421: Give Yourself A Five

Give Yourself a Five

[00:00:00] Welcome and Introductions

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, welcome to Overtired. Yes, that’s two weeks in a row consecutively. Um, this is Brett Terpstra. I am here with Jeff Severns Guntzel. Christina is out, but in her stead, we have the fabulous Jay Miller. Uh, you can find him at kjaymiller. com. How’s it going, Jay?

[00:00:19] Jeff: It’s good. It’s good. Glad to be back.

[00:00:22] Jay: Hi, Jay.

[00:00:24] Brett: So,

[00:00:25] Jay: I feel like this is four in a row.

[00:00:27] Brett: is it really?

[00:00:28] Jay: I think so.

[00:00:29] Jeff: There’s been a lot. I’ve been excited. I’ve been listening.

[00:00:32] Merlin Episodes and Podcasting Dreams

[00:00:32] Brett: Thanks to, thanks to Jeff and his fill in Merlin episodes, I

[00:00:36] Jay: Yeah, you get who you can.

[00:00:38] Jeff: The Merlin sodes have been, have been good.

[00:00:42] Jay: That was a, that was a blast talking to Merlin. It was really, really lovely.

[00:00:45] Brett: Merlin told us that he would come on anytime, uh, if we could stand him. Um, so yeah, we, there will be more Merlin episodes. Look

[00:00:57] Jay: The funny thing about talking to Merlin [00:01:00] one on one is that I’ve been listening. I mean, probably like all of us, maybe listening to Merlin’s podcasts for like 12 years. Um, and there aren’t many other podcasts that I listen to regularly. I would say I listened to one of his podcasts every week. I don’t usually listen to all of them.

[00:01:14] Jay: And I used to have this dream that I was on some podcast I loved or another, and I just really, really messed it up. And it was just, I’d wake up feeling like such a failure. And the first time Merlin got on, I was like, Oh, this is that dream where I’m like talking to someone that I’ve only really known through podcasts.

[00:01:32] Jay: And it’s got to work. Anyway, it was really nice. It was delightful.

[00:01:35] Brett: Someone, someone said, uh, I like it when you have Merlin on because unlike his other podcasts, he hasn’t gotten comfortable enough to just descend into grievances.

[00:01:49] Jay: That’s funny.

[00:01:50] Mental Health Corner: Jay’s Work Challenges

[00:01:50] Brett: All right, should we, uh, should we kick it off with the Mental Health Corner, our longest running, um, uh, segment?

[00:01:58] Jay: Yes,

[00:01:59] Jeff: Yeah.[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Brett: Uh, Jay, would you like to go first?

[00:02:02] Jeff: I always feel like when I lead it, it’s the worst. I’m always super long and I guess me muting things as,

[00:02:11] Jay: the guest.

[00:02:12] Jeff: okay, that’s fine. I’ll own it. So, yeah, work has been interesting, uh, as I put in a blog post recently, I have survived yet another layoff, um, that’s the,

[00:02:26] Brett: missed that.

[00:02:27] Jeff: yeah, that’s the second one at this company, and I’ve only been here since February, which is great, um, the third re org, which is, you know, company’s gonna company, I

[00:02:39] Brett: In how long?

[00:02:40] Jeff: since February.

[00:02:41] Brett: Since February. Third reorg since February. That’s even worse than mine.

[00:02:45] Jeff: our entire original department is gone. Our company has no more marketing department.

[00:02:51] Brett: Yeah, that does sound like Oracle.

[00:02:54] Jeff: they’re like, we just don’t need this anymore. Um, but what’s funny is I was, [00:03:00] I, I’m not a movie person, so I don’t have like a great reference other than like Suicide Squad. I, I kind of got called into this Suicide Squad of a team that was like, hey, You have a special set of skills and we’re going to do a thing and we’re not going to let half the company know what we’re doing except for we’re only going to give them snippets of what’s happening behind the scenes.

