026: Tech Genius says he is an Asian who didn’t want a college degree

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, what's up everybody, and welcome back to another episode
of Them Tech Folks podcast. I'm joined by the extremely
talented Tiffany Briant, one of the masterminds behind the amazing
podcast stats on Stats. So Tiffy and on this episode
are gonna be doing our thing and chopping it up
with this guy named Ed Winnstormiento, a Microsoft certified master

(00:22):
who's specialized in high availability and disaster recovery. We're gonna
be coming out on quite a few things and it's
fun and engaging episode, such as the critical role of data,
you know, and education's role in tech. We're gonna be
talking a little bit about AI as well, of course,
and some more topics that I'm sure you all enjoy.

(00:44):
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(01:06):
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Speaker 2 (01:53):
I also realized that, you know, knowing a bit of
everything does not make you an expert. So I left
the you know, the networking, the service stuffing, I left
the development. I left that world and moved. There's one
thing that we cannot live without. So regardless of whether
you move into abs, Azure, Google, whatever, there's one thing

(02:19):
that's constant, and that's people in security. And I don't
classify myself as as a cybersecurity professional because here's what
I believe in. Cybersecurity should never be a role. Whenever
you bring consultants into a company, internal people like the staff,
the engineers, they didn't look at you nicely. Because they think, oh,

(02:41):
this guy's gonna take my job. Right with the developers
and network people, admin, everybody on the team, and within
thirty minutes, I know exactly what the problem was. It
was never about the disaster recovery solution for their database platform.
This is weird coming from an Asian with a degree

(03:01):
and who dropped out of his NBA. I never wanted
to go to school.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
I can't take no loss left owing. I hit the
ground in and go off chance. Hit the ground in
and go off chance. I can't take no loss. I
hit the ground in and go off chance.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thank you so much for having me around. My name
is Edwin. I'll just keep it to B and I.
What do I do? Yes, I run my own consulting
and training practice, and there's so much UH into that
when you think about it, because when you're running your
own business, you're actually doing everything. But what I decided
to do is I decided to stick with a niche

(03:42):
and for me, that's designing and implementing high availability and
disaster recovery solutions for micro Soft Data platform whatever you
can think of on premises, private, public cloud. But in
kind of like my day to day, it's more advisory
because back in the day, I was doing, you know,

(04:03):
everything like the typical technical technician operator, you're doing a
lot of a lot of that stuff. But I find
that the value that I bring to the table is
no longer about doing the plumbing. It's more about guiding
people and making sure that they're not making the same
mistakes that I did when I was doing that kind
of work. And so customers, my customers would bring me

(04:23):
in and either design a solution for something that they
need or to fix a problem but they couldn't fix.
So that's kind of like a long winded way of,
you know, giving you a background of what I do.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
Nice. Nice. What are you from originally?

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Originally I'm originally from the Philippines, born and raised, but
I'm in Canada.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Gotcha? Gotcha? And what was your first running with tech?

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Will you kind of like raised with parents that were
like engineers or you know, scientists and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
So it's fun any you ask. I come from a
culture where it's either you're an engineer, a doctor, an accountant,
a lawyer, the whole nine yards of the traditional way
of doing things, and I've always wanted I don't know,
maybe it's because of the fact that I was watching
a ton of cartoons when I was a kid. Think
about it, Transformers, some of those Japanese cartoons, theories where

(05:25):
you see a lot of these robots forming together. So
I grew up with that, and at the back of
my mind I wanted to work in I don't know
whatever field that is, but I know for a fact
that I want to work in something what we call
back then science fiction. I don't know. My entire family

(05:47):
doesn't work in tech. They don't know what I do.
And I think, yeah, I think it's just a fascination.
And again where I come from, I'm pretty sure you
have friends from the Philippines. You're either a nurse or
a doctor, or you're in that space. I'm like, nope,
I'm not into that.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
So well, since she's stuck, I got this question that
is like stuck in my hair right now, right probably
the most important question of the night. Which Transformer were
you were?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
You?

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Were you? Optimis star screaming like, which one were you?

Speaker 2 (06:28):
I was? Jazz? I don't know, if you know, Jazz, which.

Speaker 5 (06:32):
One like I was? I was ready for him to
say bumble bee.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
So everybody was so you know, you know how Bumblebee
back in the days was not the It was not
a Camaro. It was a beetle. Yeah, bet it was,
hence the name exactly. So it's not a sexy car.
So jazz was the the So it's an EMT car,
like a car ambulance if you may.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
I had that one.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, it's a slick car, but it's an EMT car
response to like emergencies, not necessarily an ambulance, but kind
of like an EMT car.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
On why is that because of all the you know,
family that's and nursing and all other stuff, or like,
was like, hey, this is the least I can do
is I'll be a robot, but I'll be a nurse robot.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
I'll meet you halfway.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
But interestingly enough, I never thought of it that way.
But because I play jazz music, so I'm on my
my home office, I got like a music synthesizer over there,
and I played jazz piano in my spare time. But
that was kind of like the idea behind that, other
than I want to save people.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah nice, not as a nurse though, not anything, but
a nurse, a robot nurse okay, and I and I
and I de real you just for warn and Tiffany
already knows I do that. I got a squirrel grain
so so marketsoft products specifically though SEQL high availability.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
Yeah, that's interesting, like.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
That is a very important component with an enterprise. Infrastructure
often slept on right until something is happening. You know,
two hurricanes, two pretty significant hurricanes in.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Our area down here in Tampa Bay.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Right, so everybody was playing the whole you know, dry.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
What made you decide to use that as.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
A niche interesting? For one, I'm Asian to buy default.
I am by default. I'm a generalist, and when you're
a generalist, you're doing everything right. But I also realized that,
you know, knowing a bit of everything does not make

