An OCMM Retrospective with Adriana & Ana

About us:

Adriana is a Sr. Developer Advocate at Lightstep, based out of Toronto, Canada, with over 20 years of experience in tech. She focuses on helping companies achieve reliability greatness by through Observability and Incident Response practices. Before Lightstep, she was a Sr. Manager at Tucows/Wavelo. During this time, she defined technical direction in the organization, running both a Platform Engineering team, and an Observability Practices team. Adriana has also worked at various large-scale enterprises, including Bank of Montreal (BMO), Ceridian, and Accenture. At BMO, she was responsible for defining and driving the bank's enterprise-wide DevOps practice, which impacted business and technology teams across multiple geographic locations across the globe. Adriana has a widely-read technical blog on Medium, which is known for its casual and approachable tone to complex technical topics, and its high level of technical detail. She is also a HashiCorp Ambassador. Find her on Mastodon at @[email protected] to talk all things tech.

Ana Margarita is a Staff Developer Advocate at Lightstep and focuses on helping companies be more reliable by leveraging Observability and Incident Response practices. Before Lightstep, she was a Senior Chaos Engineer at Gremlin and helped companies avoid outages by running proactive chaos engineering experiments. She has also worked at various-sized companies including Google, Uber, SFEFCU, and Miami-based startups. Ana is an internationally recognized speaker and has presented at: AWS re:Invent, KubeCon, DockerCon, DevOpDays, AllDayDevOps, Write/Speak/Code, and many others. Catch her on Mastodon at @[email protected] about traveling, diversity in tech, and mental health. 

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Transcript:

ANA: Hey, y'all. Welcome to On-Call Me Maybe, the podcast about DevOps, SRE, observability principles, on-call, and everything in between. I am your host, Ana Margarita Medina, and with my awesome co-host...

ADRIANA: Adriana Villela.

ANA: Today, we're going to be recapping what this year has been for us, some of the stuff that we have been up to, what we're looking forward to in the next year, and talking a little bit more about tech culture and what we could be doing to make it better. We're so happy that you have been listening to us this season, and we look forward to having you join us next season. To kick it off, what's your drink of choice today, Adriana?

ADRIANA: Today I've got water. Super boring. I should have something warmer, though, because it's actually really cold here in Toronto today. We've got snow, our first snowfall of the day. I mean, sorry, first snowfall of the year, I should say.

ANA: Ooh, that's actually pretty exciting. Like, I'm not someone that likes cold environments, but snow is really pretty. I'm not going to turn down being in cute snow clothes with a little beanie. [laughs]

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. Exactly. As long as it's not super, super cold.

ANA: Well, hopefully, you'll get some hot drink for the day to cozy up with the snow. 

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. 

ANA: For me, today I'm also doing water, and I'm finishing up my morning drink, which is orange-infused yerba mate. I kind of sometimes switch between coffee to tea. So it's kind of nice.

ADRIANA: Nice. Nice. Yeah, I think we have a similar drink in Brazil called mate. It must be the same thing. It's got to be the same thing. The name is similar enough.

ANA: Like, at least the little bit of knowledge that I know about mate is that it comes from South America. And my best friend is Argentinian, and she actually just gets the actual leaves of mate. And you boil them, and you drink them in these little, leather metal containers that help keep it hot. 

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

ANA: And you have the metal straw. So I've seen it more down there than in the cultures that I come from.

ADRIANA: That's cool. Now it makes me want to go to the nearby Brazilian supermarket and pick one up. [laughs]

ANA: You should do it.

ADRIANA: For nostalgia. I should; I should. Next time I'll come equipped with some mate. We can have a mate-mate off.

[laughter]

ANA: I'll make the OG Argentinian mate for that day.

ADRIANA: Nice. [laughs]

ANA: Is there any drink that in Brazil y'all drink for holidays or that you and your family really like having as a tradition?

ADRIANA: No. I mean, I think I dishonor my culture because I don't like coffee. [laughs] My dad's really into coffee, but my mom never was into coffee. I'm much more of a tea drinker. Or I'd say my go-to holiday drink is a Starbucks hot chocolate, and I usually do it with coconut milk, which gives it a really nice silky texture. 

