August 14, 2025 • 50 mins
Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes when your favorite social media platform suddenly crashes? In this illuminating conversation with Patrick Newman, a veteran software engineering manager with over 20 years of experience at Google, Twitter, and Amazon, we pull back the curtain on the invisible infrastructure that powers the digital world we rely on daily.
Patrick shares the high-stakes responsibility of managing Twitter's Core Infrastructure team—work he describes as "the bottom of the car, the underneath the car... it holds everything up, but you don't see it." His team created innovative solutions that prevented dozens of potential global outages, demonstrating how critical these unseen systems are to our online experiences. The conversation reveals the fascinating tension between moving quickly and maintaining stability in platforms used by millions.
Beyond technical insights, Patrick offers a refreshingly honest perspective on career development in the AI era. While embracing AI as a powerful tool for coding, he emphasizes that "AI can be a great accelerant, but it's not going to fix a fundamental gap in knowledge." This wisdom comes from a career that's spanned multiple technological revolutions—from the early internet to mobile to cloud computing and now AI.
Perhaps most compelling is Patrick's unexpected journey—from teaching English in Japan to becoming a baseball blogger with 45,000 daily readers to managing engineering teams at tech giants. His story demonstrates how diverse experiences can shape leadership approaches and how maintaining professional relationships opens doors to new opportunities. The genuine mentorship dynamic between Patrick and host Bobby shines throughout their conversation, offering listeners a model for supportive professional relationships.
Whether you're a seasoned tech professional navigating industry changes or just beginning your journey, this episode provides valuable perspective on staying adaptable, continuing to learn, and finding your unique path in technology. As Patrick advises, "Have a goal, stick with it... If coding isn't working for you, maybe SRE will, maybe product management will... those dots connect, no matter how far along they go."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you were a Twitter user, you never would have seen
anything that we did Basicallythink about like a car, like the
bottom of the car, theunderneath the car.
It holds everything up, but youdon't see it.
I'm not really a big AI guy,but I started messing with
Google's internal AI on likewriting code, and it's really
good.
I think that the trick, though,is that it's good because I
(00:24):
still kind of know what I'mdoing technically.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
So I know when it makes mistakes, I know what to
look for.
Basically I understand the keyconcepts.
It's just an accelerant.
So I think still know thefundamentals, know what you're
looking for, know the differencebetween depth-first search and
breadth-first and all the otherstuff.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Know when something is memory-constrained and
CPU-constrained, know all thatstuff.
Ai can be a great accelerant,but it's not going to fix kind
of a fundamental gap inknowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Welcome welcome, welcome.
What up D-Hustle hustle.
What is going on today?
Yo guess where we at player?
I don't know, but the weather'sreal great.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
You love this weather , bro, every time we come out to
the city, you always be talkingabout the weather top of mind.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, tell them where we at we'll be in san francisco
two times.
This is the second time.
Second season, san freakingCisco, there we go.
That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, but also we got to see the Giants last night
too.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yes, we did Shout out .
Was it the Giants?
Or you saw the Mets Shout outto the Mets Doing great things
out there.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Juan Soto was a bust, yeah, yeah, but Francisco, you
know he's the one that knockedit out of the park right knocked
out the home run.
Yes, I know you do.
I can't wait this, this guy, heloves, loves baseball patrick
loves baseball too.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta catch agame together, for sure, for
sure we got a really beautifulview of, uh, the ferry building
down downtown san francisco offthe market.
(01:57):
Um, I want to say welcome youall to another episode of
backstage with bobby.
I got a special guest for uswho?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
we got, who we got.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
And let me tell you, when you work in the industry
and you get a chance to workwith or for somebody like
Patrick Newman, our guest, Sayit again, say his name again.
They're automatically invitedto the podcast when we pull up,
so let's have a big round ofapplause for Patrick Newman.
What's going?
Speaker 4 (02:20):
on Patrick.
Thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh for sure, man.
Patrick, thank you so much forpulling up Just a little bit in
there.
But Patrick and I and I'm goingto drop it for everybody to
know used to work together atthis really cool social media
company.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Darwin loves it.
I did this one.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
It's the one that used to be the little blue bird.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
You ever heard of that one before?
No't you never heard it beforecome on, bro.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So yes, patrick, you don't know, what you missed.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, exactly right uh, patrick and I worked at
twitter for a number of years,um, and let me tell you, out of
all the managers I've ever had achance to work for or work with
, um, you're definitely a onethat, um, I really, really
appreciate what you've done forme and supporting endeavors and
things that we've done overthere.
That's even a gem right theretoo, For sure man and definitely
(03:06):
want to give you an opportunityto introduce yourself.
But definitely wanted to firstof all give you some roses and
let you know we reallyappreciate you pulling up and,
for over the years, support meon all these endeavors.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, thanks for having me Give us a quick
introduction, bobby.
I'm a software engineeringmanager in the tech industry in
the Bay Area for about 20 years.
Yeah, yeah, I had the goodfortune to work at some great
companies Google, twitter,amazon.
I've worked with some greatpeople like Bobby.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, yeah, I'm on that list.
You see, you see D.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I was waiting for him .
If I had a podcast, you'd bethe first guest.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Ah round of applause.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Just want to give you guys a heads up.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
ladies and gentlemen, I am not paying Patrick to see
none of this good stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Every time you probably said you were yeah, you
know.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Okay, that's after the show.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
After the show but, patrick, thank you so much for
pulling up and, yeah, you'vebeen in the industry for 20 plus
years um running at working atsome of the most well-known,
notable companies, um in ourindustry, um, and one of the
things that I just want to, youknow, kick it off with is how
did you get into tech?
How did tech end up being, uh,the place you landed?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
it's a long story oh let's go um.
I or maybe it's a short story Imoved to san francisco on new
year's day in 2004 and I justkind of hustled until I found a
job.
My first job in the Bay Area wasat the Japanese government
building websites and stuff, anddid that for like a year and a
half and kind of got tired of itand wound up in a startup and
(04:37):
just kind of ran with it.
I was at that startup for eightyears and started in a very
junior position and then kind ofworked my way up and got all
the way to senior director andthen move on to another startup
and then they laid me offbecause that's how it goes
sometimes yeah, wound up atgoogle and you know, sometimes
life throws you a curveball andyou hit it.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Listen how he just said it.
I just wound it up at google, Ijust ended up like I don't even
know, I just they.
They start signing and writingme checks.
I just ended up there, butGoogle was one of your first
what would you say big techcompany that you worked at?
Google was the first big one.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And so that startup that I worked at from 2006 to
2015 had a lot of people comeand go.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Like lots and a lot of really great people and they
wound up all over the place.
A lot of them wound up atGoogle.
So I kind of wound up, justlike by doing a good job and
having a good reputation withthat yeah that company, kind of
having this big network.
Yeah, and when, when the secondstartup that I was at kind of
started to go sideways, I kindof worked in the network and
kind of you know, put outfeelers here and there and
(05:39):
Google is the first one to hitand I knew several people there,
so they all gave merecommendations.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
So that's what's up.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
You know, um, it's always, it's always good advice
to kind of keep the networkgoing.
You know, keep in touch withpeople, let them know how you
feel, help them out that kind ofstuff.
It paid off for me for sure,roger, that shout out to patrick
keeping up the hustle and let'sgive him a gym sound too.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Uh, for those that subscribe and follow along,
y'all know about the gym sound.
If you hear that sound, thatmeans rewind to that spot,
because there was a gym that'sdropped.
Um, and I heard patrick talkabout how valuable the network
is, because your network is howyou get access to opportunities,
referrals and ultimately, youknow, landing really cool
opportunities those people thatknow you and they know what's
going on at their company andthey know what you can do and
(06:20):
they can line it up basicallyyeah, yeah, and you know here,
you and I work together.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What starting in 2019 , I think.
Yeah, yeah, here it is 2025 andyou know we're here on a
podcast.
Facts facts you know, it'skeeping in touch, building
relationships, and you know seewhere it goes.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah for sure, and I appreciate the insights that you
give into our audience, becauseour audience is definitely
either rising seniors about toget into the industry,
transitioning into the industry,and one thing I always like to
emphasize with my mentees is thevalue of having a network and
connecting and maintaining thoserelationships over the years.
Because I mean, patrick, thankyou so much for being you right,
(07:00):
thank you.
So, after Google, where did youend up after that?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So I went to Twitter.
Twitter was the next stop afterGoogle in 2019.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Oh, that's what's up.
And then you ran into Bobby Dand yes, so, ah, come on, I was
waiting for him.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
I was waiting for him you haven't even received the
money yet, Patrick.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Tell us the truth.
By that time we, in terms ofjust organizational-wise SRE,
was the pillar and, likepractice that you more or less
was providing managementservices to, were you also doing
SRE at Google?
Yeah, oh okay, awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And I think that led directly to the opportunity at
Twitter.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Google kind of is the benchmark for SRE site
reliability engineering.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You know, it's a little bit different at every
different company, and Twittersand Googles are similar, or were
?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, they were.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, so it was a really good fit and it kind of
carried directly over.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
That's what's up.
And this is the cool part ofthe story for me is when Patrick
got to Twitter.
During that time I was actuallytransitioning from like a
systems engineering role intosite reliability engineering,
but also kind of shutting down ateam, because we used to manage
a fleet management.
Fleet management was one ofthose organizations that manage
(08:14):
computers, going into the datacenter and kind of managing the
full life cycle of bare metalmachines and then obviously
developing and designingsoftware around that.
But the cool thing that Patrickactually got access to is to
manage the core infrastructureteam.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat team.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Core infrastructure.
So if you were a Twitter user,you never would have seen
anything that we did Basicallythink about like a car, like the
bottom of the car, theunderneath the car.
It holds everything up but youdon't see it.
If it breaks you certainlynotice, but if everything's
working perfectly, you nevernotice.
(08:51):
And that was kind of like whatcore infrastructure was.
It was configuration forsystems, it was addressing, it
was DNS, it was access tomachines, it was identity for
very low level, very basic levelmachine access, that sort of
stuff yeah um, there were, likeI think, 30, 35 different
services that we, that we workedon yeah, and and like you said,
(09:12):
these are, these are coreservices, like uh, failure on
them.
Services everybody else seesyeah, it's just like under the
car.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Global twitter is down globally.
Yeah, because of my stuff yeahyeah, once or twice.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But hey, we all live and learn in the process.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
It's a different vibe when, like you, wake up and
something you did is in the newsoh, it's like it's different
exactly.
Bobby knows what it's like, ohfor sure actually, uh, I don't
know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Sidebar that I told you I'm working on a book, uh,
called breaking barriers myjourney to the top in tech, and
one of the chapters in the bookis called my Journey to the Top.
I'm sorry the world knows me,but y'all don't know me yet,
meaning that there was a timewhen Twitter went down, but
nobody knows that.
I was a part of the team thatwas supporting and bringing it
back up and definitely have hadthe opportunity to experience
(09:58):
that firefighting, but alsobeing in the news, yeah.
I feel so real Right in the news, right, because that that's
used to be the thing I used totell a lot of mentees of mine is
like, hey, um, your, yourresponsibility is, uh, to make
sure that what we're doing,we're trying our best not to
bring this thing down becausethe world's going to know about
it.
Like a one line configurationcan bring this whole thing down
(10:18):
and it's happened to us.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's what's up out of the news.
Yeah, for sure, that was a goodday for us.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, and the cool thing about my journey with
Patrick is that this is the timethat I was also transitioning
out of the core infrastructureteam, moving to more of a
platform SRE, managing thecompute platform, and I wanted
to say, first of all, thank youso much for supporting me and
paving the way for that, becauseyou didn't know all of the
challenges I had getting towhere that point was.
