Embark on a journey through the dynamic landscape of technology with our special guest Dan, an IT virtuoso whose career trajectory is a testament to the field's limitless potential. Reflect upon the infancy of personal computing when unboxing a gateway PC was a momentous occasion, and discover how the role of IT professionals has evolved from hardware whisperers to pioneers of an automated future. Our conversation with Dan spans from the foundational importance of IT certifications to the pressing need for tech-savvy individuals to fill the shoes of retiring mainframe engineers, underscoring the tech industry's embrace of diverse talent and the imperative for continuous learning.
Imagine a world where healthcare professionals can focus entirely on patient care, unburdened by administrative tasks, thanks to the marvels of AI. In this episode, we dissect the monumental shifts AI is bringing to various sectors, especially healthcare, by providing real-time insights and streamlining operations. We delve into the spectrum of reactions from the medical community towards AI's growing presence and examine the changing landscape for IT professionals as automation surges forward. The narrative weaves through the importance of deep technical knowledge and how it remains relevant amidst rapid technological advancements.
As we wrap up our enlightening discussion, the spotlight turns to the essence of adaptability in tech careers and the excitement that comes with embracing change. From transitioning desktop management to mastering mobile device management, we highlight the critical nature of aligning one's skillset with the business world's evolving demands. Leadership within tech is also a crucial thread in our dialogue, as we explore the delicate balance a CISO must strike and the innovative strides EDB Postgres is making in the PostgreSQL community and cloud-managed services. Dan's story exemplifies how saying 'yes' to opportunities can open doors to growth and unforeseen paths, proving that agility in one's career is not just beneficial, but necessary for success.
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TikTok: Not today China! Not today
Speaker 1: How's it going, Dan?
00:00:00
It's great to finally have you on the podcast.
00:00:04
I think that we've rescheduled this thing a couple times now,
00:00:08
but I'm really excited for our conversation.
00:00:11
I'm glad that we can finally get together to do this thing.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm happy to be with you today.
00:00:17
And, yeah, I'm happy to get this one under our belt here.
00:00:20
So open it up for questions and let's get going.
00:00:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, Dan.
00:00:27
I start everyone off with telling how they got started in
00:00:32
IT, right?
00:00:33
Maybe what interested you in the IT world that you were like,
00:00:39
oh, I want to go down this path .
00:00:41
And the reason why I start everyone off there is because I
00:00:45
have a section of my audience that are in that situation, that
00:00:48
are trying to figure out if IT is for them.
00:00:52
Maybe they can make a career change or something like that.
00:00:56
And I feel hearing everyone's background, everyone's unique
00:01:00
story, just helps others to know that hey, maybe I can do this
00:01:05
thing too.
00:01:05
I've done over 150 episodes at this point and I haven't heard
00:01:11
the same background twice, so that seems to be the case with
00:01:15
information security.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: I think for me, my journey was actually a state
00:01:24
funded program for low income families where we applied.
00:01:29
I had a summer job at 16.
00:01:31
And I was a part of a place called Education Connection.
00:01:36
It's been rebranded, but in Connecticut it is a regional
00:01:41
educational system service center that provides at the time
00:01:45
had provided educational technology services to school
00:01:49
districts and I had that program for the summer.
00:01:53
I think we built a website.
00:01:57
I'd be dating myself if I mentioned what we developed it
00:02:00
in but, it was a fun exercise and at the end they asked if I
00:02:05
could stay on for part time hours and I worked at that
00:02:10
facility for four years.
00:02:11
They were fantastic to me and from there it was all right.
00:02:15
Well, I seem to be good at this thing called computers.
00:02:18
This goes back to the 90s, right.
00:02:21
So I'm like, yeah, I'll stick with it and see what shakes out
00:02:23
of this.
00:02:24
And between that kind of getting in, focusing initially
00:02:32
my studies in computer science and kind of just you know,
00:02:36
technology just became a part of the roles that I excelled in
00:02:39
and I kind of stuck to it from that point forward.
00:02:42
Speaker 1: So, so back, you know , back in the 90s.
00:02:47
You know I mean I was a little kid, right, so I don't remember
00:02:52
much.
00:02:52
But you know, back in the 90s, in tech, what was the atmosphere
00:02:58
like?
00:02:58
Were people excited for the future of it?
00:03:03
Was the skies, the limit?
00:03:05
Was it potentially even limited ?
00:03:07
You know in your own vision, like, okay, I'll do this thing,
00:03:11
and it's kind of just, you know tech support and that's what it
00:03:14
is, that's where it'll be, you know forever.
00:03:17
Because you know I look at it now and with the, you know AI
00:03:22
evolving like it is, with the cloud being as predominant as it
00:03:26
is, I mean it's constantly evolving, right.
00:03:28
But was that the same vision back then?
00:03:32
Speaker 2: You know back then you know, remember vividly when
00:03:36
we received our gateway boxes of PCs right, I had the cow prints
00:03:42
, if you're not familiar with the gateway brand.
00:03:44
We also received what were the latest and greatest Macintosh,
00:03:49
the iMac, that that little monitor kind of multi-colored
00:03:53
thing.
00:03:53
That was like all the rage.
00:03:55
And when we talked about technology you had big players,
00:04:00
novel as an example.
00:04:01
We had a Novel infrastructure, cisco household name back in the
00:04:06
90s I think.
00:04:09
When you look at Microsoft, even the MCSE was the
00:04:14
certification de jure, like that's what you needed to have
00:04:17
to have a successful career in IT.