(08:55):
you an expert. Knowing you become really, really really good
at one thing. That's when you become an expert. And
it took me a while because again, you do so
many things. You do networking, you do servers, you you
write code, you do all of these things. And I
realized there's one thing that we cannot live without, whether
we like it or not, and it's data. Everything we

(09:17):
do requires data. I was I had this T shirt
that says, AI is nothing without data. Which is true,
and so I decided I want to spend I want
to dive into the world of data. So I left
the you know, the networking, the server stuff. I still
do that. I left the networking, I left the development.
I left that world and move them too data. And then,

(09:41):
of course, with the evolution of a lot of different
things within data, there's still areas where you can specialize.
You could do administration, you could do you know, code writing,
you could do analytics, you can do machine anything that
has something to do with data. And then I realized,

(10:01):
what's something that I that I really know like the
back of my head. For some of you who don't know,
the Philippines is almost near the equator, and every year
we get not just earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoon and so
it's but normal for us to live in a state

(10:24):
where there's always natural disasters. And what most people don't
realize is that, you know, when it comes to designing
high availability and disaster recovery solutions, the technical part of
the technology part is just you know, one piece of
a very small piece of it. What's important is the
people in the process aspect. And that's what I'm really

(10:45):
really really really good at because I lived it. I
lived through I live through one of the most catastrophic
volcanic eruptions in the last thirty years. I lived through
so many earthquakes and typhoons where you're walking through mud
water after volcanic eruption. And the key thing there is

(11:09):
always about people in process. Always. Yeah, So regardless of
whether you move into abs, azure, Google, whatever, this one
thing that's constant and that's people in process.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, that's that's that's cute that you said that, because
a lot of people like and you do it. We met, right,
So let me let me back it up a little
bit if I go into this. We met on Facebook
in one of your groups. And I'm sure you probably
have more than one group, but I'm just saying one
of your groups. And what Edwin does on Facebook is

(11:45):
he has a group where he feels questions from anybody
anywhere that has a question about tech. If you want
to move into tech, if you want to move around
in the tech, we'll move up in the tech. Edwin's
got a pretty straight in answer for you. Right, I
haven't heard, I haven't I haven't observed. You take a
question and people not say, oh that makes sense, right,

(12:08):
So Edwin is very great with that.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
So look him up and find him on Facebook stalk on.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
He might not accept your friend request because mine has
been waiting for like months, but he'll come on your
show if you have a podcast. So you know, it's
not all bad.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
But it's it's it's it's.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
I like that you mentioned the non technical aspect of
disaster recovery because a lot of people they talk about
you know a lot of people, and I'm sure you
hit us a lot.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
I want to get into tech. What do you want
to do? Right? You know a lot of people want
to do cyber. But yeah, but it's like.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
What even like cyber that security piece, right, we often
think about like the technical piece of it. But you
know there's more than technical controls, right you you have
you know, you know, adding controls you know, in policy
and things like that that are oftentimes more important than
the technical stuff. The weakest link is often the human right,

(13:07):
and the policy is how you you know, oftentimes will
secure the human right. It's not like you can stop them.
It's still up to them to make the right decision.
You know, Yeah, I won't, I will do what this
policy is directed me to do. But yeah, it's Tiffany.
Do you have something you want to kind of add

(13:28):
to this? I see you kind of like looking your
lives older.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
Yeah, Like you keep talking about policies and stuff, and
I'm thinking, like, we have something that's changing in terms
of policies and then near what twenty twenty five so
around March timeframe? Is that impacting you at all? Edwin
the PCI in anyway?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Can you expand more on the policy change with the PCI.

Speaker 5 (13:54):
Like are you, like, I'm not necessarily sure exactly where
you're working, so are you having to make any changees
or updates in your organization based on gotcha?

Speaker 2 (14:04):
So not necessarily my organization, but in my customers organization.
And again it's it's ironicus when when when my customers
bring me in, they always think about, hey, this guy
can do this, and they're always zoomed into the technology
like Microsoft SQL server Azure. But when I come in,
I ask questions about, hey, what changing the policy that

(14:26):
may impact your organization? What uh compliance requirements? And I
don't talk about security and I don't classify myself as
as a cyber security professional because here's what I believe
in cybersecurity should never be a role. It's supposed to
be a mindset and and whe are you're working cybersecurity

(14:49):
or again, it's all about the data. What you're trying
to protect is the data. And go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
That's interesting, Like, that's an interesting question, Like I I
was slightly confused right at first, but now thinking about
it and hearing you kind of go halfway through the
response before I really interrupted you like PCI on the
DSS with the and that's like payment stuff, right, and

(15:18):
then there's on the.

