Experience the power of the combined insights of Puppet CTOs Abby Kearns and Deepak Giridharagopal as they share their wisdom and discuss how two CTOs are better than one to achieve maximum automation at scale.
Abby Kearns and Deepak Giridharagopal share their unique experience of being co-CTOs and where Puppet is headed in the near future on this episode of Pulling the Strings.
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Demetrius Malbrough [00:00:23] Hey, everyone, thanks for joining this episode of Pulling the Strings podcast, powered by Puppet, and I'm delighted to be your host. My name is Demetrius Malbrough and I'm on the product marketing team here at Puppet. I'm really excited today to talk with Abby Kearnes and Deepak. Deepak, I will not attempt to butcher your last name.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:00:47] That's alright.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:00:48] So, Abby, why don't you introduce yourself first and then Deepak with you?
Abby Kearns [00:00:53] Well, thanks for having me. Long time listener, first time caller. I'm Abby Kearns. And as you said, I'm the CTO here at Puppet. I joined a year ago. What a crazy time to join a new company and my current responsibilities include oversight of our core product design and engineering teams.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:01:16] All right, Deepak.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:01:18] Hi, everybody. I'm Deepak. I've been here for about 10 years. So I've seen it all probably, the good and the bad and so far mostly good. But yeah, you know, my background's in software development. I did a couple of startups before joining Puppet and was a big member of the Puppet open source community before formally joining the company and kind of taking more of the reins around shaping what it is that we make. But yeah, you know, ones and zeros all day long.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:01:51] All right. Ones and zeros, we will take both of those ones and zeros and see if we can spin this into something really, really interesting. Let's go ahead and start. Abby, how long has it been since you've been on board now? And also, I guess, you know, you came on board and what are you focusing on these days?
Abby Kearns [00:02:12] Well, I joined a year ago, so I am right around a year. And wow, it's been a long year. New company, global pandemic, you know, in the last 12 months. But it's actually been a super exciting 12 months here. And one of the things that I really love the most is the people here at Puppet and an opportunity to really get to work with some fantastic people all through the company. I'm a little biased towards my team, obviously, but it's been super awesome to partner with Deepak as we figure out what is the work we need to do today and where do we need to go for tomorrow. And we've had a lot of changes over the last year here and the product design and engineering team are what we now call is the core R&D. And we've got new people that have joined us. Carol Wilder joined us as a VP of Product in September, and we've had some other people join my leadership team. We made a lot of changes to the way we work and the way we've really thought about our practice and how we want to develop and deliver software. And so it's been a really exciting 12 months and I'm really looking forward to this year.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:03:31] Yeah, I think you came on board right around the same time I came on. And actually today is my one year anniversary at Puppet. So it's been a while, but I haven't even scratched the surface to the tenure that Deepak has. And you've had a really long career at Puppet. And I think you have a great relationship with the founders of the company. You probably could tell us some stories about, you know, the early days of Puppet, but I'm not sure if I really want to know all of the details around that,
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:04:09] Probably not. Yeah.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:04:10] Could you could you tell us a little of that story and how you ended up here at Puppet?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:04:16] Yeah, well, I think if you rewind to about a decade ago or maybe 10 to 12 years ago, I'd say, like that was an era where I won't say it was like the pre-DevOps like part of the IT timeline, but it was definitely in its infancy, I think at that point in time. Like the whole DevOps Days, that is a construct around events and things like that, kind of getting a community together. That was pretty new. And I think, you know, Puppet came around in this era where I think a lot of us in operations were really struggling with trying to figure out how to automate stuff, there weren't a ton of really great tools, there are a lot of kind of leading tools, but from sort of previous generation thinking. They weren't necessarily like sort of as hackable and as extensible and easy to use as a lot of us wanted. So I think early on, a lot of us in that community started to gravitate towards tools of the communities around them as a way of interacting with our peers that we felt were kind of in the same boat, because we weren't necessarily getting that from just the regular workplace that we were in. And a lot of the community spaces we take for granted right now didn't exist. Like the open source ecosystem really was the gathering point, I think, for a lot of us. And I think it was in that world where Puppet was originally conceived. And I think it was such a radical and interesting to me departure from previous ways of approaching the problem space, that I pretty early on got involved in the community. That's where I met Luke, who was the founder of Puppet, you know, and being part of that community, you did everything. You helped doobies on IRC, fix bugs when you could, I was an early commercial adopter of Puppet and then eventually came and joined the company when it made sense for me to do so. So that was around 10 years ago. And, you know, when we started, we were pretty small. It was early. It was a familiar story, I imagine, to a lot of companies that do open source software where, you know, we were trying to figure out the right commercial product, figuring out how to take a community thing and make it more sustainable, not just for the community itself, but sustain a company around it. And how do we make that grow and thrive over the next however many years? And I'm pretty proud of how it's unfolded, I would say. And yeah, you know, there's there's a lot to talk about, I think, in between then and now and my role. But initially it's fun to think about how I joined, I was just like a senior level engineer and worked on fixing a lot of JavaScript bugs in some of our dashboards. And now I spend my time thinking about sort of bigger picture strategic problems. And it's kind of fun to look at that continuum.