LIU012: Behind the Curtain at Life In Uptime

Ethan

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Kevin

Welcome to Life in Uptime, the show where we talk with the people behind the networks that keep our world connected. However, not this episode. I'm Kevin, joined by Alexis, and today we have a special guest that is not technical.

Alexis, who are we talking with?

Alexis

We are talking to my little sister, Melina. Melina, how are you doing today?

Melina

Great.

Alexis

Kevin and I had so much fun with our last episode that was slightly unstructured that we decided to do it again. I'm not sure if you guys have seen Melina in some of our content. We brought her on board about three weeks ago, but we wanted you guys to get to know her a little bit because she's going to be around in the future.

Kevin

Sounds creepy.

Alexis

Around.

Kevin

She will be watching and listening to everything.

Alexis

I just, you know, sometimes when you bring another person on board, Melina's helping us with some of our content, and so I didn't want anyone to be like, who is this random girl that keeps showing up in Kevin and Alexis's reels? Who is she? The daughter.

Kevin

Yeah, she's like a producer for the show. She's, you know, she's managing everything. She manages us, basically.

Without her, we'd be completely lost.

Melina

I would just be eating cookies in New York.

Kevin

She would do that anyway.

Melina

Couldn't stop it.

Kevin

Cookies and ice cream and candies.

Alexis

Technically, no one stopped me. You guys just let it happen. I recorded you.

Melina

I keep saying I'm going to be healthy eating on the road.

Kevin

No, it's all a lie. Okay, so today's episode, we want to kind of talk about our own journeys in tech and how we ended up here because we've interviewed a lot of people who are in technology and they have all amazing stories, but we also realized that not everyone listening knows us and has been following us for, you know, the three years that we've been doing content. And so you guys might not know our stories, who we are, why we're even here in our, you know, our journeys through tech.

So this is a good opportunity for us to just talk about our experiences. And Melina's here just to keep us honest and give us her experience of joining through this process and seeing it from like a non-tech person, which I think is a really cool experience she has that a lot of people who are coming in are having the same feeling she is where she's overwhelmed. All these acronyms are flying at her.

All these new technical things are coming at you and you have no idea what anyone's talking about and you have to try to keep up.

Alexis

I think the other thing that's fun is that every time we get into a topic like this, Kevin, I feel like I learned something new. Like I feel like I'll know you pretty well and then you'll actually start talking about your career or what you did. And I'm like, oh, wait, I didn't know that.

And we talk all the time. So this will be fun.

Kevin

You don't let me talk. It's all you talk.

Alexis

Okay.

Kevin

I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Mostly.

Alexis

Why don't we start with, did you grow up dreaming about being a network engineer?

Kevin

No, not at all. Never. It's a standard story of a kid playing video games, right?

My dad was actually in technology. He was a web designer for the local school district. And so he had computers at home.

He had technology at home. He always had the best laptop. And we actually had the first internet in Florida.

It was called Fern, Florida Internet Research Network. And it was an education only internet network. And so I was exposed to the internet at a very young age for better or for worse.

And I got like an instant. This is the coolest thing ever because no one else on my block has this. And it's a really awesome thing.

No idea how it works. No, no, really.

Melina

It's the coolest kid on the block.

Kevin

Yeah. And that's all I cared about. Like I didn't actually care how it worked.

I didn't actually care about the technology part of it. It was just the cool factor. And I could like go and aim and talk to people and go in chat rooms and do all kinds of things that I would not be happy about my kids doing talking to strangers and stuff.

But it was a more innocent time. It was a more innocent time.

Melina

Omegle and Skype.

Kevin

Well, they didn't have that then. But you're younger. Youngins.

It was all like ICQ and like chat rooms. You don't know what ICQ is, do you?

Melina

No.

Kevin

Oh, man, you guys are killing me. We're only like five minutes in the episode and I'm already old. That happened fast.

That might be a record.

Alexis

I'm not sure what else you expected when we said we were going to talk about your career.

