On this episode of the Humans of DevOps, Jason Baum is joined by Pauline Narvas of Gitpod. Pauline discusses her journey into tech, including starting to code and build websites at age 8, the importance of community and finding your tribe, cloud developer environments and so much more!

Pauline Narvas is a Community Engineer at Gitpod and community founder of Ladies of DevOps. Pauline is an international speaker, blogger at pawlean.com and host of the By Pawlean podcast. Pauline is also an ambassador for Code First Girls and the author of the DevXDigest newsletter.

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Transcript

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 SKIL framework.

Pauline Narvas 00:16
Whilst I was in those roles, I always had community at the core of them. So whenever I was learning something new, for example, in DevOps, it was because of the things that they gave me that allowed me to become the best DevOps engineer that I could be.

Jason Baum 00:33
Hey, everyone, it’s Jason Baum, Director of membership at DevOps Institute. And this is the Humans of DevOps Podcast. Well, I am very excited today to be joined by my guest, international speaker, creator, blogger and podcast host, Pauline Narvas. And as if that wasn’t enough, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about what Pauline does. So Pauline is a community engineer at Gitpod, founder of the Ladies in DevOps community, Ambassador for code first girls, author of the Deaf X digest, she runs her own blog pauline.com, which is Pa wlean.com, and the host of the buy Pauline podcast. Pauline, welcome to the show.

Pauline Narvas 01:21
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here today. I mean, I’ve listened to a few of your episodes before. And I mean, we were just talking before how I love how you’ve touched on the human side of DevOps. So I’m really, really excited for this conversation.

Jason Baum 01:39
Thank you. And I’ve listened to your podcast as well. And you are an amazing host. So I’m excited. Anytime we get to talk to a host from another podcast. It’s always interesting because I feel like we’re both inclined to interview each other. So that always happens. Yeah. So let’s see where this one goes. And are you ready to get human?

Pauline Narvas 02:00
Yeah, let’s do it.

Jason Baum 02:01
Alright, so let’s dive in. Let’s talk a little bit about I mean, my gosh, Pauline, when do you sleep? You do so much. So. So where do we get I think we should just begin, tell us a little bit about when you were born. So when When did you know that engineering was for you? When did you really start getting into it? And let’s start there.

Pauline Narvas 02:21
Yeah, no, yeah. So my journey, I think it’s one of those things that it’s been such a huge, it’s been such a long journey. And it’s been such a sort of complicated journey because as with most journeys, you sort of start to involve you trying to figure out who you are, what you want, and just doing a bit of growing up along the way. And so my, my official start, I would say, when I got into engineering was when I was just eight years old, my parents had a family computer that I used, and it connected to the internet. And I remember the first day I connected to the internet, I was like, Oh my gosh, there’s so much stuff that you can do here. You can play games, you could like create things you can, you know, it was absolutely endless there. And today, it’s even more endless. There’s like all sorts of things that you can do. And we’ve advanced so much. But back when I was eight years old, I discovered website building, and I wanted to build a website from scratch, because I was playing a game at the time, which was m, and O, like an online game. And you could sort of just go in and run around and complete quests and stuff. And I really enjoyed it. But there were parts of the game that I just didn’t, I didn’t really like and I wanted to add extra things. So I was like, as an eight-year-old playing this game, I said, How can I change this? What can I do to add these elements? And how can I build something like this myself? So I went down this rabbit hole of realizing that this game was hosted on a website, so I decided to start there. And then that’s when I started learning about the basics of web development. So I looked at HTML, CSS, bit of JavaScript. And then I sort of just fell in love with building random things on random websites for different topics that I really loved. So at the time, I liked playing video games, I liked different films. So I created websites dedicated to a specific film or dedicated to a specific game. And I just, I just enjoyed the whole process of just building the website from scratch with different elements and then adding the content on top and then hosting it and then sending the link to people to read and check out and Sometimes I get comments from people who also like the same thing. And then out of that I actually found my first, online community. And this was like, it went on for a couple of years. And I did that I was a site thing as a hobby growing up. And yeah, I think that was the very first time I said, Wow, this is awesome. This is so much fun. But I didn’t actually think that it was viable, like career path. Because up until that point, everyone, like, at school, or, you know, my family, were telling me that it wasn’t a career, it’s just a hobby, you can continue with your hobby, but go into the real world, become a doctor, go into medicine, and, you know, contribute to society that way. And they were wrong.

