00:00:04

This is the industry discussion on burnout and technology. So the purpose of this panel is just to share what we've learned this week about burnout and engagement. Uh, so here are the questions and, uh, um, I, I'll just list them out and I'll see where it goes. Um, is this important to you and why, uh, do we need this? Um, what do we need to do about it as a community? Uh, we have an opportunity to shape next year's programming. So what can we do to make a dent? Uh, and what have you heard about that is needed from leadership and, uh, in the hypothetical, what does leadership need from us? So, uh, that is about as far as I've thought this through. So maybe we start about like, is this important? So someone, uh, John, come on. This is actually your idea.

00:00:43

Yeah, I mean, and so, I mean, um, you know, I always say that, you know, I, and choose burnout. I don't choose me. So we had, um, just to bring it down a little bit, actually, in the DevOps community in Los Angeles, I think it was 2014, a young gentleman who I had gotten to know at scale, it's the largest local Linux conference in this beautiful young man that every year I'd show up. And that was the only time we saw each other. I showed up this year. They, they did a testimony and he created suicide, and it was clearly burnout. And it, it, it affected me in such a deep way. I called Gene and I said, uh, do you mind if I write a blog post on it Revolution, because this what had happened here just, just took me down as a human. And Gene's like, absolutely. So I put it up and the reaction was like, if there, if you didn't think there was a problem, what we saw in the comments, I mean, there were thousands of comments within a weekend, me and Gene went on suicide watch for a young man member that, um, we had to coax them, tell him who we were. And then I started getting emails and, um, I realized that like, this is a really dangerous thing in our community that we're just not talking a lot about. So,

00:01:51

And instantly there was, uh, similar, uh, cases in, in the information security community. Um, so our friend Josh Corman, uh, was also very passionate about that. Yeah.

00:01:59

In fact, you know, that's how I got to Christina Maslak saw her, Josh Corman, who's, he's been part of our community, spoken at a lot of the events here. Um, he's securities, he's kind of white hat security guy. And he immediately sent me, they did, um, I remember from Christina's presentation other day, it was called the MBI, the Maslak Burnout Index. Right? Which is what she created. Um, they actually did, uh, an MBI, you can do a specific industry specific one. And, and they did one with about 400 people in the IT SEC community. And they, he shared the results with me. And then I started tracking down, well, who was Christina Maslak? And what, this was

00:02:36

Basically summarize, it was as bad as, uh, um, uh, uh, er, well,

00:02:41

Uh, uh, police officers. Er, I mean, it, you know what was interesting? I, and I'll shut up here in a second, but, and I, you know, we all do millions of things. And I always go to Gene with ideas and like we get, we do about two of like 98% of the ideas. I always so Jean, but I've always wanted to do that in our industry. 'cause one of the things that it showed is, I think it was the first time it showed in it at this ITSEC that there was a report out there that said, our industry is, you know, most of you think people think you go the person on the corner, like, Scott, he's a programmer. He works, he must be happy, is all get out. But Joe's a police officer. Er, that must be very stressful. And, and I thought, you know, wouldn't it be awesome to do an MBI in our industry? And that's may, we may do that, where like we could say, well, wait a minute. Like, you know, ours is pretty stressful too. And we compare because only anything the index does is that can compare industry to industry. So you can show where you are compared to like doctors or, um, fighter pilots or, anyway,

00:03:41

Can I go? Oh, yeah. Is it on? Okay. Um, I think it's, it's extremely important. And one thing that has been an aha for me, I would say in maybe like the last six to 12 months, is that in our industry, we focus on resilience. But often it's talked about the resilience of the systems and the services that we provide, but really we need to be talking about the resilience of our organization and our teams and our people. And, um, it used to be, I mean, I started and startups, and so it was like a badge of honor to pull an all-nighter and stay up and deploy code. And you got back up and you went right back to work the next day. And somehow our industry has not lost that. It's still something that people talk about. Like, oh, if you're not sitting at your desk for, you know, 12 hours a day, then you mustn't be committed.