ANA: Ooh, I might have to try that. I just had their hot chocolate maybe two weeks ago. And I forgot that I actually really enjoy getting a hot chocolate from Starbucks. Like, it's a different experience than just making it a home.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's like a warm hug.

[laughter]

ANA: Yes, that definitely sums it up. I think for me, like, I just blanked out. But in my culture, we have different things that we do for the holidays. And in Costa Rica, we have rompope, which is our traditional eggnog that we drink during the holidays, and it's literally my favorite thing to drink. It's just not really available out in California. I think in Miami, it was easier for me to find it. So over the last seven years, what I have picked up as my holiday tradition is making coquito which is a Puerto Rican drink.

ADRIANA: Ooh.

ANA: Which is like coconut milk, condensed milk, evaporated milk, cinnamon spices. The culture of Puerto Rico is that you make it with rum. So you can do it with Brugal, and you serve it over ice, and it's extremely strong. So it's more of like their holiday party drink. So I always make it non-alcoholic, and then I'll pour Flor de Caña Nicaraguan rum and have it with it. And it's just like, cozy up. It's the holiday season, like, start celebrating from Thanksgiving to the end of January.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, that sounds amazing. [laughter] I will have to try that at some point. You had me at condensed milk, so...

ANA: Yes. I mean, that's what it is. It's that sweetness. It's that sweetness and boozy. It's also a culture that you make it for your friends and family, and that's your gift for the holiday season.

ADRIANA: Aww.

ANA: So, one of my past jobs with a credit union in Miami, I got gifted it in like one of the holiday seasons, and it was just really thoughtful of like another family is inviting you to celebrate holidays with them. 

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so sweet. I love it. So, we've been podcasting for a while, I guess, now, right? So I guess this is our year in review [laughs], where we get to reminisce on some of the highlights of the year. You know, it's a good time for reflection. So keeping in with that end-of-year theme, like, what experiences are you grateful for? And who are some of the people that shaped who you are today?

ANA: Yeah, I mean, I think things that I'm grateful for have varied a lot year by year. I think this year I'm really grateful for the close group of people that I have around me; it has been co-workers, husband, open-source community. It has been my close friends and just uplifting. I remember the last winter season; I had a lot harder time mental health-wise. So kind of trying to remind myself of, like, oh no, like, leverage your community to not struggle this much this winter as we already have the sun going down at 4:30 p.m., which just makes my heart cry. [laughs]

ADRIANA: So depressing. I hate it. 

ANA: [laughs]

ADRIANA: The only thing making it less crappy today is the snow. 

[laughter]

ANA: True. Send some snow over to California, please, but not too much. [laughter] 

ADRIANA: Yeah, just a little, tiny bit. 

ANA: And then, to answer your second part of the question, I think there are a lot of people that I'm grateful for for making me who I am today. I think my dad instilled in me a lot of values of being community-driven, giving back to folks, and constantly just learning and staying curious, like, an entrepreneurial mindset. 

And then there are two mentors that I always go back to as folks that made such a huge impact in my life growing up that I wouldn't be in the career that I have today. And one of them is my sixth-grade technology teacher, Mr. Rios, who taught me just computers and the web are a really cool thing. And he published my HTML websites on his website. 

ADRIANA: Aww.

ANA: And that gave me confidence of technology is cool; go code. And then, I had a manager for an internship in my ninth-grade summer of high school named Soleil. She was just an amazing woman of color leader that was fierce in business and really tried to explain to these high school students, like, you have to present yourself the way you want people to respect you and also think about your career really early, and those decisions are going to make an impact. So if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be having a successful career in technology. So I think this holiday season, I'm always like, hmm, thank you. Thank you, all.

ADRIANA: Aww, that's awesome. That's really sweet.

ANA: What about for you? Who are you grateful for that has made you who you are today?