Jason Baum 05:51
They were, they were way wrong. I know what you mean, by the way, because like, you know, computers are for fun. That’s not that wasn’t a career. So they said, and it’s just so funny to when we talk to our guests on this podcast. And you know, you didn’t like the game. So you built your own. I didn’t like a game, I went and bought a new one. Like, I just, I think it’s so interesting. But so I mean, you’re, you’re this is like a hobby for you. It’s fun. So when did you realize that you can make it a career? If everyone’s telling you it’s not career? It’s not career? How did you go from? Alright, I’m not going to listen to them and make it a career. Like, I didn’t do that. I just had fun. And then I didn’t realize that this was a huge mistake for me. But great, great move on your part. So how did you know?

Pauline Narvas 06:41
Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. So for me, it was. So I was at university studying for my degree in Biomedical Sciences. And that was the degree that my parents had asked me to do because I failed my first medical medicine exams or to get into medical school. And so they were like, go to BioMed. And it’s like the next best thing. I went in and did that. But it was my second year at Duke University doing a degree where I just took a step back, and I was like, I hate this. Like, I love learning. I love picking up a book and reading how the human body works in terms of like when it’s healthy on when it’s diseased, it’s really, really interesting stuff. But as a practitioner, you know, working either in hospitals or in labs, it just didn’t appeal to me at all. And my course was three years. So I got to the middle point, and I said, I can’t graduate next year, and expect to go to the world and contribute when I hate what I do. And I don’t have any passion for it. So around the same time, out of nowhere, I actually got an email from the University’s computer science department talking about how they have a coding course for women only. And it was in partnership with a company called Code First girls. And I saw the email, I was like, Whoa, all this time, I’ve been coding websites, by myself, in the room in my own room, just in the corner of my room. All by myself, I this whole concept of coding with other people just I was blown away. And also it was only women as well, which blew me away even more. So I decided to sign up. It was a course teaching the basics of web development. And I had already got the basics down from being self-taught and tinkering around with web development as a hobby. But then I joined the course just to, like, understand what this was all about. So I did the course. And I was I learned so many cool things like that was the first time I learned about Git, and GitHub, version control, and stuff like that. Because up until that point, as I said, I was just coding by myself. I used to develop PHP websites for WordPress, and I used to like edit them in my text editor and, upload it via FTP. That’s what I used to do. But then I go-to skills. I learned that you know, you could even host websites on GitHub, for example. But yeah, it was that moment where connected with all these women who also wanted to learn how to code who had no experience. And they all got we all got like a certificate from it. And then they were looking for ambassadors. They were looking for instructors to help teach the future courses. And it was at that moment, I realized that coding is not just a hobby, it’s not just a side thing, but some people do. It can be a viable career because the instructors that were teaching it were had very successful careers in tech, and they were volunteering their time to help build this coding community to pay it forward to other people. And that was when I said, Oh my gosh, this is a viable career. But, you know, I went and told my parents about it. And they were like, okay, it’s okay, you can continue doing that hobby, you can go to labs if you want to keep, you know if you want to spend four hours a week doing that continue, but you need to graduate, you need to go into postgraduate medicine. And that is that isn’t as final. So it was really, like upsetting for me at first, but then I just continued with it because I found this new community who all really just connected with me and like, reminded me that I was going in the right direction. And it’s honestly, I think, a lot of the code vesicles community at the start for where I am today. Because if it wasn’t for them, encouraging me throughout the whole thing when everyone else was saying, like, don’t do it, like you’re doing BioMed stick in your stay in your lane, blah, blah, then I don’t think I would be who I am now. So yeah, I think that was when I was like, yeah,

Jason Baum 11:04
yeah. That’s the power community. Right. Thank goodness for communities, because, look, a lot of people in our lives who love us want things for us, but certainly there, they have their reasons for everything. And it’s in, you know, often in their eyes, best interest for you, but you’re the one who knows your life. Right? And even when it’s your parents, that’s like the hardest thing, right? Sometimes is that disconnect when there? You’re gonna be a doctor, you’re like, I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to be a coder. Yeah, I mean, I’m sure a lot I know, I’ve gone through that I’m sure a lot of people who are listening have gone through that. So, but kudos to you, because you found the community to push you. You know, a lot of times, you know, you don’t have that are early enough. And so sometimes you feel stuck. So I think that’s, that’s great that you found that community, I’m assuming that’s the reason why you’re so I mean, I read your bio, how many things said community in it? You know, you’re a community ambassador, a community founder, and a community engineer. So I’d maybe that’s good, it’s a good segue for us to talk a bit about community what community means to you, and you’ve kind of shaped your career with community?

