Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the SKIL framework.
Dan Pupius: [inaudible] environment is how you get
people to do their best work because they feel much more
connected to the purpose of their work. And they feel much
more ownership when there's a lack of trust. And that's just
going to inhibit a lot of their ability to be creative, to
collaborate to get feedback.
Jason Baum: Hey, everyone, it's Jason Baum, Director of Member
experience at DevOps Institute. And this is the humans of DevOps
podcast. Welcome back. Thanks for making it for another week,
we are happy to have you. And this week, I'm really excited to
be talking about how team manager specifically can
significantly improve culture, productivity and employee
satisfaction, using a healthy mix of technology, compassion,
and forward thinking. And honestly, these skills are more
than just for managers, I would think but as we are now living
in our many people are living in the second year of remote work.
And you know, maybe there's some hybrid sprinkled in there, maybe
we're going back a little bit more, but I think many are still
working remotely. This is a very timely podcast episode. So with
me to discuss those issues is Dan papayas. Dan is the CEO and
co founder of range, a workplace collaboration software that
builds high performance culture. He's formerly the head and of
engineering at medium, and staff software engineer at Google. And
in past lives, he's raised snowboards jumped out of planes
and lived in the jungle. So he's led a pretty boring life. Dan,
welcome to the podcast.
Dan Pupius: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Awesome.
Jason Baum: Yeah, as exciting as living in the jungle.
Dan Pupius: I'm sure a little bit by the jungle sounds sounds
fun, but it's really living in a clearing that's kind of gets
kind of muddy, and then looking after people living in tents for
three months. So it's not as not as uh, maybe, you know,
attractive as it sounds,
Jason Baum: and picturing The Jungle Book in my head. So I
don't know, are fighting a lot of mosquitoes? One of the two.
Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us. So let's just dive right in.
Are you ready to get human? Definitely. Awesome. All right.
So let's just start with this. Why is it important for
organizations to build a healthy team culture for developers?
Dan Pupius: Yeah, well, I mean, I think, I mean, culture can
often seem like a fluffy word, that's a nice to have supplied
afterwards. But really, you have a culture, whether you want it
or not, and it's whether you're intentional or not. And as
organizations grow, things change and issues, propagates.
And if you're not careful, you know, the culture can
metastasize. And you can end up with a situation where people
don't feel respected, don't feel safe, don't take risks, don't,
you know, aren't creative and communicate well with each
other. So really, the goal of, you know, a manager in an
organization is to create a culture where you can achieve
your goals. And if you're a modern organization, you need
people to, you know, have psychological safety, so they
can take risks and grow as a, you know, an individual, you
know, hit their goals. And, you know, that's why you should
intentionally focus on building culture.
Jason Baum: Yeah, I guess when people think of culture, they
think of ability to work with their peers, you know, how they,
I guess, feelings, but I like that. How you said it's to
achieve goals, because I think that's, that's an easier sell
sometimes to write when you're all focused on the same thing.
Dan Pupius: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot of these people,
issues that are held up as yeah, like I said, nice to have. But
really, they're fundamental, and they are tied to business goals.
So once you can reframe them, they become a lot easier to
support, and much more concrete. And it's not just about making
people happy, for the sake of being happy, like, being happy
means you're engaged with your work, you're more likely to be
loyal and more likely to be retained. And you will actually
be more creative and you know, and you know, better at your
job. So there's, you know, there's a symbiotic relationship
between the needs for work and the needs of an organization.
And it doesn't, you know, we're not living in factories anymore.
We're not, you know, cogs in a machine. We need people to be on
the, you know, on the most creative and most kind of
inspirational selves and to do that we need to create an
environment where they can win they can manifest that.
Jason Baum: So why do companies choose to not focus on building
healthy team culture?
Dan Pupius: I think the old school would be seen as a nice
to have that is not it's not about the work and you know, we
should focus on goals and like, you know, these these entire I
told engineers who wants, you know, who want this and that,
and, you know, just asking too much. So I think that that's one
thing. The second thing is, I think fear or uncertainty, they
don't really know what it means. So they don't know what they're
doing cuz they're not trained in this, like, they're trained as
engineers or managers or like designers, they're not trained
in organizational design, or psychology or group behavior or
group dynamics. So they just don't know what they're doing.