00:04:37

And it's so opposite. And as a, you know, a leader in a big organization, I find myself exposed often to that old way of thinking and figuring out like, how can I show up differently and engage differently and lead by example, but then also influence our peer group so that they see that you actually get more resilience when you practice things like, um, I think Josh said in his ignite or lightning talk, uh, mental health day. Well, I was reading GQ on the flight down, and there was like a section about, uh, burnout, and it talked about the, um, courage it takes to say that you need a mental health day and how hard that is. And, um, so yes, I think it's extremely important and I'm, I'm glad that we're talking about it more.

00:05:34

Scott, Jeff. Um, yeah, so this incredibly important to me. So, you know, when, um, we did a Culture IQ and started measuring MPS and, uh, employee MPS and, um, our first, uh, culture IQ results when we came back, there are thousands of comments, but, um, there were a ton of comments, um, really around work-life balance, right? Which a lot of people saying that, you know, it's not sustainable. And so that, that kind of really hit me. It's like, this is what I'm doing to people, right? So, um, it became incredibly important to me to, to start looking at that and saying, okay, not just how we understand that. Can you speak into the mic? Sorry, understand that and make it, make it visible. And you saw in the presentation with Brian that, um, part of what he cares about is this also. And, and really seeing, okay, what on the teams, both from a, a product development operations is, is happening.

00:06:25

And a lot of this, this work, um, you know, change requests, service requests, um, pages that happen at night, which is work and disruptions, you know, as an organization, we had no idea, right? I mean, you hear about it and it's there, but we just didn't surface that and make it visible. And the product management teams definitely didn't understand that either. So that was, um, kind of shocking. Um, but once we started to make those things visible, we understood that, um, we, we had to fix it because this is something that, um, we were doing to the people. Um, and so that's just kind of been the focus now of the last 18 months or so of really trying to get a handle on that thing, uh, a handle on that, and then continue to improve it, um, with our folks.

00:07:09

Uh, and just like everybody else up here on the panel, it's important to me too. Uh, John mentioned a few years ago, he wrote that, um, that blog post Carriage Jasu and, um, got a lot of comments and got a lot of emails. Well, I was one of the people who read that blog post, and I was one of the people who sent John an email afterwards. Um, now I can say it, yeah, say, please don't tell anybody. So, um, my, uh, perspective on, on what John had written in the situation was as a, as a leader, um, and, uh, having, uh, a team of people and having a company of employees that, um, I feel a great amount of responsibility and accountability for their careers and their happiness and both personally and professionally. And, um, one of the things that I really appreciate about this DevOps community in particular is the sharing and the learning that happens.

00:08:13

Um, and teaching me about things that I needed to know about that were important, uh, to my, to my clients and to my employees. Um, but also the, the caring that goes along with it. It's the most human community that I've tech in the technology space that I think I've ever been a part of. And so, as a leader, here's the picture that I had in my head when I read, um, John's post is, Jeff, imagine the situation where you're getting the news that it was one of your employees, or it was somebody that was on your team that did that. And it, it horrified me to think about that. And that was, that was when it, it, it, it came on the radar when burnout, that b word stopped becoming just a word anymore.

00:09:12

So, you know, it just wanted, so a week later, another gentleman from that same company committed suicide. And, and so one of the things, um, I, I got to know Christina Maslak again. I, every day I wake up, I feel blessed. I feel blessed to be here. I I'm lucky I got outta high school and I'm around like brilliant people all the time, right? And then I get to have conversation with Christina Maslak about and giving her my theories. And so one of the things that like, again, armchair, but like validate it with somebody who has the ability to at least accept or dismiss the hypothesis. But if you read Carla Flores, who was the gentleman who I wrote the article about, his tweet stream clearly was crying about efficacy. And if you remember those. So one of the things I think we do a disservice.

00:09:55

So certainly we disservice if we think that burnout is a badge of honor, right? Let's like oblivate that, but even worse is there's a kind of a difference between kind of clinical onset to clinical burnout and really just, am I just exhausted? And I'm not saying that's not a bad thing, but the things that really are the hidden ones, and these are the conversation I had with Christina about, so in the mbi, I, there's three, there's exhaustion, there's cynicism and efficacy. And so like, exhaustion is kind of easy. I mean, honestly, because it's, you can see it. The one you never see is the efficacy, which is am I worth? So I work for Courtney scenario, and I go to Courtney, and Courtney's awesome, by the way, and I say this all the time, and, but like, I go to her and I got this great idea, and she's like, John, I that right now.