00:04:19
And I think when you look at the technologies and really how
00:04:24
businesses applied those, you know that the scope or the
00:04:30
vision was very much of like oh, we have these tools and we're
00:04:33
going to make us more productive .
00:04:34
Now that net is just casted even wider with what is
00:04:38
considered, you know, business enabling technology.
00:04:42
So it was, I'd say, a very different world.
00:04:45
I think back then the focus is really on, especially on the
00:04:50
engineering side, understanding.
00:04:52
When you're in university you're going through
00:04:55
understanding microprocessors work and my program was very
00:04:58
specific for that.
00:04:59
But a lot of my coworkers at the time I mean they just knew
00:05:05
through experience and education how the really almost like
00:05:11
lower level operations happened, how to support hardware
00:05:17
technology at a very low level, and I think that the main
00:05:20
difference that we're seeing today is that's become very
00:05:24
commoditized.
00:05:25
Very hidden below the scenes are certain individuals that I
00:05:29
work with at EDB that understand just not a necessity from a
00:05:35
post-grist perspective understand those internals.
00:05:37
But you know the economy that has built on top of that low
00:05:42
level understanding has really grown and I think you know
00:05:47
individuals have an opportunity to excel in the field,
00:05:51
technology field in general, even without that knowledge.
00:05:54
Now, having that knowledge only makes you that much more
00:05:57
proficient in understanding why things work the way they work.
00:06:01
But I think, comparing the mid 90s and that ramp up tocom, yeah
00:06:09
, there was a lot of web kind of growth there.
00:06:13
But I think you know techies were more techie back then,
00:06:17
believe it or not.
00:06:18
And I think, wow, some folks would cling to the laurels on
00:06:22
whether they're as hardcore as some of the old engineers.
00:06:25
You know you're not going to find many mainframe folks and if
00:06:29
they do, they're making a pretty penny these days because
00:06:32
it's just the level of knowledge and just institutional
00:06:37
knowledge, especially in organizations that have those
00:06:40
technologies, just can't be replaced.
00:06:42
You know we studied this at MassMutual with the aging out of
00:06:48
specific talent that would run our mainframe systems.
00:06:51
We built cognitive knowledge systems that we're trying to
00:06:55
solve.
00:06:55
How do we get an L1 to an L3 in terms of proficiency and being
00:07:00
able to address really hard problems?
00:07:03
By cognitively modeling what a mainframe engineer kind of looks
00:07:07
like and how they think through analysis.
00:07:10
So this is kind of a large problem.
00:07:13
But in general, when we look at opportunity and I think you made
00:07:17
mention your viewers often have , you know, a question is IT
00:07:24
right for me?
00:07:24
I think is technology the right world for you?
00:07:27
I don't think there's plenty of jobs that technology don't
00:07:32
doesn't play a strong part, but I think we're going to start to
00:07:34
see industries being changed that have been isolated from
00:07:39
that.
00:07:39
When we look at the four or three prior stages of industrial
00:07:46
revolution, right, we're going into a fourth and this is what
00:07:50
AI is driving.
00:07:51
This industrial revolution is going to change the way we work
00:07:55
in ways that we're not even aware of today, but also change
00:07:59
areas that traditionally haven't been in focus.
00:08:02
So you know, farming for a while has actually benefited
00:08:06
from technology advancements, right, but where does AI take a
00:08:11
farmer of the future.
00:08:12
Do you have a love and passion right for agriculture, but also
00:08:16
have an act for technology, where that intersection is going
00:08:18
to become more interesting for you right?
00:08:19
Or if you're, you know, a post grad and you have these skills
00:08:23
and you're like, well, where do I want to work?
00:08:24
Well, there's going to be these industries that are not really
00:08:28
saturated and when we think of reskilling ourselves, it's where
00:08:33
do we want to work, where do we want to apply ourselves?
00:08:35
And ultimately, you know, we want to be successful in our
00:08:40
career, but there's just going to be opportunity for
00:08:44
individuals to kind of prove themselves and to kind of live a
00:08:48
, you know, I'd say, successful career, but, you know,
00:08:51
fulfilling life.
00:08:52
I think it's really exciting right now and I don't know that
00:08:57
is technology or IT.
00:08:59
The right thing for me is like do I have a passion for this and
00:09:02
a passion for some industry?
00:09:04
Because those worlds are colliding right now.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know, in the near future or even
00:09:11
right now, you know, we're going to see IT be involved into
00:09:16
fields and into ways that you know we never, we never really
00:09:20
imagined before.
00:09:22
Right, like you mentioned, how AI and IT will meet for farming
00:09:27
right, and how it'll augment, how farmers, you know, plant
00:09:32
crops and you know, maintain them and things like that.
00:09:34
I mean that's a whole, that could be a whole industry right
00:09:40
there.
00:09:41
That's a consulting firm of tech people that come in, deploy
00:09:46
an AI, set it up with a drone and the drone does whatever In
00:09:51
the autonomous mapping of property.
00:09:55
Speaker 2: Some of these things likely exist today, but I think
00:09:57
the catalyst for the more human aspects of how they engage, when
00:10:04
you take a look at various industries and I'm not going to
00:10:07
call it farming, but various industries right the service
00:10:12
aspect naturally has this level of personal engagement with
00:10:20
customers.
00:10:20
Patients take healthcare.
00:10:22
There are ambient technologies to give a really pointed example
00:10:27
for healthcare, where AI is able to, in the background,
00:10:31
listen.
00:10:31
When you're walking in, you're having a conversation with the
00:10:36
nurse prior to the doctor.
00:10:37
You're having a conversation with the doctor, but in real
00:10:40
time that conversation is being turned into insights.