So saying, That's why people would not would not do it, it's
like, either, they don't believe that actually has a positive
effect on the business, or they just don't know what to do.
Jason Baum: Here, you bring up culture, and someone's gonna be
like, I'm not having a conversation about a four day
workweek, like, you know, like, they go instantly to like, the
the benefits and that, rather than the actual core, talking
about,
Dan Pupius: there's a lot of misunderstanding about what
culture is the culture is that whether you want it or not, it's
the essentially the way you behave, and you interact with
each other. And one way to measure culture or to observe
culture is what you recognize and reward. So if, if you think
of like recognition as attention, what you pay
attention to is what you reward. So if you only ever work for,
like, you know, engineers, if you only rewarding launches,
that's what will define your culture. And then people who are
doing some of the other grungy work keeping the systems running
or fixing bugs or handling security issues. They're not
getting the attention, and therefore, you know, that's, you
know, it's out of sight out of mind.
Jason Baum: So, I mean, you just touched on a couple, are there
additional company culture related issues that developers
specifically are facing in 2022?
Dan Pupius: Yeah, I mean, I think definitely unique times.
So you mentioned in the opening around remote work in the
pandemic. And so, mass, mass rescue remote workers up ended,
many people remote work wasn't new, it's, you know, it's been
going on for decades. And even in the 2008, financial crisis,
remote work really expanded. But it wasn't, you know, 100% of the
workforce, 100% of desk workers weren't working remote, which is
what we saw, kind of like last year. So so. So, organizations
now having to figure out how to settle in the long term, instead
of just, you know, surviving. And that's like, causing huge
changes. The other thing, which you also mentioned, was like
hybrid. So some people are starting to go back to the
office, but many people aren't. And a lot of the survey suggests
that a significant portion of the population wants to stay
remote, at least part time. What this means is you have a
bifurcated workforce, where some people are in the office, some
people are remote, and that actually amplifies a lot of the
issues that people are facing, then I think the third issue is
really about just the long term effects of the pandemic. So
people are feeling isolation, fear, you know, anxiety, they
sort through an all time high. And that affects our ability to
show up for work and the ability to relate to people. So when
you're thinking about what healthy culture is, it's like,
how do you support people when family members are sick, or they
don't have childcare? Or, you know, they just like feeling
really burnt out after two months in a loft apartment, like
I like I'm heading and and that changes, like how we have to
approach work.
Jason Baum: Yeah, so work as hard as it is, right? If you
are, you're already focused on on all these business goals. And
now you have to focus on individual personalities, and
everyone is different, right? That's what defines us as humans
is we are all unique, and have our unique issues. So how like,
I mean, specifically for that last last issue that you just
named, the one that we all are kind of facing, which is this,
we all just kind of have been through a major trauma. You
know, by many, many people in the mental health industry, I've
been kind of flagging, as, hey, this is this is a major trauma
that we have all just suffered not just one or two people. And
then keeping people on task on on focused on the on the goal at
hand, but also providing a stable work environment that is
open and receptive to people's issues, whatever they may be,
that is an outcome of this. Where Where did where where do
you begin with that?
Dan Pupius: Yeah, it's super difficult. I think, ultimately,
there's no one answer one silver bullet. I think a good starting
point is to focus on people's needs. So like, how, what do
people need in order to be successful at work? And just
talk to people to have conversations, you know, where
are they struggling? what's working, what's not working,
both on an individual level and then a team level? And then you
can, you can, you can go for that. So some of the things
we've been doing it range reacting to this as, like, we
make sure that we have one extra day off every month. So like the
whole company shut down. So this isn't just encouraging people to
take vacation. That means that everyone's offline, so you know,
there's no email, there's no slack to catch up on. And that
really helps people switch off for a long weekend. We've also
laid in, you know, a new set of benefits including, you know,
therapy support and stipends for make your home office a little
bit nicer, just to make the environment feel like it's
changing, so it doesn't feel so static. And then we also just
think about, you know, how people work. So what type of
projects are suitable for someone's mindset at a certain
point in time, if they're really struggling, you probably don't
want to put them on a really Greenfield app, you know, you
know, abstract projects, you want to give them some more like
concrete work streams, where they can just like churn through
tasks and feel a sense of accomplishment. And then when
they have, you know, some wins under the belt, maybe you can
give them some things that are more, you know, more, kind of
more creative and more, more like, you know, Greenfield?
