Speaker 0 | 00:07.561
Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, this kind of last minute, we’re talking about a warehouse full of diapers with Sebastian West. I wish I had hit record earlier because what I thought was a server room is not. It’s not. It’s a warehouse full of diapers. I need to know more, please. First of all, welcome to the show. I know we’re talking about IT, but we need to first talk about this warehouse full of diapers and what that’s all about.
Speaker 1 | 00:30.484
Yeah, you bet. I’d actually prefer to talk about that rather than IT. No, so we here at WSI, the IT department, we’re actually in a building that used to be an indoor kind of recreation area. It had go-karts, mini golf, a climbing wall, bowling alley, you name it, right? So we turned it into our… home office or headquarters and turn it into something much cooler yeah maybe they didn’t leave the climbing wall or the go-karts which that would have been they should have should have you know if i i was here i would have told them but yeah so um one of our customers uh is a company that produces all kinds of paper products uh including diapers um sure and our warehouse which is just outside of The IT area here is full of diapers. It’s floor to ceiling, pallets of diapers, and it’s really a maze to get back here because everybody else in the office is up front. They’ve got really nice cubes. There’s nice conference rooms up there. And of course, IT gets shoved in the back corner, much like baby, dirty dancing. And there’s no Patrick Swayze here to really save us. Yeah. We’re hanging out back here.
Speaker 0 | 01:59.245
The roadhouse version. The roadhouse version. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 02:02.007
There you go. There you go.
Speaker 0 | 02:03.528
It’s such a great age though. No, let’s think honestly. What a great age. Everyone that listening, everyone can reminisce about what we just said in my kids can’t. And I was telling them back then, I was like, you guys just grew up in such a lame age. I was so much cooler back in the eighties or nineties or I don’t know, whatever it was. It just was more.
Speaker 1 | 02:23.660
fun now i was like now we all helicopter parents we all know where you’re at we you know it just doesn’t exist you just be like hey leave come back please well you know in a lot of ways uh phil that it is kind of like that too right because back when i started in you know mid mid to late 90s you wore so many hats right and there was very little structure it was you were the it person and it didn’t matter what it was right didn’t matter what you did didn’t really matter what you did either as long as you fixed it
Speaker 0 | 02:54.232
Oh yeah. Cable something. I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 02:56.973
Yeah. Yeah. IRQs all the good, good stuff. Right. No help.
Speaker 0 | 03:02.175
No firewall. No problem. Less problems. No firewall. Less problems.
Speaker 1 | 03:08.478
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I remember, uh, cutting my teeth on my first firewall, which was a border manager by Novell. Um, that was, uh, tried to get certified in that. I think I failed that test. Like like three times and just gave up.
Speaker 0 | 03:24.344
And still in IT. Still in IT. And that’s the nature of the game.
Speaker 1 | 03:28.226
This is great. That’s great.
Speaker 0 | 03:29.947
This is a lot of fun. So now we’re actually having a real call today where, yeah, IT is shoved in the back with diapers. It’s going to get any better, man. I don’t even want to move on from, I just, I don’t even want to move on from this. First of all, yeah, mid-90s discussion where like… you could just couldn’t do any wrong you know i don’t know can you just just tell us let’s just do a let’s do some visual memory i don’t know what what was the what was the most nostalgic memory oh you know the
Speaker 1 | 04:06.987
the first thing that just came to mind when you asked me that question um again i you know going back to my novella days i remember uh doing a service pack for uh netware um Anytime we had to do a service pack upgrade on any of our servers, you could, no question, you had to set aside at least 24 hours to install it and then fix everything that it broke. And that was early on in my IT days. And I just remember thinking, like, God, is it going to be like this all the time? Because I was young and single, so I didn’t have much to do at that point. But. I definitely could have been doing better things than hanging out in the server room for 24 hours.
Speaker 0 | 04:57.432
So let’s just kind of go through the physical. Let’s just make everyone realize how much better they have it now, I guess.
Speaker 1 | 05:04.635
or don’t what was the um what was the task loading this or upgrading the service pack what did that require physically to do okay so physically you had to be at the server uh you had to generally speaking what we did was um we either had a bunch of floppy disks as i recall or uh you could download it it wasn’t just a bunch it was like dozens yeah right yeah And you’d wait and it would say load disk, you know, three of 28, right? And you get to,
Speaker 0 | 05:40.219
you get to 18 of 28 fail start over.
Speaker 1 | 05:43.982
Yeah. Yeah. It will honestly,
Speaker 0 | 05:46.523
sometimes format disk. Anyways. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 05:51.307
Yeah. But you know, you would sit there and inevitably you’d get done. It would reboot. You’d wait, you know, the 15 minutes for it to come back up. start testing things and you know right away you knew not everything was the way it should be right so one one thing i give a shout out to old novell their knowledge base was top-notch at the time if you needed to find something which oftentimes you did uh they actually had a really nice knowledge base uh so kudos to them or whoever designed that i’ll give them a lot of credit but You know, you were spending rest,
Speaker 0 | 06:32.851
rest in peace.
Speaker 1 | 06:34.532
Yeah, exactly. You know, you were spending the evening looking for knowledge based articles. You could call them on the phone, but that was really very fruitless, as I recall. So.
