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 SK il framework.

Grant Fritchey: In terms of that, the learning curve for

people was not for the remote or hybrid, the learning curve for

people was the fact that you're not in the office, the fact that

you don't have immediate communications. And I think that

is the biggest impact. It's not. It's not fully remote or

partially remote. It's remote at all.

Jason Baum: Everyone, Jason Baum, Director of Member

experience at DevOps Institute, and this is the humans of DevOps

podcast. Welcome back. I hope you had a great week. It was a

good one for me, it's been hot and sunny. And I will take that,

especially coming out of what felt like a very long winter. To

say the work world has changed over the past two plus years,

would definitely be an understatement. First, the mask

for shift to fully remote, then the evolution of the attempted

return to the office, then we didn't return to the office than

we were returning to the office. Are we still waiting to return

the office? Who knows? Companies started to adapt. They developed

hybrid strategies. Other companies said forget it, we're

gonna stay remote. Some even made their home base remote and

their offices, satellite offices, we're definitely still

in the, I guess, second wave of change, which is just continuous

change. I found a recent study, one that really piqued my

interest. It was from January 2022. So I'm sure some of these

statistics have changed because this is an ongoing thing. But I

thought some of the stats were interesting. 66% of executives

say their company is considering reorganizing its office space to

accommodate hybrid work. It's definitely different for each

office, some are giving up the you have a space and have

adopted the come in and share the space. Others are keeping

their space but expect you to come in a few days a week 63% of

high growth businesses are using hybrid work models already

hybrid model that works for all generations. Yeah, that one can

be a little difficult. Apparently three out of four Gen

Zers. Want more face to face collaboration opportunities,

compared to 66% of Gen Xers and 66% of baby boomers, which is

interesting to me being in the ladder as a Gen X er. Yeah, I

don't really want to go back. I'll be honest, I've done my

networking ice could still go out and do my networking at

conferences. That sounds fun. But you know, I'm happy in my

home office. A hybrid model in which employees can work

remotely at least 25% of the time is preferred by 83% of the

workers polled. 92% of those polled in one survey expect to

work from home at least once a week and 80% expect to work from

home at least three times a week. So that's pretty

interesting. organizations around the world are turning to

DevOps as a way of working together to improve the

efficiency and quality of software delivery, especially as

they continue navigating to hybrid work environments. But

for some still struggling through their own digital

changes may not be as easy to adapt, which is why providing

guidance to help some of these companies is critical. Here

today to talk to me about the importance of adopting DevOps to

support new hybrid working environments is Grant Fritchie.

Grant has worked for more than 30 years in it as a developer

and a DBA. He's built systems from the major enterprise to

distributed systems to small boutique companies. He's the

author of multiple books, including SQL Server execution

plans, and SQL Server Query performance tuning. He develops

and presents complete structured learning plans to teach Azure,

AWS and other data related topics to developers and other

IRS personnel grants. I'm Microsoft data platform MVP, and

an AWS community builder and grants here today, and I'm very

excited to have you grant welcome to the podcast. Oh,

thanks

Grant Fritchey: for letting me play. Appreciate it.

Jason Baum: Awesome. Are you ready to get human? Yeah, well,

you

Grant Fritchey: know, as much as I get anyway,

Jason Baum: yeah. Sometimes it's tough getting human. So grant,

you're actually at a conference right now. So you're with

people, other humans.