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:07:16] Yeah, yeah. OK, yeah. It really reminds me that the technology landscape changes really fast and you know, things used to progress like every, what, six months plus. But now it's like every six days that, you know, there's something new. Either there's a new company, there's a new technology. There's, you know, it's just shifting a lot. So I want to also see if we can gain kind of a tiny peek into your world, Abby, and also Deepak, your world as well. So if I was a fly on the wall right in, I know you're looking at me, you know, a little strange right now because I look a little weird, but I'm not a fly on the wall. But what would the conversation look like between you and Deepak? Like just behind the scenes? You know, what are some of the things that you two would work together on or coordinate, etc.?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:08:11] We just yell at each other. All the time.
[00:08:13] You beat me to it, I was totally going to say that.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:08:17] Yeah, it's just we're just constantly yelling "nuts!"
Demetrius Malbrough [00:08:19] And that's you doing the yelling, Deepak, right?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:08:21] No, no surprise. It's 50/50. We like to split it. It's an OKR.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:08:26] Abby seems cool, calm and collected.
[00:08:27] No, I'm not. I'm not. Appearances can be deceiving.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:08:38] Now, I think, you know, I mean, obviously you feel free to chime in, Abby. I mean, I think a lot of the times we're in the same room to talk about, you know, it's usually something that of kind of high level or strategic importance. I would say, you know, I think it's not that we never get together to talk about just what's been going on during the week or any sort of tactical problem solving like certainly that has its place. But I think a lot of the venues we sort of find ourselves in are really, especially for my part, you know, I'm oftentimes trying to you know, I put stuff in front of Abby like, hey, here's what I'm thinking about. You know, this seems like kind of a big deal. What do you think about it? You know, should we go this way? Should we zig or should we zag?This is kind of a big deal, whichever way we decide on it. What do you think? You know, and I think at a certain point, decisions become high impact enough that, you know, it would be nuts to not seek opinions and feedback on it. Right. So, yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Certainly a lot of the topics that I bring it up.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:09:50] And what about you, Abby?
Abby Kearns [00:09:51] Well, I think, you know, to Deepak's point, there is, you know, when you're really starting to be thoughtful about both the transformation work you need to do interally as well as Horizon Zero, One and Two, for us as a company, that's not something anyone can do in isolation. And so, you know, for me, Deepak and I have a lot of similarities, but we're also very different. And I really embrace that difference because I think it helps us produce better strategies, better decision making and frankly, get to better conclusions than I think we would independently. And I think there's such a strength in that because we don't talk enough about the importance of diversity in decision making and the importance of diversity of the team and the perspectives. I think we talk a little bit about that. At least I know the three of us do quite often. But at the end of the day, it actually is what I think fundamentally produces the best outcomes. And I think it's fantastic to have a partner like Deepak because at the end of the day, our outcomes, our decisions and our conclusions are so much richer because of it.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:10:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just going to jump in and say, I think we have a killer rock star team here with Yvonne, you know, leading the herd, you know, and everyone rallying around her in order to number one, you know, on the front of diversity, equity and inclusion. And I can say that I've been a part of that. And we are just really adamant about making sure that we get that right and that we are placing focus and effort and dollars, you know, putting the money where our mouths are and investing in that particular area. So it's really important. And I like to see the diversity between you two as well and how you're working together. Deepak, I want to ask you a specific question and then Abby, you can also answer the question as well. But what does a day in the life and I'm going to call you a thought leader, is that OK?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:11:56] I mean, you could call me that. I can't stop you.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:12:03] Yeah, yeah, what does that look like? What does a day in the life of a thought leader look like?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:12:08] Well, I mean, I suppose I'm sure there are people out there that wake up saying, like, you know what, I'm going to do some thought leading today.