Speaker 0 | 06:51.857
And you were looking for knowledge based articles where in the library down the street.
Speaker 1 | 06:56.683
Yeah, right.
Speaker 0 | 06:57.923
On the messaging board? Like, hold on. I mean, what did you guys have for internet back then? Did you guys have some kind of like, I don’t know, multiple bonded T1s, OC3, OC12, if you were really, really…
Speaker 1 | 07:10.606
We had T1s, generally speaking, those were our meaty pipes to our locations. So,
Speaker 0 | 07:20.569
yeah. I would love to do like a trivia question, like stump the old… the old, old T old it, you know, they’re like, like battle of the sexes. We should have like battle of old it versus new it. And one question would be like the, the multiple choice question would be like, what bandwidth was delivered via a T one,
Speaker 1 | 07:40.399
right? Like
Speaker 0 | 07:42.220
10 megs, 30 megs, 1.5 or 56 K. Yeah. Who gets it right. Let’s see anyone that’s born after, I don’t know, 2000. 10 or something that’s an IT that would get that right. How do we have that?
Speaker 1 | 07:57.768
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 07:58.608
It would be fun.
Speaker 1 | 08:00.309
I would agree.
Speaker 0 | 08:01.389
What is a frame relay?
Speaker 1 | 08:04.891
Good stuff. You know your old IT.
Speaker 0 | 08:06.952
Yeah, I know. This is an audio show, but if people could see the grays, that should be the… If you could count the gray hairs in Phil’s beard.
Speaker 1 | 08:18.757
Like three rings.
Speaker 2 | 08:21.037
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Speaker 0 | 10:41.151
Oh, let’s do more. Let’s do more. So, um, so this is where, so, so while it was fun and people played around and loaded discs and you know, it was, that was this thing that led to. a many stereotypes that people made fun of on saturday night live and other you know it was just the stereotypes you know then best buy had to come up with geek squad which is horrible name it’s just such a horrible name you could do better you know just do something like you know like uh i don’t know they should just have you know what could we do it should be like you know some like i don’t know like you know what’s the the trash removal thing that’s like you know like hot like college dudes like moving stuff or something they should have done oh yeah yeah like you should have been like geek squad like no no get out of here dude i guess i feel comfortable sending a geek to my house but anyway i think too when
Speaker 1 | 11:41.876
you think about it like yeah the stereotypes are real uh and when when best buy came out with geek squad i mean that’s right when i think geek was becoming a little more popular you Right. Um, it’d be, you know, I used, I used to call people geek in high school, right. And it, it was a somewhat derogatory term. And then all of a sudden it’s this,
Speaker 0 | 12:08.017
and then revenge and the nerds came out.
Speaker 1 | 12:10.759
Yeah. Right. Right. And then, you know,
Speaker 0 | 12:13.021
pretty soon it’s like cooler.
Speaker 1 | 12:15.142
Oh yeah. Right. But you know, I, eventually it became this like something that, that, uh, I think the IT world embraced and, and, uh, eventually. you know, the, the general population kind of embraced it. Right.
Speaker 0 | 12:30.115
I think I need to sell. I think I need some more sponsors. Um, one of the sponsors, yeah, should be hot, like a, like a, a geek makeover, like a full body geek makeover for us. It should be, it should be, um, anabolic steroids. Let’s see. It should be what else could we have? We need some other things, a tanning bed,
Speaker 1 | 12:53.561
uh, some Personal trainer,
Speaker 0 | 12:56.026
personal trainer. Yeah, yeah, some weights. Yeah, exactly. We need like a full, like, we need some like, and we guarantee you, you know, we throw some kind of guarantee out there. So, oh, and it should be, we need some way to get rid of, and this is just me, I’m warning everyone right now. If you sit in a chair all day and you do all these things and you have any kind of, I don’t know, herniated discs or neck problems, it’s a serious issue for me. It’s getting. It’s getting worse. So you need to, I should have this. What is the book? I think it’s like heal your own neck or something like that. I’m going very off topic today, but I just want, I just wanted to put that out there for anyone that wants to advertise anabolic steroids or I don’t know, neck stuff on my show. You’re free. You’re free. We’ll welcome you. We welcome you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 13:44.243
Well, I think that goes for a lot of IT geeks who sit in their chair. Good portion of the day, right? I think another option too would be like get somebody in to dumb down your vocabulary, right? Because you start doing all that nerd speak and it’s,
Speaker 0 | 14:02.113
yeah. Speak like a third grader or something. Yeah, say something real quick. Let’s see if I can translate for you. Let me see if I can try and translate. Say something like really, I don’t know, crazy. I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 14:14.438
I really agree. Oh man, you’re putting me on the spot here.
Speaker 0 | 14:17.438
I don’t know. Just think of the last thing that you had to explain to somebody. Like, I don’t know. Let’s, uh, let’s see here. You guys have how many employees? How many, how many? Uh,
Speaker 1 | 14:27.461
we have, uh, approximately, uh, I think we’re pushing 1200.
Speaker 0 | 14:32.202
Uh, do you have more than one location?
Speaker 1 | 14:33.983
Yes, we’ve got about 40.
Speaker 0 | 14:36.984
Okay. Um, let’s see. What could we, what, what, what was the last major forklift you guys had to do for executive management?
