Speaker 1 00:00:01 Join us as we gather around the hedge, where we dig into technology, business, and culture with the finest minds in computer networking. Speaker 2 00:00:20 Hello Tom. How are you today? Speaker 3 00:00:22 I am doing fantastic. How are you Russ? Speaker 2 00:00:24 It's been a full 24 hours since we've talked. Speaker 3 00:00:27 I know. , something like that. You'd think we'd be sick of each other by now. Speaker 2 00:00:31 . Yeah, well Russ. I just didn't wanna say anything. Tom my kind of people. That's what you get. don't leave open doors like that one around . So today we are joined by Kerry Goats. Did I say it right? Goats, Kerry Gut. Okay. Carrie Getz. And Carrie has this really cool book out about data center jobs. So we just wanted to talk through some of the data center jobs. You know, we're network nerds, number one, and so we don't tend to think about what's outside the network. The other thing is, is that I know that I came into networking through electronic engineering and anybody who's hung out and listened to me long enough probably knows that I started by working on radio systems and climbing towers and dropping 40 meter inverted bees and stacking up log soldering together, log period die poles and yaggies and stuff like that. Speaker 2 00:01:31 And then, um, went through the Air force and ended up in Compsci or ended up in networks primarily through telco. That's kind of my path. I'm not sure that's a path anymore. I'm not really positive that path exists. Like there are many people who are hanging inverted vs. And and soldering together Yass. So I think that path is kind of gone. So one thing I'm very interested in is how do people get into networking now? I mean Tom and I have talked about this in the past on various shows, it's like popped up in conversation like, okay, so I always find that people who have electronics backgrounds are better engineers than people who come straight outta coding just because I don't know why. It just feels that way to me a lot of times that they know more about the network, they understand more about the physical stuff going on, particularly people who do radio stuff or have done radio stuff in their background at a time. Speaker 2 00:02:24 You might might disagree with that, but we've had this kind of conversation ongoing in a long time about like people who come outta attack, people who come out of the troubleshooting operation side, people who come out of engineer out of some other branch of engineering. I don't know, for some reason there's more of a, a spidey sense or something about the way things work in my experience. And, and maybe that's just a, a craziness on my part. But, so I thought it'd be really cool to talk about some of the other pathways into the career field, into network engineering and other areas of the world that we don't really talk about a lot. So I don't know. I mean, any thoughts Tom, before we jump over to Carrie and start hammering her with hard questions? Speaker 3 00:03:04 No, I think, I think things are changing. I also think that a lot of the things that were, um, sort of OnRamps into networking, some of those fields are full career paths in their own right now. Um, they don't, aren't necessarily like, do this and then you can do it as something better. Like I think there's a lot of, and I and I also think we're, we're, we're in danger of losing expertise in those things that are, that are physical, that are real. And that's a problem because none of the coding or the stuff that we do can survive without the real world and underneath it. Yeah. And so, um, anyway, I just, I think it's a really important topic. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:03:38 Cool. So, okay. Talk to us a little bit about like what are other areas and like how do you see this? I mean, I'm not even sure where to start sometimes. Speaker 4 00:03:46 So yeah. In the book I kind of took it from inception through a data center build, right? And I, and I picked it that way. What goes into site selection? How do you determine what your site is? What are the jobs and site selection? And then when you move on to construction, bringing in the trades and all of those kind of things. Because I think a lot of those people that build data centers definitely have aptitude to do other things. Um, certainly people with electronics backgrounds are, are part of that. But to me, I think the thing that was kind of the crime and the whole thing, data centers have been around for a very long time. Every known digitally documented thing on the planet resides in at least one data center. Now, they may be accessible to the outside world, they may not, but they're in a data center at least one. Speaker 4 00:04:32 And so the diversity that needs to follow that needs to be everybody, right? We don't need a group in one city deciding how everybody in the world is gonna interact. It needs to include all of us 'cause we're all gonna use that. It's all our information. And when you think of it and it instruction in schools and coding academies and tech merit badges, all of those are little snippets. But what they don't talk about is that whole entire ecosystem that's surrounded. And so what I started learning, especially working with younger kids, was if their first experience with tech was a coding academy and they don't like solving puzzles and coding is not up their alley, they just leave the whole industry because that's their exposure. So they assume the whole industry is, you know, the code they learned to write that they hated to write when they learned to write code. Speaker 4 00:05:25 And really there is this whole myriad of not just technical jobs in the industry, but supporting jobs, sales operations, marketing management, um, you know, all the way down to trade show people and events people. And so when you start looking at the data center as an ecosystem and say, well, not just the networking guys, but who else do they deal with? First off, that's a big huge world. And second off, if you are that