[00:12:18] Wait a minute, hold up, Deepak. You don't do that?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:12:21] No, I do not do that. I don't know what it's like to be someone that does that. I guess you wake up, I assume you check your Twitter feed and your follower account and you try to come up with the right mix of buzzwords to weigh in on that day, strike while the iron is hot and then you get the eyeballs. And, you know, I think I've always been more one to, I'm very constrained in what kind of leadership, what sort of thought leadership I want to cultivate and to me I think I care way more about the teams I interact with on a daily basis, like, am I leading them effectively? And is there stuff in my brain that I want to make sure that they all understand? So I think overall, I mean my day, especially given now that I'm more attached to like a new product incubation in Relay, a lot of what I do during the day is kind of like I try to think about what the most important thing is that I want to get done or that I want to communicate or that I want to check up on. And, you know, I try to make sure I get that done. So, you know, for me, that could be anything from like, for example, today we have like a prioritization discussion around what we're going to be doing for Relay over the next quarter. So, you know, I've spent a lot of my time trying to think through "what's my opinion, what's my point of view on that. And then more importantly, what kind of challenges do I want to make sure that teams can articulate to me?" I think at least for me, it's helpful to think about what I want to hear other people say, not because I want to put words in their mouth, because I think it's more if they don't say it, maybe that's indicative of I'm not getting the complete picture, right. And I'm sort of obsessed with trying to get the complete picture to the extent that I can, so that I think I could make better decisions. But yeah, a lot of my day is really sort of the care and feeding of the teams that I run and then equal parts of that and then thinking about the more big picture, like, you know, I'm sort of a tech junky. So there's a lot of like what's new, what are people into, what's something that's novel or interesting that maybe we could be using or that I should have a point of view on, what can I be contrarian about in a way that makes sense and it's authentic. And then what do I need to learn? And there's usually something every day. So maybe that's unglamorous, I suppose. But, you know, but that's my day.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:15:01] You have to be leaving something out. Really.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:15:05] Well, I mean. Yeah, I don't know. There's also I mean, you have to make sure that you're swapping the right number of dank memes on Slack with the right people in order to cultivate your personality.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:15:16] Yeah. And so, Abby, you're also a thought leader as well. And what does your day look like?
Abby Kearns [00:15:28] I would say, you know, my days change depending on what's going on. You know, I spend a lot of my time with my team, either directly or indirectly thinking about how do we get better or more efficient. We're undergoing lots of change in the team. And so really identifying ways that we can really help improve the team from an efficiency standpoint, but also impact, how do we really reach everyone across R&D and make sure that they are both really in tune with what the strategy is and the direction we need to go, but also their role in that and really helping people understand their impact to both the team, but also Puppet at large. Lately, I've been spending a lot of time with Deepak on strategy and really figuring out what's horizon two, horizon three, look like for us. And are we making the right investments now that help us realize those visions? And, you know, I also advise a lot of startups and I sit on the board of another late stage startup. And so those are all good forcing functions for me to say what else is going on, not just in our space, but in some of the adjacency space within Cloud Native or serverless or what's happening in the broader open source and cloud native space. And just to kind of give me a good flavor of what the other efforts that are going on, what some of the innovation and what's our place in that over time. And, you know, it's just a lot about, to Deepak's point, kind of like looking at the greater horizon and figuring out where our place is in that.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:17:04] Yeah, so you have a lot of cloud experience and, you know, also, you know, when you came on board, you know, what's your story, I guess what attracted you to Puppet? Like, why Puppet at this particular moment in time? It's been a year. But what what was that attraction?
Abby Kearns [00:17:22] Oh, I think first I'll start with this. Any of us have really history with cloud? I mean, it's really it's you know, it's like put in "I have 20 years of Docker" on my resume. Do you really?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:17:35] You need 30 years of cloud experience if you really want to be a cloud thought leader.
Abby Kearns [00:17:40] Exactly. But tabling that aside, although I did see, speaking of Twitter memes, I did see an interesting one last week about a description, the visual description of a presales with the architect with 10 years in cloud. They look very tired and very old because, I was like, 10 years in cloud is like, I don't know, 30 years anywhere else, right?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:18:04] Yeah, it's a time warp for sure. Absolutely.
