Eric (0:0) Hey Hey there, and welcome to the office of the IT guy, the show where we celebrate the people and talk about the technology that's changing our world. (0:22) I am your host, Eric, the IT guy, Hidricks, and my mission here is to share a love for Open Source and help build a stronger community. (0:28) I'm so thankful that you tuned in because the office is now open. Eric (0:56) Hey there, and welcome to the office of the IT guy show. (1:00) Probably being rebranded as the IT guy show, a little bit easier to say. (1:04) As you can tell, we're still working out some of the kinks. (1:06) I'd been been working a little bit this afternoon setting up Restream, which is the platform we're using for for live episodes. (1:13) But few kinks to work out, but never fear. Eric (1:17) I am a professional or at least that's what they tell me to say. (1:21) Anyway, I'm your host, Eric, the IT guy Hendrix, and I'm really excited to be kicking off with the new brand, with the new show, all the things. (1:30) So right off the top of the hour, let's I I'd like to thank Freehive for for the intro bumper, for the graphics, and and not to mention for the helpful videos that they recorded to to kinda help walk me through how to use everything. (1:43) Of course, you sysadmins, you you all understand this. (1:49) Do not ever make any changes to your production environment the day of a big thing. Eric (1:54) So that translates into podcasting. (1:57) Don't make changes when they say, hey. (1:58) We've got a shiny new studio interface you can use. (2:02) Don't make that change two hours before a show and then walk off to do other work things. (2:08) Anyway, welcome. Eric (2:10) Thank you all for for joining me and for for helping promote the the new content. (2:14) You know, new channel, new branding, new look, but but same content, same same desire to teach and to learn and share. (2:22) So what are what are we talking about today? (2:25) One of the things that I learned as a systems administrator early on was that you can't just go to your boss and say, hey. (2:33) I want this new tool because it's shiny, and I think it'll be fun to play with. Eric (2:37) That that doesn't fly very well. (2:39) So one thing I didn't really learn as a systems administrators, how do you how do you promote that? (2:45) How do you how do you identify maybe a new tool that would actually help your environment? (2:51) How how do you promote that? (2:52) How do you basically present that as an option to to your manager in such a way that makes sense? Eric (2:58) And a lot of times that includes dollars or hours of investment for a team or a lot of cultural shifts. (3:06) So there there's a lot that's involved in that. (3:09) And most recently, I was at an event here in Kansas City. (3:14) I I even picked up my shirt today, DevOpsDay's Kansas City twenty twenty four. (3:18) I was in Downtown KC. Eric (3:20) And so, actually, the next few episodes, I've got interviews both live and prerecorded from that event where I'm where I'm interviewing and having conversations with some some of the some of my fellow speakers that were there. (3:34) I was I was was very thankful to be invited as a media sponsor, and so the IT guy show got got a moment in the spotlight. (3:44) While I was there, I I met an individual who one of his who whose talk was about ROI, return on investment. (3:53) And he and I got talking in the green room later on about how that kind of applies in a couple of different ways. (3:59) That that could be ROI on your career. Eric (4:01) That could be ROI on, like, traditional business ROI. (4:05) So he he was very kind to to agree to sit down and and have a chat with me today. (4:10) So as long as I don't break the the interface, let me bring in JT Perry, my guest for today. (4:18) And there you are. (4:18) Hey. Eric (4:19) It worked. (4:21) Gotta love it when things work. JT (4:22) Pleasure to be here, and thanks for having me on you know, fun to be one of the early ones on the new channel and and see everything you're doing over here. (4:30) Good stuff. Eric (4:31) Well, you realize if if things don't work out with the new channel, I can just blame you. (4:35) Right? JT (4:35) Absolutely. (4:36) Right? Eric (4:37) Perfect. JT (4:37) VMware, Tanzu, Red Hat. (4:40) Right? (4:40) Mhmm. (4:40) Right? (4:41) Dogs and cats get together. JT (4:42) Right? (4:42) All the fun stuff. Eric (4:43) What what could possibly go wrong? (4:46) JT, why don't you, why don't you take a moment, introduce yourself, and, and who are you? (4:50) What do you do? (4:51) And and what's what's something you do for fun? JT (4:54) Absolutely. (4:55) Again, thanks for for having me. (4:57) JT Perry, current day job is a a Tanzu executive value adviser, which is a really fancy name for those in the industry. (5:06) If you're familiar with, like, field CIO, field CTO, it's it's kind of a version of that. (5:12) Very much focused on the the Tanzu modern application stack within VMware and Broadcom, but really helping organizations at the especially at the leadership level kinda take on this transformation. JT (5:27) How do we move to legacy to more cloud native development, leveraging tools that we all talk about. (5:34) Right? (5:34) Insert buzzwords here, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, all those kind of things. (5:38) But I spend a lot of time on the how and the why and and things like that. (5:45) Been in the industry in a variety of roles for for over twenty years. JT (5:49) This is my first time on kind of the vendor side. (5:52) Previous to this, I was CIO of Premier Blue Cross. (5:56) More in gay, fancy title, but probably more interesting there was business transformation to both kind of a hybrid business and technology role, doing things like watching doctor's practices, which, you know, talk about sys admins doing stuff as as a developer and sys admin in my background. (6:14) Probably had no business doing that, but that was a lot of fun. (6:18) Let a data transformation, the data hub strategies, other things back there. JT (6:23) And previous to that, several roles in kind of the technology, m and a, and and transformation space as well. (6:32) Jeez. (6:32) Yes. (6:33) What do I do for fun? (6:34) I live on a 20 acre farm Eric (6:37) Oh, nice. JT (6:37) South Of Seattle. (6:40) So chickens now, we're we're doing the work to to bring in goats and and probably cows. (6:45) And I don't know if we'll get all of that this year, but but we're headed in that direction. (6:49) Like, every IT project, it's over budget behind town behind schedule, all those good fun stuff. (6:56) And then also super heavily involved in in First Robotics, which is probably a whole another