The Crooked Path to Tech with Jen Shute of Slalom Build

About the guest:

Jen Shute Benson (she/her/hers) is a Senior Director of Platform Engineering at Slalom Build. She has worked for over 25 years in the tech industry. Her early career included quality engineering, application support engineering, and systems engineering. She moved into leadership and has managed Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Solutions, DevOps, and Platform Engineering teams. She has managed two major cloud migrations at large-scale enterprises before moving into the world of consulting. At Slalom Build, in addition to leading Platform Engineering teams in 3 geographic locations, she supports multiple markets and clients and is heavily involved in ID&E initiatives within her Platform Engineering capability and at the Slalom Build level. 

Jen also volunteers as a mentor for Slalom’s Women Who Build program. She is a member of Cloud Girls and co-chairs the membership committee. Cloud Girls is a non-profit organization dedicated to community building and celebrating the success of women in cloud careers, and giving back through awards and charitable programs.

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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 talking to Jen Shute, who is a Senior Director of Platform Engineering at Slalom Build. Thank you for joining us today.

JEN: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here with you today.

ANA: In true On-Call Me Maybe fashion, we always like asking our guests, what are you drinking today? 

JEN: Okay. So I've brought with me some kombucha. It's organic brew, Dr. Kombucha, and it's a new flavor that I've never tried before. It is blood orange ginger, and it is very good. I highly recommend it to anybody who likes kombucha.

ANA: I'm a huge kombucha nerd, and it makes me want to have one of those this morning too. That ginger sounds delicious. What about you, Adriana?

ADRIANA: Today I've got water. 

ANA: Nice.

ADRIANA: Nice and simple, my go-to drink. [laughter] How about you, Ana?

ANA: I'm going to make some water and some caffeine. So if you've listened before, it's usually the yerba mate with mint. I'm doing one of those today; just trying to pick up the energies. With all these California storms going on, I'm like; I need all the positivity energies that I can get.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah, you guys finally got a break in the weather. Somewhat. [laughs]

ANA: We had a 24-hour break, and we're back to another three, four-day storm. 

ADRIANA: Oooh.

ANA: So it's like, I think, four atmospheric rivers hitting California. 

ADRIANA: Holy cow. 

ANA: And for folks that are interested, they should look at the maps of what it was like the drought in California in December and what it's looking like now and the fact that some parts of California are still in drought and a lot of parts are very much flooded. It's crazy. Global warming is insane.

ADRIANA: Yeah, well, definitely a stark contrast to Toronto. We actually got snow today. I woke up with, I'd say, five centimeters of snow. What's that in inches? Like two and a half inches. So yeah, we got a dose of proper winter after rain for the last couple of weeks, so yay. [laughter] Definitely better than the floods. I'm sorry you're having to go through that. That does sound very awful. So I hope it subsides soonishly.

ANA: Thank you. Definitely HugOps to California. I feel bad for all of it. And, I mean, I think the entire world has been having some crazy weather right now, and hopefully, it is a bigger wake-up call to those that are currently not looking at it or being proactive about the actions that they take against the environment.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. What's the weather like in your neck of the woods, Jen?

JEN: I'm in Ohio. And I think I generally I'm pretty close to what you have in Toronto. You know, I haven't been outside today. I just kind of peeked out the window to see if we got any snow since you mentioned you had snow. It doesn't look like it. But I think we're probably in pretty similar climatic regions, so we both got a little lake-effect snow and --

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally.

ANA: I like snow. I would not be able to live somewhere with snow. I think this rain made me realize --

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: This type of weather just makes me extra sad, and that's really hard. 

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true.

ANA: So with snow, I would not be able to live, like, I've always lived tropical or next to water. I think California is the coldest I've ever lived, which says a lot. [laughs]

ADRIANA: Oh dang. Oh yeah, that's right. You lived many years in Miami, right?

ANA: Yeah, I've lived in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Miami, and now San Francisco Bay area. So pretty privileged, I would say.

ADRIANA: Nice, warm weather. I do miss that. I do miss that. [laughs]

ANA: Well, Jen, since we have you here, we wanted to hear how you found your way into technology. What was your path like from that moment when you were like, this was cool too. I can make money. 

