DevOps Institute

[EP39] When It Turns Blue, It’s DevOps with Ravi Lachhman

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On this episode of the Humans of DevOps, Jason Baum is joined by Ravi Lachhman (@ravilach), Evangelist at Harness and frequent SKILup Day speaker.🎙 Prior to Harness, Ravi was an evangelist at AppDynamics. Ravi has held various sales and engineering roles at Mesosphere, Red Hat, and IBM helping commercial and federal clients build the next generation of distributed systems. Ravi enjoys traveling the world with his stomach and is obsessed with Korean BBQ. They discuss Ravi’s love for food, how he got into DevOps, the origins of technical evangelism, making the news for an incident, gnomes, and more!

The lightly edited transcript can be found below.

Narrator 00:02
You’re listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills, knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SKILframework.

Ravi Lachhman 00:17
It’s all about trial and error, right? And then, at a very basic, that’s, I’m a big proponent of iteration, you’re gonna get stuff right and you’re gonna get stuff wrong. I’ve gotten a lot of stuff wrong, but I take it from the side. I’m a software engineer. It’s like all part of learning.

Jason Baum 00:34
Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Humans of DevOps Podcast. I’m Jason Baum, the director of membership at DevOps Institute. And I’m excited to have you back for yet another episode. Today, I’ll be chatting with Ravi Lachhman. Evangelist at harness. And prior to harness, Ravi was an evangelist at AppDynamics. He’s held various sales and engineering roles at Mesosphere Red Hat and IBM, helping commercial and federal clients build the next generation of distributed systems. Ravi enjoys traveling the world. And I heard a little hint that he might be into some, some pretty good food too. Robbie, thanks so much for being on the podcast and for getting him in with us.

Ravi Lachhman 01:20
Ah, Hi, Jason. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. And yeah, and for that food reference, I just absolutely love Korean barbecue. It’s in all my like profiles and bios. I just want to make sure I let people know.

Jason Baum 01:34
I travel the world looking for good Korean barbecue.

Ravi Lachhman 01:38
Ah, yeah, actually very funny. I had Korean barbecue in several countries. And so I just love it. It’s my favorite food. I just love the flavor the creativity and everything about it.

Jason Baum 01:51
Have you had Korean barbecue in Korea?

Ravi Lachhman 01:54
Yes, I have.

Jason Baum 01:55
Okay, there you go. Well, then you’ve been to the source so that you have something to compare it to. A baseline? Yeah. Where’s the best Korean barbecue?

Ravi Lachhman 02:04
I’m so biased like we could spend the entire hour talking about Korean barbecue so are you here just Yeah, yeah. So um, so I grew up in like Metropolitan Atlanta and like, an interesting statistic like Atlanta has like the third biggest Korean population in the US behind like LA in New York. So it’s I’m used to eating Korean barbecue No, no, like, I’ve my favorite place is a local place here in Atlanta. When I used to live in New York, I used to hit up Korea tag all the time. But it used to be really expensive for anybody who hasn’t lived in New York everything is like four times the price well, not that much. But like I’m so used to like a different baseline of pricing like

Jason Baum 02:42
this is what I like to compare it to so like so for people who don’t know New York pricing and I’m I’m in the New York metropolitan area i One beer is like 12 to $14 That’s, that’s a good like, just gives you a sense of how things are priced here. Just

Ravi Lachhman 03:00
have the price. Absolutely. It used to be when I lived in New York. Earlier in my career, I was limited by my money. So I would stop eating you know, at some point because it would get too expensive. But now kind of a combination of there’s all you could eat places and I make more money. Nothing is stopping me other than myself.

Jason Baum 03:19
Always look at those all you can eat. Buffets is like a challenge. We’ll see. We’ll see about that. Get a prep all day. I want them to kick me out. After Well, now I won’t step foot in one but that’s okay. I think I hope buffets come back. I don’t know. They were kind of given me out before now. Definitely. Well, Robbie, thank you so much for being on the show. That was a good intro. I feel like we just like right off the bat just went straight to the core of who you are. And it’s all about Korean barbecue. So how can we, I guess, take that from there and go to your career. And maybe there’s a cool way that you could link the two. I’m gonna put some holes that’s like homework on you now to think of that. But like, tell me a little bit about you your backstory just so we can get a sense of who you are. And yeah, and how you got to where you are as an evangelist. Yeah.