00:10:43
Those insights are building a profile of what could be wrong
00:10:46
as the doctor is asking more probing questions, really
00:10:49
getting into a potential diagnosis for the condition that
00:10:55
you have and being able to automatically type out and have
00:11:00
those notes being put into the EMR.
00:11:03
That's happening today.
00:11:04
You think about how that experience can translate to
00:11:08
other industries.
00:11:09
It's going to enable productivity gains across
00:11:14
population demographics, even skill levels, bringing up and
00:11:20
allowing even entry-level analysts or whatever role it may
00:11:26
be be able to perform at much higher levels than they are
00:11:29
today.
00:11:29
That's with the assistance of these technologies.
00:11:32
It's going to be wild when you look at the prior stages or
00:11:39
phases of these industrial revolutions.
00:11:41
This one is going to affect our families, our kids and
00:11:47
generations for much like the industrial revolutions of the
00:11:51
past.
00:11:52
It's very exciting, for sure.
00:11:55
Speaker 1: I wonder.
00:11:56
You bring up the doctor's office and I wonder how much of
00:12:04
a doctor's, just a normal physician, how much of his work
00:12:11
would be offset by AI?
00:12:12
Potentially, because even with telehealth and telemedicine,
00:12:19
they're not there touching you.
00:12:21
Obviously they're listening to what you're telling them,
00:12:24
they're putting your symptoms into a computer, checking the
00:12:28
symptoms with an illness and then prescribing you something.
00:12:33
That's all things that an AI could probably do at some point.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are at least two camps.
00:12:43
I'll put it that way.
00:12:44
There is the camp that looks at this, as there's no way a
00:12:48
machine knows more than me.
00:12:49
This technology I've done this for years.
00:12:54
I know when I see a condition there's going to be another camp
00:13:00
.
00:13:00
That's wow.
00:13:02
I have this assistive technology.
00:13:04
I'm still in the driver's seat for making decisions, but it's
00:13:08
providing me real-time telemedicine, real-time
00:13:11
information that makes my job easier.
00:13:13
When it comes to compliance, oh, the documentation and the
00:13:18
potential for miss billing and miss coding.
00:13:21
That is also addressed with the ability to leverage these
00:13:24
technologies.
00:13:24
I think practices that lean into this are going to see much
00:13:30
more time with patients where they need to, less time, which a
00:13:35
good portion of time and overhead is spent on the
00:13:39
compliance and governance of ensuring that records are kept.
00:13:43
When that starts to become just seamless, and to the way this
00:13:49
technology is being framed in ambient, it's around you, your
00:13:52
work and what you dislike about your job.
00:13:56
It starts to be minimized in a way that you get back to
00:13:59
treating patients and paying attention to the actual patient
00:14:05
rather than worrying about.
00:14:06
I got to go to the next thing and figure out this next set of
00:14:10
tasks that I have ahead of us.
00:14:11
I'm bullish with the way that this is going to change
00:14:18
industries, but certainly in the more regulated industries where
00:14:22
compliance and regulation exists for protecting patients
00:14:27
and protecting organizations and entities.
00:14:30
That, overhead, I think, is where we're going to see a lot
00:14:34
of initial gains, where we can get people back to being
00:14:36
productive and compliant at the same time.
00:14:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be a really fascinating time and work
00:14:47
effort there.
00:14:47
It's almost like a compliance check while you're doing it,
00:14:54
while the new information is being added in.
00:14:57
That's even offsetting some tech careers there.
00:15:02
It's interesting how everything will shake out.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
00:15:08
I mean I think the replacement of roles will only go so far,
00:15:14
because there's going to be companies at different levels
00:15:16
and how they want to operate their business.
00:15:18
But even in particular, like Chrome OS, when that came out,
00:15:23
everyone's like oh you don't need a desktop anymore, you
00:15:26
still.
00:15:27
Yeah, there are plenty of use cases where that's valid, Even
00:15:31
to your point.
00:15:32
Telehealth is going to benefit and is benefiting.
00:15:35
There's a company called NABLA that has this.
00:15:40
They just received their Series B With a verified product.
00:15:44
It's getting traction.
00:15:45
But embedding this in the conversation and you can imagine
00:15:48
we're having this dialogue remotely today but imagine next
00:15:52
year your profile and seeing real-time updates to what the
00:15:56
system thinks it might be in the areas to continue to probe into
00:15:59
for questions, that augmented workflow, I think is really the
00:16:04
exciting part, Whether it's doctor, whether it's agriculture
00:16:09
even think of cooking chef.
00:16:13
Maybe there's other applications that we can't even
00:16:16
think about.
00:16:17
It's happening now.
00:16:20
That change is starting to happen.
00:16:21
Now, If an individual in your audience does have some
00:16:28
technical abilities but really has a passion for some industry
00:16:31
that isn't technology-focused, that intersection is going to be
00:16:35
the magic mix, because being able to bring those together are
00:16:38
going to make any business more efficient.
00:16:40
At the end of the day, You're going to have laggards that are
00:16:42
going to be left behind.
00:16:43
Sure, there's folks on the bleeding edge of things, but
00:16:47
that wave is going to crest.
00:16:49
You better be on the front side of that if you're a business,
00:16:53
Many of the careers that you're looking for will be growing on
00:16:57
that upswing.
00:16:57
There's plenty of opportunity for sure.
00:17:03
Speaker 1: You talk about how, back in the 90s, it
00:17:10
professionals were a lot deeper in the space.
00:17:13
You really had to know the underlying processes and systems
00:17:19
that are running and whatnot, and what they're doing and how
00:17:22
they're doing it.