JEN: I actually had a really roundabout path, and I think that's not uncommon for people in tech. In college, I took psychology, so I graduated with a psych degree. I worked in human services for a couple of years. I found that I was not making enough money, unfortunately, to support myself. So I tried to figure out what's a transition I can do? Like, I don't feel like I'm ready to, you know, or I'm at a point where I could go back to school. And I thought human services might be a shift that I can make a little easier. 

And so I got a job in HR. At the time, it was myself, and there were three other women that I worked with in our team. And I was the only person, you know, I was in my 20s at the time. I was the only younger person. And we had a HRIS where we kept all of our HR data, and nobody else really wanted to use it. And so I kind of became the person that took over that HRIS, and I did all the management. And it kind of got to the point where if we needed to be tracking something that we weren't...I'm kind of aging myself, but it was an Access back end. I learned --

ADRIANA: Oooh. Good times. I remember Access. 

[laughter]

ANA: Same. I'm certified in Access 2005. [laughter] 

ADRIANA: Oh my God. 

[laughter]

JEN: So I learned how to go in and add fields and did a couple of trainings at the company that created the HRIS that we were using, and I actually ended up getting told about a QE position they had there. And I had always kind of thought that people who worked in tech were super cool. I always thought that's something I could never do. But I went ahead, and I applied for the job, and I actually got the job. So that's how I got into tech. 

So I worked in QE for probably about five years. And then I switched over into systems engineering and then kind of worked my way through. And as things changed and we started moving to the cloud, I started working more in the DevOps realm and cloud. So that's my journey so kind of a roundabout way, but it got me here.

ADRIANA: That's such a cool path to tech. And what are the things that you're like, oh my God, so much has changed in tech from when I started to where I'm at now? What do you think is the biggest thing where you're like, holy cow, I could have never envisioned this happening tech-wise?

JEN: So this is a great question. And I feel like it's a hard one to answer because I would love to say everything. Like, when I first started, I was testing software for a client-server application. And when I moved into systems and infrastructure support, I was supporting a monolithic application that was on-prem. And what we're looking at is scalable systems that are resilient, and self-healing, and containerized. I almost have to say, like, everything has changed, and I would not have predicted any of that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that is so true. I kind of feel the same way. I mean, my first foray into programming was on a computer that wasn't even on a network. There was no internet that I was aware of at the time. I think it existed at the time, but I wasn't aware of it. Writing code in QBasic, [laughter] like, I don't even think QBasic exists anymore. [laughs]

ANA: Or even looking back at the text editors we were using, like, I was using some obscure one. 

ADRIANA: Yes.

ANA: And then I ended up using Dreamweaver 8. And to think I was doing more of like websites and stuff, so using FTP to upload sites versus just going into the server in other ways. Like, it's interesting to look back on things like it.

JEN: I mean, it really makes you wonder, like, what's next that we can't even imagine yet. How advanced are we going to be when we're going to be looking back on this and be like, "Oh my God, remember when we were in AWS?"

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's true. And as radical a change as it is from starting out in one's career versus now, at the same time, I think everything's just been slowly evolving towards where it is. I was having a conversation with my dad the other day, and he was like, "Yeah, I was doing stuff in the cloud before it was even a thing."

ANA: [laughs]

ADRIANA: And he was talking about, "Yeah, I was using Heroku." And I'm like, oh damn, yeah, I totally forgot about Heroku. Stuff like that has paved the way for where we are right now, which is super trippy.

ANA: It is always interesting to see when Heroku comes up in conversations.

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: Because everyone literally always forgets about it. It had always done so much movement around empowering developers. So it's interesting how developers, like, it was one of their first aha moments in this type of platform space. But because other vendors have such larger marketing budgets, you kind of put it somewhere else in your brain, and like, who taught you how it works? You forgot about it. It's interesting. So with the current job that you do right now, Jen, what is it like managing the staff that you have in your day-to-day?

JEN: I mean, first of all, I have an absolutely fantastic job. I really have found a home at Slalom, and so I love what I do. My role is pretty diverse. I do people management; I do sales support, I do client relationship management, project oversight. The thing that I really like most about it is I'm constantly learning. This is my first time that I've worked in consulting in that world at all. And so that's even been, like, over the last three years, such a growth opportunity for me. So it's great. It's busy. It's learning every day. 