Kevin

True. Okay. Back in the olden days.

Alexis

So you were the coolest kid on the block and then you went to school. Did you study computers?

Kevin

Yeah. So I wanted to be a web design because that's what my dad was doing. That's pretty much all I knew of the internet.

Like I knew the internet went out there and that's how you interact with it. You go to websites and that is the internet. And I want to do someone technology.

Did not like programming. I tried doing some programming. I did some basic HTML, CSS, that kind of stuff or websites.

But that's as far as I wanted to go. Went into college, majoring in web design and absolutely hated it. Talking to users or people like who are paying me to do their websites was the absolute worst thing.

Because I spent, you know, days on a website design that they wanted, that they told me about. And then they would nitpick every little thing. This margin is half an inch too fine.

This button's green and I wanted it blue. And it was meetings after meetings, after meetings, talking to them, trying to fix the design and every time they would change it. And it just kept, I was like, I hate user.

I hate people so much. And I was, believe it or not, I was not as a social butterfly as I am now. I believe it.

Melina

I don't.

Kevin

That was fast. Dang. I was a nerdy kid.

Did not know how to talk to people. Did not know how to do small talk. I was terrified of having conversations.

So the idea of spending time and talking to people over and over again was terrible. And so I graduated with an IT degree, general IT degree, no idea what I wanted to do. Got my first job at the school district, because again, my dad worked there and it's about who you know.

And I was like a general IT person for a school. And it wasn't until we ran into a network issue at the school that I actually had to dig into networking. And it was a computer lab.

And the computer lab had a hub that would connect like 25 computers. It was like multiple hubs, all daisy chained together. And the computer lab during the peak hours would always crash out.

Kids would not be able to connect to the internet and they couldn't figure out why. So they called the IT guy. I went to the classroom, crawled under the desk.

There was like inches of dust everywhere. And you know, it was disgusting. And I had no idea what I was looking at.

All the lights were green. And I knew enough of IT at that point where like green meant good and red meant bad. I think that's like pretty general now.

But at that time, that was that was hot stuff. Okay. And there was a little light that would blink green and then red and then blink green and red and green and red.

And I was like, okay, red is bad. So this little light's called collision. And let me go back to my desk and start Googling network hub.

I think it's a Netgear or something collision. And that took me down this giant path of what a collision is, broadcast domains, hubs for switches and all this stuff. And the more I learned about it, I was like, wow, this stuff's actually cool.

Like this isn't just, you know, you connect to a modem and the modem goes out and it's done. I can actually see where the computers are connecting and packets are going and things are happening. And that was like, it was tangible.

It wasn't just, it goes out of my, out of my wall and hits the phone lines and it's gone. This was something I could actually touch and see and cables and all this other stuff.

Alexis

You had the internet in your hands.

Kevin

Yeah. It's like the IT crowd, you know, they have the little black box. Tell me, you guys know what the IT crowd is, right?

You're, you're looking at me like you have no idea. Oh my gosh. I'm not going to go on a rerant.

Okay. I won't, I won't put you guys through that again, but check out the IT crowd. But yeah, it was cool.

I could touch my hands on it and it was something that the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to do. And at that point I was like, I need to quit the school district. I need to quit my help desk job, basically get my CCNA and I want to become a network engineer.

And that started my journey and I didn't look back since. I've been in love. It's been a, it's been a true love story ever since.

Melina

It's amazing.

Kevin

Yeah.

Alexis

I love that.

Kevin

So that's my, my elevator speech of how I got into tech. Alexis, I know.

Alexis

Your villain origin story.

Kevin

I wouldn't say it's a villain because it's, it's, if I was in like server team or something like that, maybe I'd be a villain, but.

Alexis

All of your lights are green.

Melina

Like all, all of your whole brain is green.

Kevin

It's symbolic. Yeah.

Alexis

Oh, okay. Okay. I actually, I kind of wanted to hop to Malina next.

Melina

Oh, you still want to talk about yourself.