(10:45):
But then Patrick recognizedgame, you know, he understood
right, the skill set, what Ibrought to the table and the
opportunity and he definitelyopened doors for me.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So Dee's going to get mad at me and say you know that
Bobby didn't pay for this.
But I really don't say things Idon't mean.
And I first noticed Bobby likeprobably three weeks after I
joined in one of these incidentcalls and just noticed the
insight and just picked up onthe ability right away.
So it was very, very clear tome.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah yeah, you know, I don't shy from it.
The same way that I am now isthe same way that I was at work,
right?
Is that mindset or, more orless, the environment that was
created for me to be myself andsomething I always talk about.
What was so special aboutTwitter, I mean, when you said
it's not the same, it's thatculture, it's that dynamic and
or the space that was given to,you know, underrepresented
(11:33):
individuals like myself toreally excel and really step
into our abilities, because thiswas, for me, the major leagues.
Right, I'm not just playingaround, but I'm really, really
you know, making impact into theworld.
So, uh, definitely appreciateyou recognizing and seeing it
and supporting me well, youearned it, you know, you can say
thank you, but you earned ityeah, I appreciate it.
And then patrick's the one thathelped, uh, you know, usher me
(11:55):
into promotion cycles too.
So a big shout out to youcongratulations.
You know, when you get promotedyou get that bread too.
So you know he's helping outthe family, you know
generational.
So I never, never, had a chanceto say this face to face, and I
definitely have, but in in thistype of setting.
Thank you so much forsupporting me on that.
Um, it was definitely, uh,something that was impactful to
my journey, because anotherthing patrick remind me is that,
(12:17):
even when I used to send outlike company-wide emails, I
always used to send outdifferent types of emails, right
, I used to always have somemusic playing or a theme song
behind it, and when I gotpromoted, I actually had a video
that I sent out to the wholecompany.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
What kind of video was this?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It was like this Exactly right.
It had some music and Bobby wasvery gracious.
You know you earned yourpromotion.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I worked on a document and I went to the
committee and I did all thatstuff and your skip level helped
too.
It wasn't just me and therewere like 16 people who
supported on the feedbacksection, so you had broad
support.
Yeah, it was a very easy thingto do, yeah, he was like it's
Pat Bagg.
Usher him in, bring him in.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
But for me, that promotion really just opened up
the opportunity for me toinfluence the organization even
broader, right?
Because it's like, especiallyat that tables that we sat at,
sometimes you don't really getaccess unless you have a certain
title or you're considered ateam lead or really bring that
value, and I was really missingout on those conversations.
But as soon as that promotioncame and Patrick is like, hey,
(13:22):
y'all need to talk to Bobby,bobby needs to be in here,
that's when it was like, yeah,it was like, uh, you know
stamping where, where I was atmy, my journey, and I really
appreciate that for sure, yeah,well, you earned it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Thank you so much another.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
The cool thing about Patrick, especially at Twitter,
is that, uh, patrick really didwholeheartedly support, you know
, underrepresented communitiesand ERGs and being one of, in my
opinion, the forward thinkingleadership or being a part of
leadership and embracing andbeing an ally for our ERG called
Blackbirds.
So tell me a little bit aboutBlackbirds and more or less like
(13:57):
what was kind of like yourfirst impression and what really
helped drive you to make yourcontribution Blackbirds.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, Blackbirds is an amazing community.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I think I told you this story.
I don't know how much time wewant to spend.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So it was my last day at Google and I was having
lunch with an African-Americanfriend literally
Nigerian-American friend.
Yeah, so a black friend and wewere talking about inclusion and
diversity and you know thesetypes of topics and Google had
like names of rooms, likePac-Man and Super Mario Brothers
, and I'm like, does everybodyget it?
(14:30):
Like does that work foreverybody.
And so this friend was tellingme about, you know, the black
experience at Google, whichwasn't always positive.
And so I remember driving homeand thinking, okay, I wasn't
aware of this, like I didn'tknow, it was just something that
wasn't on my radar.
And so I thought, okay, what canI do better at the next stop,
at Twitter?
(14:51):
You know how can I involvemyself?
And so I thought, okay, he toldme there's an ERG at Google for
black people and for the blackcommunity, and I'm sure Twitter
will have one too too.
So I'll just join and startfrom there.
And so I got to twitter and onthe very first day, like within
the first two hours oforientation, they tell you about
ergs yeah yeah, and they put itall up in a slide and I'm
(15:13):
saying it like they still dothis, you know, um, so, uh.
So blackbirds is on there.
I was like, okay, perfect, I'mgonna join that one.
So I signed up for the emaillist and I was all like ready to
go.
I was like I'm gonna likeintroduce myself and I'm gonna
be part of this.
And then I saw all these emailslike michael jordan and whitney
houston and all this stuff and Ithought I'm gonna stop I'm just
(15:33):
gonna wait for a while and I'mjust gonna read these emails and
I'm gonna like see what peopleare talking about, I'm gonna see
, like, where I fit in beforejust jumping in with both feet.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
And so I didn't really want to like interrupt or
like or like disrupt and Iwanted to learn about the
community.
It wasn't really till I got toknow you well that I felt
comfortable, kind of saying youknow, I'm here to engage and
learn with this community andkind of be part of it in my own
way.
Yeah, and it kind of went fromthere.
So I think it was probably agood.
(16:03):
I don't know, maybe a yearafter I joined that I kind of
had the guts to ask you likeBobby, how do I step in here?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And then I remember you introduced me to Babatunde
and we had a thing going withhim for a while and a couple of
others and I don't think I didmuch.
I just showed up and listenedmostly and you know I gave some
people some advice from amanagement perspective about
handling certain situations,stuff like that.
(16:31):
Mostly I just learned a lot.
I mean, sounds weird to say Idon't think I contributed much.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think I got much more out of it myself than I
contributed back yeah um.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So yeah, it was um.
And you know I'll say I've beenat other companies since
leaving Twitter.
I've never seen any energyquite like the Blackbirds
community the way it was atTwitter.
For sure it was just so vibrant.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And valuable too.
I remember Nick Caldwell comingin and giving some talks to
Blackbird and it was thisBlackbirds, and it was stuff
that I wasn't hearing otherexecutives do.
Yeah, it was just very uniqueand very special.
So, yeah, I'm glad we got toexperience it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I wish it was still there, so yeah for sure, and
give patrick a round of applause, because I think, uh, from an
ally's uh perspective, sometime,it is uh challenging to to find
the right groove to slide intoin terms of, you know, providing
support.
Um, and, and I will say uh,especially when we had that
conversation, I was like, ohsnap, patrick wants to chill
with us.
Huh, what's going on, patrick?
(17:24):
And then Patrick's like hey,this, that and this, you told me
that story and I was like, oh,patrick got some beautiful
spirit and I was like you knowwhat, just hang out, pull up and
I'll introduce you to the crew.
And then, obviously, we foundwhere you would provide the most
support, and definitely havinga resource or having an ally
that sits at a different table,especially on the management
(17:46):
side from the ERG's perspective,was so valuable to us, because
we started off in terms of justengineering, with only a handful
of black engineers, and by thetime you got there, we were like
the door was open, right, buteven with the door was open,
it's like we didn't have areception team, right, because
there was only five of us.
So we definitely needed supportfrom other allies and other
(18:07):
ergs and and at twitter to toreally help us create a space
that allowed for development andgrowth, but also a space to ask
questions, because we justnever really have had that
opportunity to make those typeof connections.
So, uh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Um, and definitely uh thank you because, like I don't
think I would have feltcomfortable stepping in in that
way without your guidance, so Igot you.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
You know it goes both ways yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like
, I'm like a tour guide.
Yeah, what'd you say?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
shout out to who shout out to to uh my name
patrick and uh palatunde, ohokay, I thought you were
shouting me out, bro shout outto my man, patrick yeah, yeah,
no big shout out to baba tundaybaba tunday was a guest here.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I watched that one.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, he's a true gentleman, oh my gosh tunday is
a brilliant, brilliant engineerand he was one of the first uh
um black uh interns that webrought in um and he, he just
helped us redefine what itlooked like, uh, to come out of
school, have this wholechallenge of meeting the bar,
and he exceeds the bar everytime.
So big shout-outs to Babitu.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
You had Meryl on too, and she was involved with that
as well, so let's not forgetMeryl, yeah big shout-outs to
Meryl, a little bit Shout-outs,a little bit.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Had a chance to come on the podcast too.
But yeah, in general,blackbirds, ergs and I know it's
kind of like a tough subject inthe time that we're living with
DEI has really just, in myopinion, given access and
opportunities for everybody tocontribute and see the value of
it, especially with diverseperspective.
That's one question I have.
(19:39):
So how did it feel to well, Idon't know how I feel to be a
manager of me, because I'm alittle bit much to carry too,
even though I do come with goodspirit but how did it feel to
have like that different type ofperspective in conversations?
Um, during our time workingtogether?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
you mean like, uh, from a dei perspective, or I
don't know um he treated likethe red team and the blue team,
huh it was somebody from beatswho had reached out for help
with a management situation.
Like it was an engineer who washaving some trouble with with
their manager and I rememberlike just not knowing quite how
(20:17):
to navigate it.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
You want to be supportive but then I don't know
the other side of theconversation, like I don't know.
I know how how that person wasperceiving the situation they
were in, but I didn't know theother side of it.
So you have to provide guidancethat's supportive, but not kind
of over-promising and takingeverything into account.
So, it can be a little trickywhen you don't have all the
information, when you're notdirectly involved.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
You know it's good because you're neutral and
you're unbiased in a way, butit's also, it's also tricky
because you don't want to kindof be, you know, over promising
or saying no, you're, you knowyou're being treated unfairly.
Maybe they were, maybe theyweren't.
They perceived a situation andthey were dealing with a
situation.
That was difficult, for sure.
Yeah, Um, so, you know, beingsupportive and being reasonable,
(21:03):
without sort of likeover-indexing on what you think
the situation might be, I don'tknow if that answers the
question.
No, no, I definitely know it canbe tricky, but I think in the
end, the key thing is likeletting people know that you're
there for them.
You're listening, someone doescare and someone will make their
best effort to help.
I think that's always the beststarting point.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
For sure, 100%.
Thank you so much for thatbecause I definitely felt like
you cared and you know what?
The other thing about Patrickand I is that this was almost
low key.
I was already working remotelyor I started working remotely
and COVID kind of hit and it waslike almost I was reporting to
Patrick.
I never met him in person, Inever met him face to face until
(21:42):
I actually came to the officeand it was like one of my trips
and I think I had already beencycled out to another manager or
something happened.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, I managed Bobby for about a year.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And I was managing two teams for a while.
For sure I was managing Bobby'steam for like on an interim
basis for a while.
And then I think, yeah, I thinkthe first time you visited the
office was after that, like theinterim period was over and the
permanent manager For sure, forsure.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I think that was right.
And I was like yo, that'sPatrick.
And I was like, oh, and in mymind I'm like yo, I've been
talking to you through thiscomputer for a year and a half
and I'm like this is what beingin person.
You don't know how tall peopleare, you know?
And I didn't have the same hairat that time I was shorter.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
It was a lot shorter.
Your height has increased.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, exactly right, it's just the hair Patrick.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I got shorter.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
That's funny, that's funny.
So another cool thing that Ilearned about Patrick and we
were talking about this actuallybefore we even got the show
started was about your time inJapan.
So last time we tried to pullup and have a conversation with
Patrick when we met up withTunde and Miro, but you were out
of the country.
But I mean, in terms ofstory-wise, you lived in Japan
(22:51):
for a while.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So I was a student in Japan for a semester and I had
a good time there.
So I went back and lived thereas an English teacher for two
years.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, shout out to that.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, it wasn't a very good job, but it was a
great experience.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
That's what's up.
Did you learn how to speak thelanguage?
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I mean, he worked for the Japanese consulate.