ADRIANA: So at what point in your career did you...it sounds like you were more hands-on with the coding earlier in your tech career. And now you're, I guess, a little more hands-off, and correct me if I'm wrong. At what point did that transition for you? And how was that transition for you because it's not always for everyone either, right?

JEN: It was gradual. I worked as a, like I said, systems engineer for a number of years. And I moved into my first management role managing a small team. I'm going to say it was probably ten years ago, although if I looked at my resume, I might be off, you know, plus or minus three years, you know, initially managing small teams. I really was still able to get hands on keyboard and help my team with troubleshooting issues. 

As my responsibilities grew, I kind of moved into one of those roles where you're in meetings most of your day, and there were things that I liked about it and things that I didn't. I do miss feeling like I could just jump in and grab a keyboard and help my team out when they need help. And there are times I think, man, I really want to go back and do that again. 

One of the things that I love most about my job is being a coach and mentor and helping other people grow. And I think, too, that probably also comes from that psychology background. And my career choice was really to go into some kind of counseling, and so it's kind of taking that and implementing it in the role that I'm in right now. There are times I miss it, but I also really love what I'm doing right now as well. And given the choice, I probably would choose to do both, but I like what I'm doing right now. I wouldn't give it up, probably to go back in time.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. And it's really cool also having the psychology background to lean on to help you with being a people manager because dealing with people is friggin hard. [laughs]

JEN: Exactly, yeah. It sure can be. 

ANA: [laughs] And it's a part of that...because I think there are a lot of people that go into management just because, one, they feel like they need to in order to have a career progression. And then there are some people that go into management because a company needed managers, and they got thrown to be a manager. So when you do find managers that, one, want to be people-first managers but, two, find such huge passion and have the skill set to do it, it is kind of like those unicorn managers that are really hard to come by. Because it's that, like, once you make people happy, believe in themselves, that's when they can really bring their best selves to work and do their best job.

ADRIANA: Yeah, and really being able to mentor them is, I think, key. I mean, I think both Ana and I we wouldn't be where we are if we didn't have good mentor managers that helped us along the way. So knowing that you can shape someone's life in a positive manner is super awesome.

JEN: Yeah. And I have to say, I've been really lucky, too, because I think a lot of times the way you learn how to be a good mentor and a good manager is by having good mentors and good managers. Some of my managers that I've worked for in the past that I can point to and I can say you know what? I really grew under that person, and I learned to be more confident and I learned how to take care of my people. And so I guess it's also kind of passing on what had been given to me in the past.

ANA: What would you say are two or three things that you would pass on to folks that are wanting to become managers, people that want to be people-first managers or those managers that are trying to be more human-focused, or those VPs that are like, I should probably care about all my staff a little bit more, but I'm so overwhelmed with work?

JEN: So to think about what are the things that I think I would tell someone to be a really good manager, or mentor, coach, give feedback. Give kind feedback, but give feedback and give it timely. And try and give good, specific feedback and help that person with how they could do something better. So I think feedback is key. 

And then I think the other thing is having empathy and listening and hearing what someone is telling you. I've actually recently even myself I've been working on active listening, and it's a real challenge because a lot of times, I want to reach out and relate to that person and connect by saying, "Oh yeah, me too. I had this similar..." But I've been going through a one-year leadership program at my current company, and we've really been focusing on active listening. And it's really been a big change for me to see the benefits that come out of that.

ANA: For listeners that don't know what active listening is, can you describe it?

JEN: Sure. Active listening would be listening to what someone's telling you. Ask clarifying questions. Try not to feel the need to jump in and save the person. And this may sound contrary because I just mentioned giving feedback, so I don't want to say that you should not give feedback. But in this situation, when you're active listening, just be a listener and try not to interject and give your own personal experiences and just let someone else talk.

ADRIANA: That reminds me a lot of therapy sessions where [laughter] with your therapist, they're listening, and you're doing all the talking, which it's a technique. I'm sure [laughs] you're well aware of this. But yeah, that's what came to mind when you mentioned that.

JEN: You know, it's funny because I think being a manager, you are a therapist sometimes. That's what you're doing.

ANA: Yeah. Not to derail us off topic, and at the same time, as an SRE, you end up being a therapist for systems. You're listening in.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, yes. [laughs] It's so true.

ANA: For all of our listeners, I'm sure you all --

ADRIANA: This is the hot take of the day. [laughs]

ANA: The cross between reliability and mental health is where Ana's brain lives up 87% of the time. 