Grant Fritchey: There's Docker, I can see them. You

Jason Baum: can see people can you can you Well, hopefully not

too much touching but I am sure you're doing some handshaking,

which for me is still I have to get over because I didn't like

handshaking before the panel I'm back. Now I'm definitely not

Jacob too many hands. But, but it's interesting that we're

having this conversation as you're around so many people

talking about hybrid. So I guess we could start with, how is

DevOps being incorporated into the workforce? Well, I mean, the

remote hybrid environment, I should say, is DevOps

Grant Fritchey: being incorporated, or enforced to be

one question. But honestly, it is being incorporated into the

hybrid workforce, because what they're recognizing is that,

especially when it comes to deployments, development, that

kind of thing, when you're not in a situation where you're

sitting eyeball to eyeball with someone, where you can't

immediately run down the hallway and go, Oh, my God, everything's

on fire someone fix it, you need a lot more automation, you need

a lot more figuration planning, a stricter, more discipline

process allows you to have, frankly, a looser work

environment. So where you don't have to have that capability of

instant communication, especially, you know, as much as

much as we enjoy our hybrid, and I do, boy, do I ever wear

cavemen, right, we aren't jumped up monkeys, we've got a million

years of evolution that teaches us that that eyeball to eyeball

communication is more efficient. But we're not going to be doing

it as much. So we have to come up with other mechanisms

supporting and DevOps is really acting as one of those

mechanisms.

Jason Baum: And it's interesting. We actually had the

conversation a few weeks ago about, like, the crossover of

hybrid and HR and the roles that they each kind of play or don't

play, or should play in everything. And certainly with

remote versus hybrid, there are differences. So I guess what,

what major differences do you see are complications that are

arising in a hybrid environment that don't necessarily come up

and fully remote. And then vice versa?

Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, I would, I'm not sure that you're

going to be seeing a lot of stuff that's hybrid that you're

not going to see in a fully remote situation. I'm either

lucky or unlucky, or depending how you look at it. When all

this went down two years ago, I'd already spent nine years

working fully remote, or effectively, fully remote. I

mean, I was always in the office, maybe twice a year,

three times a year. So I would call that fully remote.

Jason Baum: Yeah, I think we can count that as remote.

Grant Fritchey: And so when the initial transition went down, I

didn't notice anything. Other than the fact that I wasn't

traveling to events like this. It was no big deal. But but in

terms of that the learning curve for people was not fully remote

or hybrid learning curve for people was the fact that you're

not in the office, the fact that you don't have immediate

communications. And I think that is the biggest impact. It's not,

it's not fully remote or partially remote. It's remote at

all. And you'll notice that I mean, I used to complain about

my company. Not that I complained about my company, I

love my company. But

Jason Baum: I used to complain that we had our people are

listening,

Grant Fritchey: why I say we had a hallway culture, because there

are a lot of decisions that got made in the hallway, raw, a lot

more decisions got made at the coffee urn that got made in the

meeting rooms. And so they were very good about bringing in the

right people to the meeting, even though I was remote, I

would be brought in, I could make the calls, make the you

know, and make the talks. And we maybe make a decision or two.

And then they'd all walk out with it on their heads and go to

the copier and start drinking and suddenly, wait a minute.

Hey, I've got an idea. And decisions got made that way.

Jason Baum: Yeah, those lightbulb moments. Yeah,

Grant Fritchey: and I'm not complaining about that that

happened. It's normal. But in terms of this hybrid, non hybrid

remote stuff, that's not happening now. And you need

mechanisms in place that are going to allow you to support

people's ability to not be in the hallway. And I wouldn't say

DevOps solves that problem, by any means. But DevOps helps

solve that problem as it moves. Again, it moves a lot of

communication and a lot of mechanisms into known processes

and out of ad hoc mechanisms. So instead of, you know, making the

decision at the coffee here, we're now making those decisions

in a more structured fashion. And, frankly, the automation is

helping the automation is my favorite bit. I love that aspect

of DevOps, but I mean, I mean, I always remember it is people

Process tools, right? That's people or people process

products, that's the better way to put it. But thinking of it

that way, it really makes a difference. I mean, it helps. It

doesn't solve every problem. But but it does help in a major way.

Jason Baum: Yeah, there. I mean, there are some inherent issues,

right? Because these are human issues. So unfortunately,

there's not a tool or process to fix all of them. They just help

them right or make it more efficient. I guess it's the

better word. But you know what, I find it to be fascinating how,

and maybe it's because in a time of crisis, you're you go into

fight or flight, and you just kind of react instantly. And we

all have got, or I don't know what it is this like, second,

this, this thing switches on, right. And we just, we just go.