Ravi Lachhman 04:13
Yeah, it’s definitely interesting, interesting path. I kind of grew up in metro Atlanta, and I kind of moved around a little bit, but I went to university. I have a very interesting degree. It’s like half computer science, half English. So it kind of stressed both parts of my brain, the left and the right. Computers are easy to me. People are not we’re very subjective. So it was always that not hard begun engineering classes. But harping on the kind of liberal arts classes are really challenging because it’s a lot of times you have to like understand what the author was coming from what was for some thinking this way. And so kind of combining forces. When I graduate from university, I became a software engineer for a large software company. I was told I talked too much so they put me in the field. I I was so told I talked to you about so I became a consultant. And then after a while I kind of transitioned into sales engineering, I really liked helping people adopt and acquire new technology. I did that for a while. And then really funny how I became an evangelist was. So I was working at a company called mesosphere. So I kind of stick with distributed systems. So from IBM Red Hat. At the time, I was really big into building large-scale Java distributed systems as a software engineer, got into Kubernetes. You know, I kind of was like 5050 on it. But then I got into more distributed stuff. And so I joined Mesosphere for their offering, which was Apache mezzos, Apache marathon, kind of a little bit of a precursor to Kubernetes. And I gave a talk at DevOpsDays, Atlanta. And so I did it as a joke because I knew the organizers, and now I’m an organizer myself, but this is it back in 2017. I gave a talk about I really like food. So this is a common theme you’ll hear is that link, there’s that link, there’s a link might not be to Korean barbecue, but there’s a a old Heroku man manifesto called the 12-factor application, or the person who ended up starting Heroku. But 12 factors of an application that’s cloud native. And so I gave a talk comparing a 12 layer burrito to the 12-factor app. So the eighth factor is port binding. And so I say, okay, factor eight is port binding. And then burritos are bound by rice. until like, I basically like kind of laid out like, hey, you know what this is? This is it, you know, like, this is how you log this is your receipt from like Chipotle. This is, this is it. And I kind of laid it out. And someone thought it was really funny and never confused about it. And so a person his audience was actually kind of a higher-up at Cisco and kind of had no key. I don’t know how he got my contact information. I guess one of the organizers worked at Cisco at the time, and gave me a buzz and said, hey, you know, it was really funny. Do you want to do this full-time? I’m like, what do we do? What full-time like you want to be a speaker? I was like,

Jason Baum 07:00
Huh? Speaker eat?

Ravi Lachhman 07:03
Yeah, I was like, I’m all about eating. So how much? Yeah,

Jason Baum 07:07
the Anthony Bourdain of the DevOps world.

Ravi Lachhman 07:10
I love that. Yeah, go around smoking and trying different DevOps, like exotic locales

Jason Baum 07:17
may risk I gave you your next position, there you go.

Ravi Lachhman 07:21
I actually will try that. Minus the smoking is not good for you, you know, you know that? Yeah. And so I ended up becoming an evangelist for Cisco, or AppDynamics, after some convincing and after a little time with that. The founder of epidemics has a machete Ventile founded another company, which I’m currently at today, come harness, you know, I was asked to come over and build the program from scratch. And so as an evangelist, I tell my mother that I married people in software, and I’m like, a televangelist like Copeland. So send me money. And she believes I didn’t correct you know, I think I should, at some point, yeah, she tells people I do this, so and really helping to focus on the ecosystem and helping people for their journey. Currently, I’m a leader on the team. So I have a few folks on the team and we’re continuing to expand. I own the developer advocacy, community developer relations and evangelism job function at harness. And yeah, it’s really exciting to really be in the space.