Man, he was the guy right Stopthe press.
And then also you got intoblogging and sports.
Baseball is obviously the bigsport over there, so tell us a
little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah.
So you know, going way back, Iwanted to be a writer.
That was my dream and my wifewhen she sees this, will laugh
at me because you know, it's oneof those things.
So I wanted to be a writer andI've always been a huge baseball
fan and I can speak and readJapanese.
And then, around 2007, 2008, Inoticed there was a lot of media
(23:43):
about Japanese players.
Around 2007, 2008, I noticedthere was a lot of media about
Japanese players.
Most of it was wrong and so Ithought, okay, I know these
things, I've seen these guys, Iknow who they are, I can just
start a blog and tell people.
And, to my surprise, it reallytook off.
I think my biggest day I had45,000 page views.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Oh, big shout-outs to you.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, and I've done over 100 newspaper and magazine
interviews and, I think, 25radio interviews.
Yeah, and one TV.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Oh, that's what's up.
So yeah, just totally took off.
We're sitting next to a star Ifwe go to Japan they're going to
know him more than they know me.
That's fine, that's fine, I'lltake that.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I'm retired now.
I'm retired.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Now, he was retired this was like 2008 to 2012.
This was a long time ago.
You put another blog out therein the whole yard.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, well, we'll see .
Play that laughing sound therehe goes, that's funny, that's
funny.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh man.
But you know what the coolthing about this part of
Patrick's journey is that a lotof people feel like, especially
in tech, that tech is the onlything that you expose yourself
to, or you may only pursue interms of pathway.
But there's other things thatyou can do on your journey that
will obviously help you in thelong run.
But allow those things tohappen, like what we're doing
(24:59):
right now, podcasting around thecountry, right, and Patrick you
know being, you know a sportswriter in Japan, which is wild.
You know, I didn't even knowthat.
And then I went to his page, Iwas looking it up and I was like
wow, my guy was out hereholding it down and we didn't
even know.
But in general, that thatopenness or that experience
definitely helped influence.
(25:20):
So how did that experience helpinfluence your journey in tech?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
so I think the biggest thing I was thinking
about this question because, uh,um, earlier, I think the
biggest thing was when I wasteaching english there.
You're in there's rules whereyou have to speak english to the
to the student and, um,sometimes you're speaking with
somebody who can't reallycommunicate in english, but you
still have to use english andkind of get by to them get
(25:47):
through to them with somethingvery basic and you sort of learn
how to sort of build from thatand I think I've used that skill
a lot in communicatingtechnical concepts to
non-technical audiences.
You know, like you're talking toa salesperson about, it's got
to be this, this is how it works, this is what you should demo,
this is what you should avoid.
That kind of stuff.
(26:08):
I think just learning how totalk to different people where
they're at with theirunderstanding, I think is the
biggest thing.
And the English teaching inJapan was a very extreme example
of that, you know.
But there's always times inengineering where we're talking
to somebody we might assume thatthey know some technical detail
(26:31):
, that's you know, natural to us, or like just you know, we're
fully fluent in that detail, butwe might not, might not
remember that Whoever we'retalking to might not be aware of
it, might not be super familiar.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And so learning how to kind of meet people where
they're at, so to speak.
I think that was probably thebiggest thing.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Big shout-outs to you .
That's definitely a gem.
Put a mark there for him.
Very much appreciate that,because this is the part where
you're not always aware of howpast experiences could help
influence your journey thatyou're experiencing now.
But that's why you have to gothrough those journeys and go
through those experiences.
Yeah, and the dots do connect.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
You know I mean I you've told me about your time,
different jobs.
You know things you picked upalong the way I'm sure it's the
same way.
But you know the dots connect.
And when you're 22 or 23 andyou're thinking why am I wasting
my time on this?
You know, yeah you know itmight feel pointless, but you
never know when something'sgoing to come back and be useful
you know when you're like 32,like I am if he's 32, I'm 31.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Come on D you can see just a few grades Maybe 56.
Damn bro, you sound like my sonnow.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Wow, jeez.
Well, big shout-outs toeverybody, 56 and above.
Oh, man, and Patrick and I had aand we're going back to jumping
back into Twitter and tech butPatrick and I had some really
cool time working on some reallycool system software.
And one of the ones that cometo mind and actually I didn't
put here in the notes and I justthought about it is we had a
(27:56):
team that was working onbasically helping us mitigate
some of the challenges we hadwith Puppet basically helping us
mitigate some of the challengeswe had with Puppet, puppet
being a configuration managementthat basically allows you to
consistently configure groups ofmachines with the same
configuration and they came inand they came out with this
really cool way for us to rollout changes and by far one of
(28:17):
the coolest things that I'veever seen in my field,
especially to mitigate thechallenges that we had.
But how did that project comeabout and like?
How did that like in terms ofthe outcome, because I believe
it might have been right when Ileft, when it was just about
done, but in terms of rolloutand all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, yeah.
So what Bobby is talking aboutis a tool called Puppet, which
is this open source thing, andbasically the way to think about
it is you've got a bunch ofmachines and they all need to
have some setting, some memorysetting or some permission or
something.
They all need to be consistent,they all need to work the same
way.
So how are you going to do it?
You're not going to log intoevery machine and manually set
it and change all this stuff youneed a way to do it
(28:56):
automatically across a big groupof machines, and so Puppet lets
you do that.
The problem with Puppet lets youdo that.
The problem with Puppet atTwitter scales.
You have hundreds of thousandsof machines and if you get one
of those settings wrong, thenboom.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
You could wind up with a bad situation.
It wasn't funny for us.
That was a womp, womp, womp.
That can be all of them.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Exactly the laughing, the glory of fixing those
things.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
That's why I put the fixing those things.
Oh, you need a button for sheerpanic yeah, you know, or pager
duty sound.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Oh, there we go, there we go, that's the, that's
the right yeah, yeah yeah, so,um, we came up with a way of
applying, uh, puppet changesincrementally.
So you're gonna, you're gonna,um, make your change to part of
the group of machines that youhave to change and then, if it
works, you move on to the nextone and the next one, and
eventually it's all completelydone, and so it's basically just
(29:54):
a way to mitigate the risk ofsome unwanted change blowing up
everything.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And this is going back about three, four years now
.
So the way I measured thesuccess of that was how many,
how many of those rollouts didwe intervene with and stop
something bad happening?
And I think at one point we hadstopped 27, wow, so, um, so,
yeah, that was good, I mean soyeah, I stopped counting at some
(30:21):
point.
I mean, I moved on yeah, yeah,he's like problem solved well,
the other thing is that theengineers told us that when they
were making changes involvingPuppet previously, they were
really scared and nervous andyou know, trying to test
everything for weeks and weeksand weeks, make sure
everything's perfect.
But then we gave them a safetyrail, a guardrail.
They could move a lot quickerand say, okay, if I roll this
(30:44):
out and it has a problem, I cancatch it and stop it, it's not
going to blow me up.
So you can move a little bitmore aggressively, move a little
bit more with higher velocityit's sort of an unplanned
benefit, but it turns out thatmaking changes safer to do makes
people feel less stress intheir jobs, which is really nice
.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Big shout-outs to that and that whole team, the
whole squad.
It's so great that we had thattype of challenge and that
problem, because that problemspace you don't find it in a lot
of organizations, and also theimpact that it has for a change
in our environment.
Like you said, it was massiveif something went wrong, but
then the side effect of it whichis always the cool thing of the
(31:26):
results of a problem is now theside effect of it is people
felt more safe, and more safemeaning they feel more
innovative and now we caniterate and go faster.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So that was actually a great side effect of that.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, it wasn't the plan.
We were just trying to takecare of the risk.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
But it turns out that fixing the risks and leads to
those other benefits yeah okayfor sure.
Big shout out to the whole team.
Uh, ciss, uh, and I know thatwe had a a few uh off of uh
consultant services helping usout with that.
So big shout out to the wholeteam over there.
Amazing, amazing job, uh.
So by that time I would saythat, uh, it was, it was you're
done with Twitter and then youmoved on.
Did you go through the ElonMusk cabal thingy?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Well, I left because of him.
But I mean Amazon had beencoming after me for a while.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
You see that You're like Amazon was knocking at the
door.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So I do this thing, I do this thing where I shouldn't
say this, but I'll say itanyway.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Don't say it, we don't get you in trouble here.
No, no, no it's okay, mycurrent employer.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I may not want to hear this, but I usually
interview for jobs every April,whether I'm looking or not.
Just to kind of stay sharp.
It's a gem right there, forsure.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
My wife is the same thing.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, go ahead, let me push it then.
So Amazon recruited me and Iwas like I don't really want to
work there, but I want to seewhat the interview is like.
So I went and did the interviewand they made me an offer and I
said, well, that's great, thankyou, but I'm going to decline.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
And so they kept calling me.
It was like your interviewresult is still good.
We can make you, can make you adifferent offer now.
Are you interested now?
And then I kept saying now I'mhappy at twitter.
Thank you, but you know, Iappreciate it, but no yeah and
um, it was about april or may of2022 and elon's rolling in and
uh, amazon calls me and they'relike this is literally the last
(33:19):
day we can use your interviewresults yeah so I was yeah
sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I think the timing is perfect.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah yeah, this will work, and so it turned out to
just be lucky.
I had kind of this escape hatchbuilt in.
I didn't plan it that way.
Okay, it was just to go havethe experience of seeing what
it's like at Amazon, tointerview there, yeah, and it
turned out to really be a goodthing for me during that time,
(33:48):
yeah, I mean I didn't want towork for you on this.
We don't need to get into that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
That guy was bad news.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
I'm just amazed how they still call you after a year
has passed by.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I didn't know they right away either.
I kind of sat on it for a while.
And Google will still hire youif you pass an interview a year
and a half after your interviewif you pass.
And so I got through and Ithink I wound up joining about a
year after the interview.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah, something like that Imagine that yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
So you never know, yeah something like that.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Imagine that.
Yeah, so you never know.
Yeah for sure.
Congratulations on that.
Yeah, so you went from.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Google to Twitter, to Amazon, back to Google.
Yeah, how is it being back atGoogle?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It's different.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Google in 2025 is not the same as Google in 2017,
2018.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Still a great company to work for.
I know, I've seen enough andyou know, having been at Google
and seeing how other things work, it was definitely my choice to
go back to Google, For sure.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Now with limitations on how much you can talk about
it, but what type of projectsare you working on and doing at
Google?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, so I can't go into much detail, but I work in
the Google Payments Org and myspecific role is helping Google
accept and process new forms ofpayment globally.
Oh, that's what's up.
So you know we have Venmo orwhatever in the US and credit
cards and all of that that wehave.
A payment in Japan or Koreamight be different.
(35:25):
It might be a QR code.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Payments in India are different.
Payments in Africa aredifferent.
There's more usage of cash,there's more usage of direct
bank transfers, peer-to-peerpayments, all that kind of stuff
, and they all have differentrisk profiles and different
technical limitations andtechnical advantages.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
So we deal with all that stuff, so it's pretty
interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
That's what's up.
That's what's up.
And you're still in aleadership role over there,
right?
Yeah, oh, that's what's up.
And this is the cool thingabout leadership and reflection
is like well, one question Ihave written down here is what
would make the great mentor ormanager in 2025 and beyond?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
I don't know, I don't know.
I think, at the big techcompanies, management in 2025
has a lot more to do withgetting people through specific
performance processes andperformance milestones and
performance procedures and stuff.
So being really well-versed inhow is performance assessed and
evaluated, and keeping your teamprepared and helping them
(36:29):
understand how they're beinggraded, how they're being judged
, how they're being compared totheir peers.
I think, that's something that'sreally important.
It's difficult too.
Mentoring and management isdifferent.
Anybody can be a mentor.