Jason Baum: Great. Yeah, and I wanted to talk about windowed
work, because this is something that I have not heard of before.
But as a term that when we, we were chatting, you threw that
word out. So I would like to dive into that a little bit
more. And what are these benefits? These other therapy
benefits such as windowed work?
Dan Pupius: Yeah, yeah, I mean, window work is, is pretty
straightforward, really. And I'm sure it makes sense to you. So
the old way of working was that you'd be in a factory or at a
desk nine to five. And if you weren't at your desk, you
weren't working. And there's a bunch of reasons why that's bad
in the modern day. So the first reason that's bad is that many
people have logistical needs, such as childcare, eldercare
health things, you know, that don't mean that they can be at a
desk nine to five. The second thing is that when they are
sitting at a desk, nine to five, they're not actually working
100% utilized, like we do creative work. And if you think
you can sit at a desk eight hours and be productive for
eight hours, like you're kidding yourself. So it's important to
have breaks and take off. And then the third thing is that
different people actually have different energy cycles. So you
might have heard of like, are you an owl? Or are you a lark,
and this actually maps to your ability to have different types
of cognitive function, the different types of the day to
what you're good at in the morning, might be very different
from what I'm good at the morning. And like, I might
actually be better doing that type of thing eight o'clock at
night, because I'm more of an owl. So So having this nine to
five, work schedule that, you know, that is uniform for
everyone just doesn't make sense. In in knowledge work, it
was designed for factories. So the idea of windowed work is
very simple. It's essentially to break up the workweek into
Windows. So instead of it being nine to five, five days a week,
you can structure a schedule that works for you, both your
energy and also your logistical needs. So if you want to do a
really early morning and do two hours, five to seven at home,
then go off to the gym for a few hours, and then like work in the
afternoon, in the evening, you know, we should be able to
accommodate that from from a work schedule. If I have
childcare needs on Wednesday morning, I can find that my
calendar is like a yellow zone. So I'm available for
emergencies, but mostly not not available. That's like my
childcare window. So really, it's just about fragmenting and
fragmenting the workweek to better suit you. So you can
actually, you know, have better work life integration, and then
be, you know, be more productive as well.
Jason Baum: I love that concept. It is true. And like the thing I
noticed when moving to working remote, I was remote for a year
before the pandemic is that you get so much more work done. At
home, I find some people do, some people don't. But I found
that I was much more focused at tasks, because you'll have
people knocking on your door coming in and doing whatever you
know, going to get coffee and you get stopped, you know, in
the hallway. So when you start adding up all those hours, you
realize how many hours you weren't working at work when
you're there for nine to five. So then all that time it goes
into the task and take a shorter amount of time.
Dan Pupius: Well, that period in the early afternoon, between one
and three where you kind of just stare at your computer and
everything goes really slowly. Like why not just step away, go
for a run or you know, go to a park and just accept that you're
not gonna make you're not gonna be productive during that time.
So, but you're going to be more productive in the evening
because that's when your brain comes online.
Jason Baum: Yeah, I'm so glad I'm wasn't the only one that was
just staring at my computer from one to three. Yeah, no 100% And
now with you know, because kids were home from school, and you
know, now many are back but I think in many ways life was
disrupted, but it helped us to prioritize. And I from a
business perspective, I'm wondering like, you know, how
goal setting plays into that when you have this windowed
work, I think of teachers out you know, with with with school,
it's almost like teachers hours, when you can go find your, you
know, office hours or whatever, and kind of need to have
something when you can all collaborate at once, you know,
when everyone's on at the same time. But
Dan Pupius: yeah, I think that I think a lot of the resistance
this level of flexibility is rooted in the lack of trust that
People are motivated to do the work that you hired them to do.