Pauline Narvas 12:21
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like you said, I just, I don’t think I’d be where I am now without the community that I found. And, and, and yeah, so with the. So just to give you a bit of context, right now, like you said, I’m a community engineer at git pod. And for those who may have not heard of us before, Git pod is an open-source container platform, that provision is ready to code developer environments in the cloud, so you can access them in the browser via your laptop or tablet, and also your local IDE. So I got this role, I get pause, July 2021. This year, it feels like years ago now. But that in that role in my role, currently, what I’m doing is I’m building the community that use Gitpod. And it’s, it’s been such an interesting journey, it’s been so positive because I’ve been able to apply my learnings of community building over, you know, from code first girls, from ladies in DevOps, and from all the various different communities like I was also part of hackathon community, I was also part of a blogging community. So all of these communities that I’ve either been a part of, or LED in some way, I’ve been able to apply the same sort of learnings to Gitpod. And it’s, it’s been such a, like, positive experience. And it’s honestly like, one of those things where I have to wake up when I wake up in the morning, I just pinched myself because I’m like, I’m doing the job that I’ve always wanted to do, but I couldn’t place it in a role. Because, you know, when I got into tech, I was an engineer, I was coding nine to five as a DevOps engineer, as an SRE and also a software engineer because I did the training scheme. And whilst I was in those roles, I always had community at the core of them. So whenever I was learning something new, for example, in DevOps, I reached out to the wonderful tech community on Twitter, asking for advice on learning how to get started with DevOps. And it was because of the things that they gave me that allowed me to become the best DevOps engineer that I could be. And yeah, I think it’s the same sort of thing when it comes with or when it comes to, like, the communities that I found now or that I help build. I try to pay it forward as much as I can. Just because that’s What the communities pretty easily has given to me if that makes sense. It definitely

Jason Baum 15:05
makes sense. And I think that’s what so many people rely on communities for right is support. It’s the support, it’s the advice, it’s the wisdom that others, you know if you’re not the first person who’s gone through, a great term is, you know, we’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re just improving it. So it’s like, you know, and that’s, that’s kind of the purpose of community other than, hey, there’s someone here to talk to, which is a huge piece of it, right? Sometimes you just need to vent, you know, or, you know, it’s one way or then there are other times where you just need to take in. So I think that’s a great piece of community. How has it helped you? As far as like breaking into the industry? But then also, were there barriers for you? We’ve talked to some women on the podcast as far as being women in tech, you know, the challenges that they’ve had, did having your own built-in community help you?

Pauline Narvas 15:58
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So ladies in DevOps is a community I started this April this year. And the reason I actually started it was because it, because I had just started at a new company. So over the past three years, so just to keep everyone in the loop, I graduated in 2018, I got my first tech job that summer. And then I worked that job for two years. And then 2020, at the end of 2020, I left my old company and joined the new company as a DevOps engineer. And then, and then in July, I joined git pod. So when I was a DevOps engineer, in the second tech company, I joined, I had left something that I was very comfortable in. So I graduated in 2018. And I had this company that I worked at, for two years, and I had the support network because it was part of a graduate training scheme. So they got fresh graduates out of university to train to become whatever they want to become in, in the, in the, in the company. And for me, I was in tech space. So I had a few people who were also interested in tech. So we have this nice little graduates tech community within the company. And it was really nice because they really supported me throughout all the learnings of the past two years. And then when I left that company to join as a DevOps engineer, another, I suddenly lost my support network, I suddenly lost everything, I just didn’t have the same people around me, whenever I went for advice, they, they just couldn’t relate with the things that I was learning anymore, because we were in two different companies now. And so I created ladies and DevOps as a safe space for like self-identifying women to connect with each other. Because I needed it, I needed that community at that time, when I joined a new company, and I couldn’t see another woman’s insights. And I, you know, my team, they were all very lovely, but I felt like we just weren’t connecting the same way. And in my other. In the first tech job I had, there were women also in tech, who I sort of relied on for that support. So that’s why when I left, I just didn’t have that anymore. And that’s why I created ladies in DevOps. And the next few months before I joined Gitpod was so much better than the first few months when I didn’t help ladies in DevOps because I would go in to work, do my like, nine-five, do my different tickets, move what a ticket from left to right. And then I would go into the ladies and DevOps community, which is hosted on Discord. And then I’ll just have a conversation with someone from the other side of the world, who’s also a DevOps engineer who also had a bad day. And we would just be talking about, like, you know, supporting each other, with the various different issues that we were that we had that day, whether that was like a technical thing, or a personal thing, or whatever it was, and it was that that like, supported me through that. And genuinely, I don’t think I would have survived if I continued to just go into that job and feel so isolated and alone because no one else looked like me, no one else seemed to want to talk to me, you know? And then now I had ladies in DevOps, that that changed everything for me.