Management has a lot ofresponsibility that comes with
it that I don't recommend foreverybody.
A lot of people would find itstressful.
I wish I was a better engineer.
(36:50):
You want to be back at thekeyboard, like that, yeah.
There's times when I wouldn'tmind.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
So, being a mentor, I think I don't really like to
consider myself a mentor,because everybody that I try to
like help.
I'm getting something from themtoo.
We talked about Blackbirdsearlier.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
And Bobby feels like I contributed to Blackbirds.
I think that I got way morefrom Blackbirds than I ever gave
.
And mentoring is similar in away.
If I'm mentoring somebody andI'm sort of making my experience
available, they're also tellingme what they're experiencing,
what they're going through, andit's helping me kind of adapt
and be a better leader, be abetter community member,
(37:31):
whatever.
So I think the first thing thatI try to do when I'm trying to
mentor someone is just simplylisten and then make my
experience available to them,whatever it might be in a
relevant way.
Sometimes old man Patrick tellshis stories.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
What are you talking about Old man?
You're 32, bro, when I was yourage, when I was your age, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
We had blackberries, and there you put it on your
belt.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, you know the good old days, right, when you
actually had a keyboard on yourrather than touchscreen.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, yeah, so you know, try to keep it relevant.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, for sure.
And the reason why I bring thisup is because I know that
during your journey you werealso providing services on
LinkedIn for people to reach outto you and have coffee chats.
And for me on the sidelines,seeing that I was so grateful
that people had hadopportunities to speak to you
and schedule those times andreally just knowing the value
(38:26):
that a conversation with you interms of any challenges they
would have, I knew that it wasdefinitely like gold, right.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I hope there's definitely some people that I
definitely feel like I helped.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yeah, big shout-outs to you on that.
So the other thing that I wantto talk about is like what would
you say it would be?
You know messages to risingengineers trying to find their
footing right, especially withthe era of AI.
So I've got to find a way tothrow AI in here.
What messaging would you havefor them?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So you know, on the AI point, I'm not really a big
AI guy, but I started messingwith Google's internal AI and
like writing code and it's, it'sreally good.
Yeah, isn't it?
It's good, yeah, so I thinkthat the trick, though, is that
it's good, because I still kindof know what I'm doing
technically.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
So I know when it makes mistakes, I know what to
look for.
Basically, I understand the keyconcepts.
It's just an accelerant.
So I think still know thefundamentals.
Know what you're looking for.
Know the difference betweendepth-first search and
breadth-first and all the otherstuff.
Know when something ismemory-constrained and
(39:37):
CPU-constrained.
Know all that stuff.
Ai can be a great accelerantbut it's not going to fix kind
of a fundamental gap inknowledge.
That's probably the first thing.
Navigating that that's probablythe one that jumps out at me
the most In terms of justgeneral stuff.
I think one thing I see from alot of earlier career engineers
is that they're a little afraidof asking questions, and it's a
(40:03):
natural thing to like be afraidof how it looks to not know
something, and so I would sayfind a situation where you're
comfortable not knowing.
You know.
Maybe you don't want to putyour hand up at a meeting and
say what does that mean?
Maybe you want to find somebodythat you can ask privately.
You know somebody that you knowis not going to judge you and
not going to, like you know,think any differently of you if
(40:23):
you don't know.
I mean you know, we've been atthis for however many years
there's stuff we don't know,facts we're never going.
So I think that's the key thingis to kind of find a way to
build your network, find somepeople who can guide you through
and get comfortable absorbingall that information.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, for sure.
And one other thing that comesto mind when you were talking
about that is a mentoring skillthat I introduced at Twitter
called the red and blue exercise.
You remember that exercise?
Yeah, that I introduced atTwitter called the Red and Blue
Exercise.
You remember that?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
exercise.
I remember, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
So that exercise and just to fill D-Hustle in the
audience allowed us to basicallyturn the fire alarm on and
basically practice when thesystem fails or different
components of the infrastructuregoes down.
And our main goal was to haveengineers go through that
process so that they know whatit feels like before the real
fire alarm turns on, so that youcan have a safe space to ask
(41:15):
questions and really like feellike, hey, that overwhelming
feeling but also understandingthe team that you have that you
can lean on in those situations.
Because me even me didn't knowall the answers.
And then during those exercisesI even got the chance to kind
(41:36):
of like I used to put myself insituations where I knew the
answer but I just made it seemlike I didn't know the answer.
So I can force that type ofinteraction.
And then after the red and blueexercise, everybody on the team,
confidence you know they'rewalking the next day with a
different posture, right, theyjust feeling more confident.
And that space that we createdis basically being able to uh,
sharpen the engineer's skill setbut also bring to light like,
hey, we're a team, we're here tocommunicate, we're here to
(41:57):
create a safe space that, ifit's 2 o'clock in the morning
and the thing goes down.
Don't be afraid to give me acall, right, yeah, so tell me a
little bit about your view froma management perspective and
value around red and blueexercises.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
Red and blue exercises I love it.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Red and blue.
Red and blue exercise.
I love it.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
I mean, it's just, what you said, I don't have that
much to add to it.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
I think it's about creating the safe space where
it's safe to fail and safe toget things wrong.
Also, in the site reliabilityengineering role, you have to
think about how are things goingto fail and how gracefully can
a system fail.
And injecting failures into asystem and thinking through
things that way is unnatural.
We don't think about failurethat much, but it's inevitable
to happen, especially on thescale of a global tech company.
(42:41):
And so by simulating it,injecting those failures,
testing your processes, testingyour people, testing yourselves,
I think it's one of thosethings everybody should do.
It takes actually a speciallevel of discipline to do that.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
Most places.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Don't do it Google.
When I was at Google in Essarypreviously, Google did that
every February, basically Ah,had these drills.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Wheel of Misfortune, I believe they called it.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Well, there was one that I was thinking of that was
called Dirt Week.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Oh, Dirt Week.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
It was like basically , you would intentionally break
systems and see what wouldhappen and Netflix did this for
years too.
They would have this automatedjob that would go in and
deliberately turn things off,just to make sure that
everything could sustainsomething being down suddenly.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Is that the error message that always comes up,
that it's going to reload likein?
Speaker 3 (43:29):
60 seconds or something like that.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Maybe they don't run it enough.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
That's when they're running their tests.
Right, they're running theirtests.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's like okay, I got it.
I understand, oh man.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
But, those exercises.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
oh my gosh, some great times, though that's what
separates the companies thatreally make it from the ones
that don't.
It's an investment right.
That's time you're taking foryour engineers to not be
shipping, be building forcustomers you know, whatever
else they could be doing.
It's opportunity cost.
But what you get from that isbetter, because if your stuff
(44:00):
isn't available then it'suseless Facts.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Facts, Facts.
If your stuff isn't available,it's useless.
I used to say that same linewith metrics If there ain't no
metrics and data around it it'sbroken.
For sure, for sure.
One other side story, before weget close to wrapping up, uh,
here is is that, uh, one thing Idon't know if the audience
remember me telling y'all and ddefinitely heard this saying is
that these streets are small,like the streets are always
(44:25):
watching.
Uh, I remember I was traveling,um and I'm obviously from
florida, south florida, bigshout outs to south florida and
when my wife and I were going toSan Diego for a conference, um,
and remember I only seenPatrick in person maybe two or
three times by this time, butyou know, I've been video
chatting with you all day andall of a sudden we're in the
airport in San Diego.
We just get off at off the plane.
(44:47):
My wife is wearing a techhustle shirt and I'm over there,
you know, ushering her, tryingto get her to you know where the
Uber is for us to get picked up, and then all of a sudden she
kind of let my hand go and shewas talking to somebody and I
was still moving and I turnaround and I'm like hold on a
second, is that Patrick?
And I was like Patrick Newman,what are you doing in San Diego?
What?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
were you doing there?
I'm at least in California,yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
And I'm all the way from Florida.
I didn't even see you at first.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I saw the Tech Hustle t-shirt and I was going to say,
you know, I know the guy thatstarted that thing.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Oh, look at that, you know I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
It was your wife.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, how about that?
That was such the universe,right there that years ago?
Yeah, for sure, yeah my son wasin eighth grade, I think yeah,
and I believe you you weretraveling with your daughter for
uh going to the museum, or Iwas the zoos my son was on a
trip to the east coast with hisschool.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
They were going to like new york and washington
gotcha, gotcha and so springbreak we had our daughter alone
and, uh, just the three of us,and we said, what do you want to
do?
And she said she wants to go tothe San Diego Zoo and Safari
Park.
So we said, okay.
Speaker 4 (45:56):
Let's make it happen.
Is that a big park?
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Safari Park is like 15,000 acres, so yeah, pretty
big we skipped SeaWorld and weput a little bit more money into
Safari Park because there's allthis other stuff you can do.
You can like go on tours behindthe scenes and stuff.
They've got all the animalstogether.
(46:19):
It's like an african savannah.
Basically, it's pretty cool.
It's.
It's pretty far outside of sandiego.
It's like a good 40, 40, 60minute drive something from the
airport from wherever we werestaying.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
The airport in san diego is right downtown yes,
okay so, um.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
So yeah, the zoo is also right downtown.
The zoo is like right next tothe airport.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
But Safari.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Park is a long drive.
It's not even in San Diego.
It's in San Diego.
Oh okay, but it's a cool placeand she wanted to go there, so
we said yeah sure, and we did.
And then we're going to stop byand see Bobby.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
You know how, when I'm at the airport, you know I'm
just walking like I'm a guy,you know, like yo what up?
You know just what up do you?
Also wait, just wait until theaudience, the crowds are gonna
be like bobby, bobby, you'regonna be, you're gonna be
providing security again.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Go ahead, go ahead the audience.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
No, no no, no no I'm just messing but I tell you that
that right there, uh afterwards, me and my wife jump in the
uber and I was talking, I waslike yo, can you believe?
We just ran into patrick newman.
She was like no way.
And I was like yo, how in theworld did that happen?
Uh, and definitely it was likeone of those moments.
Like man, the universe hasdefinitely put us in the right
position.
Yeah, and I really appreciatethis quick little second that we
(47:27):
had to dap each other up and Igot to meet your wife, you got
to meet my wife.
Definitely, it was definitelyone of those moments.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Yeah, I mean, you were forever the guy from the
airport.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
So, as we're coming close tothe end, one thing that I
definitely want to give you anopportunity to do is any like
last words, some advice for ouraudience members.
Remember, these are individualsthat are either getting into
the tech have you know, thinkabout transition or they're just
about to graduate college.
And AI is this big topic thateverybody's you know, a little
(48:00):
bit hesitant and afraid of.
But just some words of adviceand wisdom for our audience.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
I just say stick with it.
Have a goal, stick with it.
There's going to be ups anddowns.
You know there were ups anddowns for me.
I'm sure for you too.
Thanks, darwin.
You know ups and downs for allof us, it's just part of life.
And you know, now the big thingis AI, but you know, 25 years
ago it was this thing called theInternet.
You know, that was we rememberwhen that was new.
(48:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Then it was iPhones, and whatelse.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, yeah, iphones and what else there's always
going to be something.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Cloud computing Remember when AWS was new, so
disruptive, you know peoplecoming up now.
Yeah, free CDs in the mailRight.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Now you're showing your age.
I am yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
So there's always going to be new things to adapt
to.
You've got to kind of stayagile.
You've got to keep learning.
You can't stay static in thisindustry.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
That's what's up.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
So I would just say, stick with it.
Have a goal, stick with it.
If coding isn't working for you, maybe SRE will, maybe product
management will, maybe saleswill.
Having a core set of technicalskills that you can apply to
those other areas will work.
And remember, those dotsconnect right.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, those dots connect, no matter how far along
they go.
It'll be like oh I rememberyeah, those dots connect.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
It'll come back.
Dots will connect, for sure.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Well, d cue up the music, patrick.
