00:00
Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast.

00:15
Cloud adoption is on the rise and many network infrastructure professionals are being asked to adopt a hybrid approach. As individuals who have already started this journey, we would like to empower those professionals with the tools and the knowledge to bridge the gap. Hello and welcome back to the Cable's Two Clouds podcast. I am this week's host, Tim McConaughey, and with me are my bearded compatriots, Chris Miles and Alex Perkins. How are you guys doing today? How are you doing today, Alex? I know, Tim, you got rid of your beard, man. You betrayed us.

00:45
You get too scraggly. Dude, so, you know, the running theme is how I do all the work and you guys don't do anything but play squash and, you know, go play sports on the weekends. I spent probably 50 hours of work between Friday and last night doing Nexus upgrades. No joke. Oh my god. Yeah, dude. I'm exhausted. It was up to like 4 a.m. like three nights in a row. It was terrible. I can't wait to be done with doing this stuff.

01:14
Oh, you got more? You got more? No, that was, I just finished last night at like literally 3 30 a.m. Yeah. Yep. Oh man, that's, that's pretty awful. I'm sure it went well. Everything, everything flawless. You know, actually there were surprisingly few issues. Um, there were some features, uh, I don't know if you know this, but when you upgrade Nexus devices from seven to nine, you lose OSPF area commands and you have to do it under the interface. So that's a tip for anyone doing that. Don't forget that or things will go down.

01:43
How about you Chris, what have you been up to? Yeah, still not working very much. I'm just kidding, yeah, I did actually work a little bit over the last few days, so I've been busy, actually doing the typical thing is like right before you go on PTO, you're busy as hell and it's almost not even worth it to take the vacation. But yeah, so it's, I'm leaving tonight to go to New Zealand for the weekend and see a few sights on the North Island and it'll be very nice. I'll go do all the Lord of the Rings stuff, so I'll have plenty of a report back.

02:13
for next time. Oh, nice. We need pictures. Absolutely, I got you. If you think I'm gonna go there and not take any pictures, you're crazy, so I got you. He's taking a vacation from not working to go to New Zealand and not work, got it. Bingo. Awesome, no dude, I love it. Let's see those kids. Me, I am, well, I mean, I gotta keep the thing going. I can't actually say that I did any work this week, right? We gotta keep Alex as the only one that actually does any work around here. So yeah, I sat around. You shaved your beard. That's quite a bit of a...

02:43
some legwork, yeah? Yeah, it took longer than I thought it would. Nah, I was getting too long, man, like too old. I tell you, I lose like 20 years when I shave this damn beard off, like I do. So I decided it was time, you know? It'll grow back. And anyway, my wife is temporarily happy with me that I shaved my beard, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway.

03:09
So we have with us a guest that also does not have a beard, luckily. And her name is Mercedes, and we're very excited to have her with us. Welcome to the podcast, Mercedes. Nice to have you with us. Oh, thanks. Oh, oh. Nice to be here. Yes, well, obviously, yes, as you can hear now, yes, I was making a joke. She does not actually have a beard, and we need a beard. It's good to have you with us.

03:39
just a new guest for us. We haven't had her on the podcast before. I mean, we are like, what for? We are several episodes in at this point, but we haven't had her before, so we're very excited to have her. Mercedes is here to talk about her cloud journey, kind of where she started and how she got to where she is now. And just a couple other things, we'll see where the conversation takes us. So...

04:01
Mercedes, if you're all right with that, can we start with kind of how you started with tech? I know you didn't start there originally, like how you came into tech, how you got started. Oh, yeah. So my story is pretty unusual. I actually started in fast food. So I had a lot of like that sort of people interaction, which is kind of what really helped me to get into technology, really being able to communicate with people and kind of calm them down.

04:30
once things didn't go their way. So I actually, so I worked for Domino's for like six years. And funny story, I worked for like one of the busiest stores in the country. Oh, wow. So doing that and just kind of wanting to do something more with my career, you know, I was, I was already out of college and I wanted to just kind of.

04:58
do something else. I mean, there had to be more to life than just pizzas. So I actually got a little curious. I started working in a call center and I wanted to know how the call center work. I mean, where was the data being stored? How are we able to really communicate with our customers? How are we able to keep up with all of these different types of information? So that's where I just started.

05:28
jumping into it, I told my manager I wanted to learn more about technology and I just got curious and that's really that's really how I started. What did you go to college for? So I actually graduated with a bachelor's in human environmental science which is just a fancy word for humanities. So you learn how to basically kind of do, I was trying to say like conflict resolution, people manage.