Speaker 1 | 14:43.986
uh probably our data warehouse uh stuff is like something that that eludes uh you know the business right it’s um i’m trying to think how i can put that in a weird
Speaker 0 | 14:59.835
i’m just trying to think of like we had to upgrade some erp system and had to have an api with our crm and uh i don’t know then we had to bring in a new i don’t know what do we call those the data dudes Data dudes, what do we call those? Who are those guys? Why can’t I remember the name off the top of my head? I don’t know, just say something really nerdy. I’ll try and translate for the executive. Okay. This might be a good news spot on the show. I don’t think we’ve done this before.
Speaker 1 | 15:25.852
Yeah, well, here’s one. We actually just went through our network config and we were talking about moving from ASA to FTD and firepower infrastructure across the org.
Speaker 0 | 15:39.045
And it was going to do what?
Speaker 1 | 15:42.527
Basically replacing our firewalls, getting up a little more up to date and centrally managed.
Speaker 0 | 15:53.153
Okay. Let me see how I can explain this to… Did it cost more money or did it save money?
Speaker 1 | 15:59.897
Well, we haven’t done it yet, but it’s going to cost more money. But of course…
Speaker 0 | 16:06.905
how do you explain the return capex or opex capex or updates opex okay okay okay so it’s gonna cost more how much more
Speaker 1 | 16:16.008
100k per month or a year uh uh actually year okay okay um okay are we gonna be more secure and faster this will be more secure uh the faster is debatable but um uh it’ll Allow us to easily manage them from a central location.
Speaker 0 | 16:42.076
Okay. How do we, how do we put this in terms that the CFO and CEO would, would want to hear? Are there other, are there other glaring problems in the business that need to be fixed? Not problems. We don’t want to say problems like, you know, areas of opportunity.
Speaker 1 | 16:55.883
Opportunity areas for sure.
Speaker 0 | 16:58.805
Okay. And who’s, do we have big competition? Do you guys have a lot of competition?
Speaker 1 | 17:04.288
We have a fair amount of competition.
Speaker 0 | 17:05.369
optician out there okay okay look look um john smith john smith is the is that the number one name in the world is it in the united states is it john smith or is it chris smith chris smith john smith chris smith ceo cfo chris smith the cfo look here’s the deal um we are coming end of life with our firewalls that’s the box that protects us and allows us to communicate between all of the different locations and allows us to access our erp and um data management system we need to upgrade this we don’t upgrade this um we are basically sitting ducks for uh problems and if we get you know hacked or we have any kind of security breach it’s a big problem but here’s the thing it’s yes it’s going to cost us a hundred thousand dollars more per year but um what we’re going to be able to do with that is be highly more efficient so we’re actually i don’t know whatever your role you must have some ri on that so we’re going to save um Really what it’s going to do is open up a lot of time for us to be more competitive as a business and use, it’ll free up my team’s ability so that IT can use technology as a business force multiplier so that we can take out Johnny Appleseed Logistics Company, which is already on board and doing this.
Speaker 1 | 18:24.830
That’s really good, Phil. Shoot from the hip, man.
Speaker 2 | 18:28.031
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 0 | 18:28.792
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 | 18:30.532
It’s good. It’s good. You know, I. Just on the spot there, I think you did a fine job. I found that with security type stuff, one thing I find that’s effective is talking about publicity with senior leaders, staying out of negative publicity. When you get hacked, you’re susceptible to having your competitors know about it, your customers. Almost certainly. Right. And maybe just, you know, depending on the business you’re in the community at large. Yeah. It’s never good. Right.
Speaker 0 | 19:13.401
So not only that, are you guys would you guys say your logistics supply chain? I mean, is that like kind of your niche type of thing?
Speaker 1 | 19:21.187
Yeah. Logistics, supply chain, warehousing and e-commerce.
Speaker 0 | 19:26.771
You must have to be dealing with a lot of. Do you have certifications or compliance stuff that you guys have to meet? SOC 1, SOC 2, any type of stuff like that?
Speaker 1 | 19:35.078
Not necessarily, but a lot of our customers do expect us to have something like that. At least a framework that we’re measuring against. We’re a privately held company, so we don’t necessarily have to do anything. But a lot of our customers are…
Speaker 0 | 19:59.145
Chris, level with me. We need to be able to differentiate ourselves from our competition. And by you having a technology department that is above the curve, where we can be more competitive, we can give you more bullet points to sell to our customers to ultimately make us more, if we can fulfill orders more efficiently, faster, better, and more securely, that’s just one more shotgun shell in your presentation, so to speak, for, I don’t know, Jimmy, who’s over in sales. Yeah. I don’t care. Look, I don’t, we will, we will continue to work in the diaper factory. I don’t care. That has nothing to do with what we care about is that you have the best technology and the best face for it. You guys can sit in the best cubes all you want. I don’t even, I, I love. Being back where the old climbing wall was, it’s filled up with diapers right now.
Speaker 1 | 20:49.976
Yeah, it’s pretty true. You know what’s great, though, about like IT folks, honestly, they care way more about the business than sometimes maybe they even should. Right. And and no,
Speaker 0 | 21:03.047
no, no, no, that’s wrong. I think you need to say IT folks care more about the business.
Speaker 2 | 21:09.713
And
Speaker 0 | 21:11.634
I think they should piece was. but they don’t communicate it enough.
