Ep 68 – Cloudy with a Chance of Networking

This week we chat with Eyvonne Sharp! Eyvonne shares how she got her start working at a small ISP in her hometown and how she has progressed throughout her career to land as an Architect working for a large Cloud provider.

More from Eyvonne:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SharpNetwork
Blog: http://www.esharp.net/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyvonne-sharp/

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Transcript

this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray he is tim burtino and he's sitting with me in my office unbelievable he's so happy uh so tim landed yesterday in burlington i met him at the airport i will tell you we embraced there was a big old hug it was so great to to see tim in the flesh and we've had a great time you know talking shop talking about the podcast and uh just just really having a great time uh hanging out here in vermont so tim how are you doing tim i am excellent aj i'm having a blast here i'm trying to fit in i brought flannel vermont is is wonderful we were uh downtown burlington earlier today on church street and i had to brag to my wife because she's a big hallmark movie fan i'm like i i am walking down the street of the middle of a hallmark christmas movie it was just this place is incredible i'm having a great time excellent excellent i'm glad you're having fun and we have a fun-filled day planned tomorrow but i won't give any secrets away i'm sure we'll post all over social media about what we're going to be up to tomorrow uh andy how are you i'm good i have questions so has there been any maple syrup consumed yet there's been lots of stuff with maple in it yeah but i don't think there's been any like direct maple syrup this is like the maple syrup capital of the united states correct it it really is yeah and you have you haven't had maple syrup yet tim okay maybe tomorrow tomorrow morning tomorrow morning with breakfast maybe we'll see was there was it awkward at all when you saw each other it was just so cool like oh my god it's him i don't i don't i don't think so i don't think so no no yeah that's not interesting not at all i i saw him walking through you know at the security gates i'm like that's tim i mean he was wearing an artwork engineering shirt so i knew it was 10 but that's fantastic wait well uh any other questions andy i want to cut you off i'm sorry no but to answer your question i'm good soccer tonight the boy had soccer around like to get here and on time and here we are and i'm really excited for uh for our guests i i have i have a maintenance window tonight a big migration tuesday that consists of four maintenances over four nights so here we go i if i'm out of a job next week we'll all know why i blew the world up excellent well we do have a guest this evening we will get to her in just a second we will let's let's run through the winds for the week andy can i get a goat screen and that sound means it's time for the wins for this week winning in our discord channel is rise to grind who recently accepted a position as a software qa engineer congratulations eugene hubba stank pilgrim passed the aws certified cloud practitioner congratulations and network pistolero eric won a four book giveaway from jason goulet on halloween and got a pretty cool pack of swag to go with it congratulations eric and to everybody in our winning channel there are no new patreons to announce this week but if you're interested in joining our patreon program you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of netenge and join the program we thank all of our patreons and all of our listeners for your support of what we do here at the art of network engineering podcast now back to the show all right uh i am so excited and honored for our guests this evening yvonne sharp is joining us yvonne thank you so much for taking the time and and hanging out with us tonight hey hey hey it's good to be here with goat screams and everything yeah it's just what you wanted to do yeah you know the the community loves it it's like a sign of celebration for us and it it works it's unique you know yeah i get it yeah andy started it it was like you you and another co-worker and whenever you you were in a meeting and something frustrating was going on you would share a goat screen with your co-worker yeah the goat was the stress reliever at work and then i started sending them to my colleagues who are also equally stressed and when you're having a moment you just scream the goat and it's better than you screaming or slamming your keyboard but then it became this winning thing where you know people would pass a certification somebody get a promotion and that that kind of negative stress relief thing became a positive thing and here we are with the good excitement yeah it's all about the endorphins goat endorphins that's right that's right yes yes excellent so uh yvonne what do you do what's what's the current role oh what do i do now so actually i just accepted a new role in in google cloud i've been there a year i am now a transformation technical lead so i came on board at google about a year ago as a customer engineer supporting really on a national team supporting customers related to infrastructure so not even networking so more infrastructure and have been doing a lot of more what we call transformational engagements so i'm much more doing higher level architecture executive alignment kind of this weird dim between architecture sales project product no not product but program management and technology like it's it's a combination of all those different things but i'm loving it oh my gosh that's incredible congratulations cool yeah congrats i have so many questions but i guess we should come back to google later right you know it's your show so well i don't know if you want to go back in time on how you got there and then start pumping you with google questions but yeah i'm trying to figure out what transformation is right i mean that's maybe we'll come back to that you know okay you're talking infrastructure but it's cloud there is no infrastructure i have questions well i mean well it's just somebody else's infrastructure it's true there's it's true and i mean there's still like compute networking in storage no matter where you go like you got to have those things um whether you see them or not so that's what we talked about right right yeah should we go back in time aj yeah let's let's go back in time and and um what was what was you think the the thing that got you into networking so uh so when i was a kid like a little bitty kid i was like a science math person like even through my elementary school like my favorite teachers were my math teachers and then i had a chemistry teacher who was my best friend in the eighth grade because some drama with a buddy of mine and then um yeah so yeah uh we won't go there um but uh yeah so i went to i started college as a chemistry major and after my first year i was like yeah i love the science of chemistry but i don't want to do the latex gloves and working in a lab my entire career so i switched over to computer science um and while i was in college i got a job working for a mom-and-pop isp in my little tiny hometown and this was so the the owners they built a it wasn't exactly a shed but they built a big building in their backyard they ran a single t1 line to that big building and then they had a bank of 30 u.s robotics sportster modems uh that they resold dollop service through so this would have been the mid-90s um so that was one of my first jobs i had i had worked like phone support in uh in college um as a student worker but yeah one of my first jobs was at a mom and pop isp so didn't know what you think did you get that through school was that like an internship uh no uh what i did my mother-in-law ordered service from this company and i kind of went down there and hung out and was like i really want a job and so they hired me to do dollop support i was 19 uh you know newly married like yeah it was a baby you had no technical skills yet at the moment right like this was your first job in tech no degree no experience yeah no i didn't have a degree i was i was in college and i i i did do some like support of that work study job at college but yeah um that's impressive you know like your first job in tech right like hey at an isp nonetheless yeah yeah yeah with a with a single two helmet and a bank of certain modems i mean it was a lot of you know telling people how to set up their doll of networking yeah but you got paid to work in tech with no certs no degree yeah i mean i yeah i wouldn't gloss over that that's pretty that's pretty kind of begged my way in the door and then so while i was there we did web design and so i started doing some of that to learn some photoshop did some web design and then um from there got a job with one of our customers and started there to do web design but then they were also like