andy lapteff 0:16

This is the Art of Network Engineering, where technology meets the human side of IT. Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems, or shaping your career, we've got the insights, stories, and tips to keep you ahead in the ever-evolving world of networking. Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. My name is Andy Laptev, and I am joined by not an Andy. You're officially Drew, correct?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

I'm officially Drew. My dad was Andy, and so I didn't know your dad was Andy. My dad is Andy. I didn't, yeah. My parents didn't want me to be a junior, but they also didn't want to get confused, like people get confused. So I was Drew.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Drew, for people who don't know you, living under a rock. I'm Drew Conry Murray. Uh, I am a podcast co-host at Packet Pushers, where I also do some writing.

andy lapteff 0:58

You are those things, and I so enjoy uh I've been listening to Packet Pushers for at least 10 years, and I I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Well, I'm excited to be on A1.

andy lapteff 1:08

This is like, this is it, man. This is the first. Drew, Drew was on. So we're both from PA. We kind of see each other in airports sometimes, which is nice. I was in a lounge once, and I think you and your son came up. I'm like, whoa! Yeah. We were going to Texas and I had an Eagles jersey. Remember that? You did.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

We were headed to Dallas country, and you were like, but it wasn't Dallas.

andy lapteff 1:26

I wasn't that brave. Yeah. I don't think I would have done it going to Dallas. I probably would have.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

I think you would have.

andy lapteff 1:31

I probably would have got beat up. So your dad was Andy. You could have been a junior. That's amazing. Oh, I was almost a Drew. So my aunt Julia, Julia Flatley, Aunt Jewel, she was the best. She told my mom, like, oh, what about Drew? Isn't Drew nice? And I would have much preferred Drew.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Really?

andy lapteff 1:45

I don't like Andy. Why not? It's a little kid's name.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

My dad would disagree.

andy lapteff 1:49

And when I say hi, nice to meet you, I'm Mandy. People go, Mandy? So yeah, it feels like a little kid's name. I and I went through identity crises throughout my life, not crisis, but I was an Andrew for a while. Uh-uh. And my grandparents called me Andrew growing up. My buddies called me Lap because my last name's Lap Tef, and that was my name. So I liked Lap. Lap was cool. That was like my high school college thing. Andrew was okay, but I don't feel like an Andrew. That's kind of formal. And Andy felt like a little kid's name, but I am a junior. So what did your dad your dad didn't think Andy was a little kid's name?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Apparently not. I mean, maybe he did. He never, he never said. He never remarked on his name.

andy lapteff 2:25

I'm an old ass. I should probably accept my name by now and just move on.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

It's never too late. It's never too late. It's never too late. You can go back to lap.

andy lapteff 2:33

Well, yeah. They were different. I probably shouldn't go back to laugh. It's good. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Are there some associations with that that you don't have?

andy lapteff 2:40

Maybe, maybe. So I asked you on the show because you have done a bajillion packet pushers episodes. I love them all. You always have great insights. I am compelled by people who ask good questions. And I think in part it's because when I hear a good question, like, oh, you know, it steers direct, you know, conversations in certain directions. And I am also plagued by curiosity. I used plague kind of, you know, playfully, but yeah, when I hear someone asking good questions, I assume like, oh, they must be a curious person. They're they're they're going down that path. So I thought it would be cool up front just to kind of like who is Drew? Because when I learned, here's really why Drew is on, I think. When I learned that you didn't have a technical background, I'm like, wait. Because I hear you hang and contribute in these very technical discussions. And when you said you were like a journalism, you know, writer guy on the I was an English major in college. An English major. Like now I was a communication major, but that's because I failed out of computer science.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

But again, to me I didn't even try.

andy lapteff 3:36

So but in my silly internal narrative, English majors, uh communication majors, you wouldn't think they would be on highly technical shows.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

I didn't think I would either. Right. This is a surprise to me as much as anyone.

andy lapteff 3:49

So as far as I can tell, this is the first time Drew has been on a show talking about himself. So who is Drew Connery Murray? And how did we go from like this guy who isn't in tech to this guy who was like one of the biggest voices in our technical industry? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Um It started when I got married. Um, my wife got into a graduate program. So we moved out to California, to the Bay Area. Uh, and this would have been 1998. So, right around the time the whole internet bubble was inflating.

andy lapteff 4:22

What were you doing? Were you working at the time?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

No, I uh I had to quit my job to go move out or didn't have anything lined up. So I ended up freelancing for this company called CMP, which did a lot of publishing, but they also had a bunch of magazines, including tech magazines. So the first real editing job that I got when I was there full time was for a magazine called Network Computing. And they just hired me as a copy editor. That was it. I wasn't writing, I wasn't doing it.

andy lapteff 4:49

I was just but interesting. It was for a networking.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

But it was a network publication, yeah. And I didn't know anything about it. They were just like, you know, make sure everything's spelled right. Here's our style guide, make sure the grammar's good. They just straight up copy editing.

andy lapteff 5:02

And what were you doing prior to that? You were were you a writer journalism?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Uh prior to that, I worked for a small publishing company in Boston. So you went to college, you were an English major. I went to college, I was an English major. I went and got um a master's in education. I was gonna be a teacher. And then I did my teaching practicum where I was actually in the classroom and I was like, I hate this. So I finished the degree and got the debt, but didn't go into teaching. I hate kids, I'm out. And wasn't the kids, the kids I loved. Um, I was gonna be a high school English teacher, essentially. That was my idea. But then it's a hard thing. I was really young. I felt like I didn't have any actual experience or anything to actually teach them uh because I was still learning myself. And being a teacher is a grind. So respect to all of the teachers out there. It's hard work, and I know everybody jokes like, oh, you get summers off and blow you just coloring or whatever. No, it's hard freaking work.

andy lapteff 5:59

I just remembered I had uh I think her name was Miss Eberly. She was my one of my high school English teachers, and that was the year we were reading like Shakespeare, and like yeah, I remember that being so difficult because they say it's written in English, yeah. And English is my native tongue. But we would literally, I don't know if we'd spend an entire class going through either a sentence or a paragraph, like every word just seemed like what? Yeah. I I never got there to like, oh, I love Shakespeare now. Like that was, but to your point, like it's it's a difficult, especially that age, like trying to get a high school kid interested in English as a subject would be tough.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

It's tough, yeah.

andy lapteff 6:34

So okay, um, you were gonna be a teacher, English, and then you got out of the teaching thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

I got out of teaching, went to work as an editor for a small publishing company in Boston.

andy lapteff 6:44

Okay, and then your wife gets this awesome opportunity. You guys go out to the Bay. We go out to the Bay Area, yeah. Can you get a job at Network Networking World?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Is that called Network Magazine?

andy lapteff 6:52

Network magazine.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

It was one of the many trade pubs focused on the tech industry. And this again was at the time when there were still printed magazines.

andy lapteff 7:01

Good old days.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah. And actually, Ethan Banks was just talking to him yesterday, and he said he remembered he would get uh Network World, the physical magazine delivered to his office, and he would be like, Oh yeah, it's here this month, and he'd go and read some columns and be like, Oh, what's the latest switch? Whatever. Like that was how information was getting out to people was still through print.

andy lapteff 7:20

What was that like for you who didn't have a background in networking to be was it harder, like the acronyms and how was it edited? It was insane.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The first probably the first year, uh, it was luckily they had built a style guide, which is like this is what LAN means. Okay. First you spell it out and then you put it in the LAN. This is what TCP means, all that stuff. So they had a basic style guide. And then I just read everything I could get my hands on about what was happening.

andy lapteff 7:49

What did you read?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Like you like trying to learn networking, you mean to learn what does this all mean? The the trying to learn the technology. Yeah, what does all this mean? How does it all fit together? How does it work?