Alexis

She's still at the beginning and I feel like it's very relatable. And just reflecting on when I was first getting into technology and how scary it was when I felt like everyone knew something that I didn't. And Malina has been thrown into a role where she's working with a lot of very technical people.

And not only is she not the only beginner, right? She's on a team of one. So how are you learning?

You know, what's that been like?

Melina

It's funny because I was actually just saying today. I used to always say, you learn something new every day. And I was thinking about it and I was like, I feel like I learned like 10 new things every day now.

Like it's, it's, I'm like.

Kevin

Not only that, but you're, you're being not only thrust into technology, but you're being thrust into like people that are experts. Like, it's not even like, you know, you're starting at a help desk job and the kid, everyone around you is also learning or whatever. You are like, we're interviewing high level people that are big wigs in this job.

And like, you're, you're conversing with people who are like, that I'm awestruck by. So like, it's like, I can't imagine like you like talking to CCIEs and stuff like that. Like I, to me, that was a mythical creature back when I was starting networking.

Like CCIEs were like this idol that were like, you don't, you don't talk to them.

Melina

You don't touch them. I was talking about what was it COO? And I'm like, I don't even know what that means.

Throwing around titles.

Alexis

So Malina, can you tell us a bit about your journey post? Maybe start with like junior year of high school.

Melina

There's nothing to talk about in junior year of high school.

Alexis

You made a decision not to go to college. Yeah. Okay.

You want me to start there? Yes. That's a great place to start.

Melina

So junior year of high school, COVID happened and we had to wear masks in school and we were sitting on our computer and it made me the laziest person in the world. And I'd fall asleep in my classes and mom would have to come wake me up and it'd be a half hour after my class ended. And I'm like, Oh, gotta get out of there.

I jumped every class late because I was always asleep. I lost all motivation. It was awful.

So when they were like, Oh, like this, anyone want to come back to school? We could wear masks. We could separate our desks.

I decided, yeah, it might help with my motivation. So I went and it was awful. And it ruined my senior year of high school.

It was so bad. We had to wear masks in graduation. We had to sit six feet apart at graduation.

It was awful. And everyone was rude about it because it was like the sticklers that were like, you have to stand six feet apart. And it just ruined everything.

So then I decided I wanted to go to Temple for college for psychology. I really liked psychology. My sophomore, junior, senior year, I'm just interested in how people act and stuff like that.

I just like psychology on stuff. And I committed to Temple. And I was filling out my dorming stuff with mom.

And I was like, what if I just don't go? She was like, is that what you want? I'm like, a gap year.

Like, yeah. Gaps, years, gaps, six years. So then I worked at Texas Airdouse for, I continued to work there for six years and got less and less of a people person.

And now I'm here.

Kevin

Which I've seen some of your TikToks where you were like, taking pictures of bad customers. One person wrote in ketchup on your table or whatever, no tips, service sucked or something. So yeah, I don't blame you.

Melina

Bad service and ketchup on the table.

Kevin

I dealt with crappy people doing web design. They were like, that button's a different color. I've never had someone throw ketchup at me.

So I think it's a different level.

Alexis

What do you feel like your main takeaways were from working there? Do you feel like you learned tangible skills? I feel like people always say working in the service industry, there are skills that will serve you the rest of your career.

Melina

Yes, I definitely have better communication skills with people. I hate talking to people on the phone. If I have to order a pizza, I'm like, hey, can I order a large?

I hate talking on the phone. I hate going into shipping your boxes at the UPS. I'm like, yeah, can I ship this to California, please?

I feel like I didn't have good social skills. And COVID again, ruined that for me. And so serving definitely, I could just be someone that those tables don't know.

They don't know who I am. I'm just their server. And I could, I was lying to people out of my butt.

Telling those stupid... Just, yeah, making up stories, knowing people don't know you. I didn't care.

You would just go make a little bit to entertain yourself. Yeah, if it was a boring, slow day and I'm just like miserable or something, you got to do something and cheer yourself up.