podcast to talk about at at some point, but but very involved in opening up STEM opportunities to kids of various backgrounds and things like that. Eric (7:12) Yeah. (7:13) That we we're kinda discussing some of your interest in preparation for today's episode, and and and you just kinda offhand mentioned robotics. (7:19) I was like, wait. (7:20) Wait. (7:20) What? Eric (7:22) Except I already put you down for this episode, so definitely have to bring you back to talk about robotics. (7:26) But so let's let's let's dive into this. (7:32) Like I like I mentioned in the preshow, ROI generating a proposal, those things were not ever something that was really taught as a systems administrator. (7:43) The main thing I learned in fifteen years as a sys admin was that I had no business being a sys admin. (7:48) That what I do today is much more applicable to my skill set. Eric (7:51) But that that aside, I did learn a lot, and I did spend a lot of years as a systems administrator. (7:57) And it never failed that we you know, I I was I would manage anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds, if not a few thousand servers at any any given time. (8:09) Of course, the the ratio of servers to sys admins was always was always low. (8:14) So trying to figure out, how do you how do you get the tools that you need or the tools you think you need and and get them introduced into your environment? (8:24) Was this something that, that kinda led to your was that a problem you saw in your career that kinda led to your current position? JT (8:31) Yeah. (8:31) I can't say it led directly to my current position, but but throughout my career, a lot of, hey. (8:38) I need to justify why we're going to write as maybe an individual contributor or a frontline manager, you know, why we need this this tool. (8:48) Like, why should we do this? (8:49) But also not just, like, spending dollars as in writing it. JT (8:53) I need the company to write a check so I can have this thing, this widget, whether it's hardware or software. (8:58) But, also, this is how I wanna spend my time. (9:01) How do I justify upstream that, you know, look leadership. (9:06) I know you have a 100 things you wanna do. (9:09) I'm gonna go do this and and why you should let me and why, frankly, you should reward me for for going and doing this. JT (9:15) So it's it's not only a hard dollars off the road, but that how do I justify my time and focus? Eric (9:22) Yeah. (9:23) I I like that, especially sort of the non the nondirect billing path. (9:30) Like, I I wanna spend my time on a lot of times I spent time trying to learn technologies that we were already using. (9:40) One of the one of the mantras I feel like I lived by as a sysadmin was that every environment is a production environment because dev could never be down because you'd never knew what developers were working on. (9:51) You didn't know what schema changes the the DBAs might be playing with at the time. Eric (9:55) So, unfortunately, every environment was a production environment. (9:58) So having to request additional compute or I I guess I should I should share my anecdote that kind of inspired the topic was just the fact that, very early on, gosh, this was back when Puppet was was new and really looked into, I think it was Puppet Enterprise at the time, just kind of their orchestration piece around, around all their all their, automation and going, we can you imagine? (10:26) We could just click a few buttons and these tasks that are now exist in a Google Doc well, I'm sure they weren't Google Docs at the time. (10:33) They were probably on a shared drive somewhere on a Windows share. (10:37) But, you know, just being stuck in this position of, well, I've I've got all these steps, and I do the exact same thing over and over and over again. Eric (10:46) And it's copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. (10:49) That's that's not effective for the company. (10:51) That's not effective for is is not effective as as an employee. (10:58) It's not effective for your your end users, whether that's your internal customers like devs or your external com customers. (11:05) It just doesn't do anybody any good. Eric (11:07) So one of the things that I really struggled with was, like, in that example, I I want this tool. (11:13) It'll make such a big difference. (11:15) We can automate so much of the mundane. (11:18) But then just going in and and I think I made this joke before we went live was that just showing up and going, I want this tool. (11:25) Can you go buy it for me? Eric (11:26) Was met with, like, crickets and a lot of blank stares. (11:30) Like, that's not how this works. JT (11:33) Yeah. (11:33) And, like, if if if I'm gonna buy this thing as a leader, how do you know, what am I gonna get out of it? (11:39) Right? (11:40) I know what you're gonna get out of it. (11:41) Or well, maybe I don't know what you're gonna get out of it, so you have to tell me what you're gonna get out of it. JT (11:45) What am I gonna get out of it? (11:47) And how do I know that you've thought of at least as as reasonably as possible, nothing is ever perfect. (11:54) Right? (11:54) Well, we'll get into this, but but ROIs are educated guesses at best. (11:58) Right? JT (12:00) But how do I know you've thought of, like, all the effort and, frankly, some of the disruption that it's gonna be bringing in this tool? (12:06) Right? (12:06) Puppet example, you bring in Puppet. (12:09) Well, a, there's a whole bunch of time to write those scripts, figure it out, right, in the in the front end. (12:16) The rest of your sysadmin team, right, are are gonna use it. JT (12:20) I hope, like, one person using it. (12:21) Right? (12:22) That that doesn't really if everybody else is doing manual changes. (12:25) Right? (12:26) You're doing all this automatic configuration. JT (12:29) But then also, hey. (12:30) Have you thought about how this is gonna impact security and compliance? (12:33) Like and and maybe not detail, but at least that, you know, I acknowledge it's going to impact them, that they're going to right? (12:40) There's a new way we're gonna do compliance controls because no longer is is Eric gonna sign off on this. (12:45) It's part of the puppet chain, so it just happens. JT (12:47) Right? (12:48) And and all of that kinda kinda stuff is is you know, ROI, while it's a thing, it can be an instrument. (12:56) There isn't one version of it. (12:57) It's not that scientific, but it's a way to communicate that I've thought about it. (13:01) Here's here's what I think it's gonna cost us. JT (13:04) Here's what I think it's it it can be, and and at the risk of rambling on. (13:11) Also, being aware that, like, this also