[laughter]

ADRIANA: Actually, going back on the SRE thread, one thing that's near and dear to a lot of SREs' hearts is on-call. [laughs] And I think a lot of people have very visceral reactions to on-call. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about...we talked in the pre-chat you've had experience with both being on-call and managing on-call. So I think it'd be really interesting to have you share those two viewpoints. 

JEN: For me, being on-call, especially early career as a systems engineer, was honestly terrifying because I was so afraid that something was going to come to me and I wouldn't be able to solve it. And so it was very terrifying initially. The more I adjusted and got used to it...I think the weeks that I was on-call, I was part of rotating on-call systems where I'd be a week off, two or three weeks back on again. 

I didn't really sleep well the whole week because even if I wasn't getting an alert that I had to get up and respond to, I always knew that there was the chance that I would. Or I'd wake up in the night, and I'd grab my phone and look at it because I'd be like, oh my gosh, did I miss something? Had I slept through? So it was definitely stressful. And I think there is a level of burnout that can come if you don't take care of yourself when you're on-call.

As a manager, one of the positions I was at when I was on-call, the company would...when we'd have an outage; basically, anybody who managed a team that had a system that even might remotely touch the system that was down would get on a call. I think that was pretty exhausting as well because there were some months where I was weekly getting up and getting on a call in the night. And there may be a couple of things I might have had to contribute, but I may have just even been a listener. So that was also an exhausting experience for me.

ANA: I think we need to have those conversations more. I think they've happened more recently, but that burnout of being next to on-call or just even acknowledging that burnout can happen, having that conversation, like, what does burnout look like? What are ways to prevent it? And what do you do when you are nearing burnout or if you see a colleague being burnt out? Because burnout is maybe sometimes a signal to sliding into depression. Or it just shows that something in an organization is not working well. But we have not been trained in our jobs to be on the lookout for those things, that psychological safety kind of extending a little bit more.

JEN: And I think, maybe I'm making a generalization here, but I think as women, we're often raised to take care of other people but not to take care of ourselves. And I will own that because, as a manager, I felt like I did a lot better job of taking care of my team if they were up in the night resolving something. I'd be very clear to tell them like, "Hey, sleep in tomorrow. Take some time back." It wasn't something that was as easy to do to take care of myself. 

And I think that's something I've had to work on for myself, maybe even over the last ten years. I'm maybe getting better at it. And that's, you know when you're on the plane and they say to put the mask on yourself so that way you can take care of someone else. But that's something I've been working on, but I think it's something really important for people who are in those types of roles to know it's okay to take care of yourself. It's okay to say, "Hey, this is what I need."

ANA: Leading by example when it relates to mental health in our development, technology spaces, and diversity as well is what makes the most sense. As you mentioned that and leading by example, what tips do you have for managers to actually protect their on-call teams' mental health?

JEN: Being aware and making sure they're giving people time back but also having constant, like, open dialogue and checking in with people. Do regular one on ones with your team. And I know this is something that we all think we should do, and I know some managers don't do that. But have those one-on-ones and check on people. And "What do you need?" And when someone tells you, "This is what I need," be responsive to that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. On the topic of one-on-ones, in my last role, I was managing a team of, I think, 13 to 15 people. And I had made a point of doing regular one on ones. And it's very mentally exhausting. But also, I know that my direct reports really benefited from it. And it was cool because I tried to provide a safe space for them to talk. 

And so oftentimes, it's like the therapy thing. I'd have people telling me about some of the challenges in their personal lives. And part of my job was making sure that I can still support them so that they feel like they can still perform at work and deal with their personal problems, which I think is so, so important.

JEN: That's so hard too. When you have 13 to 15 people, that's a lot of people to be responsible for, and to have those weekly one-on-ones, I mean, that's a whole day a week. So it is really hard when you have that many people reporting to you.

ANA: Apart from that, do you ever spend any time looking at how often every single team member is getting paged, like the hours or things like it?

JEN: In my current role, because it's consulting, I don't have any team members that are on-call. However, this is something that in previous roles where I had team members that got called when they were on-call, that was something that I would try and keep my eye on. And, like I said, I did try to be really proactive about if somebody was spending a lot of time off standard work hours dealing with things to make sure that they were getting time back and that they had what they needed.