ADRIANA: I'd have to say top one is my mom, and I lost her earlier this year to cancer. And I had to actually rush home early from KubeCon to be with her for her final hours, and that was really rough. But I'm also so grateful that all my family was there. My dad, my sister, my daughter, and I were there for her final moments. And every day, I think back to the lessons that she instilled in me, which were she always wanted my sister and me to be fiercely independent career women, and she got her wish. 

I mean, for her, the most important thing was no matter what, just make sure that you set yourself up that whatever life throws at you, you're able to come out maybe with a few scratches, but you still come out okay in the end, and I'm so super grateful for that. And she's always taught me to be super driven. And I think we both, [laughs] you know, I'm pretty sure she was undiagnosed ADHD. She was like a little rocket ship. I mean, we'd take 10K walks regularly. I think I definitely get that from her. So I'm very grateful for that. 

And I would say my dad and my sister have been so supportive in the last little while, like, after losing my mom and gotten closer over that, which has been super nice. My dad is actually the one who got me into tech. [laughs] He's a software architect. I mean, last week, he's like, "Yeah, I'm learning this new language called Zig, and it's supposed to be like an easier version of Rust." [laughter] I'm like, holy crap, man, you eat computer languages for breakfast. [laughter] 

So yeah, he's always on top of the techy things. I got into DevOps because of him. [laughs] When I was bitching one time after a really bad release, and all the things that went wrong did, and he's like, "You should look into this DevOps thing." 

ANA: [laughs]

ADRIANA: I'm like, ooh, cool, and that got me hooked, so eternally grateful for that. And my husband has been ridiculously supportive of my career. And he's been at the same company for, like, 25, 26 years. And I'm the one who's had career changes and job changes over the last 20 years of our marriage, and he's super chill about it. [laughter] Even though at one point I'm like, "I'm quitting tech, and I'm going to become a professional photographer," and he's like, "No problem." [laughs]

ANA: Aww.

ADRIANA: So that was cool. And my daughter, Hannah, like, honestly, she's the sweetest person. And she's always there to cheer me up whenever I feel crappy, so I super appreciate that. And I've had a couple of really awesome mentors, too; my friend, Bernard, who unfortunately suffered a stroke a couple of years ago and is still in hospital unresponsive, but I always think of him because he's the one who got me interested in observability. And he's one of those people who could see...I guess he saw what my mom saw in me. He's like, "Oh, you're really good at what you do. And you should never forget that." 

It's so nice to have someone who believes so fiercely in you and can see past, you know, you're your own worst enemy. And I had so many mental blocks, like, doubting my skills. And so he continues to inspire me. And every day, I think of him and every day where I am right now, especially in this career as a DevRel, in observability I'm grateful to him for that. 

And another mentor I can think of is a manager that I had many, many moons ago named Lawrence when I worked at Bank of Montreal. He was just like the most supportive manager, and I feel like he's the gold standard of managers because he was easy to talk to. I could play pranks on him. 

ANA: [laughs]

ADRIANA: I got him a bullshit button as a joke one time, [laughter] and he took it super well. And I also got him a giant calculator as a prank, [laughs] and he took it all in stride. And I think being able to have that kind of a chill relationship with the manager while they're still interested in helping you grow and mentor you I think that's priceless, so yeah.

ANA: I mean, most definitely. It's like, I see you as a human, and I'm going to help you flourish in every single personal way that I can versus only in the box of tech or in the way that you bring value to an organization. 

I was going to mention that I'm still very sorry about the loss of your mom earlier this year. And I'm glad that you've been able to spend time with your family to be together and help build each other up because there's a little hole in your life in the holiday season. I know it gets hard. And I know you, and I have talked about it of what it's like to lose parents and continue on. The best we can do is just make them proud.

ADRIANA: Exactly. Exactly. Honor them by honoring their teachings. 

ANA: Yeah, most definitely. 

ADRIANA: I also want to say a big shout-out to our DevRel family because, honestly, y'all have been super supportive throughout all this. I had to rush home on October 27th, and everyone's like, "No problem, do what you need to do, like, no sweat." And everyone's just been, like, I don't know, you guys sent me some lovely flowers and just some lovely messages. And it was super nice. So really appreciate it. Y'all are awesome.