isn't like a waterfall project plan either. (13:15) Right? (13:15) But that that's not what this is. (13:17) This is that first, hey. JT (13:19) This is what I it's gonna cost, and here's what I think we're gonna get out of it. (13:22) Here's why I think we should do it. Eric (13:26) Yeah. (13:26) I like that. (13:28) So we we've identified a need. (13:30) And so we want we want a shiny new automation tool. (13:37) So I I, as an individual contributor, have identified this need. Eric (13:41) What what would be your next step if if you were in my shoes to to start promoting this up the chain to get to get their right approvals? JT (13:51) First thing I would do is start to talk to the people I think are going to be impacted by this. (13:56) Right? (13:57) And and impact is not necessarily I think that sometimes carries a negative connotation. (14:02) But pro and con. (14:03) Right? JT (14:03) There are good impacts. (14:04) There are bad impacts. (14:06) And and starting to have a conversation to say, okay. (14:10) As a SIS admin, this is what I think I'm gonna get out of it. (14:14) I'll say leveraging the vendor, and that's not even just a plug because of my day job. JT (14:18) Like, I I did this previously. (14:20) The vendor knows what the benefits, you know, of these tools are. (14:25) At least they have a hypothesis around that. (14:27) Ask them. (14:28) So so I'll use the security example again, right, or the compliance example. JT (14:32) Go and start talking to them. (14:34) And and look. (14:35) We we all know have horror stories of those not being great relationships. (14:39) These, by the way, are are are exercises that start to build the bridges between the organization, so I would encourage you to do that anyway. (14:46) But start to have a conversation with security of, hey. JT (14:50) I think you could get something out of this too. (14:52) Right? (14:53) And it's not all sunshine and roses. (14:54) Sometimes those can be contentious where security is like, no. (14:57) We've got our own tool or we have our own road map. JT (15:00) Like, all that exists. (15:01) Welcome welcome to the real world. (15:03) Right? (15:03) Right? (15:03) All that that's all real. JT (15:05) But I would start to have those conversations and start to see what what you know, part of it is being a salesperson. (15:12) Right? (15:12) Help selling. (15:14) I I I want Puppet security. (15:16) This is what I think you can get out of it. JT (15:17) Do you think you can get out of it? (15:19) Finding that person that will, you know, help maybe pick up that message, talking to dev, talking to the other folks that that that may be involved. (15:27) Right? (15:27) Today, we've got SRE and all all all these other things. (15:30) Right? JT (15:30) But start to have that conversation with no stakes. (15:37) Right? (15:37) You're you're not at this point, you're just trying to to get folks to come to the table. (15:42) And, really, what you offer them up is, hey. (15:44) Let's come to a table and start to talk, you know, the dreaded meeting. JT (15:48) But but let's have a meeting with all of us in a room where we can start to say, if we were gonna do this, what what we'd get out of it, and what do we think it's gonna cost us? (16:01) I mean, you know, what what do we think that effort is? (16:03) Big round numbers. (16:04) No nobody's making a commitment. (16:07) We'll put a pin in that word, and and we need to come back to that. JT (16:10) But but least have that conversation. (16:13) And I talked about this a lot in Kansas City, and and, hopefully, it it came across. (16:20) That's some of the most important work you can do. (16:24) Again, we're talking for a fairly large, like, enterprise level investment. (16:27) Right? JT (16:27) Mhmm. (16:28) We're talk yeah. (16:28) I wanna go on this little exercise. (16:30) Well, of course, then you don't need to go as broad or as high, right, to get approval and and and that kind of thing. (16:35) But if you're talking about an enterprise wide tool, as a leader, right, if I'm in that CIO position and I'm gonna approve this, one of the first things I wanna know is everybody around my table, are you in on it? JT (16:46) Right? (16:46) Mhmm. (16:46) Has CSO even heard of this? (16:48) Right? (16:48) I don't care if the CSO, you know, if if they know an in-depth amount about it, but if they at least heard about this. JT (16:54) Because that's at least a signal that their team's been engaged. (16:57) That's gonna be a big, big red flag for me as a leader if they're what? (17:02) What is this? (17:03) Right? (17:04) If it's a CIO level approval and the people around my table haven't heard about it, you know, that that's it. JT (17:09) So Eric (17:12) So we have identified need. (17:14) We've got a shiny new automation tool, and I'm sure nowadays, it's it's filled with all kinds of AI juicy goodness in the middle as you almost choke on your drink. (17:25) And we've we've we've built we started to build our request. (17:28) We've we've talked to a lot of stakeholders and not even so much you you haven't even mentioned dollar signs yet, which I think is very important to to share is how is this going to affect our ability to do business. (17:41) Like, the iron sys admin in chat mentions that when automation clobbers manual changes and then people are confused because they they weren't involved in that process early enough that now we have we have all these automation tool manage configuration files. Eric (17:57) You go and make a change, and it comes back twenty four hours later and changes it back. (18:01) And so you you get all the right people around the table. (18:05) I I could see a lot of this this give and take type conversation where, hey. (18:10) We're going to get to the point where it's not gonna take sysadmins three days to take a take a a a a VM template, update it because no one's touched the template in six months to update it, run all the security scans, get the approvals from security, get it back, set up all the developer work tools, and send it over to the development team. (18:30) No. Eric (18:31) Instead, we're going to use the shiny automation tool, and we're gonna speed up that process. (18:35) So instead of three days, it's gonna take three hours. (18:38) But here's the catch. (18:39) The catch is that it's going to take us six months to get all the scripts in place or to to get the tool up to speed. (18:46) So during that time, new requests may be slower. JT (18:51) Yeah. (18:51) For sure. (18:52) And I think, you know, also starting in that time. (18:56) Right? (18:56) And and if you're an IC new to an organization, this may not be obvious. JT (19:00) So, this is where