00:17:23
Even when I started out after college talking like 2010 period
00:17:31
, it was still like that to a good extent.
00:17:35
It wasn't as deep.
00:17:36
I know what you're talking about.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: It wasn't as deep as reading the kernel and
00:17:44
understanding logic gates and things like that.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: That was not a part of it, very thankfully.
00:17:51
If it was, it might not be in IT right now.
00:17:55
Is that method still beneficial ?
00:18:00
Where, early on in your career, you get this deep dive
00:18:06
experience into a platform, into a technology, and you're
00:18:10
learning the ins and outs of it as you progress throughout your
00:18:14
career, you're going to hire tiers within the technology.
00:18:21
You're not worried about the processes anymore, you're not
00:18:23
worried about that app and things like that.
00:18:26
You think that there's still some benefit with that.
00:18:30
Speaker 2: I'll make sure to clarify my position.
00:18:32
That background and that knowledge absolutely still
00:18:38
extremely helpful, especially high tech Learning.
00:18:42
That depth is a skill set that is needed today.
00:18:45
I think the thing that I'd probably call out is the breadth
00:18:52
of roles doesn't necessarily require you to have that
00:18:55
fundamental knowledge because it's been abstracted.
00:18:58
If you think of it as an inverted pyramid, you can start
00:19:02
anywhere up above that, but for certain roles you definitely
00:19:04
need that foundational pillar.
00:19:06
To your question directly, I would agree and I would say, if
00:19:13
you're fortunate to have work in an environment where you're
00:19:18
getting that exposure, that you're understanding those
00:19:21
internals, take the time and really, really absorb it.
00:19:27
I think that will pay dividends through the rest of your career
00:19:31
and allow you not just operate at the operational level, but if
00:19:34
you're trying to solve a problem that's unique to you, if
00:19:38
your knowledge starts at this and you need to kind of Know
00:19:43
about the internals enough to solve your problem, you're gonna
00:19:45
be short-handed and you're you're gonna need help, and
00:19:49
that's it's not wrong to ask for help.
00:19:50
It just means you're just less useful in your role and how you
00:19:54
want to solve a particular challenge.
00:19:55
So definitely that knowledge is super valuable and and if you
00:20:03
have an opportunity, you know comparing different job roles
00:20:07
like money is valuable.
00:20:08
You know the, the culture of a company's valuable.
00:20:12
I would say also that the level of work that you're doing in
00:20:17
complex systems, that that will pay dividends throughout your
00:20:21
career for sure.
00:20:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's.
00:20:25
You know, looking back on my career a little bit, you know
00:20:29
it's always interesting, the little nuggets of information
00:20:33
that have stuck with me.
00:20:34
You know that will randomly kind of pop up.
00:20:37
You know, like, like now.
00:20:39
You know like, for instance, you know, a couple years ago I
00:20:43
was deploying a web proxy.
00:20:45
It was the first time I ever did it.
00:20:48
Never touched a proxy before, never really touched network
00:20:52
security anything.
00:20:53
Before and years prior to that I had some experience with DNS
00:20:58
registries and you know how it's stored and when it's refreshed
00:21:03
and things like that.
00:21:04
And we ran into an issue with the proxy.
00:21:06
We're basically no one around me knew what was going on.
00:21:09
They couldn't really figure it out.
00:21:10
I'm like, oh, we need to reboot , you know, three times because
00:21:14
it clears out this registry, that it's pulling this
00:21:16
information from, and once we do that, it'll pull the right
00:21:20
information, refreshes itself.
00:21:22
And everyone thought that I was joking and I was like, no, like
00:21:26
that's literally what it is, you know.
00:21:28
And so we tried it out, one device and it worked.
00:21:30
And like even my boss was like, well, surely it's not gonna
00:21:34
work again, you know, and it worked again.
00:21:37
He's like okay, I guess we need to do that everywhere now.
00:21:42
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think three reboots is, you know, and
00:21:46
that's sure a lot above.
00:21:48
Yeah, I think you know when I worked at Maskeet rule, you know
00:21:54
I saw a lot of problems in the kind of personal computing,
00:21:58
workplace technology area and More often than not you hear odd
00:22:04
stories.
00:22:06
And it's really when you, you know, when you get into the
00:22:10
troubleshooting aspect that you realize it's almost a miracle
00:22:14
that some of these things work at all.
00:22:16
But you start to appreciate, you know, now I'm an old timer
00:22:22
but the old timers that are there and they're like I used to
00:22:25
run token ring and you're like, all right, yeah, and I removed
00:22:29
plenty of that At my day, but I was removing it, I wasn't
00:22:33
responsible for its operation and, yeah, I was surprised at
00:22:37
how many times during my career that would surface when I was on
00:22:40
the infrastructure operation side where you know it always
00:22:44
comes back to some legacy implementation or technology
00:22:49
implementation that Was quirky.
00:22:52
And if you knew the quirks your life was much easier.
00:22:54
And you know supporting stuff without knowing some of those
00:22:58
quirks and how, how we arrived to now Major, major role,
00:23:04
definitely more hard.
00:23:05
And you know you start to respect some of the folks that
00:23:08
that you know Struggle through the pre golden days.
00:23:12
Put it that way.
00:23:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, earlier out of my career I did
00:23:18
a little bit of work with some government agencies and you know
00:23:22
my, my company.
00:23:24
They told me before I went on site they're like, oh, this is a
00:23:27
very custom deployment, you know, you got to know the ins
00:23:30
and outs of it and everything else.