[00:03:29] Jeff: Um, and you’re responsible for giving those snippets because that’s your superpower here. Um, so do you want to be loved by this team of like 10 people and hated by the other 180 people on in the company? because you’re just not doing the things that we normally do.

[00:03:45] Jay: 10 people are. Yeah.

[00:03:49] Jeff: very senior staff level engineers, architects, like this is, this is all good.

[00:03:54] Jeff: And that’s why I feel like the, the analogy is breaking down a little bit, but I got, I got [00:04:00] asked to be on a special team at work. The team is doing some like not so top secret, secret stuff, but what’s interesting about it is my role on the team is part. API designer, part like project manager, part developer advocate.

[00:04:24] Jeff: So there’s, there’s a lot going on, but it very much reemphasized some of the things that I’ve been working on in a recent blog post, um, or series of blog posts, which are like, what are the valuable skills that engineering. teams or development teams actually need that aren’t coding because I’ve seen a lot of code.

[00:04:52] Jeff: I’ve seen a lot of production level code. They’re not hiring people for their coding skills. That’s obvious. Um, code is bad. [00:05:00] Um, and no matter how big or small the company is, the code just gets bad over time. Um, bad decisions are made for good reasons. Bad decisions are made for bad reasons. The code sucks, so there has to be something else.

[00:05:13] Jeff: And I’m, I’m slowly learning just from people who have worked at companies like Google, who’ve been architects for Google, architects for Microsoft, Shopify, like some of these bigger companies that have seen a lot of success and are doing things differently. Just like picking their brain and really learning a lot, but also having them see The value in good production, like I have to do a weekly demo to the rest of the company of what we’ve been working on every single week.

[00:05:47] Jeff: And often it’s like, Hey, here’s some infrastructure stuff that Jay’s never had to touch before. And then also here’s Jay giving the demo of how to use this. And the resounding response [00:06:00] is like, Jay, your demos are the thing that everyone looks forward to now on the call because all the other ones are like watching bread turn into toast out in the sun.

[00:06:14] Jeff: It’s, it’s just, it’s grueling. So it’s, it’s great to, to be loved and to be like wanted by a team of people who are very, very experienced and often have to re explain things to me because I have no clue what they’re talking about, but then also. Because of this shakeup at work, there’s kind of been this rift in that our current team is under new management.

[00:06:40] Jeff: That new management wants me to stick around because kind of the hope is if this team is successful, then it becomes a new department, and then the people who are there just kind of stay there. So old company wants me, or old team wants me around, new team wants me around. A third team that is like Hey, you probably should actually be over here anyway, because that’s what makes [00:07:00] like logical sense.

[00:07:01] Jeff: We also want you around. And everyone is throwing out like, do you want money? Do you want management? Do you like what do you want? So it’s, you know, safe to say like, aside from feeling kind of overworked and a little stressed out, which is just I feel like a normal thing. I I’m feeling very much wanted and having, having a little bit of survivorship bias, having, you know, these conversations where people are like, you know, what can we do to keep you happy with, you know, the team that you’re on and with the projects that you’re on.

[00:07:40] Jeff: And that’s been really, really blinding of the fact that I just lost. Another half of my existing team and some of the people I worked closest with due to these, this last layoff round. So it’s like, Hey, rose colored glasses, going to put those on [00:08:00] and ignore like the atomic bomb that just went off in our company that mostly impacted my areas.

[00:08:08] Jeff: But also, Hey, this sunset’s looking really nice right now. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at.

[00:08:16] Brett: So when I first started at Oracle, they wanted me and, and they gave me a good salary and they gave me a bonus my first year and a raise. And then we went through multiple reorgs and I feel completely unwanted now. Um, I got no raise this year. I got no bonus. I got nothing. Um, and that feels like punishment.

[00:08:40] Brett: Uh, you know, when, you know, inflation is going up and your, your salary isn’t going up, um, that’s basically a pay cut. I’m really jealous that you feel that you literally are that wanted. Um, I wish, I wish.