And that seems like a bigger problem to me, then, you know,
forcing a nine to five at the desk. So if you if you decouple
the flexibility from the motivation, and then
accountability as well. Like you hold people accountable for the
work they're meant to do, and the outcomes are meant to drive
you motivate them by helping them have a sense of purpose,
mastery and connection with the team and the company. And then
you and then you use that as a foundation for building these
flexible work work situations. And then, once you have this
flexible work situations, you realize that people aren't
always going to be available to respond to Slack nine to five.
So how do you set up the communication protocols that
support that? So we think about this in terms of like cadence
and rituals? And and how do you support you know, a lot of
asynchronous communication that is more of a like a Pub Sub
model, where in the morning, I check in, and it doesn't need to
be synchronously at the same time that you check in. Like, if
I check in at 911, it doesn't matter, but the information gets
shared. And we just remove the urgency from a lot of the
communication because a lot of the time, we don't need an
instant response. We don't need this to be like synchronously
online, and AdMob. Back in 2006, I was working with teams in
Zurich, and Japan and like, there's no way we could always
get on line at the same time. So we had to figure out ways of
working. So really, it's just using those those principles,
but applying it to people who may actually just live down the
road from you,
Jason Baum: too. Today's episode of the humans of DevOps podcast
is sponsored by collide collide is an endpoint security solution
that sends your employees important and timely security
recommendations for their Linux, Mac and Windows devices, right
inside Slack collide is perfect for organizations that care
deeply about compliance and security, but don't want to get
there by locking down devices to the point where they become
unusable, instead of frustrating your employees collide educates
them about security, and device management while directing them
to fix important problems. You can try collide with all its
features on an unlimited number of devices, free for 14 days, no
credit card required. Visit collide.com/h o DEP to sign up
today. That's callide KOLI d.com/h o DEP enter your
email when prompted to receive your free callide gift bundle
after trial activation. And that that initial culture, right
that, I think is Many businesses have still it's it's a culture
of mistrust, rather than a culture of trust. Right. And
yeah, I think that's what you're talking about a little bit.
Dan Pupius: Right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the phrase
like a high trust environment and a high trust environment is,
is how you get people to do their best work because they
feel much more connected to the, to the purpose of their work,
and the, you know, they feel much more ownership or when
there's a lack of trust, people don't take risks, they, they
worry about making mistakes, they worry about asking
questions. And that's just going to inhibit a lot of their
ability to be creative, to collaborate to give feedback,
and then you end up with problems that many people have
heard of like groupthink, or, you know, like, autocratic
decision making all these problems that emerged in
organizations can be rooted in this lack of trust and safety.
Jason Baum: What are some additional things that you do to
have a culture of trust? I'd be curious to know.
Dan Pupius: Yeah, so I think a mental model I really like is
from Daniel coils culture code, which is he has a progression.
So psychological safety is really well understood now,
thanks to Google. But you know, it dates back to the 60s in
terms of the research. So Google popularized it, but people still
find it a relatively abstract concept, though, Daniel Cole
breaks it down, which is that psychological psychological
safety requires belonging, a sense of belonging, belonging
requires trust and interest requires vulnerability. So you
often think that you have to have trust in order to be
vulnerable, but it's actually the other way around, you have
to exhibit vulnerability in order to gain trust. And this
goes to some pretty basic you know, psychological behaviors
such as, like smiling or like showing someone some like body
language, which we're, you know, we're not enemies, we're on the
same side, like things like handshakes and all these like
micro cues, to create the sense of like that listen to like,
micro vulnerability moments that leads to trust and and
belonging. There in the remote world where you don't see people
in the elevator and the coffee in the coffee kitchen. There's
not as much opportunity for these belonging cues, as they're
called so plushy much harder to build trust. So so we think
about that as like the foundation and how do we create
these Moments of vulnerability. And that might be playing games
or having silly check ins where we share, share images of what
we did over the weekend, or we have, you know, fun and play is
actually a really good way of having very low stakes
vulnerability, like it requires vulnerability to laugh and play
a game. But, and that's like a good way of building culture.
