1 00:00:07,832 --> 00:00:12,245 Welcome back to Adventures in DevOps, where we deep dive with expert guests. 2 00:00:12,245 --> 00:00:20,491 Today's adventure focuses on infrastructure as code, which is, guess, as specific as asking an author if their next novel will be written with words. 3 00:00:20,491 --> 00:00:29,608 Our expert has done the systems administration thing, the founder thing, the AWS consulting thing, previously the director of cloud architecture at CBS, but here today, 4 00:00:29,608 --> 00:00:36,012 due to their work maintaining what I think is the world's largest repository of open source IEC modules, 5 00:00:36,076 --> 00:00:38,663 the CEO and founder, Eric Osterman. 6 00:00:38,663 --> 00:00:39,352 Welcome. 7 00:00:39,352 --> 00:00:41,262 Thanks Warren, glad to be here. 8 00:00:41,930 --> 00:00:45,656 I mean, that was probably one of the longest intros I've done so far. 9 00:00:47,063 --> 00:00:49,937 Well, it's a long track record, know, been at this for a while. 10 00:00:49,937 --> 00:00:56,537 I mean, I can't believe that I've been doing this since 2015, just terraform, terraform, terraform, terraform. 11 00:00:56,537 --> 00:01:02,572 But that laser focus on like one thing, I guess, you know, I found enjoyment in going deep. 12 00:01:02,572 --> 00:01:07,514 Well, I think that laser focus also really helps sell it as like, this is my niche. 13 00:01:07,514 --> 00:01:08,905 I am the foremost expert here. 14 00:01:08,905 --> 00:01:11,707 And like you said, it's been over a decade now. 15 00:01:11,707 --> 00:01:18,936 And I want to believe almost any engineer who has worked with any sort of infrastructure as code, IAC knows about your company as well. 16 00:01:18,936 --> 00:01:21,188 You know, I like to think that and it keeps me going. 17 00:01:21,188 --> 00:01:29,680 uh But, you know, whenever I've gone to like AWS re-invent, I get very humbled ah because I'll be saying, yeah, I run cloud posting there. 18 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:30,556 Oh, interesting. 19 00:01:30,556 --> 00:01:31,206 What's that? 20 00:01:31,206 --> 00:01:32,017 we do Terraform. 21 00:01:32,017 --> 00:01:33,337 What's Terraform? 22 00:01:33,358 --> 00:01:37,221 And it's like, you're at an AWS conference, you don't do Terraform. 23 00:01:37,221 --> 00:01:38,742 How are you managing your infrastructure? 24 00:01:38,742 --> 00:01:46,649 Well, it turns out that actually I believe something like the large majority of IAC is actually cloud formation and not Terraform. 25 00:01:46,649 --> 00:01:48,513 But in my bubble, that's in... 26 00:01:48,513 --> 00:01:50,505 That's sacrilegious. 27 00:01:50,540 --> 00:01:58,172 Well, I can play you into the dirty secret here of that we also use CloudFormation, but ah we don't use the CDK. 28 00:01:58,172 --> 00:02:07,135 We generated our own programmatic wrappers to dynamically generate CloudFormation because doing it straight in JSON or YAML is so atrocious. 29 00:02:07,135 --> 00:02:19,078 ah We did that earlier before Terraform really picked up and the other ones out there, which I want to ask your opinion about uh at some point in this episode. 30 00:02:19,150 --> 00:02:21,290 would love to go into all of those things. 31 00:02:21,290 --> 00:02:30,830 And I was recently posting on even just how, you know, I don't think languages as it comes to ISE and as it comes to a product are what make or break the success. 32 00:02:30,830 --> 00:02:37,170 There's so much more than the language choice, but I think what you did makes total sense. 33 00:02:37,170 --> 00:02:45,210 And there's part of me that has some FOMO on cloud formation because it does make some things easier and it has improved over the years. 34 00:02:45,210 --> 00:02:47,374 yeah, writing raw cloud formation. 35 00:02:47,374 --> 00:02:52,474 That was like the one of the first contracts they did like in 2010 or something. 36 00:02:52,754 --> 00:02:56,334 Actually, that is part of the origin story of Cloud Posse. 37 00:02:56,334 --> 00:03:06,514 I built this system for a company, Lookout Security, and it was an exploration into managing infrastructure as code. 38 00:03:06,514 --> 00:03:09,474 In its infancy, cloud formation had just been announced. 39 00:03:09,474 --> 00:03:15,414 So we built out, we did kind of like a spike on this and I called the project the Insane Cloud Posse. 40 00:03:15,502 --> 00:03:25,798 And you can see where that five years later after traveling the world for a few years, I founded Cloud Posse as the company in that name. 41 00:03:26,246 --> 00:03:30,888 When you're telling that story, feel like I'm already seeing trauma when CloudFormation originally came out. 42 00:03:30,888 --> 00:03:34,209 There was a dedicated UI for moving components around. 43 00:03:34,209 --> 00:03:39,692 I think their goal was you would define your architecture using a graphical user interface. 44 00:03:39,692 --> 00:03:44,734 And this interface is literally the worst thing of any service that AWS offers. 45 00:03:44,734 --> 00:03:46,765 And it memorizes location and stuff. 46 00:03:46,765 --> 00:03:48,596 It was very programmatically done. 47 00:03:48,596 --> 00:03:52,777 And just the output was just absolute garbage to store in any way. 48 00:03:52,777 --> 00:03:54,778 I think very quickly, everyone's like, 49 00:03:55,009 --> 00:03:56,107 No, thank you. 50 00:03:56,110 --> 00:04:03,510 Yeah, I don't know if we missed that part because this was something we did in Ruby, which was the language du jour at that time. 51 00:04:03,510 --> 00:04:06,410 And then generated the templates. 52 00:04:06,550 --> 00:04:19,778 this is kind of like, this is a sore point for me a little bit because it is the state of IAC a decade later or 15 years later. 53 00:04:19,778 --> 00:04:25,892 I mix it up 2004 or 2006 is when I started using AWS and these things weren't around then. 54 00:04:25,892 --> 00:04:31,945 And at that point you're using, oh whatever that Python package is to manage cloud. 55 00:04:31,945 --> 00:04:32,986 uh 56 00:04:32,986 --> 00:04:34,057 I don't even know what that is. 57 00:04:34,057 --> 00:04:45,817 I'll tell you, I got my journey started accidentally when the company I was working for wanted someone to orchestrate the deployment of their thousands of Windows services to 58 00:04:45,817 --> 00:04:53,024 individual hardware machines, like not even virtual machines in their production data centers where they had a list. 59 00:04:53,024 --> 00:05:00,586 It was like pretty much a CSV list where this server had these services running on it at a time and to consume that and 60 00:05:00,586 --> 00:05:09,812 At the exact same moment I was doing this, the worst thing that ever happened was that Puppet came out and said, this is the way we'll do it. 61 00:05:09,812 --> 00:05:13,554 And so my company was like, amazing, let's do that. 62 00:05:13,686 --> 00:05:17,938 And then soon after everyone was like, that's the worst thing in the world. 63 00:05:17,938 --> 00:05:19,208 We should use Chef instead. 64 00:05:19,208 --> 00:05:21,320 But my company kept on using Puppet. 65 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:23,661 So that's its own sort of trauma. 66 00:05:23,661 --> 00:05:25,019 eh 67 00:05:25,019 --> 00:05:26,720 Oh, yeah. 68 00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:28,972 We're kicking a hornet's nest here. 69 00:05:28,972 --> 00:05:34,807 So that's actually good that you said that because, put a pin in that briefly. 70 00:05:35,408 --> 00:05:41,473 What I was going with that is the interesting thing with IAC is it's foundational. 71 00:05:41,473 --> 00:05:52,032 The tooling for it is often pretty unopinionated in that sense and basic to do anything with any of this stuff. 72 00:05:52,076 --> 00:05:55,228 The first thing you reach for is a tool of some kind. 73 00:05:55,509 --> 00:06:02,296 your case, something, you don't want to write walls of YAML, of CloudFormation with conditionals and logic in that. 74 00:06:02,296 --> 00:06:03,051 Totally get it. 75 00:06:03,051 --> 00:06:05,319 I totally get CDK also on top of that. 76 00:06:05,319 --> 00:06:06,981 If some use it, I know you're not. 77 00:06:06,981 --> 00:06:08,622 But yeah, some template engine. 78 00:06:08,622 --> 00:06:09,903 So you do that. 79 00:06:09,923 --> 00:06:11,485 And then the next company does it. 80 00:06:11,485 --> 00:06:17,142 And every developer, when they approach these things, they, this is super cool, but I know what I'm going to do. 81 00:06:17,142 --> 00:06:23,325 I'm going to build yet another uh factory around this or something to systematize it. 82 00:06:23,426 --> 00:06:28,288 And then sometimes you get these things like you said, puppet, chef, and that's the sore point, right? 83 00:06:28,288 --> 00:06:35,533 Because those are relics of the past of where we came from and there's so much investment in them and they are no more. 84 00:06:35,533 --> 00:06:38,334 And then there's Kubernetes and then there's 85 00:06:39,118 --> 00:06:40,061 Don't say crossplane. 86 00:06:40,061 --> 00:06:42,444 uh 87 00:06:42,444 --> 00:06:45,176 Yeah, that's an interesting one, cross-playing. 88 00:06:45,176 --> 00:06:54,121 ah I want to love it, have FOMO, but I never speak to anybody actually using it in production except for companies who are moving off of it. 89 00:06:54,121 --> 00:06:55,462 ah 90 00:06:55,538 --> 00:06:56,719 I got one. 91 00:06:56,719 --> 00:06:57,480 did happen. 92 00:06:57,480 --> 00:07:07,807 There was one company I was advising that actually was in it, except what had happened was some engineers from like ex-engineers from Google had joined the company, started spinning 93 00:07:07,807 --> 00:07:08,938 up everything in Kubernetes. 