[00:08:56] Jeff: I think the downside to that though is none of these like only one of them [00:09:00] was like, maybe it comes with a pay increase. And that’s just because to level out, again, you’ve got like, like staff level architects from Google coming in making that kind of money, we kind of have to balance things. But everyone else like, Everyone else is like, hey, we just laid off a bunch of people because we’ve got to save money.

[00:09:20] Jeff: So I’m, I’m also kind of in the camp of like, I feel like as much as they want to promise me more money come time for like, hey, let’s do a review and let’s talk about compensation. That’s going to get left out somehow.

[00:09:32] Brett: Yeah, yeah, and that sucks, um, all this saving money when your stock is doing fine shit. Yeah.

[00:09:40] Jay: oh yeah, there’s this spectrum that’s starting to sort of emerge in my mind and I want you to help me fill it out. So there’s what you’re talking about, which is you survived the layoff. You have a blog post about this too, which I’ll put in the, um, in the show notes, or I put in there. Uh, you survived the layoff and you feel wanted, right?

[00:09:58] Jay: On the other end is you’ve been [00:10:00] laid off and you feel totally unwanted. Another one is you’re Brett and you’re there, you’ve survived layoffs, but you also feel unwanted. What is the one between Brett and you, Jay? Like, is it just, I feel wanted and. But I may die any day?

[00:10:15] Jeff: My team is designated for future layoffs. That’s, that’s like the space in between where things are great. Everybody’s gelling and there hasn’t been a layoff in six months. So, You’re, you’re like, hey, this is good while everybody braces for impact. I talked about this in that blog post of that like being a military veteran and being someone who’s been diagnosed with PTSD like I can, I can honestly say that dealing with layoffs at Elastic, followed by layoffs at Microsoft, followed by two rounds of layoffs at Ivan, like, and, and they don’t, they don’t want to call them layoffs, they want to call them restructuring, but like restructuring comes with like, if [00:11:00] more than three people got laid off at the same time from different departments and I feel like it could be justified as a layoff, um, you know, for the same reason, When those things happen, there’s no good way to do it.

[00:11:14] Jeff: And that’s the problem is that like, in Microsoft’s case, hey, we’re gonna lay off 10, 000 people while also announcing that we’ve had record sales, you know, record revenue generated.

[00:11:27] Brett: The, the in between is that, um, that 1950s, 60s, uh, mentality that no longer exists where you get a good job, you do your job, you, you do everything that’s asked of you, and every year, um. You get an incremental raise and a Christmas bonus and, um, and you’re not worried about layoffs because you’re doing your job.

[00:11:53] Brett: You’re good at your job. And now, like, the reason they gave me for not getting a bonus was I only [00:12:00] scored, um, uh, Uh, there’s like five, it’s like a one to five rating in your review, and a three means adequately performs all duties. And when I started, they told me just always get a three and you’ll get what you need.

[00:12:16] Brett: And like, if you put a five down for anything, then like management gets like uneasy that you’re looking for a promotion or whatever. And the reason they gave me for not

[00:12:26] Jay: I don’t know about this guy.

[00:12:28] Brett: The reason they gave me for not getting a bonus was I only had a three on my review and I like, it’s a self review too.

[00:12:36] Brett: So I just gave myself threes and everything. Cause

[00:12:38] Jay: And it’s a self review. That is capitalism, right? Like

[00:12:42] Jeff: you’ve denied yourself a raise.

[00:12:44] Jay: Yeah,

[00:12:45] Brett: a, it’s a self review that your manager can argue with if he feels that you overranked yourself and rarely will they, uh, up your score for you.

[00:12:54] Jeff: It’s weird in that like Microsoft was the same way except for basically we were told hey don’t [00:13:00] screw over like it was a peer review, so the ruling was you never screw over one of your

[00:13:06] Brett: Sure. Why would

[00:13:07] Jeff: put in the good stuff, you never put in any bad stuff, so there’s no growth whatsoever, there’s no like personal development, but then also at the same time, They’re like, hey, we know that you’re lying.