networking guy, understanding all the stuff that goes around you makes you a better networking guy, right? You understand more. I'll give you a great example. I was working with a company down in Australia years ago on a project and they got this networking layout from a networking company and you know, this was pushing top of rack architecture and it was gonna be all great. And I said, well look, you know, you guys don't have enough power to even fill these cabinets. Speaker 4 00:06:19 So why are you putting switches in the top of a cabinet that would support this huge payload when you don't even have that payload? What if you move those switches and used a cable plant to make 'em accessible to the other cabinets and this is what your equipment would look like. And it was $25 million less. Now the networking team had no idea that you could do it in a different configuration because they did, like a lot of companies do. And they hit the easy button and asked their vendor, Hey, what's the latest greatest? And of course, the vendor's happy to provide those solutions, but not necessarily what's best for your ecosystem as a whole. And so if you view the ecosystem and say, okay, well here's the networking gear, but here's the power it's gonna take to run it. Here's how many ports I'm gonna buy. Speaker 4 00:07:03 Here's how many I'm gonna use, here's how many you're gonna be wasted. Here's my throughput and all of those other things. But view it as far as what's gonna be in the ecosystem and just saying, you know, look at your world. If you said, okay, well the network is the only thing that it needs to run everything, so I'm just gonna put this networking gear in and everybody's gonna have to attach to me. That's a really irresponsible decision for a company. And so, and even from a jobs perspective, people that started out in that, once they learn about the other parts of that ecosystem, it opens up, you know, thousands of other jobs that would not have been in their purview and wouldn't have been on their radar if they'd only focused on networking, for instance. So, you know, I think it's important to understand all of that. And it is an ecosystem. You make one screw up a networking, it, it affects a lot more than just the network, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:07:53 . Yeah. Well, and I would say access Speaker 4 00:07:55 Control, jobs, resumes, you know, those things. , Speaker 2 00:07:58 I would, I would actually say even further than that. Like me understanding what else is out there. Again, I, my, my daughters have friends and they're like, I want to get into it, but all I know about is coding. Like, they think that if you're not in coding and they don't even know about my career field, most of these people I talk to, even at University of Tennessee, university of Colorado and stuff like that, they don't know the network site even exists. They don't even like it. It's coding or it's nothing. And I think the broader view helps us draw people in and help 'em understand there's a lot more out there than what you're talking about. Right? And so, well, sure. Speaker 4 00:08:33 I mean, if your first experience to exercise was a 10 k mm-hmm. , how excited would you be about doing any kind of Speaker 2 00:08:40 Exercise after that? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, Speaker 4 00:08:43 Yeah. Speaker 2 00:08:43 That's, that's exactly the way it is. Or somebody put you on a, put you on a squat rack and says, here squat this 500 pounds. And you're like, oh, I can't even move that. I guess I'm worthless. And you just stop working on it, right? Yeah. That's, that's Speaker 4 00:08:55 Everybody's gotta start. We're all ignorant till we know you gotta start somewhere. Yeah. And the other thing too is I personally believe that most of our jobs don't require a college degree. And I think that it's a shame that we have in doctorate. And and to be fair, my generation is largely responsible for this because that's where the good paying jobs were right Back in, back in the day. I mean, I'm in my sixties back then, if you didn't have a college degree, you made decent money, but you didn't make great money. The good money jobs were the white collar jobs. And that was, you know, trained into me. And then of course we trained it into our, our kids. But most of our jobs don't require a degree. Most of these jobs are learned anyway. Even if you got a degree, you still gotta go get certified to do the jobs anyway. So why are we doing the degree part first? Why don't we put 'em into these jobs, use 'em as OnRamps and then if you're a student, most of these companies have tuition reimbursement. You could go out and get whatever degree you want and have it be completely paid for no college debt. Yep. Speaker 2 00:09:55 And in and in fact I did not get my first degree until I had been in the industry for five or 10 years. And exactly. Speaker 4 00:10:02 A lot of people did. Speaker 2 00:10:02 Yeah. And, and this also speaks to the other side of this, which is we now treat colleges as tech schools. That's pretty much what colleges have become. That's not really the intent. The intent is to build a well-rounded person who knows how to research things, things like that. It's not to teach you coding, it's not to teach you electrical. Like you don't need college for that stuff. You need college for, but you don't Speaker 4 00:10:26 Need college to become a well-rounded individual either. Speaker 2 00:10:29 Well, right. But, but you can treat it as a guide, right? You can treat it as, and, and you can use it as a set of resources for people to help you learn things that you might not otherwise encounter or talk about. Um, so I think we misconstrues college to start with. I think even colleges have started misconstruing what college really means and kind of converted themselves into school and their values. Yeah. . Yeah. Well yeah, I mean Speaker 4 00:10:53 There certainly are things that are value, but I'm gonna tell you, you know, at my age, most of the people my age in