00:23:31
Like that I get on site.
00:23:33
I started looking at our product and like how the hell
00:23:35
does this thing even work?
00:23:36
Like literally, how is this thing running right now?
00:23:39
And it was so bad that it got to the point where I just had to
00:23:43
, I just basically had to start over.
00:23:45
I had to do a complete, you know, clean install.
00:23:48
But now they're actually on a supportable product because the
00:23:52
company you know everyone at the company knows how it's running.
00:23:55
Everyone in the company knows what should, what's the expected
00:23:59
result and things like that.
00:24:00
Because I mean, it was, there were, there was pointers In
00:24:03
places that should not have existed, there was, you know,
00:24:07
custom directories with custom scripts in it running and it was
00:24:11
such a mess the only option was to start over.
00:24:14
But you know, if you don't have that kind of experience, it's
00:24:17
difficult to move along in your career.
00:24:20
You know, because you're kind of building on all of these
00:24:23
different Experiences and skill sets or whatnot, is that?
00:24:26
Speaker 2: is that what you found as as well, looking back
00:24:29
now as to see, so yeah yeah, you know, I think for me it was
00:24:36
always a Bit of our how do I, how do I progress in my career,
00:24:43
and I made it very much.
00:24:44
While there's opportunity, it's up for me to seize that, but
00:24:48
also me to be ready to kind of step into a role or an
00:24:51
opportunity that Would require.
00:24:54
So I did a lot of self-study, right, you know, first
00:24:58
certification was a network plus , I think you know Was fortunate
00:25:04
enough, after a little bouncing around between positions, to
00:25:08
get to, you know, desktop position at a financial services
00:25:13
company.
00:25:13
And you know we had this thing at the time called Citrix, a
00:25:17
presentation server that was just released, and you know
00:25:20
we're moving to that and building on Just self-study.
00:25:25
Moving on to more network access gateways that they had in
00:25:28
their product line I always seemed to look for when, where
00:25:32
next do I need to be ready to apply my skills?
00:25:35
And Well, virtual desktops became a thing and a fad for
00:25:39
quite a long time.
00:25:40
That was displaced by this thing called mobile and now we
00:25:44
need some MDM, all right.
00:25:46
Well, now with MDM comes this challenge of identity and
00:25:49
traditional ways of managing identity.
00:25:51
We're slow and cumbersome and we have this thing called octa
00:25:55
and these identity platforms that make it really easy.
00:25:58
And, of course, there was new standards that facilitate that,
00:26:01
like with Sam all and open an ID , connect right.
00:26:04
But I think the this, the salient point here, is
00:26:10
Technology is going to change.
00:26:11
If you want to make this career , you have to watch the trends
00:26:16
and I always was mindful where the trends were.
00:26:18
What could I bring value to my, my business and organization
00:26:23
and then continue driving it?
00:26:24
And security being thought that I would say the last stop
00:26:27
because I'm still on that train, but I Think it was an
00:26:31
opportunity.
00:26:32
I spent close to 10 years Deploying technology that was
00:26:38
used in the enterprise fortune 100, right, I now had to secure
00:26:43
it, but it gave me the advantage of knowing how an end user
00:26:48
connects To a system.
00:26:50
How are you in remote access?
00:26:52
How are you servicing remote employees when they're in the
00:26:55
office?
00:26:55
What is the network layout and how are you securing connections
00:26:58
on the network?
00:26:59
Are we detecting threats and what's normal, easier behavior?
00:27:04
Well, if you work for 10 years supporting an enterprise, you
00:27:08
know there's a lot of abnormal, normal behavior that needs to be
00:27:11
baseline.
00:27:12
So you start to have a better appreciation of the challenge.
00:27:15
But you're actually in a much stronger place than others,
00:27:19
because you understand how these pieces fit together and
00:27:21
ultimately how you have to secure them.
00:27:23
So I Think you know, for anyone aspiring to kind of make
00:27:29
progress in their career, you have to be motivated, you have
00:27:33
to be a self-learner, you have to kind of realize where the
00:27:36
trends are going.
00:27:37
I've seen a lot of fantastic technical talent get stuck up on
00:27:42
philosophical preferences of how they think the world should
00:27:46
be.
00:27:47
And if we just use this Flavor, I'm not gonna pick on Linux
00:27:51
folks.
00:27:52
This flavor on Linux our users would be fantastic.
00:27:54
I know no one in an enterprise is gonna use Linux as their
00:27:57
primary device, except for handful of people, right?
00:27:59
But there are situations where I think individuals are shorting
00:28:08
themselves opportunity by clinging to a philosophical view
00:28:13
of technology that they have no control over.
00:28:15
And as much as you may love one technology coming in, if you're
00:28:21
seeing its application struggle , well, it's probably losing its
00:28:27
value at some point to the business that you're in, right?
00:28:31
And at the end of the day, you're there to support a
00:28:33
business, even if you're on IT or there to generate revenue for
00:28:37
an organization, right?
00:28:38
And I think that gets lost sometimes with some really,
00:28:43
really talented engineers that I've seen over the years.
00:28:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point that you bring up.
00:28:51
It's very easy as I guess, techies right To get attached to
00:28:58
a technology as you know it.
00:29:00
You understand it so well, you know, and it's like, okay, I can
00:29:03
fix this issue.
00:29:04
You know it does this, whatever it might be.
00:29:07
You know, and this is even recently right, even recently in
00:29:12
my career, I recommended a technology you know that is very
00:29:18
well-known.
00:29:19
You know everyone expects you when you talk about doing this
00:29:22
project.