[00:13:20] Jeff: So therefore we’re going to just throw out this. And it’s like, it’s not even lying. It’s just like, if, if I’m having to basically re interview for my job every six months. give you all the good stuff and turn all the bad stuff into more good stuff, then like I truly am not developing as a human being and our company has a bunch of robots and then that’s when I get bored and I bounce.

[00:13:44] Brett: Well, it’s, it’s bullshit. Like you should, your manager should do your rating and they should be on your side. And, um, this whole, this whole system, you’re right, it does not inspire personal growth. Um, [00:14:00] I will say like not getting any compensation, uh, it feels like they thought that would inspire me to work harder, but it, it absolutely does not.

[00:14:12] Jeff: Yeah, it will make me work harder on everything other than my job.

[00:14:18] Brett: Yeah, exactly. It makes me work harder at looking for a new job.

[00:14:22] Jay: Or it makes you dig into a passion project or something, right? Like, it’s just like, okay, fine. I’m going to go where I, I already know how to feel, uh, satisfied and valuable, but you’re just not the framework in which I could do that.

[00:14:34] Brett: All right. So Jay, does that sum up your mental health corner?

[00:14:38] Jeff: Yeah, no, that’s it for me.

[00:14:40] Brett: All right.

[00:14:40] Mental Health Corner: Brett’s Health Journey

[00:14:40] Brett: Mine is actually not work related. I do actually want to talk about what’s happening at my job in brief later on. But the weird thing for me right now is I feel like I have Both ADHD and bipolar, like under control. Like I’ve got, I’ve got [00:15:00] focus.

[00:15:00] Brett: I’ve got like, uh, when I’m sleeping anyway, like I’ve got, uh, just like steady mood, um, motivation and like, it’s weird. It’s weird to be like both bipolar stable and ADHD attentive at the same time. Um, I have had. Sleep issues ongoing, like this has been going on for months and I’ve talked about it, um, and I tried, I started having lightheadedness, uh, like persistent, not just when I stood up, just like constant lightheadedness that was on the verge of like euphoria, um, like it felt really good, but also made it unsafe to drive, so I figured I should do something about it.

[00:15:48] Brett: Um, so we tried the, the only reason they could come up with was it must be caused by the gabapentin. So I tried to get off the gabapentin, which gabapentin [00:16:00] also acts as an anti anxiety medication. And I went cold turkey off it and had the worst day of anxiety I have ever had. I was absolutely certain I was going to lose my job.

[00:16:11] Brett: I was absolutely certain that everybody hated me. It was a real rough day. Um, so, so I kind of went back on the gabapentin and tapered myself off and tried this drug called DayVigo, which is supposed to help with sleep, but as has been my experience with every other sleep medication, I got no sleep. Um, it did nothing.

[00:16:36] Brett: So I’m currently back on the gabapentin. I am not anxious, and today I am not lightheaded, and I am not convinced that the gabapentin is a problem, which means I have to go in for like pulmonary and brain scans, um, to try to explain the lightheadedness if it comes back. Because, uh, yeah. So I’m, I’m, I’m filling out [00:17:00] forms to try functional medicine.

[00:17:01] Brett: Are you guys familiar with those?

[00:17:04] Jay: I don’t know. Explain.

[00:17:05] Brett: It’s like a cross between western medicine and a more holistic, um, kind of, uh, what’s the word? When they give you a bunch of supplements and recommend electromagnetic therapy.

[00:17:22] Jeff: I was meds, crush them up, dip like acupuncture needles in them and then like, Do that or

[00:17:31] Brett: so, yeah, I, I don’t know yet, um, I wasn’t impressed with the, like, consultation phone call I had, but I’ve got, like, GI issues, I’ve got bipolar and ADHD, and I’ve got, um, sleep issues, and I have specialists for each one of these, but none of the specialists agree with the other specialists, and in my mind, all this shit has to be connected.