this industry learned from the school of hard knocks. Yeah. We made mistakes, we paid for 'em sometimes with our job , you know, everybody, everybody's got a situa. I say that some people I'm sure have paid with their job. I have not. But, but you know, but to that point, a lot of it is on the job training. A lot of it's what you learn and you can get those other skills in a variety of ways. Some people get 'em from homeschooling, some people get 'em from a regular classroom scenario. Some people get 'em off the internet and programs like Kki and, and those that that help teach because that's an avenue that's available to them. Not everybody understands or learns in a classroom environment as much as you try to be the 80 20 rule, there's still the 20% that think outside of that or that learn outside of that, that might actually excel and do much better if you took algebra out of their equation, right? Speaker 4 00:11:51 Because algebra might might be the thing that makes 'em hate school. So I think we have multiple paths to learning. I mean, we've had MOOCs for years, which are massive open online classes that are the same classes they teach in every college. Anybody can go take one. You don't get credit for it 'cause you're not paying for it 'cause it's free. But you get to at least say that you went through the course materials and you have that benefit of knowledge for yourself. And I think now too, if you add in the fact that a lot of these kids just came through to your covid lockdown. So they've missed all the career days, all the career fairs going to work with your parents. I mean, outside of walking into the dining room, right? Um, you know, so a lot of kids don't know what they wanna do. Most people in this industry fell in it anyway. Speaker 2 00:12:32 Yeah. Even the first low paying job they've missed. 'cause those places were closed, right? Speaker 4 00:12:38 Yep, yep. Speaker 2 00:12:39 And so, yeah, Speaker 3 00:12:40 I think the, the, the big thing that drives business value is outcomes. It's not, uh, necessarily credentials. Um, even though a lot of HR kind of put that in front of, um, in front of the higher paying jobs, it's, oh, you have to have a bachelor's degree or we're not even gonna talk to you. That's sort of artificial. Like, you know, like what you're saying, Carrie, the, the a person's ability to do the job is almost never predicted by their credentials. And so like, but outcomes is the thing. Like to achieve business outcomes, you do have to have skills and you do have to have education of some sort. You have to have some sort of, uh, ability to deliver, um, and get something done. And that, I I think that's, well, I'm Speaker 4 00:13:18 Not discounting education. I'm just saying it can come in multiple forms. It doesn't have be through a a hundred thousand dollars college program. Speaker 3 00:13:25 Yeah, totally. Totally. It's the outcomes that matter, like how the person gets themselves to the point where they can deliver business outcomes. There are lots of ways to do that. It's not just one. Um, and I think like when I, when I interview people now, this has changed for me in the last couple years. When I interview people, I am less thinking about, um, how many years of experience do you have doing x I almost never ask about that anymore. Now it's like, how do you accomplish this? Like, what's your thought process? How do you get this going? How do you make this happen? And what, when you have barriers and obstacles, how do you overcome them and still meet deadlines? Um, that's the kind of thing that I I, that's, that's really the kind of person I wanna work with and the person of the business wants, I think. Oh, for Speaker 4 00:14:01 Sure. And, and I used to do the same thing, you know? And if, if they rambled on for 30 minutes and never got to a solution or never said, I'd call tech support, you know, my opinion of them dropped a little bit . Because that's part of the way you gain that knowledge, right? Even if you go to a certification, it's best world, you know, it's never gonna break. It's always gonna be lovely. There's gonna be roses growing outta your routers and they're gonna operate like this . And we know that that's, I mean, the school of hard knocks is where you learn the big stuff, right? So I think that we have to do a better job of providing these on-ramps to kids. And I think we have to do a better job of just making the industry known. I mean, if you go, I, I talked to, I, I just did a thing with some students, um, a couple months ago, well, last month, and there was about 75 students in the room. And I said, how many of you have heard about data centers before today? And one person raised their hand. I said, who in your family works in a data center? My dad. I mean, that kind of says it all right? Yeah. The data center house, all of our information, you interact with 'em every day on your phone, your streaming services, your tv. I mean, you don't literally do anything that doesn't touch a data center and nobody knows what it is. Speaker 3 00:15:11 Right? Yeah, I was just thinking all those, all these, uh, the, the kids you see at, um, you know, food service jobs or whatever, um, why couldn't they, if they can, if they can serve you a hamburger, why couldn't they go do a lot of the work that, um, needs to be done in data centers too? Not, not saying that all that work is that low level, but I would love to see teenagers, um, doing and, and I'd love to work with them. Speaker 4 00:15:32 Yeah. I don't even think it's it's low level. I think it's the fact that you have an open door to a mind that wants to learn, right? Mm-hmm. Right. I don't think, I mean, entry level I guess would probably be better than low level. But, you know, I, everybody's gotta start somewhere. And we have tons of jobs that are honestly skilled trades and, and in my mind, we owe the trades everything. Because if it weren't for the trades, nothing would be built. Nobody would have an office, nobody would have a desk chair to put their butt in. Nobody