Kevin

What kind of lies did you make up? I want to hear your like, did you have like a whole backstory of like, my name is Natasha and I am from Russia.

Melina

Oh no, I mean, I have a name tag on that says my name. I can't think of anything specific. Like, I mean, I had these like crazy regulars that were obsessed with me for like, no good reason.

They were just a little weird. That was a nervous laugh. Okay.

So I mean, no, it was just like an older couple and they were like obsessed with me going to college because like, I would just tell people my life story and if they got a little weird about it, yeah, I apply to them like, oh yeah, I'm applying this spring. I'm applying this fall. And they're like, oh my God, when are you going?

And I'm like, oh, I'm actually moving to California to go to college. Surprise. And they're like, oh my God, we're so proud of you.

And then they see me a year later and I'm still there. I'm still there. So I don't care.

Alexis

What has been your initial reaction? I and this is on me. I feel like I've thrown a lot at you.

Melina's been on board for maybe a month now. And I'm like juggling in circles. Her first task was setting up a new domain.

So we stopped using Gmail addresses. She's like, what is this DNS?

Melina

I never knew what a DKIM was.

Kevin

You threw the newbie at DNS, Alexis. That's like, come on.

Melina

I was at another time zone. She has Google and cloud co-work. I didn't.

I didn't when this was happening.

Kevin

But she paid someone to get it working, which that's, you know, that works.

Melina

Alexis did.

Kevin

Oh, Alexis did. Okay. Wow.

Melina

Outsource.

Alexis

We can outsource. It's called using every tool you have available. And sometimes Fiverr is a great tool.

Kevin

Yeah. I mean, as a small team, you have to, you know, manage your resources.

Alexis

Melina, what? I'm curious. Initial initial 30 day review.

Well, not of me.

Kevin

No, no, we can do it. Let's let's do it. 30 day review of your boss.

Melina

When Alexis moved in together, she was like, so like, how was it living with me for a week? Like, am I a good roommate? Can you tell me everything I did?

Feedback in performance metrics. It's a good communication skill, because if you don't know, it's going well. I'm not knocking you for it.

It was, it was funny. So like first 30 day trial.

Alexis

I was going to ask more about tech initial reactions of working in technology, not of working with me, but yeah.

Kevin

I'm curious about the working with you part, though. It's that's the part I'm curious about.

Melina

Okay. It's not that bad. Like.

Kevin

It's not that bad. Okay. That's a great way to start.

Melina

Like me and Alexis never got along. So to understand like why she is the way she is and like doing it for her and helping her. Now I get it.

And I'm like, okay, maybe she's still a little bit crazy, but it's less crazy than what I thought it was.

Kevin

No, that is a compliment, Alexis.

Alexis

I'm hearing a compliment. They're running joke. They're running joke right now is when we go on family vacation again, instead of just me sitting on my laptop.

Now it's going to be me and Melina sitting on our laptops.

Kevin

Well, now you're paying her to be on your laptop for you, right?

Melina

Yeah. So you could have off and I guess all this work we could switch. But yeah.

So like working with Alexis isn't awful as I thought it would be.

Kevin

That's a solid review. I know when, you know, my boss says you don't completely suck. It always feels good.

Okay. So Alexis, is that okay? Okay, boss.

How has been the technology? How's been like drinking from a fire hose?

Melina

It's definitely interesting. Like I hear things that I never thought I'd hear before. I'm like trying to understand things that I never thought I'd try to understand before.

Like I said, I've learned 10 new things every day, but don't quiz me because I can't have any answers for you. I just like, I don't know. I do my research when I want to understand it.

And if I like, don't grasp it, I like continue to research it, but not like to an extreme. I'm not like obsessed with learning it. It's just like, I'm just like kind of trying to retain the information that I'm getting thrown at me, but it definitely helps when the person I'm helping makes like informational videos.

And also you make it helps when I'm like editing something. I'm like, oh, okay. I get it.

Kevin

Honestly, like, have you guys talked about like partnering up for content? Like, I don't know. I use my wife and my kids for content all the time.