Speaker 1 | 21:15.897
That I think is right on. That’s right on because your spokesperson for IT is typically your top level person for the most part. They’re not always in best position.
Speaker 0 | 21:33.109
I’m going to challenge you. I want to challenge you there for the benefit of everyone out there listening. Why is that?
Speaker 1 | 21:39.493
Well, I have some theories, I guess. I think one…
Speaker 0 | 21:43.076
Let me ask you in a different way. Why shouldn’t it be everyone on the team?
Speaker 1 | 21:47.519
It should be. It really should be. But I don’t know that a lot of IT folks may not feel empowered enough to communicate that. They demonstrate it, but a lot of the IT stuff that happens, happens in the back room, in the corner. But man, you know.
Speaker 0 | 22:11.384
Most of the team doesn’t want to go into leadership. Not everyone on the help desk or the IT team wants to go into leadership. They’re very happy just doing that. But I think as IT leaders, we need to communicate to the team. I think we need to have more top-down. I think we need to share more the roundtable discussions that we’re having with executive management with our own teams. And I think we need to get our teams to be… Have ownership in the company and have ownership in their own team, have ownership in the team’s mission statement. A lot of IT teams don’t have a mission statement, a value statement. If I was to ask 95% of the companies out there, hey, what’s your IT help desk team’s mission or vision? Oh, we don’t have one. And maybe we just need to drop some secrets in the hallway. Like, yeah, I don’t know. Did you hear about the new secret IT thing that’s doing really well? I hope no one finds out about how awesome we are. I don’t know. We should do some crazy stuff like that. It’d be fun.
Speaker 1 | 23:05.726
Well, I think too, part of our job as IT leaders is to really help our people, especially the individual contributors, be advocates not only for IT, but for themselves in terms of understanding the business. Because a lot of times as an IT leader, I’m not in the best position to talk tech. technically, about everything. But so then I need to bring some of my technical experts. They’re not always in the best position to present themselves at an executive level. But I, you know, part of my job is to get them to that point. And, you know, I think empowering them, helping them understand, challenging them to get out of their shell a bit. get in front of some of the key stakeholders in the business is really important. It’s important for not just IT, like how IT is represented, but it’s also important for their development and growth.
Speaker 0 | 24:15.235
The hardest thing that I find doing in that role, and it’s a very selfish thing, and I know it’s the wrong thing, and I know it’s very bad, and I know I need to let go. And this is my advice to everybody else to let go because otherwise no growth happens, and you’re not really, I think, the right. I think the right approach to always happen is to help people to grow as a team and to watch your team grow, because then I guess you can just have more meaning in your life rather than just, you know, just I did this successfully. No success really is the kind of the growth of other people. Yeah. And I think one of the things that’s very hard to do is to say, I want you to go do this. Here’s the tea. key terms that you need to know. Here’s what CapEx is. Here’s what OpEx is. Here’s what gross margin is. Here’s what return on investment means. Let’s go through a little, now you go back and do the little, I don’t know, exercise here. If they’re interested in growth and they want to do this, right? Now come back to me and tell me, okay, what’s your presentation? What are you going to say to people? And kind of walking through and then letting them go do it, even though you know you would do much, well, you think you would do much better, but How is someone going to grow if they haven’t had these conversations 5,000 times like we have? Absolutely. That to me is a hard thing to do, to let go when you’ve kind of got your like baby. That’s hard for me to do. And I need to let people do that more.
Speaker 1 | 25:40.810
Yeah, no, you’re right. I mean, we’re all probably guilty of it, especially because, you know, sometimes we can get it done, like you said, better, faster. You know, time is always something that we never have enough of. So, but you’re right. I mean, I think too, I just had this conversation with my IT leaders talking about delegations. So I’ve got a number of new leaders to IT. Like many IT leaders, they were really good at their technical, whatever their specialty was. But it’s really hard for them to let go of that. And for frontline IT leaders, delegation is so key to your success. I can’t stress it enough. Because what you’ll find is a lot of those people will try to lead and continue doing the same job that they were doing. And they’re going to.