leadership, helps. (19:04) Right? (19:04) Your specific leadership, but also talking to your peers and talking to the other organizations, dev security, etcetera. (19:10) But talking about how this like, going from I I forget what your example was. (19:15) Three weeks to three hours or whatever. JT (19:17) I'm not sure those are the exact numbers you used, but how does that help drive the overall business outcomes? (19:23) Right? (19:23) What is the business? (19:25) Are are you an insurance company? (19:26) Are you a hospital? JT (19:27) Sorry. (19:27) You use health care. (19:28) That's my background. (19:30) Are you Red Hat? (19:31) Are you are you, you know, a software company, a start up? JT (19:34) What what what how does getting to three hours help? (19:39) Right? (19:39) If I'm a a health insurance company, well, that means in in open enrollment, as I identify a hot need, I can get something out into into production quicker, right, and, you know, to use that. (19:51) Well, what what does that mean? (19:52) Right? JT (19:53) Aligning those things to those business objectives are really, you know, important. (19:58) Right? (19:59) We want to increase our compliance in the high trust security framework. (20:05) Right right now, we're we're level x, and we wanna go to level y or whatever whatever that case may be. (20:10) Well, this tool can help with that. JT (20:12) Right? (20:12) And as a SIS admin, right, well, I always care about the business objectives. (20:16) But if I can identify a business objective like that HITRUST, well, that helps bring over my security friends, right, to people and stuff like that. (20:24) The the more dollars that are involved and the more investment, meaning time and effort that it's gonna take, the higher up you have to align to to company objectives. (20:34) Right? JT (20:35) Your team of of six or eight people may have their own objectives for the year. (20:39) And if you just wanna spend 20% of your time, right, doing something that'll help with that, well, then all you really need is your manager's approval. (20:45) Right? (20:46) Great. (20:46) Mhmm. JT (20:46) If you're gonna bring in a a $400,000 tool and you need six months of half the IT's time leadership. (20:53) Well, that's the CIO level, maybe even a board level. (20:56) That's a real thing, though. (20:57) Right? (20:58) I mean, that Mhmm. JT (20:58) That so that's a a real type of investment for some tools. (21:03) Well, you better make sure you're aligning to probably the three year strategy of the company and and the one year. (21:09) And that may sound daunting, but I I promise it it it's not. (21:13) Right? (21:14) I mean, you you probably can get there. JT (21:15) And I would say, if you can't if you can't remotely make it fit, hopefully, you are you know, frankly, I'll I'll use the word mature, but but self aware enough to go, this might not be the thing. (21:26) Right? (21:26) You can use that as a self check. (21:27) Yeah. Eric (21:29) I like that. (21:31) So one of the one of the key parts of this proposal that we're building is that ROI, the return on investment. (21:40) And and you kind of started to hint at this, the the meat of the conversation of, okay. (21:46) Great. (21:46) So server rollouts can go from three days or three weeks to to three hours. Eric (21:52) Great. (21:52) What does that mean? (21:54) And that's not necessarily financial. (21:57) So what, in its most basic sense, keeping in mind metrics and and definition, what is ROI? (22:06) What it what are we looking at when we talk about return on investment? JT (22:11) Yeah. (22:11) At the end of the day, at its most basic form, am I gonna get more out of this than I'm putting into this? (22:17) Right? (22:18) That can be, am I gonna get more sales if that's the kind of customer I am? (22:22) Am I gonna lower expenses? JT (22:24) Right? (22:25) To use your previous example, how much did it take me in salary to to deploy a a VM in three weeks? (22:31) How much does it take me to do it in in three hours? (22:35) Like, that that's a material difference to the bottom line. (22:38) So starting to capture and gather those things. JT (22:40) Right? (22:41) So when you get into that first meeting or or you kinda get alignment that, hey. (22:45) We're at least all interested in exploring this because that's what you're trying to do. (22:48) ROI is is kinda have a guided exploration. (22:52) Right? JT (22:52) Start to have those conversations of, okay. (22:54) What what's the first change? (22:56) If it's up at enterprise, the first thing you're gonna say is like like you already said, it's used to take us three weeks, and now it's gonna take us three hours. (23:04) Okay. (23:06) What's the average salary of a operator? JT (23:08) Right? (23:08) And and that sometimes could be a loaded conversation, I admit. (23:12) I would all your friends in HR and say, look. (23:15) For budget or, again, ask your leader. (23:17) Right? JT (23:17) What number do you use for budgetary purposes? (23:19) Right? (23:19) Every year, everybody does an annual budget, and then there's a big round number they use for a developer, for an operator, for a security person, insert title here. (23:27) That those are the numbers you want. (23:29) Right? JT (23:29) Whether you make more or less of that, I look. (23:31) That's a reality. (23:33) Just but it's a number that your organization uses for budgetary reasons. (23:38) That's the number you should use. (23:39) Right. JT (23:40) And literally say, okay. (23:41) Three hours versus three weeks was, what, a hundred and twenty hours, if I do my math right, 40 times three. (23:47) You know, take that hourly salary and and times three. (23:51) There you go. (23:51) There there's one benefit you you can come up with. JT (23:55) Right? (23:55) Times how many times a year do you do this? (23:57) Right? (23:58) At its simplest form, from a technology perspective, from a justifying investment, those are the kind of things you're gonna do. (24:05) How long does it take me today? JT (24:06) How long is it gonna take me tomorrow? (24:08) Right? (24:09) Or how how much does it cost me today? (24:11) How much is it gonna cost me tomorrow? (24:12) How often do I do this operation and add them up? JT (24:16) And realize, right, from from that perspective, you are going to find things that are the opposite. (24:25) Right? (24:25) I'll I'll use the puppet example. (24:28) You spend well, I'm gonna make a big broad statement here just for for the contrived example. (24:33) But you spend no time managing scripts today. JT (24:39) Well, guess what? (24:40) Tomorrow, you're gonna manage a good chunk of time in scripts. (24:43) Right? (24:44) But but if that's, you know, four hours