Speaker 4 (15:19):
Healthcare side, right, you have hippop the sock stuff.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
And you do deal with data, and you do have
clients that span across some you know, different industries.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
You don't say, oh, I'm only gonna deal with you know,
people in healthcare or the banking, right. You deal with
whoever needs help with their DR solution. Do you go
to that depth where you have to have a significant
amount of knowledge to like specific policies or regulations based
on industry.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
I don't. And that's one of the things that I
So the way I classify my work is one consultants
who tell you what to do, and whenever you bring
consultants into a company. Internal people like the staff, the engineers.
They they don't look at you nicely because they think, oh,

(16:13):
this guy's gonna take my job, right. I don't look
at myself like that. I look at myself as an advocate.
And what I'll do is I'll come in and I'll
ask a ton of questions to a point where I
tell people, look, I get paid to ask questions. So
they know. You know the policies, they know the compliance requirements,
they know everything more than I do. I only know

(16:34):
how to identify patterns. So I ask questions and make
them look good because they know this better than I do.
So when I come in, I help them craft solutions
based on what they already know, and just I just
fill in the gaps. So, going back to what you
were saying, true, at the end of you know, at
the bottom of all of these we're really trying to

(16:56):
protect when it comes to cybersecurity is the data. So
I'm always asking the question, what are you trying to
accomplish here?

Speaker 1 (17:04):
So you take requirements and then you formulate solutions based
on requirements. That kind of sounds like a consultant or
something I thought you you did say you were a consultant.

Speaker 4 (17:14):
That makes sense.

Speaker 5 (17:16):
But what I'm curious now, I'm like, you've gone, I'm
sure into many organizations and they have in their mind
an idea of what they want the end goal to be.
And because you're you know, you're the you're the consultant
and you're the expert, I'm sure that you've had a
couple of interesting cases. So can you talk to us
about one of your most recent cases where it turned

(17:41):
out a little better than you anticipated going in.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
I categorized and like I said, I focused my work
on three pillars. I call them the PPT Manifesto. P
for people of course, another piece for process INTE technology.
So when a customer brings me in, they they kind
of have an idea that only work on the T,
the technology piece, So they would bring me in and

(18:08):
then they would, you know, uh, start looking at hey,
these are the problems we're having. I uh, I haven't
done more than one hundred stories of this, but the
one thing that comes to mind was, So this was
a SaaS company. They're based out of Vermont. They're implementing
a disaster recovery solution UH one data center in Vermont.

(18:30):
One Data Center in Las Vegas, and then, you know,
I kind of sense that there's something going on. They
want to they want to bring me in to have
a look at their existing infrastructure and you know, do
a quick assessment. And I'm like, sure, I can do
the work remotely. I could be anywhere, right, But I
kind of sense that there's something going on beyond what
they were telling me, and so I said, I want

(18:53):
to meet your team physically, meet your team. And this
was before everybody was forced to work from home. I
want to meet your team. I'm like, we can't afford that.
I'll pay for my travel accommodation. I get there with
the developers, the network people, admin, everybody on the team,
and within thirty minutes, I know exactly what the problem was.

(19:14):
And it was never about the disaster recovery solution from
their database platform. It was about the people not talking
to each other. To the network people, we're not talking
to the datase guys who are implementing firewall rules that
are preventing their databases getting replicated over to data dr site.

(19:36):
Their developers are not talking to their admin people, so
they're deploying code then generates a ton of data. Then
bloats up their database. It now has to be replicated
across the wire. So there's all of this miscommunication that
is causing issues to their database. And I told them,
there's nothing wrong with your database. There's something wrong with
your internal process that ties back to talking to each other.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, that's that's yes, that's that's about right.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
Man.

Speaker 5 (20:05):
Do you find that, I'm like, do you find that?
You know, you trend trend more towards finding out that
it's a process problem when you get to locations.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Oh again, they bring me in to solve a technical problem.
But I know for a fact it's either a people
or a process problem. And the way I look at it,
maybe it's just the way I think, or maybe it's
a mindset. And I've decided to embrace every technical problem
is the people in the process problem. First. If I
solve the people in the process problems, the technical technical

(20:39):
problems go away.

Speaker 5 (20:41):
Gotcha.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
And it's interesting because if there's one thing that we
can never eliminate in tech, it's the people, even when
they are And we were talking about this earlier, and
I date myself. I'm old. I go back to the days.

(21:09):
I go back in the days of novelle Alpha risk servers.
And I've seen what thirty years of working in tech
looks like. And I think if you see patterns. So
we always hear people say history repeats itself And the

(21:30):
only reason why history repeats itself because people don't see
patterns and they keep repeating the same thing over and
over and over again. So AI is no different from
what we had back in I was in high school
back then, and this was what mid nineties we were
dealing with VR and robotics. Of course, the robotics are

(21:53):
not as sexy as Tesla optimists, but the robotics nonetheless,
we've gone through stages where, uh, machine learning and DevOps,
all of these things were just called differently. Back in
the days, we we called DevOps making things work. We
called AI and machine learning making sense of data. That's it.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
That's crazy, man, you've been you've been in this industry
for thirty years. I know there's people like the people
that are gonna watch this on YouTube and will be like,
when are you startling? He was in diapers or something like,
you look thirty. It's crazy. Shadow of staying healthy.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
You can never ever bring back time health and wellness. Yeah,
So you might as fall start now.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
Absolutely absolutely, I feel.