would have a desk to write on. You know, we owe the trades literally everything. And somehow it's just sort of gotten to be that way in society that somehow people that work with their hands aren't as good. And it, and it's really the opposite. I feel bad for people in the trades because they do this beautiful craftsmanship and this artistry and they have this pride in their work. And then they leave when the job's done. And a month later somebody walks into the data center and sees all the piping and the cable plant and everything's just laid in and beautiful. And they just have that oh moment and the poor guys from the trades never get to see that moment . Yeah, Speaker 2 00:16:35 Yeah. That's Speaker 4 00:16:36 Right. But, but it happens. It happens all the time. And I mean, these are perfectly respectable, good paying jobs. You can feed your family on them. You know, there's, there's nothing wrong with any of those jobs. And the other thing is, I do a good bit of work with transitioning, uh, veterans from the military and helping them get in because they have a lot of the same skills that are very parallel to some of the stuff, you know, that we do in the mission critical industry. And there's jobs for all kinds of people. There's jobs for the people that thrive on that chaos that really just need that constant energy around them all day. And there's people, you know, jobs for people that wanna be in sales and they just like to get to know people and talk to people. And you know, there's all kinds, there's such a huge gamut of jobs that also include networking, by the way, . Yeah. Speaker 2 00:17:24 Yeah. Well, let's back up for a second and talk about, you said in the book you start out with site selection. So let's talk through some of the jobs that are out there for this. We don't have to go into a lot of detail, but like, you know, like what is out there? What, what, what do we, what are we not thinking about? Speaker 4 00:17:41 So when you think about site selection, think about county liaisons. Think about people that work with tax departments for the state, for the tax credits. People that liaise with the energy companies to make sure you have power, renewable, sustainable energy, real estate folks that do really well with commercial real estate, buying data center space or spaces to build a data center that's pretty specialized. And it's a fun, fun area to get into. And then once you get past that and you move into the design and build phase, obviously you've got all of the engineering, but on top of that you have drafters, you have people that sell engineering services to people. You have the commissioning agents that go in and make sure it all got built right. You have all of the trades people that participate in the build. And then moving from there, you have people that train the operations personnel. Speaker 4 00:18:30 And then you have the networking engineers, the server engineers, the storage engineers, the knock personnel that sit there and monitor network services and make sure there's no fires in the data center. Security personnel, that's a big part. You know, cybersecurity is one, but you also have physical, physical security. Yeah. Making sure that people don't, you know, get in and do what they're not supposed to. And then of course you have all the application folks that use the resources when the, within the data center and, and so you put all of these things together and it's a nice little ecosystem, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:19:00 And by the way, we do really bad with physical security. I'm just gonna say we're really horrible. Humans are really bad at physical security. There was, well Speaker 4 00:19:09 We wanna be trusting, right? Yeah. We all still wanna live in the age when you can leave your car unlocked and your front door unlocked. We unfortunately do not. Yeah. . But we all kind of crave that. Just safety. We wanna believe that people are genuinely good, not jerks and . Speaker 2 00:19:23 Some of them are. Yeah. I used to work in a secure facility where the, I probably shouldn't say this. Well the secure facility's probably long gone by now where we had a drop ceiling. And to get into the secure facility, you used a, you used a um, a keypad type thing, right? Right. Well, after being there for a month, they said it was time to change the keypad thing. So we went out and got a ladder and went and the keypad programming thing is in a little sheet metal box above the drop ceiling outside the door of the secure facility. And you're like, well Speaker 4 00:19:57 That just freaks of security Speaker 2 00:19:59 , you know, like really this is how this work. Speaker 4 00:20:03 I guess the assumption is you're supposed to notice the ladder with the guy. . Funny story though about physical security, you'll get a kick out of this. So years ago I had a customer, he looked every time we went for lunch, he had to go to this all you can eat buffet. Well in the data center their man trapp has weights in it. Yeah. It's got a weight system. So it can measure if you weigh more when you came out than you went in and vice versa. You know, to see if people are taking stuff in. That's one of the things they used to trigger an alarm. 'cause they don't have full-time security. Well this dude put away, I don't know how many plates of food, it was kind of embarrassing after about the first 20 minutes that he could still consume so much food. And when we went back, sure enough, he tripped off the weight thing, the mass trap and the machine guns showed up and the arm guards. It's like . Yeah. All he did was eat an extra pizza or whatever Speaker 2 00:20:54 was. Speaker 4 00:20:56 Yeah. Speaker 2 00:20:57 Yeah. I have lots, I have lots of stories like that from being out insecure areas and on flight lines and stuff like that when I was in the Air Force. So yeah, it's kind of crazy. But, so let's go back to the build process. As far as electrical. Like describe to me all the trades involved. Well maybe not all the trades. 