Jason Baum 08:23
Thanks for spending a few times, by the way on the word evangelist, because I feel like that’s such what is that? Like Apple? Right? Really, I feel like, at the beginning of it was really me. And correct me if I’m totally making this up. I could be, but I feel like they were the first ones to really have evangelists, like who really were. out there spreading the good word about the company and really a key component of the creation of the product through the users. side of things to write.

Ravi Lachhman 08:55
Yes, suppose spot Jason spot on, like, 100%? Correct. Apple is the textbook example of how evangelism came about going back to just kind of a grassroots movement, right? Like, hey, focus on the end-user or modern turns, I focus on an engineer, but focusing on the end-user convinces them that hey, you should write some software for the Lisa for backtrace it’s a cool platform, it’s easy to use, and you can your reach can be Apple amplified. Apple was the original the OG there’s funny, I always equated to like my mission, like, like, exactly what Apple did. As, as a child and public school. I was I grew up with Apple products in school and Office products. And so even though they weren’t as fancy Macs, as we have now I was used to using a Mac to

Jason Baum 09:48
a little turtle that you learned how to type right that’s

Ravi Lachhman 09:52
That’s it? Yeah. clacking noises sometimes. Yes. And

Jason Baum 09:56
yeah, and we’re not the same computer

Ravi Lachhman 10:00
But it had an office on it. And so by the time I went to university and then in the workforce like I was so accustomed to using that as I would, I would be lost without these tools, right, like, and so I kind of say that, Hey, that’s my job for the continuous delivery, or fix integration case delivery space, I want to make sure that everybody has a nice experience. And even those who are just starting out to those who’ve been doing it since the inception of the term can do it with ease. And so that’s kind of like my guiding star there.

Jason Baum 10:32
The Mac two and like that, that generation of Mac, it’s like, I feel like for those of us who enjoyed it back then, like, when I hear about it now it has like this warm like, I don’t know, I think of like McDonald’s in the 80s or something like that. It’s like completely different, but it warms your heart. I just remember like Mac two so we were apart. We had Macworld, I don’t know if you remember Macworld, it was like the first real like before AOL there was like this community and it was an online community it was Mac had their own and it’s like Mac was so on the forefront of everything not to keep promoting Mac. I don’t know why I keep doing that. Especially when I have an iPad that’s just sitting here that’s not working but I’m really frustrated about so anyway, not to go too far into the Mac love but yeah, it’s funny to hear you talk about back to Funny,

Ravi Lachhman 11:22
funny story of is giving a think about a funny story about like my very forced first foray in technology. So I was really lucky that I had a computer as long as I unburied have at least a family computer than my own computer. As long as I can have a memory of myself, right. So a couple of years old. I remember the very first time I went on the internet, I was probably like four-ish. And so like I knew some basic dos commands to play my games like CD, backslash. I didn’t realize what that command was until much later but not to go play reading rabbit or Oregon Trail trail, but we had at me in the mid or like later 80s on my parents’ house. At the time, we had prodigy internet. And so the project was one of the first ISPs and I remember like double-clicking or like, executing prodigy and it would give us the weather for like Atlanta. That’s where I’m from They say oh, it’s sunny outside, no-look outside the window. Like it’s sunny outside and look at the computer screen and be like it’s sunny outside and I didn’t understand how the computer knew it was sunny. So I assumed that there was like gnomes living. God was a big fan of all those like gnome shows like The Smurfs and like the Keebler elves, like I was really like, I was a pro gnome. And I believe that you know, in my entire career, I still believe it at some point, right? Like as much as like large systems distributed systems or SRE practices or DevOps practices they might live in they’re still I can didn’t quite find them but I have faith that they’re they’re

Jason Baum 12:55
still, they were gnomes when they are good, right David the gnome, by the way, another one that you missed it but they were they were Gremlins when they were bad. Fallen gnomes. Yes. All gnomes gremlins. Yeah, and I remember getting the same thing, prodigy and I remember going to CompUSA to buy him out. Like there’s this CompUSA exists. I don’t think that’s

Ravi Lachhman 13:17
no fun. I love coffee with Yeah.