a um a var uh a yeah like a very small barn integrator i think we would do work for companies that didn't have they were too small to have it staff so like 50 employees this is before there was any no cloud computing i mean i used a blackberry um and yeah and uh and so like we would show up we would install a file server we would install antivirus we would be sure their backups work sometimes there was exchange sometimes there was a switch some i mean it was just very all of it right just very basic small business stuff and i did that for eight years eight to ten years oh wow yeah in my 20s yeah i'm very 45 if you're wondering was this after you graduated well interesting tidbit i did not graduate ah i did not yeah i was uh i don't know like i was just like i i'm not learning anything in school like i really want to do what i'm doing at work and i mean it's worked out for me i wouldn't recommend my kids do that for example i mean that turned out okay um you know and i mean i had a baby and you know i was i was working for that um that bar when i had my first one um okay yeah yeah very cool so i did that so what what what came after the the isp yeah so my husband and i moved from hit with his work we moved um to uh to louisville um in kentucky and i got a job eventually at a um a large healthcare enterprise and that was really the beginning for me yeah yeah um and it was a networking job so my job when i got hired i was hired as a contract employee to config and ship cisco asas with uh any connect vpn and so literally my job for a long time was copying and pasting configs onto asas boxing them taping them up taking them down to the shipping dock and shipping them out and i spent eight years there and started doing that a couple years in got hurt on full-time uh by the time i left i was team lead you know um and it was really that period in my career where i went to my first just go live met all the really cool online networking community people it's like oh like there's this whole cool world out there um yeah um and just grew and grew and grew like grew so much in that job yeah how was your first cisco live i've never been to one was it amazing it was so this is this is gonna sound it was life-changing like really um i met amy arnold so amy engineer there i met tom hollingsworth there um ethan and greg from packet pushers it was 2013 and so it was kind of the glory days before twitter became a cesspool um do we need to cut that out um you know it was it was still the glory days that the internet could be this new renaissance right and that you know the world was more connected than ever and the networking community was really small and it was just like oh my gosh there are all these amazing people out there i have no idea what i'm doing there's all this stuff to know that i didn't even know that was out there to know and it was it was great it was really really great um so yeah so spent um like i said eight years at that healthcare job moved to another very large healthcare enterprise um it was not a good experience for me it was not a culturally healthy place um i don't know if you're familiar with uh like uh westrom's taxonomies what it's called google it it talks about the different um types of organizations you can have a generative or a culture a bureaucratic culture or you can have a pathologic culture it was very it was pathological it was very it doesn't sound like a good one it was yeah i mean it was yeah it was just i was a i i always kind of operated as a change agent you know hey like this thing we could do it better how about we do it this way i wasn't one of those like uh you know fingernail chewing nervous we've never done it that way before network engineers and um and it just wasn't a good fit for me so um from there hold on before we jump off of there because i for me and for a lot of people i think when you're changing jobs the scariest part is what you're stepping into right and it's hard to know what culture you're stepping into me i look at glassdoor i don't know how accurate that is but you know if you look and everybody can't stand the place oh maybe that's a place to stay away from so do you do you have any when you're looking at a job or company do you have any way to vet or figure it out do you talk to people there like did you have any idea walking into that bad culture what was in store i'm guessing you didn't or you probably wouldn't have taken it right i knew it had been bad but i also heard from some relatively trusted friends that they had new leadership that they were trying to turn over a new leaf that they really wanted to do some new things but i did have some never again takeaways from that from that hiring experience and one of those was i was hired by a director-level person and the interview with the person who is going to be my direct manager was almost a throwaway it was like hey just talk to this guy be sure things are okay i did not pay enough attention like i will never take another job where i don't have a very serious conversation with my hiring manager yeah because the hiring the person you work for has such a significant impact on your work experience um yeah it was just it was really painful because like it was yeah it just there was and i think maybe some people did try to tell me and i don't know i was eager to do something different so how do you vet taking that pretty you know were you there long i'm guessing not too long no okay a year how did you what did you do different you know moving forward that you didn't wind up in another bad situation i mean beyond you know listening to people who told you it might not be great like when you look at a company do you know do you have a way to vet like is this good is it not is it word of mouth do you talk to the community does clay storm mean anything to you or is it always just a gamble i think those are all good things um i was i was way more connected to the online community than i was the local community in my regional area yeah um and and i also think like there are no guarantees either like i think um i think the best thing is to be employable yeah you know like sometimes it's worth now if if you are gloriously happy where you are you love your team you have a great manager like think really long and hard to make that move especially if it's in a similar company in a similar geography for slightly more pay because right yeah um but i i think so for me when i made this move i was like holy cow like i don't know if i can cut it there right but i was like you know i feel like i'm pretty employable and the situation is such it's worth the risk like at some point you just got you got to do that math and i was i'm asking for a specific reason because i have a history of staying in not great situations longer than i should and i think part of it is the fear of what's the saying like the devil you don't know for the w or whatever it is you know so i'm like well you know yeah so i i i tend in the past not so much anymore but in the past i've been very tentative to get out there and approach a different place because like you know you can kind of settle into a certain amount of comfortable misery in a place and like you know you know what to expect and you know so anyway that's that's what i wanted to well and keep you and you know i think the the job that i left wasn't as bad as i thought it was right because i didn't have the field of vision to understand what bad really was um at the same time every move has been a significant jump in compensation and and it is almost impossible to get that staying at the same employer mm-hmm i've heard that so many times that you have to jump around to get your salary i'm not that you've jumped around but you got to move because nobody's ever going to give you a big right like if you're at a company you know oh here here's another 40 grand to stay you're not going to get a 25 bump stay in the same company you're just not right and i don't know against it they have hr policies against like they can only give you a certain amount of money i was at an is i was a cable guy in isp and got my ccna and got into the knock and the recruiter told me the money and i'm like wow that's great and then hr got a hold of me and they're like well we have policies and you can't get more than ten percent so sorry that number that the recruiter gave you you know they didn't know about hr policy so anyway it's yeah yeah well i've worked at places where people would leave and come back two or three different times right yeah but because of that kind of reality and i don't know i still like i grew up like my dad worked the same job for like 20 years you know what i mean like i grew up in that kind of world and it still is like i'm cringing you for those of you listening you know it's it's a hard thing to come to terms with right but it is the sad reality right right all right so so where do we go after the the crappy culture place i didn't mean to keep you there too long vmware