andy lapteff 7:57

Did they offer you any resources? Like, did you get a C C N A or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

No, they didn't offer that, but there were just books around. Um, like a lot of the older editors had had were either analysts or had been network engineers, uh, so they had their books, so they I I would just read whatever was on their desk. I started reading the other technical magazines that were around.

andy lapteff 8:16

Did any of it make sense? Not really. Not really. This is why I'm so impressed by you, because you would never know listening to you.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Well, it was a long process. And I'll tell you, one of the best things that ever happened to me, I hated it at the time, but we were a magazine, and so vendors would come and tell us about their new products, and usually they would speak to the senior editors who had some experience. But one day, one of the senior editors came by my desk. I was still a copy editor and said, Hey, I'm talking to it, it was one of the early firewall companies, and I can't make the meeting, you go. And I was like, Just sent you. What do I ask him? He's like, Don't worry, just you'll figure it out.

andy lapteff 8:51

This was at the network world.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

This was at Network Magazine.

andy lapteff 8:53

How long you were there? Not long. I was there for a few years. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah. But you weren't ready to have I was not ready to have this conversation because I I was I barely knew what a firewall was. I was like, it keeps stuff out here and doesn't let it in there, and that was about the extent of it. And then I have to sit there for half an hour with an engineer and an exec who are like so excited about this new thing and they're saying things, and it's like, do you remember the Charlie Brown show where the teacher talked and it's like, yeah, that's what I'm saying? And I'm just like, mm-hmm. Oh, really? Was that stressful? Super stressful. Because I felt like one, they're gonna think I'm a freaking idiot, and two, am I gonna somehow screw up for the magazine?

andy lapteff 9:30

I guess you weren't recording like the audio.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

It wasn't audio or anything, it was just an interview, and then like if we decided it was worth writing up a write-up, whatever.

andy lapteff 9:38

But I'd almost bring a cassette and like I'm gonna miss something. I don't know what any of this stuff is, you know?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Like I used to actually record when I would um interview people on the phone, I would record the conversation and then transcribe the conversation by hand, which added to my workload. But it was I think that part was also very useful because it made me go back over things and be like, oh wait, okay, okay. I think I'm starting to see how this works.

andy lapteff 10:00

So when your wife went out to work this dream job or go to this dream school or whatever it was, does she have any idea what happened to you and your poor emotional state?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Like I'm sure she did, but she was also she was in a PhD program and it was really hard, so she was do it dealing with her own stuff. Yeah, she didn't want to hear your cry. She didn't, yeah. She was like, Oh, I'm sorry, you had to spell LAN.

andy lapteff 10:21

I learned about molecular geometry of tetrahedral. She was learning stats.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

So she was like, Yeah, get good, yeah, go cry somewhere else.

andy lapteff 10:27

I can almost feel the anxiety for you. Like I remember how anxious I felt. I don't know if anxiety is the right term, but I spent eight months in Cisco Nedicad with an instructor who was a CCMP, and we had four-hour class on Friday night, four-hour class on Saturday, and we would lab and I was studying like crazy. And there were still concepts I would come upon and be like, what? Like subnetting is an example. I almost quit over subnetting because I'm like, I don't, this doesn't make sense. You're telling me it's important, you're telling me I'll get it. And honestly, dude, 20 years in, I'm not like I don't subnet well. I can I can look at certain subnet like a mask and and get it. Like the class C is like, Oh, yeah, right, the third octet just changes, got it. But you throw other stuff at me, I'm like, dude, I don't know, man. That's what we have calculators for. So for your for you who didn't spend two years trying to pass the C CNA to just be in this every day, yeah. Was any of it fun? Was it mostly stressful? Were you interested in it at all? Like, what was the experience?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

It was interesting. For one, the environment, the the Bay Area in the late, late 90s, early 2000s was like this bubbling hotbed of where everything seemed to be happening.

andy lapteff 11:29

So like the dot-com thing happening now?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, yeah, the dot-com thing. So besides the work I was in, it was like the culture around me was also being like, oh, what is this internet thing? Oh, this is cool. Oh, this could be transformative. And so I felt like I was kind of at ground zero of a of a thing that was happening.

andy lapteff 11:43

So you were kind of learning it as it was taking off.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

As it was taking off. So I felt like, okay, this seems like it's going to be important. So I'm maybe well positioned. Uh and this is pretty interesting, this little niche part of it.

andy lapteff 11:55

Were you interested or was it strictly just I need a job? This is the job I have, and I have to do well at it.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

At first it was, I just need a job, but with the interviews, I learned that there was a set of questions I could ask that generally applied to everybody. Like, what operating system is it running on? Oh what kind of throughput? What's the performance? What are my trade-offs?

andy lapteff 12:14

Did they give you that list ahead of time when they sent you into the firewall people? Or you had to figure this out?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

No, that's what I figured out on my own. Somebody could have been like, here's a list of questions in case you get stuck. The reason I wanted to tell that story was being thrown in the deep end like that made me have to figure it out and to come up with a set of questions that were relevant uh to the people who were taking their time to talk to me about something.

andy lapteff 12:33

Don't you think we all get trial by fire?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

I think a lot of us do. I'm sure. I mean, every career, every profession, every part of there's some moment in life where you are going into a situation you are not prepared for and you just gotta go through it.

andy lapteff 12:45

That's interesting. The the the difference between being educated in something and learning about the concepts. But then applying it.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Mine was lower risk than like network engineers. Like if you are But you needed a job, you know, just doing the big thing and you get displaced and like you know if I misunderstood something or I wrote something that was incorrect, it wasn't gonna take down a network.

andy lapteff 13:10

It was just Was anybody checking on like were you the final say, or was there another editor after we had after I was copy editing for a while, I asked, Can I start writing?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Okay. And one of the senior editors was like, Okay, you can do this little bit.

andy lapteff 13:22

But could mistakes get out? Like, or did you have somebody after you? Right. If you guys can't spell simple stuff, we did have layers of control.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

There, I mean, copy editing was for the the grammar and the spelling and all that, but there was also a technical edit that it would have to go through. Because as a writer, you want it to be good. Yeah, and then a general edit, does this read well? Are we emphasizing the right things? Did you ever mess up and get in trouble? I messed up. I never it wasn't like a punitive organization.

andy lapteff 13:49

I don't know. I can't believe I called the thing a other thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yeah, I I had some It was a gigabit, not a gigabyte. Yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, stuff like that. Or people would write in and be like, Who is this knucklehead who said this about that? They totally got it wrong. And you you're you look at it and you're like, Oh yeah, the well actually crowd? It was, but they had to do it via email.

andy lapteff 14:10

I have 15 years of production experience, and people say that about me that I don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

So I remember we're all just doing our best, man. One of the best comments I got was from somebody I don't even remember what they were complaining about, but I have a hyphenated last name because my wife and I put our last names together. He thought I was some like British nobleman or something. I was like, buddy, you couldn't be farther from the truth. But he's like, Who's this? Blah, blah, blah, thinking he's so whatever. That was a funny critique.

andy lapteff 14:34

Like, how did you get from editor of networking world or network world to superstar, packet pushers, analyst host guy? I know that there's something in between there, but there's a lot in between there. Yeah, yeah. So I'll let you get into as much of the in-between as you want. Okay. But that's where we'll head is like, how does this poor guy thrown in the network world together? Again, this is amazing to me that you didn't have to go through formal training. The fact that you taught yourself enough to figure this out. Did your anxiety start to abate as you learn more?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

In some ways, it increases because you realize how much more there is to learn. You're never done. Yeah. There's always more. Like, oh my God. Right. And you feel like, okay, I I figured out what a firewall does. And then it's like, well, here comes IDS. And you're like, well, what is that? How does that work?