ANA: We're humans first. That's all that matters. We just get to work on really cool technology and get to build communities around it.

ADRIANA: I'm so grateful to have the opportunity in the last couple of jobs to work at places that are less robotic about the corporate-y stuff and really value the humanity of the employees. Like, I don't feel like a number. I feel like the work I do matters, and I think that's so important.

ANA: I've worked at places where it said that humans come first, and then things change. And I think a lot of it also varies team by team, manager by manager. Things can change really quick, which really sucks. But I try to be an advocate for that even when the situation around me might not be like that. It's like, nope, I'm putting my foot down. We are humans. 

There are limits to our capacity, to the things we can do. We can't just be running around trying to do 50 tasks all at once or working 60-hour work weeks continuously. I understand that it might be needed once in a release or something like that to catch up. But there are limits, and life is not just all about tech and our jobs.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Very well said.

ANA: [laughs] I think one of the things that talking about gratefulness, and talking about end of the year, and looking back into what we have done, I think one of the questions that I ponder about as we have this conversation is how is it that we can build more of a thank you culture in technology? Like, working within the Kubernetes community, some folks try to constantly be giving like, hey, thank you to this person that's helping out on this enhancement that we're working on or on this PR. But I think in the wider technology space, we don't always give honor to those that came before us and helped set a certain guideline or a certain movement.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. And I think remembering where it all came from, even Kubernetes community or OpenTelemetry community started from somewhere. And those pioneers of the early days, like, that was some serious hard work that they put in. And things might seem like fairly well-oiled machines, I mean, nothing's perfect, but compared to the start, I'm sure it's a lot more organized than it was at the start. And we got to give kudos to the people who cared enough to build up those communities and to the people who continue to care to continue to support these communities. 

Because, I mean, open source wouldn't be where it is if there wasn't a sense of empathy and understanding and not making people feel crappy or scared about opening PRs, even though I'm still scared every time I open a PR. [laughter] But knowing that there is that psychological safety in the community that I'm working in where there's no judgment, there's gentle nudges of like, oh, perhaps you should look into doing XYZ instead of ABC, so then it makes you feel it's a lot less scary.

ANA: Yeah. And I think with that too is, as you mentioned, I think you have to be really intentional about it. It just doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't stand on its own. Like, if a person is pioneering it, once they go away, they don't have that in that community. So how can you replicate it and make sure that it's scaling, like, the empathetic aspect of it, the human side of stuff, and also constantly build each other up and support one another?

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, I think we need to give out more kudos in our tech communities. That's one thing that I do appreciate in our internal slack, like, we've got a kudos channel or whatever, whatever the channel is called where people give each other kudos for even things that you're like, oh, you know, I've gotten kudos for participating in something. But it's like, yeah, I was there helping out with whatever. And it's kind of nice to get some recognition, and it feels nice. And it feels nice to give it too, because it's like, hey, I appreciate the work that you're doing.

ANA: I mean, it's building trust too. Like, you helped out; I help out. We're in this together. We're building something bigger. And I think that recognition culture also gives people that sense of purpose and just fills that need. So I also agree. Like, in my last organization, we called it tacos instead. 

ADRIANA: Nice.

ANA: So you got tacos for everything that you...for people giving you, like, thank you for helping out on this. And they could be really random to you closed a customer. [laughs] So it's a lot of fun ways to think about it. But yeah, I would love to hear also some of our listeners' thoughts on that, like, what can we all be doing to build more of that culture?

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Please feel free to reach out to us in our various social media accounts with your feedback. We truly, truly want to hear back.

ANA: With it being the holiday season, are you going to be taking some time off to recharge?

ADRIANA: Yeah, I always take a couple of weeks off during winter break to line up with my daughter's winter break at school. So it's nice because, typically, we don't go anywhere during December. It's just a hunker down at home and chill kind of holiday, which is super nice. And then hanging out with family and making Christmas dinner and stuff, and we all cook together, which is fun. So it's not like any one person's burden, so I definitely appreciate that. 