actually so i had some friends some co-workers who've gone to vmware and i went to vmware um and um man the leap from customer to vendor is a culture shock um it was a really difficult transition for me huh so in in customer world you're on a team where you work with four or five people maybe that's where i was you work with four or five people who do exactly what you do you work on projects together you um you know there's this sense of sh and and when it's good there's a sense of shared community and like you have people who do what you do um so i jumped over to vmware in what's called a core customer engineer role which meant i was responsible for our entire portfolio coming in as a network engineer that and of itself was overwhelming but also your primary relationship when you are working for a vendor in a a ce or se role is your sales rep that you're paired with not other engineers now you're on a team of other engineers but those engineers are geographically dispersed they have their own sales reps they have their own accounts they have their own customers and so that day-to-day work dynamic is very different because you're not in the trenches with people who are doing exactly what you're doing and so it's a big transition it's it's and when you're doing customer work and you're doing your own implementations like there's a very clear this is my project this is what i'm going to accomplish this is what a win is right like you know when you go to your migration later tonight that you were talking about whether you do it successfully or not right it is not that cut and dried in vendor land so when you there's not this clear i succeeded or failed since like even if you um close a big deal even if you um you know like you know you were involved like i was there for the meetings i talked to the customer i did this thing it's not clear what your actual contribution was right so it's just very different and you were an sc right a solutions engineer sales i've heard it said that yeah and that's basically engineering installation engineer customer engineer like whatever yeah and that's like a pre is that pre-sale it was increased that's right so they bring you in they'll bring you into a client and they want to do stuff with vmware and you are you the one that does like the presentation or like do you do demos uh well so in my personal role um my job was to understand the technology well enough really to know which specialists to call in right so i learned over time a little bit more and could do a little bit more myself but a lot of that particular role was okay what have you got going on if it was like a core vmware thing v center vsphere all that like i had to figure out the answer which was pretty intimidating for me um but if it was uh you know one of the other products horizon like vdi or if it was nsx or if it was you know now the nsx stuff some of that i could carry just because i had such a strong networking background right um but it was much it was just very different different kind of role hey a1 fans aj here to remind you about nordvpn.com nordvpn will help secure you wherever you go i use nordvpn on all my personal devices whenever i'm out about i just go into the nordvpn app hit quick connect and away i go nice and secure don't have to worry about prying eyes anybody looking at my connection if i choose to go work from a coffee shop locally or you know even while i'm traveling if i bring my personal device devices i will uh use the word vpn to help keep things safe and secure i'm using nordvpn right now and there's no degradation in my signal everything looks good when you guys watch us on the live streams so i can't say enough good things about nordvpn they have some great additional services included with their vpn product they'll scour the dark web for your credentials and see if they've been involved in any sort of hacks or anything and then if they have they'll let you know and you can go change your passwords and do whatever you need to do to help keep yourself safe and secure they also have a mode that will block any websites or ads known to possess malware and they just have general ad blocking anyway because you know who wants ads uh as i record an ad anyway if you want nordvpn and you do go to slash nordvpn.com for the art of network engineering and you can get a really great deal uh 73 off two years plus four months free so again that's 73 off two years plus four months free of nordvpn if you forget that url just go to nordvpn.com at checkout you can use the promo code t-a-o-n-e for the art of network engineering and we appreciate your support as well as nordvpn support of the art of network engineering podcast now back to the show and are you interfacing with sales you said so like the sales people bring you in to be the technical resource for client communications right is that okay yeah yeah i can see that being different right yeah so did you in your previous role prior to going to vmware did you work a lot with vmware on a regular basis no oh so so what what i guess my question will be twofold then what what drew you to work for an oem or a vendor and and why vmware if you weren't working with vmware and such a regular so i had a really a good peer colleague who had gone over there who had a very similar technology background to me um and he made the leap and he was very encouraging oh you can do this you can do this and um i i thought about this earlier today as something i want so i kind of got to the point in my career where i knew i either had to go deeper or i had to broaden out like i either had to go deeper i had to go higher like i either had to like go start really digging into service provider networking and bgp and um and i did some bgp it's not but but i service provider networking is a different beast from enterprise networking for sure yeah and and i had to kind of decide do i want to go deeper or do i want to do something different and i think for me i scratched my technical itches like it just wasn't fun for me it's as fun for me as some other thoughts can you elaborate on that because i kind of feel like i'm in a similar place right now in my career i either need to go deeper in the same area like i'd have to really jump into service provider technologies because of what's happening in my career or pivot and like how i mean how did you find yourself there it's just the career progression and you're like huh okay i mean you just get the pivot points i guess right you kind of look around and like because i thought the same thing like vendor life right or do i go you know deep into you know my super service provider cert path and get uh yeah so that that really difficult job that i was talking about one of the things that i personally realized was that i wasn't gonna have the kind of influence i wanted doing what i was doing like i needed i needed to do something different um because i i found myself in a position where um i wasn't getting to do a lot of recommending i wasn't really getting to speak into the architecture or the plans and i was getting handed stuff to make work yes this all sounds very familiar and um it's just not what i wanted and like if that's where you are and you love it wonderful like do it be it love isn't the adjective i would i would i would just i just like uh it was soul-crushing for me like because i was like we could do this better um but i i did not take the time to learn the culture of that environment and i said things there like i would have said at my previous job that had a very different culture and i kind of um i kind of slaughtered the sacred cow you know what i mean and and so i just didn't have any influence and so i was like okay well this is not it and so are there titles to put on those roles like so were you not an architect you were like like for me right where i'm at i'm surrounded by people who are design and architecting gurus and they hand me the stuff hey kid go do this right um was that kind of where you were like is that what you mean by going deep like you just weren't the architect level super nerd that could design all the things i think well so it was interesting because i architect was in my title but that's not really the that's the other thing like don't assume you know what the title means don't assume you know what the title means very good point um yeah no i it was i don't know how to see the architect to me means design right like you were an architect by title but you weren't in the design decisions and conversations right yeah okay yeah i mean i was i probably was more than i more than enough it was just it was just such a brutal environment i was like yeah yeah i got it right um and frankly like i didn't want to do change windows anymore i've done it for 20 years you know yeah um right yeah so they were they changed the stink they're not i mean there's just no way around it they're not fun they're not good they make you tired though like um we when i was at that the healthcare