05:55
It's a whole lot of everything. Lots of soft scale stuff. Yeah, so I mean, it seems like, yeah, you definitely had a lot of experience on the side that most of us struggle with, I'd say, that come in straight from the technical side. I agree. That's a skill that most of us tech people don't start with, right? They usually start with the tech side of it. So that's an interesting angle, totally opposite angle.

06:20
Yeah, I was going to say I was really glad you touched on that because I feel like there's a lot of people in this industry that haven't had to do customer service at any point in their life and it very much shows because you got to learn to talk to people off the ledge very nicely and I think that would be a good experience for almost everyone to have at some point in their life to go through that and as much as it sucks but it teaches you a lot about interpersonal communication and things like that. Yeah, like the help desk, right? Everyone starts at the help desk.

06:50
A lot of that, part of that is the customer service interactions, right? So, ties in. Absolutely. So, tell us a little bit about, so you wanted to understand the call center and how it worked more. A lot, what I find is a lot of, when we talk to a lot of people, I mean, not just on the podcast, but in general, people are always asking the question, well, how do I get into tech? What do I do? What are the steps that I take? So, you wanted to learn more about the call center. So tell us more about how you turn that into, I guess, the tech shift, if you would.

07:19
Yeah, so one thing that I had to find was what I enjoyed, which is a step that a lot of people skip. They just want to jump into whatever their friend is doing. So I realized that since I was really curious and I like to be a little more analytical and kind of do some critical thinking, I just kind of googled what type of roles would be great for me.

07:46
A lot of people, like you were saying, like help desk or doing support. So I kind of started in user support and I like kind of being the one like that, that first in line defense when somebody needed some type of issue solved. I mean, I liked being the one that they could call and I stay with them all the way to the end to solve the problem. But I realized, you know, the, the more I got into it.

08:14
the more, you know, it wasn't just me and I had to kind of let the problems fly to somebody else. So that's really how I got started into, you know, finding things that I like. So I have an interesting question. So do you think your interest in understanding the call center, like how it worked, is because of the technology side or is it because you kind of want to have a better understanding of how it's helping the customer? Or both? Ooh, maybe both. Because I really wanted to have...

08:43
a better understanding, but I also like being the one to solve the problem. So I guess wanting to have both of those skills was really what kind of took me to that next step. Right. Like they compliment each other anyway. So yeah. Okay. So when did you, when did you like decide, and I'm assuming that you have, when did you kind of decide?

09:08
Okay, like what was your moment where you were like, okay, this tech thing that I'm getting into, like, this is what I want to do. Like, this is the thing now that I want to, I want to do from here on in. Yeah. Um, I would say when I decided that this was really for me was probably when it got really easy for me, like most people struggled maybe like a year or two in, but I was really getting good at it. Like I would say at least 90 days in, like I'm really good at troubleshooting. I'm really good at investigating.

09:38
And that's when I was just like, you know what, this is probably it for me. And I didn't feel so exhausted. I was actually excited. Like any time I finished something or completed something. Yeah. Passion is so important. I mean, everybody I know and we talked about this, I think, last episode or maybe a couple of episodes ago. You know, we're all in it to make money, obviously. But, you know.

10:01
We can make money doing a lot of different things. And so I think the passion piece of it is so important. You gotta like what you do and you gotta be, feel like you're good at what you do. So that's great. We were looking at the, I was looking at the timing and I noticed that like a lot of, it seemed like you were entering the tech journey right around the time the pandemic really kind of kicked off. Was that a piece of it? Was that just bad timing it just happens to be? Or was there any, are they related at all? But you know what? I've thought about that because

10:29
I didn't know if I just got curious into like really wanting more with technology because we were starting to, you know, we were trying to go through that transition phase of going home and everybody masking up and just kind of being well connected with, well connected with their homes. I don't know. I could say that it might have played a little bit into it. I think I had a lot of extra time on my hands.

10:58
some extra books to read. So that might help me out a little bit on that part. Yeah, I think that's one of the keys that a lot of people had, right? You suddenly had so much time on your hand. It was like, what do I do if I can't go outside? And like, if you have kids, like I can't go, you know, take them to places, I can't go play here and there. So what did you fill that time up with? That was a big, big thing for a lot of people. Yeah, the statistics are very high that like a lot of people took the opportunity that they were stuck at home.

11:28
You know, with some of the financial stuff, the incentives that the government had put out there, not incentives, I don't know if you'd call it, helping people out basically during the pandemic, people were taking that opportunity to re-skill and everything. But it sounded like you'd already basically started that journey even before the pandemic had really hit. So, all right. So, let me think about it. I see you on Twitter all the time posting about the cloud stuff that you're working on.