Let me tell you.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Thank you so much for pulling up man.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Thanks for having me.
It was such a greatconversation.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
D H D-Hustle always in the cut holding it down.
He's doing like two or threejobs for us right now.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Y'all can't really see it.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
The utility guy, right, but I want to say first
of all thank you all for tuningin.
This is my guy, patrick Newman,dropping Gems.
Give them that sound again whatthey should be listening for.
So if y'all hear this sound,make sure y'all rewind to that
spot, because Patrick wasDropping Gems.
As you know, I'm out on thesestreets traveling the country,
speaking to peers of mine thatI've had a pleasure of working
with, interacting with, being onthe internet with for a few
(49:57):
years and then finally run intoyou in person.
Right, the streets are alwayswatching, but, as I always
mention to you all, thank youall so much for tuning in.
Holla at your boy.
It's Bobby D.
If you were a Twitter user, you never would have seen
anything that we did Basicallythink about like a car, like the
bottom of the car, theunderneath the car.
It holds everything up, but youdon't see it.
I'm not really a big AI guy,but I started messing with
Google's internal AI on likewriting code, and it's really
good.
I think that the trick, though,is that it's good because I
(00:24):
still kind of know what I'mdoing technically.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
So I know when it makes mistakes, I know what to
look for.
Basically I understand the keyconcepts.
It's just an accelerant.
So I think still know thefundamentals, know what you're
looking for, know the differencebetween depth-first search and
breadth-first and all the otherstuff.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Know when something is memory-constrained and
CPU-constrained, know all thatstuff.
Ai can be a great accelerant,but it's not going to fix kind
of a fundamental gap inknowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Welcome welcome, welcome.
What up D-Hustle hustle.
What is going on today?
Yo guess where we at player?
I don't know, but the weather'sreal great.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
You love this weather , bro, every time we come out to
the city, you always be talkingabout the weather top of mind.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, tell them where we at we'll be in san francisco
two times.
This is the second time.
Second season, san freakingCisco, there we go.
That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, but also we got to see the Giants last night
too.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yes, we did Shout out .
Was it the Giants?
Or you saw the Mets Shout outto the Mets Doing great things
out there.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Juan Soto was a bust, yeah, yeah, but Francisco, you
know he's the one that knockedit out of the park right knocked
out the home run.
Yes, I know you do.
I can't wait this, this guy, heloves, loves baseball patrick
loves baseball too.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta catch agame together, for sure, for
sure we got a really beautifulview of, uh, the ferry building
down downtown san francisco offthe market.
(01:57):
Um, I want to say welcome youall to another episode of
backstage with bobby.
I got a special guest for uswho?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
we got, who we got.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
And let me tell you, when you work in the industry
and you get a chance to workwith or for somebody like
Patrick Newman, our guest, Sayit again, say his name again.
They're automatically invitedto the podcast when we pull up,
so let's have a big round ofapplause for Patrick Newman.
What's going?
Speaker 4 (02:20):
on Patrick.
Thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh for sure, man.
Patrick, thank you so much forpulling up Just a little bit in
there.
But Patrick and I and I'm goingto drop it for everybody to
know used to work together atthis really cool social media
company.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Darwin loves it.
I did this one.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
It's the one that used to be the little blue bird.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
You ever heard of that one before?
No't you never heard it beforecome on, bro.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So yes, patrick, you don't know, what you missed.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, exactly right uh, patrick and I worked at
twitter for a number of years,um, and let me tell you, out of
all the managers I've ever had achance to work for or work with
, um, you're definitely a onethat, um, I really, really
appreciate what you've done forme and supporting endeavors and
things that we've done overthere.
That's even a gem right theretoo, For sure man and definitely
(03:06):
want to give you an opportunityto introduce yourself.
But definitely wanted to firstof all give you some roses and
let you know we reallyappreciate you pulling up and,
for over the years, support meon all these endeavors.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, thanks for having me Give us a quick
introduction, bobby.
I'm a software engineeringmanager in the tech industry in
the Bay Area for about 20 years.
Yeah, yeah, I had the goodfortune to work at some great
companies Google, twitter,amazon.
I've worked with some greatpeople like Bobby.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, yeah, I'm on that list.
You see, you see D.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I was waiting for him .
If I had a podcast, you'd bethe first guest.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Ah round of applause.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Just want to give you guys a heads up.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
ladies and gentlemen, I am not paying Patrick to see
none of this good stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Every time you probably said you were yeah, you
know.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Okay, that's after the show.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
After the show but, patrick, thank you so much for
pulling up and, yeah, you'vebeen in the industry for 20 plus
years um running at working atsome of the most well-known,
notable companies, um in ourindustry, um, and one of the
things that I just want to, youknow, kick it off with is how
did you get into tech?
How did tech end up being, uh,the place you landed?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
it's a long story oh let's go um.
I or maybe it's a short story Imoved to san francisco on new
year's day in 2004 and I justkind of hustled until I found a
job.
My first job in the Bay Area wasat the Japanese government
building websites and stuff, anddid that for like a year and a
half and kind of got tired of itand wound up in a startup and
(04:37):
just kind of ran with it.
I was at that startup for eightyears and started in a very
junior position and then kind ofworked my way up and got all
the way to senior director andthen move on to another startup
and then they laid me offbecause that's how it goes
sometimes yeah, wound up atgoogle and you know, sometimes
life throws you a curveball andyou hit it.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Listen how he just said it.
I just wound it up at google, Ijust ended up like I don't even
know, I just they.
They start signing and writingme checks.
I just ended up there, butGoogle was one of your first
what would you say big techcompany that you worked at?
Google was the first big one.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And so that startup that I worked at from 2006 to
2015 had a lot of people comeand go.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Like lots and a lot of really great people and they
wound up all over the place.
A lot of them wound up atGoogle.
So I kind of wound up, justlike by doing a good job and
having a good reputation withthat yeah that company, kind of
having this big network.
Yeah, and when, when the secondstartup that I was at kind of
started to go sideways, I kindof worked in the network and
kind of you know, put outfeelers here and there and
(05:39):
Google is the first one to hitand I knew several people there,
so they all gave merecommendations.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
So that's what's up.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
You know, um, it's always, it's always good advice
to kind of keep the networkgoing.
You know, keep in touch withpeople, let them know how you
feel, help them out that kind ofstuff.
It paid off for me for sure,roger, that shout out to patrick
keeping up the hustle and let'sgive him a gym sound too.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Uh, for those that subscribe and follow along,
y'all know about the gym sound.
If you hear that sound, thatmeans rewind to that spot,
because there was a gym that'sdropped.
Um, and I heard patrick talkabout how valuable the network
is, because your network is howyou get access to opportunities,
referrals and ultimately, youknow, landing really cool
opportunities those people thatknow you and they know what's
going on at their company andthey know what you can do and
(06:20):
they can line it up basicallyyeah, yeah, and you know here,
you and I work together.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What starting in 2019 , I think.
Yeah, yeah, here it is 2025 andyou know we're here on a
podcast.
Facts facts you know, it'skeeping in touch, building
relationships, and you know seewhere it goes.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah for sure, and I appreciate the insights that you
give into our audience, becauseour audience is definitely
either rising seniors about toget into the industry,
transitioning into the industry,and one thing I always like to
emphasize with my mentees is thevalue of having a network and
connecting and maintaining thoserelationships over the years.
Because I mean, patrick, thankyou so much for being you right,
(07:00):
thank you.
So, after Google, where did youend up after that?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So I went to Twitter.
Twitter was the next stop afterGoogle in 2019.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Oh, that's what's up.
And then you ran into Bobby Dand yes, so, ah, come on, I was
waiting for him.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
I was waiting for him you haven't even received the
money yet, Patrick.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Tell us the truth.
By that time we, in terms ofjust organizational-wise SRE,
was the pillar and, likepractice that you more or less
was providing managementservices to, were you also doing
SRE at Google?
Yeah, oh okay, awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And I think that led directly to the opportunity at
Twitter.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Google kind of is the benchmark for SRE site
reliability engineering.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You know, it's a little bit different at every
different company, and Twittersand Googles are similar, or were
?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, they were.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, so it was a really good fit and it kind of
carried directly over.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
That's what's up.
And this is the cool part ofthe story for me is when Patrick
got to Twitter.
During that time I was actuallytransitioning from like a
systems engineering role intosite reliability engineering,
but also kind of shutting down ateam, because we used to manage
a fleet management.
Fleet management was one ofthose organizations that manage
(08:14):
computers, going into the datacenter and kind of managing the
full life cycle of bare metalmachines and then obviously
developing and designingsoftware around that.
But the cool thing that Patrickactually got access to is to
manage the core infrastructureteam.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat team.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Core infrastructure.
So if you were a Twitter user,you never would have seen
anything that we did Basicallythink about like a car, like the
bottom of the car, theunderneath the car.
It holds everything up but youdon't see it.
If it breaks you certainlynotice, but if everything's
working perfectly, you nevernotice.
(08:51):
And that was kind of like whatcore infrastructure was.
It was configuration forsystems, it was addressing, it
was DNS, it was access tomachines, it was identity for
very low level, very basic levelmachine access, that sort of
stuff yeah um, there were, likeI think, 30, 35 different
services that we, that we workedon yeah, and and like you said,
(09:12):
these are, these are coreservices, like uh, failure on
them.
Services everybody else seesyeah, it's just like under the
car.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Global twitter is down globally.
Yeah, because of my stuff yeahyeah, once or twice.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But hey, we all live and learn in the process.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
It's a different vibe when, like you, wake up and
something you did is in the newsoh, it's like it's different
exactly.
Bobby knows what it's like, ohfor sure actually, uh, I don't
know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Sidebar that I told you I'm working on a book, uh,
called breaking barriers myjourney to the top in tech, and
one of the chapters in the bookis called my Journey to the Top.
I'm sorry the world knows me,but y'all don't know me yet,
meaning that there was a timewhen Twitter went down, but
nobody knows that.
I was a part of the team thatwas supporting and bringing it
back up and definitely have hadthe opportunity to experience
(09:58):
that firefighting, but alsobeing in the news, yeah.
I feel so real Right in the news, right, because that that's
used to be the thing I used totell a lot of mentees of mine is
like, hey, um, your, yourresponsibility is, uh, to make
sure that what we're doing,we're trying our best not to
bring this thing down becausethe world's going to know about
it.
Like a one line configurationcan bring this whole thing down
(10:18):
and it's happened to us.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's what's up out of the news.
Yeah, for sure, that was a goodday for us.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, and the cool thing about my journey with
Patrick is that this is the timethat I was also transitioning
out of the core infrastructureteam, moving to more of a
platform SRE, managing thecompute platform, and I wanted
to say, first of all, thank youso much for supporting me and
paving the way for that, becauseyou didn't know all of the
challenges I had getting towhere that point was.
(10:45):
But then Patrick recognizedgame, you know, he understood
right, the skill set, what Ibrought to the table and the
opportunity and he definitelyopened doors for me.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So Dee's going to get mad at me and say you know that
Bobby didn't pay for this.
But I really don't say things Idon't mean.
And I first noticed Bobby likeprobably three weeks after I
joined in one of these incidentcalls and just noticed the
insight and just picked up onthe ability right away.
So it was very, very clear tome.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah yeah, you know, I don't shy from it.
The same way that I am now isthe same way that I was at work,
right?
Is that mindset or, more orless, the environment that was
created for me to be myself andsomething I always talk about.
What was so special aboutTwitter, I mean, when you said
it's not the same, it's thatculture, it's that dynamic and
or the space that was given to,you know, underrepresented
(11:33):
individuals like myself toreally excel and really step
into our abilities, because thiswas, for me, the major leagues.
Right, I'm not just playingaround, but I'm really, really
you know, making impact into theworld.