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Jason Baum 20:11
Yeah, sometimes it feels like you’re screaming into an abyss, you’re not connected. And, you know, for me, for a lot of people, the pandemic is a great example of, you know, I, I said on another podcast that we did that I’m reluctant was it extrovert, you know, like, I like I am an extrovert, but, but sometimes it drains me. You know, being, you know, having, having the spotlight on you sometimes or talking, you know, that sometimes that’s a draining feeling. But when you’re disconnected, and you don’t have the community because I do seek community as well. I’m a community builder, myself, and I think anyone that is seeks community, and the pandemic is one example of it being taken away, you know, of, of having a group maybe that you could bend with, or maybe you look to different types of communities. So I get that sense of, of screaming into the void, sometimes, you know, until you make that community, what would you say to someone maybe who’s starting out because you said something really powerful, you don’t think you would have made it if you didn’t have that community? You know, for someone who’s starting out seeking the community, how do you know we found the right one? How do you how do you know?

Pauline Narvas 21:36
Oh, that’s such a good question. Because it’s interesting because the pandemic really brought alive a lot of online communities. And I think at the startup and the start of the pandemic, I was actively looking for various different online communities to feel better about the whole situation that was just going on across the world. And yeah, and so I joined quite a few. And a lot of them actually sprung up on Discord because discord feels like the most natural for me anyway, because I’ve been part of different communities on various different platforms. But discord has been one of those that feels, for me, anyway, feels like the best place to build your community around. So I joined so many discards the first time the pandemic hit, I was like, looking for community and looking for people to connect with. And I quickly found the ones that, like, welcomed me listened to my story, and allowed me gave me that sense of feeling that I was safe. And that things that I had shared, that I was going to share wasn’t going to be sent around anywhere, or there was no judgment, that is when I felt like oh, yeah, this is the right place. For me. It’s all about it’s, it’s, it’s so weird, because like, when we think about creating a safe environment, it’s quite easy to think of, like when you go into a room, you sort of feel people can create that environment in person. But when you have it online, it’s a bit. It’s a bit, I don’t know, it’s so difficult to sort of replicate that. But I think once you know, that you’re you know, I think you can easily see on online communities actually, where if you quickly browse through different channels and see who’s talking and see types of people that talk to each other, and how they speak to each other, I think you can start to see what sort of like culture and environment that they’re trying to cultivate. So, unfortunately, I actually had to leave quite a few of those communities and those different servers that I joined, because I didn’t feel safe in them. In some of them as in, like, I didn’t feel like I could open up I didn’t feel like I could share my knowledge or

Jason Baum 24:00
why is that? Like, why why do we feel safe in some and not in others? Yeah, I