11:57
you know, that you have been studying at it for a while. So can you talk to me a little bit about when you kind of knew, like, or again, presuming that maybe cloud was kind of the thing you were kind of looking at or pivoting towards? Because I don't know, you didn't start with cloud, did you, right? You kind of moved towards it or did you start with cloud right from the beginning? Right. So I didn't start with cloud. I had actually reached out to a couple other people who were interested in getting into tech or they had just kind of

12:26
got their foot in the door and they were like, hey, you know, have you guys looked at this cloud stuff? Like this is getting really popular, you know, maybe this is something we need to tap into. So of course, I mean, I'd always use Microsoft products. So I just kind of jumped on Azure. So that's really, that's really where I've been digging into and trying to find my place. What about the skills? Like what kind of skills do you feel like you needed to pick up?

12:51
to make to do the cloud? Do you think it was different than other, like the other tech stuff you'd been looking at before, like totally different skill set, or really just the same, but kind of towards the cloud? Because the reason I ask is a lot of people in tech now, probably even maybe in some of the people listening to the podcast, are in some transition state or thinking about a transition state maybe, going to cloud. Our podcast is mostly networking focused, but I think there's a lot of tech people out there that are thinking about,

13:20
Oh yeah, like I looked into networking a little, so I knew pretty baseline things when it came to it. But after going into it some more, I was like, OK, maybe I need to learn a little bit of Linux and I need to learn how these systems really work. So I think that's something that definitely gets overlooked when people want to jump into the cloud. And I mean, you got to learn that baseline stuff first.

13:48
Yeah, and as Tim put it, you know, typically, you know, we're all, we're all networkers, me, Alex and Tim. So we've kind of dubbed this thing the MPLS moment. So I'm curious to find out what yours was. So what was, what was the piece of technology that like you learned that really just made it click for you? Like you, you like, maybe you were like studying for a bit of time and like, you know, you're just kind of learning the things to get your feet set. But then there was one technology that really sent you over. You were like, man, this is cool. This is awesome. And this is what I want to do. What, what was it? Ooh.

14:18
That's a good question because I actually started learning SQL. That was like my first, I guess you could call it coding language. Um, so I got really interested into databases. I'll start a war. I thought it was, I thought it was pretty cool and it was easy for me to learn. I, I picked up a couple of, uh, Udemy videos and, and some books and things like that, and it was just.

14:46
It just instantly clicked for me, but I kind of left it behind. I kind of wish I would have stuck with it some more, but it's definitely came in handy like along the way. I mean, these past what, three years. It's, it's really helped me a lot. So I'm glad I started there. That's interesting. We were laughing because I was complaining maybe just a couple of episodes again that, that with WGU I'm taking a, the bachelor's to WGU. And I was doing a, a, a sequel.

15:15
class and I was complaining because I don't want to be a database administrator. These guys are always teasing me now about being a database administrator. So it's kind of topical and funny. Now, did you get to play it? So, and I know you kind of left it behind, but did you get to play with any of the kind of paths, the platform, like cloud-based database stuff, or were you just like kind of like playing with it locally or did, I don't know?

15:45
the platforms, I did MySQL server, did Microsoft SQL server. I mean, it was a bunch of different platforms that I used, but not much in cloud at all. I'm kind of interested to see what that kind of looks like. Okay. I think something that keeps coming up, I just want to call this out, is you mentioned Linux, and I think it was just last episode we were talking about this. It's something that gets overlooked a lot. It's one of those foundational things that it's hard to know like,

16:14
It's hard to tell people exactly what they need to know with Linux. It's more just kind of get familiar with some basics of how to use it. So I'm glad you pointed that out because that's, that's exactly what I think we all agree on as well. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, it's funny enough because my team really doesn't use any Linux and if we have to touch it, that means something's wrong. So anytime somebody asks me if, you know, if I've used it or am I using it at work? I'm like, if I have to use it.

16:43
something's messed up, so I'd rather not. When you say this, do you mean like, is this because the appliances are like Linux based, that you, like if they're working normally, you don't have to go into the shell and like try to figure out what's wrong with them? Exactly. Okay. Yep. Yeah, as I was gonna say, most of these vendors just build their systems to help us not have to interact with Linux or Unix. So it's like, yeah, if you have to get down to that, that granularity, it's tough, right?

17:13
Right. But it's good to know it when you need it. That's 100% accurate. So if someone's, and I don't know if people have or not, but if someone was going to come to you then Mercedes and say like, hey, I'm thinking about tech, like where should I start? Like what? And now obviously you only have your own experience to draw and we all do, right? Having kind of looked around a little bit, like what would you suggest to them if they're thinking about like, hey, where should I get started? So something that I always tell people is to...