[00:17:55] Brett: In some way, there has to be some underlying problem and functional medicine seems to [00:18:00] be the only option I have without going to like fucking acupuncture and stuff. Um, with no, no offense to acupuncturists. I just don’t think it’s going to solve like

[00:18:11] Jeff: I love acupuncture. I’m not using it for those

[00:18:15] Brett: yeah, exactly, exactly, but like, um, what, wellness, the wellness industry, I guess, is like, I don’t have a lot of faith in, um, I think it’s a, uh, mostly a rip off, but functional medicine seems like my only hope for finding, um, connections?

[00:18:35] Brett: And, like, you start with, like, urine samples, saliva sample, fecal sample, and it takes, like, five weeks to analyze all this, and then they come back with, like, a recommendation, I guess, so, I’m gonna give it a shot, we’ll see. Um, last thing in my mental health corner is Uh, health insurance. I, uh, one of my therapists, multiple [00:19:00] therapists, um, does not submit to insurance, so I have to make claims myself using her super bills.

[00:19:08] Brett: And, um, I, I submitted like 20 bills for the year and I got back 20 separate 25 checks for, to cover, they’re supposed to cover 90 percent of like a 280 bill, which they reduced to 20, 250. And then instead of giving me 90 percent of that, they paid me 10 percent of that, which means now I have to like resubmit all these claims.

[00:19:38] Brett: And when you’re resubmitting, they require faxes. So I have to fax in Receipts, which obviously I do online because there’s no fax machines in the world anymore.

[00:19:50] Jay: my god, no, there’s not.

[00:19:52] Brett: and so, like,

[00:19:53] Jay: There’s only super spammy fax services online.

[00:19:57] Brett: And then for, yeah, [00:20:00] I found one that’s free, or like for 2. 90 I could send a 20 page fax. Um,

[00:20:06] Jay: was it?

[00:20:07] Brett: no, I can’t remember, it’s called like FreeFax. com or something. Um, but they also, my last 10 I submitted, they sent back 10 separate envelopes, each one containing a single piece of paper that said, Hey, for how to network claims, contact our partner.

[00:20:25] Brett: Uh, this, and they’ll help you like get your bill reduced or whatever. And I’m like, that’s, you have fully reimbursed me for this provider in the past and something is wrong now. So I spend an hour on the phone with customer service and it

[00:20:43] Jay: The upside

[00:20:44] Brett: and more faxes.

[00:20:46] Jay: the upside is that somewhere there’s an envelope licker who has dodged all the layoffs.

[00:20:53] Brett: right. That’s all, that’s all I got.

[00:20:55] Jeff’s Workshop and Mental Health

[00:20:55] Brett: Jeff, how are you doing?

[00:20:57] Jay: doing pretty good. Um, yeah, I’m [00:21:00] doing good. Uh, I know I’ve, I think I’ve talked about my lathe and my mental health check in, or maybe just my workshop. Um, but I, a new sort of like, Cause I mean, the background is that a really severe manic episode, unlike anything I’d ever had or have had since in October of 21 led me to fill my garage and my driveway with things from, uh, from auctions of closing steel factories.

[00:21:23] Jay: It’s quite a thing. Um, and it took me probably, I mean, it took me until about four months ago to get out from under it, which I obviously wasn’t doing that. Constantly, but when I could, when I could stomach going into my garage and kind of facing sort of the shame and frustration of this self of mine that, that existed for one month, that is of course still me, but like was a little screwed up by brain chemistry and the wrong medication.

[00:21:47] Jay: Um, it took me a long time to get out from under it. Finally, I have a workshop that is just like, it’s exactly what it should be. It’s a lovely place. Everything’s organized. Any tool I want is within reach. All my drawers are labeled. And, um, and I have this lathe. [00:22:00] I, I have this, it is amazing. I have this lathe, this hundred year old lathe I’ve been unmasked on about it a lot.

[00:22:05] Jay: And, um, and I have a machining teacher, a mentor who I learned how to use metal lathes and, and bridgeport mills to machine metal. Five, six, seven years ago. Um, he’s a lovely person. He’s unlike anybody I would have ever imagined a meeting that would teach and mentor and machining. And I finally felt confident having him over, um, because my shop was just a nice place to be.

