0:00

If a junior came to you and

0:02

asking the questions you were asking

0:04

your mentors now , is

0:06

there a piece of advice you would give

0:09

almost everyone and say , hey

0:11

, start there .

0:12

I would say the fact

0:14

that you're reaching out is you're going to get an answer

0:16

and you're going to be able to be successful . It's

0:18

the people that don't reach out that are

0:20

going to remain stuck and stay junior

0:22

. So , just building your network and

0:24

talking to people , because there's not going to be any

0:26

. It's all contextual . It's all situational

0:29

, but if you can find the right people

0:31

that have been where you are

0:33

, they'll help you through it . So

0:35

reaching out is that key piece

0:37

of advice is what I would give to the juniors

0:40

.

0:40

Hello and welcome to Developers

0:42

Journey , the podcast bringing you the making

0:45

of stories of successful software

0:47

developers to help you on your

0:49

upcoming journey . I'm your host , tim

0:51

Bokenu . On this episode I

0:53

receive Joshua Duffney . Josh

0:56

is a senior cloud advocate of Microsoft , a

0:58

former Microsoft MVP and XSRE

1:01

site reliability engineer at

1:03

Stack Overflow and a Pluralsight author

1:05

, to name only a few . Fz books

1:07

or e-books and stuff . I'm sure he's doing

1:10

tons , josh . Welcome

1:12

to have Journey . Thank you so much . Pleasure

1:14

to be here and it's my pleasure to have you . It's

1:16

been a long time in the making and I'm glad

1:18

you're finally here Finally here . Thanks

1:20

for the persistence . Before we come to

1:22

your story , I want to thank the

1:25

terrific listeners who support the show

1:27

. Every month you are keeping

1:29

the DevJourney lights up . If

1:31

you would like to join this fine

1:33

crew and help me spend more time

1:36

on finding phenomenal guests

1:38

than editing audio tracks , please

1:40

go to our website devjourneyinfo

1:43

and click on the support me on

1:45

Patreon button . Even the smallest

1:48

contributions are giant steps toward

1:50

a sustainable DevJourney journey . Thank

1:54

you , and now back to today's

1:56

guest . So , josh , as you know , the

1:58

show exists to help listeners understand what your story

2:00

looked like and imagine how to shape their

2:02

own future . So , as is usual on

2:04

the show , let's go back to your beginnings . Where

2:07

would you place the start of your DevJourney ?

2:09

The very , very beginning . Well , it's interesting

2:11

that you say DevJourney , because I feel like the DevJourney

2:14

for me is just beginning , because the

2:16

first decade or so that

2:18

I've been in the tech industry I've been in the operation side

2:20

or like scripting , and so I've always kind

2:22

of skated around development

2:25

, so to speak , going deeper and deeper . But

2:27

it all kind of started for me in high school

2:29

with video games . So

2:32

I was around like the early

2:34

thousands when I was getting really into video

2:36

games and starting to go into the PC gaming

2:38

and needed to upgrade my graphics card

2:41

. And so my grandma got me a graphics card

2:43

for Christmas . But then I learned that there's different

2:45

sockets and slots that you put

2:47

video cards into , and so my computer

2:49

didn't work for the video cards you got me . And

2:52

so that's kind of where it all began . And

2:55

then you know tinkering and taking apart computers

2:57

and then eventually going

3:00

into an associate's degree program

3:02

for computer networking because it was the closest

3:04

thing to like video game design

3:06

that I could find at a local college .

3:09

That's where it all began for me that

3:11

must have been a rough wake up call

3:13

when you realize that networking has nothing to do with

3:15

gaming .

3:17

A little bit , but it got me in the industry . It

3:20

was either that or joined the military . And

3:23

I just met my wife now

3:25

then and so I felt like I had to make

3:27

a choice , like I could go the military route

3:29

and get a GI bill and eventually pay for

3:31

video game design down the road , or

3:33

I could go to the community college route

3:36

, stay here and kind of pursue that path

3:38

which eventually to starting a family and

3:40

all that goodness . So that's

3:43

kind of the choices I made and it was the closest thing

3:45

and it's treated me well . I've gotten pretty far on

3:47

that associate's degree .

3:49

And I approve this message .

3:51

Do you want to tell us ?

3:51

about how you do studies went

3:53

and maybe compared to what you were

3:55

expecting .

3:57

Yeah , I had really no expectations . I

3:59

really I could have gone to a four year university for

4:01

game design , but I didn't want to start life

4:03

Six figures of debt . You

4:07

know , college in the US is really expensive and

4:10

so I wanted to avoid that and had the community college , the

4:13

computer networking degree . It was

4:15

, it was said , computer networking , but it

4:17

wasn't focused on that entirely . I mean , I

4:19

had a semester about printers , a semester

4:21

on shell scripting

4:23

, semester on Linux , semester on virtualization

4:26

of course , had some Cisco classes

4:28

, had some C classes

4:31

that I really did not do well

4:33

at the time and

4:36

so it was kind of like a general introduction to technology

4:38

and computers in general . You know , I did

4:40

have some networking concepts . I even got to wire

4:43

the new dorm room so I had to run , you know

4:45

, hundreds of , hundreds of feet of cable and

4:47

so I just got exposed to everything

4:49

really in that two year degree , you know

4:52

, from layer zero all the way up to the

4:54

application .

4:56

You had pictured that in your mind

4:58

as a first step in your

5:00

studies , or would you expecting something else ?

5:03

I . All I knew was I

5:05

wanted to do something in the technology sector

5:07

because previously I had come and

5:09

my summer job was a road crew

5:11

, which I enjoyed , but it required a lot of travel , is a lot of manual

5:13

labor , and I was just seeing like , as I get

5:15

older this is going to be harder and harder

5:18

to do , and

5:20

I guess it was . It was pretty laid out

5:22

from the syllabus and I had a good

5:24

idea of what to expect because I knew what these things

5:27

were . I just didn't understand how they worked , you

5:29

know , and so it was . It

5:31

matched up with my expectations and then it

5:34

get . Basically , let me hit the ground running . When

5:36

I went into the workforce to start on the help

5:38

desk , let's talk

5:40

about that how .