94 00:07:08,938 --> 00:07:10,489 No one else knew anything about it. 95 00:07:10,489 --> 00:07:17,734 And then of course with that, they're like, wouldn't it even be better if Kubernetes deployed all of our infrastructure for us, you know, because it wasn't complicated enough 96 00:07:17,734 --> 00:07:18,675 before that. 97 00:07:18,675 --> 00:07:22,107 And so they wrote all their infrastructure uh was deployed through crossplane. 98 00:07:22,107 --> 00:07:23,668 And then as a result, 99 00:07:23,758 --> 00:07:25,200 They're like, oh, this is boring. 100 00:07:25,200 --> 00:07:27,644 I've automated everything time to leave. 101 00:07:27,644 --> 00:07:36,598 And these like, I was like five engineering teams now had Kubernetes and crossplane running as their only IAC and their whole architecture was run like that. 102 00:07:36,598 --> 00:07:39,895 And no one had any idea really what the heck was going on at that point. 103 00:07:39,895 --> 00:07:44,118 It's, you know, I could believe they were on GKE, you said? 104 00:07:44,118 --> 00:07:44,909 Yeah, they will. 105 00:07:44,909 --> 00:07:46,060 Well, no, actually. 106 00:07:46,060 --> 00:07:48,593 Oh, yes. 107 00:07:48,593 --> 00:07:50,845 These were the days and it actually wasn't so long ago. 108 00:07:50,845 --> 00:07:53,768 They were running Kubernetes on top of the virtual machines directly. 109 00:07:53,768 --> 00:07:55,390 They weren't using GKE. 110 00:07:56,794 --> 00:07:58,575 Yeah. 111 00:07:58,575 --> 00:08:05,818 And this is kind of, you know, we come at this from an interesting perspective at Cloud Posse and me in particular. 112 00:08:06,098 --> 00:08:10,340 there are so many, like the whole problem space of DevOps has gotten so large. 113 00:08:10,340 --> 00:08:16,082 think it's almost impossible to claim to be a domain expert uh top to bottom on all of it. 114 00:08:16,082 --> 00:08:25,280 We have been laser focused at like day zero, like going from bare 115 00:08:25,280 --> 00:08:29,041 AWS account, for example, and then where do you build up from that? 116 00:08:29,041 --> 00:08:30,442 And what is the architecture of that? 117 00:08:30,442 --> 00:08:31,662 And how do you scale those systems? 118 00:08:31,662 --> 00:08:33,402 And how do you manage that with infrastructure's code? 119 00:08:33,402 --> 00:08:36,503 And then how do you build the software delivery patterns on top of that? 120 00:08:36,503 --> 00:08:38,084 And how do you get the team on? 121 00:08:38,084 --> 00:08:38,602 How do you know? 122 00:08:38,602 --> 00:08:39,694 It just goes on and Okay. 123 00:08:39,694 --> 00:08:40,514 Right. 124 00:08:40,515 --> 00:08:48,297 And cross-plane to me is really interesting, but everything I just said cross-plane is almost after that. 125 00:08:49,057 --> 00:08:52,682 And that is the conundrum is that we simply that like it's 126 00:08:52,682 --> 00:09:01,550 If it's OPP, other people's problems to manage everything I just said, absolutely agree, cross-playing sounds really awesome all day long. 127 00:09:01,550 --> 00:09:06,073 And if you're running on GKE and you have autopilot, I guess you're closer to that. 128 00:09:06,073 --> 00:09:16,422 But then there's still everything else that has to go on there that is more than just this one little cute thing of deploying apps and infrastructure with that for your applications 129 00:09:16,422 --> 00:09:21,866 because it's like an iceberg where the rest of your infrastructure is underneath the surface. 130 00:09:22,034 --> 00:09:22,935 I love the picture. 131 00:09:22,935 --> 00:09:31,802 I think there is this aspect that exists in the industry, especially in the infrastructure as code space that evolved from we want to automate this thing because we know it's 132 00:09:31,802 --> 00:09:36,546 dangerous or I have more than one machine I have to SSH into to make a thing happen. 133 00:09:36,546 --> 00:09:41,610 And you get to this place where now, okay, what is the right tool of choice? 134 00:09:41,610 --> 00:09:45,993 And everything looks better than what you had before. 135 00:09:46,446 --> 00:09:52,026 It's good to take a step back sometimes and look, reflect on where we're at. 136 00:09:52,246 --> 00:09:55,186 And boy, I don't know when you got started on these things. 137 00:09:55,186 --> 00:10:03,126 I remember when Capistrano was like the silver, the holy grail of automated deployments and things. 138 00:10:03,126 --> 00:10:05,126 This was a little tool built in Ruby. 139 00:10:05,166 --> 00:10:10,366 I remember doing a contract on this probably in 2008 or something in 2007. 140 00:10:10,586 --> 00:10:12,870 Gosh, that's almost 20 years ago at this point. 141 00:10:13,056 --> 00:10:16,068 So, but yeah, things were simpler back then. 142 00:10:16,068 --> 00:10:21,371 And you, we wonder like, what have we dug ourselves into here on all of it? 143 00:10:21,371 --> 00:10:35,448 And the one mea culpa that I would say that I've had over the last year or two softening is recognizing that there are practical limits to IAC and automation where the ROI is not 144 00:10:35,448 --> 00:10:35,708 there. 145 00:10:35,708 --> 00:10:40,301 And it's not going to be, there's no universal rule for it. 146 00:10:40,301 --> 00:10:42,304 It will be different depending on the enter, the 147 00:10:42,304 --> 00:10:48,410 organization, for example, in enterprises, what I've seen is like for whatever reason, you know, they have to use service now. 148 00:10:48,410 --> 00:10:53,805 They have to have this way that they provision OUs and accounts and things like that. 149 00:10:53,805 --> 00:10:56,708 And it doesn't make sense to introduce ICE. 150 00:10:56,708 --> 00:10:59,891 mean, fundamentally, think it still makes sense to introduce ICE. 151 00:10:59,891 --> 00:11:03,814 I understand why they say that they're not going. 152 00:11:03,886 --> 00:11:07,819 I mean, I think the message is it doesn't make sense to try to convince them to use IAC. 153 00:11:07,819 --> 00:11:11,222 It should still make sense to use IAC, but you know, try to have that conversation. 154 00:11:11,222 --> 00:11:12,512 That's the challenge. 155 00:11:13,373 --> 00:11:14,924 Yeah, obviously. 156 00:11:14,924 --> 00:11:17,196 I mean, it's like not worth it in any way. 157 00:11:17,196 --> 00:11:26,313 Like they're still paying me to do the consulting or advisory that they've asked for, but that conversation is not like maybe I have to sacrifice a little bit on my principles, but 158 00:11:26,313 --> 00:11:29,826 realistically at the end of the day, like no one's going to care. 159 00:11:30,092 --> 00:11:38,819 I do need to ask about that though, because I feel like there is this area and maybe it's worth going into it that basically you've mentioned is one of the cornerstone problems of 160 00:11:38,819 --> 00:11:39,120 IAC. 161 00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:48,560 I think it says bootstrapping and I think it was like, uh historically it was like, how do I even get onto the machine in the first place to do the deployment? 162 00:11:48,560 --> 00:11:53,141 Well, I need to SSH, but I want that requires username and password and I don't want that. 163 00:11:53,141 --> 00:11:53,982 So. 164 00:11:54,002 --> 00:11:59,914 Obviously I need my authorized keys there in order to even remote in, but then how do I get the key there before the first time? 165 00:11:59,914 --> 00:12:07,738 Well, like, oh, and then there's like a whole bunch of system administration, like activities that, technologies that no one ever wants to talk about ever again, like pixie 166 00:12:07,738 --> 00:12:08,668 booting. 167 00:12:09,028 --> 00:12:11,369 But the same problem exists in the cloud, right? 168 00:12:11,369 --> 00:12:22,124 Like you still have to, for your very first AWS account, like sign up and like start clicking some things in order to even deploy uh a deployer from your CICD platform or 169 00:12:22,124 --> 00:12:23,458 whatever you're going to utilize. 170 00:12:23,458 --> 00:12:26,922 to even grant it the permissions to get in and start doing that. 171 00:12:26,922 --> 00:12:29,534 What is the state of the art solution today? 172 00:12:29,534 --> 00:12:36,020 Or is it just basically admitting that what we have is just not good enough, but there's no alternative? 173 00:12:36,398 --> 00:12:44,234 would say off the shelf from the cloud providers themselves, it's all an exercise left up to the end user. 174 00:12:44,234 --> 00:12:49,569 And here's medium, go read the posts and you figure it out. 175 00:12:49,569 --> 00:12:55,453 I would say there is, depending on who you ask, you'll get wildly different answers. 176 00:12:55,453 --> 00:13:02,049 And I come at this, first and foremost, with major imposter syndrome. 177 00:13:02,049 --> 00:13:05,281 That's why we open sourced everything, because I want to do like, 178 00:13:06,478 --> 00:13:11,478 Who am I to do these things, maybe if I open source everything, know, believe me. 179 00:13:11,478 --> 00:13:17,458 But the other one is now I have the curse of knowledge because I've done all of this so many times and we've just been focusing on that. 180 00:13:17,458 --> 00:13:23,958 So the example that you bring up here is I think how so many organizations approach the problem. 181 00:13:23,958 --> 00:13:25,438 Okay, we need to deploy our apps. 182 00:13:25,438 --> 00:13:31,618 We need something, a deployer, we need something that does that, code build, GitHub actions or something like that. 183 00:13:31,618 --> 00:13:33,898 And okay, so what do we need? 184 00:13:34,124 --> 00:13:36,705 Okay, we're going to need, I guess, a platform to run our apps. 185 00:13:36,705 --> 00:13:38,376 These days we would pick a container thing. 186 00:13:38,376 --> 00:13:40,778 So let's do ECS or Kubernetes or something. 187 00:13:40,778 --> 00:13:43,679 So many teams pick Kubernetes for the wrong reasons. 