00:29:23
Everyone expects you to go to this technology right.
00:29:26
So of course I involve them in our discussions and everything
00:29:30
else like that.
00:29:31
And I mean I was thrown off guard when they weren't really a
00:29:38
fit, you know, just because of different variables in the
00:29:41
environment and whatnot.
00:29:42
And you know I could have taken these stance of you know,
00:29:50
holding my ground right and trying to force it in and trying
00:29:54
to make this thing work, when you know in all actuality it's
00:29:59
not going to work for the environment, no matter how hard
00:30:02
I try.
00:30:03
And you know if I try and do that, it's actually going to
00:30:07
lower my own reputation within the organization.
00:30:09
You know people aren't going to look at my recommendations the
00:30:12
same way.
00:30:13
They're going to be like all right, well, there's an asterisk
00:30:15
there.
00:30:15
You know like we have to really kind of check on this thing.
00:30:19
You know, it's interesting.
00:30:23
I've also experienced that from when, you know, my direct
00:30:27
manager couldn't let go of a technology that you know he
00:30:31
loved.
00:30:32
He brought it in, he sold it internally and everything else
00:30:36
like that, you know, and it's like, hey man, this thing does
00:30:39
not work.
00:30:39
I'm literally spending 60 hours a week just making sure that
00:30:43
it's up.
00:30:43
You know like, can we go with the market leader?
00:30:47
Speaker 2: finally, I think that cuts both ways.
00:30:51
But when you can't let go, it becomes a personal thing and
00:30:57
yeah.
00:30:57
I think once it becomes a personal thing to you and you're
00:31:01
not making mindful decisions based on context, and managers
00:31:05
sometimes, especially if it's a seven figure kind of price tag,
00:31:09
like their career is basically stuck.
00:31:11
So there's some, you know, I'd say unhealthy motivation,
00:31:14
sometimes at a leadership level, but you know, certainly at an
00:31:19
engineer level, you know, clinging on to something and
00:31:24
making it a personal issue that you're moving off of it or your
00:31:29
philosophy because it's so personal to you is definitely a
00:31:35
career limiter that folks should just be aware of.
00:31:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point.
00:31:42
You know, I wanted to ask you.
00:31:44
You know, recently, right, I've been talking to a lot of
00:31:48
different people and the concept of saying, yes, I'm figuring
00:31:53
out how to do it later, you know , comes up quite a bit, and do
00:31:57
you think that that still holds true at the CISO level?
00:32:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not bad.
00:32:07
And saying yes isn't bad as long as it's followed with, but
00:32:11
we'll have to see at what expense.
00:32:14
Right, I think, especially in the CISO role, we're balancing
00:32:21
balancing depending on the type of company, right?
00:32:23
You know, when you take a look at EDB Postgres company, we're
00:32:28
delivering it via cloud.
00:32:30
We have technology you can install and print.
00:32:33
Ciso's role is both protecting the environment, reducing the
00:32:37
risk of a potential future incident, but it's also enabling
00:32:40
sales.
00:32:41
It's you can have a sales pipeline if you don't have a
00:32:44
SOC2, you can, but it's very hard to close deals.
00:32:48
You know, you look at PCI can't sell into cardholder
00:32:53
environments, environments that have cardholder data.
00:32:55
Hipaa can't sell into healthcare.
00:32:58
So in information security, those, especially in a tech
00:33:01
company, you start to have other pressures that when you're
00:33:05
growing business.
00:33:06
That's where the risk calculus comes in and there's always
00:33:09
going to be trade-offs.
00:33:10
We can do this, but by this date you need it by this date.
00:33:13
All right, yes, but here is the impact and I think that's fine.
00:33:18
I think people want to at least acknowledge that you're hearing
00:33:22
them, that, yes, there's value in what you're saying.
00:33:24
You don't say yes to everything , but if there's merit there,
00:33:28
agree to the point.
00:33:29
This is a great idea but where is it going to fall?
00:33:32
And one of the things I've learned in even prepping for my
00:33:38
role and kind of growing into it setting expectations,
00:33:44
especially with peers and leadership, is very difficult.
00:33:47
But if you don't do that, you get into a situation where a yes
00:33:51
but doesn't really mean much, right, like I think you really
00:33:55
have to set expectations of the work that you have ahead of us.
00:33:58
So when conflicts come, where changing priorities come, they
00:34:02
know all right, there's going to be a trade-off we have to
00:34:05
discuss.
00:34:05
I know I'm already asking these three other things.
00:34:07
I'm kind of smiling because we I work pretty closely with our
00:34:11
CIO and it's very similar conversation.
00:34:14
He has dozens of commitments across his teams, right for the
00:34:20
business areas, and I'm just another participant and he's
00:34:23
very skilled at saying yes.
00:34:25
But and I think that's a valuable lesson there's no shame
00:34:29
in saying yes.
00:34:30
There's no shame in saying no.
00:34:32
But when you say yes, it generally should come with some
00:34:36
conditions and I think everyone appreciates that thoughtful kind
00:34:42
of response, especially when they're coming to you with a
00:34:46
business problem that needs to be addressed.
00:34:48
Speaker 1: Right.
00:34:49
So you kind of touched on this a little bit, but let's talk
00:34:55
about what EDB does, what you guys specialize in, and, yeah,
00:35:02
we'll just start.
00:35:02
We'll start with that.
00:35:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, born in one of the primary, born around
00:35:10
the Postgres SQL open source project, but have grown into an
00:35:17
enterprise focused product that solves quite a few challenges
00:35:22
that the open source project doesn't have.