17:41
find what you like. I mean, if you like, if you're curious, like me, like you always need to know the answer to something. Maybe look for, you know, one of those troubleshooting or analysts, like support analyst roles or, you know, something like that. If you're a writer, maybe look into technical writing. Or if you like to do research, there's, there's always something for, for somebody. And, you know, it's not just a box.

18:11
that you're supposed to fit in. I mean, I just feel like there's a place for everybody and they can just kind of get in where they fit in, I guess you could say. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. So I mean, I guess on your journey into cloud, what kind of roles have you basically had relating to cloud and which ones would you maybe like to have in the future? I don't know how your career in cloud has been so far. Oh.

18:40
So I was a DevOps engineer. So that dealt a little bit with some cloud. We just used it mostly for monitoring. And we had a couple of applications in there. And I just recently started as a systems engineer. So that one's a little bit different. I'm doing some monitoring with Splunk. We use Azure. We use some network monitoring tools like Thousand Eyes. But I actually like the monitoring.

19:09
part of it because it does have some of the troubleshooting and you just kind of, you know, something's not going right. You hop up, you look at the dashboards, you know, see where the root cause was the problem where it's coming from. So I don't know if there's a title like for what I would like to do in the future, but I would like to, you know, to just kind of be in that that troubleshooting analytical type of in that type of career field.

19:36
So like operations basically, I can think of, right? It's mostly cloud operations, I would think, or network operations, depending on which part of it you're monitoring, absolutely. Yeah, to me, it's like a site reliability engineering. Oh, SRE would be great for you, actually. That's great, great call out, Alex. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, and there's, I can send you, there's a free book that Google puts out, because they're like one of the pioneers of the SRE space. And it's a whole full book about...

20:04
what site reliability engineering is like and the skills you need, the mindset, the tools that you would use, all that kind of stuff. It sounds like it'd be exactly what you're looking for. Yeah. There's coding involved, Linux. There's, there's a, yeah. I think the best part about SRE is that not only is it focused on troubleshooting as well, but interoperations and monitoring, but on developing the ways to kind of, you know, to keep, basically keep the lights on, you know, keep things going, monitor it and get it back up quickly. And like I said, there's a fair amount of coding and stuff in there. So yeah, that's.

20:34
That's a good call out, Alex. All right, so one of the things I noticed, and you've been very, I swear to God I'm looking for it, you've been very open about kind of learning in public, and it's been really good to see actually on like Twitter and other social media. I feel like a lot of the people out there, social media in general, a lot of people are big on celebrating the wins, but not taking the L, taking the losses as it were. And you know,

21:03
And there's, I personally think there's some, there's some bravery involved in just being able to say like, hey, I tried something and it didn't work. I wasn't good at it. I didn't, whatever that is, right? You know, I failed that I'm coming back or I failed that I'm not coming back. So if it's all right, I'd love to talk just a little bit about, I saw that you were working on the AZ-104, the Azure, is the Solutions Associate, or I'm trying to remember what the actual title is. It's for admin. That's what it was. That's what it was, Solutions Admin.

21:32
And I know you've been working on this one for a while. And was it twice that you've taken it now? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. That was, ugh, that's not a pleasant test at all. So it's one of those things where it's, you think you know something, but you really don't know something until you sit down and they're asking you something so crazy. Like, what was the color of this icon on the back? I mean, you're just not.

22:01
I know this platform like from just from front to back. So that was, I mean, I studied harder the second time. You know, I went back over, they always tell you to go back over those weak areas. And I mean, how do you go back over something when you're weak in all the areas, right? So. Or when you thought you knew it, like well enough to take it the first time, right? It's a hard, it's hard to do. Absolutely. And I just, I mean, I think.

22:30
The second time I took it, I only went up like 20 points maybe. And I was just like, man, this is, it's not budging. So. I mean, it's, yeah, absolutely. And I don't think that's an easy test either. I haven't taken it. I do have to, I have to take it for WGU. I think it's actually the last class standing between me and my capstone actually. So I'm almost done with my degree and that's the last one. So I'm gonna, I'll find out as well how much fun it isn't. But no, I just, I.

22:59
And I think it's just really important that we be able to say that, hey, we struggled with this, we didn't get it, and be able to be okay with that. And this is moving beyond you, obviously. This is a bigger picture. A lot of people, and you see this on Twitter and social media all the time where, you know,

23:20
People are like, oh, you know, tech, you make so much money in tech and it's so, you know, six months, what was it like go to my bootcamp for three weeks and you're making six figures and like they're selling this dream. Like it's just so freaking easy to get into and it's not right. We have everybody on, you know, we're all, everybody sitting here, probably everybody listening to this or at least most people listen to this realize that that's not the case. But part of that is because part of the reason that that's dream gets sold, that snake will get sold is because we.