And when the pandemic happened, that switch, I kind of have

referenced it, it almost makes me think of y2k, except y2k, we

had a lot of time to prepare. And then nothing happened. This

time, we had no time to prepare and something happened. And we

had to shift instantly. And something that was said, Oh,

this digital revolution is changed. This is gonna happen.

And it's gonna take time it took no time it took like, it

happened in weeks. You know, it would by by April, everyone was

remote. You know, it's it's kind of fascinating to look back and

think about, but the transition back to hybrid is much clunkier,

much slower. Why do you think that is?

Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, one people got comfortable. And

if you're comfortable, you're not going to want to get

uncomfortable. I mean, commuting sucks.

Jason Baum: Putting on pants, forget commuting. Well, I

Grant Fritchey: mean, just so everyone knows that the

conference, I am wearing trousers. But once you're

comfortable, you don't want to change. And so there's

resistance there. Whereas the discomfort before would be, you

know, well, hey, am I gonna go out in this place where I don't

know whether or not the mask is going to work? There is no

vaccination yet. You know, there's there was a certain

level of concern, right, valid concern. So so the switch was

driven out of again, actually comfort, right? I'm more

comfortable working from home. And then of course, you get used

to it, and then you're more comfortable working from home? I

think that's one of it. I think the other is it. It's easier to

work remote when everyone is working remote. It is harder

when there's when the hallway conversations come back in. And

then some people aren't there and you realize, oh, God, we

can't make this decision until we talk to you know, Susie or

Peggy or whoever it is, it's that's going to be involved in

it. And so, you know, it makes it more difficult. It just slows

down the process.

Jason Baum: It's so funny you say that, because I also worked

remote prior to the pandemic. And you know, my home base was

in Chicago, I'm located in the New York area. So you know,

yeah, to go to the office was get on a plane. And same with

you. I was probably in the office, maybe four times a year

five, six at the most. And yeah, it's tough like you go to the

holiday party. So you could show face, you go to the you know,

you try to make sure that you're there. You're there for a week.

Can you show face, but yeah, there's still all those

conversations that are happening that let's go back to that,

because that's an interest, the hallway conversation, the coffee

pot conversation. Just recently, my own company started coming

back, you know, DevOps Institute, we started having in

person meetings, not that frequent. You know, we'll we'll

fly down to our home base in Florida, get together for a few

days. And I got to say, what you can accomplish when you are face

to face, we forget, you get so much more done that could have

taken weeks to do remote, and you get it done in a few hours.

So there is that component that's still there that even

though those of us who are very comfortable working from home,

there is that realization that I think that we are missing that.

Right.

Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, it lets you say I mean, it's

absolutely an aspect of it. And like I said earlier, we are

monkeys, right? And we did it's unavoidable that evolution is

part of our communication mechanism. And as much as our

technology has grown and just something like this is amazing

and wonderful and really cool. It still doesn't replace the

efficiency of that face to face communication.

Jason Baum: Yeah, even this I'm always like we need the after

conversation. I've been thinking and toying around with the idea

I think I need to take it to like Twitter space or something.

Like continue the conversation get more people involved in the

conversation because I think we have a lot of these we have a

lot of the one offs. We have a lot of the Okay, I'm my team's

going great. But then what about all the other teams are missing

out on other teams silos are made? DevOps is pretty good

about breaking down silos, but it's harder and remote. Right?

So how do these processes? How does this automation? You said,

you're a big fan of automation? How does it combat that?

Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, the big part of it is that you

can't automate everyone's work, you need everyone involved to do

the automation. So, you know, my work generally, is database,

very, very focused on databases, fine. But I work very closely

with dev teams, I work very closely with the ops teams, and

I work closely with the business. And I can't automate

any of those other things. I just can't I can't control

those. So I have to communicate with those people, you know, and

say, like, Well, hey, I've got my piece automated up to here.