188 00:13:44,160 --> 00:13:47,501 And then they spin that up and you're successful with it. 189 00:13:47,501 --> 00:13:51,983 Like for the demo that you needed to do and it's all throwaway. 190 00:13:52,064 --> 00:14:02,209 it is like, if this is for a actual organization, an actual business, you got to ask almost like the five whys and you got to go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. 191 00:14:02,209 --> 00:14:03,840 And it starts down to... 192 00:14:03,906 --> 00:14:08,270 fundamental questions that we ask, for example, like, all right, so what regions are we going to be in? 193 00:14:08,270 --> 00:14:13,074 What namespace are we going to use to organize our resources? 194 00:14:13,074 --> 00:14:18,608 What IP ranges are we going to pick so that we can grow and expand and not overlap? 195 00:14:18,608 --> 00:14:20,440 How are we going to do service discovery? 196 00:14:20,440 --> 00:14:21,701 What are the DNS names? 197 00:14:21,701 --> 00:14:29,447 And it's like, there's, we call these design decisions and these are the things that are not done by teams before they just start to go build out. 198 00:14:29,447 --> 00:14:33,558 So most of our engagements are companies that started in... 199 00:14:33,558 --> 00:14:40,843 A single account that grew and grew and grew, churned and churned and churned, one DevOps engineer left, left it to the next guy who's keeping track of this thing. 200 00:14:40,843 --> 00:14:44,906 Then they realized, we need one more account because we shouldn't have everything in one account. 201 00:14:44,906 --> 00:14:46,567 I'm just going to add a dev account. 202 00:14:46,567 --> 00:14:48,883 That's kind of cool, except for then they rushed something out. 203 00:14:48,883 --> 00:14:55,813 So now dev is kind of in production and not, and then it's not reproducible and everything just grows organically. 204 00:14:55,813 --> 00:15:02,397 But this is why, like, if you ever built a modern software application, you don't do it this way. 205 00:15:02,397 --> 00:15:03,360 oh 206 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:07,332 It's like start, it's like, I'm going to build the next billion dollar company with bash. 207 00:15:07,332 --> 00:15:08,593 You don't do that. 208 00:15:08,593 --> 00:15:12,855 Point is you go more importantly with a framework for how to do these things. 209 00:15:12,855 --> 00:15:18,628 You don't go, I'm going to go pick up a book on JavaScript and then just go build my billion dollar SaaS company. 210 00:15:18,628 --> 00:15:26,163 No, you're going to pick next JS and deploy it on a modern platform like for sale or, you know, serverless functions or Kubernetes things. 211 00:15:26,163 --> 00:15:29,184 You're going to build on things that exist and not start from scratch. 212 00:15:29,184 --> 00:15:32,664 And this takes me back to what we started the conversation with. 213 00:15:32,664 --> 00:15:33,616 CloudFormation. 214 00:15:33,616 --> 00:15:36,850 is so fundamental and so basic and it sucks to use. 215 00:15:36,850 --> 00:15:43,029 So the first thing everybody does is reach for their templating system or reach for something like this, but they're not reaching for a framework. 216 00:15:43,029 --> 00:15:45,863 And that's what everyone else does for every other language. 217 00:15:45,863 --> 00:15:46,684 I don't get 218 00:15:47,378 --> 00:15:58,884 I gotta tell you, realistically from our standpoint, one of the things that caught us very early on is when we have a multi-account set up in AWS, we see the OU stack set as a 219 00:15:58,884 --> 00:16:09,751 strategy where realistically, AWS has a built-in mechanism to automatically deploy across all your AWS accounts in your entire organization without having to know the account IDs, 220 00:16:09,751 --> 00:16:13,492 without needing permissions already set up in some specific way. 221 00:16:13,493 --> 00:16:16,014 And you can throw cloud formation at it, but... 222 00:16:16,014 --> 00:16:18,674 You can't throw open tofu out. 223 00:16:18,674 --> 00:16:20,134 You can't throw a Pulumi at it. 224 00:16:20,134 --> 00:16:22,294 I don't know if we're calling a terraform anymore. 225 00:16:22,294 --> 00:16:26,958 If system initiatives still exists as a product, you can't throw that at it. 226 00:16:26,958 --> 00:16:29,138 I think you need to close down. 227 00:16:30,144 --> 00:16:39,981 We can now we can officially talk about that and I think it really does help some part of the bootstrapping story It is a little bit of a framework, but it doesn't get you to any 228 00:16:39,981 --> 00:16:51,610 real, you know final point one of the problems here though is is I think a lot of people end up in a situation where as you mentioned the or the people who had constructed that 229 00:16:51,610 --> 00:16:57,714 architecture of their deployment story are no longer present at the company and so you're coming into a scenario where 230 00:16:57,740 --> 00:17:04,941 Some people believe it's all working correctly and other people know the truth and those people don't work in the company anymore. 231 00:17:05,710 --> 00:17:07,051 Exactly. 232 00:17:07,311 --> 00:17:11,355 And I've seen this too many times. 233 00:17:11,355 --> 00:17:17,760 When the tough gets going, the going gets, or how do say, going needs to get tough, but they just get going. 234 00:17:17,760 --> 00:17:20,621 uh We'll leave it to the next person. 235 00:17:20,712 --> 00:17:21,932 Why would you stay? 236 00:17:21,932 --> 00:17:23,291 Like you fixed it. 237 00:17:23,291 --> 00:17:24,364 You know it works. 238 00:17:24,364 --> 00:17:25,578 Yeah, exactly. 239 00:17:25,578 --> 00:17:28,503 And then they write a post about high scale to, you know... 240 00:17:28,503 --> 00:17:29,613 How was so great, right? 241 00:17:29,613 --> 00:17:39,675 How we completely re-architected the deployment story at, know, insert uh some giant multi-billion dollar company and then they get hired because of that story of which you, 242 00:17:39,675 --> 00:17:42,015 like, it was not a long-term viable. 243 00:17:42,015 --> 00:17:43,636 And maybe I'll ask this question. 244 00:17:43,636 --> 00:17:47,636 Like, what is it here that really solves the problem for us? 245 00:17:47,636 --> 00:17:57,120 Like, how does an engineer or a team lead or a director who comes into a company and sees the current state, how do they get from that to... 246 00:17:57,120 --> 00:18:02,136 something that we would consider a viable long-term infrastructure strategy. 247 00:18:02,136 --> 00:18:02,926 Yeah. 248 00:18:03,027 --> 00:18:04,728 that's a really good question. 249 00:18:04,728 --> 00:18:10,253 I like to think that we solved it, but let me not answer it from how we approach it and just more generically. 250 00:18:10,253 --> 00:18:18,520 I think any conversation on this would be incomplete if we didn't also factor in how the landscape has changed as well today. 251 00:18:18,520 --> 00:18:20,641 And I'm going to get to where I'm going with that. 252 00:18:20,762 --> 00:18:21,542 AI. 253 00:18:21,542 --> 00:18:22,823 Let's face it. 254 00:18:22,823 --> 00:18:31,500 But what has, what the key thing about AI is it rewards best practices and brutally punishes. 255 00:18:31,786 --> 00:18:33,007 bad practices. 256 00:18:33,007 --> 00:18:35,588 Now there is no canonical best practice. 257 00:18:35,588 --> 00:18:39,440 There's golden paths or recommendations or conventions. 258 00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:41,712 So that's where I would like to take it. 259 00:18:41,712 --> 00:18:51,107 So if we go into this organization and they're in this position and they're going to approach this from the ground up, one thing is what are all the practices that they're 260 00:18:51,107 --> 00:19:00,460 missing that mean that they can't institute these systems and things like that have done really well for us are architectural design records along the way. 261 00:19:00,460 --> 00:19:10,516 Because oftentimes decisions made were the best at the time, given what was available, what is uh the time, budget, money, all these other factors. 262 00:19:10,516 --> 00:19:17,380 But the problem we as engineers have when we go into one of these problems is I know exactly how we solve this. 263 00:19:17,380 --> 00:19:20,862 I'm going to do exactly what I did the last company, but I just left. 264 00:19:20,862 --> 00:19:24,884 I didn't stick around to manage it or maintain or see what it was going to be in one or two years. 265 00:19:24,884 --> 00:19:28,126 But I get to now advise the next company exactly what I'm going to do. 266 00:19:29,257 --> 00:19:34,618 And hence, we're just recycling advice for more than it's worth. 267 00:19:34,618 --> 00:19:35,438 it's worse and worse. 268 00:19:35,438 --> 00:19:43,478 So what I wanted to say is seek to understand what the problems are before we seek to fix. 269 00:19:43,838 --> 00:19:49,878 In one of these enterprise environments, think it's too often they just start, we're just going to build new, we're going to create a new account where you're going to repeat all 270 00:19:49,878 --> 00:19:56,038 the same mistakes all over again, not learning from what we did because it's as engineers, it's what we do. 271 00:19:56,078 --> 00:19:57,418 We engineered. 272 00:19:58,136 --> 00:19:59,567 I mean, I like the business focus. 273 00:19:59,567 --> 00:20:05,850 I think it's one of the things that's often missed and realistically when you're focusing on this, is that conversation. 274 00:20:05,850 --> 00:20:08,952 It's why do we think what's currently there is broken? 275 00:20:08,952 --> 00:20:17,656 uh Why do we think the new thing is gonna be so much better than what we currently have and not really worrying about the cost or the transition to get there? 