00:10:39

And then I, you know, a week later, and then I get the sense that like she, and she's so busy and she's got other things going on. I don't underst stand a big picture, but I'm starting to get the sense that do I matter and I start caving in. And, and I have a feeling that in our industry that might be the really, really nasty hidden one is, again, we can see that we're overworked, the, the death marches and we, it's good leadership. We should make sure we call those. But it, you know, but you know, a little bit about cynicism. But, but it's that, I wonder if we don't have that, um, the, the roles that we play today and the things that we touch have such incredible impact on lots of people's lives. And imagine a 25-year-old person out of university who is turning knobs, you know, the night capital. I don't, that wasn't, but somebody turned the wrong knob and they lost 420 million in, uh, three or four hours. They were outta business for 24 hours. I think of a lot of our people that work for people might have that sense, you know, like Jason, right? People that work few, they make mistake. I don't get to check in it. Disneyland, my wife would kill me. You know? So, um, anyway, uh, that's

00:11:45

So, I mean, um, I'm gonna give you a magic wand for a moment. Like, what would you wanna do, uh, if you could wave magic wand that we could do for the programming to, you know, address this issue? Uh, we've got Chris, um, Christine, Dr. Maslak was, uh, willing to come back, right? Uh, John and I, we've been brainstorming about bringing in, uh, chief people, officers, people who are really trying to red formm, uh, redefine HR and performance management. So, um, you got the magic wand. Uh, the idea box is open. I'll

00:12:09

Go really quick. I, and I, I shut up <laugh>. Um, I, I think we oughta just follow through on the MBI, I mean, I think we just, you know, we've been talking about it. Let's just roll up our sleeves and, and get it done, right? Let's, we have, you have the biggest microphone to what you've built in our industry. Let's do an industry MBI and let's see what the data says, and then we can start for there. 'cause now we got the proof that this has to be changed.

00:12:29

Would there be any interest if, uh, we made it possible to do an MBI study?

00:12:41

I like the idea of having industry experts, um, and the chief people officers because they're helping. But the other piece I think that's important is to find other leaders who are making this happen in their organizations. Because that

00:12:58

Technology leaders or

00:12:59

Yes. And business leaders. And business leaders, yeah. Because to me, again, it goes back to I something that, um, Scott said about once you make it visible and then you decide like what you're gonna do about it, I would love to hear success stories or things that have been tried to make it better. And I think it go, it comes down to what the organization values. And if you can get that story out there and people can see that, you know, the whole, what you said, it's not a badge of honor and it shouldn't be, and how it's actually building that resilience in the company and, and helping people be successful. I think that would be, um, powerful.

00:13:38

Uh, some, something that, for me that I'd like to see with it is, um, a tie obviously to, to, to burnout or maybe it's not obvious. And then working safely in kind of complex systems. So one is obviously overworking people, but then the other part of it is we're we're putting folks into systems that are incredibly dangerous and, you know, they make a mistake and it can blow up some environment. And then you've got executives and customers that are actually coming down on that person. That is incredibly stressful. That is terrible for that individual. 'cause it's not their fault that, that they made a mistake. It's the fault in the design of the system was not, um, designed in a way that could prevent that from happening. So that's also another key area of mine is to continue to, um, work with my people architects to make those systems safe so that they can't make those mistakes or the mistakes and the blast area of those mistakes that they do happen are relatively small. And then finally, that leaders across the organization understand that this is not a people problem. That the failure, um, it's, it's a robustness problem in the system, but it's also them resilience in the organization to deal with it. It, and it's very hard to change that culture 'cause it's really easy to pick up the phone and say, fire someone because they made a mistake. Um, and that's the wrong reaction. So