'cause you know, we don't have five hours, but , maybe describe to me all the trades involved in building a data center like the building is up, right? Which we know inquires, laying footers and building walls. And most of these are still framed buildings, I'm assuming nowadays and things like that. Speaker 4 00:21:32 Concrete Speaker 2 00:21:32 Actually. Yeah. Okay. Concrete buildings. Um, and then you build the building and then you've gotta have what, I mean what do you do from them? Well, Speaker 4 00:21:40 So all the trades, all the construction trades obviously were involved up until that point. Heavy, uh, equipment operators, diesel mechanics, all that good stuff. When you get inside the building and say the building is constructed, you still need electricians. You know, you've gotta have people that put in all the power conditioning, all the uh, power control equipment. You're gonna have um, subject matter experts, engineers to do all that piece. Speaker 2 00:22:03 Right. I was gonna say, that's not just one job though, right? There is, oh no, Speaker 4 00:22:07 That's multiple, multiple jobs. Speaker 2 00:22:08 Yeah. Yeah. That's power conditioning, that's high voltage. That's step down voltage. That could be DC specialists. That could be, there's a lot of different DC Speaker 4 00:22:17 Yeah. Yep. Low voltage cabling, right. Fiber obviously you've gotta have all the fiber in there for the stuff to communicate. Um, copper for the stuff to communicate. And then of course you've got management systems. Um, any of those systems that are in there. You have test and development teams. Then you also have regular development teams and then you have operations teams, database management, all of those kind of things. And, and all of those are ones that don't necessarily require a degree. And I think, you know, to say that somebody has to learn in a college setting as opposed to learning on the job is, is kind of awful. And so I work with a lot of companies that are starting their own training and this is why last time I checked 31% of the adult working population had a four year degree. 14% of those are doctors and lawyers, which means 17% of the population has a four year degree. And we're trying to fill every job with 17% of the population. Yeah. It's not gonna happen. And HR is being lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy. Trying to say, trying to rely on somebody's degree because we all know educated idiots. Speaker 2 00:23:28 Yeah, well I was gonna say that 17% includes people who have weirdo degrees that are working in Starbucks or whatever. Of course. Because yeah, there is no like, you know, um, and, and here's the thing about degrees too that people may not understand. So once I got into networking, I got a bachelor's in in design and network design and then I got a master's in network design and then went off and got a theology degree and people were like, why would you go get a theology degree? Like that's crazy. For me it was again, going back to being fully human, to being actually to, to interact with people at that level and understand this stuff. And then going into a PhD in philosophy and like thi this to me is about interacting with people and understanding people and understanding things better about life. But I don't think anybody in HR should hire me because I have a PhD in philosophy. Right? Like that's crazy. They should hire me 'cause I have 30 years experience doing network engineering. That's a different world. Speaker 4 00:24:21 Yeah, well for sure. And I mean at some point, especially in tech, a 10 year old degree is worthless. Yeah, absolutely. I mean none of that technology still exists unless you're doing legacy systems. Speaker 2 00:24:31 Yeah. Well and I think it's funny 'cause colleges try to, every now and then you'll see a a a, you'll see a survey from a college that'll say, what are the five hottest languages? 'cause they're trying to switch their program over to teaching that language. And you're like, I don't really care what language, you know, when you walk in the door, I mean I'm impressed if you know C but I don't really care between Python and I don't know, whatever else Ruby. On the rails. On the rails or whatever it is. I wanna know that, you know what, how programming works, right? Because if you know how programming works now you can learn any language. Speaker 4 00:25:07 Oh sure. For sure. And C'S a good introductory language for that. But yeah, I um, you know, I used to write code. It, it's not for everybody. Not everybody enjoys just sitting down, staring at a computer all day pounding a keyboard. Speaker 2 00:25:20 I can't do it. Honestly. I don't think I can do it full-time. You know, Speaker 4 00:25:24 I think your first few programs are fun. Yeah. Because it's kind of like, you know, having a kid and growing 'em up, you know, a little bit and you get to see your stuff kind of come to life. But it's, but it is a monotony, you know, and, and not everybody, I'd put accounting in that same category. I can do accounting. Do I wanna be an accountant? Abso absolutely not. . Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And so, yeah. Speaker 2 00:25:48 You know, and so yeah, I think that's all now. Alright, so now we've built the building. We have our electricians in, now we have cabling people. Right? You were talking about fiber. Is that all structured wiring, wiring nowadays? Are people doing their own wiring in this area? Like Speaker 4 00:26:04 Well it should all be structured wiring. It should and and it's not always, but it should be. And I say that because it's kind of like anything, right? The more organized you are, the easier it is when it comes time to troubleshoot. And those are the times when you have the least amount of time to find things. Mm-hmm. sort things out. So structure cabling definitely is the benefit there. I know it, it's kind of weird, especially since you guys are in networking. I'm sure you'll be able to relate to this, but networking seems like they always sell against cabling. And so, you