ShipTalk - S02E06 - Its All About the People - Imposter Syndrome - Deserted Island Foods

In this episode of ShipTalk, our host Jim Hirschauer interviews many of the speakers from the WTF is SRE conference and discusses the many life lessons they express. This episode is packed with important lessons to help you interact with your co-workers and to succeed in life in general. The crew also has some fun discussing foods for a deserted island.

Introduction
What's your favorite...?
If you could give yourself one...what would it be?
Just for fun ... Deserted island food

Chapters

• 0:22 Today's show is different
• 1:30 What was your favorite thing about WTF is SRE conference?
• 2:26 It's all about the people.
• 3:27 Tips to "remember the human"
• 5:20 A tip for conference organizers
• 6:00 Advice to your past self
• 7:15 Tips for getting the most out of your work life
• 10:01 Just for fun - deserted island food

Transcript

Jim Hirschauer: 0:10

Hello and welcome to ShipTalk. I'm Jim Hirschauer your host for today. ShipTalk is a DevOps podcast brought to you by Harness, the software delivery platform. Normally on the show we have a featured guest that I get the pleasure of interviewing. Today's show is gonna be a little bit different. You see, I attended the WTF is SRE conference a couple of weeks ago, and I got to interview a bunch of amazing people who were all speakers at that conference. So today's show will feature many different guests and I'll provide some commentary of my own. I'd like to start off the show by saying that it just felt amazing to be at a live in-person event again. The pandemic just sucked for so many different reasons, but one of the worst parts about it, in my opinion, was the lack of in-person, human interaction. Seeing two dimensional images of people on a video conference call is just not a good substitute for getting to interact with someone in three-dimensional real life. I know I missed this part of life tremendously, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling. During my interviews, I asked all the speakers what their favorite part about the WTF is SRE conference was. Let's listen to the answers. What's been your favorite thing about the WTF is SRE Conference so far? My favorite thing about the WTF conference is the people, the conversations that we're having. I love from a logistics perspective, I love that after every talk, there's a 15 minute break so we can all connect with each other. It's so good to be. In person, finally, for the first in-person, WTF is SRE. My first thing would be the people that I met with. I already know some of them, but actually like via Slack and via GitHub, just like with GitHub. And so seeing them especially in person and then have to say like hi or have nice conversation was like really great. I know quite a lot of people at this conference, so it's just great to catch up with people and hear what they're saying and see old friends and make, make new friends. I think the people, I mean from the organizers to the speakers, to the attendees, I've just been having the best conversations and building camaraderie. It's the community really. Wow. Almost every single person said it was all about the people. It's all about the people. In every company we work for, it's all about the people. Our direct manager can make or break our entire work experience, our coworkers within our team and across the organization. They can create a feeling of joy or dread. It's all about the people. At my company, one of our corporate values is"remember the human". Those three little words hold a tremendous amount of power, but without putting those into practice, they're just three meaningless words. At my company there's many people working to turn those words into actions, but what are some ways that you can make those words a reality? Here's some suggestions. Set aside time to genuinely interact with your coworkers. I am a fully remote employee, but I've built some incredible relationships by having short but meaningful conversations with my coworkers when we jump on conference calls. One way to kickstart this process is to schedule 30 minute calls with important coworkers just to share a beverage together(I personally love coffee) and then talk to each other about non-work stuff. Get to know each other. If you've never done this before, you'll be amazed at how well it works. If you're not sure what to talk about, just go ahead and ask ChatGPT to put together a list of questions and then you won't feel like you're not prepared. Another important thing is to just recognize each other and cheer each other on. When something good happens. Reach out. Be happy for your coworker who got that promotion. Celebrate that fantastic work that someone delivered. Be supportive of each other. Just in general. This next one's just really important. Always assume positive intent. Now, this one, it can be a little bit tricky because it doesn't mean that you should be blind to the fact that some people are only looking out for themselves. But instead, you should assume that even if someone messed up, they didn't intend to. They're almost certainly trying