Pauline Narvas 24:05
think it just goes back to our after the environment that they cultivate. I mean, so in ladies in DevOps as a good example is when we created ladies of DevOps, one of the things I was worried about was using the word ladies, because it’s a very, like, you know, gender term. And then we, we might, I don’t know, specifically exclude different types of women. And so that’s why when I was creating the tagline, I made sure that I put self-identifying women because I wanted to welcome everyone. So you didn’t have to be a woman by birth. If you identify as a woman, you are free to join the DevOps, the ladies and DevOps community. So it was the language I was very, very aware of the language I was using. And we also have a Whenever someone says, guys, for example, in our server, make sure to message them privately just to say, we tend not to use guys because it’s very exclusive. And the language that we use is the language that we, you know, talk to each other with or to announce things. It’s, it cultivates a, it contributes to the, to the overall environment of the community. And I noticed that when I started, like messaging people just to make sure that they don’t say that they became more aware of using more inclusive language. And then we went from, I don’t know, it was like, 10 people to now Around 600 people across the world join us. And, you know, when someone, I’ve noticed that some of the long-term members have been a bit more inclusive with the way they speak, compared to when they first joined. And it’s, it’s nice to see, it’s, it’s nice that we’ve been able to cultivate that sort of positive environment. And now we’ve got so many different women from all walks of life who have said to me, like privately or publicly on the, on the community chat that I feel really safe here. And, you know, I can share literally anything, it doesn’t have to be about tech, it can just be about things that I’m dealing with as a non-binary person, or as a, as someone who identifies in this certain group, and it’s so positive to see. And it’s sort of, I think, to answer your question around that way, it’s all about, I think, the being mindful of your community, and what you want your community to stand for when you create it. And so I had to put myself in different people’s shoes when I was creating the website when I was creating the ladies in DevOps community because I wanted to make sure that if I was this person, how would I feel? How would I react? Will I want to click Join? And even once I’ve clicked join, if I go through the channels, will I be overwhelmed? Or will I feel immediately at home? From you know, more inclusive language that people are using? And everyone seems quite friendly? Or will I just leave because, you know, people are sharing things that I don’t like or not talking in an inclusive way. So, so yeah, no question

Jason Baum 27:27
about it. It does, I think it does it, I was thinking about diversity, inclusion, how important it is these days, and just, you know, for companies and to listen to something, like what you were just talking about, and also how we define communities. Let’s take the humans of DevOps for example, DevOps Institute, we define it as we are for the humans of DevOps if you’re a human, and you’re in DevOps joined, you know, so but when you’re creating a community, it’s always we always look at it as like, well, you’re, you’re being exclusionary to someone. And yeah, kind of, but I look to look at as at the positive of it, which is, we’re actually inclusion, we’re being inclusive for those who follow it. So if this is something that you are interested in, we are for you, it’s not that we’re being exclusive, saying, Hey, don’t join, it’s, well, why would you want to join and be, you know, this is so you can find it, I’m always in awe of my soon to be four-year-old girl who can go out there and just find a friend, who, they’re always the same personality type. And they just somehow find each other. And they connect like that. And it’s like, wow, that was so it was hard for her because it’s not easy for her to like muster up the, you know, the energy and the ability to make a new friend but to find that person seems to be so easy for her. She’s just, I don’t know what it is about children and just finding your tribe so quick, that we then forget when we get older. But it’s just fascinating because that’s what community is finding your tribe, right?

Pauline Narvas 29:12
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something but I’ve sort of gotten better over time. Like, especially last year, when I was going through so many different communities and trying to be a part of so many of them. And then deciding that, actually, this is what I want, like because sometimes you go to you join different communities, and you spend some time there and you’re like, actually, these are the people that align with my personal values or my long term goals. And I am not getting much out of this and I don’t feel very nice being around these people. So then you end up you know, learning along the way and I think over time, especially from my point of view, I’ve learned to find the get sort of like an instinct on And the type of people I want to be around similar to what you said there. And I think like you said, it’s one of it’s a skill that certain people that we forget. And it’s something that we community builders, I think you improve on and you build upon, the more you like join serial communities across different platforms and stuff.

Jason Baum 30:26
Yeah. And it’s so important. I think it’s so important that that in work and our workspaces, we have safe communities that we can turn to and I think that employers are starting to listen, I’m hoping that it’s, you know, the more we talk about it, the more real it becomes.

Pauline Narvas 30:46
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, that’s something I actually predict in the next few years, as we go fully into the remote world, I feel like diversity, inclusion will be number one priority, because you can hire anywhere. So you can literally hire anyone. So I mean, we’ll see.