Speaker 0 | 26:38.482
ultimately they’re gonna fail uh so you so you really have to you’re gonna be very very stressed and very unhappy yeah they’re gonna just be you know and they’re gonna look at their team like i you know gosh i do everything around here which is is not leadership um yeah and to me the biggest metaphor is for anyone out there that has more than i don’t know five children you know, if mom is not, does not become King delegator, I’m saying, mom, this is very chauvinistic, but you know, it’s just how it is in my house. It’s just how it is in my house. Like, you know, like I get the call, like I need the principal in here because I have eight kids and I’ve got two grandchildren. Right. And like, sometimes just all chaos breaks loose. And I’m like, no, no, no. Like when mom leaves or goes and does her thing, like goes out to the flower farm or whatever she wants to do for fun or visits or something. And like, I’m in charge. It’s King delegation mode. It is delegation. It’s like you do the dishes, you vacuum, you whatever. Right. So like, yes, like the other day I only, I had four of the boys, I had four boys with me, four boys and four girls. Mom went out with the four girls to the flower farm. This is where this example is coming from. Right. So like they had their like two days where they go off and they, they go to the flower farm, some massive tulip farm in Connecticut or something. And it’s a huge online thing. And there’s someone out there that probably knows what I’m talking about. I don’t even know the name. I should know. great flower farm or great, I don’t know, whatever it is, right? They go out, they do the flowers all day. Then they go shopping and then they do the whole thing, right? So here I am at home with like a five-year-old boy, nine-year-old and 11-year-old and then a 17-year-old, right? So I can’t just throw everything, 17, right? I can’t do that. That would just be oppression. So it’s a king delegation mode. It’s like, okay. look everything has to be perfect when they come home i want it to be like like it had to be like we do the job better than them but they come home and like everything’s right dinner’s got to be ready you have this house clean you know you vacuum i’m so i’m like okay you’re vacuuming you vacuum this all you go upstairs and you mop the floors and you do this right but sometimes if my wife’s having a bad day it’s because like she’s trying to do it all she’s like no they’re the laundry right then and do the dishes right they didn’t load the dish who cares if they didn’t pre-rinse it right like let them fail like let them load the dish yeah yeah then come through my coach and be like no you need to put the the plates in this way and you need to do it in a calm way and not throw the, it’s just difficult sometimes. Well,
Speaker 1 | 29:01.187
right. And you know, I think that’s a great example too, of like, when you compare that to it, how, how are your children going to learn those life skills if they’re not challenged to do it and delegated to, right. And that, that’s the same for it folks.
Speaker 0 | 29:18.484
You just think of like, Look, you got to start off the way I did. Okay. So here’s an old server. It’s sitting here in this closet. Okay. Here’s 30 disks. I want you to load this.
Speaker 1 | 29:30.148
Maybe just start way back from the beginning. Right. But yeah, I mean, you know, that’s where I think delegation is, is just so key. Not only for the new leader, but for the, uh, the, the, the person that reports to them now is challenged. to learn a new skill, right? And ultimately, that’s what we should all want as IT folks is to learn new skills and develop our skill sets.
Speaker 0 | 30:00.745
Yeah, so training. It makes me think about training, training and development. My thought was, it only popped in because of the old disks things. And there’s so many things. there’s so many things in this world when we start off training we kind of go back to the old school now you got to start with the basics back to the basics back to the basics and sometimes the basics are so old that there’s no point in starting with basics and i think that’s probably very very true in the technology world like why even bother learning some of this old stuff when It’s already so obsolete anyways. Maybe we can summarize it all in a history course. This is what a server is.
Speaker 1 | 30:44.746
Well, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 30:46.267
No one uses those anymore.
Speaker 1 | 30:48.409
Right.
Speaker 0 | 30:49.330
Well, they kind of do, but it’s in the cloud. And what’s the cloud? Go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 30:54.714
I think that’s where I have a hard time with formal education, right? Having been in IT for so long, I can’t tell you how many HR… people I’ve worked with who have not let me hire the best candidate because they don’t have a four-year degree, which as you just alluded to, in IT, that stuff changes so rapidly that your four-year degree in two years or so is fairly obsolete with the exception of some classes.
Speaker 0 | 31:33.515
So you got to have the trump card there. Who cares about what HR says? And I can’t say that. Can’t say that. I don’t have an HR department anyway, so who cares? But yeah, because I, in the book, the last chapter of the book, I talk about like, how do we get, how can you find your dream job? And like, one of my suggestions is, is go around HR, literally contact a, whoever the hiring person is that you’re actually going to work under or contact the president. and, um, Hey, and, and ask him what’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern when it comes to it and your company, or, Hey, um, you know, it’s kind of like Sebastian when it comes to, uh, hiring people for your help desk role, uh, when you’re looking for help desk guys, I’m just going to, let me just pretend I’m hiring, but what’s the last position you had to hire for?
Speaker 1 | 32:24.857
Uh, I actually just hired a senior network engineer.
Speaker 0 | 32:28.278
And let’s say, I know that you’re hiring for that and I don’t want to apply through, I’m assuming they, did they apply through the company website?
Speaker 1 | 32:33.964
Yes.
Speaker 0 | 32:34.744
Okay. So I’m like, I don’t want to be one of those 400 applicants. How many people applied for the job?
Speaker 1 | 32:40.746
Do you know? We probably had about 40 candidates, I think.
Speaker 0 | 32:44.008
40? And did you layer it down to like top four, top three, top one? How many did you layer?
Speaker 1 | 32:49.550
Honestly, most of them, for some reason, we get a lot of candidates that require sponsorship. And yeah, so we had a lot of them out.
Speaker 0 | 33:00.815
Okay. So, well, let’s just. hypothetically speaking i know that there’s i remember there was a job i was i was applying for once which is like a district manager position okay and i think 400 people applied 400 people and i was an internal candidate i was an internal candidate so 400 people applied for this position so that means like you know, they’re going to layer it down to like the top three. They’re going to interview the top three. One person is going to get the job. I was just like, nah, not going to even bother, not going to even bother. So, but my thought would be is, okay, let’s say I reach out to you and I say, Hey, Sebastian, you know, just want to ask your advice and fellow, fellow IT guy in the field. And I’m looking to grow. And I just wanted to ask your advice. If I reached out to you on LinkedIn, would you, I just want to ask your advice. I promise I’m not trying to sell you anything.
