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• Approach to problem-solving: analysis over blueprint or quick fixes |
• Value of honesty and telling the truth in business, even if it's not in one's own interest |
• Benefits of flexible thinking and learning from diverse perspectives |
• Transitioning conferences and events to online format due to pandemic |
• Launch of WTF (What's The Fork) series for explaining complex tech concepts in simple terms |
• Importance of humanizing tech discussions and avoiding jargon |
• Value of humility and assuming one is wrong, double-checking and learning from others |
• Managing biases and preconceptions in professional settings |
• Need for teamwork and improving as a group to achieve success |
• Importance of ongoing conversation between Ian and Gerhard |
• High-level analysis work and presenting information effectively |
• Balancing honesty and transparency in helping others change or move forward |
• Evolution of relationships and conversations in the industry (from one-off meetings to building blocks and journeys) |
• The importance of learning from past experiences and refining concepts over time |
• Changes brought about by 2020 and looking towards the future |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So I remember Docker coming out around 2014, so that's seven years now... Seven years ago, Docker fascinated me. I thought it was amazing. Like, "You mean what?! Finally, containers that make sense." LXC has been around for a long time, so I know that Google contributed to the Linux kernel and they we... |
In 2014, at the time, I was a lead engineer for a startup called How Are You. And I was into Chef at the time, I was using Jenkins heavily... And I blogged about using Jenkins with Docker for continuous deployment. Again, this was 2014. And in that context, there was a meetup in London... Was it the London Ruby User Gr... |
**Ian Miell:** It definitely wasn't Ruby, because I would not have gone to a Ruby conference at that time. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Right. It wasn't a conference, it was more like a meetup. |
**Ian Miell:** \[04:24\] Yeah, a meetup. I think it was like a DevOps... Maybe it was a DevOps things, or-- |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah... I know ContainerCamp, or whatever the Docker equivalent was at the time... Container Days? Something like that. I can't remember. It was a long time ago. And in that context, I know that we met, and you were like "Hey, Gerhard--" I think you've read something, or we'd be like on the same GitHu... |
**Ian Miell:** It's very different from my memory, Gerhard. \[laughs\] |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That's exactly what I thought. Like, what I remember is very different from what you -- so what do you remember, Ian? |
**Ian Miell:** Okay, here's how I remember it... And it just shows how fallible memory is. It's a good reminder. So I remember giving a talk... I was working at a company called OpenBet, and we did backend systems for online gambling companies around the world... So it was like a big monolithic, old-school, three-tier ... |
So I did a little skunkworks project, deliberately went skunkworks because previous attempts to go the official route had not worked. I did something before with Erlang... So yeah I went the skunkworks route with a couple of really bright, young engineers, and we got the whole 15-year-old monolith packed into a single ... |
So engineers who'd spend weeks setting up their machines suddenly could just get going from day one. And they had a completely safe environment - they could trash it, they could commit it... Docker Commit was a wonderful thing, and it's a shame it's kind of disappeared from view... But you used to be able to just make ... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I missed that completely. That's crazy. I missed that feature. I didn't even know it had it. Wow, okay... Okay, go on. This is really interesting. I'm finding new things out from seven years ago, which I completely missed. |
**Ian Miell:** \[07:57\] You could run your environment and then you could run a cron job that did some ETL process... And then you could go "Okay, Docker Commit. Now let's do Docker Diff. Oh, these files changed. Why did those files change?" It's like another debugging tool. It had so many things like this which were ... |
So how we met, to get back to the point, was I started talking about this in public, and I was terrified of talking in public. And I can't remember -- this is where my memory goes hazy, but it may have been the first talk I ever gave, and I was super-nervous, and I had practiced loads at home, and I got up and I said "... |
So those people came up to me afterwards and said that it was great to hear the real stuff... And you came up and said -- I was gonna leave, because it felt like these were all sales talks... And then you'd get up and talk some real engineering. That's wonderful. And we exchanged emails, and that's how I remember us me... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That does bring some memories, but I do have to say, maybe that day was so bad that I mostly forgot about it... Because you're right, we did exchange emails, and then nothing happened for a long time. And then we met again. I said, "Hey, Ian." And at the time I think you were working for Barclays when... |