So, uh, definitely appreciateyou recognizing and seeing it
and supporting me well, youearned it, you know, you can say
thank you, but you earned ityeah, I appreciate it.
And then patrick's the one thathelped, uh, you know, usher me
(11:55):
into promotion cycles too.
So a big shout out to youcongratulations.
You know, when you get promotedyou get that bread too.
So you know he's helping outthe family, you know
generational.
So I never, never, had a chanceto say this face to face, and I
definitely have, but in in thistype of setting.
Thank you so much forsupporting me on that.
Um, it was definitely, uh,something that was impactful to
my journey, because anotherthing patrick remind me is that,
(12:17):
even when I used to send outlike company-wide emails, I
always used to send outdifferent types of emails, right
, I used to always have somemusic playing or a theme song
behind it, and when I gotpromoted, I actually had a video
that I sent out to the wholecompany.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
What kind of video was this?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It was like this Exactly right.
It had some music and Bobby wasvery gracious.
You know you earned yourpromotion.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I worked on a document and I went to the
committee and I did all thatstuff and your skip level helped
too.
It wasn't just me and therewere like 16 people who
supported on the feedbacksection, so you had broad
support.
Yeah, it was a very easy thingto do, yeah, he was like it's
Pat Bagg.
Usher him in, bring him in.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
But for me, that promotion really just opened up
the opportunity for me toinfluence the organization even
broader, right?
Because it's like, especiallyat that tables that we sat at,
sometimes you don't really getaccess unless you have a certain
title or you're considered ateam lead or really bring that
value, and I was really missingout on those conversations.
But as soon as that promotioncame and Patrick is like, hey,
(13:22):
y'all need to talk to Bobby,bobby needs to be in here,
that's when it was like, yeah,it was like, uh, you know
stamping where, where I was atmy, my journey, and I really
appreciate that for sure, yeah,well, you earned it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Thank you so much another.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
The cool thing about Patrick, especially at Twitter,
is that, uh, patrick really didwholeheartedly support, you know
, underrepresented communitiesand ERGs and being one of, in my
opinion, the forward thinkingleadership or being a part of
leadership and embracing andbeing an ally for our ERG called
Blackbirds.
So tell me a little bit aboutBlackbirds and more or less like
(13:57):
what was kind of like yourfirst impression and what really
helped drive you to make yourcontribution Blackbirds.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, Blackbirds is an amazing community.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I think I told you this story.
I don't know how much time wewant to spend.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So it was my last day at Google and I was having
lunch with an African-Americanfriend literally
Nigerian-American friend.
Yeah, so a black friend and wewere talking about inclusion and
diversity and you know thesetypes of topics and Google had
like names of rooms, likePac-Man and Super Mario Brothers
, and I'm like, does everybodyget it?
(14:30):
Like does that work foreverybody.
And so this friend was tellingme about, you know, the black
experience at Google, whichwasn't always positive.
And so I remember driving homeand thinking, okay, I wasn't
aware of this, like I didn'tknow, it was just something that
wasn't on my radar.
And so I thought, okay, what canI do better at the next stop,
at Twitter?
(14:51):
You know how can I involvemyself?
And so I thought, okay, he toldme there's an ERG at Google for
black people and for the blackcommunity, and I'm sure Twitter
will have one too too.
So I'll just join and startfrom there.
And so I got to twitter and onthe very first day, like within
the first two hours oforientation, they tell you about
ergs yeah yeah, and they put itall up in a slide and I'm
(15:13):
saying it like they still dothis, you know, um, so, uh.
So blackbirds is on there.
I was like, okay, perfect, I'mgonna join that one.
So I signed up for the emaillist and I was all like ready to
go.
I was like I'm gonna likeintroduce myself and I'm gonna
be part of this.
And then I saw all these emailslike michael jordan and whitney
houston and all this stuff and Ithought I'm gonna stop I'm just
(15:33):
gonna wait for a while and I'mjust gonna read these emails and
I'm gonna like see what peopleare talking about, I'm gonna see
, like, where I fit in beforejust jumping in with both feet.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
And so I didn't really want to like interrupt or
like or like disrupt and Iwanted to learn about the
community.
It wasn't really till I got toknow you well that I felt
comfortable, kind of saying youknow, I'm here to engage and
learn with this community andkind of be part of it in my own
way.
Yeah, and it kind of went fromthere.
So I think it was probably agood.
(16:03):
I don't know, maybe a yearafter I joined that I kind of
had the guts to ask you likeBobby, how do I step in here?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And then I remember you introduced me to Babatunde
and we had a thing going withhim for a while and a couple of
others and I don't think I didmuch.
I just showed up and listenedmostly and you know I gave some
people some advice from amanagement perspective about
handling certain situations,stuff like that.
(16:31):
Mostly I just learned a lot.
I mean, sounds weird to say Idon't think I contributed much.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think I got much more out of it myself than I
contributed back yeah um.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So yeah, it was um.
And you know I'll say I've beenat other companies since
leaving Twitter.
I've never seen any energyquite like the Blackbirds
community the way it was atTwitter.
For sure it was just so vibrant.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And valuable too.
I remember Nick Caldwell comingin and giving some talks to
Blackbird and it was thisBlackbirds, and it was stuff
that I wasn't hearing otherexecutives do.
Yeah, it was just very uniqueand very special.
So, yeah, I'm glad we got toexperience it.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I wish it was still there, so yeah for sure, and
give patrick a round of applause, because I think, uh, from an
ally's uh perspective, sometime,it is uh challenging to to find
the right groove to slide intoin terms of, you know, providing
support.
Um, and, and I will say uh,especially when we had that
conversation, I was like, ohsnap, patrick wants to chill
with us.
Huh, what's going on, patrick?
(17:24):
And then Patrick's like hey,this, that and this, you told me
that story and I was like, oh,patrick got some beautiful
spirit and I was like you knowwhat, just hang out, pull up and
I'll introduce you to the crew.
And then, obviously, we foundwhere you would provide the most
support, and definitely havinga resource or having an ally
that sits at a different table,especially on the management
(17:46):
side from the ERG's perspective,was so valuable to us, because
we started off in terms of justengineering, with only a handful
of black engineers, and by thetime you got there, we were like
the door was open, right, buteven with the door was open,
it's like we didn't have areception team, right, because
there was only five of us.
So we definitely needed supportfrom other allies and other
(18:07):
ergs and and at twitter to toreally help us create a space
that allowed for development andgrowth, but also a space to ask
questions, because we justnever really have had that
opportunity to make those typeof connections.
So, uh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Um, and definitely uh thank you because, like I don't
think I would have feltcomfortable stepping in in that
way without your guidance, so Igot you.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
You know it goes both ways yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like
, I'm like a tour guide.
Yeah, what'd you say?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
shout out to who shout out to to uh my name
patrick and uh palatunde, ohokay, I thought you were
shouting me out, bro shout outto my man, patrick yeah, yeah,
no big shout out to baba tundaybaba tunday was a guest here.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I watched that one.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, he's a true gentleman, oh my gosh tunday is
a brilliant, brilliant engineerand he was one of the first uh
um black uh interns that webrought in um and he, he just
helped us redefine what itlooked like, uh, to come out of
school, have this wholechallenge of meeting the bar,
and he exceeds the bar everytime.
So big shout-outs to Babitu.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
You had Meryl on too, and she was involved with that
as well, so let's not forgetMeryl, yeah big shout-outs to
Meryl, a little bit Shout-outs,a little bit.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Had a chance to come on the podcast too.
But yeah, in general,blackbirds, ergs and I know it's
kind of like a tough subject inthe time that we're living with
DEI has really just, in myopinion, given access and
opportunities for everybody tocontribute and see the value of
it, especially with diverseperspective.
That's one question I have.
(19:39):
So how did it feel to well, Idon't know how I feel to be a
manager of me, because I'm alittle bit much to carry too,
even though I do come with goodspirit but how did it feel to
have like that different type ofperspective in conversations?
Um, during our time workingtogether?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
you mean like, uh, from a dei perspective, or I
don't know um he treated likethe red team and the blue team,
huh it was somebody from beatswho had reached out for help
with a management situation.
Like it was an engineer who washaving some trouble with with
their manager and I rememberlike just not knowing quite how
(20:17):
to navigate it.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
You want to be supportive but then I don't know
the other side of theconversation, like I don't know.
I know how how that person wasperceiving the situation they
were in, but I didn't know theother side of it.
So you have to provide guidancethat's supportive, but not kind
of over-promising and takingeverything into account.
So, it can be a little trickywhen you don't have all the
information, when you're notdirectly involved.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
You know it's good because you're neutral and
you're unbiased in a way, butit's also, it's also tricky
because you don't want to kindof be, you know, over promising
or saying no, you're, you knowyou're being treated unfairly.
Maybe they were, maybe theyweren't.
They perceived a situation andthey were dealing with a
situation.
That was difficult, for sure.
Yeah, Um, so, you know, beingsupportive and being reasonable,
(21:03):
without sort of likeover-indexing on what you think
the situation might be, I don'tknow if that answers the
question.
No, no, I definitely know it canbe tricky, but I think in the
end, the key thing is likeletting people know that you're
there for them.
You're listening, someone doescare and someone will make their
best effort to help.
I think that's always the beststarting point.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
For sure, 100%.
Thank you so much for thatbecause I definitely felt like
you cared and you know what?
The other thing about Patrickand I is that this was almost
low key.
I was already working remotelyor I started working remotely
and COVID kind of hit and it waslike almost I was reporting to
Patrick.
I never met him in person, Inever met him face to face until
(21:42):
I actually came to the officeand it was like one of my trips
and I think I had already beencycled out to another manager or
something happened.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, I managed Bobby for about a year.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And I was managing two teams for a while.
For sure I was managing Bobby'steam for like on an interim
basis for a while.
And then I think, yeah, I thinkthe first time you visited the
office was after that, like theinterim period was over and the
permanent manager For sure, forsure.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I think that was right.
And I was like yo, that'sPatrick.
And I was like, oh, and in mymind I'm like yo, I've been
talking to you through thiscomputer for a year and a half
and I'm like this is what beingin person.
You don't know how tall peopleare, you know?
And I didn't have the same hairat that time I was shorter.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
It was a lot shorter.
Your height has increased.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, exactly right, it's just the hair Patrick.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I got shorter.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
That's funny, that's funny.
So another cool thing that Ilearned about Patrick and we
were talking about this actuallybefore we even got the show
started was about your time inJapan.
So last time we tried to pullup and have a conversation with
Patrick when we met up withTunde and Miro, but you were out
of the country.
But I mean, in terms ofstory-wise, you lived in Japan
(22:51):
for a while.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So I was a student in Japan for a semester and I had
a good time there.
So I went back and lived thereas an English teacher for two
years.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, shout out to that.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, it wasn't a very good job, but it was a
great experience.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
That's what's up.
Did you learn how to speak thelanguage?
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I mean, he worked for the Japanese consulate.
Man, he was the guy right Stopthe press.
And then also you got intoblogging and sports.
Baseball is obviously the bigsport over there, so tell us a
little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah.
So you know, going way back, Iwanted to be a writer.
That was my dream and my wifewhen she sees this, will laugh
at me because you know, it's oneof those things.
So I wanted to be a writer andI've always been a huge baseball
fan and I can speak and readJapanese.
And then, around 2007, 2008, Inoticed there was a lot of media
(23:43):
about Japanese players.
Around 2007, 2008, I noticedthere was a lot of media about
Japanese players.
Most of it was wrong and so Ithought, okay, I know these
things, I've seen these guys, Iknow who they are, I can just
start a blog and tell people.
And, to my surprise, it reallytook off.
I think my biggest day I had45,000 page views.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Oh, big shout-outs to you.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, and I've done over 100 newspaper and magazine
interviews and, I think, 25radio interviews.