5:41

how did you pick that field

5:43

of operations ? Or how did that field of

5:45

operation pick you the

5:47

help desk ?

5:48

Yeah , well , it was kind of like the entry

5:50

level position that I could get with that degree , you

5:52

know , aside from just trying to walk in as a

5:55

network engineer or a network administrator

5:58

, which is kind of what one

6:00

of the teachers at the college campus did . He was a

6:02

network administrator and managed all the way

6:04

in connections and stuff like that was where there was

6:06

T1 lines and stuff and all

6:08

that . Where you'd have to bundle it to get beyond was

6:10

a one and a half mag download and

6:15

so , yeah , it was just I . My

6:17

wife lived in , kind of lived

6:19

with me for a little bit in college and it's a couple

6:21

hours away from where she's from and where I'm

6:23

from , and she wanted to move back

6:25

home . And so I just started looking for jobs in the

6:27

area and there was a little engineering firm

6:29

that was looking for a help desk person , someone

6:32

to upgrade everybody's computer

6:34

from XP to Windows seven . And

6:36

I , I fit the bill , you know , and figured

6:39

that out and kind of ran the help desk there and

6:41

installed software and troubleshots

6:43

stuff and all that , all that good

6:45

good thing , all those good things that you do on the help

6:47

desk . But I learned , learned a lot , mainly

6:49

a lot of people skills , so that was a valuable

6:52

trait that I picked up . Communicating

6:54

my favorite , my favorite story , I got to share this one

6:57

. There was an executive that

6:59

was super mad at me because I went into his

7:01

office work on his computer

7:03

over lunch and

7:05

so I , you know not to disturb his working

7:08

hours . And so then I went

7:10

in and I replaced everything , upgraded his computer

7:12

, put a new keyboard and mouse on there and I got called

7:14

into his office not even 15

7:16

minutes after he got back and he's like if

7:18

you're going to have the audacity

7:20

to come in here and mess with my computer , you

7:23

should at least plug back in my mouse

7:25

and keyboard so I can work . Lo

7:28

and behold , I had replaced his mouse

7:30

and keyboard with wireless Nice keyboard

7:32

. And I was like oh , I don't know

7:35

what you mean . I say

7:37

I've got batteries in them , they're powered on , like I made sure

7:39

all those things work . I had literally a paper

7:41

checklist I had to go through to leave

7:43

your office . I was like it all works . And

7:46

he didn't say anything to me after I shook the mouse and it

7:48

worked . He just said I could leave

7:50

. I mean no apology , nothing

7:52

.

7:54

Yeah , I guess I would be speechless

7:56

as well , yeah

7:58

.

7:59

What is this magic Exactly ?

8:02

Do you have other example of people skills

8:04

, besides being able to

8:06

deal with executives that have no idea what

8:08

you just did .

8:10

Well , a lot of it was just , um , just

8:12

realizing how much that

8:14

you could know so quickly in the industry

8:16

, like there's these people that have a really , really smart

8:18

had their

8:20

electrical and mechanical engineers , but

8:23

I could quickly learn more than them about these particular

8:26

things that they depended on Just because

8:28

of my focus on technology . It's so I really loved

8:30

that that fact that the there was so much to

8:32

learn in technology that even me

8:34

with less than a year would know so

8:37

much more than these people that have been kind

8:39

of in this field or in an adjacent

8:41

field , dependent on this for decades

8:43

. And so a lot of the

8:45

the people skills I learned was just to communicate

8:48

without that kind of Talking

8:50

, that demeanor like talking down to people , and

8:53

so learning to communicate things and to

8:55

teach things is kind of I stumbled upon Very

8:57

quickly in technology one of the

8:59

kind of the passions or areas that I really enjoy

9:01

, which is the teaching aspect of it

9:03

, and so , yeah , just being

9:06

able to communicate with people about technology

9:08

was probably

9:10

the bigger skill that I learned in that role , and

9:13

Calming people down when they're getting emotional

9:15

about you know their spreadsheet doesn't do this or that

9:17

, or you know Outlook isn't doing this or that

9:19

, like it's just . It's a , it's

9:22

a program following a procedure , and once you

9:24

understand a procedure then you can understand how to make

9:26

it work . But doesn't mean that it's not complicated

9:28

.

9:28

Yeah , that is very true , that is very

9:30

true . The oldest positions , actually

9:33

, where you're in

9:36

Mendated

9:38

to help people when something

9:40

is not working , those are

9:42

all really learning pressure cookers

9:45

. Really . People come at you , they are

9:47

mad already they have a problem that cannot

9:49

solve and and it's timely

9:51

, and it's painful , etc . And

9:53

so you have to be thinking on your feet . You have to understand

9:56

the whole system . You have to understand what

9:58

they're telling you and what they're not telling you , because

10:00

you just don't know about it . And I've

10:02

had my fair share of of after-sales

10:05

support now in a Tech store

10:07

, and that was that , was this , again

10:09

and again and again , people coming in and screaming

10:12

and this is whoa , I

10:14

really learned a lot . I agree with that . It's very interesting

10:17

. So how did you go

10:19

from there ? Because I've heard

10:21

you code a bit , so , oh

10:24

, at least you did coding stuff after that

10:26

. So how ?