**Ian Miell:** So the chronology was I had found out that with this Docker stuff, with its surveys among the engineers who were using it, and one team had adopted it completely, and we found that we saved (self-reported) four man days a month per engineer. And I thought it was actually more, because they didn't wanna s... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** "So I'm gonna join you, because you scared me." |
**Ian Miell:** They scared me... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Really the opposite thing happens when you get scared... You run away. Not you. You run towards the danger. \[laughs\] |
**Ian Miell:** Well, this is actually a philosophical point... I often say to people, "You should feel uncomfortable at work about 30% of the time." |
**Gerhard Lazu:** 30% afraid. Okay. |
**Ian Miell:** Yeah. Not more than that... But if you're feeling uncomfortable 3% of the time, you're not moving enough. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** \[12:18\] When you mean uncomfortable, do you mean like out of your depth, like you don't know enough, or what type of uncomfortable do you mean? |
**Ian Miell:** Well, it's never good to feel out of your depth, right? So when I say uncomfortable, I mean -- it's kind of related to another piece of advice that I liked many years ago, which was if you have a choice between doing two things at work, and one of them makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, do the slight... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I see. I think I would call it challenged. You should feel like you're challenged, you're learning something you maybe don't know, you don't have all the answers and you're figuring things out... Because that's growth. Failing - that's great; keep failing, because those things you don't know, and that... |
**Ian Miell:** I think that's a better word, yeah. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay, okay. So 30%, like a third of your time you should feel challenged, so that you're learning, so that you're not being static, stagnating, and feeling like "Well, what's the point? Nothing's happening. I'm not going anywhere. I'm stuck." |
**Ian Miell:** Yeah, so in this 14-year company that I worked for, it was a very narrow domain, and everyone there was an expert in that domain... And it was a very challenging environment; people were really into it, and you had to kind of work -- but you were working in this narrow domain. So I went to talk to these ... |
At the time, at the beginning, we were working on OpenShift version 2, which was pre-Docker. That was rolled out to the whole business, so any team could use it. So the rigor and the demand on security and audit and control was enormous... And it was very little about technology. I mean, the choice was made, the produc... |
So one of the things that was really attractive was like I'd worked in unregulated -- we had router production everywhere and these huge databases with millions and millions going through them every hour, to a place where everything is really tightly locked down. And I was like "I've never worked in that environment, I... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** \[16:04\] You went from the initial Docker experience and Docker in Practice book I was talking about the second time we've met... You were working for Barclays, and I think you have almost maybe just finished writing the book, or it was just published... It was around that time. This was the first ed... |
**Ian Miell:** Yes. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I don't think you wrote another book, but you did write some courses... Is that right? Or like self-published books, the Hard Way. Because you had Git the Hard Way. Bash the Hard Way. Terraform the Hard Way. Were they self-published books, or courses? What were they? |
**Ian Miell:** Yeah, the book was published when I was at Barclay's, and that was a very long process. And then when the book came out, it sold very well... So they said "We want a second edition." I thought naively that the second edition would be "Add a chapter a here, take a chapter out there, revise some stuff, fix... |
The self-published books came about because -- well, I can't actually remember the chronology. I think I did the Git one first. So I was working in Barclays infrastructure, and there were all these super-smart people around me, but they were very infrastructure-focused; they were not from a dev background. And they wer... |
Anyway, long story short - they came to me one day and said "Oh, Ian, you know about Git. Can you help us with -- we're trying to find out where this change came from." I was like "Oh, great. Just send me the reference to the repo. I'll download the repo and I'll figure it out." So I downloaded the repo, did `git log -... |
So I tried to explain what rebasing is, and of course, I got to the deeper points about Git... And I realized, "Oh, to get there, I need to explain all this other stuff." So I created a course for people at Barclays who were using Git, but wanted to understand it more deeply. |
I'd read "Learn Ruby the Hard Way", because I was doing Chef at the time, and I'd read a couple of other of the books by Zed Shaw, who kind of popularized the Hard Way method. I wrote to Zed and I said "Is this your trademark/copyright? Would you be pissed off/upset if I used this in my books?" and he said "No, it's fi... |
Then I thought "You know what - I don't know Bash as well as I like, and there's so many things about Bash where I'd like to use the Hard Way method so I can understand how it works..." So I wrote one on Bash, and that was really popular. That sold really well. |
\[19:51\] Then I was learning Terraform and I thought "This is how I learn stuff now." I pick up a technology, I use it, and then I'm like "I really wanna understand it more thoroughly. Writing a book is the way to do that." So that's what happened with Docker - I felt like a complete impostor; they were asking me to w... |
And of course, self-publishing is easier in the sense that you have more control. No one is telling you how to write it, no one is telling you you need more of this, that and the other, and you can kind of follow your vision more closely. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** If you were to write a book today, would you go via a publisher, or would you self-publish? |
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