Abby Kearns [00:18:07] You know, I've been in the cloud space since its beginning. I worked on it even at Verizon, so. 2007 to 2008, I focused on cloud and kind of the infrastructure layer of cloud. I joined Pivotal and got to start spending time around platform and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. And then I was CEO of Cloud Foundry Foundation for a little over four years prior to joining here. And so I've spent the last seven years really focused on cloud native architecture and platforms. And I say all that because when I joined Puppet, I got really excited. The more I got to spend time with the team here. And, you know, there's a lot of interesting opportunity that's in the space we're in, not just automation, but automation as you think more broadly around what is the enterprise journey with infrastructure. You know, I've been in tech 21 years and all of it is enterprise infrastructure. And so for me, I'm always focused on that and that problem space and there's a tremendous amount of opportunity and hybrid estate and the automation around that. You know, I really got interested in Puppet because I felt like Puppet was one of the one companies that could actually tackle that space not only authentically, but actually solve some of the hard problems, because automation at scale, particularly with distributed systems in an enterprise, is not an easy problem. There's a reason not many people have actually tackled this. It's very hard to do. And so for me, Puppet was the clear leader from a technology standpoint. Now, how do you take that and really build that over time? And I just felt Puppet was the best position to really go after this space.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:19:44] OK, excellent, excellent. I really love that explanation. And I have a toss up question, and this is for either one of you or both of you can answer it. But what I want to know is, I guess what what's your vision for the future of Puppet and DevOps as a whole in the industry? You don't have to answer it in that order, but it's more of a crystal ball view, you know, what are you seeing and what do you expect? You know, what's going to happen?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:20:14] That's a big one. What I see does not match up, I suppose, with my vision, which might be a little more utopian. But like, you know, ultimately, I think my vision is a couple of things. I think on a human level, you have folks inside of IT that I hope over time have like lower stress. They're not getting paged in the middle of the night. You know, things are more self-regulating and they can sort of have their brains freed up to think about kind of more meaningful stuff. I think, more signal, you know, like less noise. But I think that there's a lot of stuff in the way of here and there. Maybe we might never get there. But I think as an industry, I feel that personally, I feel that we overstate the sophistication and how technologically advanced like most companies are and most folks that are in IT, like I think we overestimate the level of sophistication that they're looking for. You know, like I think we assume a lot. We assume that, yeah, what you want to do is spend all of your time, like gluing together all these really complicated, hyper advanced pieces of technology. We assume that what you want to do is be like Google when in actuality, like there's like five companies that you probably stand to be like Google. And for every one really high paid SRE that talks a lot on Twitter, there's probably a hundred, probably even more highly paid folks that don't build things during the day that get paid to tell other people how they should build things. And for every one of them, I think there's a thousand that just don't pay attention to any of that at all, like they just have a job and they're just trying to get their stuff done. It's a means to an end. And I think where the industry overstates that is our opportunity, because I think Puppet, you know we've always, could we lean into doing something that was more, I suppose, like more hardcore for like hardcore users, like I think we could. But in a weird way, I almost think that's easier. It gets easier to build something super powerful that you're only intending to make it work for, like really advanced exceptional users. I think it's harder to figure out how to make it, how to uplift kind of everybody, you know, a broader piece of that pie. And that, I think, is the big gap like industrially. So as much as it's funny because you'll read stuff like "Is DevOps passé?" And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, go ask the average like real estate company with like a server room somewhere or go ask the average like retail place, go outside of like the Fortune 50. And then I don't know, like you all tell me how passé that is or is that still aspirational? So I think that we're in an interesting place and the industry is funny where everyone, I think, tends to think they need a lot more than they actually do. And yet at the same time, it's still hard to get from where they are to even the modest set of things that they do need. And I think that's a balancing act that I think we can play and I think we can authentically sort of speak to, because I think we see both sides of that. And that's the industry to me.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:23:41] And Abby, is your vision similar or is it different or is it you see something grander?
Abby Kearns [00:23:49] Is there grander than DevOps? I just don't know. No, I think I completely agree with what Deepak said, and I think he's got a really fantastic way of putting what the utopian scenario looks like. I tend to be a little more jaded or practical. You know, you choose your adjective. But I think that at the end of the day, and I think you touched on this a little bit, is I think people are just trying to figure out how to make their jobs easier. And that's really what I think the value of DevOps does is how do you make it easier? Like when I started my career, I started on the infrastructure side, which meant I got to spend time in data centers with servers, you know, those things we don't talk about anymore, but are very much still here. Yeah.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:24:37] And yeah, it was cold in there.