276 00:20:17,897 --> 00:20:24,886 I have been coming around to the alternative argument though, is if we have to always, let me say this differently. 277 00:20:24,886 --> 00:20:27,542 I've seen a lot of companies say, we're data-driven. 278 00:20:28,046 --> 00:20:38,065 I think that's a dirty thing to say because it means that basically we don't make any decisions unless we have data, but there are certain things that you'll never have data 279 00:20:38,065 --> 00:20:38,495 for. 280 00:20:38,495 --> 00:20:41,527 So you're basically saying we're never going to go down that path. 281 00:20:41,527 --> 00:20:49,815 And I think this is one of those areas where it's very difficult to prove that an architectural strategy that drives your infrastructure as code or your overall 282 00:20:49,815 --> 00:20:56,430 infrastructure uh would be better if it were totally different without already having that in place. 283 00:20:56,430 --> 00:21:00,830 is just like, oh, it's like this one, like, oh, I love when executives do this. 284 00:21:01,010 --> 00:21:09,010 We're gonna transition to Azure or GCP because we're getting millions or tens of millions of dollars in credits and it will be so much better, right? 285 00:21:09,010 --> 00:21:10,390 The clouds are interchangeable. 286 00:21:10,390 --> 00:21:15,030 And then of course, all your enterprise architects stand up and say, no, please don't do that. 287 00:21:15,030 --> 00:21:16,130 This is a huge mistake. 288 00:21:16,130 --> 00:21:18,390 This is a reason why they're throwing money at you. 289 00:21:18,390 --> 00:21:20,570 But, know, good thing we're using Kubernetes. 290 00:21:20,570 --> 00:21:22,330 We can just transplant everything. 291 00:21:22,330 --> 00:21:25,666 And then you go through it and you realize, okay, you know, 292 00:21:25,666 --> 00:21:28,207 five years later, this was such a mistake. 293 00:21:28,207 --> 00:21:29,628 maybe there is a good, or maybe not. 294 00:21:29,628 --> 00:21:31,129 Maybe it was the best decision ever. 295 00:21:31,129 --> 00:21:35,712 But you only have the benefit of that after the fact. 296 00:21:35,712 --> 00:21:43,967 so I do want to ask, so you said, you know, there's the generic answer and then maybe there's also the specific answer because you've been in this uh advisory position where, 297 00:21:43,967 --> 00:21:50,620 of course, you are now the de facto expert because you've written the open source modules because your name is attached to them in some capacity. 298 00:21:50,620 --> 00:21:52,171 uh You know, you run the company. 299 00:21:52,171 --> 00:21:53,832 Oh, of course, Eric. 300 00:21:54,104 --> 00:21:56,057 Foremost expert in the area. 301 00:21:56,219 --> 00:21:59,750 How do you work with these clients to actually transition them specifically? 302 00:21:59,750 --> 00:22:03,373 I mean, you did talk about the questions you asked, but there's obviously more to it than that. 303 00:22:03,714 --> 00:22:12,528 You know, the interesting thing, the position that we're in for it is that we put out a lot of material, a lot of modules, a lot of posts. 304 00:22:12,528 --> 00:22:14,579 We have our own IAC framework. 305 00:22:14,579 --> 00:22:19,541 So if you don't not hear the subtle message here, you need a framework and we have something called Atmos. 306 00:22:19,541 --> 00:22:20,791 So it's an open source thing. 307 00:22:20,791 --> 00:22:21,351 Go check it out. 308 00:22:21,351 --> 00:22:21,612 No. 309 00:22:21,612 --> 00:22:22,082 Okay. 310 00:22:22,082 --> 00:22:23,532 So back to this question. 311 00:22:23,532 --> 00:22:32,180 The thing is we self, we, we find people who self-select that they know the problem by communicating that these things are problems. 312 00:22:32,180 --> 00:22:34,471 so much throughout posts and everything. 313 00:22:34,612 --> 00:22:43,237 the hardest thing, you can't like going back to this thing with, you know, click ops for, or control tower or managing organizations or things like that. 314 00:22:43,237 --> 00:22:47,899 It's like, you're not going to convince certain organizations that they need to make that change. 315 00:22:47,899 --> 00:22:49,971 And dude, they got a lot more money than I have. 316 00:22:49,971 --> 00:22:50,871 They're doing something right. 317 00:22:50,871 --> 00:22:55,944 So it's not going to make it or break it, even though, you know, fundamentally I disagree. 318 00:22:55,944 --> 00:22:59,614 My point is you have to first accept that you have this problem. 319 00:22:59,614 --> 00:23:03,957 seek, understand what your problem is, then seek solutions and see what's out there. 320 00:23:03,957 --> 00:23:10,462 So for customers that approach us, they've already identified based on the material we put out that they have these problems. 321 00:23:10,462 --> 00:23:22,450 We just nudge them now, like, all right, so you only have three accounts, but therefore you have no ability to control uh the boundaries uh between services effectively. 322 00:23:22,811 --> 00:23:26,776 people so much think, one of them, I would say one of the biggest misconception is like, 323 00:23:26,776 --> 00:23:29,467 We just need three accounts, dev, staging and production, right? 324 00:23:29,467 --> 00:23:30,477 Yes, you are right. 325 00:23:30,477 --> 00:23:34,379 You only need three accounts for an SDLC for software development life cycle. 326 00:23:34,379 --> 00:23:45,323 But that neglects the other, that iceberg underneath the surface of everything else you're managing from uh audit logs and security products and network management and centralized 327 00:23:45,323 --> 00:23:54,957 ingress, egress and the automation uh where that runs and the list just keeps going and going and going. 328 00:23:54,957 --> 00:23:56,620 So for these companies, 329 00:23:56,620 --> 00:23:58,752 We, we paint first. 330 00:23:58,752 --> 00:24:05,938 think one of the things Amazon has done a great job on, they have this framework where it's kind of assess, mobilize, migrate. 331 00:24:05,938 --> 00:24:09,861 And it sounds like buzzwords, but I've learned to internalize it. 332 00:24:09,861 --> 00:24:13,444 Assess means that seek to understand, know what your problems are. 333 00:24:13,444 --> 00:24:15,645 And then, I guess I skipped one step. 334 00:24:15,645 --> 00:24:16,746 It's modernize. 335 00:24:16,746 --> 00:24:23,552 So then show what the future could look like, mobilize, show that you, your stuff can do that way. 336 00:24:23,552 --> 00:24:26,690 And now think about how we migrate, but that's dangerous. 337 00:24:26,690 --> 00:24:37,618 I've seen so many things where now, you know, we built this shiny new uh panacea, but you never, you know, it just remains that way because now you have two problems. 338 00:24:37,618 --> 00:24:40,360 You can't move off of the old and now you have the new one. 339 00:24:40,360 --> 00:24:45,483 And by the time you move on to the new one, now there's a new one. 340 00:24:45,483 --> 00:24:48,785 And God help you if you've been naming these environments new. 341 00:24:49,710 --> 00:24:53,361 Well, there's like, know, legacy, legacy, know, 2000. 342 00:24:53,361 --> 00:24:56,016 mean, my thing is always just put the data in it. 343 00:24:56,016 --> 00:25:06,055 so I do need to ask, though, especially in today's climate, I'm wondering what the field looks like from your perspective now, because I think it's going to be unavoidable for you 344 00:25:06,055 --> 00:25:12,044 to be seeing environments that were partially or completely set up by the recommendations from LLMs. 345 00:25:12,044 --> 00:25:13,024 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 346 00:25:13,024 --> 00:25:20,396 And I think this is where a lot of uh valid concerns are, but a lot more FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt. 347 00:25:20,396 --> 00:25:26,018 And I like to always bring it back down to applications and application architecture and so forth. 348 00:25:26,018 --> 00:25:34,000 They, you will have a much worse outcome if you are just saying, Hey, spit me out some JavaScript and reinvent React for me. 349 00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:38,422 And don't use a framework and just do that and see where that gets you. 350 00:25:38,422 --> 00:25:39,468 And that's what people are. 351 00:25:39,468 --> 00:25:40,034 That's what 352 00:25:40,034 --> 00:25:49,323 What you're hinting at, think leading at is that that's what some companies are doing is that they approach infrastructure as code as though they were approaching JavaScript 353 00:25:49,323 --> 00:25:52,425 basic, not even TypeScript, just JavaScript. 354 00:25:52,766 --> 00:25:55,849 And that's why uh there'll be this problem. 355 00:25:55,849 --> 00:25:59,293 I don't know what the solution is for fixing that. 356 00:25:59,293 --> 00:26:04,957 I know what the solution is to avoid it, which is golden paths, best practices. 357 00:26:05,134 --> 00:26:09,576 codified decisions, architectural design records, requirements. 358 00:26:09,576 --> 00:26:12,898 And this is catnip for AI. 359 00:26:12,898 --> 00:26:19,351 And when you start with that from the foundation, now you can start every new thing follows those conventions. 360 00:26:19,351 --> 00:26:25,083 And in your use case here, you have your own in-house framework and there's no shame in that. 361 00:26:25,363 --> 00:26:30,346 You define the skills, you define the agents around that that know what to do. 362 00:26:30,346 --> 00:26:31,468 And that... 363 00:26:31,468 --> 00:26:37,883 That's what's going to ensure a successful uh contributor process throughout your organization for everyone else. 364 00:26:37,883 --> 00:26:41,066 What do I mean when I say agents and skills? 