We Are Always Learning with Patrick Debois

Matty and Jeff Smith, in Jeff's first episode as a co-host, talk with Patrick Debois about Patrick's new role and journey. Patrick recently became Director of DevOps Relations at Snyk, a DevRel role that's new to Patrick, aimed at talking about security from an ops and DevOps perspective. The word "relations" matters to Patrick because it makes the job less about technology and more about people collaborating and the cultural side. The cold open is Patrick's line from the 2010 conference story below: "In all due respect, I call bullshit."

Not Patrick's Idea

Jeff asks what gave Patrick the nerve to change an industry. Patrick says "I didn't have the idea," and never takes credit for it. Patrick put a lot of effort into promoting the ideas, but they weren't Patrick's, and compares it to research, where you find little nuggets and put the pieces together. It stuck because the first devopsdays got people so excited that they took it further, to the US and Australia, and Patrick says the timing was about "amplifying the zeitgeist." Patrick admits to organizing the first events because it would be cool to travel to country X, finding random people on Twitter, and says the drive was learning, which "might sound selfish."

Matty mentions the 10th anniversary of devopsdays in Ghent and the Day Zero for organizers, which had more people than the first devopsdays. Patrick calls it surreal, and is struck by the cooperation among random individuals on their free time, helping people on a budget fly to Belgium, and by growth in places like Brazil and China. It "sometimes does feel a little bit like a religion," and Patrick rants on Twitter about the echo chamber in dark moods.

Tools, People and Safety

The big thing Patrick learned from the global community is that tools and human relationships go hand in hand, though we don't want to believe it. Patrick points to the irony of automation and promise theory, which Patrick learned about from Mark Burgess, plus safety and resilience. Jeff asks why safety conversations thrive on Twitter but not inside organizations, where people are still being asked to do blameless postmortems. Patrick says there's a lag, and that change takes time, including time to recognize you need to change: "it's really hard to sometimes see yourself honestly in the mirror." Matty says devopsdays has always had an underlying human factors approach, so resilience engineering fits in naturally.

Patrick recommends a forthcoming IT Revolution book by Jeffrey Fredericks and Douglas Squirrel about honest conversations, where you say you'll go along with tool A while thinking something else, and being transparent about what you mean is part of safety at work.

Measuring What You Can Do

Jeff asks how teams evaluate what they're capable of delivering. Patrick says the first step is being aware you're not good at something. Patrick first thought more talking meant healthier collaboration, then read that it's not the number of interactions that makes a better party. Patrick's paradox is that we now use services and don't talk to them, so is that the end of DevOps? Patrick's answer is that you don't need to communicate if the other side helps your goals, and "if you don't hear too much of the friction points, then things are good." Matty adds Dunning-Kruger and a point about not knowing how far the spectrum goes, and says sharing at devopsdays and DevOps Enterprise Summit resets where people think they are.

Saying "I Don't Know"

Jeff says it takes vulnerability to be the first to say you don't know what an acronym means. Matty tells of a game with a fellow systems engineer, where one texted the other a made-up phrase on a two-way pager and the other used it in a meeting as if it were a saying, and nobody ever questioned it. Patrick recalls a 2010 conference where Stephen Nelson-Smith, "this impeccable Englishman," stood at the microphone during a panel and said, "in all due respect, I call bullshit." Patrick says Patrick was shy, and learned to speak up because people kept asking for an opinion. Patrick's tip from someone else: you don't have to talk like you know everything, just say what you found and ask for another opinion.

Laggards, Context and Moving Bottlenecks

Jeff asks about people in an organization who aren't bought in. Patrick wouldn't go in saying it's what everybody is doing, but would try to understand the person's problem, because bad past experiences make trust hard, and says you first learn the history and context, like a firewall auditor who flags open ports that the business needed. Patrick prefers supporting people with little successes to being on the barricades, and says if you can't change beliefs "you have 2 options. Either you leave or they leave," while wanting diversity of opinions too. Change is baby steps: find champions, book successes, and question yourself either way. Jeff adds that organizations have preferences, and that the purpose of the business isn't the technology.

Patrick tells of spending about 4 years at a mobile and video streaming company, getting the tech straight in a year and improving sales, marketing and legal, and realizing "we're not making any money, so there is no business fit." The bottleneck "just moved, moved, moved." Jeff says the win you celebrate this week is next week's bottleneck.

Projects, Kubernetes and Resume-Driven Development

On project management, Patrick mentions the No Estimates book and says to treat plans as a projection, play the milestone game while asking for a stake in the ground on features, time or resources, and build confidence by delivering smaller chunks, talking to project managers about their real goals.

Jeff asks whether it's fine to skip a technology, like jumping from the data center straight to Kubernetes, compared with the leapfrog to mobile. Patrick notes Jeff is already biased, and says to ask what you're trying to achieve instead of which tool to use. At a recent meetup, asked who isn't using Kubernetes, Patrick was the only one to raise a hand, because Patrick felt no friction in what they were using. Patrick says being mature is picking the right tool at the right time, same with serverless, and squads at Spotify, which Patrick says Spotify doesn't use anymore, and to avoid "resume-driven development or operations." Jeff jokes the episode title is that Patrick Debois doesn't need to run Kubernetes.

How Patrick Learns

For a new domain, Patrick starts with blog posts to find the keywords, then buys several books for different perspectives, since they share about 70%, then follows blogs, looks at slides on SlideShare, and finally follows people on Twitter. Patrick is on Twitter and will speak at QCon London, DevOps Talks Melbourne, DevSecCon Sydney and the new O'Reilly conference in San Francisco. Matty will be at devopsdays New York March 3rd and 4th and runs a workshop on blameless postmortems at SREcon Americas West, and mentions devopsdays Chicago's CFP, in its seventh year.

Referenced in the show

• Patrick discussed his love for continuous learning and referenced some of his favorite books.
• The Ironies of Automation is a paper discussing how automation can expand problems rather than eliminate them.
• Promise Theory is an approach to coordinating actors and agents in a system about their intentions to each other in the form of promises. The model was originally proposed by Mark Burgess
• NoEstimates: How to Measure Project Progress Without Estimating is a 2016 book that explains the "No Estimates" Agile concept.
• A trip down memory lane with the very first DevOps Days Ghent back in 2009.

Where you can find us

Patrick

• KubeCon in London
• DevOps Talks Melbourne
• DevSecCon Sydney
• O'Reilly Infrastructure Conference

Matt

• DevOpsDays NYC March 3rd - 4th
• SRECon Americas West March 24th - 26th

Jeff

• Panda Express usually on Thursdays

Open CFPs

• The CFP for devopsdays chicago will be open at the time of this publishing, so go to devopsdays.org/chicago to check it out!