But you know, it's just all these touch points throughout
the weekend throughout the month that we think about. And then
we've even done silly things like we did like a spirit week,
which required a lot of vulnerability and silliness. And
that's, you know, that's how you build that foundation. And then
on top of that, people, then you find ones, they have
psychological safety, they take risks, they speak, speak up,
they push back on, you know, executive decision making, like,
I love that like being CEO that people once people question me
like, but that's not that's not a given.
Jason Baum: Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's great. Something
else that you had mentioned was the mind was mind mapping, mind
mapping tools and mood mapping? Or I'm sorry, mood mood mapping?
Yeah. And I would love to learn a little bit more about that,
and what how you're using that?
Dan Pupius: Yeah. So the range products are essentially an
asynchronous checking tool at the core, which is kind of like
a virtual standup. And so in the same way that individual standup
you share, what you did, what you're planning, and then
anything that's blocked. You know, we do all that
asynchronously. But what we've also added is these, these sort
of cultural check ins, and one component is the mood. So it
might sound silly, but you select the traffic light, red,
yellow, green, and then an emoji that represents your mood. So
today, I was like a green cowboy. But yesterday, I was
like yellow sleepy. And this is important for a couple of
reasons. One, it's like a moment of like, introspection of like,
how am I actually showing up to work today. And that actually is
a powerful moment in itself. But then also sharing it with the
team is good context. So when you remote, you have no idea
like how, how I am, right, and you have all these like little
hints through slack and email, or GitHub reviews. And you'll
start writing stories like is Dan pissed off with me is done
upset, or is down being aloof. And if you just know that I
literally haven't slept last night because my daughter was
up. And I have this yellow, these emoji that'll like calm a
lot of your anxieties. So that's the mood, the mood sharing in
the moment. And then what we can do is we in at all that we have
the mood history. So you can see the aggregate moves for the team
over time. And this just helps you understand, like how people
are faring, and especially in the pandemic, there's been a lot
more yellow and red than there was previously. And and then we
just use that as a signal of like, do we need to change
timelines? Do we need to, you know, rebalance work, or, you
know, spend some extra time thinking about, like recovery
and repair, or like, it probably like progressed for extended
period of time, and we, you know, ask fundamental questions
about what we're doing to support the team and ensure that
people are able to show up to work as a full selves.
Jason Baum: I love that. It's like the DevOps principle, you
know, like continuous feedback. You know, having that feedback
loop is so, so important. I mean, it's so interesting. So
you, like your, your name shows up with a mood next, like, how
do people see your mood? Like, how do they know that Dan is
feeling yellow today? By the way, I'm so totally stealing
this, we have we have to do we have to? Can we we have to
collaborate offline about how we can do this.
Dan Pupius: I mean, he's right. So yeah, when you
Jason Baum: know, I would love to use range. So we will have to
talk about how.
Dan Pupius: And then every time everywhere that check in shows
up, whether it be in Slack or email, like you see the person's
mood. And then also the avatar in meetings is has a yellow
ring, which can, it can be mildly stressful, but also, it's
helpful, because it's not masking reality. So it gives you
something to talk about this abstract. So instead of, hey,
you seem stressed today. It's like, Hey, I noticed you checked
in with the lat yellow emoji like how are you doing? And it D
personalizes it a little bit. Whereas it's really hard to talk
about someone that's like, you seem really aggro?
Jason Baum: Do you find that people have a hard time
initially getting used to it?
Dan Pupius: Um, surprisingly not. And what we found is it's
like the vulnerability is contagious. So I'm actually
surprised that people check in so openly, like around 10% of
users check in red every day. Just kind of interesting. Wow.
But But yeah, I think a lot of people think that, that so we
have the three colors, but then we also have the emojis which
allows like some resolution and some differences. So like the
difference between like a sunglasses emoji and a greeting
emoji, you know, it has like flavor. And so it makes it kind
of like a fun exercise, as well. So it definitely doesn't feel
like surveillance or oversights. It's, it's very much about
showing with your team. You know the reality of you Your
experience today?