10:26

yeah , yeah yeah , so the story

10:29

there is . I was helped Desk , worked there

10:31

for a couple years and then I

10:33

became kind of like a one-man shop

10:35

, like a network administrator was the title , but I was

10:37

really just like the sys admin for a small bank

10:39

and so I was rack and servers

10:41

, like figuring out the storage capacity

10:43

, like for the backups you know , and

10:45

installing battery backups for this little

10:48

bank and data center , rewiring

10:51

everything , upgrading the access points , and then

10:53

I started working on virtualization at

10:55

that point so net app Was

10:57

the solution that they chose there and we

10:59

were placing all the like the teller terminals with

11:02

these little wise devices . So instead of

11:04

hardware computers there are these wise

11:06

devices . And that's where I

11:08

I just got exposed to like everything I was

11:10

. I was responsible in the primary on call

11:12

for this little bank and all these operations

11:14

and keeping the way and links connected and all that

11:16

stuff and and I learned

11:19

a ton and I was only there probably about a year until

11:22

I got this opportunity to join , to

11:24

get a pretty big pay raise and join the service

11:26

desk for a really large enterprise and

11:28

that's where the kind of the coding journey started

11:30

and the

11:33

ticket that kind of Pushed me down

11:35

that path was we got was

11:37

. I worked for this really large construction company

11:39

and what they would do is they'd spin

11:41

up and they'd spend down construction sites and

11:44

they'd hire what they would call craft workers , you

11:46

know contractors , and

11:49

but they would have to provision them all these accounts and stuff

11:51

to log in time and whatever . And so

11:53

we would pretty often we get these tickets

11:55

that you know this job site spun

11:57

, spun down , we needed to disable these

12:00

300 or 500 people and

12:02

doing Is

12:04

we had a service desk of about 60 people . They

12:07

just divvy up this Excel spreadsheet and

12:09

say you right-click , disable 25

12:12

and you disable 25 , and so you

12:14

know , by the end of the day , you know we

12:17

had three chefs or whatever of people it

12:20

would get done . And there was this guy His

12:22

name was Rob that worked with me on the tier two

12:24

help desk and we kind

12:26

of looked at each other and we're like I

12:28

think there's a better way . I I think we

12:31

could do this quick . The monotony

12:33

of it was getting us , we're getting

12:35

bored , we're getting a little stir crazy , right click

12:37

disabling these hundreds of lists

12:39

, and so we could some of

12:41

them upon PowerShell , powershell I just kind

12:43

of taken root in the Windows

12:45

ecosystem and it had a really good support

12:47

for Active Directory and Exchange and

12:49

those are the two primary things that we administered

12:52

. And the first time we did that

12:54

we got that list of 300 and seconds

12:56

later it was all disabled and

12:59

our bosses were just stunned and

13:01

blown away and magic

13:03

, you know like , oh , we needed , we

13:06

would have had . You know , I need a team of developers

13:08

to be able to figure this out is what they said . And

13:10

so we quickly . I was in my younger , my

13:12

early 20s at the time , so I

13:14

got the title of a script kid , so

13:18

from that point on I kind of anything

13:21

that had any kind of volume behind it . It

13:23

was an opportunity for me to exercise

13:25

some more scripting skills and eventually

13:28

that got me hired , taken out of the service

13:30

desk and hired as a systems engineer working

13:33

on SCCM , so system center configuration

13:35

manager , and I worked to automate

13:37

a bunch of software installs and Windows

13:40

updates and imaging , which

13:42

kind of ties back to the help desk job , you know

13:44

. But now fast forward to Windows 8.1

13:47

.

13:47

You know that was . That

13:49

was the OS Windows 8.1 . Oh

13:51

, that was a nasty one .

13:53

Yeah , not as bad as Vista

13:55

, but definitely not fun . That was

13:57

the surface and everybody wanted the surface

13:59

and those were a nightmare to

14:01

try to image , if

14:04

memory serves . But that's kind

14:06

of where the coding started . And then I got kind of hopped on

14:08

the DevOps bandwagon and got

14:11

roped into infrastructure as code and

14:13

learning a lot of software engineering

14:15

principles , but in the lens of operations

14:17

and through infrastructure the kind of all the DevOps

14:20

I read like the Phoenix project and got

14:23

on that bandwagon , started following a lot of influential

14:25

people in the community that were starting that

14:27

up , just humble being one . And then

14:29

what's his name ? Gene

14:32

Cam . And so

14:34

that was kind of my first kind of introduction

14:36

into software engineering and those disciplines

14:39

, was trying to apply

14:41

them and mature the process of managing

14:43

infrastructure and that

14:45

eventually I was a DevOps

14:48

engineer and tech lead for a

14:50

payroll company for about four years and

14:52

then I got the opportunity to join Stack

14:54

, overflows and SRE , which you

14:56

know they're at kind of like the top of the industry for

14:58

the practices that are led by Thomas

15:01

Limoncelli , who was a sysadmin

15:04

at Google for many years and

15:06

he's now been at Stack for a long time . But

15:08

they've got a really , really good you know ship

15:11

, so to speak , and it was

15:13

just an honor to be among them for

15:15

the short time that I was . And then

15:18

I kind of hit that pivotal

15:20

point , I guess , where I was like , okay , well

15:22

, I've kind of got to the top of

15:24

this particular field that I'm super

15:27

, was super interested in profession and

15:29

kind of . I

15:32

took a leap of faith and joined Microsoft as

15:34

a technical writer because I had just

15:36

released a book in this time and

15:39

so I'm skipping a bunch of stuff we can dive deeper into

15:41

. But I in

15:43

hindsight overpivoted into that role , because

15:47

something that you do for the side that

15:50

you have a passion for doesn't always make a good full

15:52

time job . And so I quickly

15:54

realized that and I started to

15:57

miss the sense of mastery

15:59

that I previously had in my other discipline . And

16:02

so since then I've been trying to repivot

16:04

, so to speak . Right now I'm currently as

16:06

a I'm a cloud advocate , so I'm not

16:09

necessarily fully content . I'm in the middle

16:11

where I get to sit between the customers

16:13

and the product and both be the storyteller

16:15

and teacher , but also an engineer , and

16:18

so that's been a good balance for me currently . But

16:20

yeah , ever since I left stack I guess I've

16:22

been kind of like trying to course

16:24

correct a little bit since an

16:26

overpivot , but what's been humbling

16:30

and honoring and people like realizing

16:32

that jump of people that have followed

16:35

me online and stuff and I get these conversations

16:37

sometimes they really

16:39

admire the ability

16:41

to kind of rebase right , like

16:43

rebase your skill set , which is super hard

16:46

. A lot of people they get really good

16:48

at one thing and they have that sense of mastery and I

16:50

get it . You don't want to let it go because it's so rewarding

16:52

. But this , this field , demands

16:54

that you constantly develop your

16:56

skill set . My only caveat

16:58

I think in hindsight that I would do

17:01

a little bit differently is make

17:03

smaller pivots . That's

17:05

such huge , drastic changes

17:07

but it is indeed

17:09

.