365 00:26:41,066 --> 00:26:43,648 Not everyone is familiar with these concepts yet. 366 00:26:43,648 --> 00:26:47,630 So Claude, think has done the best job evangelizing it. 367 00:26:47,650 --> 00:26:51,394 And let's face it, prompt engineering is all marked down. 368 00:26:51,394 --> 00:26:56,998 And that thing we used to call WikiOps, a pejorative, now is 369 00:26:57,542 --> 00:26:58,411 Don't say it. 370 00:26:58,411 --> 00:26:59,677 Don't say it. 371 00:26:59,842 --> 00:27:02,023 But that now is what enables the AI. 372 00:27:02,023 --> 00:27:09,707 So an agent is basically an instance of AI running with some instructions with a prompt in its own context. 373 00:27:09,707 --> 00:27:13,760 And a skill is basically a prompt that you have. 374 00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:15,990 So you have a library of prompts. 375 00:27:15,990 --> 00:27:17,752 Those prompts have front matter. 376 00:27:17,752 --> 00:27:21,434 The front matter is kind of like the yaml at the beginning of the markdown. 377 00:27:21,434 --> 00:27:27,457 And that's what the AI looks at to say, hmm, should I care about this bit of uh knowledge? 378 00:27:27,457 --> 00:27:29,408 Should I care about this bit of knowledge? 379 00:27:29,408 --> 00:27:31,219 It finds the skills it needs. 380 00:27:31,219 --> 00:27:35,581 It finds the agents that can do the job and then it executes it and it'll do well. 381 00:27:35,581 --> 00:27:41,963 And this you can implement today and you your organization, if you haven't already, this is what we're doing at our organization. 382 00:27:41,963 --> 00:27:47,385 And it's been amazing because we have this IAC framework because we have the Terraform modules. 383 00:27:47,385 --> 00:27:48,986 We have all the context. 384 00:27:48,986 --> 00:27:50,967 We have the ADRs. 385 00:27:50,967 --> 00:27:52,748 We have the requirements. 386 00:27:52,748 --> 00:27:55,943 Dude, it's like, I'm talking to my digital twin. 387 00:27:55,943 --> 00:27:57,440 I don't mean like cloning environment. 388 00:27:57,440 --> 00:27:59,110 Like I have my... 389 00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:03,500 my assistant here who knows exactly what I want, how I want it, and it implements that. 390 00:28:03,500 --> 00:28:05,574 And this is what enterprises need. 391 00:28:05,802 --> 00:28:08,973 I think you've hit it on it very specifically. 392 00:28:08,973 --> 00:28:16,145 Actually, a couple episodes ago, we talked with Dan Walleen from Azure about skills specifically. 393 00:28:16,145 --> 00:28:24,578 But I think what we actually landed on as sort of a definition, and I think there is an aspect here that a lot of less technical people, or even those that just haven't really 394 00:28:24,578 --> 00:28:28,689 explored agents as much, are really understanding what skills are. 395 00:28:28,709 --> 00:28:33,194 And after a long time, I think where we landed is this idea. 396 00:28:33,194 --> 00:28:42,006 that historically you had to write a README file and in that README file for open source repositories, was like 100, like basically a hundred pages long of how to build and deploy 397 00:28:42,006 --> 00:28:44,370 that piece of software to your infrastructure. 398 00:28:44,370 --> 00:28:47,053 And often it didn't have handling. 399 00:28:47,053 --> 00:28:47,974 What? 400 00:28:49,477 --> 00:28:49,647 right. 401 00:28:49,647 --> 00:28:50,067 That's the point. 402 00:28:50,067 --> 00:28:50,574 It's like. 403 00:28:50,574 --> 00:28:55,134 Oh yeah, it like probably had explanation for like how to deploy it with Docker swarm only. 404 00:28:55,134 --> 00:28:56,434 There's no Kubernetes. 405 00:28:56,594 --> 00:29:07,354 And if you're not using you want to, you know, bare virtual machine, there was only Ubuntu server version 2016 and that's it because the maintainers didn't decide to actually go any 406 00:29:07,354 --> 00:29:14,314 further because there's so many flavors of stuff and on the end there's just and there's going to be a new one all the time and managing that was just going to be too complicated. 407 00:29:14,314 --> 00:29:17,952 And on the flip side, in order to even understand those instructions, you would have to. 408 00:29:17,952 --> 00:29:19,223 also be an expert. 409 00:29:19,223 --> 00:29:27,287 I feel like historically now, you know, in last few years, the agents would have to know how to handle each of those pieces individually. 410 00:29:27,287 --> 00:29:34,530 And when we look at what's available in the training data for for agents, like half of it, least half of it is definitely garbage. 411 00:29:34,530 --> 00:29:36,246 And this is what you're pulling into your organization. 412 00:29:36,246 --> 00:29:41,806 And I think this is where you were going realistically, is that you don't want to trust what's in the agent. 413 00:29:41,806 --> 00:29:50,806 Specifically or the LLM the foundational model to understand how to deploy everything correctly you want to use what's in the repository But that's incomplete and historically 414 00:29:50,806 --> 00:30:01,226 you could write some sort of bash script that had like if Mac OS if Windows if Windows Server You know 2007 if Windows Server, you know, 27 or 2012 etc, etc You don't do that 415 00:30:01,226 --> 00:30:09,126 anymore because some of that's included in them in the LLM model But you also don't want to trust that so you would install the skill for deploying in your infrastructure in 416 00:30:09,126 --> 00:30:11,348 kubernetes in docker swarm Whatever you're 417 00:30:11,348 --> 00:30:15,781 and also the skill from that repository for deploying that specific open source. 418 00:30:15,781 --> 00:30:19,623 And now hopefully those two pieces together would be sufficient for actually deploying. 419 00:30:19,623 --> 00:30:26,707 I do like your perspective of if you don't do the ADRs, you don't write any documentation for your internal stuff. 420 00:30:26,707 --> 00:30:29,748 You're pretty much just pulling whatever garbage is in the LLM. 421 00:30:29,748 --> 00:30:36,942 And so if you do write ADRs, if you do write readmeets, that's like incredibly valuable stuff because that's exactly going to be the instruction. 422 00:30:36,942 --> 00:30:37,903 So you can call it whatever you want. 423 00:30:37,903 --> 00:30:38,663 You can call it skills. 424 00:30:38,663 --> 00:30:40,568 can call it prompts, et cetera. 425 00:30:40,568 --> 00:30:50,728 But that's going to be the thing that actually causes the right thing to happen when you ask your LLM, hopefully not an internal one, one of the foundational models, how do I 426 00:30:50,728 --> 00:30:53,110 write this script to deploy to my infrastructure? 427 00:30:53,134 --> 00:30:54,265 Yeah, I think that's it. 428 00:30:54,265 --> 00:30:56,196 that's, you know, so garbage in, garbage out. 429 00:30:56,196 --> 00:30:59,898 So if you're only starting with just a pure LLM, it's amazing. 430 00:30:59,898 --> 00:31:03,430 The first time you do it on the surface, it was perfect. 431 00:31:03,430 --> 00:31:04,090 Just what you asked for. 432 00:31:04,090 --> 00:31:05,641 And then you dig in and you see it. 433 00:31:05,641 --> 00:31:06,812 And then here's the kicker. 434 00:31:06,812 --> 00:31:09,503 And anybody who's been playing with these things knows this. 435 00:31:09,503 --> 00:31:10,373 You delete that. 436 00:31:10,373 --> 00:31:11,804 You ask the same thing again. 437 00:31:11,804 --> 00:31:13,985 You didn't get exactly the same outcome. 438 00:31:13,985 --> 00:31:15,546 You got something kind of similar. 439 00:31:15,546 --> 00:31:17,467 And that's disconcerting. 440 00:31:17,467 --> 00:31:22,410 So uh you need an imperative artifact from this, right? 441 00:31:22,850 --> 00:31:24,392 I actually don't mind. 442 00:31:24,392 --> 00:31:32,461 One thing I get so triggered when people say it's not deterministic because that has like from an engineering background for me, that has a completely different meaning than how 443 00:31:32,461 --> 00:31:33,936 people are utilizing it. 444 00:31:33,936 --> 00:31:42,292 I get the same prompt, different output potentially, but there's like seeds and temperature you can change and stuff like that that you're just not like directly exposed 445 00:31:42,292 --> 00:31:42,753 to. 446 00:31:42,753 --> 00:31:44,488 So, you know. 447 00:31:44,488 --> 00:31:49,551 between my machine and your machine and the ice system and 448 00:31:50,136 --> 00:31:51,387 Yeah, so that's definitely one thing. 449 00:31:51,387 --> 00:31:53,329 And I think there's a lot we can potentially talk about there. 450 00:31:53,329 --> 00:32:04,718 But the one thing that it doesn't line up for me is there still all these potential pitfalls that exist in IEC development that we just assume go away as soon as we utilize 451 00:32:04,718 --> 00:32:08,220 like repositories or golden paths and therefore LLMs. 452 00:32:08,220 --> 00:32:09,681 But I still feel like are there. 453 00:32:09,681 --> 00:32:15,616 And the one that comes to my mind most readily is that there is this aspect where 454 00:32:15,616 --> 00:32:20,268 a cloud provider or tool that you're utilizing can know that a resource should not be deleted. 455 00:32:20,268 --> 00:32:28,952 An example could be a database that is currently have open connections to, or has been read or written to in the last hour, day, week. 456 00:32:29,092 --> 00:32:33,314 And I feel like there's very few protections in place without pulling in something. 457 00:32:33,314 --> 00:32:35,855 Someone said check off uh a little while ago. 458 00:32:35,855 --> 00:32:38,916 I don't even know if that really does what you would want. 459 00:32:38,916 --> 00:32:43,498 And I feel like there are these pitfalls and I really would like that problem to be solved. 460 00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:50,484 It's not like cloud providers don't offer this level of protection for little mistakes that come into your pipeline. 