00:14:59

Scott, I mean, um, so part of the CSG is a bill printing operation. I mean, if I remember correctly, uh, there's some sort of norms in this manufac in, in the plants about safety. Can you just talk, tell us what that sounds like? Uh,

00:15:12

Well, I mean, everything they do there is printing facility, right? All the, all the systems are designed so you, you know, you can't get your hand caught in them. Uh, the, the plant manager's biggest worries are that that will happen. And, you know, he goes home at night thinking like, what happens if a roll of paper that weighs tons right, rolls off and could, could kill someone, right? So they're very focused and in these physical systems of making sure they're safe and that, uh, the people, um, can't, can't get hurt. And there's all kinds of protections in place, obviously, in in IT systems since you can't see, you know, the system itself. And OSBA has obviously great, um, really kind of great pictorial of that above the line below line that that complexity that people are managing in, um, creates these kind of very safe, dangerous, uh, and unsafe and dangerous environments. And, and, you know, surfacing that and then continuing to focus on making that better is incredibly important.

00:16:08

Uh, wow. How to tackle, how to tackle that problem, uh, with, with programming. Um, <laugh>, uh, I don't have any easy answers to that because I don't think it's an easy problem to solve. I mean, if it were an easy problem to solve, it would already be solved right now.

00:16:24

Um, and sort forgetting this in the wrong order, but I mean, what did you learn about, uh, what do you think, did you learn anything this week that you think is relevant to making a dent in this problem?

00:16:35

One of the things that, um, I, I think I relearned, um, in particular was the, uh, was the MBI, the Maslach burnout index. And, and the, the, the construct behind that. Um, I now have a vocabulary to talk about burnout in a way that I didn't have before. And I'll, and I'll relate this to another experience that I had, um, two, three years ago related to culture. So culture was one of these things for me anyway, there was this kind of fuzzy, amorphous, can't really put your finger on it, but you know, it, you know it when you see it sort of a thing. And when, um, I learned through this community about the, the western topology, the cultural topology, I now have a taxonomy for this. I now have a construct for being able to talk about culture and describe different kinds of cultures and what kind of attributes are associated with those cultures and characteristics.

00:17:33

And because I can describe it now, I can measure and assess certain things about it. And because I can measure and assess certain things about it, I can change it because I know that the actions that I'm taking actually are having an effect on, on the culture. And the NBI is now doing the same thing for burnout. So instead of just, I feel burned out, well now I have vocabulary to go in and say, well, tell me about that. What is it about the situation that is making you feel burned out? Is it overwork? Is it cynicism? Is it self-efficacy? I mean, tell me. And then we can start tackling those things. We can start coming up with actions to be able to move the needle and get that person outta that situation.

00:18:19

So for $15, you, for yourself, you can run that MBI. And one of the presentations I did at Q con a couple years ago, um, I was asked to like give, uh, like answers. I'm like, no, <laugh>, I'm not certified to give answers. Um, but, but I then said, well, okay, go do some research on what's out there. So I took this MBI for myself, and I was a doctor at the time, and I was gonna just to do it to show you how, you know, kind it is. And I, I a little bit exaggerated the answers to do that, but on the marking of efficacy, and this is why I'm like kind of so high in efficacy, literally in the NBI that you run for yourself. So I, I tell you, just run the NBI $15. 'cause the thing I had no idea that I was fire engine red.

00:18:59

I was in the highest percentile for efficacy. Like beyond the joke of like, kind of fabricated to make it look good. It was beyond that. And then I, what it did actually for me is there was a docker time, I was remote and I was getting very frustrated that they were doing a lot of decisions without me. I had 10 startups. I'm like, why aren't they asking me? And I realized, 'cause you don't live out in San Francisco. And then the second question was, do you wanna live in San Francisco? Like, hell no. I got a house near Lake and on a cul-de-sac with a pool in the backyard. Like, I couldn't afford that in San Francisco. And it would actually started helping me every time I started getting all frustrated about something that happened in the whiteboard and came out just 'cause I ran that little test for myself

00:19:40

A second. You said it was 50 bucks to run the

00:19:43

15, 15, $15.