Jason Baum 31:01
I mean, look with that with DevOps. Okay, so with culture building, right? What type of culture do you want? Do you want a culture that’s nurturing? And safe? Or do you want one that continues to have barriers? But why do we put up these barriers anymore? It’s very old concepts to keep people out? Or, I mean, you know, there’s all these internal biases and things like that, obviously, that exist. But at the end of the day, don’t we want to just don’t we want to coexist and be able to have healthy communities and healthy work environment that people want to go to, and so that you’re not screaming into the abyss and hating every moment of it. So what are the biggest challenges that you see in the DevOps space in, you know, in 2021? And then maybe the positive? What are you excited about for the future?

Pauline Narvas 31:50
I would say, actually, since we just talked about diversity inclusion, and that’s the first thing that’s in my head right now. It’s something I experienced with hand, because in my first job, when I was a DevOps engineer, as part of the graduate scheme, training thing I did, there was actually quite a few women there. And that was because we were, we had a lot of different engineers from different places. So we had folks from Bella rose from India. And so it was quite a wide, widely distributed team. So we had quite a bit of quite a few women there. But then when I joined my second company, I was the only DevOps engineer who was a woman like that I could see in my team. And the further back, I kept looking, I was just like, where are they all? I can’t find anyone. And that was quite, it was quite a, it’s quite a local company. So they were local to the city I live in right now. So they weren’t as international as my old company. But I think, yeah, diversity inclusion is like the biggest challenge. And I mean, I spoke to my manager at the time about how he was talking to he was telling me about all the different applications that came through for the role that I ended up getting. And he said everyone was the same on paper. And the reason why he interviewed me and he picked up my, my CV was because he found it interesting that I had, I only had X amount of experience and that I like I wasn’t like everybody else, because everyone else had a similar experience. It was just like a mass-produced, like, different applications. And so but then he said out of the, I don’t know, six months, he was hiring, I was one of the only women that applied. And

Jason Baum 33:49
that’s how that’s shocking. To me. That

Pauline Narvas 33:50
was shocking. absolutely shocking, because when I started ladies in DevOps, I started to see women from across the world, who were DevOps engineers, and SRE is who, clearly there, it’s not like we’re not there. And I don’t know, this is again, links back to how important community is because I’ve seen in the ladies in DevOps community people encouraging each other to apply encouraging each other to, to to go for the role to go for the interview and to support each other through that whole really intensive process. And so yeah, diversity inclusion, very, very important. I don’t know the answer to it. But in the DevOps space, especially, it’s where it’s missing, quite significantly.

Jason Baum 34:40
It’s interesting to hear because as you were saying, you kind of answer what I was going to ask is, are women just not applying to it? Or it could it be in the job description is it does it turn you away because maybe the language isn’t welcoming or encouraging for women to apply? Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting.

Pauline Narvas 35:01
It’s like, it’s a lot of different like touchpoints, you could go. And we can delve into this a bit more. But like, it’s, yeah, it’s just so many different touchpoints that we need to do to get better and, you know, improve every step of the way. So yeah, the point has completely escaped. So I’ll move on to your next question around what I’m excited about in the future in the DevOps space, and I think, for me, and I might come across as bias because I now work for Gitpod. But like I said, Gitpod is a container platform that creates ready to code, developer environments all in the cloud. So that basically means you can start coding in your developer environment, from anywhere from your tablet, laptop, as wherever, as long as you have a browser and the whole cloud, ephemeral developer environments, that’s the thing to me that I’m so excited about seeing progress in the future. So Gitpod has been doing it over the past few years now of trying to make it more mainstream so that you know, anyone from any device can code. And they have all of their developer environments, automated in a similar way as infrastructure as code. So you specify what your environment what you want your development environments to look like. So if you need to install dependencies, you can all put that in a Git pod Yamo file, and then once all the configuration is set up, it automatically builds your developer environment every single time and it’s like a fresh environment. So you’d never have to worry about dependencies, you never have to worry about being tied to your local machine. So you know, when you I’m sure everyone has experienced this when you open a new project, but you haven’t. Sorry, when you open up a old project that you haven’t opened in a while. And then suddenly, the last time you use that it worked flawlessly. And then suddenly it doesn’t, and you’re just like, I don’t understand what happened and dependency is outdated or whatever. But Gitpod sort of like make sure that that doesn’t happen. So I’m just really excited about that whole space. Like, there’s other like competitors, I guess, and other products like GitHub Code Spaces, you know, they’re trying to move local environments to the cloud, as well. And it’s just more of these sorts of things popping up that make me super excited for the future of like, the developer experience of, of development environments, you know, and how our engineers going to be developing in the future. Will it all be cloud base? Will we even need very powerful, you know, MacBook Pros? Or can we just develop on an iPad, it’s all of these things, but I’m just really excited to see, you know, grow in the future is such a great opportunity. I think, again, it links back to the diversity and inclusion piece, but also different communities as well. Because now with this sort of technology in the source software, that’s that we’re trying to push forward, we’re going to then open up coding and tech, in general, to anyone who, who doesn’t have a powerful machine, and that specifically, really excite me. So people who don’t have very powerful machines, and they think they can’t code because they don’t have the best specked out laptop, it doesn’t even matter anymore, but you can still learn to code, you can still start your journey, wherever you are. So I think that whole space, you know, cloud, ephemeral developer environments. I’m so excited about it. I mean, I could talk