provider i was at for a long time we had done an acquisition and we planned for six months this data center migration and it was complex we couldn't convince our leadership to buy nsx so we couldn't migrate vms we had to migrate vlan by vlan and so we've done tons of planning storage replication mapping out the um order of operations for how we were going to move this data center and it was like okay and so we you know we had this call and it was completely orchestrated and okay so we're gonna shut down this vlan we're gonna move this gateway and then the infrastructure server guys are gonna bring up that and then we're gonna and like we moved to data center overnight right um and this was i don't know 10 12 years ago now and i mean there's nothing like that right that i mean to to it sounds intense yeah i mean it was a herculean effort you know and at night that's insane yeah and like i said there was there was months and months of planning and the fights over uh no just because it's a hundred meg circuit doesn't mean you can move 100 megabytes per second right like those you're familiar right like i can't make it going faster than the speed of light and tcp windowing and yeah we have to have multiple streams and threads and if we do it this way it's going to take us five years to get the data there i don't care how big the circuit is you know like it has been months of those kinds of conversations and it's a really rewarding experience yeah yeah that's huge yeah so the sc life wasn't for you i guess right you did the sc for a couple years and i am kind of yeah oh okay yeah i mean yeah um so so how did google happen um i was at vmware a couple years and they called um frankly like they were building out a new team google called yeah google called you yeah they did yeah a recruiter reached out to me on linkedin and at first i was like somebody's trying to steal my information like i was like looking the guy no seriously i was like is somebody like was just trying to fill out a job application to you know like somebody trying to spam me or sell my stuff like that that's what i thought so when you say recruiter was this a google employee like an internal recruiter yes google internal employee recruiter and there's a difference there okay yeah a fella i work with at vmware had gone over about six months before and so i called him up and was like hey dude what's it like there and he's like it's awesome it'd be great to have you and and uh so i approached the interview process as a learning experience like i don't know if i can do this job i don't know if i want to do this job but it's an an opportunity to interview with google and see what that's like um and i know that that that we have a reputation of being like um gotcha questions and all kinds of craziness but um it was the process for me was very straightforward my my my recruiter managed that process and he everything he said like he gave me the framework these are the questions or not the questions but this is what we're going to talk about here's the role here's the different like there are three different types of interviews you're going to have this is how um i am so sorry my robot just turned on we're living in the future that's awesome okay that's amazing my robot vacuum just started that's so cool we had it in the house and it ran over some nasty stuff that the kids left in the floor and it doesn't it doesn't work as well it doesn't work good enough to be vacuuming in the house but it's perfect for the shed because by the way guys you may just have to tell me to stop but no no no no no this is fantastic straightforward like here's what you expect here's what there's going to be a role related knowledge there's there's going to be like kind of a culture fit interview and then there's going to be i think they call it like a cognitive ability interview mm-hmm okay and and so um i did them and it was their philosophy was we don't want you to necessarily present on our technology we want to hear you talk about a technology you already know and see how well you present that and how well you discuss okay so um i think coming at it as a learning experience for me kept me from being nervous because it wasn't like holy cow this is google like this is like the opportunity of a lifetime like it stopped the hand-wringing right um and i see a question what technology did i discuss uh vmware like that's what i was that was what i was selling every day that's what i was immersed in so um i i couldn't use like the slides that i was using at work but um you know we had a whiteboard and so i just talked about how um to implement a vmware solution because that's what i was doing um and the way you framed the whole experience to not get the yips and freak out was just hey this is just a learning experience like did you assume you were going to get this or you're like oh no or you like there's no way and i'm just going to right yeah okay yeah so there's no pressure right like you didn't you had a job yeah right yeah yeah yeah and so um yeah it was um it was a fun experience and i was very incredibly fortunate with the timing of it that they were hiring a big bunch of people so they were they had the process was fast that's not always the case was that a lot of interviews was it like a ton of three like ten interviews three wow okay it was great did did they ask you those goofy questions like how many marbles would fill those no no okay no no they got your questions it was very yeah yeah yeah and and like this is a cloud like are you with gcp right it's like the cloud division yes did you have cloud experience coming into this no i mean i worked so i worked for vmware and we had our uh vmware on aws solution so i was kind of familiar with that and i mean you know i was i mean i'd read all the devops books and i you know i was familiar with some of the language i wasn't necessarily familiar with their specific technology um but like i could talk about like what is infrastructure is code you know that there were some things like that how would you describe this what is infrastructure's code well it's representing your infrastructure in code where you can manage it check it into a system and you can track your changes and all of that infrastructure is represented in code so it can be stood up deployed taken down redone you know without a lot of clicky clicky right um it was things like that um so anyway yeah it was it was a great experience and frankly i'm loving it um the culture's great my team's great um yeah it's been good have you been to the campus did you ride like this i think we got a little internet action can you still hear us i can but my latency's terrible a little latency or something yeah i might have to kick the kids off um let me text the husband are they in their gaming are they well and actually i use ubiquity at home and so typically everybody's rate limited um anyway okay so hopefully it's a little better sorry about that you may have to complete it's good where was it you're doing great yeah you were just saying that the culture's great and uh you're real happy there um so i i want to quickly go back for a second you were very skeptical of the recruiter how did you debunk that this uh this you know turned out to be an actual recruiter yeah i mean so i i looked i mean i checked out his linkedin and his connections and then i called my friend that i knew that went over there and i just you know i um yeah i i just like i made sure that the links like actually went to a real domain that there was nothing crazy weird going on there well and when he emailed me right directly it was from google.com right and i know enough how to read an smtp header wow yeah so i knew it was him and you said this is another like se type role right like you're kind of presenting you're a technical expert to the customer yeah i'm a customer engineer and um the the role i'm stepping into is actually much more man my ping times are terrible um are much more of a um it is a much more of an architectural and i do a lot of my time now talking to executives and directors of infrastructure and things like that so uh it's good um actually it's been good i mean i think so part of what i would encourage everybody um so the the business who has the money makes the decisions because they have business problems to solve and it's really important to be able to understand those problems and how what you do fits into solving those problems and to talk about it in the language the business uses right i mean because if you if you start talking about iops and latency and ping times and uh you know whatever your metric is of the day like they're going to be like yeah move along like that does not mean anything to me and so i think where i've sort of developed stretched um some of those muscles is how do we talk about technology in a way that resonates between the technology and the business so that's those are the things i'm really working on now are these executives of