23:49
Collectively are not really great about about being able to be vulnerable and get that out there and just be like hey look I tried this and it didn't work or whatever So I just wanted to say that's that's really good. I guess or I think How to say it but really excited that you were able to do that Thank you. Yeah, it's I feel like you're I agree with it. Go ahead out. No, go ahead Chris. I'll jump in after you

24:15
I was going to say, yeah, kind of the same way you feel. I had the same experience with the, like the Cisco SD-WAN exam. I took that a handful of times and it was very strange to just walk in, know that you know something very well and you've been, you know, like implementing it and doing it for a very long time. Working with it. Exactly. So you know you know it. You're even studying the things that you don't know, that you don't deal with on a daily basis.

24:40
and you walk in and it just kicks your ass and you're like, what the hell was that? You know, you just kinda like, I kinda got to the point where I was like, I have a lot of grievances with that test. I really don't like the way it's written. I don't like, I'm not gonna get into it because I don't wanna bad mouth it. But you know, eventually I just got to the point where I just took it on the chin and I was like, you know what, I'm not taking it again. I'm not gonna do it. I was like, I fully accept that I've.

25:05
I know this product, I know how it works, I know the technology, I've implemented it for numerous Fortune 500 companies in the right way, so I'm just going to have to roll with it and accept that I don't have the certification, but that's fine and I'll live with it. Yeah, I'm just going to beat Dead Horse here with the same thing, but I have multiple tests. I work a lot with Cisco ACI. I failed that test twice.

25:34
Like all of us have these stories of just things that, why would you need to know this? People that actually work on this stuff every day, it's like, some of these are just trivia questions, right? And not to pick on just those exams, because there's all kinds like that. But learning in public and showing that you have these failures, like Tim said, that's really valuable. And it's awesome to see things like that in the community. Yeah, I mean, everybody, every one of us has a, we walked in knowing this thing backwards and forwards and just got our.

26:02
you know, just got our shit kicked, you know, by something. So, and we've all, I don't think any one of us has been, for what it's worth, right, maybe preaching to the converted, right? Because I don't think any of us have ever been like, oh, well, I've never failed an exam, right? You know, we've been pretty open, I would say generally about that. So I just think we as a community, as an industry, a community, whatever you wanna call it, need to own that a little bit more and be a little bit more comfortable.

26:31
support each other. I think half mine and Tim's friendship is joking about how many times I failed my CCIE lab. So yeah, we're I think you gotta you gotta learn to accept failure, you know, and it's like Technology that's how much I respect the learning and public thing because like if you're going on, you know You're doing twitch and all that like your study habits like I've I've already said this on the pod before but I'm like terrified of being wrong, which is very stupid thing because I'm wrong all the time, but

26:59
The learning and public aspect of it, like technology, the number one way you learn it is by fucking it up and breaking it. Like, unless you're not, if you're not doing that, you're not gonna learn it, you know? Yeah, if you're doing it and it's not broken, all you learned was like one way to do it, right? Like it's when it's just absolutely freaking broke and you're beating your head against the wall. That's when you learn how it actually works, you know, backwards and forwards. So anyway, just to...

27:23
Yeah, so I don't know if you ever plan to go back and get it or not, maybe down the road, maybe if it makes sense, maybe never. And that's okay. All three answers are acceptable, right? So just, I do want to ask though, how do you deal with those kind of stuff? And maybe it's an open question for everybody, but how do you kind of deal with those setbacks beyond obviously just picking yourself, dusting yourself off and going on to the next thing? You know?

27:50
We all know what it's like to really, really, really study and then get our ass kicked and then really, really, really study more and feel much better about it and then just get your ass kicked again. How do you guys deal with the setbacks there? I guess for me it's just realizing the test isn't the, really say the end all be all. I mean, doesn't mean that you don't know it. I mean, like y'all were saying, you know how to use the tool, you know how to troubleshoot it, you know how to...

28:20
you know, it's, you know that tool. I mean, like the back of your hand. So I kind of feel like, you know, I got my agreements with that. With that test, I don't know if I'll ever take it again only because I know how to use the tools. And I guess it's more about taking a, taking a step back and just being like, all right, well, you know, I didn't really lose anything taking it. And you know, I didn't lose anything by not passing. So.

28:47
You know, let's just not take it to heart and just kind of, you know, go for the next one or whatever that might be. Yeah. I think like for me, my thinking around certs has definitely evolved over time. Cause of course, when everyone first starts, well, maybe not everyone, but I know for me, it was like, I got to get all these. I have to get CCNA, CCMP, CCIE, right? Like you got to get everything. But after failing and dealing through that process, I mean, really nowadays certs are more just for.