andy lapteff 15:18

This is the dirty secret no one tells you when you get into tech, at least for me, is it never ends. That's yeah. I thought that I would get a net I'd get a certification. I just wanted to stop climbing poles and I wanted to make more money because I fell in love with a girl and I wanted to be a good earner and a good husband and all that. So I'm like, all right, I gotta stop. I gotta get something better. And I honestly believed that I would get a certification, get this job in networking, and then just do networking. So fast forward to like, well, you have to learn development now. You know, all the whining I did because like I just want to be a networker. Well, now you have to do all this other stuff too. Tough. Like, uh so it's a it's an interesting, even from your side of the table, like it never ends, it's always there. This oh my god, we never arrive. No, and then every five years there's this new thing. Like, oh, you thought you you thought you caught up? No, which is the cool part of tech. It would be a lot easier and cooler if I didn't. I don't want to say if I wasn't married with kids, but like if I had less responsibility in my life, sure, I would just read and study all the time and be a super expert with all the certs. Like, guys, I got soccer tonight. I'm coaching the thing. Like, yeah, exactly. I have to sell life. Like, yeah, yeah. I'd like to celebrate my anniversary with my wife. Is that okay? Like, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Yeah, can I have my weekends? All right.

andy lapteff 16:35

So, how do we get from Network World to pack a pushers? What happened?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

It was Network Magazine. At the time, this whole internet bubble was going on. The magazine industry was like going crazy because there were so many new companies, they were all buying ads. So magazines were getting bigger and thicker, and there was a huge market for it. Then the dot-com bubble collapsed, so did all that advertising business. So the company I worked for got acquired multiple times, changed a bunch of hands, and I got shifted from a bunch of different magazines. I worked on network computing, which at the time I think was, in my opinion, the premier print publication around networking. I also worked for a magazine called Information Week and had a networking beat.

andy lapteff 17:10

Editor and writing. Yeah, writing and editing.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yeah, I had moved up to full-time writing by this point. And then the organization that owned um network computing also owned the Interop Conference. And the Interop Conference started like asking me to help them put together the technical track for the Interop event, the live event. So we're just all the technical topics.

andy lapteff 17:30

You just made a big jump from like editing copy to writing.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Like even there, like that's a big I moved up over time until I got to an editor-in-chief role. Wow. Yeah. Look at you. Well, part of it, the secret is if you are the lowest paid person at the organization when it gets acquired or has a huge problem, you're gonna be the last one fired. So there were levels being shucked away, and they were like, That guy can do it. Uh we're gonna get rid of everyone above him. Yeah, I just make him do all the jobs. Uh everybody above me just get cut down. Um, and then eventually it was my turn. But yeah, you know, I guess I should have seen it coming. But I did rise up through the ranks to do more editing, uh, writing and editing, and then take on editorial responsibilities, like being production editor and editor-in-chief eventually. And then you were doing the technical track at and then I got a job with the interopt conference where I was working full-time for the interopt conference, putting together the technical, all the technical tracks that people would go and attend.

andy lapteff 18:21

Full time. So is that because the print industry was suffering and you had to get out?

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah. And I saw the opportunity with the interopt conference because at that time the business was also like live events is where it's at. It's the same company that also owned um the Black Hat conference. Okay. So they were like, yeah, there's a lot of money here in in in live events.

andy lapteff 18:38

That's smart. You saw the contraction in in your industry. I mean it was hitting me in the face constantly.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

So it wasn't like a brilliant insight on that.

andy lapteff 18:44

And how did you get how did you make that pivot? Did you did you know those people from the print stuff?

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Yeah, just from being in the business. Yeah.

andy lapteff 18:51

You might have interviewed one or wrote an article for like whatever, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Or uh somebody was like, is there somebody here who can help us? Um, you know, we need to fill in a a talk for this event. And I was like, Oh, you could try this person because they've done some good stuff, and they were like, Oh, this worked out.

andy lapteff 19:04

And then so they were like, So that's how you got plugged into the industry, I guess. It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

It's kind of like the longer you're around, the more people you meet, the more connections you make, right? The more opportunities that might present themselves that you hadn't anticipated. Which is exactly how I met Ethan and Greg, because I one when I was editor-in-chief of network computing, Ethan uh did some um writing for us, like as a freelancer. And so did Greg sometimes. Who were they writing for? The interop uh for network computing.

andy lapteff 19:30

Network computing, okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yeah, they would write some articles while they were doing packet pushers. Yeah. They would write some articles for us and I publish them and pay them.

andy lapteff 19:35

Okay. Did you interface with them at the time? Like were there phone calls or meetings, or it was just, hey, here's a thing to edit.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

It was more email.

andy lapteff 19:41

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

It was email like, hey, you guys are pretty well known and you know what you're talking about. Do you want to write an article about XYZ?

andy lapteff 19:46

Very business and back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I got to know them. And then when I was working for the Interop conference, I was like, Hey, do you guys want to speak? And so I worked with them and they would they did like day-long talks, Ethan and Greg at Interop, and they were very popular, some of the highest-rated stuff we did. Absolutely. And that's how I got to know folks like Ivan Pepelniak. I think he's here. He's here.

andy lapteff 20:05

I've never met him. I'm a little afraid of him, I think. He's the sweetest guy. Is he really? He really is. But he goes at people, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

He goes at technology. Right, right. He goes at technology. It's not personal. It's not personal. He goes, he's very frustrated by bad design uh and and bad technical decisions. Yeah. But he is a lovely human being.

andy lapteff 20:22

I wanted to ask him on while I was here, and I was just too intimidated to go for it. Well, I listen, I don't know him, and I want to be like, hey, nice to meet you, and by the way, right? I was afraid he'd yell at me. He would not. But when I heard that he is livid about bad design, I thought that was like an interesting, like, oh wow, that's everything bad comes from bad design, I think, right? Yeah. Like, why aren't we designing things better?

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah, exactly. So that that's his passion, and he's been talking about that for a long time.

andy lapteff 21:48

So, how do you go? So you meet Ethan and Greg, you guys are working together, you're doing different things, you're inviting them on.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

So through Interop, I got to work with Ethan and Greg more closely. And then one day Greg reached out to me and said, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this news podcast on packet pushers. Do you want to be like a guest co-host? So I was just coming on voluntarily as his guest co-host. This was the network break podcast.

andy lapteff 22:10

Which makes sense because you worked in I was still working for Interop. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

And I wasn't being paid by packet pushers. I was just like, yeah, this sounds like a fun thing to do.

andy lapteff 22:17

But you wrote the industry a long time. This was a new show. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I I was still plugged very much plugged into the industry. For Ballywick, like yeah. It makes sense to ask the journalist to be the news.

andy lapteff 22:27

I think it was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

And Greg and I made a nice pair because he had the technical background and I had the journalism background, so I could talk about the latest stuff and he would be like, yeah, and here's why it's all crap or whatever.

andy lapteff 22:35

That sounds like Greg. Was it you two? Like it was you two?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

It was the two of us. Huh.

andy lapteff 22:39

Yeah. So we invited you on to be a guest host, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

I was a guest host, yeah, uh on the Network Break podcast, but I was still a full-time employee by Interop. How'd that go? It was a lot of fun. Yeah. In some way, like it's so much fun being on your podcast because it's not my podcast. I don't have to worry about it. I don't need to show up. Isn't that nice? It's really nice. And so that's the same experience I had with Network Break, where I would just come and Greg would be like, here's the things we're talking about. I'm like, great. And then sometimes I started like bringing some stories, like I think we should talk about this and this.