00:19:46

Is that a barrier for anybody for running that tell you if it is, um, if it is or you know, of anybody who it is DM me, I will.

00:19:58

Yeah. I would actually, maybe to make a concrete ask is, uh, let's all take it. And, um, Jeff, maybe, you know, I can think about a way to well get a population at

00:20:08

Scale if we did it ourselves. It's like a dollar. I mean, in other words, if we just create our own Yeah. And give it to everybody. It's like a do it's scales, like ridiculously. So I mean, either way, but I mean, if you're sitting down and you wanna think about it, just go on. You do like, um, MBI and you'll get a couple answers. It's the one that Christina Maslak iss on the board. Uh, there's a bunch of 'em out there. It's $15. But I, you know, again, back to the thing, I think we could create a scale, the one for all of this de enterprise settlement community, and we'd have real, real data.

00:20:37

Um, actually just a little, uh, um, observation, you know, so when we, uh, wrote the Phoenix project, you know, this is Brent's character and you know, Brent is kinda a caricature, Brent is, you know, but, uh, you know, we've all been Brents and, uh, I'll say, uh, uh, something that kinda was a little astonishing was writing that confession for the, uh, you know, the router error, right? And ah, I just, I, I didn't realize there was a dimension of Brent that I just either didn't fully acknowledge or fully understand or comprehend. It was like, God, that sucks. Right? <laugh>, uh, you know, the, the, the stress that causes, you know, the physiological response when you're in that mode, right? And you have that sustained response. That was a, you know, I just kinda realized, oh, that's probably what we do to Brents, right? And every, you know, lots of organization have Brents

00:21:25

So well, yeah, I agree. And I also think that there's this, um, false sense of maybe an expectation that Brent's gonna raise his hand and say, I have too much workload. Brent is never gonna raise his hand and say that ever. And so, like, how do we, and I, I was thinking a lot about this because I was like, how can I see it? Like, you know, Jay, Paul and I have talked about like the weak signals, and it's like, I was talking to somebody last week who was saying, you know, that he went through kind of a, a dark period over the last few months, and he's like, you will not be able to see it in someone else. You know it yourself, but you so, like, as a leader, rather than trying to identify it, how do I just create the environment where it never happens? So like, to your point, making sure people feel valued, making sure people are part of decision making, that's a big challenge for us right now is like empowering teams to actually have the decision rights. It's like that level of engagement is something I can control, but maybe I can't control having an assessment process where I can see it coming. Um, but what can I do differently to help teams feel like they can be successful, I should say individuals. 'cause I feel like it's really, it's a one-to-one thing, so

00:22:49

Of,

00:22:50

Oh yeah, let me, let me riff off of that too. So everything that Courtney said, and, um, yes, it's empower, it's important to empower teams and to give them a sense of autonomy, and you have to help 'em get there. And so I've recognized even just recently that sometimes it takes a leader to step in and say, this is not right, and this needs to change. And it lets that person off the hook from, um, feeling the accountability or the responsibility to work themselves outta that situation. Um, those real quick situation. Um, I noticed back to those weak signals I was having a meeting with, um, with, with one of our teams and, uh, the, the team lead was supporting a, um, this is anti-pattern, do I get it? A production release window on a Friday night, um, <laugh> and it, you know, we got done with our stuff and we're waiting for other teams to finish. And that lasted until after midnight. Well, I was up with him, um, on Slack, just making sure how things were going. Um, and he let me know that he had gotten in at normal time that morning, 9:00 AM and I'm having a WTF moment. Like, you're working a, what is it, 15, 16 hour day at this point? It's not, it's not right. And, um, it just wasn't right. I,

00:24:17

I actually just heard, um, I, I, um, cube the Steve Steve Spear thing. Um, so, um, yeah, so I did that confession, right, of the, uh, engineering leader who left, uh, over, uh, lunch. Someone actually gave me an alternate ending to that story. And I, I, I have this card, um, um, his name, if you're in the audience, uh, uh, it was basically, uh, I, here is a different ending, an ending that looks like, Hey, this is not right. Um, you know, I quit, uh, here's my resignation letter that I'm gonna email to everybody else because it's not right. And this is a norm that, you know, it's like, and basically paint what it should look like, <laugh>. And so it's not a quiet exit. It is a very loud exit. Like, uh, you know, uh, you know, I, I can't think of the example, but I mean, it was a, it was a, it was a fascinating kind of alternate universe, right? Where, uh, um, hey, this is what I believe in, this is my values, uh, this is in conflict with that. And, uh, you know, uh, uh, I'm walking away and this goes out to all the executives and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I mean, I thought that was a, it was provocative.