I'm like, is there something that you guys do with technology you had to understand? And one of my most successful videos was about website cookies. And that was my daughter, my 15 year old daughter.

She was like, every website I go to, I have to click accept cookies. I'm like, I have no idea what that thing is. So I'm like, okay, I'll make a video about it.

And it ended up like having over a million views and like it went great. So you guys should.

Melina

I can't wait to watch it.

Kevin

You don't watch my content?

Melina

I think you did like. No, I do. You were like pumping something cookies.

Kevin

Probably. Who knows? I'm a weird guy.

But yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, she's a resource. What I'm saying? You should use her as being like, what don't you understand about technology or about anything?

Melina

You want me to start making you lists?

Alexis

Yeah, no, literally. I think that's the other, I think that's the other thing. And I'm sure we'll get into this a bit more later, but moving from a hands-on engineering role into a role where I am doing a lot more high-level content creation, the process of deciding what to make is so much different than it was when I first started.

Which when I first started making content, I feel like I've told the story a few times now, but I was a solutions engineer at Cisco and I just made videos about what my customers were asking me questions on. Every video had the basis of, if one person has this question, more do two. And with technology, more often than not, that's true.

But when I moved from a hands-on role where I was working directly with customers themselves into what I'm in now, which is more of a community-faced role. My job at Megaport, I actually, it's funny. I just put together a list of initiatives I'm running for my boss with like a status update on each and there's like 12 different things, right?

Not all of them are content-focused. And a lot of it's more about driving community, brand presence, how to enhance like the technology and the technical voices without glazing over all of the marketing fluff, right? And being like an advocate for actually...

Kevin

That's difficult, yeah.

Alexis

Just talking about the technology as it is. I'm sure you guys have all seen, you know, ad campaigns with some like beautiful marketing slogan on it. And you're like, what does that even mean?

Melina

Yeah.

Alexis

I'm really big on just saying the thing as it is. You don't need to sugarcoat it. You're marketing to engineers.

You can just tell them and expect them to have a level of understanding because they work in... They're specialists, right? Like they are engineers.

You can just tell them the thing.

Kevin

Every engineer has like a giant BS detector. If we start hearing fluffy words, it goes off. And we're like, I don't trust a single thing you're saying because it smells like BS.

Alexis

Right. So that's a lot of what I'm doing now. But in order to go back and make technical videos, now I'm not getting those direct questions from customers.

Of course, I get a lot in my DMs. I get some of my comments. But it's not really the same as like sitting across the table from someone and having them ask you questions directly. So the process has just looked a little bit different now.

I also feel like I'm kind of losing my voice. So if you guys hear me coughing, I'm so sorry. I was sick.

Kevin

Yeah. And you're traveling and you're... I deal with my customers still and I deal with co-workers and I pull a lot of content from there.

But I also have the time to do some research on my own projects. I have a home lab that I'm spending probably too long, much to my wife's chagrin, doing projects and stuff like that. I'm doing the open claw and some AI agents, messing around with that stuff.

Alexis

And it looks really cool.

Kevin

It is really cool. AI agents are... I know people hear about AI, AI, AI.

But AI agents are taking it to the next level. I used to be before... I'm not saying I don't know a soapbox about AI.

But I used to be before like, every job is going to be fine. AI is overhyped and overblown and blah, blah, blah. But now that I'm actually messing with AI a ton, man, I am nervous for all tech jobs, really.

Alexis

It's something I really wish I had more time to play with and set up. I mean, I have a small home lab that's in Malina's office right now. It's kind of funny.

It is really bizarre seeing Malina sit at my desk where I usually am. There it is.

Kevin

Perfect, perfect.

Alexis

But it's something I wish I had more time to play with because I feel like when I am home, I'm home for such a short period of time. It's all either admin things, going to the dentist, fixing my driver's license, like random appointments. Like I have to cram all of that in like three or four days, once every other month.

And then outside of that, I'm on the road. And a lot of... You're sticking to the road.