461 00:32:50,484 --> 00:32:58,069 So maybe if I'll take the devil's advocate perspective here, it's so great to have the LLMs auto-generate all the code. 462 00:32:58,069 --> 00:33:05,573 I don't care if it's not the same every time because I'm going to commit it to the repository, but man, it's going to accidentally change one of those parameters that causes 463 00:33:05,573 --> 00:33:10,316 the whole piece of infrastructure, the database to be destroyed and recreated accidentally. 464 00:33:10,316 --> 00:33:10,766 Yeah. 465 00:33:10,766 --> 00:33:14,427 So hearing what you said, I think, I think we are more or less in alignment. 466 00:33:14,427 --> 00:33:18,909 I think that the key thing here is you are committing that artifact at a point in time. 467 00:33:18,909 --> 00:33:21,409 And that's what you're building on and continue. 468 00:33:21,630 --> 00:33:25,441 It's this goldfish approach where we don't even to commit it anymore. 469 00:33:25,441 --> 00:33:26,591 We can just commute. 470 00:33:26,591 --> 00:33:29,622 We're just going to have a library of what we need and requirements. 471 00:33:29,622 --> 00:33:32,433 And we expect every time we do it to have the same outcome. 472 00:33:32,433 --> 00:33:33,493 And that's what you know. 473 00:33:33,493 --> 00:33:35,680 So you need to have an artifact. 474 00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:42,735 of what it is you're working with and you're building on that artifact, you're mutating, you're improving it. 475 00:33:42,836 --> 00:33:49,041 So on the security side, I think these things are, there's no silver bullet, they're going to be layers. 476 00:33:49,041 --> 00:33:57,347 So uh adding a layer that lets you look for maybe, you mean to do this thing? 477 00:33:57,347 --> 00:33:59,829 It's good, but it's not a guard rail. 478 00:33:59,829 --> 00:34:01,098 It means that. 479 00:34:01,098 --> 00:34:10,464 It's a little bit fungible, it's a little bit flexible, and it might see something else that makes it, what you wanted, you didn't, you didn't want to delete that thing. 480 00:34:10,464 --> 00:34:13,006 And the guardrail wasn't there when you actually needed it. 481 00:34:13,006 --> 00:34:18,882 But having adversarial agents that kind of counteract each other is working well. 482 00:34:18,882 --> 00:34:27,827 So are you seeing like LLM as judged here, like where the guardrails are just like another LLM that is validating what infrastructure is being changed and using that to make 483 00:34:27,827 --> 00:34:37,152 decisions or are we really talking about like some sort of programmatic and I'll use the term that I hate deterministic here that can actually evaluate what's happening and make a 484 00:34:37,152 --> 00:34:39,886 real decision of whether or not that change is a good thing to do. 485 00:34:39,886 --> 00:34:43,726 Going back to this idea, I think it's defense in depth or layers. 486 00:34:44,406 --> 00:34:57,046 I think at the state we are at today with LLMs, using it for like a compliance level guardrail or like black or white, I don't think it's 100%. 487 00:34:57,046 --> 00:35:03,926 What is though, is using that same LLM to generate the policy that is 100%. 488 00:35:03,926 --> 00:35:07,026 And that is closer to where we're going. 489 00:35:07,026 --> 00:35:08,044 And that's what I've seen. 490 00:35:08,044 --> 00:35:11,197 a lot of security startups focus on. 491 00:35:11,197 --> 00:35:15,961 Then there's the, like the, the, side of that, which is just the code review piece. 492 00:35:15,982 --> 00:35:19,105 And there's a lot of products in this space. 493 00:35:19,105 --> 00:35:27,984 The one that we've been using, uh we would not have been able to get to where we are in the past year if it wasn't for CodeRabbit. 494 00:35:27,984 --> 00:35:31,116 Like CodeRabbit has been amazing. 495 00:35:31,137 --> 00:35:32,536 Technically speaking, 496 00:35:32,536 --> 00:35:33,427 There's not a lot there. 497 00:35:33,427 --> 00:35:43,655 And I'm pretty sure your engineering team can vibe code that on the weekend to do the same exact thing minus the insane amount of training data and specializations and optimizations 498 00:35:43,655 --> 00:35:49,699 they've done to actually give really good reviews, at least from our perspective. 499 00:35:49,800 --> 00:36:00,188 So speeding up the code review process, getting better code into the system, having the policies in place, simplifying the process to create those policies. 500 00:36:00,188 --> 00:36:02,370 So you're not, you don't have to know OPA. 501 00:36:02,370 --> 00:36:10,430 by heart, but you can express it, then it's effectively applied imperatively through the policy. 502 00:36:10,444 --> 00:36:12,086 I want to break that down for a moment there. 503 00:36:12,086 --> 00:36:22,247 It sounds like what you're actually suggesting is that on top of whatever I see you have, it makes sense to write policies about validating the changes, maybe what can be changed, 504 00:36:22,247 --> 00:36:27,102 what is allowed to be changed from an organizational ownership standpoint and open policy agent. 505 00:36:27,102 --> 00:36:31,567 think that's what you meant by OPA is one way that you could potentially do that. 506 00:36:31,567 --> 00:36:32,780 just for as far as 507 00:36:32,780 --> 00:36:40,867 you know, should this person even be allowed to make this change or the permissions you're granting to a service client be allowed to be granted and which services get access to 508 00:36:40,867 --> 00:36:42,039 which databases. 509 00:36:42,039 --> 00:36:49,064 And then on top of that, uh I actually don't know a lot about CodeRabbit, but I believe it's the one that looks at your pull requests and gives you pull request reviews 510 00:36:49,064 --> 00:36:53,490 basically, and then also suggest changes and stuff like that to improve what you've got. 511 00:36:53,490 --> 00:36:54,440 Is that right? 512 00:36:54,506 --> 00:36:56,047 Yeah, it's like GitHub Copilot. 513 00:36:56,047 --> 00:37:02,970 uh Our experience with GitHub Copilot from a code review standpoint, look, these things change monthly. 514 00:37:05,892 --> 00:37:06,943 And thank you GitHub. 515 00:37:06,943 --> 00:37:08,794 I am actually not a hater. 516 00:37:08,794 --> 00:37:11,916 I appreciate everything you do for open source and everything we do. 517 00:37:11,916 --> 00:37:23,566 Copilot uh reviews have been frustrating because I feel like they're either pedantic or false positive or they haven't helped us move faster really. 518 00:37:23,566 --> 00:37:26,306 But CodeRabbit reviews, yeah, it's like on it. 519 00:37:26,306 --> 00:37:27,886 It understands our repo. 520 00:37:27,886 --> 00:37:34,946 sees that, wait, even though this is maybe not the industry standard for your convention, I see that this is how you're doing it everywhere else in your repo. 521 00:37:34,946 --> 00:37:38,266 Maybe you should do it that way and not this other way, even though that might be better. 522 00:37:38,266 --> 00:37:40,586 So it helps you keep the consistency. 523 00:37:40,986 --> 00:37:44,426 It's allowed us in all of our projects just to... 524 00:37:44,426 --> 00:37:51,102 Now code reviews are like the 99 % done by the time we say, hey, 525 00:37:51,102 --> 00:37:53,227 Andre, can you review this pull request? 526 00:37:53,227 --> 00:37:55,792 Now he can look at something that is beautiful. 527 00:37:55,792 --> 00:37:56,854 It's been blessed. 528 00:37:56,854 --> 00:38:03,186 Now it's just like, did this capture like the essence of what we're trying to do ah versus is this. 529 00:38:03,399 --> 00:38:06,805 looks good to me, you know, just more approvals there. 530 00:38:06,805 --> 00:38:16,220 sort of saw what I want to ask is, are there aspects of the CodeRabbit review that, you know, and I don't want to turn this episode into an advertisement for CodeRabbit. 531 00:38:16,430 --> 00:38:20,420 Your affiliation, the way, just a happy couple. 532 00:38:20,420 --> 00:38:32,977 Is there something surprising that it ends up catching for you that would have a lot of impact specifically or is it just reducing the challenge or the task of doing the code 533 00:38:32,977 --> 00:38:34,200 review in the first place? 534 00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:38,472 Let me take, I'm to answer you, but I need to answer a little bit indirectly. 535 00:38:38,513 --> 00:38:39,763 Go for it. 536 00:38:39,763 --> 00:38:47,157 And something else I've been kind of mulling about on my morning walks is this concept of how fast we're moving. 537 00:38:47,378 --> 00:38:52,321 And the concept that's evolved for me is this term of vibe years. 538 00:38:52,321 --> 00:38:53,661 So we're all vibe. 539 00:38:53,842 --> 00:39:00,945 And if you're familiar with light years, it's really interesting because light is the fastest thing we know, right? 540 00:39:01,026 --> 00:39:01,920 And yet... 541 00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:05,733 It takes millions of years for some of that light to reach us. 542 00:39:05,794 --> 00:39:09,457 And during that time, the universe itself has been expanding. 543 00:39:09,457 --> 00:39:12,359 So you haven't really gone anywhere further. 544 00:39:12,459 --> 00:39:15,012 Here we are with vibe coding is really awesome. 545 00:39:15,012 --> 00:39:15,990 It's really new. 546 00:39:15,990 --> 00:39:24,170 Uh, we're moving faster than we've ever moved before, but we're comparing ourselves to a model T and that's how we were operating before. 547 00:39:24,170 --> 00:39:29,506 Now we're operating really fast, but the problem space and the opportunities are expanding just as fast. 548 00:39:29,506 --> 00:39:40,426 So I would say these days, every week, we're basically doing a year's worth of engineering progress every week. 549 00:39:40,426 --> 00:39:46,096 And when you produce that much, the burden to review it is a new problem. 