00:25:18

Well, and I have definitely been in this scenario, and I'm sure a number of you have where you're put on kind of the spot to say, who made the mistake and who is going to get exited from the organization? And I have genuinely said back me. So if you're going, if you're going to show someone the door, you can show me the door because I'm the leader who's accountable for this environment. And so that, that's what I would like to see you do versus,

00:25:48

Yeah, this, this is civilian segue to the Steven Spears thing. I'll start with the, when I wrote that blog article, I literally got two, 300 emails, testimonials. Jeff's already explain to you, but people, industry leaders, people I didn't even know, people I thought didn't like me always start like, John, please don't tell anybody. Let me tell you about my situation. It was incredible. Um, and I thought about like, why me, why were they all sending this to me? And I realized somebody sent me this link, and I won't go into it, but it was something about being vulnerable, and I realized I'd been vulnerable. I had made myself vulnerable people. So I think the greatest gift, and I'll tell you Steven Steers quote in a minute, um, is the greatest gift you can give as leaders is be vulnerable. Like, like, um, Courtney just said and Steven Spirit, and it was either Sidney Deck or Steven Spears last year, and this is brilliant.

00:26:35

That Gene lets me be this little, like, mad scientist that's say, let's bring in Decker, let's bring in, because it like, it's like awesome that we're ha this is happening. But, um, but Steven Spears, we had a debate in that, that two, three and hour video we did. And one of the things we kept talking about the edge and, and powering the edge and making the edge thing, and, and then he, the thing came up and said, well, wait a minute. You also have to be vulnerable at the leadership role. Like, imagine the CEO or the CIO going, Hey, everybody, I don't know how to do this. Like, that just doesn't happen too often, but it's gotta be both ways, right? So I think there's some real importance of even our one-on-ones, you know, you might feel like you want to come to me with a story if you, if there's some, like, I clown around, so I'm like this vulnerable guy, so people do come up to me, right? So maybe that, that, that, that gift of vulnerability is how we just,

00:27:30

In fact, the, the specific Steven Spko is like how we can all talk about like, uh, uh, empowering the masses, uh, um, uh, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, uh, that's impossible to achieve when the leader acts like an arrogant jackass, right? <laugh> and, and to model the behaviors of like, I don't know,

00:27:48

You stand up and say, guys, I, you know, like you, I just don't know. Right? Okay. All right. Let's all jump in.

00:27:54

Jeff, you and I were having conversation it, uh, and Amy Edmondson, right? It's like, you know, the, the, the actual demonstration of, uh, uh, like to establish the norms, right? Because you're modeling the desired behaviors,

00:28:05

Right? Right. There are a lot of, um, if you, um, if you know about the Google Rework studies, um, I'll, I'll shortcut it for you. They found that psychological safety was far and away the most important factor for high performing teams at Google. Um, psychological safety. Amy Edmondson has done a lot of research on that. I would encourage anybody to go read that, um, or watch your TED talk, which is only 20 minutes. Uh, and you will pick up some actions that you as a leader or you as an individual can, can take. One of them is, um, framing problems, not in terms of the success or fail criteria, but what you can learn. So they're learning problems. Um, the second is to admit your own fallibility that you are capable of making mistakes that you make them, and that you don't know everything. Going back to what John was saying, A CIO admitting, yeah, I don't know how to do this. Um, and then the last one is demonstrating curiosity and asking questions, encouragement. And anybody can do that. Anybody can do that. But as with most things that are new and different and against the grain, it's gonna take some courage.