Well, I think it's so... Where I'm at in my life right now, it's worth it. It does take a lot more brain power to make sure that, okay, I have my hotel booked.

I have my flight booked. This is done. I need to find a place to eat.

I need to find a gym where most people... You're sleeping in the same bed every night. You're going to the same gym every day.

You go to the same grocery store. You're using the same pots and pans. And so it does take a lot.

You're on autopilot a lot. Yeah, and I have really... I feel like from COVID onwards, I mean, similar to Melina, COVID, I was graduating college, right?

And so I went to my first job at Cisco. I went in the office. I was there for like three weeks, and then we got sent home.

And in a lot of ways, that transition from being in college and being like super social and around people all the time to just being isolated in a work-from-home job in like your new adult life, people always talk about college being super formative. But I also think the two or three years where you're adjusting to your new cadence, what does it look like to be a working adult? What does work-life balance look like?

How do you make friends that aren't college friends now that you're a working professional? And I feel like that change for me was really hard because, again, it was COVID. And I'm so lucky that it didn't affect my high school or my college years.

But especially transitioning into corporate, I do feel like I kind of struggled to figure out what a good balance was. And every day, I used to say every day felt like Groundhog Day. Every single day felt the same for so long.

And I mean, we did three moves during that time. I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina. I lived in Washington, D.C. Then we moved to Charlotte. And I thought that moving cities would fix it. I thought that moving cities would kind of fix the monotony. And I feel like looking back, time went by so fast.

Everyone says that time goes by faster as you get older. But I really think it's just a lack of novel experiences because once you remove some of the spontaneity of being in person or being in college, like when you're in college, anything could happen. You could bump into your friend at the library, and the next thing you know, you're down the street at the bar.

Or you're walking to class. You feel like anything could happen. There's people bopping around all of the time.

When you're in person, you and your coworker might go for lunch somewhere new. The amount of novelty might be less, but at least there is still some spontaneity that can happen. But when you're in a work-from-home job, you really have to go out of your way to plan things, whether that's trivia night, getting together with friends.

Like, it's very rare that something random or spontaneous happens during the day because you're doing the same thing every day. And I feel like because of that, time just sped up. Like, 2022 to 2026, I feel like I did the same thing every day.

Yeah, even though my life right now seems really chaotic from the outside looking in, and there's a lot going on, and I'm in a new city, and I'm bopping around and doing this and doing that and the other thing. And like, yeah, it's hard to go make sure I have a gym, and I'm cooking different food in different countries, and I'm using Google Translate to find new labels. Like, it's almost like...

Kevin

It's exhausting. It sounds exhausting.

Alexis

I mean, like, yeah, it is in some ways, but it's also, it's like scratching an itch in my brain because for so long, I just felt like I was doing the same thing. And now I'm doing something new all the time. It's like a new puzzle in every country, every day.

Kevin

Are you ever going to want to settle down, though? It sounds like you don't like the monotony, and like, that's what adult life is. I'm sorry to tell you.

Once you get married and have kids, and like, you get in this routine, and kids strive on routine. You can't mess with kids too much.

Alexis

Sure, but I also think there is a big part of it is what you make of it. And we talked to... I know we talked to Andre last week about the co-livings, and like, there's so many people that live alternative lifestyles that are not just like your standard status quo and make it work.

You just have to be open to it. I mean, I met a woman. I was flying back from London, and I sat next to this woman.

We talked for eight hours. Like, when I tell you, like, our necks were bent.

Melina

God, I would hate that.

Alexis

No wonder. Oh, I'm sure the guy next to us was so mad. We hit it off.

We hit it off. I went and stayed at her house in Florida, like, had dinner with her family. She's amazing.

She's amazing. But her and her husband, they do like five or six international, week-long international trips a year. They own a home in Florida, a home in Colorado.

They each run their own business full-time. They have four children that they homeschool. And they just make it work.

They have four boys under the age of 12, and all of them are homeschooled. Oh, my God. And she runs her own business, and they do all the travel.