andy lapteff 23:04

I wish I could say the same about coming on packet pushers, but I was so nervous coming on heavy networking, just because it's such a big show, and I know everybody's listening. And I'm I was talking about something kind of you know scary at that conference. So, like I was so nervous coming on your show. You did great. Thank you. I wasn't fishing for a compliment, but I was so nervous. Yeah. Like how you're like, oh, this is great. I don't got a prep. I'm like, oh my God. I'm going like you guys are like the I don't know what to call. I was gonna say CNN, that's not right, but like you guys are, you know, like, oh no, everybody's gonna hear this.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I hope it's good. I think at the time too, Echo Pushes was still kind of like uh just a side gig for Ethan and Greg.

andy lapteff 23:40

Oh yeah, they might have still been working.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, I think it was around 2010 that they went full time.

andy lapteff 23:44

Okay, but it was great. You were working with Greg, it was fun, it was fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

And then I got laid off from interop. So I reached out to Greg and said, just want to let you know I got laid off. And if you want to find another co-host, because the idea was he wants somebody plugged into the industry and and had their finger on the pulse and wow was also coming from an org that he liked.

andy lapteff 24:03

That's big of you.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

You know, it's his show.

andy lapteff 24:06

I'm like, yo, I got laid off and needed a job, bro.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Like, oh, you know, sorry, man, I can't help you anymore. So, what was his response? His response was, Do you want a job? Wow, which was like the layoff, like I should have seen it coming just because everybody that I had ever worked with there got laid off, but it's still a gut punch. Like, and by that time I had kids, I had a mortgage, losing my salary was like it's the question of like, are we gonna have to move back in with somebody's parents? Are we gonna lose the house? That kind of conversation you have.

andy lapteff 24:36

Can we pause there for a moment?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah.

andy lapteff 24:40

I'm glad that you're sharing that and that the weight of having a family hit different. Um, I know plenty of people who haven't had kids and that was their life decision and rock on like that's great. There's something different, and I don't know how to articulate it other than you know, I brought humans into the world who need everything from me. Everything, yeah. I lost my salary, and that is like some people say that like they don't, oh, it was great. I went to the beach for six months, or like I like some I don't know if they're lying. That is not how I experienced it. Well, me, me me neither, which is why like when you started talking about it, it brought me back, and I'm like, uh. So it's such a terrible thing to go through any time in your life. But to your point, like if you're 24 and you have no bills and you have to move home, okay, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Or oh my God, I have a mortgage. But you're in your 30s, you have a mortgage, and in the United States, like sort of your job is also like a key part of your identity, and when you lose that job, it feels like a part of your identity was like, you know, your val your self-worth really takes a hit.

andy lapteff 25:40

And then what are you gonna do? So the public like the publication industry was, you know, the magazines died, right? Right. And then you pivot to interop, which is great. Yeah, are there other interop type like were you totally lost?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Like, I was totally lost. Like, what's next? So I started looking for jobs at like some online pubs, I started looking for at other live events, and I also started like thinking about well, maybe I could work in marketing at a vendor or something because any idiot can do that.

andy lapteff 26:11

That's where he was going. I just said it's for you now. No, it makes sense as a writer, a communicator.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Right, I was a writer and a communicator, and I could see technical language. Yeah.

andy lapteff 26:20

So how long before Greg offered you a job? How long were you like trying to figure out? It was a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Um, I had I did get a severance from the company, like they treated me fairly, they gave me a severance, they set me up with Cobra or whatever it is, but it was like maybe a six-week severance. It wasn't how old were your kids? Uh they were middle school, middle school age. Yeah. Um, so I was like, my wife, bless her heart, was like, you're gonna it's fine, you're gonna be great. You should take this time, relax. She even said, like, take take a week off, take a couple weeks off, relax, don't think about anything, then you'll find something. I trust you. How'd that go for you? I didn't do that at all. No.

andy lapteff 26:58

Same. Yeah, you should take some time to find yourself and really find what'll make you happy. Yeah. That's not what I did. That's not what I did.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Well, fortunately, I appreciate the fact that she no, it didn't last long, and I really respect the fact that she said that. It was in some ways it helped. Like it Yeah. I, you know, I didn't take the advice, but I was like, I appreciate you. That that kind of support was really valuable.

andy lapteff 27:17

That's a really good point. My wife took it better than I did.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Yeah.

andy lapteff 27:20

And I was surprised because some smaller things to me can really set her off. Dealing with change in life, I didn't think was a strength of hers, but I don't know if it's because she believed in me. I don't know. I have to ask her. This is actually something I should ask her. Like, how was she so strong? Because I was a mess and I was trying not to look how I felt, which is when I started running again. Like, I I've been running ever since because I was laying in bed when I got laid off on a Thursday, and I'm like, I'll be fine, it'll be great. I'm good at things, blah, blah, blah. People know me. Friday, the weekend, and Monday hit. My wife went to work, the kids went to school, and that's when it hit me.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

I'm like, You're just in that house by yourself.

andy lapteff 27:58

I have nothing to do. Like, this is awful. And I was gonna stay in bed. I'm like, well, this is that's not I can't. I don't think that's what she meant by take some time, you know what I mean? If I stay in this bed, I'm not getting out. So I put on sneakers, started running it. But then no, I'm glad that uh when someone's going through something hard and you're partnered with them, it's so loving to. I don't know how assured my wife was, but if she ever was nervous, she didn't let on. Yeah. And it really helped.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

It really did me too. I guess we're very lucky to supportive spouses.

andy lapteff 28:59

Marry well, people, right? It really makes a difference. It matters. So Greg offers you a job.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yep. Super awesome, right? He said they had really just started Pack of Pushers as a business and they weren't sure how it was going to work out. So he said, Let's bring you on as a trial part-time. And I was like, sounds great.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

So I'm working for them part-time. I'm doing network break. I started doing some other production work for them. At that time, it was basically just like two or three podcasts. Yep. But I would help like write descriptions and titles and all that stuff, and that became part of my job. That's me. Yeah. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do a lot of work. Um yeah. For folks who don't know behind the scenes, like it seems like, oh, you just talk into a mic and it comes out. No. Like aside from the audio editing, like trying to write a description, a good title, something that sounds like engaging, writing good description so folks know whether it's the right show for them. That takes a lot of work.

andy lapteff 29:52

Yeah. Um I just got to the point where I really like I'm going through things and I just realized how bad our titles are. It's hard. Like three-quarters of our shows, like the show titles have nothing. Like you would never know from the title what the show is about. It was all inside stuff. Like we didn't think a lot of people would be listening. So, you know, one might be like, I don't know, 20. We had this guy on the show and he was 24 years old and he was very successful at 24. He knew so much. So we named the episode 24. Okay. Yeah. Is anybody right searching for something going to know that 24 is about a young man who has really come up in the technical age? So now again, now I'm in the process of like, oh my God, I got to rename 200 episodes. Like to your butt for SEO, right? Like nobody's going to find us based on 24. It's a number. And the worst part is I think the title is like 7-24 because it was the seventh episode. Like you couldn't confuse prospects out in the audience more than we did because we didn't know what we were doing. But anyway, he brings you on, you're doing you know, good. I'm not working part time. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

I'm I'm doing the network break with Greg and then doing other work. And at some point he and Ethan had a conversation and they were like, I think I think we can go full time. Oh, that's nice. And it was great.

andy lapteff 31:02

Full time with you? Yeah. Like have they had had they quit their day jobs yet? They had, yeah. Yeah, okay. So it was starting to take off.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

It was.

andy lapteff 31:08

Yeah. Oh how long was that whole?