Now, what do we do? Right? Who, who, who picks up the ball and

runs with it from there, and, and we've got it, you know, I

mean, for a good DevOps process, there's got to be somebody doing

each of those steps. I mean, and I know there's some people who

specialize Oh, I can, I can automate the whole thing. I'll

bet you there's, you still bring in some specialists on some

aspects of it, to automate or control other little bits. But

they've all got to go into the same process, they've all got to

go through the same set of testing and the same mechanisms

of protection for your production environments. It all

lends itself to better and more efficient communication. And it

all lends itself to better protection. But it does require

a lot of cooperation, a lot of communication.

Jason Baum: The tools we use as a team have a direct influence

on how we work together, and the success we create. We built

range with that in mind, by balancing asynchronous check ins

and real time collaboration. Range helps remote and hybrid

dev teams build alignment and put time back on the calendar.

Branch connects dozens of apps like JIRA and GitHub in one

place. So everyone can share updates on work, and even makes

it easier to run focused, efficient meetings with an easy

to use facilitation to create greater team success and

engagement by bringing focus and a bit of fun back to your work.

Visit us range.com/devops To learn more, and try range free.

Yeah, if you ask data scientists, right, and you ask

these these people who live in create AI and machine learning

and all these things, they'll say the first the first thing

I'll say, I feel like most of them will say my job is to make

human lives better not to eliminate their jobs to make

their lives better.

Grant Fritchey: Sure. Well, I mean, and frankly, you know,

I've heard this over and over again, it's like, well, you

know, if you automate all these things, then what am I going to

do for my job? It's like one if your job is poking buttons like

this, your Homer

Unknown: Simpson, right?

Grant Fritchey: Well, maybe we should eliminate catch. But But

no, because your your job, especially if you're in it are

jobs up here, you've got a lot of thinking you have to do and

we need you to be thinking we need you not to be pushing a

button like this. So no, it is about humans, it is about

supporting the humans through their processes. Credit lost

track on the question, no, that's

Jason Baum: okay. So, no, I think that was great. So is

hybrid, do we? So I read those statistics, first of all the

generations, the adaptation from the generations, that's an

interesting one that really stood out to me. And it makes a

lot of sense, right? Those early in their career, really need

that face to face, and are lacking in hell, I work with

people who came into this workforce in this environment

and know nothing different. In some ways, I feel like well,

maybe they're kind of more adept to to work in it. And others I'm

feeling boy, they're really missing out on on quite a bit of

what we all had earlier in our careers.

Grant Fritchey: Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, I learned so much

early in my career from just being able to turn to the person

next to me who, you know, had a year more than maybe only a year

more and go like, What the hell is this?

Jason Baum: And get that immediate feedback. Right. I

remember sitting in a conference room and just hearing everyone

else talking. I'm like, wow, you sir. Smart people. Being a

little overwhelmed a little bit of impostor syndrome. But it's

good, right? You soak it in, you absorb it, we're missing that.

Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, I mean, it's talking DevOps, you

know, in a fully remote, or they're even in a hybrid

situation. I may never have jumped on board with this. And

I've been doing automation of database deployments and moving

into a full blown DevOps since 2005. I mean, I've been engaged

in it for 12 years. Is that right? Yeah. Math is hard. Math

is hard. 17 years, 17 years. 17 years. Oh, my God, I'm old, but

I've been doing it for a long time. But I started it, because

I had a developer come up to me and say, hey, you know, I think

we can do this better. I've been reading up on these new things.

And let's sit down and talk about this, you know, and so we

sat down, and we hashed it out, again, face to face. And, and we

figured out some new stuff. I mean, you know, I went off and

did my own thing, he went off and did his own thing. And then

we got together with some with some other people. But, but it

was that initial face to face that made the difference in my

getting started along this path. And you got to think if the poor

people who are only on a hybrid or are only remote, they might

not get that spark, they might not get that moment where you

go, like, Yeah, we really could do something better. And then

start making that change.