know, if you buy this switch, it's less cabling. If you buy this switch from us in a direct attached copper cable, you won't have to spend money on that structured cable. But what they don't tell you is that you have to replace that every time you change your equipment in a structured cable, you don't. Speaker 4 00:26:46 It's gonna work through multiple iterations. And so as long as you know what you're doing, your cable has been properly installed, properly tested, properly terminated, it'll ask you through multiple generations of electronics. But you know, here's the deal. The cabling budget typically is in a different department than the networking budget. And so the networking guy knows, well I can't sell you networking gear if you have to upgrade your cable plant unless I sell you the cable plant too. And now, you know, those structured cabling kind of disappears a little bit except in fiber or you know, there's cases where somebody plugged in new sand director and it was at a higher speed. And so the link gloss budget was different on the fiber because of the, the protocol requirements. And it quit working. So they plugged in a long cord to see if it was the cord and that worked. So now they have the assumption that every single storage device in their data center has to be direct connected because it worked once, you know, because they don't really understand. But that's, that's one of those things I'm talking about in that ecosystem, right? It could be something very simple like one fiber being gone that puts everybody going nuts. Like even as a networking guy, would you check the port first or would you check the cable first? Speaker 2 00:27:58 Yeah, always check the port first. 'cause I assume the optics on the port are the first first point of failure for any kind of, right. You know, if, if, if the network is down, first point of first word of call is gonna be the optics on the port. 'cause that's a Speaker 4 00:28:10 90. Now if you were a networking guy though, and somebody came and said, Hey, this port's down, what would be the first thing you check? Speaker 3 00:28:17 You mean if you're a cabling person? Speaker 4 00:28:19 Yeah, you check the guy. If you're Speaker 2 00:28:20 Cable, you check the cable. That's right. Yeah. And by, by the way, the ccc, the C C I A lab used to play on this. I don't think they do this anymore. They used to give us way back in the day, or this is gonna like really date me now. Um, way back in the day when I took my C C I A, they had 60 pen cables and a g s pluses, right? And the 60 pen cable is set up such that each connector in the 60 pen cable can be pushed back and it connects at the very end of the connector, not like midway up. So you've got this half inch or three quarter inch pen and it connects in the last quarter inch of that pin if you're lucky. So yeah, so you can take a pair of pliers and you can push that pin back in the connector just about a quarter of an inch and you'll no longer get a connection and you'll, you'll get all sorts of weird symptoms. Speaker 2 00:29:09 Like you'll get okay, uncast works and multicast doesn't, or you'll get like, just all sorts of stupid things that you would never expect out of an H D M I link. And so they used to do that. They used to have this big racket cables and you could go grab a cable and plug it in. You'd be working on building your lab and this one link is not working or these five links aren't working and you're sitting there fighting with the transceiver and everything else and it's the stinking cable. They've actually messed with the cable so that it's not right. But Speaker 4 00:29:36 You actually thought through that exercise, you worked out that cable can go bad, right? Yeah. and I mean, you know, some people have cabling run by people that can match colors and it , you know, it never should have run. Never would've run, never could Speaker 2 00:29:48 Have run. Oh my goodness. It happens. Yeah. I, I had an electrician into one of the houses that I, that I worked, that I built for my family and I told him I wanted ethernet in every room. So he ran all the ethernet was great. The, the connectors were there. He ran it to a straight shot back to a a 66 block so I could punch everything down. Everything was happy. Um, and then I got in there and started plugging things wouldn't work. So I started pulling the, the things apart. And what he had done is, is he had done a on the 66 block and b b on the Allstar, all the Speaker 4 00:30:23 That'll do it . That'll do it in a Speaker 2 00:30:27 Heartbeat. Yeah. It's not gonna work that way . So Speaker 4 00:30:31 It is, but those are great paying jobs. I mean, it's a very good specialty. Kids can go straight outta high school apprenticeship for any of these skilled trades and then have, you know, have a great career. And if they wanna do something in addition or they wanna go back to college and get that, most of these employers pay for that. It's an, it is a benefit. Yeah. So, you know, I think there's lots of paths to learning. My deal was in writing this book is, I think you have to have exposure, right? I mean, if you never knew what a nuclear scientist was, you'd never know to become one. Yeah. 'cause it, it would just be completely outta your frame of reference. And for years in the data center industry, we were really kind of not not secret spy, you know, nobody can't tell people where the data center is. Speaker 4 00:31:14 It's, it's a risk thing, you know? Yeah. Right. Somebody's gonna sneak in and now it's not like that obviously. 'cause there's a real estate component, so you have to advertise. So we got over that, but we never really got around to telling people about the industry. Yeah. And Northern Virginia, you know, they're doing internship programs, right? Left, um, TJ over at Stack is run a run now for kids in that program. And even when I was over there talking to them, like the guy that does the course for the electrician said one of the problems he had, even though the kids were electricians and had been through the program once they gave him some of the specialty equipment from a data center, they zoned out and were afraid to even go for those jobs when really it's electrical theory, it's just called something different in that particular chain in a data center. It's not that you can't use how to do it, it's just very intimidating. And I, I just wanted to take that intimidation out of there. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:32:04 That, that's actually a major problem in our industry is that we'd like to name things, fancy stuff. Uh, if you go look at five Speaker 4 00:32:10 And then, and then put an acronym on it. Yes, Speaker 2 00:32:12 That's exactly right. Go look at five G. And you're like, once you actually read the spec on how something works, you're like, okay, that's mobile ip. But they don't call a mobile ip, they call it something completely different. And you're like, why is it called that? Like, and they have all these interfaces, the B interface, and then you interface and then you're like, why, why do we have all this stuff? Can't we just say it plugs in here and that's the way it works. Like why do I need all this stuff? So we, we do, we over complexify. The other thing I bring up about these trades that I think is interesting and kind of makes me rethink my career sometimes when I go back is that, or when I think through what I've done with my life is that a lot of these careers lead to independent businesses. Speaker 2 00:32:51 Electricians. I mean, it's very hard as a network engineer to start an independent business. I'm just gonna tell you flat out, you, you almost always have work for somebody large because what are you gonna do? Like hang out a shingle and be a consultant. And that's actually a lot harder than it sounds. I'm just telling you that's a lot harder than it sounds it . And so, so, but these jobs, like as an electrician, like you can start your own electrical business and subcontract and all of a sudden you have not just this data center, but every data center in the country that's willing to pick you up as long as you're willing to drive there to go do it or fly there to go do it. So I think a lot of these jobs are actually better in some ways than being coders or being Oh Speaker 4 00:33:29 They are. They absolutely are. And, and there's no student debt. Right? So most of these apprenticeship programs lead to really, really great paying jobs. And honestly the jobs are getting better because people don't wanna do things anymore. And the people that can do things now make a whole bunch of money in New York City right now, if you start out, um, going through the electrician apprentice journeyman program, you get out making about $150,000 a year and owe nobody . I mean that's, that's not bad, you know? Speaker 2 00:34:03 Yeah, no, it's not bad at all. Yeah. And and the upside, like I said, is eventually you can start your own business and maybe you hire a couple of people and you end up making two or $300,000 a year and having building value in the economy Sure. That you wouldn't otherwise build. So it's, yeah, I don't think it's a bad thing at all. Speaker 4 00:34:20 Well, and it's the opportunity to meet people where they wanna work to, right? Yeah. Because not everybody wants to do what you do. Not everybody wants to do what I do. You know, we have to have, it takes all kinds to do all things. And I think meeting people where they wanna work makes people happier anyway. Speaker 3 00:34:38 Yeah. Carrie, I wanted to go back to, um, you were talking about helping, uh, veterans, uh, transition into civilian life. Um, and I wonder 'cause so, so we've talked a lot about kind of the, the younger, the younger crowd kind of coming into a career. But then there's other people like the, like the veterans that are making a switch. They had they, the one thing was their occupation, now they're gonna do another thing. Um, I'm just curious what kind of experiences you had there? What, what was hard for them that, what were some common issues that they had before Speaker 2 00:35:04 You jump in, Kerry, I'll tell you that my transition from being a veteran to not being a veteran was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. Speaker 4 00:35:12 They all, everybody I've worked with say that says Speaker 2 00:35:14 That, that it was, it was incredibly difficult. I went through some extremely hard times trying to get back on my feet once I left the Air Force. Speaker 4 00:35:24 Interesting. Yeah. You know, I'm married to Yvette. Um, and I think for a lot of them, the trick is it's a very different way of life, right? If you go in the military, they tell you what you're gonna make. You go in private sector, you have to negotiate a salary. Wait, what , you go into the military, everybody knows your skills. Somebody's keeping up with you, right? You have your own little brag wall, but, but you have your own kind of thing in the private sector. You gotta show everybody what that is. You have to promote yourself. And I think some of those skills are really difficult. And I would say the other thing that I hear most from military veterans coming back is trying to find that purpose. Like when they were in the military, they felt their life had a purpose. They were, you know, everybody was working towards a common goal. Speaker 4 00:36:09 And then when you get in regular life outside of the military, sometimes that purpose is hard to find. And so one of the things that I tell 'em is, look, it takes everybody to make sure that technology functions for all of us. And the way to do that is to make sure everybody's a part of it and the, you know, and we have to bring in all these other people to make that happen. And so there are companies that hire predominantly veterans. Um, I just did, uh, hiring our heroes, uh, event with the Chamber of Commerce. Um, you know, there's a monthly draft that goes out and they have a whole bunch of people just, just so I guess everybody listening knows there's, there's two different programs with a chamber. One