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So I get in touch with Microsoft Professional Services and go "How would you do this?" And they're like, "You don't. That's impossible. Don't do that. That's reckless and foolish, and it's not supported." And I was like, "Okay, but I'm being paid for this, and I know no better, because I'm barely in my mid-20s, and I'm... |
And I wrote a script for the registry on one of the cloned Exchange Server machines, and I basically renamed everything. And I fired it up afterwards, and it worked. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Wow... |
**Dee Kitchen:** That was my day's work done. I left. I have no idea whether that worked... \[laughter\] It appeared to work. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** "Why is your two-week notice exactly after this project ended?" "Oh, I don't know. I don't wanna know." \[laughter\] |
**Dee Kitchen:** Anyway, contractors, that's what you get. |
**Mat Ryer:** Wow... That could have just worked though. But you know, I never trust code that works first time. That's why I like a failing test before... |
**Dee Kitchen:** The only thing that I was really, really scared about -- the name of the company in the Active Directory was six characters long. And I was reasonably sure that that was a magic value. So I asked them for a new name to be the Active Directory name that was also six characters long. That's the only thin... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** And lots of regexes... \[laughs\] Again. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Yeah... Good call. |
**Mat Ryer:** Spooky... Spoopy. |
**Kris Brandow:** Spoopy... |
**Dee Kitchen:** But yeah, that's the scary question... No one's asked me that for years. "Hey, what do you know about...?" |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Now you'd be like "Nothing... Nothing. Nothing at all. I don't want to know anything about it. I know nothing." |
**Dee Kitchen:** Maybe that's the thing though... When you see people late in their career, and you're just like "What do you know about this?" and you think they're doing the "I've forgotten more than you'll ever learn", but no, they're actually going "I don't want to do this..." \[laughter\] |
**Mat Ryer:** Active Directory. Never heard of it, mate. Never heard of him. Thinks it's someone man's name... Active Directory. That's a weird name for a man. I think that's a man, just really selling that you know it, just to get the job... Oh, just a tip there for people that want to get into that. Like I said, I'm ... |
**Kris Brandow:** \[34:15\] They're toasty, and brown, and delicious. |
**Mat Ryer:** Oh, perfect. Well done. Are you gonna share, or...? |
**Kris Brandow:** No... |
**Mat Ryer:** Nah... |
**Kris Brandow:** These are my marshmallows now. |
**Mat Ryer:** Yeah. Although they're imaginary, but... But you know, I still want one. |
**Kris Brandow:** We have an infinite supply. Everybody can make their own marshmallows. |
**Mat Ryer:** Oh, yeah. Okay. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** All you need is an infinite loop. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Speaking of loops, I have a scary story... But it's actually the story that I think helped me gain a new appreciation for sort of how to integrate systems, how distributed systems have sort of pitfalls, there's a trade-off for everything, and all the things that we value as best practices for dea... |
So I was working for an organization, a very awesome organization, a nonprofit, which basically helps students, especially in underserved communities, sort of prepare to take sort of standardized testing, and that kind of thing. So for months, leading up to a major sort of testing day - students are going to come, sit ... |
**Mat Ryer:** Wow. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** And basically, I'm part of the team that basically has been working on this sort of integration for months now. We had different systems talking to each other, and everything else. And development, and even in staging, everything works perfectly. \[laughs\] Systems can talk to each other, we're s... |
What we didn't test against is basically having roughly 4,000 students trying to log into the system at the same time. \[laughs\] And because you have these systems that are talking to each other for authentication, and pulling things, whatever it is, basically, we just had a thundering herd kind of situation happening... |
So within a matter of about an hour and a half or so, while students are waiting there - because they can't really dismiss everybody and send everybody home; we're talking like countywide 4,000+ students, all this coordination across months... To me, this remains the best and worst moment of my career, because I'm like... |
So after that incident, I was never again, like, "What do I need to do? What do I need to learn? Who do I need to talk to?" Like, it was -- I had to level up. And any point in my career - I can't remember a single incident that has driven me to level up as much as this one, because the impact was so real. It was so in ... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** \[38:11\] That is the $1,001 bill. |
**Mat Ryer:** Yeah. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Listen, I would have gladly handed over $1,000 out of my pocket like to be like, "Look, whatever this is, make it go away right now." |
**Mat Ryer:** Like, to the kids. Just give it to the kids. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** To the kids. \[laughs\] |
**Mat Ryer:** "Uncle Johnny has messed up again. Come and collect your $20 bills, everyone... No college for you, but here's some..." Yeah, that's horrific. Yeah, but when the stakes are that high, Johnny, it's like... That is scary. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Yeah. And you feel awful. Like awful, awful, awful for being the responsible for that. |
**Dee Kitchen:** What do you think about engineers sort of having that sort of sense of consequence? Because it comes in multiple directions; you get salespeople going, "If you don't do this, we're gonna lose a million-dollar deal." It's not that the engineer's gonna receive no million dollars round. They're just gonna... |
And likewise, when you're working in incidents, someone will turn and go, "It's affected this air traffic control signal" or "It's affected this sort of kids, or hospital, or the traffic lights are down" or whatever. Kind of unhealthy, isn't it? It's like, we've got to keep it abstract enough that -- because I get that... |
**Mat Ryer:** Yeah. Some value in being somewhat abstracted from the consequences. |
**Dee Kitchen:** Yeah. If you consider it too much, it just weighs so heavily. It's too serious. It's too much of a... And the things you need to do to actually get out of those situations - they become even more horrifying and scary. "What if I prolong this? What if I make it worse?" And sometimes you've just got to b... |
**Kris Brandow:** I feel like this is where systems can be helpful, though. I think we as an industry are pretty bad at understanding that there can be bad consequences. It's like, something terrible happens and we're like, "Oh no, this terrible thing happened", but so much of the time, that terrible thing was complete... |
Like, I worked for a lifeguard -- when I was young, I worked as a lifeguard, and I remember one of the things that we always did is we trained a lot, but also did a lot to make sure that the environment was always a safe one. So we did a lot of that. That's why lifeguards yell at people so much, and they're like, "Don'... |
I feel like the number of times I've been at companies that -- I've worked at banks, and people have been like, "Well, this isn't like life or death." And I'm like, "This is affecting people's money and their livelihood. What do you mean?!" And like, that's always the thing that gets rolled out, is if it's like, "Oh, w... |
**Mat Ryer:** I haven't done that for weeks. I don't know why you're bringing it up. \[laughter\] It's spooky, ain't it? It's a spooky show. |
**Break:** \[41:59\] |
**Kris Brandow:** I have a spooky story, I think... It feels spooky. So I'd recently joined this company, and of course, because it's the modern day, they're using Kubernetes. |
**Mat Ryer:** Classic. |
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