Speaker 1 | 33:54.831
I would. Yeah, I would most definitely respond. I appreciate that.
Speaker 0 | 33:59.053
Okay, so curious. Hey, when it comes to growing in the IT world and when it comes to, what was the role title again? Network?
Speaker 1 | 34:06.456
Network engineer.
Speaker 0 | 34:07.637
Network engineer. Hey, I’m just curious. When it comes to network over there, what’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern when it comes to managing the network?
Speaker 1 | 34:18.501
Nobody knows how to manage our network. We have to go outside to help manage the network.
Speaker 0 | 34:25.120
Yeah. And I’d probably dig a little bit more and be like, okay, cool. Why is that? I’m just, I’m just curious because I’m trying to, you know, grow my career and, you know, I just want to kind of find out, I’m trying to get a feel for like, you know, where I’d be actually be able to help people. And, you know, I kind of just want to find my place, you know? And then if I actually, actually have the ability to help that, I’m like, oh, Hey, I don’t know if it’s of any interest to you. If you’d be interested, like, this is kind of how I would do it. I don’t know. You know? And let’s say I give you an answer that you like. Would that put me in a better position to get a role or to get a conversation with you than any other way?
Speaker 1 | 35:01.904
Yeah, I think it most definitely would. I mean, just the fact that you took the initiative to kind of reach out, especially tactfully in the way that you just said, right? You know, more of a conversation rather than, hey, can you help me or whatever? I think… I appreciate that. Maybe part of that for me too is because I just, as we all do, continually get hit up by salespeople on LinkedIn. So having a genuine conversation with somebody is actually quite refreshing.
Speaker 0 | 35:39.936
But the fact that we’re talking right now is a low probability score because most people, when I reach out to them on LinkedIn, either ignore me or they’re just shocked. or they’re just not on LinkedIn anymore. Like I get a lot that are like, Phil, I never get on LinkedIn anymore. Like I’m just now getting your message. I’d love to be, talk to you about the podcast or something. Cause that’s how I, that’s how I find most people that want to be on the podcast is LinkedIn because I guess I should use Twitter or something, but then that’s like a, it’s not Twitter X, sorry, X or, you know, there should be other ways, but it just happens to be the way that, uh, I find most, uh, people, or I think it’s easier to find it leaders that way. But yeah, um, yeah, there’s a high level of skepticism. The, I asked that because I just think hacking the hiring process should be done to a certain degree. And I have a, my son-in-law’s brother who has a PhD in construction engineering or some kind of engineering field. He’s been trying to find a job for like a whole year. Yeah. He’s probably applied to like 400. He just, he just got a job. I’m like so happy he just got a job, but I’m like, the guy’s got a PhD. What is the problem with this process and the fact that you said, so let me ask you this though, can you get around that HR if they don’t want to have, if there’s no degree or certificate or something like that, can you get around that?
Speaker 1 | 37:03.981
I can in my current role. Sometimes working for a large organization, it’s a little tougher because that’s the nature of the beast. I think more HR people are starting to understand. especially in technology um you know the the formal degree just uh isn’t always indicative of the kind of talent you’re going to get it’s funny because let’s say you are hiring for like a microsoft licensing specialist like i don’t know we need a microsoft licensing specialist bill
Speaker 0 | 37:41.545
gates would be would be um ruled out oh why he didn’t he didn’t graduate oh right he dropped he dropped out of harvard so bill gates If you needed a Microsoft specialist, Bill Gates would be, would be ruled out. You’re right. He might’ve been given like an honorary degree or something by now. Who knows? Pretty sure he didn’t graduate. I’m almost, I’m going to Google that because, uh, my brother was in his class. Cause my brother went into software engineering and was a super nerd. Um, and moved to Germany was, um, did Bill Gates graduate? We need to do this. Uh, uh, anyways, as, as we, as anything that you want to add there or anything like that, cause I don’t want to like. cut this amazing subject off like degrees should certifications matter i don’t think me i’m i lean on the side of no it doesn’t matter but if i’m talking to the individual that’s applying for a job i say it does matter in some cases depending on the company that you want to work for they may require an mba true yeah and i would say certifications are kind of hit and miss right i’ll look at somebody with a certification and i
Speaker 1 | 38:44.434
think you can tell you know are they you is it just a resume bullet or does it really take some prep and knowledge? Maybe a CISSP, that takes a little thought and knowledge. You can’t just go in and read a book and then go pass it. So I think it kind of depends. But ultimately, I think what really makes a difference is getting that face time with somebody, right? And understanding, are they a culture fit? Can they answer your technical questions? Can they solve a problem, right?
Speaker 0 | 39:32.672
This was all a ruse, by the way. This was just me applying for a job. I wanted you to know that. I did all of this just so I could get in and apply for a job.
Speaker 1 | 39:40.379
Man, well, look, you’re hiring because you’re definitely creative. I’ll give you that.
Speaker 2 | 39:46.484
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Speaker 0 | 42:06.301
The top three favorite vendors.
Speaker 1 | 42:09.483
Oh, man. Okay. top three favorite.
Speaker 0 | 42:13.174
Like they’re just like everything, everything is right. Like, you know, they vibe right with your team. I don’t know. The product works. It’s like, it’s an, it’s just so simple and easy and it is solved. It just, it was just so turnkey. That’s what I want to know. Right.