And maybe I'll venture out this year and go ice skating. I'm not the most coordinated when it comes to winter sports, but I still make an effort. [laughs] I can ice skate and "ski" in air quotes. I do enough of a decent job that I'm not falling on my ass on a regular basis. So I'm hoping to get out there this [laughs] winter, yeah. 

ANA: Nice.

ADRIANA: Crush it.

ANA: Hopefully, that means some photos will be coming on social media of you, [laughs] you on winter sports.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah. [laughs] There's a video of me skiing a couple of years ago (I hadn't skied in like 15 years.) where I'm like seriously a grandma on the bunny slopes making these wide-ass turns because I'm like, I haven't skied in a really long time, and I'm not ready to commit to a steep, steep hill.

[laughter]

ANA: I still have yet to do winter sports, so I do not relate to any of that.

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: But I can see the visual in my head, and I would love to watch this video. [laughs]

ADRIANA: Okay. Yeah, I'll dig it up. I got to dig it up. [laughs]

ANA: And for me, I'm also going to be doing winter break, taking time off. I haven't figured out plans, I think, for this year. A portion of it, we'll try to stay put, try to explore outdoors. I think I just need to recharge with being out in the woods, by the ocean, even though it's going to be chilly. Being away from technology, I think, is what my goal is for whatever length of winter break that I take, like, just disconnect as much as I can, try to be with myself, introspect, like, think about what I want to bring in the next year.

ADRIANA: Nice. Yeah, yeah, I do actually take my winter break as a technology break as well. So I totally agree. It's a nice time to take that break.

ANA: Yeah. And, I mean, I think for the job that we do that we're developer relations, developer advocacy, that we're constantly in front of people. [laughs] And being in front of people is amazing, like, I love it, but it requires a lot of energy. And then we're on social media promoting stuff, talking to folks, doing podcasts, and things like that. For me, that December time after our re:Invent conference starts being like, slow down. And it's like, I got to take care of me in order to survive the next year. So let's hermit crab now and get under my weighted blanket, turn on the heater, turn on my candle.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree, yeah. And it's going to be a busy couple of weeks for you because you're just coming off the heels of KubeCon, and now you're preparing for re:Invent. And I guess, well, there's Thanksgiving next week, and then re:Invent right after Thanksgiving, right? So...

ANA: Yes. Yes, yes. It's definitely crunch time right now. I'll be speaking at re:Invent, and that will happen right before this episode launches. So yeah, giving a talk on using the Well-Architected Framework to build for liability, which should be exciting, and I'm very excited to put out that new content. I've worked with the Well-Architected framework for a while but never have built a special talk around it. It's been exciting to work on it. And it'll be nice to be closing all my tabs and logging off once that talk is done.

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: We'll have some other projects going on, but they're not as big. That's kind of like the big deliverable.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. That's going to be so satisfying. And hopefully, by the time this episode airs, we'll have a link to your talk that we can post in the show notes as well. 

ANA: Yeah, if not, I'll publish my slides. It'll be very exciting to see how large AWS re:Invent is this year. I actually still haven't gone, as we're still in this pandemic. My last time there, I believe, was in 2019. So it'll be exciting to see. 

ADRIANA: Is it always in the same place? 

ANA: Yes. It's sadly always Vegas. 

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: And I don't know what type of contract they have or why they do this. Or they do it because it's going to attract tech people, and sadly, that's a lot of male dudes. So I don't know if that has anything to do with it. 

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: But I really wish that we would stop hosting AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. Thank you very much for coming to my TED Talk.

[laughter]

ADRIANA: There's your PSA.

ANA: Yeah, the amount of things that happen there that make me cringe it's a lot. So that's a whole other podcast episode that probably is not a podcast episode but should just be a Mastodon, Twitter, LinkedIn post. 

[laughter]

ADRIANA: Stay tuned, folks. Some juicy content possibly heading your way.