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Jason Baum 14:12
so that’s a great thank you for taking me on that journey. You know, along the way, what was like one major career or life lesson that you learned that you kind of stick with? Other than I love what I think I’m going to if you don’t take this on my take it from you, but make it a bumper sticker. Computers are easy to mean people are not I love that. But what’s another thing that you’ve kind of learned that you?

Ravi Lachhman 14:40
Yeah, yeah, it definitely careers definitely a journey, right? Like one thing that it’s this is kind of like tangental is that hey, you know, we software is all about iteration. It’s all about trial and error, right? And then, at a very basic That’s a big proponent of iteration, you’re going to get stuff, right and you can get stuff wrong. I’ve gotten a lot of stuff wrong. I used to beat myself up, say, Oh, if I get it wrong the first time, ah, people are gonna think I’m stupid. Or I have a lot of like incidents and outages like I have a lot in my career, but I take it from the side of a software engineer, it’s like all part of like learning, right? Like, hey, if no one likes me, I programmatically destroyed one of my employers’ day of work. And their bank, you know, like, it was a real problem that I had.

Jason Baum 15:36
And what was that? Tell me about that.

Ravi Lachhman 15:39
So they do daily backups on their database for the particular set of applications that I owned when I was brought in to modernize those applications. So I that without naming the employer? Certainly, if they knew who I am, listen to this of like, oh, yeah, this is it. So was a teammate in charge of the next generation of the application. We did all sorts of testing, you know, we went from version one to version two, it was a huge release, it was all or nothing. And I inserted lots of duplicates into their prod database, and so programmatically corrupted a day of work, basically, that we had very sophisticated ways of checking for dupes. But some of them did not, you know, get live data is always different, as much as we could test and test and test. And I spent the next two days and asleep trying to undo some of the calculations that were very close to me,

Jason Baum 16:38
was just gonna ask, did you make that headache for yourself or for someone else, but it sounds like it was for yourself. It was a headache for everybody.

Ravi Lachhman 16:44
I mean, I was ultimately responsible. It was even funnier because like, we had contractors working for us, so like they were gone. You know, at the time, it was kind of like the connective tissue as a team Wait, like I ultimately responsible for it. That was my most stressful outage, I had bigger outages and that like that was confined to the bank, like another outage. That’s a fun one. For me, this actually is a good story on where the DevOps movement is going. And this whole concept of blameless culture. And so it’s the most quintessential, I was working, actually for another one of my clients is in New York again, you know, it’s kind of shows that New York is bad luck for me, sometimes that was working for a media company in New York, and we were migrating their on-prem applications to AWS for the first time. Now, this is so cliche. Like I was, I was a JTV, like a Java-like developer. So I was rewriting some of the services composing them, like running them somewhere externally, it’s when they’re running before. But for some odd reason, I was also had to write some of the networking rules like the Virtual Private Cloud VPC rules. So it was my very first like, we were all done and say, Okay, now it’s time for us to turn everything on in production. And it kind of their stance was the networking team. We’re not touching anything in AWS, because it was our first like, we were one of the first apps that was going over to AWS. And so there’s something called a cider a CIDR. Now, when I heard what I decided was that it was like one of those things like made of apples. Okay, like, whatever.

Jason Baum 18:26
Sorry, my mind went to. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s,

Ravi Lachhman 18:29
it’s correct. If you drink a hard cider. Cider, yeah, again, bring an angry orchard around here. It’s pretty good. But no cider is a, it’s a, it’s a subnet mask, or if it’s rules of IP ranges. And but what I didn’t know at the time was it has something called significant digit notation. So the larger the number, you divide by the actually the more IP ranges it supports. And so any networking engineer would say when they looked at my site, again, I had to configure the VPC cider rules. I divided something by eight instead of by 16. So, that means I cut off half the internet. So I was like, Oh, if you divide by eight, that means like, you get a bigger number than dividing by 16 That’s how math works. No, it was not the case. You know, turning on a product block half the internet from there. It was our iPhone streaming application. It was an incident it was it actually made the news like no one shows you know, iPhone out broke. I was like, Oh, boy.