ANA: I was asking because that was something that I actually felt and have seen in the industry a lot where I totally burnt out of being an SRE at Uber for various reasons. And one of it was not getting training to be on-call but getting just thrown into the rotation to having just so many pings and getting woken up in the middle of the night, being expected back at the office at 8:00 or 9:00, which it's just not sustainable as a human. But no one really was overlooking at the rotation or pages or anything like it. And I know that the same was for a lot of other SREs at that company. 

And so many other friends that I know in SRE were like, they completely burnt out because they were constantly getting paged and woken up in the middle of the night that a lot of them ended up extremely depressed, ended up in hospitals, like, I was one of those. And it's one of those things that it sucks because you can't really bounce back from that easily. My story has been really complicated. And for a lot of others, they completely left tech or even just getting triggered by the sound of PagerDuty and things like it. I think we don't consider the big impact that it actually can have on the livelihood of a human.

JEN: And I think there is even some PTSD where even when you're not on-call during certain weeks or not on-call anymore when your job changes...like, after I wasn't on-call, I still struggled for...honestly, it was like a couple of years after being on-call for the majority of my life where I'd wake up in the night, and I'd feel panic, like, oh my gosh, did I get a page? Did I miss something? I'd be like, oh, I'm not on call. It is very stressful.

ANA: It goes back to the idea, too, that your body's holding in a lot of that trauma that you went through. And as you go through workplaces, you pick up stuff. So it's just the larger whole...like a whole system that's also very complex as you work on the complex systems in technology too.

ADRIANA: On a similar vein, was there a time in your career where you were struggling with something like a personal issue where you found that you got some good support from your workplace where you're like, oh my God, thank you, like, I couldn't have done this without a supportive manager, colleague, whatever?

JEN: Yeah. So about a year and a half ago, I went through a divorce, and I was at my current role. And I don't know if any of you guys have been through divorce before. I'm sure people listening, you know, there are plenty of people who have. But it's very disruptive to your life. And I told my people, manager, I told my team, you know, "This is what I'm going through right now." And I felt my effectiveness dropping. And my team all supported me. And they were like, you know, there were other people on my team that had been through it. 

And I had people on my team saying, "Let me know what you need. How can I help? Do you need me to pick something up for you?" I really appreciate having had the support of my team to get through that because when you're going through something like that, you just can't give that 100% to your job at that time. And I felt bad about it, but I just didn't have it inside me to give. So it was really a relief to be in an environment where I had a group of people that cared about me as a person and as a co-worker and were able to just rally around me and say, "What do you need me to do? How can I help?"

ADRIANA: That makes such a huge difference. I can think even last fall; I lost my mom to cancer. And my team was so supportive around that, like, people reaching out to me and just having other people who had been through it offering to talk about it, like, having that support. Like, even though you're going through a really rough time, just knowing that there are others who have gone through it and are there for you, I think, makes such a huge difference.

ANA: I think it's that simple I see you, I hear you, I'm here for you. That just validates your human suffering so much.

JEN: Yeah. On the flip side, I've also been on the other side. And as an early career engineer, my oldest son had mental health issues. And he was on medication from the time he was, I want to say, almost five, which is pretty unusual, but he was really having some major challenges. And I've also worked in places where I did not feel that I had that support. And it's very difficult. And it impacts your own mental health when you're dealing with somebody else who has mental health issues, and you're trying to maintain a full-time job that's demanding. 

And talking about on-call, I was in on-call situations for a lot of that. And I got to a point when my son was 26...I know I'd shared this earlier, but my son did pass away. And I was in a job at the time, but I chose to leave because I didn't feel that I would have that support. And I did take some time off afterwards, which I absolutely needed. At that point, I had kind of made the decision when I go back; I'm going to take the time to find the right role to go to and the right company and the right team. And that's when I ended up where I'm at right now.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And the moral of the story is there are nice companies to work for out there. And so you shouldn't shortchange yourself and stay and work under hellish conditions because there are better things out there.

JEN: Yeah, absolutely. 

ANA: There is going to be a place that lets you bring your whole self to work and allows for you to show up and request the human needs that you have. And when you realize that that's not a fit or you start having these spidey senses, physical senses of I don't feel so well because of the way that I'm being treated and such, kind of try to trust your gut as much as you can so that you don't end up burning out.