17:10

It is indeed and I want to know the

17:12

choice of word we say rebase your skills . That's

17:16

the , the , the expert

17:18

probably talking when

17:21

you , when you say you over

17:23

pivoted and you miss

17:26

the mastery , can you , can you explain a bit more

17:28

what you mean ? Yeah

17:30

, so I was moving from yeah

17:32

, absolutely so .

17:33

I , to give the full context , I was , you

17:36

know , a site reliability engineer at Stack Overflow

17:38

. I had been working seven years

17:40

to get into that position . I had applied many times

17:42

, never got in , and then it finally got in

17:45

and I had a number of friends and colleagues that already

17:47

worked there that I knew from different communities and so I was

17:49

well connected . But

17:52

I just had such a sense of mastery . I knew everything that

17:54

I was . I was still challenged

17:56

and the team was still moving and progressing

17:58

and bettering the organization . But

18:01

if in like the dev ops space and

18:03

is from a company and culture stack overflow

18:06

is , you don't have to like sell dev ops to stack

18:08

overflow . They understand it , they embrace

18:10

it , and so for a long time I had

18:12

to fight , fight that in organizations . But

18:16

what I mean by over pivot was I was moving from

18:18

this discipline of dealing with infrastructure

18:20

as code and dev ops and a lot

18:22

of that stuff and Over into

18:25

technical writing , and so the difference

18:27

in the daily level is I'm no longer responsible

18:29

for maintaining Production

18:31

systems . I'm now writing

18:34

very technical , detailed , technical

18:36

documentation that explains the

18:39

things of my previous domain , like terraform and

18:41

ansible , and writing that

18:43

and so is a totally different skill set to be

18:45

able to see , without

18:48

even talking to the audience , like what , like , what

18:50

is this library want ? There's a lot of information

18:52

architecture that goes into that . There's

18:55

obviously the editing , a little bit of storytelling

18:57

that you need to have in there , and

19:00

then the real world experience was kind

19:02

of like the edge that I had on other people

19:04

that had technical writing as their discipline . For many

19:06

years I had , I'd lived in

19:08

these tools and I knew some of the rough edges , but

19:11

what that left me with was having

19:14

to create All these different

19:16

scenarios for myself . No longer

19:18

was I constantly hit in the face

19:20

by the problems of production , and

19:23

now I had to create all the problems myself

19:25

, and the

19:28

main thing that I lack there was just

19:30

the that keeps your

19:32

skills so sharp constantly having

19:34

problems presented to you and having

19:37

to solve them . Just like the help desk , you get a , get

19:39

a call , you get a sit down and like outlooks not working

19:41

, that's the only directive you get . You gotta

19:43

figure it out . On the other side , with

19:45

the technical writing , there's

19:48

no one calling you , there's

19:50

no problems hitting you in the face . You've

19:52

gotta go and seek them out and try to understand

19:54

them , and so the biggest challenge there

19:56

was just Having a

19:58

faith in my decision . For the problems I was selecting

20:01

, there was no one telling me that they're good or bad

20:03

, or useful or not useful

20:06

. You know , you don't have . You don't get that feedback till

20:08

the end , just like an author doesn't get that feedback till

20:10

the end of their book . You know .

20:13

I see , I see it probably also do

20:15

the problem of of if you

20:17

have a blind spot . You didn't see

20:19

a category of problems that

20:21

could happen . You just don't see them . They're not

20:23

gonna hit you in the face and so , unless

20:25

somebody tells you gonna

20:28

see , not gonna see it . Yeah

20:30

, how was it in terms of of reward

20:34

cycles ? I mean , when you

20:36

solve problems day in , day out , you get

20:38

your kick off problem

20:40

solving . When you have to make your own problems

20:42

and you're writing stuff , I guess the

20:44

time that would be way longer and

20:47

the rewards way less

20:49

often .

20:50

Yeah , yeah , your feedback loop is way , it's

20:53

a long tail , right , and that

20:55

was actually the biggest thing that I miss was the problem solving

20:57

in the reward cycle of that . You know

20:59

that constant feedback you

21:01

get from programming or solving those

21:04

challenging problems . Yeah , for the content

21:06

, I mean it would be take me two weeks to

21:09

write an article and then I

21:11

would release it and then I get some feedback

21:13

. And then , you know , doctor

21:16

, it's learn now has good domain

21:18

authority , so the sc always pretty decent . I can

21:20

get ranked on google , but there's

21:23

the most people like they won't leave

21:25

feedback on there . The verbatim is always kind of

21:27

the negative stuff and so , yeah

21:29

, you don't really get the same feedback

21:32

that you normally would

21:34

you like ? It's funny now that

21:36

it's been two years since I've done that , I'll get

21:38

a comment like , hey , this was a helpful article

21:40

. So there's an example Like

21:43

two years after I wrote it did I get a

21:45

single piece of feedback on it

21:47

? You know .

21:49

But I'm . Then . Why did you decide

21:51

to I wouldn't say double

21:53

down , because you pivoted again a little

21:55

bit of pivoted back , as you said . Why

21:58

didn't you say , hey , screw that , I'm coming

22:00

, I'm going back , and but decided

22:02

to try something else still ?