Jason Baum: Do you think the full amount because even fully

remote before we were saying, Well, we still got, we were

still in person a few times a year, there were still things

that we did to be in person? Do you see a world where that's

like, kind of be I don't think anyone's fully remote anymore. I

mean, I feel like some people are still doing, I even said my

company, which is a fully remote company, we still get together

and are planning to do that more and are thinking of other ways

to get together because now that it is safer. And look, you're

never 100% safe, you know, no one can promise you those

things.

Grant Fritchey: But I'm flying in an airplane tomorrow.

Jason Baum: Yeah. Look, it's it's it's naive to say you're

safe. Right? But, but we certainly are safer than we were

maybe a year ago or two years ago, for sure. But now that it

is that way, and people are starting to get back to face to

face, you're at a conference. You know, do you think you're

gonna start seeing it returned to where it was before? The very

least with remote companies still doing in person thing?

Grant Fritchey: Yeah, I do. I really think there was no good

while there. You're hearing the phrase regularly? Well, the new

normal. Yeah, well, we're we've already left what was right,

that's already gone. So it was never the new normal.

Jason Baum: I heard a really smart person call it the now

normal in the time. Like, I love that I love Okay,

Grant Fritchey: that was good. I had not heard that I wish I had

because then I would have felt better about it. Because every

time someone said to me, Look, I know I'm old. I'm old. Try trust

me, you're wrong. The The interesting thing here is that

there is efficiency in the face to face. And so I think we are

going to be going back to that. Are we going to be going all the

way back to a fully in a place in a work environment? Now I

think I think there's going to be a degree of hybrid for the

majority of people. I work for a company, I'm not going to name

names. And the CEO once said he won't allow remote work because

he can't allow it for everyone. Guess what, two years ago he

left for everyone really have a choice? You know, that's just

how it went? And I think it's okay. I think it's okay, that

you know, some degree of hybrid is still going to be there. Is

it going to occasionally slow down some conversations? Yes. Is

that occasionally going to impact some of our processes

change some of the some of how we do some DevOps? Sure. But the

fact that we're getting back into that in person making that,

you know, letting the monkey out play, and doing that face to

face communication is more efficient. And I think that

that's just going to continue. I just don't I don't think it's

going to be all the way back. I don't think we're going to see

fully in person. For most companies, I think some may, but

but probably not all, being my son went through the whole

pandemic in manufacturing. And his job didn't change an inch.

They went to work, because that's where the machines are.

And so, you know, there was just no choice.

Jason Baum: I mean, now there's a good percentage of the

workforce that that just worked. I mean, just based on those

numbers. I mean, we said 66%, right, we're, we're remote.

There's still a lot that weren't. Right now those are

transitioning, so there's even less sure. There's also you

know, we're coming close to the end of the podcast, but I did

want to get a few more questions in there. Especially because you

you've sparked my interest on some things. And I'd be curious

to know, we've talked to a lot of people on the podcast

throughout the process of this pandemic. And they've been

adopting some interesting things that I don't think they're gonna

just go away. You know, now that they've been adopted, because

like you said, we're also creatures of habit. We may be

monkeys but we're also we've, we've adapted and we've evolved

in this working from home remote, sort of Hybrid sort of

knots, the constant change. One thing that I've seen is with the

metaverse becoming more popular, and people starting to go

towards it. I talked to at the beginning of this season of the

podcast, a company called Modern, and they started

beverage brand new. They sent me an Oculus, my first time ever

using it, and I got to meet them in the metaverse at their office

in VR. And let me tell you, it felt real, like I mean, like

real, which is weird, because it was clearly not I was talking to

cartoons, when they were next to me, you can sort of feel their

space, your the space between you it felt like you know,

someone was in your, if someone's sitting too close, you

felt like they're sitting too close. All those things, which

is very cool. You can see hand motions nodding your head

sipping your drink, although that's very weird, because can't

see the cup. Again, oh, so all those things you can get up you

could present. So that's how they were working with their

developers, right to move software, you know, have their

their stand ups have their you know, when they are trying to

work out a bug and problem they would they could do it together.