JEN: Yeah. If you're not in a place where you can be authentic at work, and you can be vulnerable at work, at least with the people closest to you, to me, I think you probably would be better off in a different position. And it's not always easy to find the right spot. But maybe circling back to, you know, it's okay to do what's right for yourself and take care of yourself. It's okay to look for a spot that you're going to be able to show up and be your authentic self.

ANA: And I think it extends to it's a job; put yourself first. At the end of the day, like, what's a job when you don't have you? And I say that speaking to myself [laughs] in the sense of really make sure that you're tending to your own needs, whether it's making sure you're going on trips, taking time off, spending time with your loved ones, having set work hours, making sure that you go to the gym and you do bouldering and things like it. What makes you happy that you can continue being happy to be successful at your job, and does that align with what work allows you to do?

JEN: Yep. When you look at where you're at, are you being true to the values? And that is a huge piece of it. And are you being true to your values when you're at a certain company as well? And maybe even doing some self-exploration to try and figure out what are my values and making sure you're in alignment.

ANA: It's funny you mentioned that because I think not many people go through exercises of defining their values, like whatsoever. I've done it a few times. And I'm always kind of surprised, like, very different surveys leave the same results, or how I feel about them afterwards. Or keeping in check of, like, am I staying true to what it is that I really wanted to do? 

But at the same time, it makes me wonder, is there a space where organizations do these exercises with you as you're coming on, as you're interviewing? So that you, as a candidate early on in the process, are actually able to say, "Oh, holy crap. I'm not even supposed to be doing this." Or "This type of role doesn't allow for me to give back to my community, and that's in my top three values. Hold on, how is it that I can do that in my own volunteer time, or are there other ways around it?"

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it underscores the point, too, that when you're interviewing for a position, it's not just the company seeing if you're a good fit for them. It's you making sure that they're a good fit for you. Because I think we often get caught up with job descriptions and salaries and sometimes desperation to leave where you're at, and then you end up going into something equally bad or worse. So being aware of yourself, what your values are, I think, makes a huge difference.

JEN: I've gotten caught in that in the past where I got drawn in by money and title. And I thought, you know, I'm not sure this is the exact company for me. But I go there, get the money, get the title, work there for a few years. When I did that, and, you know, I'm thinking of one thing in particular, I found that that was definitely a big mistake. And there are many things that are more important than getting that next jump. You can get that next jump somewhere else without sacrificing, you know, taking care of yourself and what's important to you.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. And taking care of yourself...my PSA for the day is take your damn vacation days. 

ANA: Ooh.

ADRIANA: So many people I've talked to...and I worked in consulting for five years. And the company I was at there was mega hustle culture. So there was like so many work...there was like, oh, I didn't take my vacation at all this year because I was doing it all for the project. And it's like, um, yeah, I'm going to take all my vacation days, thanks. 

ANA: [laughs]

ADRIANA: I value my time off. [laughs] It's my body saying, yo, it's time to chill. It's time to relax.

ANA: Same. I very much think you need to relax in order to do your best work. And I am very big on being outspoken about me taking time off and telling other people around me to take time off. So I'm known to tell my managers like, "You haven't taken time off in a while.

ADRIANA: [laughs]

ANA: Like, what are you doing?" That's always gone very interesting because it's just not the standard, or also; it's a hot take. But for me, I go up to leadership like HR, C-levels, and I'm like, "Are you guys tracking the unlimited PTO you guys are giving us in the sense for the goodness of the employees as in making sure that they're actually taking time off?" For them to actually be like, "Hey, Adriana, you've worked about seven months. We see you've taken two days off. How about you go take a mandatory week and a half off? Thank you. See you in a few weeks." That's what we should be doing.

JEN: Yeah, even on a small scale, I think it's great. If you can find times to tell someone out of the blue...and not even like, "Hey, why don't you take PTO?" But just say, "Hey, go home. Get out of here. You got a long week. Get out of here. I don't want to see you again until Monday." 

ANA: [laughs] I always like those on Thursdays where it's, like, just take Friday off. And it's like, oh, it's like school just got canceled randomly. 

ADRIANA: I know, right?

ANA: And it's a sunny day. 