22:05

That's a really good question . I don't know if I made

22:07

that consciously , part of it was just opportunity

22:09

. So I kind

22:11

of realize like , hey , I enjoy the technical

22:13

writing , but it's not somewhere I want to stay for a

22:15

long , like a long , long time . You

22:18

know , I've kind of learns a lot of good

22:20

skills . My writing skills obviously improved

22:22

with 18 months of just Always

22:24

writing a little backstory . I

22:26

was writing a nonfiction book at that same time

22:28

as becoming a full time technical

22:31

writer , so I was just like

22:33

reps and reps and reps with writing . So my communications

22:35

gotten a lot better . But

22:38

yeah , it was more . So just the opportunity came

22:40

up to join a team

22:42

with someone that I've looked up to in the

22:44

industry for a long time is named seed morowski . He

22:48

had a spot open and I just

22:50

somehow stumbled upon it to the job

22:52

site and I was like I'd be really cool to work with him

22:54

. You know , it's kind of like in the middle of the

22:56

two things that I used to do or what I'm

22:58

currently doing , what I used to do . So

23:00

maybe I'll just give it a try . It's just kind of an

23:03

opportunity that I saw it and

23:05

it's the funny thing is is I

23:09

was , I think four hours shy

23:11

of meeting the cut off for the hiring

23:13

pause . That happened couple

23:15

years ago . Wow , like had I

23:17

waited to sign the offer just

23:20

a couple more hours , I wouldn't

23:22

have the current role I'm in . Wow

23:25

, okay , so that means , just before

23:27

cool , be the gorgeous when could it or something I

23:29

was kind of afterwards , yeah when the economy

23:31

really hit in twenty , twenty

23:33

two , twenty three , yeah , okay

23:36

yeah , yeah , that's that

23:38

one for sure .

23:41

Okay , I'm . Do you still

23:43

miss this , this feedback

23:45

loop , or did you manage to create your

23:47

own now , in this new position ?

23:49

I do still miss it . I've got variants

23:52

of it . Depends on the project I'm on . But

23:54

I'm also starting to realize , listening

23:56

to some of your other episodes actually , that this

23:59

is kind of the world of the senior role

24:01

is . Things are so much more ambiguous , you

24:03

know , and there are things are more

24:06

long tail , just like a mentoring is a long tail

24:08

thing , and I'm

24:10

realizing that I'm probably just gonna have to get used

24:12

to that ambiguity

24:15

a little bit , you know .

24:21

Maybe I've seen those deep

24:24

technical roles where you

24:26

actually say , no , I'm not gonna

24:28

go this direction , I'm going back to

24:30

the I know staff

24:32

, senior staff , principal route

24:34

and really going very deep

24:36

as as an expertise in

24:38

what I'm doing , and then I guess you can

24:40

still keep that part of

24:43

the of the feedback to be intact . But

24:45

as soon as you want to multiply

24:48

bb a force multiplier and

24:50

really try to to multiply your effort

24:53

by mentoring , networking

24:55

, helping others , I guess

24:57

that's the price you

24:59

have to pay .

25:00

Yeah I guess I'll . Yeah , that's that's kind of

25:02

. You talked about the fog of the

25:04

words beginning , beginning of the

25:07

episode before start recording and when

25:09

you feel lost . That feeling I

25:11

definitely definitely feel that way . I

25:13

feel kind of like right at the cusp of that

25:16

being lost and just trying to find , like , do

25:18

I double down and find an area where I want to

25:20

be super technical or do I kind

25:22

of embrace this ? Am you

25:24

a little bit more ? Is this the best way to

25:26

just uncertainty right

25:29

and try to look for ways

25:31

to drive more clarity and have broader impact

25:33

, you know , and to have some faith behind

25:35

that ? And that requires that you learn more

25:37

in your network so that way you can bet out

25:39

those blind spots and All that

25:42

good stuff , which are all skills that I have

25:44

yet to really hone .

25:46

Do you mind loving a bit more in this ? You're

25:49

facing this problem right now . What

25:51

do you do ? I'm explicitly

25:54

to try to get out of it , or

25:56

understand it more , or or

25:58

cut some branches that

26:00

you might realize are not the good one . How

26:02

do you ? Do you go at it , right ?

26:03

now . Right now , it's been

26:06

when it gets too much to handle

26:08

. What I typically do is reduce scope and I try

26:10

to find some kind of problem that has a

26:12

finish line . So I just

26:14

did like a little deep dive into how containers

26:16

work and made that like

26:18

a little learning sprint and I found a way to

26:20

make some , you know , content , did some live streams

26:22

, and that's an example of where the

26:25

ambiguity and the uncertainties just like it's

26:27

too much , it's too restless for me

26:29

that I need to have some kind of finite outcome

26:31

, and so I'll kind of like zoom

26:33

in for a sprint , like a one to two

26:36

week period , on something like that , and

26:38

I'm kind of coming out of that phase where I know

26:40

I need to deal with this . But

26:43

one thing that I'm just recently

26:45

learned is that I

26:47

can't think my way out of it . I have

26:50

to talk my way out of it , and

26:52

so now what I'm doing is I'm starting

26:54

to set up meetings with my lead and with other

26:56

Product group leaders in the space

26:58

I'm in to get a better idea

27:00

, like , okay , I have these vague

27:03

notions of important work , but I need

27:05

I need more data points , and

27:08

those data points can't just be conjured from my

27:10

imagination . I need to have real data

27:12

points from different people . Really

27:14

good advice that I got from a colleague was Find

27:17

the problems that the people at your level

27:20

or above Find

27:22

important but don't have time to do . Then

27:24

you know that you're always working towards something that has

27:27

impact , because you don't have to sell them on . They

27:29

see the value . You don't have to sell them on

27:31

that . But if you go and start your own little thing You're

27:34

gonna have to create , unless you really believe

27:37

in it and you really see the vision , you're

27:40

gonna have a uphill battle convincing people

27:42

that they should even care that

27:44

your problem is is worthy of solving

27:46

. You can go and solve it and they're gonna say , okay , cool , but

27:49

if you go and solve something that they already are experiencing

27:51

as pain , you don't have to sell

27:53

them on that . And so that's where I'm currently

27:56

at right now is is trying to Find

27:59

the right people to have these conversations with so

28:01

that way I can more accurately Articulate

28:05

the problems that I'm working on and then

28:07

go back into that scoping thing that I

28:09

talked about . Or okay , here's this broader

28:11

chunk of a problem , here's what I

28:13

can get done and show some visible progress

28:16

on . And you

28:18

know the next quarter or whatever it is

28:20

, and then break that down further , I

28:22

love it .