[00:22:28] Jay: And I, and I wanted his guidance and I wanted him to help me problem solve and all of this stuff. And so it was the first time I had invited somebody into my workshop. Cause I’ve normally just kind of like. People would be over and they’d be like, let’s go look at your workshop. And I have to be like, no, not now for years.

[00:22:41] Jay: And it was just horrible. Um, cause I knew that it was just like, it was like, why is he ashamed of his workshop? And, uh, so I had my, my, uh, teacher over. I served Nepalese, uh, food at the work table, um, on a big old piece of cardboard. where he drew how he had recently [00:23:00] created, uh, built an elevator, like a freight elevator using the mag drill I gave him that I got at an auction.

[00:23:07] Jay: A mag drill is like when you see people breaking into safes in the movies with a giant magnet. That’s what a mag drill is. Uh, he drew a whole, like he drew a whole picture of another thing. And then we just like, we spent like three hours Um, investigating how a thing was put together a hundred years ago so that we could take it apart.

[00:23:24] Jay: And, and the, there is something in that, that is such a calming, um, experience for me to be staring slowly at a thing and going, how do you want to come apart? Like, I see, I see maybe there’s some threads under there. I see there’s like a Woodruff key. I’m just going to use jargon. And, and, and just, and doing that with someone else, um, and then ultimately succeeding in, and then really appreciating what you find underneath, or, or when you realize how it is that they, they devised this, this, you know, this thing and having just [00:24:00] like really like unmitigated joy, like goofy childish joy.

[00:24:03] Jay: Um, he’s a great match for that. And, and so it was awesome. And he’s also happens to be right now building a seven foot beer can that, uh, for a brewery that actually tips and pours beer and then tips back. So he also is just like a lot of fun. Um, so anyway,

[00:24:19] Brett: an Axeman trip for sure.

[00:24:21] Jay: exactly. Um, so that was like, that was a huge milestone for me and so directly related to mental health.

[00:24:27] Jay: Um, and, and so it’s just amazing.

[00:24:31] Brett: am totally like that with code, especially with writing regular expressions. Like I just find the world around me calms down, especially when I’m like looking through someone else’s really good code to figure out how they did it. Um, and, and you, there’s just all these, like, delights along the way and you learn, like, all new, all new functions and, and API calls and, yeah, it’s, it’s really nice.

[00:24:56] Brett: I had a metals teacher in high school [00:25:00] who was, he told me, um, I have to give you an A. I think you’re dumber than a box of rocks. Quote. Dumber than a box of rocks, but I have to give you an A because you, you did everything. Um, I kind of was, I, I, I, I screwed off a lot in his class. Um,

[00:25:19] Jay: cuz it’s shop.

[00:25:20] Brett: Yeah, it’s shop.

[00:25:21] Brett: And like, we were, we were like chasing each other around with like metal files and pouring molten lead down

[00:25:27] Jay: it’s shop.

[00:25:29] Brett: I got the back of my tennis shoe burned off by like molten metal.

[00:25:34] Jay: It’s really a science class about evolution.

[00:25:37] Jeff: So wait, wait, wait a minute. Hold on. So your, your shop teacher said that you, you, you gave yourself a three and was still able to promote you into the next grade.

[00:25:48] Brett: And then in, in college, I took a metals class and again, it, in the review at the end, he told me I was an asshole, but he had to give [00:26:00] me an A and I’m like,

[00:26:01] Jeff: this time, I guess.

[00:26:03] Brett: yeah,

[00:26:03] Jay: only ever got told I

[00:26:04] Brett: this time I was a smartass. I made some cool, I made, I made a, so they brought in a nude model and had her pose and we had to draw one part of her body and then sculpt it in metal.

[00:26:19] Brett: And I chose

[00:26:20] Jay: the knuckle.