[laughter]

JEN: Of course, you wouldn't have snow days but -- 

ADRIANA: Oh yeah. One thing I'm hoping for is to normalize the four-day workweek because I know a lot of companies are starting to adopt it, not as many as I would like, but definitely, the numbers are growing. And I think was it in Iceland that they ran a national experiment of the four-day workweek? And it was super successful. So I have high hopes maybe it'll make its way into North America as the standard.

ANA: I also think so. I mean, I've seen some technology companies moving to four-day workweeks. I would also like to see it or at least be given the option to partake in it. 

ADRIANA: Yes. 

ANA: Because I personally feel like my mental health could actually really appreciate just longer work days with more focused time but having that extra day and having two rest days and one reset day to prepare for the week. And I think this conversation also matters more with the COVID era that we're in where it's just like, our lives are so much more different. And because most of us still end up spending a lot more time at home than we did four or five years ago, I think more than ever, you need an extra day to either clean up your house a lot more or get the hell out of your house or just change up something.

ADRIANA: Yeah, hear, hear. 

ANA: [laughs] 

ADRIANA: Oh, we're coming up on time. But there's one more thing that I wanted to touch upon with you, Jen. When we did the pre-chat, I think you mentioned that you work with a mentorship organization.

JEN: Oh yeah. I've been for about a year and a half part of...it's a nonprofit organization. We're called Cloud Girls, and we advocate for women in the tech space. So each year, we open up for nominees for awards, and we grant three different nominees for women in different areas of their career growth based on something great that they've done that year. We also, each year, we'll pick a different organization that we can sponsor, and we can do fundraisers for. It's been about a year and a half that I've been a member of Cloud Girls.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. I definitely want to check it out.

ANA: That sounds really cool. And I always feel like names like that come with really cool stickers. Like, I did a lot of those programs growing up too. But bringing in more underrepresented folks into this space and actually providing mentorship for them because it's not just about opening the door for them, it's about actually setting them up to be successful and have someone to talk to about their experience, the ups, and downs of it.

JEN: Yep. And it is hard being a woman or in a different, you know, underrepresented group in tech because you don't have as many women in senior positions. So it's a lot harder to find that mentor. So in response to, I guess, my own comment, it really shows the real value too of having allies, male allies, to help mentor women and amplify their voices as well.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And hey, who knows? Someday it'll be normalized to have a bigger representation of ladies in tech. Wouldn't that be nice?

JEN: Yeah, I think it's especially a challenge in the SRE DevOps space as well. Because when I look at some of the other capabilities that I work with, software engineering, and data engineering, and experience design, there are more women just in general, even though it's still underrepresented, but there are more women in general in those fields. But for whatever reason, it seems like that SRE DevOps space, we still struggle more than some of these other areas to get women.

ANA: It's like we go from being one of the only ones in the room to being one of the only in the auditorium. Like, we just get smaller and smaller that when we see another one of us, it's just like, oh my God, hi. Please say hi. [laughs] Like, can we be friends? Are you suffering too? Like, are you okay? [laughter] Can you give me a hug?

ADRIANA: I know I get so excited when I meet other ladies in tech. It's like, yay, there are more of us. [laughs]

ANA: My favorite is running into [inaudible 37:58] girls, SREs, or even non-binary folks in the bathroom where it's just like, it's empty. You are here. You're cool. We are friends.

[laughter]

JEN: Yeah, like a tech conference is the exact opposite of the bathrooms like at a concert, you know?

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, that's probably the best place to meet [laughter] other badass ladies in tech, the tech conference bathroom. [laughs]

ANA: I think there's only been one technology conference that I've been to that I had to do a line for the bathroom, and I want to say it was actually one of the...I think it was the second day of KubeCon North America. And while I was in line, I remember telling the other folks on line like, "Oh my God, I'm doing a line. I'm so happy." [laughter] I've never been happy about doing a line. [laughter]

ADRIANA: Well, I think that brings us to the end of our conversation with Jen. Thank you so much for joining us in today's podcast. Folks out there, don't forget to subscribe and give us a shout-out on Twitter and Instagram, and Mastodon via oncallmemaybe. Be sure to check out the show notes on oncallmemaybe.com for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. For On-Call Me Maybe, we're your hosts Adriana Villela and...

ANA: Ana Margarita Medina. Signing off with...

JEN: Peace, love, and code.

ANA: Woo!

ADRIANA: Yay. [laughter]