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Was it months, years? It was months. Wow. Yeah, it was months where I was where I was like, not sure it's gonna work out. I think it's gonna work out. But I'm not sure it's gonna work out. But I have something.

andy lapteff 31:19

So the feeling you must have had when Greg offered you part-time had to be just fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Like it was a validation of okay, I'm I I I think I can get through this, even if it doesn't work out with packet pushers. At least somebody who I respect like Greg thought I was worthwhile to consider employing. So that really helped.

andy lapteff 31:37

Absolutely. And then again, I remember when I was out of work, I because I had technical chops, I thought, well, I could do, you know, I should be able to get a job. And I'm not saying it would have been scarier for you, but like you're on the journalism side, it's it's more of writing. Like again, mark like I'm in marketing, right? It's I'm not calling marketing more fluffy than technical, but if my company needs to cut, you know, budget, yeah, are they gonna cut the developers and the product managers that are building things that make money? Right. Or are they gonna cut the guy who makes videos and right and and updates the website? Yeah. In a sense, it's kind of scarier on the communication side because you know you're the first to go.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Although I will also say, as someone who consumes a ton of vendor communications, having a good marketing person, having a good communications team is so valuable. Slippy that 20 bucks.

andy lapteff 32:30

You listen to that, people?

unknown 32:32

That's right.

andy lapteff 32:33

So that's fantastic. Well, that was uh how long ago was that? 20 years ago, 10 years ago? When did you start?

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Uh I think 2015 is when I came on full time, like I'm doing this full time. Wow. Yeah, 11 years.

andy lapteff 32:47

So you started on the network break? Was that the news show that you started? That was the new show, which you're still doing.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

I'm still doing.

andy lapteff 32:52

I think I've been on there with you. Or maybe I was in the network break. We know something.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Yeah, we did something else.

andy lapteff 32:56

Whatever the sponsored ones that you do.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tech bytes, maybe. Yeah, tech bites. Yeah, tech bites. Yeah. So you're still doing network break. I'm doing network break. Um, we launched a security podcast called Packet Protector that I co-host with Jennifer Manila. And since Greg retired, um, I have taken on co-host duties of heavy networking with you're Ethan's right-hand man uh on heavy networking.

andy lapteff 33:17

And you did such a good job when I was on. Here's the 20. Yeah, excuse me. I was trying to get it back. Um, how's it been, man? Like, is this I don't want to say a dream come true. That sounds silly. But for a communication guy who likes to write and who likes to communicate for a living, to have an opportunity. I listen, you bring value, so it's not like they did you a favor, but to have an opportunity to do and fun things with people. Like you get to travel, which is nice, right? I didn't know that your wife's here with you, which is pretty cool. I was gonna bring my wife until I saw the plane ticket price. Like, oh my God. Yeah. Coming to Europe is not cheap. No, it's not. They might listen to this, so you can't say you're not enjoying it, but you seem to be really enjoying what you do.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

I do. I I love it. It's interesting work. It challenges me all the time. And I work with great people. Um, it's a small outfit, but everybody who works with us is like really enthusiastic about what they do. We know what we want to accomplish. We know we are trying to help our listeners advance their careers or get a better understanding of what's happening, or be able to anticipate all of the changes coming and try to navigate all of the confusion that's out there in the market and around the technology. So it feels like valuable work.

andy lapteff 34:25

It absolutely is.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

And it's so community focused, which is great, which sounds kind of fluffy, but I know this happens to you. When you meet people who say, I love your podcast, like it also feels good, but you also like feel like you have a connection with that person. You can it's it's just a great feeling.

andy lapteff 34:39

So the best part about this whole experience for me has been the feedback. And it's not that it's because it feeds my ego, because it really doesn't. It's not like I feel better about myself because like, ooh, somebody thinks I'm somebody from something. It's the messages that I get constantly from folks who thank me for what we've built, for what we do. And then they give me specific examples. This happens constantly. Just last night, somebody hit me up on LinkedIn and he's like, I just want to tell you I've been listening for however long and I'm going my way through all the episodes. And I don't know if it's because of my my story and my background, but I seem to attract a lot of people who are like career pivoters, like, oh, I was blue-collar too, and I had, you know, I got hurt and whatever, and I did the and it just feels so nice because you know, when you're going through hard times, I don't know, man. It it at the time I wasn't like, oh, this really crappy part of my life right now is gonna be inspiring for people someday. I'm just telling people my experience and the story of what happened in my life and career, and to kind of get this almost constant stream from people who I found your show, I love your story, and not just mine. I mean, they they love everybody that's been on the show, but it's you feel like you're helping people. Like that's all I want to do. Yeah, if you can make a living helping people, like is there anything better? Right. Uh that's pretty great. It is pretty great. I mean, I used to sell used cars and I would lie to myself that I was helping people, but I don't think I was helping people. You know what I mean? When I was jumping crappy cars out back before they got there because I knew it wouldn't start in front of them and going home at night telling myself I helped somebody. I mean, yes, I sold them an affordable car, but maybe I should have told them these things don't start all that well. Uh-huh. I'd like to ask you before we get out of the packet pushers world, you've seen so much happening over the years. You've been paying attention. Um, but you know, before we wrap, I just want to know if there's might we call them like industry trade wins. I mean, I have been, you know, yapping for probably way too long about network automation because I got laid off. And in my mind, and I don't even know if it's true at this point, because I've had people be like, I don't know, dude, maybe, but because I publicly said no, this is not for me. I don't want to do this when I was out of work. It I don't think it helped me to be anti-something, right? Um, so I've probably over-rotated on that and been yapping at our audience ever since that happened. And it's even, it was even my talk at Autocon 4. Like, learn the basics of this. If people have a choice between you who doesn't want anything to do with this, and at least someone who's curious that's done something, why would they ever choose you? And then I see AI and all the displacement, and I get even more scared. Like, oh my God, it's gonna get even worse. So, again, is that true? I don't know. It's been my experience, but because you have had a different life experience and you see way more industry and have done way more analyst type work than I have. I'm kind of curious for people listening, where do you think our industry is today? You know, is AI gonna make us all batteries in the matrix? Um, is network engineering going away? These are intentionally provocative things. I mean, it's probably not gonna go away. I don't think AI is gonna, you know, ruin the world. But what do you tell network engineers? There's two people I try to talk to. I don't care about the experts anymore. The CCIEs can go to hell. Well, because they've arrived. They're the doctors. Who cares, right? Like you don't go to a surgeon and tell them what they need to do in their life, they got it figured out. Like, you know, oh, you're you're you're an orthopedic surgeon. Let me tell you about something. They're not gonna listen to you. They got a God complex, and so do CCIEs, except for Ethan, he's lovely. Uh but for the people trying to get in, like when I was trying to get in as a cable guy, it was get your CCNA, and if you can communicate, if you can start a blog, you know, uh go to meetups, like try to meet people, try to show you can communicate, maybe build a home lab or do something like learn the stuff, apply the stuff, communicate the stuff. And that was kind of the triumvirate thing that someone told me, and it worked. Now, I don't know if they still apply because we've stacked on it, seems like a number of things on top of that. It's yeah, you know, that and all this other stuff. So the people trying to get in, what would you tell somebody? You know, you meet somebody here, and oh, I'm really trying to get in and I dig ditches and I'd love to get in, and somebody told me to come here. How do you get into our industry? And then if you're in, how do you stay skilled up enough to stay in and not get laid off when disruption hits because AI is gonna kill everything?