Abby Kearns [00:24:40] I have a side note: I do feel like anyone that gets a job in tech should have to spend 30 days in a data center and fully appreciate once you've slammed your finger underneath a server two or three times and you've been cold and just sad, you know, I feel like you would appreciate the magic of VMs in the cloud. You're like, oh, my God, I have it. It's done. Thirty seconds. I didn't have to go somewhere. It's still magic to me, much like Wi-Fi in an airplane. It's just one of those things. It's magical. But, you know, as I think about what our opportunity exists as Puppet, but also DevOps at large, just how do we make someone's life easier? You know, back then when I started my career, you really gauged your sysadmins ability to, you know, that one person to a number of servers, which was, you know, one to eight, one to ten. Past that it was just really hard for one person to manage because it really involved someone actually physically walking out and rebooting machines and checking things. And it was a whole process.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:25:40] Crash cart.
Abby Kearns [00:25:41] Crash carts, yes. And over time, as we really move to automation and start automating more, you're able to really expand those numbers and you add in containers and you add in cloud and you add in all of these capabilities, the SRE mindset. And now all of a sudden that's one to what I don't know, Deepak, what do you think? A thousand, at this point in terms of containers, two thousand containers? We've really gone exponentially up. And the goal of that is how do we make someone's life easier? And really how do we take some of the monotony out of their day? Now, the endgame of this that I think our opportunity is, is how do we solve the one problem that every organization, regardless of the size, is trying to solve right now? Because we're all software companies, which is how do I create more software and get it into production faster? Full stop. That's everything we all do collectively is in service of that outcome. Right. And so that's where I think, as I think about the vision and the future. It's how do we achieve that meantime in a much faster rate? And I think, again, that's why I came to Puppet, as I think Puppet is one of the few companies that have really thought about this in a meaningful way and have an opportunity to solve this at scale.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:26:58] OK, great. And you both mentioned that there's some yelling or is that disagreement?
Abby Kearns [00:27:06] That's spirited debate.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:27:08] Spirited debate and what are some of the things that you disagree on then? Deepak, you answer that question?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:27:16] That's an interesting one. I don't, I actually, it's a bit of a copout answer. But I mean, I don't know that Abby and I have, like, vastly different, like hugely like opposed points of view on most of the stuff, I think we end up like needing to talk through at work. Like which is interesting to me because I've definitely worked with other folks on the different executive leaders over the past 10 years where it was not the case. You know, there was there was way more disagreement. I mean, I think a lot of it might just come down to maybe like what tactics makes sense or sometimes we might have disagreements around, like, look, five years out, you know, like there's a couple of different, like, focus areas that are on the menu, you know, which ones make the most sense? But the reason why I don't stress out about disagreements, I think of that form is, you know, I mean, it's those problems are big enough that the error bars are wide enough that, like, people can have differing points of view within reason and still end up inside the envelope of like this kind of makes sense. It's probably not the thing that I would choose. But like, I totally get where you're coming from and disagreement, like I can tolerate. It sort of like, you know, it's like a lack of logic or a lack of respect or something like that that I don't, but like that's not really been a problem. So, you know, I think a lot of it is just like, where do we want to go? Are we on the same page about it? And then what are the right tactics to use to get there? And, you know, sometimes for a five hundred and some odd person company, like having points of view like that is oftentimes informed by your own experiences and your own sort of gut feel what you think works, and people are going to bring different stuff to the table. Right. But yeah, if every idea I had, no one said like, wait a minute, but what about? Then I would be very nervous.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:29:17] That was a safe answer, by the way.