companies who want to get into cloud is that what this conversation is okay we're thinking about getting in a cloud yeah i mean a lot of it is you know either um we've talked to consultants like mckenzie or we've seen what gartner says and um we we we believe that cloud is going to benefit us a lot of it is um i know i heard you guys talking on a show not long about how you know quick it is to spin up infrastructure like we want to move faster we want to deploy applications our developers can't get anything done like we need more storage it takes us six months and a forklift to get it here right those kinds of things that you know like they they just they they don't want to wait um and a lot of it is you know financially like we don't want to own these data centers we don't want to deal with power we want to focus on on our our business and so those are i mean those are the conversations i end up having a lot do you think traditional network engineers should be threatened by the cloud model and or pivot to cloud right like i've been managing on-prem data centers now for years and there is a move to the cloud and it is i don't know what the cost is going to the cloud but yeah like speed agility right go go it's you press a button you spin up more um you know whatever you need like could somebody be out of work in 10 years if either traditional on-prem person who you know is going to make the traditional network engineer go away right if you don't grow you probably are going to be out of a job in 10 years if you're in technology i mean so i think so is there always going to be a need for some some degree of networking absolutely i mean we've all got to we've all got to have be connected um and i i should what i would say is if you are in an organization and you hear people talking about cloud don't run from it go try and understand why are we wanting to move to cloud how can i enable this how can i understand it how can i make myself valuable in those conversations instead of just being like you know routers for life um i mean because here's the thing here's the thing like there are problems to solve everywhere right um they're they're they're um and the cloud requires architecture i think i i use the phrase a lot you know you have to take a architectural approach like you can't yeah you can go spin up a hundred vms and build a thing but can you maintain it can you support it can you like it's it is it is awesome but it really isn't magic and there's a whole new layer of problems that you know what i mean like when we got cars we suddenly needed mechanics right we didn't need as many blacksmiths right and so you know but the things you know like subnetting like how those applications work on your network um uh you know how did bgp you know like those things are super important um i think i think we might have found the title to your episode don't be the blacksmith yeah i mean really you know i mean yeah yeah i don't know like there are books out there like who moved my cheese like it's i don't know it's probably falling out of favor now but i don't know 15 20 years ago they're pretty popular i've heard a lot about that book right uh you know and so i think i think but i think for me the thing that has always worked for me even when i was a network engineer is get to know your business understand what the applications do and why they matter why is this application more important than that one um where's the money come from right and if you can solve problems related to that you're going to be fine um but i i think don't wrap your identity up in i know this particular technology really really well because know it they know it really really well just know like you're delivering a service and the tools you use to deliver that service are going to change over time and they always do right um and so i i think that would be my advice i wouldn't be like oh you know every every network engineer needs to put their cci in a drawer and go you know go all in on google cloud or aws for azure no but um but but yeah i think the mistake i see on-prem people make a lot is that they don't realize that there are these really high-level business conversations going on about how a particular solution can solve their problem and it's often around applications data and analytics areas that we don't play as network engineers and that has so much business value they don't care about the rest the business doesn't care about the rest of it and so if you don't lean into that and you don't know what's going to go on going on decisions are going to get made and you're not even going to be part of the conversation because you're going to be too busy going yeah but on-prem's better you pray right and that's the key i guess is getting into those conversations right yeah and just trying to figure it out yeah yeah like go to your company all hands i know you feel like it's a waste of time and it's a bunch of marketing and a hoopla and a bunch of wrong crap go listen to the words that they use please so that you can use them yourself in a meeting and it will give you immediate credibility like oh my gosh yeah seriously go to your company all hands and listen to what your executives care about sorry you know i'm so glad you're saying this no no no no no i hope our executive ep isn't listening who i know is a fan but you know those those meetings curdle my blood right because it does it's it's always sounded to me for the decade i've been in tech just like who cares like just do you know you guys do your thing right you all went to wharton y'all you know you're all reading the same crap like you guys make the decisions and then i'll just do the thing that you need yeah well yeah like just because that's my job but i've never really understood the business i mean i get it's a software company and they're you know like on a high level but i think i've been avoiding those conversations that you're talking about because it's it's not my it's not my wheelhouse it's not what i do it's but i'm separated from the business side and i i from listening to you it sounds like i'm doing myself a disservice right so yeah i mean you know and like you you everybody's you've got a job to do but i think for what has helped me and i didn't even realize i was doing it because i had i had a colleague say once like you understand the business a lot better than most people and i'm like i do like i do you know um but yeah i mean you can so how do we do that all hands right anytime an executive's talking or a meeting just join listen listen if you have the opportunity yeah and i asked questions like so here's a good example big learning curve for me so i really wanted um at the time it was meraki and the reason i really wanted it is because i got that job configuring and shipping asas and so my entire life was pasting config files into an asa and putting in a box taping it up and shipping it well meraki had zero touch provisioning you could plug a 4g dongle into it and bring it up online for a site that was um um you know that didn't have connectivity yet because we would have like the business would go open a site and they'd want it open in a month and we couldn't get dsl prevention in six weeks um and and so i really wanted it because like it gave me a whole new job you know i wasn't competing in shipping asas anymore i could do higher value work but at the time iraqi hadn't yet been acquired by cisco um they were startup and i was sitting in the office it was one of my first exposures to our he wasn't the cto yet he later became the cto and he said here's the thing if i spend this if we invest in this solution and i roll it out and i've got it at 2 000 sites and this startup goes belly up then i have a problem on my hands and all of a sudden it was about the business and not the technology it wasn't he's like look if somebody else comes and buys them and there's some and i know they're going to be around that's one thing but not yet right because i'm not going to bet my business on this startup because i don't know that they're going to be there a year from now right and it was like a light bulb i was like um it's not just about moving the packets right um right and i think that was a big that was a moment for me yeah yeah well as soon as you can make those connections between the i mean you were talking about it earlier you know when you can convince the business and talk in their language you know you talk about latency packet drops and all that stuff but as as soon as you say well it's about the customer's experience then you have their attention right yeah and like we um and we and that same leader uh chose to do viptela um before they were acquired um but the model was different and the pricing structure was different and it made sense and and then i learned to say things like okay if we do this we get a whole member of our staff back right it's not if we do this it saves me time it's oh we get a whole fte back on our team right i'm saying