[00:26:21] Brett: I chose her hand, which she was leaning against a table, and no one can see this because this is an audio podcast, but she had like her wrist

[00:26:30] Jay: bit like Brett has rigor mortis.

[00:26:32] Brett: yeah, she had her wrist bent, and it was resting on the table, so I sculpted from the elbow down, and I flipped it upside down to make a little table out of her hand, and did the whole thing in like quarter inch steel, Um, and welding that again was a very calming process.

[00:26:51] Brett: It took hours and I just zoned in. I was on a lot of heroin, but I just, I zoned in and it was awesome.

[00:26:59] Jay: So [00:27:00] here’s my question for your shop teacher. Is he listening? Is he, is he listening to the podcast? Um, I assume it was a he. Uh, what, when you have come up in the world of welders and, and machinists, somehow to act like being an asshole. It’s, it’s like, outside the norm, or even not required, or like, an obstacle, like, this is why it took me so long to get into this kind of stuff, is I didn’t wanna, you know, I didn’t wanna be in a community of assholes.

[00:27:29] Brett: Well, so I feel like what happens for me is, Um, especially in high school shop class, I’m, I’m, I’m not being elitist, I’m just, I think I was smarter than most of the class, which meant

[00:27:45] Jay: You’re still smarter

[00:27:46] Brett: was, I was more likely to make, uh, snide remarks, um, more likely to point out contradictions while the teacher was talking.

[00:27:57] Brett: Um, and like, just [00:28:00] that kind of trap that, you know, What do they call them, uh, gifted and talented kids fall into? You have so much potential. If only you would apply yourself. Yeah.

[00:28:09] Jay: You really lack empathy, yep.

[00:28:12] Brett: Um, yeah, yeah. But thanks, Jeff.

[00:28:15] Sponsor Break: 1Password

[00:28:15] Brett: Um, let’s take a quick sponsor break. We have one of our favorite sponsors this week, 1Password, once again, talking about part of their product that none of us actually use.

[00:28:29] Brett: So when they tell us to make this

[00:28:30] Jay: Wait, what a rousing start to the ad read. Can that just be our policy from now on when we’re reading an ad for something? Now we’re going to read you something today we’re really grateful to hear. We have never touched this.

[00:28:41] Brett: it’s, yeah, but like I said, like one password is just, it’s awesome.

[00:28:46] Jay: I’m implementing 1Password across my organization right now. We love it for everything we know

[00:28:51] Brett: Yes. Yes. So that’s our, that’s our rousing, um, promotion of the sponsor. But I’m going to talk about, [00:29:00] uh, extended access management. Uh, so imagine your company’s security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps, and managed employee identities.

[00:29:15] Brett: And then there are the paths that people actually use, the shortcuts worn through the grass that are actual straightest line from point A to B. There are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps, and non employee identities such as contractors. Most security tools only work on those happy brick paths, but a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts.

[00:29:38] Brett: 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all of these unmanaged devices, apps, and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every app is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional [00:30:00] IAM and MDM can’t.

[00:30:01] Brett: It’s security for the way we work today, and it’s now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entrout and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1password. com slash overtired. That’s 1password with the number one dot com slash overtired. Thanks 1password. We’ll continue to talk about, you know, using like end user stuff because we all love it for that.

[00:30:32] Jeff: I mean, I’ve been a mobile device manager before and I’ve had to do IAM things and yeah, this was, this was like, job right out of the military. Like,

[00:30:42] Brett: then you can actually speak to this. I should have let you do the ad

[00:30:46] Jeff: I’ve never used the 1Password bit, but I’ve definitely used some of the other tools that they talk about. And yes, I will say that there was always the like, Hey, why is this app banned? And it’s like, because it’s not on [00:31:00] the one, like, the one of, 20 apps that we allow you to use. And then we see them pull out another phone and go, but here I have this work contract here on my personal phone and I need to get it off of my personal phone and this is the only app that I have.