Speaker 5 (22:46):
Like maybe you were you a tinkerer, Edwin, like when
you were growing up.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Was I a tinker? Let's just say I got into
trouble for just messing around with so many things. I
broke watches. I mean not the digital watches, the analog watches.
I broke mechanical stuff. And uh, it's just my fascination
with trying to understand how things work. And I this

(23:16):
is weird coming from an Asian with a degree and
who dropped out of his NBA. I never wanted to
go to school. H but I'm Asian. I have to
have a degree.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
The jokes, the jokes slightly on the line. Jokes are
for me, let me do it.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
But yeah, but but it's interesting, right, it's the stereotype.
And when you come from that part of the world,
you gotta have a degree. I never wanted to have
a degree, but I have to. I you know, I
have a degree in mechanical engineering, and I well, my
my my peers were studying for their finals learning about
machine design and power plant engineering. I was in the

(23:59):
live very learning how to write code. That's that's how
I was. And I was tinkering and learning and trying
as much as I can learn anything I am interested in.
And of course this goes back to the days of
the three eighty six and the four eighty six processors.

(24:21):
So yes, I was a thinker and I still am.

Speaker 5 (24:24):
He said, hieroglyphics, hieroglyphics. He was writing code with hieroglyphics.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, you're doing the emojis. That that's the
new age hieroglyphics. So we talked about what you do
right as a profession, right and the other side of it.
And I'm assuming you do this for pay as well?
Or is it free like training stuff because you actually

(24:52):
trained people, right, or is it just.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
And here's the thing I've maybe because again, I like
to learn. And for some people they think, oh, if
you like to learn, where you like to read, you'd
like to do all you like to study, it meets
you're smart. No, I'm not. I don't consider myself that
because it takes twenty five times for me to learn

(25:16):
something before it finally hits me. And what I realized
is a lot of people also go through the same challenge.
I call it a challenge because there's no challenge that
we cannot overcome if we persist. So I am proud
of the fact that I am persistent. I agret, and
so I teach because one, it takes me a while

(25:38):
to learn something. And the only reason I'm really, really,
really really good at what I do is because I've
done it so many times. And in this day and
age where information is so abundant on the internet on
your phones, people feel like they're learning when all they're
doing is skimming through things and they're not mastering it.

(26:01):
So you asked about why I do training. Why I teach?
Two reasons, no, three reasons. Number one, if I want
to learn a new feature, new technology, I force myself
to teach. Why Because this is this is my hack.
This is my hack to compressing decades into weeks. This

(26:22):
is what I call it. Because again, when I teach,
there's the one it's forcing me to learn it. Number two,
it's not just learning it, it's mastery. And number three,
there's positive peer pressure. You don't want to look slip
in front of like twelve fifteen people, right, So teaching
something for me accomplishes all of that in one go.

(26:45):
Not to mention, of course, I do something that I
am happy and I love doing and getting paid to
do it, so why not nice?

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, well, well go ahead, go ahead, because I'm going
to ask a different question that we kind of like
moved a little faster there.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
I can get it out.

Speaker 5 (27:11):
Oh no, I was just going to say thank you
for you know, the vulnerability and talking about you know
that you have had challenges and when it comes to
you know, your ability to learn stuff and then uh,
you know, it's something that I was listening to on
the previous podcast Brene Brown. She talked about leadership, right,
you're talking about people and processes in your ability to

(27:33):
lead people, not just in school, but in order to
help build processes and finding out that it's people all
the time. Being able to lead people comes from a
vulnerability that gives you the courage to be able to
stand in front of those people and say like, look,
this is a process problem. It's not a tech problem, like,
so let's work on it now. So it's great to

(27:53):
you know, even see here that you have the vulnerability
and you're willing to say, you know, hey, we all
have some weaknesses, but we can work to find ways
to put ourselves out there and get better while we
help others it.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Did I say, I failed seventeen courses in my undergraph.
You seven seventeen courses in my undergraph.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yes, I appreciate your bringing that up to leadership is
like huge, right, And you didn't even like mention it,
but it just it's oozing off you like with the
way that you attack problems. It just it personifies like
what leadership is. You throw yourself out at the mercy

(28:38):
of others and in a way that improves you. So
it's a it's a mutual benefit, you know. You know,
you're not like a lot of I see a lot
of you know people, they're just trying to like get
something from somebody. But you're you're giving something in order
to get something, And I think that's huge.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
It's scary too, because a lot of people think, well,
I can't really put myself out there because I'm not perfect.
We're never gonna be perfect. Way, So if you're saying,
if we're saying we're never gonna be perfect, does that
mean you're not you will never ever put something out there.
And I know at some point we're going to talk
about how I got started and how I ended up
being in tech, and I was at the disadvantage. When

(29:19):
I was starting out, I had no experience. I didn't
have a computer science degree. I did not have an
I degree, so that in itself is a disadvantage. I
did not have certifications, nothing, so I kind of have
to find a way on how to get into tech
and bypass all the things that you know. Let's say
if I was starting right now, I did not have

(29:42):
all of those. What do I have that is uniquely
me that I can use my advantage? And so what
I did was I started volunteering at tech events. Interesting right,
I started volunteering at tech events realizing that one, I'm introvert.
I don't even want to be around that. But I
knew and people still doubt when I say that I am.