28:23

I love it . How would that discussion

28:26

go ? Would you go towards some of your

28:28

senior peers and then and

28:30

say , hey , I have the feeling you're working

28:32

on this and you're working on that and you have those problems

28:35

. This is by interesting right now . Is

28:37

it accurate ? Can you describe

28:39

it a bit more , etc . Oh , would

28:41

you go at it completely differently ?

28:44

I'll be on my first stop . I have a really good team lead was

28:46

the gentleman that I mentioned earlier , and so he's he's

28:49

got a really good luck , he's got a good

28:51

leadership capacity and so

28:53

he does have a good , like broad View

28:56

of the different organizations , things that are coming in . And

28:59

so typically what I'll do is I'll

29:01

try to find someone like that , someone that's just has

29:03

a broader view than I do , like I'm too

29:05

down in the weeds here or I'm just not seeing things

29:07

. I don't have the same network , and so I like

29:10

to try to peer into their minds , so to speak

29:12

, to get that a broader , detached

29:14

view , kind of landscape

29:17

. Like are there some things coming down the pipeline that are

29:19

important , or should I stay in my lane

29:21

here and double down and keep focusing ? And

29:24

so my first stop is usually to that person

29:26

and say , hey , it's usually in

29:28

the form of a career check-in , like I'm

29:30

a little bit lost right now . I'm usually super

29:33

honest . Like I'm lost , I don't exactly

29:35

, don't I'm doing . It doesn't feel like I'm having any impact , I

29:37

feel like I keep wasting my time , learned

29:40

a bunch of stuff that really doesn't do a

29:42

whole lot . Like you

29:44

, where do you think I should invest my efforts . You

29:46

know , like what are your two

29:48

or three little areas that you've got like

29:51

future state , current state , and

29:53

then Kind

29:56

of like the present . You know , like the the

29:58

now , next future type

30:01

things , and usually there's

30:03

a technology kind of bracketed in there , like maybe

30:05

wazzy and web assembly type

30:07

stuff is the future stuff that I should be have

30:09

on my radar and be tinkering with . But you

30:11

know , don't make it a big boulder just yet , like there's

30:13

not enough there . And so

30:16

that's typically what will come out of those conversations

30:18

some clarity . And

30:20

then Usually I move on

30:22

to people that are more Focused

30:25

. So then they , they send me on

30:27

, it's like kind of like a quest . You know these the video game

30:29

analogy , like here's the entry point and

30:31

then then here's they , just they're

30:33

a pointer to the town's person . That's actually

30:36

got you know the monster or whatever in

30:38

the dungeon that you need to go and slay

30:40

.

30:41

But and the monster is web assembly

30:43

. Okay

30:46

, so really going broad , finding

30:48

new contacts to go deep

30:50

with , understand if it's

30:52

something for you , if there is something

30:54

at all , if it's something you could really

30:57

rock on for a while , and if

30:59

so , double down . If not , come

31:01

back up , find that person again

31:03

or a different person to go broad again and and

31:05

find where to go deep again .

31:08

Yeah , sounds like a plan .

31:13

Have you ? So we've been talking

31:15

a bit about , about Gaming

31:17

again and again . That was

31:19

the beginning of the discussion . Have you thought

31:22

of going back to that ?

31:24

You know only recently

31:26

what really sparked it . I kind

31:28

of just left it as it was because I

31:30

had had . I had . Coding

31:34

is as close to video gaming as I've

31:36

gotten , as far as like a flow state , like being able

31:38

to code and create things , whether it be a script

31:40

that just copies files around or Whatever

31:43

else . But I've never dived into application

31:46

development . It's just been a domain that I've For

31:49

whatever seems like . Maybe it's forbidden fruit in my

31:51

mind , I have no idea . But very recently

31:53

I've got more application where I'm Teaching

31:56

my son math and I saw this thing on Twitter

31:59

. It's this game developer who created

32:01

this little video game for a son to do

32:03

just basic arithmetic , you know , and

32:06

I was like that would be . That would have been the best way

32:08

for me to learn as a kid , and so

32:10

there's been interest in there , but I've never

32:12

revisited it . Perhaps it's time I might find

32:14

a new Passion in that . But

32:16

yeah , that's a really good question

32:19

.

32:20

You know , and you haven't been tempted to

32:22

go toward your

32:25

, I want to say , I don't want to say first

32:27

mastery , but the mastery of , of DevOps

32:29

and infrastructure , etc . In the gaming

32:31

industry .

32:34

No , not really . That

32:36

would be . That would be a good parallel . I had a couple

32:38

people that made that jump the company

32:40

where I learned a lot of this stuff . One

32:43

person left . He was a sysadmin

32:45

and worked with me pretty closely , or my team . I

32:48

was a tech lead for the DevOps team , and so we we

32:50

had to basically connect with all the like

32:53

the DBA team and very fractured

32:55

, siloed , typical organization , right

32:57

. But he went to Blizzard , which

32:59

is now owned by Microsoft , but so

33:02

I was jealous of that . I've had rockstar games reach

33:04

out to me in the past , but the relocating

33:06

was always a no-go for me .

33:09

Yeah , maybe it has changed , maybe not . Well

33:13

, maybe the industry sucks , but that's

33:15

, that's a different . Do

33:19

you see yourself ? Continuing

33:22

this direction of mixing is different

33:24

the technical writing , the

33:26

community , building the expertise

33:29

that you have and continuing mixing

33:31

those . Or are you going to face

33:33

a pivot again soon and

33:35

say , hey , I need something else ?