[laughter]

ANA: Possibly, we will see.

ADRIANA: Possibly, if you get around to it. [laughs] 

ANA: Yes, exactly. 

ADRIANA: If it's still fresh in your mind at the time. [laughs] 

ANA: Yeah. And, I mean, it's also we have so many little tasks to take care of in DevRel that it's easy to put that off as non-priority type of content. 

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true.

ANA: So I think that's in the bucket that I have it on. Which actually brings me to my next question, Adriana, now you've been in DevRel for half a year. How has that experience been?

ADRIANA: I have really enjoyed it, actually. I think for me, it's like a dream career because, in a way, I've been doing that to a certain extent in previous roles. Like, when I worked at Bank of Montreal, I ran a DevOps practices team, and we came up with practices and just evangelism around DevOps. And, I mean, that's very DevRel-y really kind of work. And there was a lot of blogging involved, as you know, one of my favorite things to do. 

And then, even when I was working at Tucows in the observability practices team, again, there was a lot of evangelism trying to get people sold on observability, coming up with those practices, writing about those practices, lots of presentations on the benefits of observability. 

So I feel like it's like the perfect fit for my personality. So I've been having a blast so far. I feel like the job keeps me on my toes. I'm always learning cool things. For me, that's the most important thing about our job. Like, as long as I'm excited to come into work, as long as I'm learning cool things on a regular basis, sign me up. When you get the bored version of me, that's when you got to worry. When the apathy starts to set in, be concerned. 

But right now, I'm super stoked to be where I am. I'm loving the job. It's definitely been a learning curve. And thank you for guiding me along this DevRel journey because showing me some of the ins and outs has been super helpful, like even getting me on the DevRel Collective to connect with other DevRels. And even like when we were at KubeCon, getting to just show me the ropes of navigating KubeCon, that was super awesome. So yeah, I appreciate it.

ANA: I'm glad you've been enjoying it. It's a fun role, especially in the space of SRE and DevOps, because it is very much culture-oriented and a lot of digital transformation. And when you come with the experiences of putting humans and people first, I think we need to build those cultures a lot more in the tech industry. So that perspective always helps. 

But it's also a technology space that doesn't have that much content to help you learn. It's like you're expected to know a lot of this information because you have been working in tech for 20 years. So I think this kind of role allows for us to bridge that gap and allow for new talent to come in; at least that's been my experience. It's made me feel like it has more of a purpose.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. I think you alluded to it earlier; it puts a human touch on tech. Like, hey, come learn with us. We're here to guide you. It doesn't have to be scary. Yay, come join us. And I've actually really enjoyed the various DevRels that I've interacted with, either on social media or even getting to meet folks in real life. 

It's so nice because I do find at least the DevRels that I've interacted with it's a very open and welcoming and diverse community. Generally, folks are super chill. There isn't that stiff upper lip vibe that you get in the enterprisey, the corporate-y world, which I super appreciate because I am not that kind of girl. 

ANA: [chuckles]

ADRIANA: So it's nice and refreshing to see people being themselves, like, hey, you've got funky hair, awesome. 

ANA: [chuckles]

ADRIANA: You dress in funky clothes, awesome. Love it, be yourself. And everyone accepts you for who you are, and I think that's the best thing ever.

ANA: Yeah, I do really like that we try to help set a new standard for the technology industry of bring your whole self to the space. We're going to be happy to welcome you and open doors for you in any way that we can since a lot of our job is building connections and relationships. And we bring good into the technology space. [laughs] 

Of course, I'm very biased in that sense but being able to really listen to developers and build around the use cases that they're struggling with. Or have someone actually listen to their feedback and the problems that they're having in scaling their services, or even just hearing about burnout and giving our thoughts on ways that the organization can improve their observability incident response practices along the way.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really key thing is like, you have to be willing to listen as a DevRel. Like, you can't just be on your soapbox in your ivory tower preaching this is the way it should be, folks. 