(30:04):
I would rather be in my corner office and not
talk to anybody. But I knew I had to do
something scary which forces me to be outside of my
comfort zone. I also knew that I need to put
myself out there, because it doesn't matter how good you
are if you're not out there, nobody knows. And three,
I also know that I have to do something that

(30:29):
would not just push me outside of my comfort zone,
but to really stretch me and so I volunteered to
help out a Microsoft event a want of the venter booths,
and I'm pretty sure you know about this where if
you're running an inventor or sponsors, they would have booths.
And it's interesting. I was just tending and I heard
somebody ask a question about if I'm not saying this

(30:51):
was active directory from Windows two thousand the way back when.
And I was feeling in questions and a guy from
the local Microsoft stub has to be working for Microsoft,
and like no, and a vendor on the other booth
over her the conversation and she said, well, do you
work for anybody? I said no, And I'm pretty sure

(31:12):
you know how word is going? Said, do you want to
work for us? No interview, nothing, she said, here's her address,
go to our office and you go talk to our director.
That's how I got started in tech. And most of
the time we try, and I'm speaking on behalf of
people who are starting out in tech, because we've been

(31:33):
told the same story over and over and over and
over again. Go to school, get grades, get a steady job, retire.
In our case, go to school, get a cs IT,
whatever kind of degree. Cybersecurity not enough get certifications, not enough,
get an internship, not enough work and helped us not enough.

(31:56):
So you're talking about an average about six years before
you can actually do work that's related to the things
that you went to school for. There's a better way,
And I'm just glad that I got turned down by
the big companies, that I was forced to do things

(32:17):
that I never thought I could do. And that's the
thing about you know, challenges. We think they're challenges within
their problems, but they're really I want to say, their
guide towards discovering our inner strength, if you may, is
you'll never again when you're comfortable, when you've been doing

(32:37):
things that everybody else is doing, there's no way for
you to figure out that you're really good at something
you have more than what you imagine you have. And
part of that is just you know, crying something out,
be scared, and just put yourself out there and stretch
yourself to a point where you realize you have something

(32:59):
within you that you never thought you had. But it
only shows up when we're It's kind of like baptism
of fire, or like putting refining golden through fire. You
would only see you'd only see the value if you
go through those.

Speaker 5 (33:16):
Challenges, Edwin, He's been mentioning Rico has been mentioning Facebook
a number of times. You're a group on Facebook and
I am just learning about it, but I would love
for you to tell me a whole lot more about
First why Facebook? And then second just like what did

(33:37):
you want to do with that community?

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Why Facebook? I'll be honest, I'm not on Facebook, and
there's a reason for that. I'm a data guy, right,
Everything that we do generates data. These big companies keep
track of everything that we do in the or algorithms
that I want to say influence or probably a better

(34:06):
drum that manipulate our behavior using data. Yes, yes, AI,
So I'm rarely on Facebook. If the only reason I
was there was because I spoke at an event in
New York City and one of the attendees was the
admin for that group. He invited me and said he
would be valuable to this group, Like sure, why not?

(34:29):
And then I started seeing that the group's growing. There's
a lot of people who want to get into tech,
and I keep hearing the same recommendations over and over
and over and over again. It's just like the phrase
the surgeon is going to cut. The pharmacist is going
to give you a pill. You know, the carpenter is

(34:52):
going to build the mechanics going to fix. So you
ask somebody in the tech field who has gone through
all of those challenges and all through the same journey,
they're gonna tell it. They're gonna tell you the exact
same thing, right, which is again, go to school, get
a degree, get certifications, get internship. Not enough, go through

(35:15):
help us. And you hear people say that over and
over and over again, not realizing wait, there is better way.
And that's when uhen Rico was saying, yeah, he was
answering questions. The only reason I'm asking questions because I'm
sick and tired of people going through the same thing
and not getting results. People are saying, I've gone through
forty fifty interviews, I've submitted hundreds of applications, but nobody

(35:37):
ever stopped asking the question is this really working? So
that was my goal, and and every time I get
involved in a community, that's always been my goal is
to help the people in that community look for better
ways to achieve their goal. With the focus on achieving

(36:00):
goal because some of the things that we've been doing
have not been working for quade a while.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
I know it's gonna come back around.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
That was actually a question I was going to ask
before when you talked about not like in school and
you know, quitting on your m b A. I mean,
I'm sure you probably don't just tell people just drop
out of college and stuff like that, But what do
your feelings towards degrees versus certifications versus experience. I know

(36:28):
you went through the whole, you know, gamut of like
how you got on right, but what kind of recommendation
is do you give people when they approach you with
those types of questions?

Speaker 4 (36:40):
What should I be working on?

Speaker 2 (36:42):
And this is something that I have been trying to
keep quiet about for the past three years. Again, this
is something that I struggled with coming from my background.
I never wanted to go to school. I never wanted
to get a degree because here's what I believe in.
If I can learn all of these things that I

(37:02):
need to learn in order to achieve or to do
something in four weeks, how do you learn something like
that in four weeks, Well, you learn from the expert.
You learn from somebody who has been through the challenges
all these and they're really really good at what they do,
and so why go through university and why go food degrees?