33:39

That's the thing that's been in the back of my mind for a little

33:41

while , which is do

33:47

you disappear ? There is something that is

33:49

kind of appealing

33:53

to that , where you can just disappear

33:55

into the ether of development

33:57

for a little while , because I've been in the public

33:59

eye for a little bit since my PowerShell days

34:01

, but I do enjoy the teaching

34:04

. I think I'll have it to a blend at

34:06

some point , but I would like the ratio

34:08

to be more engineering , like more of the deep

34:10

work , more of the engineering , the

34:12

quiet heads down type problem

34:14

solving . So my

34:17

next pivot , if anything , would be if

34:19

I can change my current role to

34:21

have more of that time or

34:24

a role that has more of that built in . But still

34:26

, I think I would always had a really good question

34:29

posed to me when I was trying to iron

34:31

this out , which was what makes you

34:33

think you're so unhappy when your current role ? Because

34:35

it seems like you get to do all the things that you like to do

34:37

under the role and it just takes

34:39

a while to admit or to realize that you can

34:41

. That's kind of the weird thing

34:44

with autonomy is to

34:46

realize the freedom that you have in it . But

34:50

I did come to the realization that , yeah , I think

34:52

even if I was full-time engineering

34:54

, I would probably still teach to a degree Like

34:56

I enjoy it too

34:59

much to let it completely go , yeah

35:02

, but I'd probably pivot a little bit more to more

35:04

engineering in the

35:06

future .

35:08

Two questions on my mind . Which

35:10

nasty one should I pick ? Yeah , I'd pick

35:12

that one . What would

35:14

be ? How did you put it ? An

35:16

overpivot in

35:18

this regard ?

35:20

An overpivot would probably be to

35:23

try to force my way into

35:25

a software engineering role inside the Big

35:27

Tech , which has got a lot of gates , you know

35:29

, with the engineering role , with

35:31

coding , interviews and stuff , and try to stress this

35:34

is something that I've done in the past , a very familiar

35:36

territory . So if I were to overdo

35:38

it this is exactly what it would look like is I would

35:40

buy and it's not like I already did this , but

35:45

I would buy a whole bunch of software engineering books and

35:47

then I would force myself to do lead code for like

35:49

two to three hours a day for six months and

35:51

force my way into a software engineering role

35:53

, not give any thought

35:55

to what that role would do or

35:58

if I would enjoy the coding that I was doing in

36:00

that role . That would be kind of an example

36:02

of an overpivot in this scenario .

36:05

Makes a lot of sense . I

36:08

don't want to say being there , I don't know , but

36:10

rings a bell . You

36:13

mentioned teaching quite

36:16

a bit . You , I

36:18

know you've written technical

36:20

books . You have created

36:23

many courses on Perl site . Do

36:25

you know in-person teaching

36:27

as well ?

36:29

I used to do in-person teaching , more so when

36:31

I worked . Well , I do

36:33

some of it for work now when I speak at conferences or do

36:35

workshops or like user groups , but

36:38

I did a lot more when I worked in an

36:40

office and I would do a lot of like lunch and learn type stuff . So

36:43

I've done some in-person , but more

36:45

of the in-person has been informal . Most

36:47

of my instruction stuff has been online

36:49

and virtual .

36:51

Okay , how did you , because

36:53

you've been at it for a while , how did you deal with

36:56

this ? Mostly going

36:58

online , mostly not seeing people interact

37:00

with your content , mostly being asynchronous and

37:03

getting the feedback , if

37:06

at all , later and not

37:08

while they're experiencing it , not

37:11

being able to piggyback on

37:13

sparkling eyes and saying , hey , they start to get

37:15

it . Or

37:17

seeing faces make grimaces and say , well , something

37:19

is not right . I've got to jump

37:21

in and add a new example to this . I

37:25

assume you had this experience before and

37:27

then , slowly , with the technical writing

37:29

and the video and such it , transitioned to

37:31

this different kind . Can

37:33

you speak with that a bit ? Yeah

37:36

?