as opposed to, you know you you saved a hundred hours and you're gonna spend another ten hours. (24:52) I don't know. JT (24:52) Right? (24:52) A horrible math on the fly. (24:54) Yeah. (24:54) But it's still Eric (24:55) Should we should have a whiteboard on the show. JT (24:57) Yeah. (24:58) Have You to lean in from an integrity and a credibility perspective to the to the stuff that goes up as well as the stuff that goes down. (25:05) Right? (25:06) Again, if if I was making the decision and you brought me an ROI, right, whether it's a PowerPoint, an Excel spreadsheet, whatever, don't don't overengineer this, but you only show me the good and there's absolutely no bad, there's absolutely no downsides, I'm gonna call fias pretty quick. (25:22) Right? JT (25:22) It's true. (25:26) I've seen it. (25:27) I have seen it more times than I wanna share. (25:29) Right? (25:29) This Eric (25:29) can I I don't doubt it? JT (25:32) Okay. (25:33) Yeah. (25:34) So, you know, at the end of the day, that's so, okay, I'm gonna bring in Puppet Enterprise. (25:39) Are there any tools I can get out of my organization, right, from from from that perspective? (25:46) That's a licensing cost. JT (25:48) K? (25:49) Doing this, right, back to the old days of of virtualization and then now Kubernetes and containers, but can I get more density on a hardware? (25:57) Right? (25:58) I can save hardware. (26:01) Those are the types of things to bring in. JT (26:04) You know, there there's some warning signs around that that I would talk about is, you know, as you're the one that's leading it. (26:11) Right? (26:13) Boy, I gotta go on a tangent for a minute, and ask everybody to bear with me without getting too geeky in accounting. (26:18) But there's hard costs and soft right? (26:21) A hard cost is, like, dollars out the door. JT (26:24) Right? (26:25) Your salary that they pay you is a hard cost. (26:29) And then there's soft cost, which is okay. (26:32) We just talked about accounting for a hundred and twenty hours of time versus three weeks of time. (26:36) Right? JT (26:36) If I or or three hours of time. (26:38) If I'm gonna save that hundred and seventeen hours, if I'm not gonna lay anybody off, and we hope we don't we know layoffs happen. (26:45) That that's a thing. (26:46) But but if I'm not gonna lay anybody off, that's a soft cost. (26:50) Because as the CFO, the amount I pay in salary every two weeks didn't change. JT (26:55) Right? (26:55) Right? (26:56) No nobody left. (26:57) And so you have to be really aware of that and aware of in the ROI, what are you signing up for? (27:04) And so I bring that up to say, okay. JT (27:06) Here's Eric saying I wanna bring in Puppet. (27:10) You have to make sure you are on the very same page with your peers that are helping you build this ROI that you you you did all this kinda politicking work, frankly, to get them to the table, and and you're gonna sign up collectively for this return. (27:24) Right? (27:24) We want Puppet Enterprise because we can save a hundred and seventeen hours per VM deploy. (27:30) We're gonna do that a 100 times a year. JT (27:32) Right? (27:32) That that's a lot of money. (27:35) And I think that's a hard cost. (27:37) Well, you just signed up not only your team, but those peers to cost from the organization. (27:44) Right? JT (27:44) Right. (27:45) In unhealthy environments, you can purity to give up, you know, five bodies. (27:51) I wouldn't do it, but you could, right, from that perspective. (27:55) And and realizing that when you get up, right, there are leaders that say, really? (28:00) We we can cut that bottom line? JT (28:02) I'm I'm gonna take that. (28:03) Right? (28:05) Hopefully, they would ask a bunch of follow-up questions. (28:07) But as a leader, as a CIO, again, if everybody around the table says, yeah, this makes sense, we think we can cut that from the organization. (28:14) You just signed people up to leave the organization. JT (28:16) And and, you know, there's a human cost to that, and I don't wanna be flippant about that in any way, shape, or form. (28:24) You know, I I'd love for us to get to a world where layoffs never happen again, but but but they do, and sometimes that is the result of some of these things. (28:32) But most of the time, the vast majority of the time that that the sysadmin or somebody else is doing this ROI, right, it's really soft cost. (28:40) I'm going to save that time because I can do so much more with that hundred and seventeen hours. (28:45) Yes. JT (28:45) Right? (28:45) Back to the corporate objectives. (28:47) If I'm not spending a hundred and seventeen hours doing this, I can go do that. (28:51) That helps us make money. (28:53) That helps us do whatever. JT (28:55) Or I can do this other thing that helps us save money. (28:57) Right? (28:58) If I if I had, you know, a hundred and seventeen hours, I could do this where we don't need to pay this outside service or something. (29:03) I whatever the case may be. (29:05) Right. JT (29:06) So so don't be afraid of soft cost, but be very clear in everything you communicate around that, what what you're signing up for, and who's signing up for it, and did they sign off on it? (29:18) It sounds I have seen this movie, right, right, from a you know, several times. Eric (29:25) I'm pretty sure I still have the ticket stubs to that movie. (29:30) You you raised a lot of good points, and and and I told you ahead of time this was this was gonna happen. (29:36) I'm I wanna take us off script for a minute because a question came to mind as we're talking about hard and soft costs. (29:41) One thing that has changed in my time in the industry and, like, very early on, it was the early days of VMware. (29:50) I I I still remember just the shock of watching my first p to v conversion. Eric (29:57) So for for you younger admins out there that have had the cloud, that was physical to virtual conversions. (30:03) And watching the p to v tool the first time, we we had a ping running against that IP address as it switched from the hardware to the virtual machine. (30:12) Didn't drop a packet. (30:13) It was the most incredible thing I ever saw. (30:16) How little could I have predicted today's environment where we've got we still have data centers. Eric (30:23) We still still have bare metal. (30:25) But now there's there's been this this rush to the cloud. (30:30) And we we we can have another episode to talk about how well that worked out for folks. (30:36) But having come from a data center, capital expenditure type of budget planning world, you you can get into this conversation of between CapEx and OpEx. (30:49) And a lot of lot of folks that I talk to nowadays, see OpEx is just an an unlimited