Tech Labor Market Trends – Deepak Giridharagopal, Puppet

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstrong TV. You know about a month ago.

I had a chance to catch up with my friend here Deepak, and I don't think we talked about anything the the notes that we were going to talk about we wound up catching up and talking about tech and life in the markets and the state of things and as we often do and I speak to Deepak and I invited him back to continue the conversation and we're gonna continue it today. Hopefully, we'll be a little bit more. On track defaculty within the guardrails.

All right. Yeah, that's what we need guardrails. There.

It is. Yeah. But so we're here for those who don't know.

Deepak you're less. They say it's all good. I'm deep like Gary gopal.

I'm CTO at puppet now CTO at perforce software. Absolutely, and and welcome back to you back in absolutely. Usually I have it up in my column and I could sound it out but it's not in there now.

It's okay. Someone just types of my first name and puppet though. They'll get me so it always pops.

It's correct. So Deepak, you know you and I know each other now seven eight years, maybe more and You know 22 is probably been one of the most interesting years. That we've seen in Tech in a long time in a while for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, and you know, it's so April that here. We are mid to today's December 15th when we take we've recorded this, you know coming up on the new year.

We look back at this year. There's been one for the record books for the first time. We're seeing, you know, some of the unicorns laying off.

Yeah people and we're seeing the tech labor market really. And it's been has the gun in some places. Yeah, I would say, you know, it's been You know some with one one Vantage Point says it's a much-needed correction.

Right? Like another advantage point says well this still it pretty crummy. If you're on the receiving end of getting laid off and is anybody really safe no matter where they work at a particular point in time, you know during the year, I think probably both things are true.

The thing that makes these circumstances kind of interesting, you know relative to the Past like 10 years is you know, I do think there's a lot that can be fueled in terms of this industry if like money is cheap and people don't really ask too many questions as long as you keep posting the kind of growth numbers that everybody all collectively wants and yeah, I think as soon as money starts becoming more expensive, you know, it starts to force a lot of folks to start asking questions like well now that it's not cheap anymore. Is it really invested in the right places? Am I investing this in companies where I actually believe what they're telling me that they're gonna post double-digit growth numbers for the next five years.

If I start to get more skeptical about that, then you know, there's a kind of a ripple effect. I think that ends up having so that's how you end up with companies that You know, maybe overall financially in Revenue wise aren't that different than what they were doing a year ago or two years ago. But the way the conditions are they no longer have that same route to access the capital that they might need.

They're getting pressure from their own investors or their boards to like tighten the belts and just kind of get the balance sheet more in order in a way. That's sympathetic to General economic Outlook, which is changing. So I think that's why you're seeing this weird combination of like some companies are claiming.

They can't hire people fast enough yet at the same time. You have a bunch of other companies laying off really good people you have folks that are like, I'm not worried about finding another job and you have folks that have still been looking for work for a while, you know companies that previously you thought for sure. We're gonna go public this year and Market sentimentation go public.

Yeah, so you're right. I think part of it is just the nature of the beast of the Venture back startup world is basically companies raise money. That'll last them.

12 18 months at the outside so if you had companies that raised money in 2021, yeah. They could sit out 2022 and hope 2023 is about a year. They serve their money.

I would say fortunate with the timing right right if they had raised money before let's say February of 2022 March 2022, you know. If they raised money in 2020 though thinking they raise money again in maybe 2022. That's tough.

Those are the companies that I mean, maybe we need to just cut that especially out especially those companies that are larger where the kind of the amount of capital they're looking to raise is really big because now the bigger the price tag, the the more scrutiny there is perhaps justifiably so right this week would sneak. I don't know if you follow us. Yeah, they're cops.

Yeah, right. They had announced some layoffs just a month or two weeks ago after some previously. I think this might be the what the third one this year.

So they also this one just so now just this week and that's the huge round and crazy valuate not a crazy but very high valuation. Yeah, so, you know evaluation. I mean for my perspective it's like, you know, whenever people are talking to me about like, hey, I'm thinking about maybe joining this particular company, you know.