the same thing but it's going to be received differently like if we do this we get an fte back use their language like how do they look at it right so you are growing your head count you know by using your capex budget like who doesn't want to do that yeah speaking speaking the language yeah yeah i have two questions i have to ask before we're done but aj i don't want to no no we're we're we're fine we're fine on time we're good okay keep running so and we can cut this out if you don't want to talk about it but i was introduced to you i think formally listening to you on the network collective podcast and i i really enjoyed your take and your i i really liked you on that show you know i think i don't remember if i was kind of just starting out or maybe i just got the job on it now but i i remember you know you know everybody listens to packing pushers right to the 800 pound gorilla and that's you know the big one everybody listens to but then i came across network collective and you know it was you and russ and i i just i such enjoyed your voice on that show and and and i miss it and you know i don't know what happened and you're not on it anymore and you don't again we could cut this out we don't have to talk about it but just from a personal level because i'm getting to talk to you i really got a lot out of you on network collective and i really liked your your voice there i i always liked your contributions there um so thank you for your contributions there it was nice because i often feel like i just ramble on and maybe it's useful so um but you know i think so for me i had to pull back just because we were trying to do too much i think i think i over committed myself and i was always feeling guilty because i didn't feel like i was doing enough and um i just i needed to step back um i think i'm i'm glad that you know they're they're still going and i'm proud of the work that we did and super supportive but um i am on on the hedge from time to time with russ but it is super loose and so he sends me the invite for the recordings and if i can make it i could i show up but i don't have any other responsibilities um right and and that's what works for me right now um and did it become a source of stress for you like running the show i did and i was not um i was not a self-aware and i was not as open about that with my peers as i should have been i just tried to keep muscle through it right and it just wasn't working so yeah but thank you i appreciate that and i'm asking selfishly too right because yeah we're you know there's as you know there's a lot of work to do and we you know we have careers and families and things and it's yeah it's it's a wonderful thing that i love doing and then occasionally it there's a stress to it right or like you know i mean even i ran like hell tonight to get you know soccer with the yeah you know because because because i got to be here and not that it's um it's not a big sacrifice because i get to hang out you know with you guys but but there there is there's work right and if you're busy you know it's tough so and i'm an imposter syndrome person like it's just my oh you too yeah but you're a google engineer you don't get to be an imposter anymore you're at the top of the mountain imagine working at a place where everybody you talk to is brilliant and in every single meeting you understand about forty percent about what's being said forty percent that's pretty good that you're describing the last two and a half years of my career it's awful and and you're like you know it's it's overwhelming but yeah but what i'll also say is that i was also going through that questioning period with network collective about do i want to go deeper or do i want to go broader and i just didn't feel like it was the right place for me to be wanting to go broader i i mean there was a particular show that we recorded with nick russo who is a personal friend and wonderful and amazing um but we're talking about segment routing and i was like i was traveling for vmware i was sitting in my car at a gas station trying to record this episode and i literally didn't have anything to contribute and i was like yeah yeah this is it's just not the right place for me now and again i should have been more open about that and vulnerable but you know live and learn well thank you for your honest feedback that that helps me and i'm looking i'm looking at your linkedin so you did you change careers at like the height of covid like you've been there a little over a year i guess i mean started i started with google cloud in september of 2020. i have not met anybody i work with yeah wow yeah what's so what's what's that been like i mean that's that's got to be a surreal feeling like i've worked at you know a million different places and i can't think of an experience where you know i hadn't at least met somebody i worked with yeah um it it's what a weird year i mean it just is what it is you know they do a better job than most of you know having a system and a process for that and we were all doing it together like it was a brand new team so like like literally the oldest person on my team had been there three months longer than i had um you know and so we were all doing it together right um but there was like there was but there was also a ton of ambiguity like what are we doing here there are any processes like we know that we've got some things we need to do but uh uh yeah and we're all going through this like just fire hose of information and oh my god i can't believe i work for google and all of that like there were like nine of us doing that all together um and so it was it was it was i mean it was challenging but i don't know just like how i don't know we you know you make it like the last year and a half has been brutal i think for all of us so yeah but i've not had to travel and that's been good um yeah sorry go ahead aj no no i was just gonna say i think that's a nice segue uh you know for if we're gonna talk to you and everything that's gone on the last year i think we got to talk about the shack 2020 my office had been in four different rooms in my house four different rooms and uh our um we have two uh adult children and they were both in college at the time and so spring break they came home and didn't leave but the thing is when they both went to college the two younger kids split their bedrooms and so we had two adults a 21 year old man and a 19 year old woman that were siblings sharing a bedroom uh yeah i am how many humans in the one bedroom yeah there were two two oldest children my children were having a shared bedroom because we'd already given the little kids their own rooms and then so my desk is in my bedroom and that does not work for me um if you live in a tiny apartment in new york and that's your life i'm sorry but like i really wanted the physical separation and we actually had coveted when the idea for this she shed came about so my husband got it in september oh actually two weeks after i started google and then three weeks after i started oh my gosh which is fine as if that wasn't stressful enough wow they were wonderful wonderful like no no it was no trouble at all um and um and it was before the delta variant and we were we were fine um we were sick for several days and then fine but um i was like okay we are either going to have to buy a house or put a shed in the backyard and so we talked about that and then november of that year we went to the amish place and ordered the shed and february 1st of uh this year showed up and then in my uh we worked on it and my husband did most work and then uh yeah so now here i am it's wonderful i'm sitting in my bed did you have mission did you have to convince your husband like listen buddy we're we're gonna build a little mini house out back at this house and it's all mine and you can't come in no um he was uh no i think he liked the idea and he's never done a lot of woodwork but he really enjoyed working on it like so i i i'm shocked that we don't have another one with woodworking equipment in it yet like i figured like that would be the fault no he really enjoyed it and for us as a family and as a couple like we are closer than we've ever been like the pandemic's been good for us um yeah right and in that respect there's been a lot of hard brutal things but but but it's been it's been good for us so yeah i mean i'm super fortunate um there's a blog post at esharp.net if you want to read all about it and see the progress but um very glad i did it very very glad um yeah that's a great blog post i've i've read through it i've gotten some ideas i i don't know that we live at the right house with the right yard to to do something like that but definitely in the future if i'm going to keep working from home like i have been yeah i think andy's got a battery change to work on here but yeah no it's it's been one it's a 12 by 12 by 14 shit no 12 by 24 shed and um i've got uh yeah it's pretty much all mine um i have a little fridge