stream of cash. Eric (30:58) We we can go out and spend all this money in the cloud. (31:01) We don't have to write things off in three years. (31:03) It's it's not CapEx anymore. (31:06) Does that does that does that battle between CapEx and OpEx affect this process any? JT (31:13) Yes. (31:14) When you get into the larger right? (31:16) Right? (31:16) The whole I wanna spend 20% of my time working on. (31:18) No. JT (31:19) It doesn't. (31:20) But in the you know, I'm gonna spring in a $400,000 tool and all of that. (31:24) It absolutely does. (31:25) And, you know, leader, whether they're technology or or business, right, right, CFOs, all of that, what I feel like the OpEx versus CapEx to also go back in our way back machine is like the Windows versus Linux battles way back when For sure. (31:42) It's what? JT (31:44) You know, to expose my personal bias, I feel like CapEx is a credit card. (31:49) I can buy a whole lot right now, but I'm gonna have to make up for that down down the road. (31:55) More OpEx is I can just pay now. (31:58) So I preferred to get to OpEx where I could. (32:03) That being said, to launch a new line of business. JT (32:05) Right? (32:05) Whether I did the you know, was a a part of that with some awesome people at at at DRM's, an old job, or or cool people I got to work with at at Primera around that, well, you kinda did need to do that CapEx thing. (32:18) Right? (32:18) You kinda needed to charge the the credit card. (32:20) It's like buying a house. JT (32:21) Right? (32:22) While I'm sure there are people out there that do it, you generally can't do that with OpEx, right, just out of your payroll. (32:27) You you you you generally kinda do CapEx, right, to taking out a loan. (32:31) And I know it's not a great a 100% analogy, but there is a thing that is the the time to use that. (32:36) But, yeah, making sure that, okay, we're gonna capitalize this Puppet enterprise. JT (32:42) Right? (32:42) Wow. (32:42) Puppet should, like, sponsor you after all of this. Eric (32:46) I just pulled them out of the air, honestly. (32:47) It was just one of the projects that I wanted to get approved. (32:50) Salt. (32:50) I don't think it ever did. JT (32:53) Yeah. (32:53) Let's let's start a online discussion battle of automation tools of Puppet Chef, Salt, and Spoil. (32:58) Anyway Eric (33:00) Well, I'm I I can I can finish that right now? (33:02) I I'm I'm the host, and I I am dead set on Ansible. (33:07) So JT (33:09) There you go. Eric (33:10) That sounds horrible. JT (33:13) Okay. (33:14) It's all good, man. (33:15) All good. (33:16) But, you know, the CapEx and OpEx, knowing that, you know, I'm gonna capitalize it now because, you know, it allows me to do that without directly impacting the bottom line. (33:28) Right? JT (33:28) I don't have to take that $400,000 hit today on the bottom line. (33:33) But I do know I have to take chunks of it out throughout the year. (33:36) Right? (33:37) So you're signing up future you. (33:39) Right? JT (33:39) I talk about all the time that I hate future me because it signs me up for stuff that I have to do later. (33:44) Right? (33:44) As an organization, you are doing that. (33:46) Right? (33:46) You are setting yourselves up for for, quote, unquote, payments, at least on paper from a financial perspective, and your CFO can hold you accountable to you. JT (33:54) And and they should. (33:55) Right? (33:55) And and the street and stock analysts when you get to be public companies and all that kind of fun stuff as well. (34:00) So I I think a good awareness of that. (34:03) That being said, if you're a sys admin, you're just getting started in your career, yeah, I know it's a thing, but but I wouldn't stay up at night about it. JT (34:10) But if you are, you know, starting to be that that director level that has to sponsor these types of things or or or VP and hire, you absolutely should know what bucket of money you're tapping into. Eric (34:23) That's right. (34:24) So when when you're here in town, when you're when you're here in Kansas City at at DevOps days, you brought up a really good point in your presentation that even I stopped and went, oh, yeah. (34:37) I didn't think about that. (34:39) And that's this this idea that you might actually have to follow-up and prove your assumptions. JT (34:46) Absolutely. (34:46) At least if you wanna do it a second time. (34:49) Right? (34:49) And and it's in cheek. (34:51) But, again, if I'm a leader and you said, look. JT (34:55) If I bring in this Puppet enterprise, it's gonna take us about six months again back at the napkin, all of that. (35:01) You know, we we can get on the waterfall projects versus agile train too kind of conversation, or you can overanalyze this upfront. (35:11) Right? (35:11) Right. (35:11) Nuclear research project. JT (35:13) But you do, at the end, have to be able to say, yes. (35:17) We did this. (35:18) Right? (35:19) And and, you know, back to being an IC, and I wanna spend 20% of my time. (35:25) I'm gonna spend 20% of my time, and then, you know, two months, I I think I'll be able to do this. JT (35:31) Well, in two months, your manager's gonna come knock on the door, right, and say, well, hopefully, you're going to the manager and saying this is what I did or, hey. (35:37) This is what I thought I would do. (35:39) These things came up. (35:40) This happened, and and now here's my new expectations. (35:43) Like, that's a normal part of this conversation. JT (35:45) You have to do that for this $400,000. (35:48) I think it's the number we've been using for kind of public investment too. (35:51) Right? (35:52) I think it's gonna cost us $400,000. (35:54) I think I'm gonna save us a hundred and seventeen hours. JT (35:56) I think we're gonna do it a 100 times a year. (35:58) I think this is what I'm gonna get. (36:00) Well, okay. (36:01) You've now got it installed left, and and, you know, as you're actually installing it, you'll have your whatever status reporting kind of thing. (36:09) But after you've got it out and you've actually used it, well, okay, we thought it was gonna cost us three hours. JT (36:14) It's costing us ten hours because there's this one manual process. (36:18) We haven't come up with a way to automate that. (36:20) Okay. (36:21) None of us thought about that. (36:22) Right? JT (36:23) Or this one compliance piece, and that does not mean that security is evil. (36:27) Compliance is a good thing. (36:28) Right? (36:29) I would argue there's a lot Eric (36:29) of error. (36:30) Easy to pick on in these in these scenarios, though. JT (36:32) Yeah. (36:33) Yeah. (36:34) Fair enough. (36:35) But but right? (36:35) And and, you know, like I said, we can have a bunch of