Upskilling for the Cloud: Jeremy Morgan on Learning, People Skills and AI’s Creative Edge | Techstrong Unplugged EP31

Hey everybody and welcome back to Techstrong Unplugged. I'm your host, Atan Solomon, and this is episode 31 of our series. In this episode, we're taking you to AI Dev Summit 2024.

There our Cosst Cassandra Chen met up with Jeremy Morgan and they discussed learning people skills and AI's Creative Edge. Jeremy is a senior training architect at Code Cloud and he highlights his passion for upskilling developers. Stay tuned for practical advice and inspiring stories from a veteran educator in the tech world.

Without further ado, let's it over to AI Dev Summit 2024. Welcome back to Text on Unplugged. My name is Cassandra Chin, and today we're here with Jeremy Morgan.

Hi everyone. Can you introduce yourself? I'm Jeremy Morgan.

I'm a senior training architect for Code Cloud. Uh, we do, uh, kind of post postgraduate, uh, mid, early and mid-career training for folks who are trying to, uh, develop in the cloud. Uh, we do a little bit of programming, but mostly we do, uh, Kubernetes based DevOps type things in the cloud.

So I would love to hear more about the upskilling and education. Okay. Yeah, so upskilling right now I think is, is more important than ever because of the fact that things are moving so quickly.

So I started out about 24 years ago and, um, you know, folks that are kind of my age like to talk about how hard it was back then and, you know, how tough it was to, to do things 'cause we didn't have Google and Stack Overflow and all these things. But I think it's actually a little more difficult now today for the young people because there are far more technologies and they iterate and move faster. You know, there was a time when, when I was developing software where we were putting out software, say every six months, and we would have big pizza parties and things like that.

And, uh, the, the folks today that, that are coming into software engineering aren't gonna have anything near a six month release cycle. I mean, hopefully. Right.

And what that translates to in, in a couple of different ways is, so if you're a person who's building software and you're working on software that that's a different flow and a different mindset. It's you're working harder, pushing harder. But at the same time, if you're trying to learn software that's out there in the industry, it's moving fast.

It's iterating, they're deploying once a week, moving quick. So that's just one example of, of how things are a little bit trickier for folks these days. So deploying faster is much harder.

Yeah, deploying faster, I think. Um, updates, there's, there's this thing called this concept of who moved my cheese, right? So you're using a piece of software and all of a sudden it changes and it's really difficult to figure out, you know, they call it moving the cheese like a mouse and the cheese that happens every day now all the time.

I mean, I'll, I'll log into interfaces of software that I use and it's just completely changed and different. And, uh, this is something that we didn't see, you know, years ago that we're starting to see now. And usually it's for improvement, right?

Usually it's for a good thing, but it can be challenging to folks that are trying to learn these new technologies. For sure. So Are there any other, like points or like you said you would train, you do training?

Yeah, so most of my training is like online training where, uh, we record videos ahead of time explaining concepts, and then we have labs that you can go in and build a lab. So for instance, I, I just finished this course on Linux where I'll say, you know, here's how to move files. Here's how to delete things, and then here's a lab, go in there and log into a Linux machine and do it and, um, check it.

So it's, it's that kind of, uh, asynchronous type, uh, education. We do a little bit of live, live classes, but I, I think the majority of it is kind of the learn on your own, you know, a la carte at your own pace. If you wanna learn Kubernetes, you just jump in and start taking a Kubernetes course.

Is there a lot of engagement with the students? Um, there is quite a bit. I, I've noticed that, uh, as time goes on more recently that people are more engaged, you know, when we have a discord set up and things like that.

Um, because they'll go in and kind of ask questions, and then sometimes other students come in and ask ques answer the questions before we even see it, and then they start talking back and forth and, and so there's quite a bit of engagement. Um, there's usually several different ways that they can contact the instructor and, and they generally do, especially when we make a mistake. That's one of the best ways to hear from people.

Right. But Yeah, I think what's really interesting is this like a side thing or do you do it full-time? Oh, this is my full-time job, and so I've been doing it for around six years.

Um, and I was an engineering practitioner before, like a software engineer, DevOps engineer architect, things like that. Do you build the courses yourself? Um, for the most part.

I, I like to say that, uh, we all build them because, uh, basically I will come through and, and build out an outline of what I want to talk about. People will kind of go through it, then I'll cobble up some slides. They're kind of, they're okay, you know, they'll get the point across.

And then these folks on my team will take these slides, make them beautiful. Um, other people will come and give me feedback and say, this is what we should focus on. So it it really is a team effort.

Yeah. It's a big collaborative work. Yeah.

Yep. What kind of content have you built, uh, have maybe your favorite that you've built? Um, I think one of my favorite courses I built was probably, um, the go one on the Go Standard library for the Go programming language.

And one of the reasons I think it was really fun was some of the feedback that I got where people were just saying, you know, they were really enjoying how I kind of just made it as simple as possible and showed all these little tricks. And most of those tricks came from developing a lot of ghost software before that and like falling on my face with certain things. And so I tried to include a lot of that in the course.

Like, here's how I screwed up. Please don't screw up this, try this method. And so I got a lot of good feedback and that was probably one of my favorite courses.