550 00:39:46,096 --> 00:39:52,260 Because in the problem solution cycle, every problem you solve leads a whole new set of problems. 551 00:39:52,260 --> 00:39:53,051 And you're never done. 552 00:39:53,051 --> 00:39:55,478 And this is also where I think 553 00:39:55,478 --> 00:40:04,352 You need something like CodeRabbit if you are going to be effective with AI in anything, whether it's your application development, whether it's infrastructure and so forth, you 554 00:40:04,352 --> 00:40:09,884 need something that can review it at the scale, at the speed that you will be moving at. 555 00:40:09,884 --> 00:40:21,419 And that's what uh CodeRabbit enables by knowing your PRDs, noticing your requirements, reconciling that with the rest of what you have there so that what you can review is 556 00:40:21,419 --> 00:40:22,209 manageable. 557 00:40:22,209 --> 00:40:23,230 Did that answer it? 558 00:40:23,230 --> 00:40:24,040 Or did I just... 559 00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,374 I mean, I think that's certainly a huge part of it. 560 00:40:27,374 --> 00:40:31,699 And maybe a good look at what your software development life cycle should actually be. 561 00:40:31,699 --> 00:40:41,709 And I think maybe this is the moral of the story for your episode, realistically here, is that you have to stop and think about what the long term is actually going to look like. 562 00:40:42,326 --> 00:40:51,419 are just making individual pull requests and you put the LLM to generate some of the code in the process and you're reviewing it yourself before putting it up, then you haven't 563 00:40:51,419 --> 00:40:52,479 really changed anything. 564 00:40:52,479 --> 00:40:57,271 Maybe the LLM is just a replacement for doing the internet search that you used to do. 565 00:40:57,271 --> 00:41:06,164 But if you're gonna be generating code or generating validations or policies dynamically as part of your development process, then there's no way, like this is how you get around 566 00:41:06,164 --> 00:41:06,498 this. 567 00:41:06,498 --> 00:41:14,226 the critical bottleneck in your pipeline, is actually ensuring that the right code is being written and the right feature was being implemented. 568 00:41:14,226 --> 00:41:19,130 You need to understand that sort of like a manufacturing process so that the flow makes sense. 569 00:41:19,130 --> 00:41:27,532 However much you put in at the beginning is being managed and worked on in an equivalent amount at all work cells in your process. 570 00:41:27,532 --> 00:41:29,643 Yeah, validation. 571 00:41:29,643 --> 00:41:30,707 Yeah, for sure. 572 00:41:30,707 --> 00:41:31,479 So. 573 00:41:32,018 --> 00:41:41,242 So review kind of solved, generating code pretty much solved, writing requirements, specs pretty much solved. 574 00:41:41,242 --> 00:41:45,504 Validation is, there are a lot of attempts at it right now. 575 00:41:45,684 --> 00:41:50,757 Some cool ones I've seen, I forget exactly what their names are. 576 00:41:50,757 --> 00:41:58,742 We talked about one on office hours yesterday, but in the end you still need probably a human to still look at the recording. 577 00:41:58,742 --> 00:42:02,746 or the screenshot or the something to validate that that thing is working. 578 00:42:02,746 --> 00:42:06,990 And for infrastructure as code, I don't have the silver bullet for that yet. 579 00:42:06,990 --> 00:42:12,224 I don't know what that is that actually validates that it is that thing that you think you need. 580 00:42:13,996 --> 00:42:19,279 You know, this is where I'll like quote Corey Quinn, who's like famous for proponent of a click ops. 581 00:42:19,279 --> 00:42:28,154 I, sort of mentioned that I think at the end of the day, what everyone actually wants is the simplest experience possible that allows them to just click one button or type one 582 00:42:28,154 --> 00:42:31,356 thing and have exactly the right thing come to come out. 583 00:42:31,356 --> 00:42:37,419 But at the end of the day, there is nothing that can get you exactly 100 % accuracy in what you're doing. 584 00:42:37,419 --> 00:42:40,501 And even before LLMs, this was still a problem. 585 00:42:40,501 --> 00:42:42,166 We just sort of replaced. 586 00:42:42,166 --> 00:42:49,290 the imperfect human with determining it with another imperfect object, but you still had to do the validation at some point. 587 00:42:49,570 --> 00:43:00,326 I think so my question is going to be like, well, obviously everyone wants exactly as they perceive it to be without any of the hidden pitfalls that they don't know. 588 00:43:00,326 --> 00:43:01,156 Right. 589 00:43:01,657 --> 00:43:03,308 What's the next iteration here? 590 00:43:03,308 --> 00:43:10,052 Because I do feel like we're in this thing that people are only starting to realize, which used to take a lot of cycles. 591 00:43:10,052 --> 00:43:10,936 And that was 592 00:43:10,936 --> 00:43:16,651 there would be a technology or a platform that was built and then things would be built on top of that and would go very slowly and we would build more and more and then we'd 593 00:43:16,651 --> 00:43:19,193 realize that all this stuff in the middle was wrong. 594 00:43:19,193 --> 00:43:27,360 Basically, we built the wrong stuff, the wrong abstraction, then we delete all of it and replace the fundamental original platform with something just slightly on top of that 595 00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:30,162 which does all the things that we expect correctly. 596 00:43:30,162 --> 00:43:34,786 And I think with the usage of LLM, we're just accelerating this much faster. 597 00:43:34,786 --> 00:43:39,990 A recent example is like we talked about MCP like a couple of months ago. 598 00:43:40,138 --> 00:43:43,121 on the podcast and everyone was like, MCP is the best thing ever. 599 00:43:43,121 --> 00:43:48,687 And if you look in the recent, you know, knowledge, like the last couple of weeks, everyone's like, MCP is dead. 600 00:43:48,687 --> 00:43:51,135 We're back to just calling APIs and CLI. 601 00:43:51,135 --> 00:43:52,227 MCP has died. 602 00:43:52,227 --> 00:43:55,254 His obituary was written on LinkedIn. 603 00:43:55,254 --> 00:43:56,154 Yeah. 604 00:43:56,276 --> 00:44:00,642 So at this point, I think we're going to officially switch over to PIX. 605 00:44:00,642 --> 00:44:03,545 So Eric, what have you brought for us today? 606 00:44:04,622 --> 00:44:11,126 So a little open-ended, not sure exactly if this is it, but uh two guiding things for me. 607 00:44:11,126 --> 00:44:14,267 One has been an epiphany I had when I read a book. 608 00:44:14,267 --> 00:44:18,339 Had nothing actually to do with, you know, software, what we do, but it was the 10X rule. 609 00:44:18,339 --> 00:44:19,150 Okay. 610 00:44:19,150 --> 00:44:21,601 And uh I think about it every day. 611 00:44:21,601 --> 00:44:23,112 It's on my license plate. 612 00:44:23,112 --> 00:44:24,793 It's literally 10X rule. 613 00:44:24,793 --> 00:44:34,770 And the idea is you got to set your goals 10 times higher, therefore work 10 times harder, and then you'll actually achieve the thing you set out to do. 614 00:44:34,770 --> 00:44:40,080 And that explains why every software project fails because we didn't set it 10x. 615 00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:47,052 And I'm constantly reminded of this, that everything's going to take more work, but you set the goals high, you get a pretty good outcome. 616 00:44:47,244 --> 00:44:49,525 like create extra stress though. 617 00:44:50,623 --> 00:44:53,664 yeah. 618 00:44:55,485 --> 00:45:02,248 I don't know if this generalization still holds true, but you you have a better quality of life maybe in Europe. 619 00:45:03,049 --> 00:45:05,790 Here I slept four hours last night. 620 00:45:07,077 --> 00:45:08,331 Is that self-inflicted? 621 00:45:08,331 --> 00:45:09,193 though? 622 00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:11,869 Yeah, because I said that in X-Roll. 623 00:45:12,390 --> 00:45:22,153 I think the thing I would take away from this realistically is that there is a different way of living for everyone and it's not worth necessarily following the cookie cutter 624 00:45:22,153 --> 00:45:24,023 pattern that an LLM recommends to you. 625 00:45:24,023 --> 00:45:28,234 mean, your therapist recommends to you about how you should live your life. 626 00:45:28,234 --> 00:45:35,756 And some people absolutely are adrenaline junkies or feel like they need to achieve something or build something. 627 00:45:35,756 --> 00:45:41,378 thinking about how you want to go about and do that, I think is actually a real challenging topic. 628 00:45:41,740 --> 00:45:46,413 when you're consulting an organization and ask them to think about who they want to be when they grow up. 629 00:45:46,413 --> 00:45:50,336 I mean, you know, what, are they even doing the product that they're doing? 630 00:45:50,336 --> 00:45:54,240 So are you trying to achieve something specific right now? 631 00:45:54,240 --> 00:46:05,736 Yeah, I, well, you know, uh I have this delusion that I will finally solve, you know, infrastructure and automation and how these things work. 632 00:46:05,736 --> 00:46:07,176 And it's what keeps me going. 633 00:46:07,176 --> 00:46:09,437 But the reality is, you know, we're never done. 634 00:46:09,878 --> 00:46:11,158 But it's doing something I love. 635 00:46:11,158 --> 00:46:12,819 I there's one other thing that hit me. 636 00:46:12,819 --> 00:46:14,220 Wear sunscreen. 637 00:46:14,220 --> 00:46:16,471 It's a weird song from like the nineties. 638 00:46:16,471 --> 00:46:18,542 was like a commencement speech. 