is skills bridge that's through the US Chamber. And another one's hiring our heroes. Speaker 4 00:36:56 Um, skill Bridge. You get to hire a veteran, they pay 12 weeks of their salary. And then the expectation is you'll hire 'em at the end if it all works out. Hiring our heroes is very similar to that, but it is military spouses and you know, they can work remote jobs, local jobs, whatever, same kind of thing. They kick in some of the salary. The expectation is you hire 'em. Now, I will say that one of the complaints that comes out of the military side is that there are companies and recruiters that take advantage of that program and they use people for 12 weeks free wages and then can 'em, and they do that serially. So if you're looking to hire on with some of those programs, make sure you do that. But there's also salute Mission Critical Overwatch, mission critical, all of those are companies that operate in the data, sp data center space that cater specifically to veterans. Speaker 4 00:37:47 C B R E J L L both have big veteran hiring programs. A lot of 'em do. I think a lot of veterans just don't know really how to put the two and two together. And unless you happen to be in it in the military, you don't really know about the data center space anyway. But what people don't realize is a lot of our military people are amazing construction people because they rebuild after wars and they, and you know, those skills absolutely transfer. So there's lots of different ways to get them involved. You know, from a women's perspective, women's perspective, the attrition rate for women in tech, right before Covid was 67% not to lead their job. That lead the whole industry. Isn't that a horrible number? Wow. Right? Yeah. And so I thought, you know, if there was something out there that was very easy to digest that people could kind of get comfortable with the topics, you know, maybe that would help. And maybe instead of leaving an industry, they go to a different part of the industry or something, you know, where that experience holds. But yeah, I mean it's tough. A lot of these kids wanna be entrepreneurs. They wanna be self-employed starting out. Yeah. And you know, the trades are a good way to do that. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:38:58 Yeah. I would say that's a big problem in our industry too, is that people drop out because they just don't know what else is available. You could, for 15 years, you get tired of it and you go become a farmer. I mean, I know people who've done that, which is cool for them, but like part of the reason they did that was because they didn't know of anything else in the industry. The industry was coding to them. They just didn't know the other stuff. Speaker 4 00:39:17 And it is, you know, because honestly that's most people's first exposure and that is, that is really, really tricky, is trying to separate the coding from the technology, at least from a career standpoint because it's not the only job by a long shot. People still have to build the machines that run that code, you know? Speaker 2 00:39:38 So I mean, I don't, um, so Carrie, maybe tell us a little bit about the book, um, so that we can, uh, people can find it and, uh, where to find you and stuff so that we can, people can reach out to you if they have questions or thoughts or somebody that knows who's looking for something. Speaker 4 00:39:53 So the book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It is color and black and white. So make sure you buy the right edition. Uh, if you do buy the black and white edition and you want color pictures, you can go to kerry getz.com and I'll send you the color pictures if you prefer. Um, it's also available on Kindle audio book, the Teachers Guide and the Educ Educate Educator's reference is coming out Monday. I, I believe, um, it's up in Amazon for approval, so that should be out. And then there's a children's book coming out that follows it, um, too, Speaker 2 00:40:23 Because we should all have toddlers in our data center just saying, well, Speaker 4 00:40:27 No. So the children's book is, um, it's actually called Poly Packet's Precious Payload. And it is, um, it's all about a, a little kid sending a smile to an ill grandma. Um, and how it gets to the internet and the routers and the networks and kind of how it all gets there, but in story form for kids. That's Speaker 2 00:40:44 Really cool. Great. Okay. And so people can find you on LinkedIn, Twitter, Carrie Gatz, right? Speaker 4 00:40:51 That is correct. Carrie j Getz on Twitter. LinkedIn is Carrie Getz. Yep. Alright, Speaker 2 00:40:56 Cool. And your website? Speaker 4 00:40:58 Carrie getz.com or strategic comm.com either. All Speaker 2 00:41:01 Right, cool. Just making sure. And then Tom, where can people get in touch with you? Uh, LinkedIn and Twitter? Uh, just search for Tom Amon. Just search for Tom Amon. Mm-hmm. . Great. All right. And I'm gonna switch, Speaker 4 00:41:12 He's the only one in the entire world that will pop up. Speaker 2 00:41:15 He is . I, I usually, Speaker 4 00:41:18 I found out right after I got married. I'm not the only care gets either . Speaker 2 00:41:25 Wow. Um, let's see. And I'm Russ White. You can find me here on the hedge at Rule 11 Tech on LinkedIn, on Twitter, blah, blah, blah. I'm actually really hard to find. So you know, if you just do a Google search, you'll probably find me or a binging search or a DuckDuckGo. I personally use DuckDuckGo most of the time, but you know, that's me. So Carrie, thanks for coming on and for our listeners, thank you very much for listening. If you know somebody looking for a job in this area, you know, try to encourage them to do something, you know, to look beyond the coding, look beyond, uh, just what we know and into the other areas and point 'em with these really great resources. Thanks for your attention. 'cause we know that you actually make the hedge happen by listening. Um, so we, we really appreciate your time and your attention and thanks for listening and we will catch you next time.