37:36

So the

37:38

teaching , it was a kind of a natural

37:40

extension because it's all

37:42

I knew . To be honest , like I had done my

37:45

very first , we'll

37:47

go all the way back . So that help desk job that I had

37:49

. My second

37:52

project was to implement

37:54

a help desk system and there was a

37:56

free one called Spiceworks . So

37:58

Spiceworks is still out there . I actually

38:00

interviewed for them and

38:03

almost moved to Austin . So I was almost a Texan

38:05

but I decided to stay here for

38:07

my wife's families here . But

38:10

anyway , in that they have this awesome

38:12

community feature where it's

38:14

just a community of everybody uses the product

38:16

or , you know , you don't have to use the product to have the software

38:18

or to have part of the community , just log in

38:20

. It's this form , you know , like the

38:23

old school forms . And I

38:25

started to become kind of a lurker on there really

38:27

early on because I didn't mind , my boss

38:30

at the time Worked part time so

38:32

he was only there a couple days of the week . He was a

38:34

firefighter as well

38:36

as this like network administrator , saw

38:38

a lot of time . I was just on my own to figure

38:40

stuff out and I heavily relied on the community

38:42

, ask questions , found a lot of stuff that you

38:45

know . Some more people had problems with

38:47

, and then I started to . I

38:49

have a feeling I need to give back . You know , like a reciprocity

38:52

, a style of

38:55

a giver started to emerge

38:57

where I needed to . I needed to give back

38:59

because I had taken so much Knowledge

39:01

from this community and so I started to write up

39:03

. My project says how to

39:05

is in the community , and so I wrote

39:07

my very first one . I was called

39:10

windows Imaging

39:13

. Windows 7 with the fog projects of the fog project

39:15

is like an open source imaging tool . It's like insanely

39:18

complicated to install on Linux

39:20

, and I had like a semester on Linux . I was like

39:22

, okay , I at least know how to install

39:24

. You want to ? And

39:27

so that's where it all kind of started and I started

39:29

to teach . And when I got into the power

39:31

shell in the scripting , a lot of that was

39:33

just , I started a blog and

39:35

I started to put that out there . And

39:38

eventually I was sitting in a class one day

39:40

and I was , my

39:42

wife and I were starting about thinking

39:44

about starting a family and if she would keep her job

39:46

or not have her job , and so I just started

39:48

to ponder , like , what are some other ways that

39:50

I could have income and plus

39:53

, I had just started like was just a startup

39:56

company at that time was 2014 , 2015

39:58

. And I talked to the instructor

40:00

of this class as I was like , what do I need to do to

40:02

do what you're doing ? And

40:05

he very bloody said he's like I wouldn't do what

40:07

I'm doing . I would do video courses

40:09

is like I would reach out to To

40:11

play with site and do that . and I just read

40:14

the four hour work week and

40:16

which in bolded me to just ask anybody

40:18

anything right and I was

40:20

living by that mantra , and so I

40:23

reached out to one of my the people

40:25

that I had watched courses for for the SCCM

40:28

this is some center configuration manager and

40:30

his name was Adam Bertram and

40:32

he had a Twitter profile . So I just hit him up and was like hey

40:34

, how did you become a plural site author ? And

40:37

he's like I just talked to this guy , his name's

40:39

Adam Blake , and so I went

40:41

over to Adam Blake's Twitter profile , was like hey , I

40:44

become a plural site author . And they like

40:46

, fill out this , this interview . And funny

40:48

thing was I don't know if you know who he is

40:50

, but Don Jones , who's a big

40:52

figure in the the power shell space for many years

40:55

, started a conference and all that did the comfort

40:57

circuit for many years and that Ended

41:00

up becoming a mentor of mine later on . But

41:02

he was the one that did my

41:04

audition interview for plural

41:06

site . Wow . And so I

41:09

had to do a demo of five minute thing of just like

41:11

what's your style , like how do you present

41:13

yourself , like how's your speech , and

41:16

I got the green light by just recording it on my

41:18

laptop microphone and ended

41:21

up investing in the gear and you know

41:23

finding technology I was

41:25

interested in and then recording content on that

41:27

. Eventually it got to be too

41:29

much to do with a small family and a job , but

41:32

I was able to . I think I have like five total courses

41:34

. Only a couple of them are still active , but that's

41:37

kind of how that all . Just they just came about

41:39

.

41:40

Yeah , this is awesome . Did you imagine

41:42

some point pivoting , overpivoting , probably

41:44

toward just creating

41:46

content like this ?

41:48

I thought about it because I knew a lot of the

41:50

people were making way more money than I was with my full

41:52

time job doing that , but I

41:54

just didn't have enough steam to okay

41:56

to pivot over to that part of it was

41:58

, you know , I started a family and I

42:01

didn't like the process of being independent and having

42:03

to worry about health care and all that stuff , and so

42:05

that kind of kept me in and check

42:07

. And then I had some what really derailed

42:10

it , what I had some health

42:12

issues in 2018 . That

42:14

just made it impossible to do kind of like anything

42:16

other than just tread water , and so

42:18

in that , a lot of stuff just kind of fell

42:20

the way side and Extra

42:23

quick , their activities was one of them . One

42:25

of those things it might come back at some

42:27

point .

42:27

Never say never . Yeah , we've

42:30

talked a little bit about the , about becoming more

42:32

senior right now in

42:35

the past , but that's that's your . Your

42:37

your present now . And if

42:39

a junior came to you and

42:41

asking the questions you were asking

42:43

your mentors now , is

42:46

there a piece of advice you would give

42:48

almost everyone and say , hey

42:50

, start there .

42:51

I would say the fact

42:53

that you're reaching out is you're gonna get an answer

42:55

and you're gonna be able to be successful . It's

42:57

the people that don't reach out that

42:59

are gonna remain stuck and stay junior

43:02

. So just building your network and

43:04

talking to people , because there's not gonna be any

43:06

. It's all contextual . It's all situational

43:08

, but if you can find the right people

43:10

that have been where you are

43:12

, they'll help you through it . So

43:15

reaching out is that key piece

43:17

of advice is what I would give to the juniors

43:19

and I love it .

43:21

This is so true . Thank you so much . Thank

43:24

you , josh . It's been fantastic

43:26

going on this roller coaster of

43:28

your life and your activities and over

43:31

pivoting and , but still falling

43:33

on both feet and having a bit of

43:35

a About this . That is good . Thank you so

43:37

much for that . You're very welcome . Thank

43:39

you for the time . Where would be the best place to

43:42

find you online and continue this discussion

43:44

with you ?

43:45

I'm most probably active on acts

43:47

at Josh Duffney . That's

43:50

my digital home for the most part .

43:52

Okay , well , either a link directly

43:54

to that , and I guess we can find pretty much

43:56

you , we can find you pretty much everywhere from there

43:58

and follow the tree , the branches

44:01

of the tree , absolutely anything

44:03

else you want to plug in .

44:05

That's it . That's it for me . Yeah , I'm just on there

44:07

sharing every bit of this

44:09

journey on Twitter . I try to be pretty

44:11

transparent and show what I'm learning

44:13

, what I've missed , what I've failed . So

44:16

, yeah , hopefully see you there . Teaching

44:18

still yeah , thank

44:21

you so much . Thank you very much , it's been a pleasure

44:23

.

44:24

And this has been another episode of the first journey

44:26

we see each other next week Bye

44:28

. Thanks a lot for tuning

44:31

in . I hope you have enjoyed this

44:33

week's episode . If you like the show

44:35

, please share , rate and

44:37

review . It helps more listeners

44:39

discover those stories . You

44:42

can find the links to all the platforms

44:44

the show appears on on our website dev

44:47

journey dot info slash

44:49

, subscribe . Talk

44:52

to you soon .