enterprise scar tissue in there about that about some of those processes that we need to clean out. JT (36:43) But still, like, okay. (36:44) I could and the first blush, I could only get to ten hours. (36:47) K? (36:47) Well, that turned my ROI where I thought we were gonna save, right, $450,000 a year to only $350,000. (36:58) That's probably okay. JT (37:00) Right? (37:00) Because over two years, definitely. (37:01) Right? (37:01) I mean, that would still be a because over two years, you'd more than make up your investment in it. (37:06) You know? JT (37:07) And for that that level of scale, that makes a lot of sense. (37:11) But but being able to report out that you did that. (37:13) So as you execute these projects, building in those metrics. (37:17) Right? (37:18) And and metric sounds fancy, and, yes, we'd love it for all to be automated. JT (37:22) And and, you know, I think in our day jobs, we all push a bunch of things that that help, right, measure all of that stuff and all of that. (37:29) But sometimes it's, hey. (37:30) You know what, team? (37:31) For the next week, just for a week, I need you to record start and stop for these things just for a week. (37:37) Right? JT (37:38) Let let's not make it Right? (37:39) Right? (37:39) We're not gonna create a paperwork burden on top of it and take all our savings out of it. (37:43) But but just kind of almost surveys. (37:46) Right? JT (37:48) Watch it push to production and see how long it took. (37:50) Right? (37:51) I think about that in our DevOps tool sets today. (37:53) Right? (37:53) Right. JT (37:54) So, like, randomly pick a project that you know use project generically. (37:58) Right? (37:58) A release that's coming up and and kind of audit it for lack of a better word. (38:03) Right? (38:04) How did it go through the process? JT (38:05) We thought it would take this, and it's now taking that. (38:08) Those are really, really important things to do and not being afraid of it not working out. (38:14) No. (38:14) Look. (38:15) I I think I used this this example, but it was real in Kansas City. JT (38:22) We talked about replacing a core claim system at Primera. (38:25) And when we were working with the consultant, then I said, hey. (38:28) How long do you think this is gonna take? (38:29) And they said, yeah. (38:29) One and a half CIOs. JT (38:31) Right? (38:33) Not necessarily wrong. (38:34) So, yeah, you can get two big project failures or big spend failures that that end in that. (38:39) But most of the time, you're not doing things that big, honestly. (38:43) That's that's not normal. JT (38:44) That's not a I would think. (38:46) Things that that most people are gonna spin up are much lower stakes than that. (38:50) And sometimes it's gonna work out. (38:52) Sometimes it's not. (38:53) And, usually, what happens is it works out, but not as well as you thought. JT (38:56) Occasionally, you get the the awesome outcome of, wow. (39:00) We thought we were gonna save a 100,000, and we're saving 200,000. (39:03) I I've seen that. (39:04) It does you know? (39:06) But the usual case is we're optimistic humans. JT (39:10) We we thought we'd save 300,000, and we're gonna save 250. (39:14) That's still probably a really good answer. (39:17) And, you know, being able to articulate the why is gonna build your credibility so the next time you go to that well, you'll get a yes. (39:25) Right? (39:25) As a leader, there were people that would come to me. JT (39:28) Again, dollar amounts matter, but but generally come to me and say, hey. (39:31) I think we should do this, and this is what I think we're gonna get out of it. (39:35) It'll be like, okay. (39:36) Right? (39:36) There was others I'd probably deep dive and tear apart and challenge because maybe it was their first time, and I just wanted to know did all of this. JT (39:45) Or if there are ones that I sniffed, frankly, integrity problems with previous requests, then yeah. (39:51) Right? (39:52) We're gonna we're gonna have some fun. (39:57) Follow-up is critical. (39:58) That's how you get to do number two and three. JT (40:01) Right. (40:01) You can do any of these ones. (40:03) Right? (40:04) But but whether or not you wanna get a second or third crack at it, which you will, and frankly, it's how you build your career. Eric (40:10) Oh, for sure. (40:14) Speaking of career, have you used a lot of the, a lot of these same proposal, methods, a lot of this, a lot of the tidbits on ROI that, that we've talked about today to apply towards a job position or maybe a career shift? JT (40:31) Yeah. (40:31) I think a lot of well, I remember growing up, and my parents used to say, well, just make a pros, cons list, right, of of whatever decision you're gonna be. (40:42) Picking a college, picking whatever. (40:44) Right? (40:45) All of that kind of thing, whatever the decision you would make. JT (40:48) That's really what this is, right, at its most simplest, you know, boiling it down. (40:53) It's taking all the reasons that this is good, all the reasons that this might not be so good, and making a judgment of whether or not you wanna do it. (40:59) Right? (41:00) This is looking at all the dollars or hours or distraction. (41:04) Right? JT (41:04) Distraction's a cost as well. (41:06) It's gonna take which should probably be in the con list. (41:10) Here's all the things we're gonna get out of in the pro. (41:12) Is it worth it? (41:13) Right? JT (41:14) So I would say the same kind of concept could be used at a career. (41:18) Take alright. (41:19) So you're looking for a new job. (41:20) Let's say you you got to the you found something you were interested in, and you got an offer back. (41:27) Okay. JT (41:27) It's more money. (41:28) But is it more money that that makes it worth it? (41:30) Right? (41:31) Right. (41:31) So there's the transition cost. JT (41:33) Right? (41:33) All that stress Eric (41:34) Okay. (41:34) Sure. JT (41:35) All of that that comes with it. (41:38) You know, the devil I know versus the devil I don't kind of stuff. (41:41) And and salary, right, is the increase in salary, and and people have many more drivers for for doing things. (41:47) Can I work remote? (41:48) Can I work don't I don't mean to make it just about dollars, but we're talking about it return on the debt? JT (41:51) For sure. (41:52) But but looking at that and saying, do those pros outweigh that con? (41:56) I would say, yeah. (41:57) Absolutely. (41:58) You should be using this as as a part of your career. JT (42:01) It's probably any like, I'm gonna buy a car. (42:03) I'm gonna buy a house. (42:05) Any of those. (42:05) It's a farm. (42:06) Right? JT (42:07) I would love lots of new tractors. (42:09) Like, I'm a tractor