And they're both, like, equally successful in their own right. And I was just like, that's the dream. That's so cool.

And like, she was like, yeah, we've slowed down with the travel a bit just because with the boys. But she was like, kids are adjustable. They get used to it.

You just have to have the mindset that you want to make it work.

Melina

Okay. All right. I'll give it to you.

Alexis

Talk to me in 10 years. If this podcast lasts 10 years, we can resurface this episode.

Kevin

What do you mean? What do you mean if? Come on.

You got to have faith.

Alexis

10 years from now. Mark the clip.

Ethan

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EDA also has both generative and agentic AI capabilities. One of which is Ask EDA. Now, Ask EDA is, it's more than just making documentation easy to consume.

You can ask plain language questions and get context-aware answers back because Ask EDA knows about your specific network. So you can use it for troubleshooting and problem explanation, and even for applying and validating fixes. So you know how at some point the network got too big and too complex for you to keep it all in your head?

Yeah, Ask EDA doesn't have that problem. It is your always-on assistant with perfect network knowledge at the ready. If Nokia's event-driven automation platform with Ask EDA interests you, find out more at nokia.ly slash EDA. Try EDA for free at docs.eda.dev. And Nokia makes it easy to test drive their tools in a lab. And you can be up and running with EDA just doing a Git repo clone and a make. So one more time, that is nokia.ly slash EDA for more info and docs.eda.dev to lab it up. And now back to today's episode.

Kevin

All right. So speaking, while we're talking about your life, let's talk about your entry into IT. Now I know a little bit of your backstory where you were into airplanes.

You wanted to be a dolphin trainer, then you got into airplanes, wanted to be a pilot, right?

Alexis

I'll give a thousand-foot view. Maybe if anyone isn't corporate, we'll give the thousand-foot view what we're doing here. So I originally wanted to be a pilot.

I guess when I was like little, when I was like, when I was really little, I wanted to be a dolphin trainer. And then I decided I wanted to be a pilot. Thank you, Kevin.

I decided I wanted to be a pilot. My family never really traveled growing up. We took the same vacation every year to upstate New York.

And I had always wanted to explore and see new things. And I was like, well, if I'm a pilot, I can do that. Well, I found out that pilots have to go into a significant amount of student loan debt to get their wings and get their hours.

And it's very, very expensive. So I was like, well, maybe I can be a military pilot. I'm blind.

If you guys didn't know, I could not see. I had, I think I was like a negative six and a half. That's what I am right now.

I was, when I tell you, I was so blind. I could not see my hand in front of my face.

Kevin

And so... All I remember is the, not to interrupt, but that Cisco Live video where your glasses broke and you're like taking the camera up to your face and you're like, no one can see in the podcast, but she had this weird goofy face or like, and she's trying to like see.

Alexis

I put my camera in 0.5 and I was, the nose piece fell off my glasses at Cisco Live and I had to super glue it back on. But I was so blind, I couldn't see to do it and no one would help me. And so I put the camera on 0.5 and I had to have it this close to my face in order to put the stupid superglue on the stupid nose piece. And...

Melina

We'll link it in the comments.

Kevin

It's one of my favorite clips. Yeah.

Melina

I've had some pretty, pretty bad times like that with my glasses. I'm blind too.

Alexis

There's nothing you could do about it. And so then I was like, well, I can't be a military pilot because my eyes are too bad. What's the next best thing?

I'm good at math and science. I guess I'll just go be an aerospace engineer.

Kevin

I guess I'll just do that.

Alexis

At least then I could still kind of work on planes. And again, I wanted to travel. I had like no fear of God.

And so I decided I was going to go to the number one aerospace school, whether or not Embry-Riddle was the number one aerospace school. It was the number one thing in the Google search.

Melina

I don't know how much money they paid for that.

Kevin

Did you really Google search it and be like, number one aerospace school? And like there's a sponsored post, number one, you're like that one.

Alexis

Quite literally. That's exactly what happened. And I was like, oh, it's in Daytona Beach, Florida.