over in the corner uh corner we didn't put plumbing in it but yeah it's you know before paneling that we painted and we sprayed an insulation in it so it's nice and comfortable and um that's great do you have do you have shed rules like you know nobody nobody come by their mama between eight and five i'm working i'm a google employee i'm a big deal you can't come out here because i get interrupted a lot so that's why i'm asking like the whole year of code with the kids home it was every 15 minutes somebody needed something and yeah the shed sounds nice i think you know so i worked from home for a long time before covid um i had a um surprise kid um my youngest my six-year-old was a surprise and at that point like i was we really didn't have a work from home policy but i was like my boss is wonderful and he's like i don't care what they say you work from home so i've done that for a while already um but but yeah i mean and so i i'm kind of grateful that the pandemic kind of normalized that a bit and everybody kind of got to experience that and now like people know like more of the etiquette um but yeah i mean they're kids they need stuff like like and i you know if there's something really important going on i try to tell them and then be like uh here's your cup here's your snack here's your favorite show please like if you can but i mean invariably somebody stubs their toe or you know who knows answer anything right i'm on the phone with some executive of some big company and the dog is rubbing its butt on the rug behind me yeah you know it's it's and people are people it's um so yeah is this your last job you're ever going to have are you going to retire from google i don't know i mean i don't know i mean at this point in my career i think that's possible um i mean i had somebody asked me the other day like where do you go from there i'm like i don't know maybe a startup you know i mean i i i i know some startup folks but i think the lifestyle is not what i want right now i mean i still have small kids at home um so yeah i mean right now things are great and so i'm not going to be like what am i going to do if it starts sucking i'm just going to enjoy that it's great as long as it's great and then you know see when and if we get there but yeah i know right now i'm happy so this might seem like a ridiculous question we we have a lot of like you know up and comers people that like heard about the ccna you know people hit us up like hey i want to i want to be an i.t right like yeah what should i do so you know you've got more experience you know than a lot of us and you've had a pretty stellar career as far as i'm concerned i get it what happened i i missed it was that it no did she just call me old no i said no he said that's what happened go ahead oh no i think i'm older than you so um what would you tell somebody right like it's probably an unfair question just to blast blast you but you know somebody's starting out like so the typical advice you know yeah get your ccna try to get a job whatever like is that changing in today you know like now you have to like know automation right you should probably know cloud like is there simple advice you can give to somebody who wants to break in like hey how do i become a network person um gosh you know as far as like so it's interesting because my young my oldest graduated college with a cs degree and he is doing he got it he finally got a job doing some development and it was really hard for him to get that job even with a cs degree and but i'm not sure he that's what he wants to do he's thinking about security i mean i think a lot of it is what do you want to do uh what do you enjoy um i mean i think if you want to if you're looking for like high growth i mean application development kubernetes cloud technologies i think those are great things i mean i think those are the areas where things are really growing there's always going to be a need for networking um but i do think it's going to change over the next two years i don't know what that's going to look like um and how that's going to evolve i think any time you have you can i think the good thing about the seeing at ccna is you're going to learn some fundamental technologies um that you need to know like for me personally i never want to have to deal with banning tree ever again um don't appreciate it and that's okay but but it's okay if you do right i i think the biggest thing is to do something and then to shift around as you get in and see what's going on because like one of the things i've told my kid he's like i'm not sure i want to do software development i'm like and he and before that he got a job during the pandemic doing like tech support like installing pcs and migrating people's profiles and all that and he had a cs degree but it was the middle of pandemic and he needed a job and what i've told him is that that experience will serve you well like understanding what a user's headache is like will serve you well no matter what you do having done application development if you decide to ultimately go into security will serve you well so i think anything that you learn that is foundational will serve you well like you can use it and and it can be an advantage like i'm really grateful for that that however many years it was i spent in the those mom-and-pop situations because i saw a little bit of everything and i learned what dns was and once you know how what dns is and how it works you're not too far from understanding what a distributed system is and how it works right um yeah you know i mean learn those fundamentals those principles and they're going to apply um right now i'm working to get my google cloud data engineer sir because i see that there's going to be a need for that and what i'm doing right it's not anything ever i mean have i written sql statements before yep have i dealt with like my sql databases in sql databases yes but never in an enterprise capacity but i do understand distributed systems and i need i need that tool in my tool bag now so i'm going to be getting certified on that and that's a start right i mean what was the name of that certification like google has their own cloud cert tracker yeah so i have the google cloud certified network engineer and i have the google cloud architect i got those um in my first six months at google but there's a google cloud certified data engineer i believe is what it is and so for me personally a lot of my customers that i'm talking with are very interested in our data offerings am i a uh you know um and and all of those things and so it's something i need to know right i mean just pay attention what do you need to know to do your job better go learn it like yep how do they compare to i don't know if you're even allowed to answer this how does the google cert track compare to the cisco search track like professional level google data i mean your google cloud architecture is one test if that tells you anything it's a two-hour test um there's only so much you can do in a two-hour test right so it's not like your ccie you know gotcha um i mean it's it's i think it's it's a fair test it's um there's some there's some good content there i mean but you know it is what it is it's a test but it is a very valuable certification um and i will say that it's structured so that um it's layered so that you know they ask high enough level questions that you have to understand some of the layers to be able to do well on it but yeah that's good nice wouldn't you miss aj anything i i don't know i think we covered quite a bit here talked a lot yvonne well you're well yeah i i'm hanging on every word you're saying i love it you've got such gold um i i love the the connections to the business that resonates with me a lot um because the work that i do with a partner you know listen to the customer because i got to sell them on some changes so why are these changes important tie it to the business it's an easy easier sell well and then i was an i.t manager for a while yeah yeah no i'm sorry um a lot of times like the the people that you're selling to that you're working for like you're like you're you know they may not know how to do that right and so you start asking more questions you are in a way coaching them too to go and understand your business better right and so then you can bring extra value to the people to your customers by helping them understand their business better too like so it's layered exactly yeah yep love it uh any any parting thoughts yvonne anything we missed that we should have asked you uh somebody asked a question on the chat so it says you're clearly from the south have you ever had an issue where you're a southern accent um no that's a good question i think a lot of people find the southern accent endearing it took me a while to get to understand that for a long time i felt like it sounded like i lived under a rock let me take a drink here but if i had a nickel for every time somebody asked me that they