29:17
giving yourself a learning plan. It's like if you want to learn something, that's the most valuable thing for a cert for me. It has nothing to do with the cert. I've had two certs that expired in the last year and it does not matter at all. It's just the learning plan, a structured learning plan, and ideas of where materials are and how to look for things. That's really the most valuable part. Maybe it just takes a while for people to realize that. Maybe it takes a bunch of failures of certs to realize that.

29:44
Yeah, I mean, just kind of going back to a previous point we made is like, you know, I've been in a position a few times where I have to interview new engineers that we're potentially bringing on to, you know, to our projects, to our organization, etc. And you know, a lot of times when I'm doing those interviews, the certs are great and everything. And I'm definitely going to ask some technical questions to make sure you know your shit. But I'm actually more interested in whether or not you've had positions like customer service, whether or not you know how to deal with difficult people. How do you know? Do you know how to be part of a team?

30:13
You know what I mean? Because I've dealt with some of the smartest people I've ever met that just cannot work with other people. And that is worse than someone that doesn't completely know what they're doing technically. Because I'm more interested on how you're going to solve some of these problems than whether or not you know the question A, B, C out of some book. Right?

30:38
You can look that shit up, man. You can teach someone technology. It's very difficult to teach someone how to get along with other people or work well in a team. That's really hard to teach a person, especially an adult who's already got their whole life where they got in front of you. It's hard to teach them that. Some of them are too far gone, baby. You're not teaching them shit. They're staying the way they are. Like Mercedes was saying earlier, it's kind of blanking.

31:07
I'm just blanking on my thought right now. Holy crap. We'll cut it. Yeah, I'll come back to it. Holy cow. Oh, good, man. So one quick question I do have for you, Machete. So how has this learning in public kind of experience been for you? Like how has the community been? Are people reaching out to you about this? Are you getting feedback? Are people positive? Are they negative? Because...

31:32
I mean, let's be frank, I know it's like, I don't wanna do it because I'm scared of the criticism, I'm scared of being wrong. I can only imagine what it's like as a woman in this tech field also doing that, because we know that you guys are definitely the minority and do not get the same treatment. So how has that experience been for you so far? Usually I get really good feedback. People usually give me resources that they use. Sometimes it's like a resource overhaul.

32:01
And for me, I'm like, I just need just give me one video and like one source of documentation. I can't watch six videos and like seven pages of doc, it's just ridiculous. But you know, every once in a while you'll have like that one person who's like, well, I passed it in seven days. You know, you should be able to pass this. You know, you're an engineer. You should know this type of, but it's always that, it's always that one.

32:30
the one or two people who kind of want to kind of puff their chest up at you. But for the most part, I've had some great, some great people who will just ask me what resources they that they should be using, you know, when they're ready to take the test. And, you know, they'll ask me how long I studied or how much time I put into it, or they'll kind of applaud me for, you know, how much work I put in. So it's usually it's usually pretty good. I haven't had too many.

33:00
Too many, I guess, offenses so far. That's good to hear. That's great. Yeah, that's really good to hear actually. I was worried. Our industry is notoriously bad at shit like this. It doesn't surprise me that you got people puffing out their chest. That one always is funny to me because you'll get it.

33:21
And I know that women in this industry get it way worse than any of the guys do. That's just how it is. And that's something where I think we're all, I think everybody on here is working to change as much as we can. But you'll get, there's always that person that doesn't, I forget what I posted. I posted something I don't even remember. And the guy was like, well, you know, you've got all this and why don't you know this or something? It was something really, really dumb too. It had nothing to do with technology. It was like.

33:49
He was like, why didn't you know this? And I'm like, dude, it's not related to what I do. That's why I don't know. But anyway, so let's see. Actually, we're gonna turn this around. We're gonna give you the mic a little bit. What is a question that we haven't asked you yet, but you kind of wish we would ask you? Like, we don't know to ask the question. What's something you want us to know that we haven't asked you yet? Ooh, that's really tough. Man.

34:16
Cause I don't know, you really covered the basis as far as my skills. I've, um, I spent a lot of time learning everything, putting my hands in, putting my hands in a lot of different technologies. So I guess it was, I guess it would be interesting if you asked me about what, what I do in my free time, I guess a little more about me instead of just the technology. Yes. I love it. No, I was about to, it's funny cause you, I was actually about to say it doesn't have to be about technology.

34:44
So this is good, so this is good. So I would love to know, when are you getting Elden Ring? Yeah.

34:52
Oh man, I definitely need to get that since I think I've defeated, for the most part, I've defeated Harry Potter. Um, or not Harry Potter. Let me start with that. Hogwarts, Hogwarts legacy. It's Hogwarts because you can't call it Harry Potter. So I'm teasing her. I'm teasing her because I watch her Twitch stream and I just started Twitch streaming Elden Ring again and she was watching it and being very supportive by the way.