Speaker 1 | 42:26.123
Um, man. Okay. So I, I got to give a shout out to a somewhat regional vendor who, uh, has, it does really good work and also, uh, has a great kind of story behind the. brand. They’re very veteran friendly. And that’s a company called Tuatara.
Speaker 0 | 42:48.920
Preston Pyshko How do you spell that?
Speaker 1 | 42:50.762
Jason Lowery It’s T-U-A-T-A-R-A.
Speaker 0 | 42:53.765
Preston Pyshko Okay. Jason Lowery
Speaker 1 | 42:55.366
And they’re actually helping us with our data transformation journey. But great group of people. They’re, like I said, very… Very close to working with recently separated veterans. I’d say they’re more kind of vendor agnostic. They’re not trying to sell you a certain brand or product, which I appreciate. Next up, I’ll probably get slammed for saying this, but I’ve had pretty good luck with CDW overall. Just, uh… Mostly from commodities, but in my last position, we actually were going through a rather large acquisition, and they came in and really helped us get that organized. Cool. Boy, third, does Gartner count as a vendor?
Speaker 0 | 43:58.821
No. Okay. No, no, no. No, because you can pay them. They definitely will take money. I don’t know. I’m a little biased. I’m a little biased because I’ve worked for so many corporate companies in the past, and we always called Gartner kind of like a pay-to-play model, a necessary, like, look, you got to be in the magic quadrant. If you’re not and you don’t pay and you’re not, blah, blah, blah, you’re not in there. I look at them as a good sounding board or maybe a place to start, but there’s going to be outliers that are not. that are kind of under the radar. So I see Gartner as a snapshot in time. However, here’s an example. Let’s say you were looking for a video collaboration platform during post-COVID or during COVID. Who would show up on Gartner Magic Quadrant?
Speaker 1 | 44:56.840
Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom.
Speaker 0 | 45:00.301
Correct. Okay, so you just said one, Zoom. literally they’re like standing up at the podium we’re printing money we’ve you know we’ve hit all goals we’re super successful you know this that and everything else right so you would look at that and you’d be like of course like zoom’s a leader we should look at them but what will gartner magic quarter not tell you they’ll tell they’ll tell you like okay they like they’ve hit all their goals they hit this is but what they will not tell you is the current actual pulse of zooms operations department i’m not saying anything negative but i could be saying something negative what i What people might not know is that during COVID, a lot of those companies, Zoom being one of them, got overloaded with many, many, many, many orders. How is that framed to the public? It’s framed to the public as, we’re up. We’re doing very, very well. However, what does it mean for an IT department? It means that maybe you don’t know how many orders are in queue and how backed up the operations department is and will your order get installed in a timely fashion. And will you get all of the personalized support that you need from an operations department? That’s very, very important. I don’t think Gartner will tell you that.
Speaker 1 | 46:13.471
Yeah, that’s a good point. I do think a lot of people subscribe to that magic quadrant as the be all end all. I don’t. I think it’s an augment to a decision making process that can help. Where I find value in Gartner is really sort of their…
Speaker 0 | 46:37.794
consulting arm?
Speaker 1 | 46:39.855
Kind of that. Their research papers, I think, are pretty decent. How do you maybe go on an AI journey or stuff like that? I think it gives you a good foundation from which to maybe a strategy.
Speaker 0 | 46:59.169
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, yes, they count. Yes, they count. Um, I’ve just had people say to me before, I, we can’t look at them because, um, CEO says everyone has to be in the gardener magic quadrant. If they’re not, we can’t look at them, but it might be an up and coming. It might be an up, it might be an up and comer. It might be like, uh, you know, what if it was zoom before zoom was in the magic quadrant? And I might’ve been like, you know, wow, I wish we had been had the foresight back then to look at them or that would have been a great fit. Or maybe they have a special API or maybe they only work in logistics, you know, maybe they’re only. Maybe they’re a very niche player for, you know, something that’s, you know, I don’t know. Not that there isn’t niche, not that Gartner doesn’t have all these niche categories, but I guess that was my point. Any crazy security products that are very, very nice?
Speaker 1 | 47:48.784
Oh, security products. So we are, I’m six months at my company right now. And it’s really interesting because the… This company has infested heavily in Cisco. And I’ve never been a huge Cisco guy, I guess. But I am finding that the Meraki products are not too bad.
Speaker 0 | 48:22.849
I did a show years ago, Meraki, I Hate You, because it was all about how why people love Meraki. But it was like, what do we really have to… What is it that we do hate and have to manage on the Meraki side? No, Meraki is like, let’s be honest. If I go, if I ask anyone out there, like, hey, what’s your firewall? Like, it’s going to be Meraki, Fortinet. I don’t know. What else do we have out there?
Speaker 1 | 48:51.307
Palo.
Speaker 2 | 48:52.148
Most of them are Meraki.
Speaker 0 | 48:52.888
Yeah, yeah. Palo Alto, something, I don’t know, something in the cloud. But it’s going to be Meraki or Fortinet, pretty much. That’s it. um oh well sorry cisco yeah what is morocco which is cisco morocco right yeah uh so there you go um okay sir the the i don’t know where else to go i don’t know where to go with this how do we end all this do you um ascribe to any conspiracy theories did we land on the moon i
Speaker 1 | 49:20.519
so my wife is a huge uh conspiracy theorist and this has only happened over the last yes four or five years right And I’m trying to wrap my head around it because it seems to be getting worse as she gets older. So don’t blame her age on it.