Yeah, and one TV.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Oh, that's what's up.
So yeah, just totally took off.
We're sitting next to a star Ifwe go to Japan they're going to
know him more than they know me.
That's fine, that's fine, I'lltake that.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I'm retired now.
I'm retired.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Now, he was retired this was like 2008 to 2012.
This was a long time ago.
You put another blog out therein the whole yard.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, well, we'll see .
Play that laughing sound therehe goes, that's funny, that's
funny.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh man.
But you know what the coolthing about this part of
Patrick's journey is that a lotof people feel like, especially
in tech, that tech is the onlything that you expose yourself
to, or you may only pursue interms of pathway.
But there's other things thatyou can do on your journey that
will obviously help you in thelong run.
But allow those things tohappen, like what we're doing
(24:59):
right now, podcasting around thecountry, right, and Patrick you
know being, you know a sportswriter in Japan, which is wild.
You know, I didn't even knowthat.
And then I went to his page, Iwas looking it up and I was like
wow, my guy was out hereholding it down and we didn't
even know.
But in general, that thatopenness or that experience
definitely helped influence.
(25:20):
So how did that experience helpinfluence your journey in tech?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
so I think the biggest thing I was thinking
about this question because, uh,um, earlier, I think the
biggest thing was when I wasteaching english there.
You're in there's rules whereyou have to speak english to the
to the student and, um,sometimes you're speaking with
somebody who can't reallycommunicate in english, but you
still have to use english andkind of get by to them get
(25:47):
through to them with somethingvery basic and you sort of learn
how to sort of build from thatand I think I've used that skill
a lot in communicatingtechnical concepts to
non-technical audiences.
You know, like you're talking toa salesperson about, it's got
to be this, this is how it works, this is what you should demo,
this is what you should avoid.
That kind of stuff.
(26:08):
I think just learning how totalk to different people where
they're at with theirunderstanding, I think is the
biggest thing.
And the English teaching inJapan was a very extreme example
of that, you know.
But there's always times inengineering where we're talking
to somebody we might assume thatthey know some technical detail
(26:31):
, that's you know, natural to us, or like just you know, we're
fully fluent in that detail, butwe might not, might not
remember that Whoever we'retalking to might not be aware of
it, might not be super familiar.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And so learning how to kind of meet people where
they're at, so to speak.
I think that was probably thebiggest thing.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Big shout-outs to you .
That's definitely a gem.
Put a mark there for him.
Very much appreciate that,because this is the part where
you're not always aware of howpast experiences could help
influence your journey thatyou're experiencing now.
But that's why you have to gothrough those journeys and go
through those experiences.
Yeah, and the dots do connect.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
You know I mean I you've told me about your time,
different jobs.
You know things you picked upalong the way I'm sure it's the
same way.
But you know the dots connect.
And when you're 22 or 23 andyou're thinking why am I wasting
my time on this?
You know, yeah you know itmight feel pointless, but you
never know when something'sgoing to come back and be useful
you know when you're like 32,like I am if he's 32, I'm 31.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Come on D you can see just a few grades Maybe 56.
Damn bro, you sound like my sonnow.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Wow, jeez.
Well, big shout-outs toeverybody, 56 and above.
Oh, man, and Patrick and I had aand we're going back to jumping
back into Twitter and tech butPatrick and I had some really
cool time working on some reallycool system software.
And one of the ones that cometo mind and actually I didn't
put here in the notes and I justthought about it is we had a
(27:56):
team that was working onbasically helping us mitigate
some of the challenges we hadwith Puppet basically helping us
mitigate some of the challengeswe had with Puppet, puppet
being a configuration managementthat basically allows you to
consistently configure groups ofmachines with the same
configuration and they came inand they came out with this
really cool way for us to rollout changes and by far one of
(28:17):
the coolest things that I'veever seen in my field,
especially to mitigate thechallenges that we had.
But how did that project comeabout and like?
How did that like in terms ofthe outcome, because I believe
it might have been right when Ileft, when it was just about
done, but in terms of rolloutand all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, yeah.
So what Bobby is talking aboutis a tool called Puppet, which
is this open source thing, andbasically the way to think about
it is you've got a bunch ofmachines and they all need to
have some setting, some memorysetting or some permission or
something.
They all need to be consistent,they all need to work the same
way.
So how are you going to do it?
You're not going to log intoevery machine and manually set
it and change all this stuff youneed a way to do it
(28:56):
automatically across a big groupof machines, and so Puppet lets
you do that.
The problem with Puppet lets youdo that.
The problem with Puppet atTwitter scales.
You have hundreds of thousandsof machines and if you get one
of those settings wrong, thenboom.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
You could wind up with a bad situation.
It wasn't funny for us.
That was a womp, womp, womp.
That can be all of them.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Exactly the laughing, the glory of fixing those
things.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
That's why I put the fixing those things.
Oh, you need a button for sheerpanic yeah, you know, or pager
duty sound.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Oh, there we go, there we go, that's the, that's
the right yeah, yeah yeah, so,um, we came up with a way of
applying, uh, puppet changesincrementally.
So you're gonna, you're gonna,um, make your change to part of
the group of machines that youhave to change and then, if it
works, you move on to the nextone and the next one, and
eventually it's all completelydone, and so it's basically just
(29:54):
a way to mitigate the risk ofsome unwanted change blowing up
everything.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And this is going back about three, four years now
.
So the way I measured thesuccess of that was how many,
how many of those rollouts didwe intervene with and stop
something bad happening?
And I think at one point we hadstopped 27, wow, so, um, so,
yeah, that was good, I mean soyeah, I stopped counting at some
(30:21):
point.
I mean, I moved on yeah, yeah,he's like problem solved well,
the other thing is that theengineers told us that when they
were making changes involvingPuppet previously, they were
really scared and nervous andyou know, trying to test
everything for weeks and weeksand weeks, make sure
everything's perfect.
But then we gave them a safetyrail, a guardrail.
They could move a lot quickerand say, okay, if I roll this
(30:44):
out and it has a problem, I cancatch it and stop it, it's not
going to blow me up.
So you can move a little bitmore aggressively, move a little
bit more with higher velocityit's sort of an unplanned
benefit, but it turns out thatmaking changes safer to do makes
people feel less stress intheir jobs, which is really nice
.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Big shout-outs to that and that whole team, the
whole squad.
It's so great that we had thattype of challenge and that
problem, because that problemspace you don't find it in a lot
of organizations, and also theimpact that it has for a change
in our environment.
Like you said, it was massiveif something went wrong, but
then the side effect of it whichis always the cool thing of the
(31:26):
results of a problem is now theside effect of it is people
felt more safe, and more safemeaning they feel more
innovative and now we caniterate and go faster.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So that was actually a great side effect of that.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, it wasn't the plan.
We were just trying to takecare of the risk.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
But it turns out that fixing the risks and leads to
those other benefits yeah okayfor sure.
Big shout out to the whole team.
Uh, ciss, uh, and I know thatwe had a a few uh off of uh
consultant services helping usout with that.
So big shout out to the wholeteam over there.
Amazing, amazing job, uh.
So by that time I would saythat, uh, it was, it was you're
done with Twitter and then youmoved on.
Did you go through the ElonMusk cabal thingy?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Well, I left because of him.
But I mean Amazon had beencoming after me for a while.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
You see that You're like Amazon was knocking at the
door.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So I do this thing, I do this thing where I shouldn't
say this, but I'll say itanyway.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Don't say it, we don't get you in trouble here.
No, no, no it's okay, mycurrent employer.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I may not want to hear this, but I usually
interview for jobs every April,whether I'm looking or not.
Just to kind of stay sharp.
It's a gem right there, forsure.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
My wife is the same thing.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, go ahead, let me push it then.
So Amazon recruited me and Iwas like I don't really want to
work there, but I want to seewhat the interview is like.
So I went and did the interviewand they made me an offer and I
said, well, that's great, thankyou, but I'm going to decline.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
And so they kept calling me.
It was like your interviewresult is still good.
We can make you, can make you adifferent offer now.
Are you interested now?
And then I kept saying now I'mhappy at twitter.
Thank you, but you know, Iappreciate it, but no yeah and
um, it was about april or may of2022 and elon's rolling in and
uh, amazon calls me and they'relike this is literally the last
(33:19):
day we can use your interviewresults yeah so I was yeah
sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I think the timing is perfect.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah yeah, this will work, and so it turned out to
just be lucky.
I had kind of this escape hatchbuilt in.
I didn't plan it that way.
Okay, it was just to go havethe experience of seeing what
it's like at Amazon, tointerview there, yeah, and it
turned out to really be a goodthing for me during that time,
(33:48):
yeah, I mean I didn't want towork for you on this.
We don't need to get into that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
That guy was bad news.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
I'm just amazed how they still call you after a year
has passed by.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I didn't know they right away either.
I kind of sat on it for a while.
And Google will still hire youif you pass an interview a year
and a half after your interviewif you pass.
And so I got through and Ithink I wound up joining about a
year after the interview.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah, something like that Imagine that yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
So you never know, yeah something like that.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Imagine that.
Yeah, so you never know.
Yeah for sure.
Congratulations on that.
Yeah, so you went from.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Google to Twitter, to Amazon, back to Google.
Yeah, how is it being back atGoogle?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It's different.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Google in 2025 is not the same as Google in 2017,
2018.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Still a great company to work for.
I know, I've seen enough andyou know, having been at Google
and seeing how other things work, it was definitely my choice to
go back to Google, For sure.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Now with limitations on how much you can talk about
it, but what type of projectsare you working on and doing at
Google?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, so I can't go into much detail, but I work in
the Google Payments Org and myspecific role is helping Google
accept and process new forms ofpayment globally.
Oh, that's what's up.
So you know we have Venmo orwhatever in the US and credit
cards and all of that that wehave.
A payment in Japan or Koreamight be different.
(35:25):
It might be a QR code.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Payments in India are different.
Payments in Africa aredifferent.
There's more usage of cash,there's more usage of direct
bank transfers, peer-to-peerpayments, all that kind of stuff
, and they all have differentrisk profiles and different
technical limitations andtechnical advantages.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
So we deal with all that stuff, so it's pretty
interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
That's what's up.
That's what's up.
And you're still in aleadership role over there,
right?
Yeah, oh, that's what's up.
And this is the cool thingabout leadership and reflection
is like well, one question Ihave written down here is what
would make the great mentor ormanager in 2025 and beyond?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
I don't know, I don't know.
I think, at the big techcompanies, management in 2025
has a lot more to do withgetting people through specific
performance processes andperformance milestones and
performance procedures and stuff.
So being really well-versed inhow is performance assessed and
evaluated, and keeping your teamprepared and helping them
(36:29):
understand how they're beinggraded, how they're being judged
, how they're being compared totheir peers.
I think, that's something that'sreally important.
It's difficult too.
Mentoring and management isdifferent.
Anybody can be a mentor.
Management has a lot ofresponsibility that comes with
it that I don't recommend foreverybody.
A lot of people would find itstressful.
I wish I was a better engineer.
(36:50):
You want to be back at thekeyboard, like that, yeah.
There's times when I wouldn'tmind.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
So, being a mentor, I think I don't really like to
consider myself a mentor,because everybody that I try to
like help.
I'm getting something from themtoo.
We talked about Blackbirdsearlier.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
And Bobby feels like I contributed to Blackbirds.
I think that I got way morefrom Blackbirds than I ever gave
.
And mentoring is similar in away.
If I'm mentoring somebody andI'm sort of making my experience
available, they're also tellingme what they're experiencing,
what they're going through, andit's helping me kind of adapt
and be a better leader, be abetter community member,
(37:31):
whatever.
So I think the first thing thatI try to do when I'm trying to
mentor someone is just simplylisten and then make my
experience available to them,whatever it might be in a
relevant way.