Jason Baum: So do you ever do anything with that, you know, to
steer maybe some experiences that you offer the team. So if
you're getting like 25% Read, you're like, hold on, we need to
do early happy hour or something we need to do something to,
although maybe you don't want to do early happy hour if
everybody's read. But yeah, like, what do you what do you do
with that?
Dan Pupius: Yeah, we've, we've never had to have a major
intervention like that. But we definitely think about, like, is
the pacing too hard, like if a project is pacing really fast,
and as the launch is pushing up, and everyone's running yellow,
like just being intentional about that, and you probably
haven't, even without the mood mapping, you probably have a
sense that that's going on. But the yellow makes it very
explicit. And it kind of encourages you to take action.
So then it's so you start talking about it. So like, I
know, everyone's pushing really hard this, I really appreciate
all your work, it's really important. And this makes sure
to take a break when you know, after after launch day. If
individuals are read, we sometimes encourage them to drop
down to a four day week, using the vacation to have like some
recovery time. So it definitely allows you to create
interventions, which I think then basically head off burnout,
before it gets too bad. Because you have these various stages of
burnout. And if you let it get too bad, it's almost
unrecoverable. So if we can get these early warning signs, I
think that can be really valuable.
Jason Baum: I love it, because what it does is I'm assuming you
have kids based on what you were saying about childcare. Yeah, so
yeah. So so you're nodding and and don't you I wish my child
came with one of those where we can move map mood mapper, it
would certainly make my life easier. But I think hers too,
because it would be, you know, acknowledging is such is
sometimes the biggest piece of it is just acknowledging that
you feel this way. You don't have to change it. No one's like
forcing you to change it. But just I am yellow today. Everyone
knows about it now. And we can address it if we need to address
it, or we don't have to address it if we don't.
Dan Pupius: Yeah, totally. So my daughter, my eldest daughter
uses green, yellow, red, blue, some signs of emotional
regulation that comes from her school. And it gives you a
language and a vocabulary to talk about it. That's non
judgmental. So I think what's interesting with them all the
list read is both. It basically means out of control, which can
be out of control negative or out of control positive. So it
doesn't have any judgment in the color. It's just about like how
much control you have, essentially. And then blue is
sad and sad or slow or sleepy. But we are we use that with her
every evening actually, like we have a it's kind of funny, we
have like a check in a bad time. Like, how are you feeling like,
and then we have, you know, we can talk about it. And it's just
like a really nice way of talking about emotions in a non
judgmental way that doesn't label them as like stigmas. But
it's just it's like things you can observe and discuss.
Jason Baum: I love that. I think I would be blue every day
though, because I'm at least slower sleepy. I think the
majority of the time. At least.
Dan Pupius: I'm 90 simpler when we do the check in for sure.
Yeah, sorry.
Jason Baum: I think that's a panda. I think pandemic has
definitely made it worse too. But yeah, putting on clothes
these days, you know, it's life is a struggle. I really
appreciate it. And this has been eye opening. And I want to
continue to talk to you about range, because I'm definitely
interested, especially in the in mood mapping. I feel like we
could talk about that all day. I think it's fascinating. And
companies need to use this. Because it's it's just
understanding getting a pulse check of how people feel, is
definitely the missing piece. I think nobody's really asking
that. They say they want a positive culture. They don't
really talk about how you're feeling, though.
Dan Pupius: Yeah, I think so that's another thing about goes
back getting back to culture. It's like what you talked about
and what you acknowledge, is that how you define your
culture. So if you are transparent and open and
actually honest, that's the culture you will create an if
you're reserved, and, you know, we don't talk about certain
things. That's also the cultural craze. And that will like eat
you alive eventually.
Jason Baum: Yeah, well, you're taking a proactive approach by
using this, which is great, rather than being reactive,
which is an I don't think anybody wants to be reactive. So
that's, or maybe some find it easier. But yeah, I don't think
you want to be reactive towards this. Okay.
Dan Pupius: I mean, just just one final comment, like, it
takes vulnerability to be proactive. It's much easier to
be reactive, and, you know, you have to take risk.