Jason Baum 19:29
Oh, man, if I forget something at least it doesn’t make the news.

Ravi Lachhman 19:32
Yeah, it happens. That was That wasn’t pleasant either way, you know the but they had a very interesting like, yeah, very interesting incident response process that you know, compared to the day would, archaic, right, like there was a waste tester thing. So we have to test their product as stupid as that sounds like as a software germ like, oh, no, this is gonna happen. But yeah, that’s it and you know, kind of, were started into how I got into DevOps. You know, my nemesis is working as a software engineer with the system engineers, very cliched silo, I used to, you know, not get along with them, I would be over the road or vague or leaving things open saying I don’t know what the application connects, you just let it all come in. Now, that doesn’t work. You know. So this is where DevOps really helped break down the silos because I remember early part of my career, it would take like weeks to get a virtual machine to now it’s infrastructures code, it’s kind of at the time we ready for it. So definitely seen that movement take off.

Jason Baum 20:37
What do you love the most about that? Like, why DevOps? Is it? Like, you kind of touched on it a little bit. But sometimes when I interview people, they’re like, Oh, I’m really into the people side of thing. Do you mean, you said like, computers are easy, people are not viewed as the challenge, or is it like, like, what is it about DevOps? Specifically?

Ravi Lachhman 20:57
I’ll elevate the conversation one step up from that, like why I like the community so much. Sure, I’m being a part of a Java community before that job. Now, it’s very Java communities very exclusive. Like, it’s certainly a club. And as much as I tried, like, as an engineer to contribute back or even participate, you’re not going to join the Club. No, no, there’s, you know, you’re not joining it. And so there’s, there’s an air of exclusivity. For, for that particular computer language. I remember I walked into my first DevOps day in Atlanta in 2016. And I’ve never felt so included, it was amazing, it was April 2016. Like it opened my eyes. I’ve been working for a while, too. It’s like, wow, like, everybody’s so welcoming. People are focusing on the problem or admitting that these are problems and how to know, the entire spiel, right, like, but if you’re in the space like you’ve been hearing it for years, how do we break down the silos? How do we work towards common goals? How do we become more inclusive? And how do we educate folks who want to get into it, and I was, so you know, so excited that there’s so inclusive, I just started marching towards that right now, I’m currently an organizer for that same event. Like I want to get back, get back more to the community, I kind of centered my career on engineering efficiency, and platform engineering around the DevOps is not ever since

Jason Baum 22:20
that’s great. And now you’re speaking my language of community and community building because that’s what you know, that’s what I do my career, for the better part of my career. And, you know, one of the things we are looking to do with DOI is to stand up chapters. Atlanta happens to be one of them. So I hope that potentially when we take this offline, I can ask you to to get involved. No pressure, you’re just on-air, right? You have to say, yes. Yeah, let me know. But that is, you know, I think that it’s in something that I have been hearing from others is how great the community is. And I’ve seen that in just a short period of time. And that’s any industry, especially as it’s growing, right DevOps, even though it’s gone by other names, you know, it’s relatively new. From an industry standpoint. One of the things that help to get it to where it needs to go and to continue to grow is the community because you all have to work together. And I’ve said this quote, I think a million times, but I’ll say it again, it’s like the JFK, quote, a rising tide lifts all boats, that’s the way that we always approach it in the association, community. World.

Ravi Lachhman 23:23
Yeah, definitely believe that. Right. Okay. It’s always fun to see people like what always gets me so excited about DevOpsDays. Like, people who totally dream of it becoming in wide-eyed and maybe a little scared that they might not know a lot, but they’ll be able to include them and say, Hey, welcome, we all started where you started, you’re actually had a lot of us where we started and just keep at it, I mean, look, come and learn. It’s just what keeps me going, like, get the community like, just learn, happy to teach.