(37:25):
That's that's been my belief ever since. In the story
that I tell people, nineteen ninety nine, I was privileged
to participate in what they call the International Skills Olympics.
These are categories of technical and vocational skills. You're thinking carpentry, welding,

(37:49):
and they recently introduced back then, they recently introduced a
specific category called mechatronics. So it's a combination of mechanical, electrical,
and computer programming all in one. So the people from
different parts of the world compete for this specific category.
I met two people from Korea, South Korea. One guy

(38:14):
was fresh out of high school. They made it to
the top five. And here we are with people working
for Intel with master's degrees, and that guy, fresh out
of high school made it to the top five. So
I asked the question, how come these kids because they

(38:38):
were first I think I was twenty two back then,
and this guy was like nineteen. How come this kid
beat the hell out of us who had degrees, advanced
certifications and he barely got barely gotten out of high school.
Never about what you know, It's about what you do
with what you know. And unfortunately, and again universities colleges,

(39:05):
the reality is the curriculum is not designed to meet
the needs of the industry today, whether that's twenty thirty,
forty fifty years ago, even today you can and again
it's it's because of the fact that people barely read
the curriculum and look at what's needed in the market.

(39:30):
So that's my take on degrees. And I always help people,
don't go to college if you don't know what you want.
Why because that's a very expensive way to figure out
what you want.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
I would say, don't do anything unless you know what
you want, because you know, I see a lot of
questions with people.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
The thing that I guess, the what do they call it?

Speaker 1 (39:55):
The hot take that I have as far as like
that whole thing goes is h with the whole you know,
come tier stuff. I don't have to think, you know,
problem will come to here, come to here. Please don't
counsel me. When people tell people, hey, you gotta get
a plus, then you gotta get net plus, and then

(40:16):
you gotta get.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
Don't get these searts unless you know what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Like if there's a requirement for your job right eighty
five seventy or what do they call it? Eighty one forty. Now,
if you're going for a d D roll that requires
you to get security plus a net plus because I
think net plus gets you, I t what.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Go for it right?

Speaker 1 (40:40):
But if that's not the case, get the material usual,
just reference material right, learn the material.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
You don't have to take the exam.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
There's plenty of practice sess you can find online that
are free where you can, you know, evaluate your level right,
because you there's no there's no sense in learning if
you're not gonna check yourself like how much do I know?

Speaker 4 (41:05):
Do I know it well enough? You know? Just self
evaluate yourself.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
You don't have to pay I think come to you
is you know, hitting people across the head for like four
hundred dollars for EU plus nowadays. And that's a two
part test, you know. So it's a two part test
for help desk based certification. And you want to do
cyber make it make sense, you know what I mean?
So figure out what you want to do, set up

(41:31):
a plan in mind you I did say learn the material.
The question I was going to ask you was about
foundational knowledge. You have a lot of foundational knowledge, but
you also have you know, thirty years of experience. I
mean you start on your toddler obviously.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
How do you feel, how do you what do you
what do you recommend a person do?

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Short up what I just you know, kind of like
rambled through to get that foundational knowledge so that they
can qualify for these, you know, roles that you know.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
Because a lot of people they just want to do.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Like the sexy stuff like just talk to me, the tricks,
and they don't want to like learn about what's under
the hood. They don't want to know how the sausage
is made right.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
And it's interesting. I just want to add on to
what you just mentioned about the certifications. What most people
don't realize. These vendor certifications, for one, are designed for
people to use their products. And I say, and I
say that as somebody who used to write questions for
micsoft certifications, and it's interesting. They would bring in subject

(42:39):
matter experts from the field and then we would you know,
get in the room for like a week, and then
we'd pitch in questions and then we'd argue with debate
that no, this is not something that you would do
in in in the industry or this is not something
that you would do in UH in your day to
day and all a bunch of stuff, but at the
end of the day, it's the division that pays for

(43:04):
a certification exam to be developed is the one making decisions.
So we could come up with questions and they can
decide we don't like this because we need to sell
X feature. Whether that's a TOBS, Google, VMware, Microsoft, They're
all the same, right. So going back to your question
about how do you do foundational stuff, I think it

(43:26):
was Elon Musk who said you go back to first principles.
And the problem with smartphones and the infinite amount of
information is you you see something, you learn something, and
you feel like you already know it. No, that's not

(43:46):
how it works. You gotta go back to being a kid,
to being curious and ask questions like how does this work?
And I've learned this. And I think it's also because
of the fact that it's challenging for me to comprehend
complex stuff. So I always go back to the basics

(44:07):
because once you have mastery of the basics and the fundamentals,
you can do anything, and I mean everything. People struggle
with of calculus, for instance, the reason why they struggle
with calculus is they're not really good at their basic math.
In the same way, when you're trying to troublesh you
the problem. If you don't know how something works, well,

(44:29):
you're probably gonna read a documentation do exactly what you know.
The documentation says, follow it step by set. But that's
still not know how things work. But it requires a
certain sense of curiosity, of childlike curiosity for you to
really dig into how things work. For instance, you're probably

(44:51):
using Instagram or WhatsApp or whatever app you're using. What
you're only seeing there is one piece of a puzzle. Well,
what people are not seeing is how things work. How
are you sending that much? Though it goes through the
wire quote in quote wire, let's wire through your Internet
service provider to the servers on where that app is hosted,

(45:16):
and it comes back to you. All of these things
require curiosity because the foundations, the fundamentals, and the basics
of how things work in the seventies are still what
powers the technology that we use today. So going back
to the basics.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
And speaking of like puzzles and knowing how things work
in order to fix them, to dumb it down right,
because you like super smart and killing me right here.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Wow, this is smartness.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
You got.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
What you just described is like you have a thousand
piece puzzle and you were you know, it's done on
your lap.