Abby Kearns [00:29:19] But I agree with him. I think we want to disagree because if we're all in agreement. Yeah, I'll be honest, I'm not that clever. Like, I can make some guesses. And I've seen a lot of stuff, but I am not clever enough to feel like I can, you know, see into the future with very clear line of sight. It's a guess. And I think it's all a guess. And I think the more debate we can have makes us all better. Because, you know, my perspective, while Deepak and I have shared very similar perspective, it's just an off enough to really say, actually, you didn't think about it this way. I tend to get in rut sometimes so I really welcome other perspectives. Say, "no, hold on. You know, are you really for real about that?" And to have someone push and ask that is important because otherwise we're not questioning ourselves enough and we're just going to you know, we're all victims of our own sets of biases, whether it's confirmation bias, regency bias. We all have biases based on our own perspectives and our own journeys here. And if you don't have someone to call you on that, you don't always know it.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:30:26] I will say I think like, I would say, Abby and I are often called upon to weigh in on similar problems, but we each kind of operate along different dimensions, like whether that's scale or time horizon or something like that, which I think, you know, is one of the things that brings out some of the different perspectives. So, for example, like how I run sort of a smaller incubation team might be very different than how Abby would run the broader R&D team, even though we're both being asked, like, what's the most efficient way to run a team? Right. And I think that kind of presents both of us sort of some autonomy and some different opportunities to explore the space a little bit, even though we know that like one hundred percent of what one person does probably wouldn't make sense in the environment or the other. But, you know, that's kind of how you learn. I think. Similarly, like, what do we focus on portfolio wise for the next six months is not necessarily what do we focus on as a company? You know, and the answer to that is different. And how you prioritize it is different if you're looking two to five years out versus two to five months out. Right. And yet you're still being asked the same question. But how do you come at it is very different because of, you know, what you end up having to do.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:32:05] Well, I really appreciate both of your perspectives here, and I want to leave the listeners with maybe one nugget of your wisdom, your knowledge. Abby, you've been around for 21 years in IT and so have I. I don't have any wisdom at this point. You know, I just let all my wisdom just relax right here on the podcast. But it's not about me. It's not about me. It's about you two. So a final statement, okay? Someone wants to get involved in DevOps in this whole industry around infrastructure is code, and CI/CD pipelines and this whole automation thing, what advice would you give a, let's say, a graduating senior in college that wants to go this route? Abbie, why don't you lead us on that?
Abby Kearns [00:32:57] It's a different world than when I was a senior in college, but I would say get started. You know, I think Deepak's journey is really the advice I would give to anyone start in an open source, find an open source project and get involved. That's the best way, one, to learn, two, to really understand how to operate within a broader community in an ecosystem. And three, really help you get really deep education on a product and the technology in a way that's really hard to do any other way. So I would say find a project you care about and get involved.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:33:26] Awesome. Deepak?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:33:28] Oh, that's a good answer. I think to me, I'm trying to think about, like, what do I wish I knew, like when I graduated and was going into the industry. And I think over the intervening years, I don't think what I fully appreciate is how you kind of start off, like you start off writing some code and then you kind of graduate into you read more code than you write, and then you kind of graduate into you write more docs than code that you read. Because, you know, that's the higher leverage programing language is really in English, you know, in America anyway, and you're articulating ideas. And then you kind of graduate to reading more of other people's docs, than ones that you wrote yourself, and then you kind of, you know, and you sort of keep going up. So it's like the language you use changes and the level of abstraction sort of changes. Buta lot of the same lessons apply. It's just you have to get used to sort of kind of moving up. There's kind of like a stack, as it were, not a technical one, but it's a different one. And folks should probably pay attention to that because I underestimated how much of that was a big part of sort of advancement and kind of deepening involvement in this industry.
Abby Kearns [00:34:50] And I would say the irony on that, Deepak, is my least favorite thing that I liked to do in college, what I hated the most was writing. So the irony is that I spent most of my time writing documents now.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:35:04] I completely agree. I just wanted to be in the computer lab, I didn't want to write papers and now it's like public speaking and Google Docs and stuff like that go figure.
Abby Kearns [00:35:17] I feel like, I just feel like there is someone at college is laughing like ha ha. Yeah, you thought tech was going to be just hanging out in the lab? No, no.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:35:27] I thought I heard Deepak say he's working on his book. Right?
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:35:32] I am. I need an illustrator. Oh, actually, you can do the audio book narration.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:35:38] OK, yeah. Yeah.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:35:39] You got that radio voice.
[00:35:40] I would love to do that. So I'm going to hold you to that. It's recorded and you're going to be held accountable. All right.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:35:47] Fair enough.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:35:48] All right. Well, I really enjoyed this lively conversation with both of you. And let's see, how can the listeners get in touch with you, maybe on social media, like follow you on Twitter or reach out to you on LinkedIn. Would you like to provide any of that?
Abby Kearns [00:36:04] You can reach me on Twitter @ab415 and my DMs are open.
Deepak Giridharagopal [00:36:10] Yeah, you can also reach me on Twitter. I am @groomradical. It's my IRC handle from like 20 years ago. Stick with what works. You could hit me up on LinkedIn or just deepak@puppet.com. I would love to hear from everybody.
Demetrius Malbrough [00:36:25] Well, awesome. And it was truly a pleasure to host both of you on Pulling the Strings, podcast powered by Puppet. Thanks. Thank you.