00:35:23
So we follow a similar advantage.
00:35:25
We submit significant amount of code to Postgres over the 18
00:35:31
years that we've existed.
00:35:32
You know recently, in the last three, four years, we've taken
00:35:37
the technology and the know-how and developed the cloud platform
00:35:40
that delivers true Postgres as a service versus Postgres
00:35:45
compatible databases that you'll find in Azure, aws and GCP.
00:35:48
And then we're building in really high value capabilities
00:35:54
when it comes to encryption, active-active clusters
00:35:57
distributed, you know, in different geos, and are starting
00:36:02
down the path of including AI technology and really making
00:36:07
this intelligence systems economy of the future a
00:36:11
possibility using our product, and there's going to be more to
00:36:14
share this year.
00:36:14
But when we think about the value that we provide, which is
00:36:18
what companies exist right, we're allowing really heavy
00:36:22
transactional platforms some of the largest names, household
00:36:27
names that you can think of that operate and leverage EDB's
00:36:31
Postgres offering advanced server offering.
00:36:36
The sheer volume and scale of the processing on open source
00:36:42
can be challenging for some companies and we provide that
00:36:46
net of support, bug fixes, even performance optimization, where
00:36:51
you can get the most out of the platform and do so in supporting
00:36:56
our customer's journey, of kind of making Postgres the de facto
00:36:59
database which, depending on your sources, you know is the
00:37:02
number one most admired database Postgres for 2023.
00:37:06
So it's an exciting period of time.
00:37:09
I wish I could share a little bit more of the roadmap, but
00:37:13
that will come in near time.
00:37:15
We have recently landed on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the
00:37:19
first time for our cloud managed database offering and you know
00:37:25
I'll say very quickly, we'll be climbing up that ladder into the
00:37:29
leader's quadrant over time.
00:37:32
So I have faith in that.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a.
00:37:37
It's really interesting.
00:37:40
There's so much to Postgres in and of itself.
00:37:44
And then when you factor in trying to manage it right, like
00:37:50
if you have an internal or an external facing application
00:37:55
that's running off of a Postgres database, right, and you have
00:37:57
to manage it for different customers and whatnot, I mean
00:38:02
that is a feat in and of itself.
00:38:05
And then when you start thinking about the fact that
00:38:09
it's open source, you know, and it's you're using this so widely
00:38:14
and it's so widely used, it's a really impressive piece of
00:38:18
technology, I feel.
00:38:20
But personally, you know, I've always had, you know, kind of a.
00:38:23
I've always been a little partial to Postgres ever since I
00:38:27
experienced it, because it's just so versatile, you know, and
00:38:31
there's so many things that you can do with it and it's a lot
00:38:36
easier to maintain in terms of you know, that individual
00:38:40
solution.
00:38:41
It gets complex when it's, you know, a lot more servers or
00:38:46
whatnot.
00:38:46
Speaker 2: but the scaling aspect, you know it works fine.
00:38:51
I have a server you know you might have.
00:38:54
You know the web app and the actual database on one server,
00:38:58
and that could be fine for most environments.
00:39:00
I think when you start scaling and running into performance,
00:39:03
transactional performance issues or application experience
00:39:09
issues, where you have folks on each coast and they need to have
00:39:11
the ability to write to the database, that's really unlocked
00:39:15
with what we're able to provide to customers.
00:39:17
But to your point on its extensibility, you know you'll
00:39:23
see a trend in.
00:39:25
Anyone that's familiar with Postgres knows this.
00:39:27
They can go see the extension model.
00:39:29
Postgres, though, and is extensible, and every time
00:39:35
there's a new fad database that seems to creep up, it gets the
00:39:39
attention.
00:39:39
Dollars are pumped into supporting a vision and Postgres
00:39:44
creates an extension and, from the majority of use cases for
00:39:47
customers, that's gonna solve it .
00:39:48
So, when you look at transactional kind of SQL based
00:39:51
workloads, yeah, that's out of the box.
00:39:54
You take a look at graph database well, you know there's
00:39:57
a graph extension.
00:39:57
You take a look at vector databases with AI well, there's
00:40:01
PG vector that satisfies that, and there's a handful of other
00:40:06
extensions that we'll be bringing to the market that
00:40:09
start to enable customers in particular, you know, business
00:40:14
organizations to get the benefit out of the mixed mode database.
00:40:19
The reasons why Colomer database technologies exist is
00:40:25
for analytical purposes.
00:40:26
The reason why there's graph is to understand relationships
00:40:29
between entities.
00:40:30
You can do all this on Postgres and, rather than having a
00:40:34
portfolio of 10 different database vendors, you have one,
00:40:38
you have one you need to support , you have a trusted vendor that
00:40:40
you can go to and you have a performance profile that is
00:40:44
scalable, that you don't need to worry about how a vendor
00:40:47
implements.
00:40:47
You know Neo4j as an example Great product but when you look
00:40:54
at the majority of use cases that I've come across, the
00:40:58
performance profile isn't anything you need.
00:41:00
That is overly.
00:41:01
It requires or demands a high performance.
00:41:05
So you start to see especially the vector databases being huge
00:41:09
Pinecone, maybe, eight things like that.
00:41:11
There are definitely add value, add features there.
00:41:13
But for those that just need a vector database, need the
00:41:17
ability to tag metadata and they'd be able to query that at
00:41:21
scale, postgres still enables you.
00:41:25
So it's a really interesting technology.
00:41:28
But yeah, it's something that we see, you know, every four or
00:41:32
five years when there's some new database trend, eventually an
00:41:35
extension will make its way into Postgres and everyone will be
00:41:38
like.