ANA: [laughs]

ADRIANA: You have to interact with the folks on the ground who are doing the thing that you're talking about. And if you're not willing to listen to that feedback, then what the hell are we here for?

ANA: Yeah. And, I mean, and if you can, do the work too. So if you're able to sit in your organization with an engineering team and do work, work on product launches, to build demo environments, build pre-staging type of environments to really be able to keep your technology shops in touch, like, [laughs] I can't think of words. But stay in the loop with technology trends, I think, is what I'm trying to say and be able to relate to the community. 

But also, think about what's coming next in the space. Like, what are the problems that developers are starting to come across when they've been working with this type of technology for a really long time? Which I think is what we've seen a lot in the evolution of DevOps tooling and SRE tooling in the last few years.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, on a similar topic, I think you've touched upon some aspects, but I'm a noob to DevRel. You have been in DevRel for a while. But what are your impressions? Because I mean, yes, you're not new to DevRel, but you're newer, I would say to observability. So how has it been? And we started at Lightstep a week apart from each other. So we're like onboarding buddies, work sisters. [laughter] 

ANA: Yes. Having you join a week earlier definitely helped because I came in with a lot of questions, and having a resource on my team that was also probably a little lost as I was was really cool. [laughter]

ADRIANA: And like-minded too.

ANA: Yes. Yeah, there's definitely, like, we share a big portion of our brains together. 

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: It's kind of been interesting to work with you over the last six months. It's been fun. But it's nice to have that safe space of asking questions. Because I have worked as a site reliability engineer. I've done software engineering. I've done the DevRel for a few years. But when it came to observability, like, I always understood it. I would work with customers that did observability work, but I never was that person that would try to instrument their code or run any auto-instrumentation library. 

So onboarding to Lightstep on observability was me trying to nail down the concepts of observability from spans, traces, metrics, logs, events, trying to just understand how they all differed and have them make more sense in my head and then go back to a mindset that I had early on in site reliability engineering where you really do need to understand your system in order to build reliability. 

That allowed for me to evolve a few of my talks a little bit more about that of, like, in order for you to actually do the work in reliability, you have to start with looking at where things are at right now. How can you observe them more? How can you be measuring properly or even standardize them with service-level objectives and such? So it's been pretty interesting. 

I also just got to actually do more work in observability by working with OpenTelemetry, which was my first time touching OpenTelemetry. I remember maybe month two, month three spinning it up locally with Docker, and having my application, and putting in my traces into Lightstep. And it was like, cool, I got things working, but I hadn't really tried to dive down into code. 

So OpenTelemetry this past month, or two months ago [laughs] by the time this episode launches, has released an OpenTelemetry demo, which is a vendor-neutral instrumented application that comes in various languages. It's a microservice application that the services are written in multiple languages. So some of the work that Adriana and I did for KubeCon was introducing metrics into the application. So I took a first stab at it, and it was opening up like this Python application. And it was like, we have to implement [laughs] metrics into this.

ADRIANA: And we had no idea what we were doing. [laughter] 

ANA: So it was, like, there's no documentation because things are being built out on the open-source side of things. I've never really been a Python developer. I can do it for scripting. I can do it for tutorials for, like put things together PoC-wise, but in terms of making things work with no documentation, it was really hard. So it was really fun to pair with Adriana in terms of asking her questions of, like, wait, you mean, OTEL has like a logger that I could just co-log there and make sure that we're setting up the instrumentation properly?

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: Like, it was interesting to just realize how much easier the development process was if you leverage observability.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And that was a super fun project for us to work on. And it was cool, too, that we got to introduce our work as part of KubeCon at the Lightstep booth. There were some demos going on around that. I'm super proud of the work that we did around that because [laughs] there was like blood, sweat, and tears put into that. I thought the Python stuff was hard, but then the Terraform issues we ran into afterwards, I was like, oh my God, Terraform, why do you hate me so much? But we got past it. We made it work. [laughter] So I'm super happy with that. 

It falls under the category of getting to learn cool stuff as part of the job. So I'm very, very grateful for those experiences. I get such a high from being able to solve problems like that, even if [laughs] to other people; it's like small potatoes. But for me, it's like, I figured it out, and it was awesome.