It's a lot of the sensible stuff that maybe you didn't have to care as much about before but it's like can you find out how much runway they have? You know, do you have any understanding of you know, what's kind of their plan in terms of raising capital and when and just use that to make kind of a smarter decision as opposed to four or five years ago where it's like Yeah, whatever, right? Yeah, it folds there's money.

I'll get a new job within 24 hours right and might be a little more challenging now just given the you know, kind of changing nature of a lot of the macro stuff. I think that's going. Well.

There's another element too that we haven't touched on to you back and that's the whole work from anywhere thing. Yeah, I think you know in 2020 and 2021 and even 2022. It was cool.

I don't care if you work from Lisbon Portugal or Mary Hawaii or San Francisco. Yeah, right because we don't have an office. No, what's coming to the office?

Anyway true? Yeah. Now a lot of companies are saying, you know.

It doesn't work for everyone. There are some positions that a remote some some things work better in the office. Know I think it's you know there I imagine a lot of companies are still trying to work out culturally kind of where they stand on this stuff.

I mean, I have a lot of biases. I mean, you know, I've always been rebooted puppet puppets a big open source Centric company and you can't count on the entire open source Community being in one place let alone one country or time zone, right? So there's kind of an inherent distribution there.

What I will say though is I think there's enough critical mass of companies now that I think it's hard for anyone to really credibly claim that like, well Innovation can really only happen if you have people in a room, it's like there's enough counter examples. I just don't believe I never believed it now. I think it's like the emperor has no clothes.

I think there's also arguments, you know that a lot of these companies are making of the form and I hear this a lot. I won't mention any companies specifically, but it's like well, we spent all this money on this office space and it's really nice and we have the Barista and on-site laundry and all these other things like if people are working from wherever they Be you know, they're almost not it was the shock in Ock campaign to basically appeal to people that wanted to be on site if people don't want to be on site anymore. You lose the Allure of something that a potentially was very expensive and B.

Maybe that was a big part of that company's plan on how to keep people retained. So I think now that there's yeah there's more freedom and that's not to say obviously I'm not trying to dunk on people that are like, I just prefer to work in an office like it's completely fine. Right like people are more productive and different ways, but I think now there's just it's hard for me to take a step back soberly and look at like all of these like really top tech companies that are like You know, you just can't really be creative and successful unless you're on site and I'm like during the pandemic when you all shut down you were posting record profits.

So that's something's something something, you know, obviously there's probably connect there but I either is the other the flip side of that though is, you know, we've all heard these stories of people who have two full-time jobs the of The Quiet quitters as they call him who do the minimum they have to do to kind of stay on payroll and you know what they're not working. Yeah one in four hours a day. I think it's a cultural thing.

I think I think you know it to me, I feel that at a high level if me is a tech worker, you know prior to the pandemic, you know, people would say like here's an executive job. You want to be a CTO over here, but you have to move to Chicago you have to move to Manhattan and like no as soon as the pandemic happened now everything that comes across my desk is we don't care where you work. So for me that opens up a larger set of possibilities and for those companies looking to find people there's a way bigger pool.

So are there going to be folks that are kind of You could argue taking advantage of the system or you could argue maybe they're just taking full use of the system that previously was extracting a lot out of them regardless of which bucket you put it in to me. I would say that in general. My opinion is the more competition there is for for positions.

That's probably better for the company and the bigger of a labor pool. There is I think that tends to oftentimes be better for workers. It works both ways, right like yeah, that's a lot of choice, you know.

Engineer does and they did someone at CTO. Here's here's my take on this and I you know, I worked remote from 2001 through 2010 and Then we when I started early in on the trends. Yeah, well because my company was based in Boulder.

com I Opened an office. This was just me and marker myself person and it was easy. Here's the thing.

Working from home is in for everyone. Just the same way working in an office full-time may not be for everyone. Yeah working from home.

You've got to have the discipline and responsibility. to Work from home. Yeah, and it's and it's counterintuitive.

You gotta know when to shut down. You can't be on 24 hours today. That's what I do.

I try to treat it. Like this is me going to the office is right. Otherwise you burn out and when you are on though, you're on that.

I we saw a lot of this right when the lockdown started to happen and companies, you know, we're sort of forced to precipitously government. We saw this at puppet because you know, it's easy to say. Oh, yeah just work from home.