639 00:46:18,636 --> 00:46:25,333 But in this thing, he states these like, you know, obvious facts like wearing sunscreen is good, right? 640 00:46:25,333 --> 00:46:27,295 And brush your teeth, floss. 641 00:46:27,295 --> 00:46:33,382 But really the rest of my advice is, you know, has no basis in reality than my meandering self, right? 642 00:46:33,382 --> 00:46:36,065 It's just like, there's, I love that song. 643 00:46:36,065 --> 00:46:41,366 It just, it's spoken word, interesting song, and that resonates with you at least if you're 40 plus. 644 00:46:41,366 --> 00:46:43,285 Wait, is it, is it, you said commencement speech. 645 00:46:43,285 --> 00:46:46,606 Like was it at a commencement or is it, it's just part of the. 646 00:46:46,606 --> 00:46:52,806 ah It's recorded, at least it is, but then it was re-recorded with a soundtrack and a guy playing a guitar. 647 00:46:52,806 --> 00:46:57,685 I've been listening to it. 648 00:46:57,685 --> 00:47:02,188 Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, I think is the song. 649 00:47:02,188 --> 00:47:13,439 You know, I think this, so this segment didn't start off as a challenge for the host to find, you know, very esoteric links to things that guests have referenced, but I think 650 00:47:13,439 --> 00:47:25,572 you've just, you've got a new high here that, you know, like if I can't find this, I'll be just doing a disservice uh to all of our listeners about who now want to listen to this 651 00:47:25,572 --> 00:47:26,322 thing. 652 00:47:26,536 --> 00:47:28,320 I'll share the Spotify link. 653 00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:29,103 Okay, okay. 654 00:47:29,103 --> 00:47:35,250 So this is an easy found thing, not like you have to buy a DVD from Australia. 655 00:47:36,310 --> 00:47:39,394 it is, yeah, it's, it's interesting. 656 00:47:39,476 --> 00:47:46,326 was on Peloton one day and it was the closing song they played and I was like, wow, that's deep. 657 00:47:46,368 --> 00:47:49,199 Okay, you know, I had this weird flashback. 658 00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:55,551 Like there was a song I was listening to in a taxi one time on the way home from an airport when I was living in Wisconsin. 659 00:47:55,551 --> 00:47:58,651 And I don't know to this day what that was. 660 00:47:58,651 --> 00:48:01,772 And you say this and I'm wondering if it was that. 661 00:48:01,772 --> 00:48:04,403 But so I'm going to have to go and check this out. 662 00:48:04,403 --> 00:48:10,185 And you may have just saved me or uh this may be a new opportunity. 663 00:48:10,185 --> 00:48:15,386 So uh is that related to the 10x or is just just completely all worth it? 664 00:48:16,091 --> 00:48:17,504 polar opposites. 665 00:48:17,504 --> 00:48:21,358 Isaiah, protect yourself, also chase after your dream. 666 00:48:21,358 --> 00:48:31,938 It's just it's just a very succinct summary of just life, know in you know, you're in this race But in the end it's only with yourself and you know, sometimes your head sometimes 667 00:48:31,938 --> 00:48:41,058 you're behind, you know Maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th birthday or you know wedding anniversary or maybe your divorce You know, you don't know what you're gonna 668 00:48:41,058 --> 00:48:50,358 do right now at 21, but you know still people at age You know 40 still don't know what they're gonna do, but the race is long and you you just keep going and so 669 00:48:50,390 --> 00:48:53,752 I love these kind of motivational, inspirational things. 670 00:48:53,752 --> 00:48:59,336 There's no one way and you can't just raw, raw, raw 10X and I didn't mean it to sound that way either. 671 00:49:00,257 --> 00:49:11,375 But it also like if you're, you if you don't get the outcomes you want, the basis is too low, the angle is too low, increase the angle and you know, it's not gonna be exactly that 672 00:49:11,375 --> 00:49:13,154 linear, but it's gonna be higher. 673 00:49:13,154 --> 00:49:14,284 You got to make it mathematical. 674 00:49:14,284 --> 00:49:14,654 Okay. 675 00:49:14,654 --> 00:49:22,517 Well, you know, that's something that will definitely resonate with uh quite a few people, think, especially those that are aspiring for something more than where they are right 676 00:49:22,517 --> 00:49:23,177 now. 677 00:49:23,177 --> 00:49:27,158 I like, you know, the second best time to plant a tree is today. 678 00:49:27,158 --> 00:49:30,199 So you can take that and invest it in yourself. 679 00:49:30,199 --> 00:49:35,600 ah Sorry, it's uh from a book, the 10X yourself. 680 00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:36,300 yeah. 681 00:49:37,801 --> 00:49:38,141 Okay. 682 00:49:38,141 --> 00:49:38,641 Okay. 683 00:49:38,641 --> 00:49:40,582 I just want to make sure we have that on the recording. 684 00:49:40,582 --> 00:49:41,402 Okay. 685 00:49:41,442 --> 00:49:42,294 I love it. 686 00:49:42,294 --> 00:49:44,015 Yeah, so I guess I also brought a book. 687 00:49:44,015 --> 00:49:50,136 It's going around because I think it was just released on video or at the movies wherever you are. 688 00:49:50,136 --> 00:49:53,337 Project Hail Mary based on the book by Andy Weir. 689 00:49:53,337 --> 00:50:00,459 And I think a previous pick of mine was The Martian book, which I just only recently saw The Martian movie and it's just nowhere near as good as the book. 690 00:50:00,459 --> 00:50:03,950 So definitely read the book, Project Hail Mary. 691 00:50:03,950 --> 00:50:06,481 And I worry about bringing this up on the podcast. 692 00:50:06,481 --> 00:50:09,802 uh Eric, have you seen the movie or read the book? 693 00:50:10,342 --> 00:50:14,686 So, you know, luckily for me, don't have to discuss it because I don't think I was trying so hard. 694 00:50:14,686 --> 00:50:19,940 Like, how do I even explain what it is without completely spoiling it in every way? 695 00:50:19,940 --> 00:50:21,452 Please do not watch trailers. 696 00:50:21,452 --> 00:50:24,895 Please do not read synopsis or descriptions of this in any way. 697 00:50:24,895 --> 00:50:26,606 Just jump in and read it. 698 00:50:26,606 --> 00:50:28,498 It's science fiction. 699 00:50:28,498 --> 00:50:29,759 So if you don't like that, whatever. 700 00:50:29,759 --> 00:50:33,222 But if you do like it, like everything, don't spoil it for yourself. 701 00:50:33,222 --> 00:50:38,566 I will say that it is about a main character that wakes up in a suspiciously constructed spaceship. 702 00:50:38,686 --> 00:50:44,651 And of course, there's like some of the common cliches like he's got amnesia, but there's actually turns out that there's a great reason for that. 703 00:50:44,651 --> 00:50:55,599 So if you like science fiction, if you like The Martian or his second book, Luna, I think those on the moon or he wrote some fan fiction about Alice in Wonderland forever ago. 704 00:50:55,599 --> 00:51:04,496 Actually, ah there is a really great short story that he wrote that I didn't know was by his from forever ago called the egg, which I also did a pick on. 705 00:51:04,496 --> 00:51:05,266 So. 706 00:51:05,474 --> 00:51:06,536 That's also pretty great. 707 00:51:06,536 --> 00:51:07,898 That was a pick in a previous episode. 708 00:51:07,898 --> 00:51:08,858 I don't know. 709 00:51:09,240 --> 00:51:16,190 don't love, I don't read that much, but when I do, I somehow stumble upon stuff that I absolutely love and this is one of them. 710 00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:19,106 Sounds like you're reading definitely for pleasure, which is a good thing. 711 00:51:19,106 --> 00:51:20,283 ah 712 00:51:20,283 --> 00:51:21,143 it's interesting. 713 00:51:21,143 --> 00:51:30,071 I used to do this thing where I swap back and forth between one science fiction or fantasy book and one sort of nonfiction about technology or leadership in some way. 714 00:51:30,071 --> 00:51:40,440 But I found that over time, I was collecting like a lot of notes on what I should do or what I could do in hypothetical situations that I was never in at that moment. 715 00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:42,711 And it was just getting too monotonous for me. 716 00:51:42,711 --> 00:51:43,872 Yeah. 717 00:51:43,938 --> 00:51:47,590 You don't have to finish a book, but there's a book for every problem. 718 00:51:47,590 --> 00:51:49,090 And that's how I look at it. 719 00:51:49,090 --> 00:51:49,901 No, I totally agree. 720 00:51:49,901 --> 00:51:51,742 think that's a great way of putting it realistically. 721 00:51:51,742 --> 00:51:56,406 It's as a leader, the thing that I've learned is it's not about having the right answer to the problem. 722 00:51:56,406 --> 00:52:00,580 It's about knowing how to find the right answer once you've identified the problem. 723 00:52:00,580 --> 00:52:06,045 So it's about problem identification, more so about actually prescribing the solution. 724 00:52:06,045 --> 00:52:10,769 Well, thank you so much, Eric, for joining us on this episode of Adventures in DevOps. 725 00:52:10,769 --> 00:52:12,450 It's been absolutely fantastic. 726 00:52:12,450 --> 00:52:13,916 Likewise, Warren, it's been awesome. 727 00:52:13,916 --> 00:52:15,181 I really enjoyed the conversation. 728 00:52:15,181 --> 00:52:16,828 You ask a lot of good questions. 729 00:52:16,828 --> 00:52:17,838 You keep it going. 730 00:52:17,838 --> 00:52:19,418 Oh, well, thank you so much. 731 00:52:19,418 --> 00:52:28,158 if anyone else wants to be the target of the onslaught of interrogation on my behalf, I'm happy to give you your own episode. 732 00:52:28,158 --> 00:52:31,458 But until then, thanks for all the listeners for tuning in for this week. 733 00:52:31,458 --> 00:52:35,334 And hopefully we'll see everyone back again next week.