Jason Baum: So, yeah, we had a whole podcast on productive
honesty. And I think in in many respects, this is the company
being proactively honest and encouraging proactive honesty
from employees, and it's like, Wow, imagine a world where we
can all just be adult adults have a hard time with with this
though so I shouldn't even say it that way but this is like the
fact that you're that you work on that with with your with your
daughter you know and and we do the same with our daughter my
wife and I not we haven't used the colors I need to introduce
the colors this is great. But we don't do it enough. I think as
adults sharing like our moods even just just the basic concept
of that starts that conversation and allows for proactive
honesty. Well, okay, so I want to bring it back to the jungle
real quick because we always close the show on something a
little more personal but you you already shared first of all that
you you race, snowboards. So you're just not You're not just
snowboarding but you also race.
Dan Pupius: I used to Yeah, I was. I wasn't University race
team. That's awesome.
Jason Baum: Okay, I've I can't even balance someone. You jump
out of planes. That's something you've always wanted to do, too.
Dan Pupius: I skydive for a while before kids so did around
100 jumps, which was not a lot by like, I skydiver standards.
It's like you either do 1000 jumps, or like two. So I did. I
did about 100
Jason Baum: I'm on the I always wanted to. And I think I'm just
gonna say that through. Maybe when I'm at I'll do it. George
George Herbert Walker is it when he was like 80
Dan Pupius: I find it really relaxing. It's like so so Zen's
being up there. It's amazing.
Jason Baum: It's really the part before it can't be relaxing.
That can't be there's no way that can be relaxing. It's it's
while you're in flight, right?
Dan Pupius: The night before and then the bit after, when you
pull the parachute not relaxing, but the bit in the middle of a
relaxing once the
Jason Baum: parachutes pulled. And you know, you're you're
coming down, and it's okay. Now we're now we can relax.
Dan Pupius: But that's the most dangerous part. Most people
injured themselves into fully open canopy. Really? Yeah,
because he's still approaching the ground at say 35 miles an
hour, and then low turns. Anyway, it's the time you're
closest to the ground as well. So that's why it's most risky.
Jason Baum: See, now I can't even do it. Because now I'm
going to be thinking, Well, Dan said that I'm not in the clear
just yet. And then you live in the jungle, which you You start
off by saying wasn't that it that it sounds more interesting,
but I want to hear about it.
Dan Pupius: Yeah, I worked for an organization called Operation
Wallacea who do biodiversity studies and social engagements
around the world. And I worked in Honduras. So I helped run the
base camp where we had a bunch of scientists and dissertation
students out there doing research. So I made sure people
had guides to take him into the jungle that we had food that
accommodation, that they were like that if there's medical
evacuation, we had to do the medical evacuation. And it's
like, yeah, three months living in this clearing in the jungle.
Jason Baum: And in in Honduras, Honduras jungle. Wow, that's
okay. What wildlife did you encounter anything cool?
Dan Pupius: Unfortunately, I mean, not by the camp, at least.
They're mostly birds. There were people trying to trap large,
large mammals, but with limited success, so it's mostly things
like bats and insects and snakes.
Jason Baum: Stay white. Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah. So it wasn't
the Jungle Book. I don't know. In my head. I'll still think of
it. You know, like you were talking to a bear. And I don't
know what else to do in the jungle. Well, that's great.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a lot
of fun talking culture and talking, windowed work and mood
mapping. And I definitely want to continue the conversation. I
want to learn more about range. Why don't you tell everyone
where they can find range? And, and, and anything else that you
want to share?
Dan Pupius: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having us on. That was
really fun. Yeah, you can find out about range at dub dub
dub.range.co. And, yeah, we're happy to offer listeners a
discount or free trial. Yes, we can configure that after it's
maybe.
Jason Baum: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And
thank you for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps
Podcast. I'm going to end this episode the same way I always do
encourage you to become a member of DevOps Institute to get
access to even more great resources just like this one.
Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy. And most of all, stay
human, live long and prosper.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get
access to even more great resources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself.
You belong
We recommend upgrading to the latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
Please check your internet connection and refresh the page. You might also try disabling any ad blockers.
You can visit our support center if you're having problems.