00:41:38
I will just use Postgres at this point.
00:41:40
It's rinse and repeat.
00:41:42
It's kind of entertaining, kind of to kind of like see the
00:41:46
trend.
00:41:47
But you know, when you look at the strain, bringing in four or
00:41:52
five different database technologies on an IT
00:41:54
organization, you get the train everyone on Postgres you have
00:41:58
the ability to, you know, not have to have a specialist
00:42:03
skillset in one technology or another.
00:42:06
You can have a set of Postgres generalists really handling the
00:42:11
various needs that the business is gonna toss at you.
00:42:13
And I don't think people recognize the value in that,
00:42:17
especially with attrition and retention within engineering
00:42:22
roles you may bring in someone.
00:42:24
That's kind of the best.
00:42:25
I'm not gonna pick on Neo4j because I actually like them,
00:42:28
but Neo4j architect or DBA, they move on.
00:42:33
Who's gonna support this thing?
00:42:34
Well then you have three, six months where you don't have
00:42:36
coverage for an expert, where you can really minimize the risk
00:42:39
to bringing in technology into the enterprise.
00:42:42
So you know there's a lot of indirect value that I think
00:42:47
organizations many understand but many should kind of start to
00:42:52
think about.
00:42:55
Speaker 1: So does EDB act as like a management plane for your
00:43:02
Postgres databases?
00:43:03
That can be, you know, across a geolocation or across you know,
00:43:09
several regions, and it will, I guess, replicate and submit the
00:43:16
data that you submit to it across your databases.
00:43:19
Is that what it's doing?
00:43:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a big animal has two kind of key technology.
00:43:27
I don't wanna say components, but the architecture has a
00:43:32
control plane and a data plane.
00:43:33
Now that control plane, as it sounds, is managing, you know,
00:43:39
users, accounts, access permissions, kind of largely
00:43:44
leverages the Postgres native structure for access management,
00:43:49
but orchestrates the creation of projects, creates projects
00:43:54
and orchestrates the creation of clusters.
00:43:56
Those clusters could be AWS, gcp, azure, wherever you have a
00:44:03
cloud account.
00:44:04
And we actually have two models .
00:44:06
We have the ability to host database for the customer.
00:44:09
So I'm a customer, I'm an indie developer and I just wanna spin
00:44:14
up a Postgres cluster.
00:44:15
I get my trial account, you have $300 of credits, you're
00:44:20
able to spin up accounts and we host and can host the database
00:44:25
instances in our environment.
00:44:27
We also have a model called bring your own account, where
00:44:30
you provide us an account, the infrastructure is deployed and
00:44:34
orchestrated and managed in your cloud account and you're
00:44:39
getting the billing through your cloud service provider of
00:44:42
choice.
00:44:42
So wherever you want to run your workload, go at it and you
00:44:46
have the ability of setting up networking rules to ensure
00:44:49
security and the like.
00:44:50
We're moving towards some interesting models on how we
00:44:55
might manage Postgres in general , but those are roadmap items
00:44:58
that I think I can share, but in general you can think of that
00:45:02
control plane being kind of that , that one pane of glass for a
00:45:06
DBAs to be able to kind of manage their state and
00:45:09
performance and secure their data.
00:45:13
At the end of the day, yeah, it's really fascinating.
00:45:17
Speaker 1: I feel like we could talk about this for a couple
00:45:21
hours.
00:45:21
Speaker 2: You know something like that it's fun area for sure
00:45:26
.
00:45:26
Yeah, I think keeping an eye out for EDB through 2024, a lot
00:45:32
of exciting changes coming and really wanting to support the
00:45:39
development of intelligence systems that are gonna change
00:45:42
the economy.
00:45:42
I'm not just drinking Kool-Aid, but I'm actually seeing
00:45:48
industries being changed and I'm 100% certain the technologies
00:45:53
that we're gonna bring to the market this year are gonna
00:45:57
really start to enable a lot of organizations that have made
00:46:01
that investment in Postgres, that are poking at the edges of
00:46:04
these vector databases, maybe playing with PG Vector and
00:46:08
wondering how do I get to scale?
00:46:10
How do I do this the right way?
00:46:11
Yeah, there's some really interesting things that are
00:46:14
gonna be coming out this year and it's just everyone just
00:46:17
keeping an eye out.
00:46:18
But sure to that, trials are free.
00:46:21
Go ahead, big animal.
00:46:24
You'll be able to kind of sign up, get a trial $300 of credits
00:46:30
decide what works for you and give it a little bit of a try.
00:46:37
Speaker 1: Awesome.
00:46:37
Well, dan, when you're able to finally talk about those new
00:46:41
things, I'd love to have you back on and we can dive into
00:46:45
this a bit more.
00:46:46
But before I let you go, how about you tell my audience where
00:46:50
they could find you if they wanted to reach out and connect,
00:46:52
and where they could find EDB?
00:46:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I'll start with EDB enterprisedbcom.
00:46:59
For me, I'm on LinkedIn, so Dan Garcia I think it's the handles
00:47:07
Dan J Garcia for those that just want to shortcut but EDB
00:47:10
and Dan Garcia will bring me up, happy to connect, just say hey,
00:47:13
listen to you on the show and happy to make the connection.
00:47:17
And we do share developments both on LinkedIn.
00:47:20
So feel free to follow EDB as well on social media.
00:47:25
Speaker 1: Awesome.
00:47:25
Well, thanks, dan, and I hope everyone listening enjoyed this
00:47:29
episode.
00:47:29
Thanks everyone.