Speaker 0 | 49:40.550
It could be some other access to information that we haven’t had. It could be maybe the truth is finally coming out or we’re all going crazy.
Speaker 2 | 49:51.254
I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 49:52.415
Yeah. Well, you’re right. So it started with ancient aliens. And there’s some really actually. good documentaries on ancient aliens uh surprisingly i was i was interested and uh i’m not sure i’m you know fully bought in but um she’s opening my eyes to stuff right then now it’s it’s bigfoot and uh dog man have you ever heard of dog man no
Speaker 0 | 50:18.439
but i did see some picture of some hairy dude uh some bigfoot sighting the other day which if your wife’s tracking it she probably saw it oh i’m sure i’ll i’ll hit her up tonight There was some legit picture the other day of a really strange dude looking at something. I don’t believe anything anymore because of the AI. It’s very hard to… Any picture could be turned into anything nowadays. We could just… We could send it through the AI generator. We could send it through the AI generator. Was this produced or something? But anyways.
Speaker 1 | 50:46.305
I may know what you’re talking about. I think I might have saw that same one with…
Speaker 0 | 50:50.594
they were on a train and there was bigfoot looking dude just cruising through the field i don’t know it doesn’t matter okay so ancient aliens and bigfoot okay yeah yeah and dog man but i want to hear about dogman i’ve never heard this one this is a new one so dog man uh
Speaker 1 | 51:06.666
has the dog face uh stands on its hind legs um I I’m like, well, isn’t this a werewolf? Aren’t you really describing a werewolf? No, it could be genetic.
Speaker 0 | 51:17.055
No, it could be some genetic freak that were, that was like in a, uh, what do they call those underground duns or something like that? And there’s a lot of people that are, they’re all over that stuff. Maybe it was some like, you know, genetic experiment or something. Anyways, keep going.
Speaker 1 | 51:29.218
Yeah. Well, uh, apparently, um, there’s a whole podcast on them and she, she made me listen to one. This guy was like describing this experience. He was hiking with his dog. Uh, the dog starts freaking out. All of a sudden he looks up there’s dog, man. He got this like overwhelming feeling of dread, uh, basically like completely lost his stuff, um, over the course of the next, you know, lost his job, lost his wife. Uh, just this guy, you know, a grown man crying on this podcast, right. Every time he talks about like, like reliving the experience of seeing dog, man, it was, uh,
Speaker 0 | 52:10.370
uh kind of sad you know the um i’ve got to find this now dog man conspiracy theory that’s not working dog man podcast why can i not find this you can find this one here um okay well uh was there other people that have spotted dog man i guess that’s the more important thing yeah apparently there’s all kinds of people that uh news 18 australian man show was it in australia this one was not this one is in michigan i believe you
Speaker 1 | 52:40.118
But according to my wife, they’re all over the place. So, and guess what? She also says that Bigfoot, Bigfoot is friendly and is actually looking out for mankind. Whereas Dogman is not. Okay.
Speaker 0 | 52:54.750
So, all right. So let me ask you this about Bigfoot. What’s okay. So Bigfoot, there’s gotta be more than one of them, right? I mean, how are they procreated?
Speaker 1 | 53:01.495
Correct. Correct. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 53:04.930
We need to have it on the show. We should have brought your wife on the show. Next time I did, I’m going to start asking these, I’m going to start asking these questions before, before the show so that we can, so that if there’s a significant other that believes in these conspiracy theories, can we send your wife down the black hole of did we land on the moon? Because I think that this would be, let’s send her down that.
Speaker 1 | 53:26.666
I’m going to ask her, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 53:28.167
Here’s what I want everyone out there doing. If, and then maybe it’s because I’m getting older. maybe it’s because i’m getting older because i used to say people are crazy but i was like why do people think that we didn’t land on the moon so i was like all right you know forget about it i’m just gonna go on amazon order every single book every single book on the moon landing being faked was 180 bucks or something all got shipped to my house and i can i started to read every single one and i will and i mean not and it was very eye-opening let’s just say that um you Because when you look at statistics and you look at what actually had to,
Speaker 2 | 54:02.472
the numbers are alone,
Speaker 0 | 54:03.873
the numbers alone are overwhelming. And I’m a big numbers guy. Numbers don’t lie. People lie. Numbers do not lie. People lie. So when you look at the numbers, it’s very convincing. So it’s like, okay, whatever, crazy.
Speaker 1 | 54:19.343
It’s good. I’m going to actually, I’m going to ping my wife on this one. And you might have had more success with her being on the show than me. But, you know. hopefully I contributed something to your audience.
Speaker 0 | 54:32.691
We’re going to have to do a side gig. Dog Man, that’s a new one. Bird Lizard Man. Dog Man, I looked this one up. Sebastian, it has been a pleasure having you on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Thank you so much. I don’t know if we’ve changed the world, but that’s certainly the goal.
Speaker 1 | 54:50.556
Absolutely. Likewise, Phil. It’s been my pleasure. Thank you, my friend.