35:21
as much as I was getting my ass completely handed to me. So I was like, okay, you got to play this one next then. So that's- Absolutely. I got to get it. It has a lot of, a lot of it's very similar to the Hogwarts game. Cause I mean, everybody kept calling me, like that looks exactly like Elden Ring. I was like, what are you guys talking about? Bro, I played Elden Ring for 15 minutes and it was so hard. I turned it off. How many times did you see?

35:49
You saw you died like all 15 of those minutes. Exactly. One per minute I died, hands down. No way. That's a hard game, dude. That's, I mean, I know it seems stupid because it's been out for like a year now to even be talking about it. But dude, that game is, it's infinitely replayable because you get your ass kicked infinitely much. Alex is over there like, I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about. No games? I used to play a lot of games and then I've just been.

36:14
on a much like a break basically. Oh wait, that's right. My kids play games. Yeah, exactly. I have a job, so you know. My kids are always talking about Minecraft and Pokemon. Don't even go back, bro. It's not worth it. I relapsed and now all I do is play Call of Duty all the time. It's pathetic. I hate it. So addicting. Yeah, no. So, I mean, I wanna keep this going a little bit more. What do you, besides that, obviously, besides Twitch streaming, what do you do with your?

36:43
for your time. What are you into? So as most tech people, I love anime. So I have been on Attack on Titan. Yeah. What else? What else was I watching? The chainsaw was the chainsaw man on Hooghlyoo. I can't keep up. I can't keep up on him. My my daughters now are like way more into anime than I have. I almost like fell off the wagon. I have a DVD case full of stuff that's from the early 2000s and.

37:12
Their favorite is My Hero Academia. That's like their number one. Very cute. My kids recently found Dragon Ball Z. Oh man. Look at you. I've been very happy, because that was my, when I was a kid, it was like all I watched. I loved it. That was mine too. Yeah, that might have been one of the first anime I saw, and I'm dating myself now, but like back on VHS, like Import from Japan in Japanese, it was like one of the first anime I ever saw. Back then, you see, we didn't have that in the US, so we had to like find our friend.

37:42
who got them when they went to Japan and then dub, we had to dub the VHSs and bring them home. So just to kind of come full circle here maybe, so one thing I want to know, so as someone that's kind of transitioned from, you know, like you pointed out, you have a very non-traditional career path to getting into tech, and it was somewhat recent. What is something you've noticed recently that you do not like about?

38:08
the technology industry, because there's plenty to like and there's plenty to not like. So what really do you dislike about it and would like to see change? So I don't like that people are skipping the part of tech where you have to continue to upskill. They only kind of help you to where the part where you get in the door, but not how to stay.

38:34
So people get frustrated and then they give up. And you know, it's the longevity, I think a lot of people forget to talk about. That's a great, that's a great answer. I've been pretty vocal about the tech treadmill for a while now and how, you know, you're just on, once you're in tech, you're like, you're on the treadmill. Like you are, you've got to keep up skilling, you're gonna get left behind, you can't. So that's, to me, that's a great answer. I think it's a great answer. Yeah.

39:04
Now that I actually remember what I was going to say earlier, I was going to talk about curiosity and the desire to learn new things all the time. So we were talking about what kind of skills Chris was talking about looking for in junior engineers. It's so important to... It doesn't matter if someone knows stuff. If they have the desire to go look for it and ability to find it, like I think you said in the beginning, even when you were trying to get into call center stuff, you just went on Google and started searching. I can't even tell you the amount of people that won't even do that.

39:33
Like that is already a skill in itself. It might not seem like it, but it really is. It really is. Yeah. So that's just a really cool thing to call out. Because you've mentioned multiple times that you were really curious about things and that you wanted to learn these new things. So that's definitely something to build on. Google Foo is definitely a skill. You should probably have that on your LinkedIn profile if you don't already. Put it on your resume. But yeah, I think, yeah, I've kind of.

40:00
Piggybacking on what Tim said about the tech treadmill. I mean, there's definitely peaks and valleys, right? There's things where things are changing a lot and there's time periods where it's pretty stagnant. I think right now it is definitely very fast paced, very evolved. Hyper. Right, it's, I don't know when the next valley is going to happen. It's probably gonna be a little while. But yeah, Sadie, kind of piggybacking on what you said. I really don't understand this.

40:30
Like I understand that you put in the work to get your foot in the door and that is, you know, good on you. A lot of people don't even take that first step. But then some people kind of have this like entitlement thing right after that step, right? Where they're like, look, I deserve, I deserve to get these promotions to, you know, get these senior positions to move up, get paid more, blah, blah, blah. But they're not really doing anything to kind of upscale themselves. They're just kind of doing the same job.