would ask the engineer when they got on the phone that's a different conversation right yeah yeah yes yeah so i managed a team of engineers for a while and i was telling talking to a guy i'm like i'm pretty sure you're gonna need a firewall to solve that problem he's like well i'll ask the engineer when he gets here so the guy for me i'm like just so you know this is what i said this is exactly what you need to tell him oh my gosh so i mean just you know yeah so it's it's that's sometimes been a challenge but um wait a minute because because of your accent no no no because i'm a woman well that that's what i thought but i didn't want to say it and be that guy who's like oh my god dude what's wrong with you you just said that you're an idiot no no no no i think people and especially in the south like they're very yeah um and especially 20 years ago when i was 20 when i was a 25 year old girl you know what i mean like it happened a lot then or i would work with a guy who would like um stare at my shoes you know like not be able to look me in the eye it's like dude wow you know i'm here to help you solve your problem um so i think like those those things were challenging i will say by and large though most engineers are wonderful like they don't care who you are what you sound like what you look like as long as you help them solve the problem um and yeah and so that that's that's been great but i think yeah i mean i was more like i've gotten the question a lot like what part of the south are you from you know like i've heard that a few times why well because i don't have a deep south accent i have the eastern kentucky hatfields and mccoy accent it's it's so that that's that's where i'm from so uh much more appalachian mountain kentucky tennessee is is um you can there's some accident like this in deep texas but um but yeah i mean but it's all right it's been good i'm glad you brought up the gender thing i you know i know we're toward the end and we won't go down that whole rabbit hole for for too long but we've had our past couple of guests that we had we had we had track and pacer on who you know wanted to make it a point to bring it up her name's lexi she's a she's a woman network engineer and you know she was bringing up some experiences she's had you know similar to what you're saying right and you know i've heard it from a lot of different uh you know women in the field and it just it burns me up right i mean it's just 2 am right i was raised by a single working mother you know i i have a sister i have a little you know daughter like i just i hope that somehow someway that isn't a thing someday and i have no idea how me sitting here can you know i guess just by bringing it up and having the conversation but you know i wish there was something that yeah well i've talked about this a lot so i've talked about this a lot like with with ethan of packet pushers and we talked about it on network collective and kind of the network collective like our approach was like let's just normalize it right like let's just show that women can be engineers that they can that they can be technical that you know like let's not we're not gonna go wave a flag about it and be overt i will tell you though um greg pharaoh once we were at a conference and he pulled me aside and he said if anybody ever gives you a hard time for being a woman you let me know and i will call their ceo like it was you know it was and i didn't i didn't know i needed to hear that until i heard it right it was like very validating for him to be like and and the the packet pushers guys i give and also the tech field day crew say they were always like so intentional about we need your voice like we need to hear what you have to say it's important and um it it was wonderful right i deeply appreciate their early like because when i started i had like you know my first school live i had like 50 twitter followers and you know like and and just to be embraced by the community and um it was it was really good and and there are other there are other technical communities out there that aren't like that um right you know and so i feel like it's networking is a good place to be for that um and i think i'm pleasantly surprised how nice people are in networking in general like i've received so much help from complete strangers just i've i've been working a long time in my life and i've never worked in you know industries or places where people just seem so selfless to want to help i mean right there's jerks and everything but networking seems like a really nice place to be that's been my experience um and and honestly any most of the gender problems that i've had i had a senior director once who like i'd be on a call and i would talk and he would act like i wasn't even talking like he would talk i mean it was so egregious that people would reach out to me and be like i'm so sorry um but by and large like the technical folks like once you demonstrate you have some sense like i've never had a problem yeah right i guess it's incumbent upon the people around too like you know take a stand don't let somebody be bullied right you know what i mean like i mean it's kind of hard for a guy like me to tell a director or a vp like yo dude ivan's talking here like shut up because you know that could be the end of me but i mean i i think i i think people yeah i'm guessing that men need to be courageous right and and stand up for people if you know if that is still happening i mean i wouldn't i wouldn't put up with it on a call and it might hurt me but just because it's something that i you know i strongly believe in yeah well and i think there are things you can do to make space for example if you if you see somebody and it doesn't matter who they are really like whether they're you know it doesn't matter if they're part of a traditional disadvantaged group or not but if you see somebody trying to say something and they keep like you know joe did you have something to say or you know like were you trying to say something like just make an opportunity and and that helps with junior people too because a lot of times your junior folks if they're gonna be scared to you know have any questions and a lot of times they'll notice things that those of us who've been around the block a few times just don't even see because we've you know been there forever so yeah right makes a lot of sense yeah thank thank you for bringing that up i'm glad we're you know we got people listening we got an audience i want to make sure that if we can make a difference in a small way somehow at least at the very least having the conversation but yeah i mean i think i just like and we all make assumptions right i think just when we catch ourselves doing it to like try and you know reprogram that a little bit individually and i think the more exposure there is the the better it gets and and the world is way more aware of that now um and i think it is getting better i mean my first cisco live there were 10 000 people there and maybe like 300 women um and yeah like now it's you know i don't i don't know the numbers but i would imagine like the last time i went which would have been 2018 there are a couple thousand you know so it's it's getting better yeah that's great well as much as i hate to to put a cap on this i think we have to this has been a fantastic conversation yvonne where can people find you if they're not already following you on socials or your blog yeah yeah um so find me on twitter at sharpnetwork i'm on linkedin um and the blog is esharp.net i've got a couple ideas i'm kicking around but i just haven't written down yet so all right all right well we will put all of those in the show notes yvonne thank you so much for joining us this evening we truly appreciate it i'm sure we'll have you back again and talk more uh but this has been such a fun conversation and um we we can't wait to see what you do and continue to follow you on the socials uh guys any any parting thoughts or you've on of course tim no thanks for creating space for tim yeah thanks for letting me let me move my microphone over here just ramble so it's been good i i want to echo what what aj said about the the business-minded advice you gave because that really hit home for me i'm i'm trying to position myself and getting some backing from management to be more of a decision maker on the on the technology side for the business and i fully admit i have an issue um talking above the in the weeds tech and depending on your audience like you said sometimes that goes nowhere and it's not going to get you anywhere so thank you for for saying that because i know i i need to work on that and figure out how i can listen first find the right words to say and then put that into practice so i want to thank you for that and i also want to let you know that now i aspire to have a robotic shed vacuum someday okay aj oh my gosh all right yvonne thank you so much everybody thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you