SPEAKER_00 38:48

It's a it's a really hard question because I feel like in some ways it's really unfair that the industry puts so much onus on individual employees to be constantly reskilling constantly, and it doesn't seem fair.

andy lapteff 39:02

On their own.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Yeah, on their own, on their own time, on their own dime.

andy lapteff 39:05

Um and then doctors and lawyers get paid to take CE credit classes, right? Right. It's part of their you know, employment thing. Oh, we will pay you to go to the class where costs are like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Maybe if you work for a big var or something, they'll they'll pony up for you to get a certificate or something. But mostly it's on your own time in your own dime, and that's not fair, but that is where the industry is. So one, understand that you're going to have to put the work in. Two, I think sort of what you said apply. You're gonna need some kind of certification, a C CNA or whatever else it might be. I think it's the C CNA. Yeah, that's like the entry level. Yeah, I don't I yeah, I don't know what it else it could be.

andy lapteff 39:41

I think it's the best entry level. You know, people complain that it's too whatever, and I know I work at a competitor and I'm not supposed to even say stuff, right? But I think when you look at all the entry-level networking certifications, it's the most encompassing and it's I think it's the one that you know the HR people have been trained to look for. Well, if you look at market share, they're the 800-pound gorilla. So if you're gonna go after one, like I again to get off of them, I'm not beating them up. Like, if you're gonna get a cloud cert, maybe you should get the one that has the biggest market share. Like what right? Right if you're trying to get in, right? So like I started studying AWS Associate because that was the biggest one. So anyway, I think you're right. Certification, I would lean towards C CNA.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

I think C CNA is a good one. I I would also maybe look at cloud, um, or maybe look at wireless because wireless is always growing uh and there's a huge need for engineers there.

andy lapteff 40:29

Is wireless growing?

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yeah. See what I mean by wireless is growing is that wireless is constantly refreshing.

andy lapteff 40:36

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

So the the refresh rate, the turnover rate on new gear, new technologies, I think is a lot faster, even than in like the LAN.

andy lapteff 40:43

The reason I push back is their automation has, I think, got so good with wireless that I just kind of figured it's set and forget. You know, like you have this UI screen, you plug the APs in. I know it's more complicated than that, but I don't know. Somebody once described to me wireless, is it's so much simpler than data center, meaning if someone reports that they can't see their kitty videos, they're either on Wi-Fi, off Wi-Fi, or I guess the roaming thing is bad where they're too far in the signal, isn't it? So you can log into the UI, look at their device, see what it is, and then be able to tweak things. And there's I think algorithms and probably AI stuff to to do it for you. Whereas, like there's other environments like this, say data center, it's so complex. You can't just have a single pane of glass and it's not like the phone is on or off Wi-Fi or the kitty videos aren't fast enough. It's like, oh my God, like what happened? Who touched something? Like everything is well, I guess it's blast radius. When the Wi-Fi is down, okay. Yeah, go get a cup of coffee, we'll work on it. When the data center's down, business. Like when AWS East One goes down, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which it does. Which it does. Half the internet services are down, right? Like in the planet. So it maybe it's just blast radius. But okay, it's good to hear that wireless is still a good thing to I I think so.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

And I I I take what you mean. I think wireless actually has been at the forefront of automation more than the other networking disciplines, but there's also a huge demand for it. And also the issue is when the automation stops working, that's when they need smart people who know what they're doing. And invariably, and the other side is design, like the design up front is needs to be done so well and can get very complicated, uh, that there's a lot of work that has to happen there.

andy lapteff 42:15

So do you have and and I'm cognizant of your um business structure, so I don't even know if I should ask you this, but so we said C CNA would be a good entry-level networking cert. When you say cloud, there's six of them. Right. Do you direct anyone anywhere, or that's not a smart thing for you to do?

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Because no one has a well, uh you know, yeah. I appreciate I appreciate your sensitivity.

andy lapteff 42:37

I don't want to I don't want to make you say one and you're and then people are pissed, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Obviously, AWS is the 800-pound gorilla in the market, I think, probably followed by Azure. So those if you're trying to break in, those would be the two that I would pursue if I wanted to come in cloud through the networking side via the cloud.

andy lapteff 42:51

Right. Obviously, if you're working at a shop and they're in a cloud, go for that one because you're more relevant. Exactly. But if you're trying to get in, yeah, if you're trying to get in, have a big name. We got the nuts and bolts of networking, which is let's say CCNA, cloud, which I think is the natural progression because I had a bunch of friends pivot in the cloud from networking when I didn't, and they all did really well. I'm like, oh route switches enough, leave me alone. I don't want to and it's funny because even in production, I we had four different public clouds, and it was just so confusing. They all work differently. The documentation we had wasn't great. When something broke, you couldn't figure out where it was, how it was like on-prem just seems simpler. So yeah, but cloud is huge, it's everywhere. And is there anything else like would you push people toward automation at all? Because it's in some of these curriculum, like it's now in the C CNA.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I think, yeah, I think the market is pushing them whether they want to or not. Like it's gonna, it's already in the CCNA, and it's gonna be that's the thing, like it's yet another thing to add on top of you you already you need to learn routing, you need to learn switching, you need to learn Ethernet, you need to learn IP, you need to learn a bit of security, you need to learn zero trust, you need to learn subnetting.

andy lapteff 43:54

Oh my god, you're giving me PTSD.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Yeah, but now you also probably need to learn Python, you probably need to learn the concept of of source of truth. You gotta learn I'm thinking through it.

andy lapteff 44:04

I appreciate that it's in the the the search now. So if you can get a CCNA and get exposed to a bunch of those things, that's nice. Again, all I have is my experience, but mine was just route switch.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Right.

andy lapteff 44:17

And then getting out and being very busy doing route switch work and then having the industry add things on that I had to do like nights and weekends. I would have loved to skill up in automation when I was a cable guy studying for my C CNA as an example, right? As opposed to, well, now I have a mortgage and a wife and two kids, and I'm working four maintenance windows a week, and now I gotta learn that stack of things you just said. So I like that the vendors are put, I mean it makes it harder, but you're not an expert in like at an entry level, an associate level thing, you're not yeah, you're not supposed to be an expert. Yeah, but you're gonna response to it, right? Which is great. You can have the conversations and then you can always you know dig deeper. Right. I continue to struggle with Python just for reasons, but I know that if it was Python Git, yeah, that whole kind of like CI C D pipeline concept.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

I have that going. Have I told you? I got repos. Nice, see, yeah.

andy lapteff 45:09

So I'm using Claude Code to do stuff with coding and and apps and stuff and and leveraging the CI CD pipeline and testing. And uh John Capo just walked me through the spectrum of development stuff, which is really fascinating. But I still have a really hard time with Python. And there's a conversation also to like, well, do you need to learn it now?

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Because at some point, yeah, you may not. I think you you need to be familiar with it. Yep. But do you need to be an expert in it? I I don't think so. What I would like to be able to do is Because a lot of times you're not going to be writing scripts, you're gonna be consuming right software. So you need to be a a a knowledgeable consumer of software and be able to figure out when a piece of software is going wrong and why.

andy lapteff 45:47

And then if you could the Why, right? If you can read it, like you and I are communication people, I can read and understand it.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Yeah.

andy lapteff 45:53

I don't have that understanding with Python and that bothers me.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

Yeah.

andy lapteff 45:56

The quote code can do it. Yeah, but if something breaks or there's an error, like I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Right. Right? Right. And and things like you know, JSON and all that, be comfortable with those the way that information is going to be. You're not just going to be looking at logs anymore. You're going to be looking at all kinds of stuff.