to do something with the best of intentions. This philosophy, it's at the core of the SRE practice of blameless post-mortems. Don't blame or point fingers when something goes wrong. Instead, identify the root cause of the issue and make the corrections required to avoid the situation going forward. Assume positive intent. I bet that's exactly how you want to be treated. And here's a tip for those conference organizers out there. Be sure to plan a lot of breaks at your next conference. Give people the opportunity to interact with each other. That's a major reason for them attending in the first place. You can even go so far as to try and create those opportunities for more interaction by planning some activities that generate real human interactions. It's all about the people. So let's get back to what our speakers have to say. I asked them all the same really important question, and there were a few common points throughout all the responses. See if you can spot them... If you could give one piece of advice to your past self when you first started working, what would it be? More self-confidence. Don't be afraid to ask questions. There are no stupid questions. And then be more brave to try things out. Like in development environments, things can go wrong. It's not a big deal. You can do this. It's going to be hard and you're gonna learn over time and whatever you're doing today is wrong, and that's okay. You're gonna get better and you're gonna improve. And just keep that mindset of continuous improvement. Find a good mentor. I started my career without mentorship and that's made me learn too many things by my own mistakes, which are always very good lessons. But if you learn too many of those in that way, then it kinda is not the most effective way to learn. So yeah, always look for mentors in your, in your career who can give you some good advice. We are all human. We make mistakes, so, Try to take it simple in the end and also try to overcome the Imposter Syndrome. Try to relax because, everything is gonna be fine in the end. Okay, here's what I picked up on, across all of those great responses. First, learn from each other. Find a mentor to help accelerate your learning. Look to your coworkers as examples of what to do or maybe what not to do. Every single day we're presented with opportunities to learn either by experiencing for ourselves or through others. Embrace those opportunities. Take the time to think about the positives versus the negatives from your interactions or activities. Embrace the positives and make them part of your ongoing behaviors and be keenly aware of those negatives so that you don't get tripped up by them in the future. Second, we are all human. Expect that you're going to make mistakes. Here's the key, you have to make sure you learn from those mistakes and move on. That's what we do. We are all human. And third, be confident in yourself. You're probably way more capable than you give yourself credit for. Imposter Syndrome, it's a very real thing, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every person feels that way at some point in their life. Am I good enough? Do I know enough? What if I fail? These are the questions that will hold you back in life. If you give them the power to control you. Don't give them that much power. Stop questioning yourself. Change the narrative in your own mind. I will succeed. I don't know everything right now, but I will learn and adapt as I go. Everyone is a first timer at some point in their life. You are not an imposter. You're on a learning journey, and you can do this. When I did my first episode of this podcast, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I thought to myself, Hmm, I'll just figure it out along the way and I'll do the best that I'm capable of. But that attitude is something that I learned over a long career, and I hope that by sharing this information, I can help at least one person accelerate their career by learning from my experience. So listen, this episode of ShipTalk, it's been pretty deep compared to our normal, fun and tech talk, but I thought it was an important conversation to have. I'd still like to leave off on a fun note. So here's one last fun question that I asked the speakers at WTF is SRE conference... You're on a deserted island and you can only have one food for the rest of your life. What would that food be? That's a very good question. I would go with my Italian heritage and pizza. Definitely. There you go. I would go with Agliolio Pepperocini Spaghetti. I love that stuff. I can eat any amount of it. My first thought is to say mangoes, cuz I love them, but I don't know if mangoes are versatile enough. We'll stick with mangoes. I don't think I could get sick of'em. You're gonna die of scurvy with most of your choices there. So I'll go for the scurvy and I'll just say chocolate crispy treats. All right, well I hope you enjoyed that and that's the show for today folks. To all of our listeners, if you want to share your DevOps stories as a guest speaker on ShipTalk, please send an email to podcast@shiptalk.io and we'll get back to you. That's all for now. Until next time.