Jason Baum 38:49
so amazing. I mean, I could tell how excited you’re getting. And it’s exciting me. And it’s just, it’s like making me reflect and it’s like, my god, did you for that eight-year-old who went out to who was like, wanted to create that game to bring it home? Did you ever think in a million years that you would be able to code on a phone potentially the size of your hand, from anywhere in the world? I mean, just think about that to when you were eight and what you were using?

Pauline Narvas 39:18
Absolutely not. I was using this massive like chunky, lat sorry, computer that my parents had. I couldn’t bring it anywhere. That’s like, whenever we went out, I would be like rushing home just so I can get on the internet to build something. But now I can literally open up. I could bring my iPad Mini that is connected to 5g and connect to a Git pod workspace and start coding. That blows my mind blows my mind. It’s amazing.

Jason Baum 39:47
My first computer My First Family Computer, was the Mac to the Macintosh two. And yeah, yeah. And that’s like a computer that really didn’t do anything unless you had a floppy disk the size of my current laptop. So it’s like that stitches, you know, reflecting on these things is is pretty amazing. And it gets you excited for the future, which is really great. Which so that kind of brought us home. And now, we always ask this final question. You said you listened to the podcast, so maybe you’re expecting it. But what is one unique thing about you that nobody knows? Maybe you’ve never shared in a public space before? Oh, gosh, I

Pauline Narvas 40:29
like I feel like I live my life out loud. So I feel like I’ve said this before.

Jason Baum 40:36
If you’ve said before, it’s okay. We won’t tell.

Pauline Narvas 40:40
So, so something have not said, that’s unique to me. Um, I would say, I don’t know, I this is sort of the thing I always bring up. It’s not that interesting. But I’m actually a twin. And whenever I mentioned that people tend to assume that there are two of me just walking around the world. And that is why I can do so much more. But I just want to dispel the rumors completely and say, We are not identical. So you wouldn’t be able to say, tell that we’re sisters. But yeah, I like to say that that’s unique and interesting. I guess.

Jason Baum 41:18
I was just gonna ask, Are we talking to the right Pauline, right. It’s like face-off. No, that’s, that’s pretty cool. Was it cool growing up with a twin?

Pauline Narvas 41:28
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’re very different as we grow, as we grew up, like I’m more extroverted, she’s very introverted. But yeah, it was interesting. We had a lot of fights, hugging, I used to hug the computer a lot. And she would be like, when’s my turn? And I’d be like, I’m building this awesome website. You know, it’s not being seen by anyone. But I built it. So go away. It was very fun.

Jason Baum 41:53
That’s pretty cool. So I can’t thank you enough, Pauline, for being on the podcast. I hope you come back. And we have so much more to talk about. I know there’s a ton of things that we did not touch on that I’ve heard you speak about on your podcast, I would love to get into so will you come back and be a guest? Another time? Right time. I’m gonna take you up on that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Pauline. And you could check out Pauline at on that from the dev x digest newsletter, her blog, Pauline calm, which is Pa wlean.com and also the by Pauline podcast, Pauline. Thanks again.

Pauline Narvas 42:34
Thank you so much for having me.

Jason Baum 42:37
And thank you for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps Podcast. I’m going to end this episode 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 most of all, stay human, live long and prosper.

Narrator 42:58
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 aren’t part of something bigger than yourself. You belong