Speaker 4 (45:59):
Solve this. What's the box? How does it look? Just solve?
You don't know how it looks? So wait, what do
you start? You know, you don't know what you got.
It's a thousand piece puzzle.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
They look like, you know, just blobs, right, you know,
So learn how things work and then you'll understand what's missing,
what's out of place, and you can fix it simple
and get curious, right if if you if you if
you're trying to get in the command line, most utilities,

(46:33):
at least the good ones, they have.

Speaker 4 (46:34):
A dash dash help or dash he.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
You know, get lost in that right, or get lost
in the man pages if you're on you know, the
stuff that we were talking about earlier before we started recording.
Just get curious, like like if you're walking through something
you gotta un to me course and they say, oh,
well you do this command to do this, do that,
and then find the other switches or options and do

(47:00):
those and see what happens. If you break its fine, right,
you're probably working out of a VM anyways, you don't
break it.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
But unfortunately we're raised in the culture we're making mistakes
is penalized. Yeah, you take a test, you make one mistake.
They focus on that one mistake, so that creativity, that
innovation doesn't go. It's again we're that's part of growth,
that's part of learning. And if you're afraid of making mistakes,

(47:28):
you're never gonna learn anything.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
I think the Phoenix Project probably like shifted that a
little bit of that, right that was that was a
that was an amazing book. I think I think that
helped a lot when people really start, you know, giving
the feedback loop, you know, the the credit that is
due to it. Right, there's there's a few people that
are still you know, going on which ones. But I

(47:51):
think failure is being received a little bit better nowadays.
What do you think just you still kind of like,
you know, nervous about failure or you're racing it.

Speaker 5 (48:01):
I don't know if I'm embracing it. I'm just falling
and figuring out. Feel like whatever happens happened. Yeah, Edwin
when you think back, right, because you said you've been
doing this for thirty years. When you think back to

(48:21):
some of the questions and the curiosity that you have
gotten from people who are really new to tech, what
is something that somebody has asked you that made you
really sit back and think like, oh wow, I had
to learn I had to learn the fundamentals for this too.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Well. Having the benefit of hindsight and the benefit of
thirty years of experience, you started again, and a data
professional even you start to see patterns and I think
it was in h forgot if it was it was
King's hollowon and said it can't remember if it was
ecclesiass or proverbs into Bibles. That says there's really nothing

(49:03):
new under design. And I keep thinking about that. I'm like,
when you really do think about it, there really is
nothing new under to sign I'll give you an example.
We went from back in the days, good old mainframe,
dumb terminal, thin client, and then mainframe. What does that
look like it has compute storage and networking. We moved

(49:25):
away from mainframes to open systems. You got servers now
would thick clients. What does that look like to you?
Compute storage, networking. We've moved from open systems to virtualization.
You got private cloud, VMware, Citrix, what does that look
like to you? Compute storage not working? It'd gone from

(49:50):
private to public cloud, to Kubernates to doctor conators. What
does that look like to you? Compute? So when somebody
asking me, like, any new innovation like ai AI is
simply a bunch of data and a bunch of logic.
The only difference is now we have enough computing power
to make the compute and the processing of that bunch

(50:13):
of data a lot faster than when we did it
back in the days. Of course, for eighty six versus
you know, tons and tons of zetabytes of data being processed.
You could do it fast. I mean, any human can
do it given time.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
But when you're really dooking about, every new innovation is
really just a rehash of the old thing. If you
really go back to how I hated history when I
was in school. But I understand that there's value in
learning history. It gives you an idea of what was,

(50:54):
what is, and what could be. And I just use
that example of you know, compute forage, networking, public cloud,
private cloud, Kubernetes, doctor It's the same thing. Go apply
that concept to any new innovation cybersecurity, networking or AI.

(51:15):
AI used to be machine learning, or it used to
be big data. It just is. So the next hype,
next new thing will be a rehash of the old.
And the more we realize that we the more we
can go back to the old and figure out how
did it work back then, And that's going back to

(51:35):
the basics.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, yeah, man, I enjoy listening to you because it
really validates a lot of stuff that I tell people, right,
because sometimes I think I'm just like saying some crazy stuff.