Everyone gets to work from home. Now obviously isn't that better? There are a lot of folks, especially I think the folks that were younger where they're like, I don't have a room to myself at home.

I've seen or what I do interviews. Would you be surprised what I see here? Yeah, you know I can tell you stories about naked spouses working good.

Hello book. Yeah, but I think it's it's a it's a reasonable thing. Right?

Like if if you're prepared for it, I guess what I would say is this I think you know clearly this is at a huge effect on the Market General economic Outlook as well as the rise of distributed work I think is shaking things up in a lot of different ways to me. I think it means a couple of things I think as a company if you were relying on on-site perks to retain people you need to like really check yourself. I think if you're a worker and you think you can just this company can never get rid of me, I happen to have like special skills and I'm gonna work like four other jobs simultaneously.

Well, there's a lot of competition for your job. Now from people that work everywhere potentially places with lower costs of living than you you probably also need to check yourself as well. I think if you're in management and you previously just have experience managing people on site, you know, you kind of walk or manage by walking around you establish these physical relationships with people and now you're managing teams that are spread out across time zones.

You probably need to get accustomed to learning and different set of skills in order to keep these kinds of teams together because the relationships are just different now, so I think a lot is very different. you know hard for me to say in the future whether this is going to be positive or negative but in general I think like Most other Industries when there's more competition for positions and the workers have more Choice available where they can work. Usually I think that turns out okay, but remains to be seen how well the industry adapts the one thing I will say maybe I'll end with this, you know, but like I think the companies that have made it a priority to figure out how to succeed in this kind of environment are the ones with the best chance of actually succeeding and the ones that are kind of in denial or they're sort of hoping it'll just go back.

I'll pass my mandate to force everybody to come back to the office and they're surprised that a lot of people quit You know, is it gonna be are they gonna implode like I don't know Twitter probably not but are they potentially going to get depositioned in the market by a company that can excel in this environment? I think the likelihood is definitely there. So I would encourage other people, you know, whether you're in charge or whether you're Hands-On keyboards, you know, it's a just be aware of the change that's going on and see if you can work in concert with the change because I think that's kind of the way the winds are blowing.

I don't think we're gonna see this doubt back anytime soon, you know, so absolutely You know what? We have a few minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about what you think what you see going on in the Ops World Ops Community.

Oh my God. Sorry. It's huge.

Just what I think it's big. I think a couple of major things that I'll just go through pretty quickly. I think number one.

Opsworld is no stranger to the economic stuff. We just talked about so you're seeing consolidation teams being squeezed people getting laid off, you know in general. I think it's kind of what's happened in previous economic recessions where you have a smaller number of people managing the same amount of stuff where the pressure Remains the Same as it was before so, you know, I think that puts more pressure on Ops teams to kind of just understand and rationalize all the stuff they have and if things are getting Consolidated, they may be dealing with a more heterogeneous environment than they ever were dealing with before with less time and less people to deal with it.

So That you know, it always rolls downhill, right and sometimes the Ops people who to Google. Carry. The pagers are often the ones that feel the stink of these kinds of things which is unfortunate but I sympathize with them a lot.

I think number two is as a potential reaction to this you're starting to see more of a rise of platform engineering teams where companies are like look we need to have operations people for sure. But rather than have them do break fix. Can we have them do more strategic work where they're building out kind of an infrastructure platform.

That's more self-service for other people inside of the company. Both is a way of constraining the Mandate of those Ops teams to give them back some sanity and at the same time hopefully letting the rest of their company, you know, get access to infrastructure and things like that in a self-service way as opposed to putting something on the ticket treadmill and waiting 12 days for it to come out the other end. I think all the stuff is related though where you know, I think org structures are oftentimes reactions to economic things that are going on where you couldn't survive what the structure you had before and I think that's creating pressure for new tools.

Better tools better methodologies, but the one thing that hasn't changed is if you think it's any easier now to hire someone with you know. Four years of kubernetes experience that knows all of the entire Cloud native Computing Foundation logo landscape in their brain. I don't think that's any cheaper or more available now than it was before and if anything if they've downsized I think there's a compelling argument now, I think for a lot of it leaders to take fresh eyes at the applications.