00:29:12

One of the things that we were brainstorming about, um, and, and fact, we try to get it to happen this time, uh, but it just, uh, we didn't have enough time because of me, <laugh>, I screwed up. Uh, uh, but imagine a dream. Um, a just like we had Decker Spear Cook. Uh, maybe it's, it's, uh, Dr. Christina Maslak. It's the, uh, Prasad, uh, who's done, you know, was at the helm of the Google Rework Project. Aristotle. I really, you know, in some ways they were trying to revolutionize how HR and performance management has done. And I saw a talk by, uh, the chief people officer of Kronos, uh, and it was spectacular. I mean, they, uh, uh, like among the things, uh, they're a 40-year-old company, uh, 5,000 employees. Um, and, you know, it was one of the top goals to be one of the best places to work.

00:29:58

And so it's, it's a five year program involved. They brought in the Assassin Institute benchmark, you know, not only, uh, K'S employees, but all their customers and got, they created this front and center. Uh, they found that the biggest problem with retention and engagement was bad managers. So part of their top strategic goals, and the thing they broadcast out is every worker deserves a good manager <laugh>. And over five years, um, they've moved to a, um, a mechanism where the primary measure for like first and second line managers is totally based on, uh, their reports <laugh>. And then, uh, yeah, after a couple of years, they now publish 'em <laugh>, right? And I, uh, it was just that they found for every, they created something called the MEI Management Engagement Index. And they found, uh, just in statistical significant ways that every increase in, uh, for every two points of increase of, uh, MEI, there's one point of increase for retention, one point of engagement in, um, engagement.

00:31:01

And then he listed a whole bunch of metrics. It means that our hiring pipeline is fuller than ever. It means that, uh, you know, we have a blah blah. I mean, it was just, it was interesting, just like the Chris O'Malley talk, right? To hear a Chief people officer talk about why that's good for the business. Oh, man, it was, it was awesome. Anyway, I would love any comments, thoughts on, like, would that be cool? Oh, and also Nicole Forsman, right? Dr. Nicole Forsman, you know, um, to bring, to bear the work that we did with state of DevOps. I mean, I thought it'd be pretty interesting.

00:31:27

Yeah, my o my only and would be, if possible, find a leader or a manager who was part of that transformation, who could also share what it was like to be, uh, I guess, influenced to change kind of how they were showing up with their team. Because I, I feel like it's so great to hear about the programs and the industry information, but actually putting it into practice, I think is what's the hard part. And so I feel like if we could find someone who went through that journey and they would be willing to share, that could be,

00:32:01

So I'll go quickly. I, I was telling Christina, she, when she got here, she was like, not in this industry. I said, go meet people. I said, this is a unique community. 'cause we actually have been very open to other people coming in. And if you think what's going on here? Um, you know, you know, Scott, you talked a little about like some of the resilient stuff going on in, in complex systems, right? So you start listening to Decker, spar, Christina, um, there's this little bubble of commonality that just keeps showing up, right? And it's a, it must be truth, right? Because it keeps showing up. But BI think as we keep looking and bringing all different people, we keep kind of hearing almost every one of them embedded in, there is something around psychological safety. Um, you, you just, you, you constantly see this, you know, if we stop blaming people and, and look at systems there, there's no person, actor person is just an actor in a system, right?

00:32:52

We, that starts, um, it starts lowering or hiring the KY scale, right? Or the, the cynicism scale, right? It's just, anyway, the beauty of just constantly, that's what, you know, kind of keep thinking of. In fact, my ask is, I've been kind of single handling, throwing stuff at Gene. Like, let's bring this one in. Like, y'all need to start. Like, if, if you like this idea of other people, there you go. If put real work on, um, if there's other people in the industry, like you read a book or something, it's like, oh my God, that sounds like Decker, or, that sounds like Christina, like, throw it up here. Is like, is there any chance we can get that? Uh, sorry.