Jason Baum 23:52
I love doing these because I’ve been learning so much from everyone. And I have to say just everyone has been so amazing, to talk to and has been very, I guess, understanding and gracious towards me and my lack of complete lack of awareness of DevOps. But then as I’ve been talking to people, I’m like, Well, I guess I really do understand the core fundamentals of what DevOps is, and I think, you know, and I talked, I talked to hope Lynch about this on one of the first ones that I did, flying solo, without Jane Grohl, who was our host and is our fearless leader. You know, it’s, it’s not, it’s not an overly complex idea at its simplistic level. But then we but now obviously, it gets very complex from there, but I can certainly understand it. And you know, I was a psychology minor and I feel like a lot of the principles are, are part of psychology as well. I want to take it away from DevOps for a second. Sure. And I want to find out a little bit more about you, personally. So what’s one unique thing that like nobody knows about you, you can never share professionally. Never share right now.

Ravi Lachhman 25:05
Never share professionally. Hmm. So like it goes back to like food again. So other than Korean barbecue I really grew up in Atlanta like I’m addicted to eating their political beliefs aside, I’m addicted to eating Chick-fil-A, like I just like any Chick-fil-A, like eight days a week in another seven and they’re only open six. I remember when chick Ladies Open at NYU. I was like, ah, there’s one here in the city. But yeah, I love Chipotle. I love them so much that I used to go when my first house was to get outside the neighborhood onto the parkway was Chick fil A, it was like this right there. So I would drive to work every day. And I would pick up the chicken biscuit five days a week for a course of years. And so I went there so much that I had actually a VIP card. It was this thing called Chick fil A list. I actually have it in my wallet. It’s downstairs. Still, it’s a silver card with my name printed on it. Which used to get me VIP perks that take place now it transitioned into they rolled out their status program globally. So if you’re having Chick fil A where you live, it’s called Chick fil A read. And there’s like another level now I forgot what it was like a fourth level. But this was invitation-only they had to like you. And we used to get all sorts of weird perks as I remember in 2015 big bass on analytics, like as an individual as one of the top 30 people for dollar spin in the region that I live in. Because of the for admitting that. Yeah. Like some people like you had corporate events and whatnot. But they were like they were using BI to filter those people out. individually.

Jason Baum 26:43
It was like Hilton Marriott, the university down the street. And then Ravi.

Ravi Lachhman 26:50
Yeah, like corporate entities. So they have our users of Chick-fil-A.

Jason Baum 26:55
So one other thing. So on your social media, I guess you often reference your sister. And that’s been something that you’ve been doing lately. Tell us a little bit about that.

Ravi Lachhman 27:08
Oh, yeah, I love my sister. I have an older sister. And I’m super impressed. Like, you know, she’s was able to pivot her life in her career, like several times. I mean, she’s a quick learner. But sometimes I get really funny, it centric questions from her that baffled me, like, how did you not? How did you have a job for so long in different places and not notice? Or even like really complicated ones, as she went from zero to 100. Like in a span of like, several days, like you didn’t know how to do that, but you’re doing this. So I like to screenshot you know, I keep her name out of it. But like the screenshots, some of the questions like some recent questions, just in the span of, let’s say, 30 days for the listeners. My sister didn’t know how to save a Word document on her Mac, but she just never had to do that. Like, I’m like, what, like, be fair, I should just transition to a Mac for the first time. But she didn’t like to know that. She didn’t know the concept of like, Save or Save As I was like, so you have like 15 copies of this, like design document like, Okay, put in Google box, that is okay. And then like within the first like, 30 days after that she started using like Kubernetes. And she had like, some question like, around like, So you went from not understanding? You see, like me, perplexed if you if this is a video for, like just, you went from not understanding how to say like the Save or Save as like, deploy something on Kubernetes to explain. How did you make this jump? And you know, but it’s been really fun. I mean, she’s hilarious to talk to.

Jason Baum 28:49
So should we be sending or our IT help desk questions directly to you?

Ravi Lachhman 28:54
Yeah, you could. I mean, I’ll give you an answer. It probably wouldn’t be the

Jason Baum 28:57
one here. That’s fine. Yes.