andy lapteff 46:09

Can I bring up the two-letter word? Please. It's inevitable. It's inevitable. I'm sorry. I try, I try to be different and not do the thing, but you can't avoid it. Well, it's we'd be remiss not to. And and I guess what I wanted to say about AI, which I don't even know if it's AI, it might be machine learning. I have no idea. I'm simultaneously enamored with it because I'm using it. As an example, I come upon problems in my life or other people's lives, and I'm able to spend a couple of days working in clawed code and develop a software solution that works. Now, is it secure? Is it slop code? I don't know. Yeah. If you use the spec driven development, it goes through an enormous amount of testing to figure that stuff out. There's a secure there's a security thing that goes through vulnerability. So, like the good news is some of these systems, if you don't understand, you know, if you're not a software developer, you can you can get pretty close, I think. So I love it because I, for the first time in my life, am able to create software. The fear, I guess, for lack of a better term for me, is the disruption narrative that I keep hearing in different places. And I don't know who to listen, like I guess nobody knows. So, right, so it's hard to so I try to look at history, and I'm not the first person to say this, but when we went from an agricultural society to an industrial society, there was a lot of disruption. Huge disruption. Right. And if you were making, you know, horseshoes when the automobile was, you know, uh, maybe you should have been paying attention and skilled up in something besides that. Yeah. And and I've heard people try to draw that parallel to what's happening now. When now we're going through this new, you know, uh revolution or whatever, an evolution in our society and then economics. And what I've heard people say is like, well, that took like 200 years to go from an agricultural society to like an industrial thing. I don't know how many, 100, 200. This is like happening really fast. So again, and we're on a podcast, and I don't want to like undermine the credibility of some of these people, but you'll hear these podcasts with like a bajillion. I'm not talking about Rogan, but like people that bajillion listeners, and they'll be like, Well, I was talking to this LLM founder, and what he's saying behind closed doors is very different than what he likes. So there seems to be this behind the door, you know, Wizard of Oz kind of thing where there's this secret conversations happening, which I think are we're developing AGI, all the jobs are going away, and we're going to be on universal basic income. Why would you do that out of to be the person that said, I figured it out, like I created the god box. Yeah. Now, is that true? I don't know. Nobody's saying that publicly, but a lot of different people in a lot of different places are like, what they're telling you isn't what the bajillionaires are working on. So anyway, you hear that there's some fear, there's displacement. I mean, we work in white-collar jobs. If they're saying that, like, there's AI podcasts now. So this guy, diary of a CEO guy, I forget his name, but he created the persona of himself in AI that does podcasts for him. Like, I guess that's his way of engaging. Like, well, if you're gonna put me out of business, I'm gonna beat you to the punch. And I've never heard the AI generated one, but so anyway, uh, do you have any insights or feelings around AI? And listen, this isn't me saying what Drew says is Bible truth. And but like, what are your thoughts on all this stuff? Because I'm split.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Yeah. So first thing is my default opinion of most tech leaders, uh, particularly now in the AI space, is that they are interested in protecting their own interests. Uh, so they will say whatever they need to say publicly to make sure those interests are protected. Um and those interests tend to be I want to be first mover, I want to dominate the market, I want to make so much money that uh I can act in the world without any restraint or repercussion. I think that is their goal. Um, and AI is the vehicle for that. What does that mean for the rest of us? Um I don't know if that's true. I haven't like met them or psychologically analyzed them. I'm just basing it on what I've seen in the past from other big tech people and also just other like you know, JP Morgan Chase and all those folks.

andy lapteff 50:04

It's like seven deadly sin stuff. It's just like greed. It totally is. It's just greed. It's it's the innocent human nature.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yeah, and it's just being done on a huge technological.

andy lapteff 50:11

If you want to find some if you want to find the true nature of someone, give them some power. Like I don't know who said that. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah, totally. And so just watch. And the important thing is not to watch, not to look at what they say, but look at what they do, how they behave, the actions they take. Setting that aside, what does it mean for the rest of us? I think it's absolutely worthwhile to become conversant with AI tools, just like it was conversant to become good at Wireshark, to be familiar with Python, whatever. It's it's another tool in your toolbox, and the whole industry is moving that way as fast as it can. So it's incumbent upon you to also be familiar with with how it works. And especially if you're like new to Python, then Claude or whatever can be helpful in maybe scaling you up, or at least be like the speed at which AI has gotten better, even in like the last two years, is astounding to me. And that's why it's uh it seems so frightening. So it's not going away. I do think we're in a bubble. The bubble's gonna pop at some point. I don't know what that looks like, but it is gonna happen. But AI is not going away. There is also a continuous push and pull among employers who my base feeling is that employers really resent having to pay workers, and if they didn't have to, they wouldn't. And that is also worn out through history, I think. So they a lot of folks I think see AI as a way to get rid of these pesky workers, and they're realizing, well, it's also still expensive and doesn't work 100%. So I do need workers. So there is also going to be that push and pull between employers wanting to right size for their staff, which is also then incumbent upon you to be very productive and good at what you do so that you can be one of those people who survive. The other thing though is that usually a new technology that comes along could replace one set of jobs, but creates other work in other places that we didn't anticipate. That's what I keep hearing. Yeah. So I mean I don't know if that's gonna happen and I don't know what those jobs will look like, but it tends like the rise of the computer created more jobs and created more work and created whole new things like the internet. So the rise of AI may create whole new industries that we didn't anticipate.

andy lapteff 52:06

I was listening to something where they they thought that the calculator was gonna destroy children's abilities to do math.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

That's if you look at every major, like I I think it was maybe it was Socrates. It was either Socrates or Plato who was like, don't write stuff down because you aren't training your brain to memorize and you need a strong brain. And and memorization trains your brain. If you stop memorizing, you have a weaker brain. When the novel came out, people freaked out. They're like, What is this? The radio, television, all of it. Every every new technology change that has a huge impact frightens people because we don't know what's gonna happen. And it's the same with AI.

andy lapteff 52:37

I love all that. Uh, a couple things I thought of. There are examples of companies that got rid of other humans and replaced them with AI publicly. They like said it, and I forget the names of the companies, but one of them was a really big shop, and the AI melted the company, and then they brought all the humans back, and now they have a new policy where any change that an LLM wants to make needs human oversight. So now they created a new role, right? So they brought them back with a new role to babysit, you know, we're gonna get rid of the people because it'll be more efficient. Well, now they need both. Yeah. So, you know, maybe we can coexist with these tools. The tools do things better and faster than us in certain ways. Yeah. But also I think there's some things there's there's a way we think or or context, I don't know what it is, but we appear to be better at certain judgments than just the overconfident math machine that just does the thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Uh-huh. Oh, but go back to the job thing. The one other thing I wanted to say is aside from skills, you you mentioned like have a blog or a YouTube video, having some kind of public portfolio is really important. And the human networking is really important. You you need to know people, meet people, because the trying to run the gauntlet of an HR system right now is like seems nearly impossible. I just saw a post by Eva Santos on LinkedIn where she was like, don't put on your resume deployed a hundred switches. Describe it more like what was the business outcome of you deploying that hundred switches and and what it did for the business. So you need to have techniques like that to help make your resume stand out from the 400 other people who also have a C CNA who are applying for that job.

andy lapteff 54:12

I was just gonna half joke and say, you know, an LLM can help you with. I mean it can. It can. And it can't. But it's it's a snake eating the tail kind of thing. Like it is. Oh no, it's gonna kill us all. It's gonna get rid of all the jobs. But I use it for things.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Like I right? It's this weird. It is. That's what that it's that's so confounding. So and it's just another like the USNUA, which we both participate in for the PA NUG, go to stuff like that. It's free, it's an easy way to network, find those local meetups or start a local meetup to talk to other people because the most success I've had in my career is because I had an opportunity to make a relationship with someone who realized, like, okay, this is a person I could be comfortable working with.

andy lapteff 54:47

I love that. And you've that's been a thread throughout your entire career. Totally. Right. You you met people, you worked with them, you were adjacent to them.