00:33:25

Yeah. And by the way, I wanna sort of, uh, <laugh>, I laugh <laugh> because, um, but how cool is it that we can bring in the best experts, you know, into this community? You know, the person, like, you know, whether it's Steve, Dr. Re, or the City Decker, or Richard Cook, uh, Christina Maack. So, yeah. Hey, um, if you have a, you know, a magic wand to bring in this person, you know, get it to us, actually give it to John, John, John will, <laugh> John is like, Hey,

00:33:50

That wasn't how that was supposed to work,

00:33:52

<laugh>. But I mean, I, I guess, uh, what it, it amazes me, uh, to what degree we can get these people. Um, and, uh, um, sometimes it takes a little while to earn the right to ask, but, uh, you know, uh, we come up with the right list, you know? Uh, I, I think we can get them

00:34:14

Now. Um,

00:34:15

Can we do a time check?

00:34:16

Yeah. Um, I, why don't we wrap up with five. So we said, is it important? Yes. Uh, what can we do about this communities? That's a great discussion. Uh, we have an opportunity to shape next year's programming. Got some good ideas. Um, and, um, you had a question, Jeff? Uh, do you wanna put it out there in terms of, uh, what do we need from leadership? Or what does leadership need from us? Do you wanna put it out there, or should we, uh, end on that note?

00:34:40

I'll put it out there. Yeah, it's important. Um, so I mentioned my perspective as a leader. Um, I participated in some open spaces, um, at some DevOps days around burnout and hearing the hearing the people share about their stories, um, who are experiencing burnout and realizing that as a leader, there are people in my organization that are experiencing that too, and I don't know about it. What, what do they need from me as a leader? What do we need from our leaders to do or do differently, uh, that we haven't been doing? Um, I want to hear that. Um, I wanna hear that.

00:35:21

Can I share just one super quick story. Um, so at one point in my career, um, I had this executive leader in our business, um, who literally said to me, I go and walk the floor where your team works after, after 5:00 PM and there is nobody here. And then I stand at the elevator banks in the morning, and I notice that like, nobody's showing up until nine 30 or 10:00 AM. And so that has to be the reason why we're not delivering against the expectations that we have for like, our delivery. And I was like, wow, that's an interesting comment. Um,

00:36:04

Terrible, right? So I was like, well, how could we maybe manage this with some facts and data? Because I was trying to explain that with the work that we do, it a doesn't always require you to be physically sitting at your desk. And b, we have a lot of people doing work at night and on the weekends, because that was the situation we were in at the time. So I actually worked with an engineering leader on my team, and we actually went and, uh, extracted all the code commits that were happening outside of normal business hours. And I use that with that business partner to have a fact-based conversation about what was really happening in our environment. And so I share that story just because sometimes I think it can be hard to have the conversation with someone who's got their mindset in a certain space. And for me, I was struggling with like, what could I use to actually dispel the myth? Um, so anyways, it, it,

00:36:59

It helped. I do one quick one. This is just,

00:37:02

I can leave it to Jeff to figure out, uh, timing of clothes.

00:37:04

This is a beautiful, uh, it's the opposite of that story. So when I got the chef, right, the people who were at Chef Chris Brown invented EC2, ECF engineer, I mean wrote EC2 is the person who wrote Amazon, EC2, uh, Jesse, uh, Robbins was basically called Master Disaster. That was his title at Amazon. This was an incredible set of people, maybe 15 people. I, well, I was there nine, but maybe we got to about 30 at basically nine o'clock. There was no one in the office at five o'clock. At 5 0 5, there was no one in the office. And this was an incredible, if you've paid any attention from where they did what they did from 2009 to 2015 to our industry, that was basically a nine to five shop, right? So, and that was about as more productivity as I've seen in most companies that I've been around in the last, like, almost 40 years,

00:37:58

Would imagine what they could do <laugh>

00:38:00

24 hours.

00:38:01

That's the point. That's the point. They would not have been a productive had they been working <laugh>. I what do you think? I think there's another, I actually, is there another session right after this? Oh,

00:38:13

No, it's break time. It's free.

00:38:15

Are we stealing your coffee and soda? That's great. All right. What was the question again? <laugh>?

00:38:20

Oh, we got wrap. Um, um, I think we're wrap. Yep. Thank you so much, uh, to the panel. DMS thank you. Thank you. Thank you.