Sometimes old man Patrick tellshis stories.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
What are you talking about Old man?
You're 32, bro, when I was yourage, when I was your age, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
We had blackberries, and there you put it on your
belt.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, you know the good old days, right, when you
actually had a keyboard on yourrather than touchscreen.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, yeah, so you know, try to keep it relevant.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, for sure.
And the reason why I bring thisup is because I know that
during your journey you werealso providing services on
LinkedIn for people to reach outto you and have coffee chats.
And for me on the sidelines,seeing that I was so grateful
that people had hadopportunities to speak to you
and schedule those times andreally just knowing the value
(38:26):
that a conversation with you interms of any challenges they
would have, I knew that it wasdefinitely like gold, right.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I hope there's definitely some people that I
definitely feel like I helped.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yeah, big shout-outs to you on that.
So the other thing that I wantto talk about is like what would
you say it would be?
You know messages to risingengineers trying to find their
footing right, especially withthe era of AI.
So I've got to find a way tothrow AI in here.
What messaging would you havefor them?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So you know, on the AI point, I'm not really a big
AI guy, but I started messingwith Google's internal AI and
like writing code and it's, it'sreally good.
Yeah, isn't it?
It's good, yeah, so I thinkthat the trick, though, is that
it's good, because I still kindof know what I'm doing
technically.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
So I know when it makes mistakes, I know what to
look for.
Basically, I understand the keyconcepts.
It's just an accelerant.
So I think still know thefundamentals.
Know what you're looking for.
Know the difference betweendepth-first search and
breadth-first and all the otherstuff.
Know when something ismemory-constrained and
(39:37):
CPU-constrained.
Know all that stuff.
Ai can be a great accelerantbut it's not going to fix kind
of a fundamental gap inknowledge.
That's probably the first thing.
Navigating that that's probablythe one that jumps out at me
the most In terms of justgeneral stuff.
I think one thing I see from alot of earlier career engineers
is that they're a little afraidof asking questions, and it's a
(40:03):
natural thing to like be afraidof how it looks to not know
something, and so I would sayfind a situation where you're
comfortable not knowing.
You know.
Maybe you don't want to putyour hand up at a meeting and
say what does that mean?
Maybe you want to find somebodythat you can ask privately.
You know somebody that you knowis not going to judge you and
not going to, like you know,think any differently of you if
(40:23):
you don't know.
I mean you know, we've been atthis for however many years
there's stuff we don't know,facts we're never going.
So I think that's the key thingis to kind of find a way to
build your network, find somepeople who can guide you through
and get comfortable absorbingall that information.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, for sure.
And one other thing that comesto mind when you were talking
about that is a mentoring skillthat I introduced at Twitter
called the red and blue exercise.
You remember that exercise?
Yeah, that I introduced atTwitter called the Red and Blue
Exercise.
You remember that?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
exercise.
I remember, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
So that exercise and just to fill D-Hustle in the
audience allowed us to basicallyturn the fire alarm on and
basically practice when thesystem fails or different
components of the infrastructuregoes down.
And our main goal was to haveengineers go through that
process so that they know whatit feels like before the real
fire alarm turns on, so that youcan have a safe space to ask
(41:15):
questions and really like feellike, hey, that overwhelming
feeling but also understandingthe team that you have that you
can lean on in those situations.
Because me even me didn't knowall the answers.
And then during those exercisesI even got the chance to kind
(41:36):
of like I used to put myself insituations where I knew the
answer but I just made it seemlike I didn't know the answer.
So I can force that type ofinteraction.
And then after the red and blueexercise, everybody on the team,
confidence you know they'rewalking the next day with a
different posture, right, theyjust feeling more confident.
And that space that we createdis basically being able to uh,
sharpen the engineer's skill setbut also bring to light like,
hey, we're a team, we're here tocommunicate, we're here to
(41:57):
create a safe space that, ifit's 2 o'clock in the morning
and the thing goes down.
Don't be afraid to give me acall, right, yeah, so tell me a
little bit about your view froma management perspective and
value around red and blueexercises.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
Red and blue exercises I love it.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Red and blue.
Red and blue exercise.
I love it.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
I mean, it's just, what you said, I don't have that
much to add to it.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
I think it's about creating the safe space where
it's safe to fail and safe toget things wrong.
Also, in the site reliabilityengineering role, you have to
think about how are things goingto fail and how gracefully can
a system fail.
And injecting failures into asystem and thinking through
things that way is unnatural.
We don't think about failurethat much, but it's inevitable
to happen, especially on thescale of a global tech company.
(42:41):
And so by simulating it,injecting those failures,
testing your processes, testingyour people, testing yourselves,
I think it's one of thosethings everybody should do.
It takes actually a speciallevel of discipline to do that.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
Most places.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Don't do it Google.
When I was at Google in Essarypreviously, Google did that
every February, basically Ah,had these drills.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Wheel of Misfortune, I believe they called it.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Well, there was one that I was thinking of that was
called Dirt Week.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Oh, Dirt Week.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
It was like basically , you would intentionally break
systems and see what wouldhappen and Netflix did this for
years too.
They would have this automatedjob that would go in and
deliberately turn things off,just to make sure that
everything could sustainsomething being down suddenly.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Is that the error message that always comes up,
that it's going to reload likein?
Speaker 3 (43:29):
60 seconds or something like that.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
Maybe they don't run it enough.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
That's when they're running their tests.
Right, they're running theirtests.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's like okay, I got it.
I understand, oh man.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
But, those exercises.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
oh my gosh, some great times, though that's what
separates the companies thatreally make it from the ones
that don't.
It's an investment right.
That's time you're taking foryour engineers to not be
shipping, be building forcustomers you know, whatever
else they could be doing.
It's opportunity cost.
But what you get from that isbetter, because if your stuff
(44:00):
isn't available then it'suseless Facts.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Facts, Facts.
If your stuff isn't available,it's useless.
I used to say that same linewith metrics If there ain't no
metrics and data around it it'sbroken.
For sure, for sure.
One other side story, before weget close to wrapping up, uh,
here is is that, uh, one thing Idon't know if the audience
remember me telling y'all and ddefinitely heard this saying is
that these streets are small,like the streets are always
(44:25):
watching.
Uh, I remember I was traveling,um and I'm obviously from
florida, south florida, bigshout outs to south florida and
when my wife and I were going toSan Diego for a conference, um,
and remember I only seenPatrick in person maybe two or
three times by this time, butyou know, I've been video
chatting with you all day andall of a sudden we're in the
airport in San Diego.
We just get off at off the plane.
(44:47):
My wife is wearing a techhustle shirt and I'm over there,
you know, ushering her, tryingto get her to you know where the
Uber is for us to get picked up, and then all of a sudden she
kind of let my hand go and shewas talking to somebody and I
was still moving and I turnaround and I'm like hold on a
second, is that Patrick?
And I was like Patrick Newman,what are you doing in San Diego?
What?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
were you doing there?
I'm at least in California,yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
And I'm all the way from Florida.
I didn't even see you at first.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I saw the Tech Hustle t-shirt and I was going to say,
you know, I know the guy thatstarted that thing.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Oh, look at that, you know I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
It was your wife.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, how about that?
That was such the universe,right there that years ago?
Yeah, for sure, yeah my son wasin eighth grade, I think yeah,
and I believe you you weretraveling with your daughter for
uh going to the museum, or Iwas the zoos my son was on a
trip to the east coast with hisschool.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
They were going to like new york and washington
gotcha, gotcha and so springbreak we had our daughter alone
and, uh, just the three of us,and we said, what do you want to
do?
And she said she wants to go tothe San Diego Zoo and Safari
Park.
So we said, okay.
Speaker 4 (45:56):
Let's make it happen.
Is that a big park?
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Safari Park is like 15,000 acres, so yeah, pretty
big we skipped SeaWorld and weput a little bit more money into
Safari Park because there's allthis other stuff you can do.
You can like go on tours behindthe scenes and stuff.
They've got all the animalstogether.
(46:19):
It's like an african savannah.
Basically, it's pretty cool.
It's.
It's pretty far outside of sandiego.
It's like a good 40, 40, 60minute drive something from the
airport from wherever we werestaying.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
The airport in san diego is right downtown yes,
okay so, um.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
So yeah, the zoo is also right downtown.
The zoo is like right next tothe airport.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
But Safari.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Park is a long drive.
It's not even in San Diego.
It's in San Diego.
Oh okay, but it's a cool placeand she wanted to go there, so
we said yeah sure, and we did.
And then we're going to stop byand see Bobby.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
You know how, when I'm at the airport, you know I'm
just walking like I'm a guy,you know, like yo what up?
You know just what up do you?
Also wait, just wait until theaudience, the crowds are gonna
be like bobby, bobby, you'regonna be, you're gonna be
providing security again.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Go ahead, go ahead the audience.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
No, no no, no no I'm just messing but I tell you that
that right there, uh afterwards, me and my wife jump in the
uber and I was talking, I waslike yo, can you believe?
We just ran into patrick newman.
She was like no way.
And I was like yo, how in theworld did that happen?
Uh, and definitely it was likeone of those moments.
Like man, the universe hasdefinitely put us in the right
position.
Yeah, and I really appreciatethis quick little second that we
(47:27):
had to dap each other up and Igot to meet your wife, you got
to meet my wife.
Definitely, it was definitelyone of those moments.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Yeah, I mean, you were forever the guy from the
airport.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
So, as we're coming close tothe end, one thing that I
definitely want to give you anopportunity to do is any like
last words, some advice for ouraudience members.
Remember, these are individualsthat are either getting into
the tech have you know, thinkabout transition or they're just
about to graduate college.
And AI is this big topic thateverybody's you know, a little
(48:00):
bit hesitant and afraid of.
But just some words of adviceand wisdom for our audience.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
I just say stick with it.
Have a goal, stick with it.
There's going to be ups anddowns.
You know there were ups anddowns for me.
I'm sure for you too.
Thanks, darwin.
You know ups and downs for allof us, it's just part of life.
And you know, now the big thingis AI, but you know, 25 years
ago it was this thing called theInternet.
You know, that was we rememberwhen that was new.
(48:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Then it was iPhones, and whatelse.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, yeah, iphones and what else there's always
going to be something.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Cloud computing Remember when AWS was new, so
disruptive, you know peoplecoming up now.
Yeah, free CDs in the mailRight.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Now you're showing your age.
I am yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
So there's always going to be new things to adapt
to.
You've got to kind of stayagile.
You've got to keep learning.
You can't stay static in thisindustry.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
That's what's up.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
So I would just say, stick with it.
Have a goal, stick with it.
If coding isn't working for you, maybe SRE will, maybe product
management will, maybe saleswill.
Having a core set of technicalskills that you can apply to
those other areas will work.
And remember, those dotsconnect right.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, those dots connect, no matter how far along
they go.
It'll be like oh I rememberyeah, those dots connect.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
It'll come back.
Dots will connect, for sure.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Well, d cue up the music, patrick.
Let me tell you.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Thank you so much for pulling up man.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Thanks for having me.
It was such a greatconversation.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
D H D-Hustle always in the cut holding it down.
He's doing like two or threejobs for us right now.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Y'all can't really see it.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
The utility guy, right, but I want to say first
of all thank you all for tuningin.
This is my guy, patrick Newman,dropping Gems.
Give them that sound again whatthey should be listening for.
So if y'all hear this sound,make sure y'all rewind to that
spot, because Patrick wasDropping Gems.
As you know, I'm out on thesestreets traveling the country,
speaking to peers of mine thatI've had a pleasure of working
with, interacting with, being onthe internet with for a few
(49:57):
years and then finally run intoyou in person.
Right, the streets are alwayswatching, but, as I always
mention to you all, thank youall so much for tuning in.
Holla at your boy.
It's Bobby D.
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