Speaker 5 (51:53):
You are saying some crazy stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
I do, I do, we do just like all gestures, right,
there's a hint of truth in there, you know, you
just got to find it. But you know, like you
was saying, you know, it's all it's all repeated, right,
It's all just like expressed in different ways with new innovations.
If you learn resources, right, all these resources storage, networking

(52:20):
and you know, memory, CPU, you virtualize it virtual these
virtual you know representations.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
They all go back to physical representations of the same
you know.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
So it's just a it's just a new way of
doing the same stuff, right.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
And the sooner I realized that, the better my life
became because now it's like, Okay, everybody says this is
a new thing. What was this back in the day,
And I just go back to what it was back
in the day. And I love when when you when
tech companies would introduce a feature and introduce a new
product not realizing that was a rehash of something that

(53:01):
they did ten fifteen years ago. It's just like fashion.
You know, something I was fashional ten fifteen years ago
to rehashing it today.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
I think they know. I think they know.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
It's like it's like music, right when they sample stuff
and then you have the older, the older people like
we're listening to that in high school, like this, this
is not new music. They just made it for you guys, right,
They just redid It's the same stuff that.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Happened to Like the new eminem single.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
I've heard it, I've heard about check it out. Is
it worth it? Is it worth the listening?

Speaker 2 (53:35):
I just listen. I like the video at that test.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
I check it out. Did you did you have anything
you want to leave with the people with? I know
we're kind of coming up on the hour and I
don't want to do through life.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Well wow, so I'll be uh I'll be speaking at
a conference this weekend in Montreal, and uh, it's been
It's one thing that I have been talking about for
the past couple of months, getting, you know, getting around
people who are into AI. And I'm not just talking

(54:10):
about tech people. I'm talking about venture capitalists. I'm talking
about founders of companies or building AI companies. And it's
interesting because we're so inundated with so many things about
AI and a whole bunch of things that AI can do,
and the topic revolves around what I'm talking what I'll

(54:33):
be talking about revolves around how do you prepare your
career for this new era of the AI driven world?
And I go back to three things. One, become really
really good at who we are, meaning become really really
good at being more human, and that includes creativity, leadership,

(54:56):
communication skills, vulnerability, problem solving. This is innate within US
society just diminish that with all the social conditioning, but
we go back to who we really really are as humans.
That's one. Two. Be very very clear about what it
is that you want, because if you don't know what

(55:18):
you want, you can spend four years in university, dozens
of certifications, internships, and all and you'll still end up
figuring out what you want in life right. And the
third one is to take action. I grew up in
an era where people would say information is power. Unfortunately

(55:41):
we have so many information on at our fingertips nowadays
people are no longer taken action. It's not about the
amount of information that you know. It's about what you
do with what you know. Experts don't know everything, but
they're very very very very good at the one thing
that they know, and that's stout.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
That's what I want to there it well said, Tiffany.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Did you want to there's some parking, you know, comments
or maybe you want to you know, some jabs before
we let them go.

Speaker 5 (56:20):
No, I don't. I would like to just say thank
you though, you know, glad that you took the time
to hang out with us and tell us about you know,
your career and your journey. So this has been.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Great, and thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Absolutely, and I thank you both for joining me because
I would have just been here, you know, her asking
my kids on a Tuesday night. So what I do
want to tell you guys before I let you guys go,
And I'm talking about the audience. Follow TIFFs right on
stats on stats look her up. You want to tell

(56:59):
them what the give them the U r L.

Speaker 4 (57:01):
For the show.

Speaker 5 (57:03):
Yes, it's easy. It is stats on stats dot. I oh,
you could find everything right there.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yeah, got all streaming every everything they do, and they
got some good merch out there. Your better half just
drop some dope music.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
That was cool. I've heard some of it. It's actually
pretty good.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
I thought it was gonna be Honestly, I thought it
was gonna be cheating. I thought it was gonna be bad.
It's probably better than EM.

Speaker 4 (57:30):
And IT and stuff, So definitely check out. It's related, right,
so you know, it's one of those things. Fine, edwin, right.
I was lucky enough. I just found out.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
I was lucky enough to find him running to him
on Facebook. He's not don't know much, but I was
on there at the right time. So definitely get on
you know, get on there, try to find him, find
him on LinkedIn. He wanted accept your friend request, but
send him one anyway. Keep your guys open, you know,

(58:03):
because you know, you gotta get around the people that
are doing stuff.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
Get around people that are doing stuff, and don't just
get around them. And ask questions.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Like Edwin said, ask questions, get a path, get the information, execute,
get some action under your thought right Because for me personally,
he come to me on the streets that you want
to want to do something and take them. I want
to know what you've done so far, even if you've
been spending and wheels in.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
The mud, at least I know you're earnest and you're
being and you're willing to do the work.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
And and last but not least, obviously, you know, check
us out if you if you're interested in developing every
mind right, like what did right there? You know, join
us on them tech folks, check us out. The website
is easy to remember, develop everymind dot com. That's how
link tree where you can find all of our podcast

(58:57):
plat all of our all the all the I can't
even talk, all the platforms where you can listen to
the show or watch the show on YouTube, just linking
to all that stuff. If you want to support us, right,
if you feel like we're doing some good things for
the community, support us and and just.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
Kind of you know, keep helping people help peak because it's.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Rough, right, there's a lot of barriers. Some of them
are imagined and uh Me, Edwin, Tiffany.

Speaker 4 (59:29):
And in Jordan.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Right, we're all doing our hard to try to, you know,
clear up the rubbish. There's a lot of misinformation, disinformation
out there as as far as how to how to
do this thing.

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026: Tech Genius says he is an Asian who didn’t want a college degree

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