Ravi Lachhman 29:00
I was. I used to just buy a new one like my new computer. But yeah,

Jason Baum 29:03
my favorite is the world have you tried turning it on and off? That’s I think, right. That’s the number one

Ravi Lachhman 29:09
Mine is to buy a new one. It’s like whatever,

Jason Baum 29:12
buy a new home. Yeah, whatever. Buy a new one. Yeah, like easier for you to say.

Ravi Lachhman 29:16
Your, your iPads. Yeah, do one slow start, right.

Jason Baum 29:22
Where do you see the future of DevOps right now? How’s that for a final question? Yeah.

Ravi Lachhman 29:26
I mean, talking about abstract white papers, question here.

Jason Baum 29:31
Sure. Yeah. And I want it in 2000 words, by my on my desk by end of the day.

Ravi Lachhman 29:38
What’s it DevOps is an evolving space, right? And so I’ll give you a verse So boxes answer for this. And it so DevOps takes time, right? There’s you just can’t hire a DevOps engineer and you have DevOps automagically. Check the box, right. DevOps is more of a culture than the tech within a single or technology or seeing practice. I used to make a joke that I’m just gonna make a DevOps appliance company. And so you just plug it in and it turns blue when you have DevOps. I was inspired by the course can like, I can

Jason Baum 30:12
you tell us, your top two, the DevOps?

Ravi Lachhman 30:15
Yeah, taste the DevOps. Yes, the DevOps. Yeah, turns blue. What is DevOps? As all jokes aside, like, what if I’m saying one of my current favorite people I talked to his name is David Syria, he has a background in special education and he’s a CTO at a startup now, and he equates a lot of it’s very true. A DevOps transformation can’t be measured in weeks like so as a software engineer, I’m so used to Agile like, you know, three weeks sprints four-week Sprint’s X number of story points, true transformation, as a transformation for like, say a student is over yours. Like you can’t measure my success as a student over a week or two or six weeks or nine meters semester like it change takes time. And understanding that DevOps teams can retain to beat remember, computers are easy if people are hard, right? Like it. That’s a mindset change. It takes time. And so I think there’s a lot more of an understanding that things take time, as organizations get more true to understanding that things take time, because in the business world snap, snap, chop, chop, you know, why is this not done in a sprint? Go ahead and install Jenkins we have DevOps now. Yeah, like that. That’s not the case. And I think a lot of where the market is headed. In terms of practices. It’s there’s boiling into Site Reliability Engineering, right? So there’s, there’s wide skill sets that to be had people who have more mature in their practices, and also just making it easier for people to consume, right, like taking engineering efficiency. I actually wrote my top five predictions for DevOps in 2021 and 2022. Not to shamelessly plug myself but a lot of that had to do with supporting a blameless culture, right? How do you allow your software engineers to not incur any tech debt as they go to production and there are several methodologies to do that. From a reliability standpoint, from an operational standpoint, this is where DevOps is going to be taking the market. And as more companies embrace it, and as it becomes less of a cliche term, it’s mainstream at this point. It’s not something whispered. DevOps is a term blue. It’s pretty mainstream, in my opinion. Now, obviously,

Jason Baum 32:29
I love that when it turns blue, it’s DevOps. We’re very led focus to these days. I feel like you could tell like, if it’s still in the red, we’re not there. Yellow. Okay, now we’re green, blue. We’ve had it like that. I like that. Well, Robbie, thank you so much for giving us a little inside information on who you are, what makes it tick. What’s in your stomach right now? And, and talking all things DevOps and food, it was a lot of fun.

Ravi Lachhman 32:57
Sure. Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This is great.

Jason Baum 33:01
And when you do go on your next life, journey as the Anthony Bourdain of DevOps, please, I want all of the royalties of that, so be sure to remember me. Sure. Thanks again, Ravi. And thank you for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps Podcast. I’m going to end this the same as I always do, encouraging you to become a premium member of DevOps Institute to get access to even more great resources just like this one. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and miss most of all, stay human, live long and prosper.

Narrator 33:39
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps podcast. Don’t forget to join our global community to get access to even more great resources like this. Until next time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself. You belong

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