Um, because at at that time it was like, there wasn't anybody had a course on that particular subject anyway. And so people really enjoy the, my, my style of kind of like, I call myself the world's Pace developer on Twitter and LinkedIn and stuff. 'cause that's kind of my style is like, you know, I'm not standing up on the stage because I'm some programming God telling everybody how, how, you know, to do things.

It's more like, here's all the ways I screwed up, here's the things I learned from it, and I wanna pass it on to you. And it's fun. I, it's fun for me anyway, it's kind of my life's, uh, my life's goal is to just help people and, and teach 'em.

So I think that's really nice. And do you think you teach like any programming languages or you more about like concepts? Um, right now I'm doing a a lot more infrastructure type things.

Like I worked on the Linux thing and I'm working on some Azure DevOps things, but I have done programming courses in the past on, um, Python and Golan and a little bit of JavaScript. So Is there anything else you wanna talk about? Um, I guess what is, what is the audience for this?

Who's gonna be watching this? Um, just consider me the audience, Fear the audience. Okay.

So I'll tell you, um, one of the, the best things, the best career advice I like to give to new folks is to be a fearless learner is one of the things where I say, don't be afraid to learn it. If a human being created this thing, then a human being can understand it. So even like, you know, we're here at an AI conference, right?

So even I thought, you know, like, I can't learn ai. I am not that great at math. I'm too dumb for this and I should have known better because I've been telling people for 20 years to not think that way, right?

And so then I started to dive into it and jump into it and realize, oh yeah, I can do AI stuff. I can learn this stuff. And so I always try to tell young people like, be a fearless learner.

Don't be afraid to try to learn it, because if you do it in small chunks, you know, eventually you're gonna look back and be like, I don't know what I was afraid of. And constant learning is, is gonna be the one thing that puts you ahead. And then the second thing that I, I was talking with your dad about, the biggest thing that will put you ahead is by working on your people skills and being a good person to work with.

So when you're working on a team, if you have somebody who's just this, you know, wild genius who knows everything about technology, but they're horrible to work with and people don't wanna work with them, they're gonna add less value to the team and their career isn't going to go as well as somebody who maybe doesn't have as many technical skills as this other person, but they're good to work with, they're pleasant, they know they can be approached. Um, and so kind of work on your people skills, you know, work on, on getting along with people, work, work on conflict resolution, just as much as you would work on, you know, algorithm optimization. It's because it is as, Do you practice people skills Just in the, in the workplace, basically?

I think it's probably the only place he could practice people skills. Um, I, I read a book when I was about 13 years old that I still go back to, it's called How to Win Friends and Influence People. The title sounds cheesy, sounds like a, it sounds like a cheesy sales book, right?

Yeah. But it actually does create, have a lot of good principles in it. It was written in 1937, and it has principles.

So I'll go back to those principles and sometimes ask myself, you know, am I interacting with people according to this principle? You know, where like people like to be heard, they don't like to be talked over or whatever. And you can kind of practice that and just kind of evaluate or, or ask people who are close to you, you know, am I, do I seem like a jerk this week?

You know, and they're like, oh yeah, kind. Yeah, Maybe that's the best way. Just ask people directly Maybe.

I mean, you can always find people that can be honest with you, you know, I'm my wife and my children, uh, who will tell me immediately whether I'm doing something terrible. So sometimes it, it does help to ask, I think. So.

Have you been to many conferences like this before? Um, yeah. A lot of, a lot of conferences.

So I've been to ones that are, that are smaller ones like this. I actually prefer smaller ones like this. Um, and I've been to large ones, like AWS with 60,000 people all over the place.

And, and generally when I go to conferences, I do a lot of presenting at this conference. I'm just here to hang out pretty much. Hang out and learn and see what I can figure out.

Did You practice your people skills? Yeah, practice my people skills a little. I'm generally very quiet.

Quiet and introspective. And so this, I'm trying to get out and more, I I just saw your dad, I recognize him, so I'm like, hey. Yeah.

And then the conversation, you know, that's how it goes, I guess. So Is there anything else interesting you wanna talk about or, Um, I don't know, ai, what, what, what is the most interesting thing you think, uh, the most interesting way that people are using AI right now? Um, that's actually a good question.

I mean, the most common way is Cha g PTAs, but factual, interesting ways. I don't think I've done my research. Yeah.

Do you know anyone in school that's using it for their homework? Yeah, it's common. I figured, I thought I'd ask.

I have a daughter who's a sophomore also who says the same thing. It's, it's like very common and it's kind of scary. But I think one of the most interesting ways that it's being used is, um, kind of amplifying people's creativity.

So like, helping to outline things or helping with poetry, something like that. I think it's disingenuous to like go in and, and have, say, write me a poem and then present it and say, this is my poem. But if you could have it say, like, say you're a poet and you say, evaluate my poem, tell me what's, you know, what are the slow parts, what's bad about this?

And have it spit back. I think that's a really interesting way that, that it kind of enhances creativity. Yeah, I think so too.

Like it's kind of, you have to first create something and then kind of have AI help you. Yeah. So I think we've had a really good chat today.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, no problem.

Uh, thank you for having me. I.