They have does it make sense to re-architect this thing if it's going to take labor to maintain it that I can't find her afford. I think it's it's worth it. And again that's different than a couple of years ago when labor was always there.

You can always find people if you're willing to pay them enough, then you could probably always pay them enough because you're more or less printing money in your basement off of that words or whatever the tap is not running as freely which kind of means that you have to start taking a fresh look, you know, more pragmatic. Look I guess I would say I feel old when I say be practically that wasn't really but it's the sensible thing. I think the other thing is look.

Feeding it to the pragmatism is we we have greater maturity and some of the solutions that you working with out. That's true. And we have more experience to look at in terms of you know, if you want to say the whole Ops role is sort of changed with the Advent of devops.

Yeah and SRE and and these kind of things. Yes, it has but we also have more of A record to look at to say hey this works. This doesn't well we know I mean we can and I think that's the thing that always breaks my heart.

The most is when I see here's an emerging Trend but they're making a lot of the same mistakes. Here's like a brand new tool chain that shakes everything up. If only everyone could get on board with these tools.

They would be fine and I'm like speaking is someone who literally built a company around a really popular automation tool. It's the tooling is not in itself. You know, it's still very Pride said there's the people the culture all the product.

Yeah. It's the whole thing. Right?

So it's it's not I guess I would say I should check that's it. That's a problem in our world. Right?

We have shiny drinkitis and 2020, you know coming to the end of 22, I guess. What I would say is, you know, there's no shortage of tools and the tools are better than they've ever been and there's more of them and they're easier to kind of just wrap your brain around then ever before I could argue and yet The biggest issue I see when I talk to companies that are trying to deal with these problems. We're just operators hands on keyboards folks is it's it's not the black a tools.

It's the absorption capacity. It's it's how would I actually absorb this and use it? And what's that gonna mean?

What's that gonna take do I have enough people do I have enough time? Do I have enough latitude or am I basically woken up every day to do break fix on something and I never have time to look at it. So I think it's a full spectrum thing as it's always been but again, you know, we've been looking at this industry for a while.

So I think we've seen the pitfalls like we know where it's gone wrong and it's always been the case that absorption is a huge deal. So I would just encourage anyone watching this if you're at a company building new tools or if you're thinking about adopting just think about what your actual capacity to absorb this stuff really is because you might you might be surprised you might overestimate your ability to absorb radical these stuff. You know, what else?

And we're at a time but something I've seen from where I said to pack is. Especially when you go to larger organizations, it's the amount of tools that overlap right? I've got five different tools doing the same job.

This team uses that the guys in Chicago do that. The Indian folks do this one and our immediate team is standardized on that. Yeah, and there's a lot there's a lot more that than you think.

Oh, yeah. It's like at the micro level, you know individual team tooling probably helps a lot don't mean to you know dismiss that no, I know that I manage success as the Cure become is the cure worse than the disease so to speak at that level. Maybe it's a good problem to have potentially but honestly a lot of these companies again, it's like you adopt two left or two left or tool thinking it's gonna solve these problems and isolation.

And now what you've done is you've solved one set of smaller problems and just created potentially more bigger ones really people need to be mindful of that trade off, but it's the same stuff. We've been telling the people for a while. I just think now there's Be enough change in the external environment around these Ops teams, you know, whether it's the money the labor the overall economy that now it's hopefully it's giving people more reason to be thoughtful about these kinds of changes that they were before but you know, but you know, we have an optimist.

I always have faith in you know, what that's a pony there somewhere 20 20 DPAC will have you back on early in 2023. We'll continue the course always happy to chat with you for now though for people who want to step to date on puppet. Where do you sign them?

Just to the public? Oh, yeah, you can just just visit puppet calm. We got a lot of new good stuff coming, especially if anyone's an open source user puppet.

We got version new major version 8 coming out sometime soon. Definitely get involved. Would love to talk with you all.

Cool. Hey man, it was great seeing you. Happy Holidays.

Happy New Year. And and let's continue the conversation. Absolutely.

Cheers. All right. Hey, we're gonna take a break on texture on TV.

We'll be back in just a moment.