guru. (42:13) My my my my incredible wife does a a good job of of really watching my return on investment, right, and whether or not I can spend. Eric (42:25) And I'm I'm sure your marriage is one of those places where where you've wanted to follow-up on your ROI so you can get that next director. JT (42:32) Exactly. (42:34) Yeah. (42:34) I would say, you know, you could overuse the term, but most things you do probably day to day, you're doing some kind of version of this calculation. (42:44) It's how much investment is how much work you're gonna do is is all of those kind of things. Eric (42:49) I like that. (42:52) So to to summarize, if if I were to if I were to provide the audience with just a quick hit list of things to focus on in order to build that next project proposal, identify the need, engage with stakeholders, people that would be affected whether positively or negative, build your request, calculate that ROI, and then, of course, six months, a year, whatever that time frame is, make sure to follow-up. JT (43:27) Yeah. (43:27) The only thing I would add into that is to align it to the business objectives. (43:31) Again, tie up with the business objectives as as investment. (43:35) And and the last tip kind of builds off of that a little bit. (43:39) Say, the amount of work you need to put into this really kind of gauge to the level of investment. JT (43:44) Again, if you're looking for 20% of your time and you're just talking to your manager, there's work, but not that much work to do. (43:50) If you're talking about that $400,000 puppet enterprise, yeah, you're you're gonna spend, you know, a month or two pulling this together, and that that's that's part of it. Eric (44:01) Well, I really appreciate your time and and and you stopping by to virtually to to chat. (44:07) And it was it was great getting to connect with you in Kansas City. (44:10) We we all sat around the the speaker table and and shared some jokes and and and some some horror stories as well. (44:17) Is there is there anywhere folks can hear more from JT? JT (44:20) Yeah. (44:21) I would say my own version of this online fun, a pint of scotch with two great friends, Gotham Palapa and Brian Ross, a bunch of former or or current field CTOs talking about leadership and and technology and and all of that kind of stuff. (44:39) Also, LinkedIn under JT Perry, and then most other socials, blue sky x, all of those kind of things as Mhmm. (44:49) JTP. Eric (44:51) Awesome. (44:52) Yeah. (44:52) Yeah. (44:53) I I I almost branded this Linux and liquor, but I I didn't I didn't figure that would that would get quite the reach that I was hoping for. (45:02) But JT (45:02) A couple people that are into scotch and somebody that's into beer, and you end up with a pint of scotch, and and hopefully, you don't mix the two measurements up. Eric (45:12) So we'll we'll have to have you back at at some point and and and talk about your interest in robotics. (45:18) And I I I think that'd be really interesting, especially if we could get some get some some visual aids as well. JT (45:26) Absolutely. (45:26) I I would think we could probably even drag a team and bring a robot along and have a good conversation. Eric (45:31) There you go. (45:32) That would be a lot of fun. (45:33) Well, if if you enjoyed our conversation today, with with JT Perry from from VMware, aka VMware by Broadcom, I I think is the the official branding now. (45:47) But if if you wanna catch more of JT back on this show, make sure to like and subscribe and share with friend, please. (45:56) My my previous project had an incredible following. Eric (45:59) And now that now that we're over on this other channel, really could use your all's help to to repromote it and get us back up to speed. (46:08) I've got plenty of content lined up. (46:10) I've got a conversation about AI coming up. (46:13) We've got a conversation about DevOps and people. (46:16) Goodness. Eric (46:17) There's there's one coming up. (46:20) One of the members of the Matrix Foundation will be joining us to talk about Matrix. (46:26) There's just so much content I wanna build, and this is only part of it. (46:30) The rest of the channel will be looking at things like I've I've got a HomeLabs that I'm looking to standardize on some open source open source tools, identity management, maybe some Kubernetes. (46:41) So this is just one piece of the puzzle, but be sure to to to like the content and share it with a friend. Eric (46:47) Would really appreciate that. (46:48) In fact, in two weeks, I've got a conversation with Natalie from a company called Shipyard, and she has a passion for ephemeral environments. (46:57) So so the iron sys admin, my buddy Nate and I were joking in chat about how every environment is a production environment when you're a sys admin. (47:06) Well, Natalie and ephemeral Natalie is gonna join me to talk a little bit about ephemeral environments and how that can not only change your production environment, but also serve as that non prod production like environment for you to build and test against. (47:20) I got to meet Natalie at Cans Kansas City's DevOps stage just a few weeks ago. Eric (47:24) Amazing person. (47:24) Very passionate about minimal CD and ephemeral environment. (47:29) So I'm really looking forward to that conversation. (47:32) I'm also picking back the reins up at, the Fedora podcast. (47:37) We'll be live next week around the same time, different channel. Eric (47:40) We're gonna be interviewing the Fedora docs team. (47:43) So lots of content going on. (47:45) Of course, everything going on at Red Hat as well. (47:47) Follow me on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux channel. (47:49) There's just so much going on. Eric (47:52) I'm really excited. (47:53) This is gonna be an amazing summer. (47:55) JT, thank you so much for for being my guinea pig with the new tool and the new the new channel. JT (48:01) Thank you, Eric. (48:02) Can't wait to to watch. (48:04) We joke about about working for various vendors, but at the end of the day, we're all one community. (48:10) And I I, for one, can't wait to watch the conversation with Natalie and the rest of the stuff you have planned this summer. (48:15) Happy to Eric (48:16) Some great people lined up, and and JT and I got to meet a lot of them just a few weeks ago. (48:20) So really excited. (48:22) So on behalf of my guest, JT Perry, I've been your host, Eric, the IT guy Hendrix. (48:27) And this has been the IT guy show episode two. (48:30) It doesn't doesn't feel like two episodes considering I just did a couple of livestreams last week too. Eric (48:35) So but thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you again real soon.