SPEAKER_00 54:54

Like you still have to do good work.

andy lapteff 54:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

But lots of people are doing good work. Having that personal connection gives you an advantage.

andy lapteff 55:01

Somebody said that just because AI can do something doesn't necessarily mean that humans are going to want to consume it.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

And what I mean that's the thing I like about doing an AI podcast. Like, why would I listen if you couldn't even be bothered to think up a topic and have a conversation about it?

andy lapteff 55:15

I wouldn't listen. Yeah. But to put a point on that, I probably should have been an editor because it just it's like it it stands out to me. When I see poor grammar or bad punctuation, like I I can't not see it. So it's just one of those things. And I feel like I can tell when somebody just used AI because there's certain telltale signs, m-dashes is an example. I've never seen an M-dash in my life. Now there's unfortunate everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

I love M dashes, I use them.

andy lapteff 55:41

They're a long dash, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:42

Yeah. I've used dashes. Right. Why the hell is there a longer dash that AI loves? M-dash. I think because it was trained on a corp of a corpus of existing material that used M-dashes. Like they were like, oh, we got these novels we can train with.

andy lapteff 55:55

Lunatics with M-dashes. Like, so what I do, if I use an LM and it use and it does something good and it uses an M-dash, I take it out and I put a semicolon. Now, sometimes grammarly you'll tell me, no, that's not a semicolon, and like whatever. But I just I won't read something with M-dashes in it. And I've also found that LLMs love the word actually. So there's just certain telltale signs for me. Maybe it's just how my brain's wire. But when I see it, I'm like, this is just copy and paste AI stuff.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

And I'm not gonna Unfortunately, though, like the generations coming up are gonna be trained on that output. So they're gonna think actually an M-dashes are actually what you should do. And that's how they're gonna write. And you're the English guy. Like, do M-dashes have they have a purpose?

andy lapteff 56:34

Yeah, yeah, they have a purpose. But not like every other paragraph. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

They should be have you seen like the overuse of it in LLMs? I actually haven't.

andy lapteff 56:41

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

I hopefully I'm not looking at a lot of LLM output, so but I know it's a thing.

andy lapteff 56:46

Every time it like, so I use it for brainstorming and ideas and stuff, and everything it gives me is freaking emojis and m-dashes, and actually. And I'm like, what is your deal? So I think we touched on some really good points. I got to know Drew Conroy Murray. I got to know where you came from, your background, how an English major wound up one of the most surprises anybody. One of the most influential, you know, voices in our industry. Um, I think we got some good industry knowledge too, staying skilled up. I think we're always gonna need people. I hope so. We're all going through the world's always been on fire. I try to remind myself of this when it's like, oh no, everything's bad. And I'm not a religious guy, but I'm always like, well, listen, there's books that are thousands of years old you can look at. The world was on fire then. Yeah. So I think this is just the thing, right? And and and we'll probably get through this one way or another. Even with kids, like I know that you have um a son who's graduate. Right. So I have an eight and eleven-year-old, and I don't know what to tell them to study when they get older. And and this will have to play out.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

So we'll we'll see, right? Like my oldest is a biologist, which is good. I think he's he'll be okay. My youngest is studying cybersecurity in college, which also seems okay. Should be good, but who knows? Like, because now mythos is just gonna find all the vulnerabilities for us and everything will be fine. I'm being sarcastic, but I feel like that's also a possibility. I I have no idea. So the only idea I have right now is robots.

andy lapteff 58:08

Because I think I think Mr. What's his face just diverted all of his capital to robots because I thought like, oh, the trades will be safe, right? The the computer can't do the trades while Mr. Rocket Electric guy just divisted all of his into robots. Yeah, God, if they have AGI and and you know implanted in the robots' brains, I don't know what we're gonna do, man. I get so if my kids ask me, I'm just gonna learn robotics. I don't know, man. If robots are gonna take over, if we're gonna be living in the Star Wars age with stormtroopers and stuff, learn to fix the robots, be a robot mechanic. I don't know what to tell you. Change the robot oil. Is there anything I should have asked you? Anything you want to talk about? Do you have any new books coming out? I know that you're writing fiction. Let's plug some books. How many books do you have?

SPEAKER_00 58:51

I wrote two novels and one nonfiction book. The nonfiction book is called The Semantic Guide to Home Internet Security. I wrote it with somebody from Semantic a long time ago. It's probably out of date, but it was nice to get that under my belt back then. I co-wrote a post-apocalyptic fiction novel called Wasteland Blues with my friend Scott Carr that uh we knew each other in college. And I recently published a historical fiction/slash ghost story novel called The Haunting of Edward Drake, which you can all find them all on Amazon.

andy lapteff 59:16

I will put links in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

Oh, thank you.

andy lapteff 59:18

And if I forget, please text me and yell at me. Okay. Here's the links, dude. You said you were gonna put in. Um, do you have a preferred place people find them? Like I go to Amazon for everything, but is there I had they're also on Barnes and Noble.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

I'm do you have a preference?

andy lapteff 59:30

Like, is it better for writers?

SPEAKER_00 59:32

Oh, no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't, yeah, either one is fine. Uh I just have moral qualms about Jeff Bezos, but um sorry. But where do you want people to go?

andy lapteff 59:40

If you Barnes and Noble. If you could go to Barnes and Noble, that's fine, but I'm not gonna So my last question sounds ridiculous to ask you because everyone knows you, but where can people find you if if they're not familiar with your work?

SPEAKER_00 59:53

Packapushers.net, where you can hear all of the podcasts, plus a whole bunch of other really good ones. I recently uh wrote a salary survey based on a salary survey from our audience, based on salary data from our audiences. That's on packabpushers.net. I'm also on blue sky, it's uh at Drew C M. D-R-E-W-C-M. If you want to see what I'm up to on socials, I'm also on LinkedIn.

andy lapteff 1:00:12

Thanks for coming on, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

My pleasure, Randy. It was a lot of fun.

andy lapteff 1:00:15

I hope it was fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:16

At least it wasn't AI.

andy lapteff 1:00:18

No, man, I really appreciate it. It was great uh it was great getting to know you a little better. For all things art of net ends, you can check out our Linktree at Linktree forward slash Art of NetEnge. I try to direct people to our Discord server called It's All About the Journey. About 3,500 people. I don't know how many of them are robots. I have no idea. We have people in there trying to clean it up and keep it going, but we have thousands of folks in there that, like you mentioned, a community before, get in person if you can. It's all who you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

This is an opportunity to like start building that public profile.

andy lapteff 1:00:44

Yeah, build a public profile. So if you need uh a community, there's virtual ones, there's ones physical like USNUA, they have Nugs all over the place. A little plug for our website. So uh just build a new website. It's at the artofnetworkengineering.com. There's a resources section, and you can find links to things like the USNUA and the Nugs and all these different places. You know, get out there, try to meet people. You're not gonna get hired from a resume, most likely. You're probably gonna get hired because you met someone somewhere. Like if you listen to Drew's story, every career pivot you seem to make and every job seemed to be linked to someone you knew, someone you met, someone that you collaborated with once. They knew you, they knew your work. So get out there, meet people. Yeah, um, check out our new website. And now that I'm a developer, we have a public, don't laugh that hard. We have a public GitHub repo um that you can find, theartofnetworkengineering.com. No, how would they even find the repo? Well, anyway, there's an art of network engineering repo on my GitHub. I'm sure they know how to use Google. I hope so. I'm still trying to figure out I have a repo. I don't know how to get you there. But but the point being is uh I've been learning some of the CI C D, you know, uh Git pipeline stuff. And if you see a mistake on the website, you can submit an issue and I will fix it. You can also uh do a pull request, which if you see an error and you want to submit the fix, uh, you can submit a pull request. It'll come to me, I can review it. And if I'm like, yes, that is wrong, and thank you for being right, I can merge it into main, and that fix will get pushed by some type of magic I will never understand to the website. So this is not only me trying to practice, put into practice what I'm learning in this dev stuff, but also giving our audience an opportunity. Hey, if you got a GitHub and you want to try to, I've never done anything I've never submitted an issue to something. I've never done a poll remote. So we're all learning together. Hopefully this helps. Thanks so much for watching and listening, and we'll catch you next time on the Art of Network Engineering podcast. Hey folks, if you like what you heard today, please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher. You can find us on socials at Art of NetEng, and you can visit LinkJury forward slash Art of NetEng for links to all of our content, including the A1 merch store and our virtual community on Discord called It's All About the Journey. You can see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering. That's youtube.com forward slash Art of NetEng.