[00:31:14] Jeff: And it’s like, congratulations, you’ve snitched on yourself. Good job. Um, give me that. Um, now we need to wipe both phones. But

[00:31:24] Brett: so I, I am the, I am the person on the, uh, the, uh, the path that, that is not the brick road. Um, like, I got so fed up with using my work. Authorized laptop because of the limited number of apps I could use and the way that they forced me to work. So I set up a whole little like VPN tunnel on a mini in my basement to make my My Mac studio appear like it was a work authorized app, but without any of the control.

[00:31:59] Jay: give myself a [00:32:00] three.

[00:32:02] Jeff: Brett spends a whole lot of time every day in this one app. That’s

[00:32:09] Brett: Yeah. Um, but it, you know, we do what we have to.

[00:32:13] Work and Developer Relations at Oracle

[00:32:13] Brett: Um, so I, real quick, I want to say that. Um, so my job is, I, I work in developer relations, but for the last three years, I have basically written content for developers, how to articles, and, um, demos for different technologies, and right now they have me producing two minute videos for two minute videos.

[00:32:38] Brett: So, to promote AI solutions at Oracle, and like Jay was talking about earlier, I’m doing demos on technologies I’ve never used, so I have to work with, you know, the creators of the project to figure out what the hell they’re talking about, and then try to like compress all the impressive bits of it into two minutes.

[00:32:57] Brett: And that’s okay, I enjoy the [00:33:00] production, I like that part of my job,

[00:33:01] Jeff: part.

[00:33:02] Brett: but it doesn’t feel like it. Uh, Relationships, um, Developer Relations, so I came up with this scheme. If you will, to build a, an aggregator that finds us everybody on the web, like indie bloggers that have good search engine ranking that are writing about us or about similar technologies on our competitors and doing things like writing how tos and writing overviews and Um, and, and aggregating all of them and then putting together a team that actually develops, like, reaches out and develops relationships with these developers to, um, hopefully get them to write about our technologies.

[00:33:50] Brett: Um, maybe do side by side how tos, like, here’s how you do it on S3, here’s how you do it on Oracle Object Storage. And like, actually [00:34:00] get that content, because right now, all the content we write goes into the Oracle ecosystem. So if you’re not following Oracle already, if you’re just Googling, you’re not really finding these specific solutions.

[00:34:13] Brett: So, This, I, I made a mind map for this proposal and I sent it, they asked for a doc, a Word file or a PowerPoint, and I said, no, I’m going to send you a mind map. And every time I do that, people are like, oh my God, this is so cool. I love seeing it like this. I get, you know, at least three

[00:34:33] Jay: love mind maps!

[00:34:35] Brett: Even if they don’t like making them, they like reading them.

[00:34:38] Brett: Like it’s a great way to present information.

[00:34:41] Jeff: Oracle has their own AI. I mean, this is an amazing tool right, at

[00:34:46] Brett: they have, they have the tools you need to build an LLM, um, they don’t have like their own language model or anything, um, but they do a lot of,

[00:34:58] Jeff: I would take a template [00:35:00] of what they want and take your mind map and just feed it in and go, here. like

[00:35:07] Crafting Personalized Outreach with AI

[00:35:07] Brett: what I want to do is all these, for every AI solution we promote, we have to write a one pager. I want to be able to feed this one pager into a tool that generates the search to find people talking about specifically. The technology in that one pager so I can reach out and then I want ai to summarize what that person is already written so that I can approach them with at least a cursory knowledge of what they’ve already done.

[00:35:35] Brett: Because that’s how you contact a blogger.

[00:35:37] Effective Blogger Engagement Strategies

[00:35:37] Brett: You say hey, I read this article you wrote. I really like point A and point B that you made. I wonder if you’ve heard of This thing that I produce that you might also be interested in. Like, those are the emails, when I get them, those are the ones I pay attention to.

[00:35:53] Brett: Um, the ones that are not just like, Hello, Brett Terpstra, we noticed you’re interested in this broad technology. [00:36:00] Would you like to try our product?

[00:36:02] Jeff: not just that but like also the Like, if