40:59
They clock in at nine o'clock, they leave at five o'clock every single day. I refer to it as the lifer mentality sometimes. And yeah, I feel like as many people in this industry probably are underpaid, I think you do kind of got to make that case for yourself to be given more responsibility, to be given more senior type positions, right?

41:25
Real quick, part of that I think is because, and this goes back to what I was saying about the kind of snake oil of being told like, hey, go to my three week boot camp and you can get six figures in tech, right? Some people are buying that dream and they're going through the process, they're getting their foot in the door, they're coming across the threshold and like, I'm here, where's my six figure job?

41:50
So I wouldn't necessarily, and there's no sweeping generalizations here, right? Some people are led down that road and are more or less taken advantage of. Some people are exactly who you said, Chris, where they're just like, hey, I did this. Where's my six figure job? I deserve it, right? So there's, I don't think you can sweep, again, make a sweeping generalization one of the other way. But I do think some of it might be that is that we kind of.

42:15
There was a tricking of these people to think that all they have to do is get their foot in the door and they're going to be taken care of. And we all, everybody in the industry that already knows that's not the case, you got to keep going, you got to keep skilling up. Yeah, it feels like you're seeing that a lot right now, right? A lot of these things cropped up during the lockdowns because they knew people had so much time. And now that there's not really as much- It's really hard to keep up. .. you know, we're even close. Yeah. Well, right now people like, I don't know, Twitter for a long time was just blowing up with...

42:44
Everyone was coming into tech and now it's like I heard the hear. I'd like none of that stuff is happening now Yeah, well right yeah, yeah Well, I mean that goes into the whole over hiring of the I mean there was so much money being thrown around during the pandemic Not to get political or what-have-you, but there was a shit ton of money being thrown around during the pandemic to keep businesses going

43:08
And then zero interest loans. I mean, we've talked, I don't remember if we had talked about that on the show yet before, but like VC money with zero interest rate loans and stuff. So much tech, so much money flowing into tech, man. So much money. It had to stop sometime. And unfortunately, that usually means that, you know, well, you know how capitalism works, right? Once the cash flow stops coming, then people are the first thing, unfortunately, to get kicked out. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, sorry, I feel like we totally dominated that. Sadie, did you?

43:37
Did you have anything you wanted to add to that that we hadn't said already or give your own spin on it? No, I mean, you guys are absolutely right. I mean, the glamorization of tech, right? We saw all these people buying nice cars and shoes and clothes and everybody's like, how can I get in on that in like 90 days, right? So we don't want to work hard and build projects and network with people. That's too much work.

44:04
much more easier to take somebody's course and submit your resume and get the job. So I think a lot of people skip out on that dirty word, hard work. So. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the get rich quick scheme isn't unique to tech, it's everywhere, right? It's certainly not the tech. That's so true. Okay, I think we probably need to wrap up pretty soon. What I would love to, so first a couple things. One is where can people find you, Mercedes?

44:33
Oh man, I'm everywhere. So yeah, so I'm on, so I'm on Twitch if you guys are ever on Twitch. I thought about doing some tech stuff on Twitch, but I mostly just do gaming. It's tech savvy Sadie on there. I'm also on LinkedIn. It's just Mercedes Henderson. And Mercedes with an S not a C like the car.

44:59
Also on GitHub as well. So it's my name backwards. So it's Henderson Mercedes on there. You can, I guess you can follow me on Twitter. It's not going to be all tech. Sometimes it's some weird nerd stuff. Sometimes I post about beer. Sometimes post about food. It's just, it's going to be a bunch of random stuff, but it's black women read, but it's BLK women read all one word on Twitter. You guys want to follow me.

45:28
Okay, and we'll get all that in the show notes too, so that people can have the links and everything. So we'll take care of that. Okay, guys, any closing thoughts? No, thanks. Thanks, Tady, for coming on. This has been great. I think much like any of the other episodes, we kind of expanded this to talk about much more than we originally intended to, but that's always a good thing. So thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. Yeah, keep learning in public. You know, I think like everyone has said, it's really cool to see. And I wish.

45:56
more people talked about it and embraced failures and victories as alike, you know. Absolutely. And I'll echo those sentiments as well. So again, thanks for being our guests today, Mercedes. And we'll see everyone on another episode of the Cables to Cloud podcast. Hi everyone, it's Alex. And this has been the Cables to Cloud's podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed our show, please subscribe to us in your favorite podcatcher.

46:24
as well as subscribe and turn on notifications for our YouTube channel to be notified of all of our new episodes. Follow us on socials at Cables2Clouds. You can also visit our website for all of the show notes at cables2clouds.com. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.