[laughter]

ANA: Yes. And, I mean, I think it was also we also had that nice wrap-up of we had been working together for various months and had been doing calls three, four times a week. And then we finally got to meet in person at KubeCon in Detroit, which I think it's also a highlight for On-Call Me Maybe.

ADRIANA: Yes.

ANA: And for just in general, us [laughs] of like, oh cool, one, we are two short Latinas.

ADRIANA: Yes, yes. 

[laughter]

ANA: And two, it's cool to meet people you work with.

[laughter]

ADRIANA: And your height.

[laughter]

ANA: That was definitely a nice little highlight.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it was fun and meeting the rest of the team in person as well. Getting to meet Austin and Ted in person was super fun. It definitely, I think, helped us bond more as a team just from that relatively short interaction in person. But it was super awesome.

ANA: And it was also really cool because we got to meet listeners of On-Call Me Maybe. 

ADRIANA: Yes.

ANA: I know I had two, three people come up to me, and, like, we're talking at an event. I'm not wearing a nametag or anything. And then they just kind of look at me, and they're like, "I recognize your voice." And I was just like, "Wait, what?"

ADRIANA: Oh my God, so cool.

ANA: And then they're like, "On-Call Me maybe." And I was like, "Yes, I'm one of your hosts for On-Call Me Maybe." And this is my second podcast. I did Break Things On Purpose podcast a few years ago. But it was really cool to finally get acknowledgment for a podcast episode. Like, I'm still not comfortable with this type of medium but to know that our audience is loving it is kind of nice. So if you ever see Adriana and I anywhere, or you're liking the content, we would love to hear y'all's thoughts on it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, and come say hello on social media or in person if we happen to be at an in-person event that you're at. We love connecting with people. I also got a similar thing where they're like, "Oh, I recognize your voice," because I guess they didn't know what I look like because my avatar on Twitter is like a cartoon, and so...[laughs] but they recognize my voice, which I thought was super cool.

ANA: Yeah, it's kind of nice. And, I mean, it's been really nice to be able to grow the On-Call Me Maybe community with all the listeners too. And we're really excited for some of the speakers that we have coming next year, folks that are working in open source, folks that are working with eBPF. What else do we have in store for us?

ADRIANA: I think we've even got some folks like, you know, one of our guests works in agile, so we'll get some hot takes in agile. [laughter] So that'll be exciting. And also to put it out there, for anyone who has something cool to say about the space that we work in, observability, SRE, DevOps, and anything in between, reach out to us if you're interested in being a guest on the show because we would love to hear from you. We would love to talk to you. 

It's so much fun being able to meet different people and interact with different people from different areas of tech. It's been so much fun. And I'm definitely super grateful for having had this experience. I really enjoyed podcasting. I think for me, I was a little nervous because this is my first podcast. So I was definitely a little bit nervous at the start thinking, oh my God, am I going to be stiff on air? 

ANA: [laughs] 

ADRIANA: And I hate the sound of my voice. [laughter] But it's been lots of fun. It's been super chill conversations. It's like going out for coffee with friends is what this podcast feels like. So it's been awesome.

ANA: That's awesome. I feel very similar thoughts on that. Definitely, I was a little skeptical on jumping on another podcast, but it's been great to have an awesome co-host and to talk to so many amazing guests that we've been able to this season. 

With that, we're going to be closing off. We would like to thank you all very much for joining us for today's episode, recapping what the year has been for us, letting us share a little bit more about the reasons we're grateful for the work that we do and the communities that we work with. 

Don't forget to subscribe and give us a shout-out on social media. You can find us on oncallmemaybe on various platforms. And be sure to check out the show notes on oncallmemaybe.com for additional resources and to connect with us on social media. For on Call Me Maybe, we're your hosts, Ana Margarita Medina...

ADRIANA: And Adriana Villela.

ANA: Signing off with peace...

ADRIANA: Love and...

ALL: Code.