I'm sure you've heard of your own stories from other companies

that are that are taking to interesting methods. You know,

what are some other ways people can foster these type of

environments or those hallway in person conversations that you're

talking about?

Grant Fritchey: Wow, well, okay, I do have one example. Because

the only one I have, I think I have one. One of my dev team

well, and well, several my deficits, one of my devs have

started doing this. And I kind of went, Oh, that's stupid. And

then I did it with them. And it was like, Okay, this is not

stupid. And what they did was slack, I know, Slack. But they

opened up a Slack chat, and it gets what it is. And they open

it up all day long. So it was open all the time. And so you

could just turn it on, you can mute it, if you'd like, if you'd

like neck deep in something that you really didn't want to hear

anything, you could mute it. But it was just there. And so people

could, you know, crack jokes, say something, you know, talk to

each other in real time, responding or not responding as

they wanted to. And it actually improved the communication

between the team. It's one of the reasons, there's been a

couple of teams at the company who've been a little reluctant

to come back into the office, because they're like, now we're

fine. Right? Why do we? So I mean, that that is one in a

little innovation. I mean, just it's a small thing. But but it

is, like you say it's all about that hallway communication

efficiency. And you know, it made it real and direct and more

personal than simply typing into Slack or anything like

Jason Baum: that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, like some of these tools,

and especially in pandemic and become just, like necessary,

like Slack, like zoom like, you know, all these Yeah. And where

did where did some of the other ones disappear off to like Skype

for remember that? You either adapted and became a tool that

people really use or you didn't, we actually just launched a

community for DevOps professionals practitioners, we

actually set up so like, we have an AWS board discussion

community, we have DevOps, human issues, we have SRE, I believe

we have a whole bunch of them, that you could go in and talk

about DevOps culture. So So yeah, I would definitely

encourage those listening that if you're looking for an outlet,

if you're looking to talk to people definitely come in and go

to DevOps in the wild. It's community dot DevOps

institute.com. And maybe I'll take some of these, these

conversations over to DevOps in the wild afterwards. We'll see.

So yeah, Grant, I would love to invite you there. By the way,

maybe we can continue the conversation in there as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I really enjoyed having you on, we

usually ask one last question of our guests. And this one's a

little more personal. So get ready, put your personal hat on.

So if you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?

I always throw a doozy at the end.

Grant Fritchey: All right, I'm gonna go a little self serving

on it for over two years now. Starting at the beginning of the

pandemic, every workday, I have put up a good morning tweet,

with a little positive message about health, sleep, whatever. I

would love for that actually, to be some thing that people

remember about. Yeah, it's a tiny little thing, but it would

just be cool.

Jason Baum: I love that I think. Well, I have to follow you now.

And I've been starting to tweet as of like last week at A three

song playlist to get you going in the morning. Like music is my

way of just some sometimes in the morning like with that we

just need inspiration. We need something to get us moving.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love that. Well, Grant, thank you so

much for being on the podcast was an absolute pleasure. I

appreciate you coming on to while you're while you're away

and you're in a coma for at a conference speaking at a

conference, so it's I really appreciate it.

Grant Fritchey: Well, no, no, thank you very much for having

me. Love to come back sometime when I'm not, you know, in weird

environments. And talk yeah,

Jason Baum: we would love to have you and let's keep in

touch. Definitely. Thank

Grant Fritchey: you very much.

Jason Baum: 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 encouraging you to become a member of DevOps

Institute to get access to even more great resources just like

this one. Join us in the wild our community, it's community

dot DevOps institute.com. I hope to see you there, where we'll

continue the conversation. 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