That sounds wonderful. I'm living in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Anything sounds great.

So my parents were like, you can't visit. And I said, I don't care. I did the virtual tour like three times.

And I was like, cool, sounds good. Took my dad's credit card and applied and put down the down payment for my dorm. Wow.

And that's how that went. Racked up like 140 grand in student loans while I was there. Did three different internships.

Yeah, it was painful. I'm almost, I have almost paid them off.

Kevin

Oh my God, that's crazy.

Alexis

But I moved down to Florida completely on my own, did three internships. I ended up getting into GE Aviation, the Navy, and then finally I worked for Boeing. And every time I walked away from my internships, I was just like, this ain't it.

Like, this is not what I want to do. I imagine me just sitting in a cubicle, like tapping away at a computer all day. Like, yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't stand it.

And so I was talking to anyone I could talk to, just trying to figure out like, why do you like your job so much? I can't sit still.

Kevin

Convince me, please.

Alexis

I can't sit still. Like, I refuse to accept that this is normal. And eventually someone was like, hey, have you heard of tech sales?

I think you'd be good at it. And I was like, sales? Was it not my ex's dad?

Melina

Was it not my ex's dad?

Alexis

There was multiple, there was multiple people. So the first person, I was on a tour, I was touring a aircraft carrier when I was working at the Navy. And you asked for the story.

Kevin

Your story is cool. You're just so casual about like, I was, yeah, I was touring this frigging carrier. It's cool.

It's whatever. I just chose to be an aerospace engineer. I was good at math and science.

I was like, yeah, I'll just be an engineer. Like, you're so casual about it.

Alexis

Yeah, that's kind of how I go about my life, Kevin. I don't know what to tell you. So I was on an air, I was literally on an aircraft carrier and we were getting a private brief.

Again, we were interns for the Navy, like literally for the Navy. And we were getting a brief from this guy.

Melina

For the Navy.

Alexis

His title, his title was literally director of science. And his job.

Kevin

All of science. He's just.

Alexis

Director of science.

Kevin

Director of it all.

Alexis

Yes.

Kevin

Like Bill Nye, okay.

Alexis

His job was to brief the generals about upcoming like trends and things they should be aware of. And anyways, we're in this aircraft carrier. All of the other interns are like goofing around in a corner.

I don't know what they were doing. And because I'm me and I like yapping, I went over and started talking to this man. Because again, I have no fear of God.

And I was just like, hey, great presentation. Just networking. I just like talking to people and networking.

It's kind of what I do. And so we were having this whole conversation and he goes, have you ever thought about tax sales?

Kevin

It's so random to me. Like, why would the director of science advocate for tax sales?

Alexis

I don't know. I don't know. He was like.

Kevin

But you're someone who's already having an internship. Like you're already there for a reason.

Alexis

I am not sure. I don't remember what we talked about. I just remember him being like, I think you'd be really good at it.

I think you should look into it. And so I went back to school and I got an internship at Boeing. And I was like, this is it.

This is it. Like Embry-Riddle, if you're an aerospace engineer and you get an internship with Boeing, like you peaked. You've peaked.

Like that's it. That is endgame. And so I got this internship and I went out there and I hated it.

I mean, like everyone I worked with was very nice, but the work I was doing, I just didn't find interesting. Again, I didn't like the whole cubicle thing. And I felt like I, that was my last option.

Like I was like, this is supposed to be the best job and I still don't like it. And now I'm a senior in college with this very expensive four-year degree. What am I going to do?

And when I went back to school, I met my now ex-boyfriend and his uncle worked in tech sales. And he was going into tech sales. And I was like, oh, there's that weird thing again, tech sales.

I wonder what that's about. Well, the nice thing about tech sales is that you can ramp up and make a lot of money very quickly. And for me at the time, I had a large student loan and I was looking at my estimated monthly payment and I was like, oh my God, how am I ever going to pay this off?

This is crazy. Why did I do this to myself? I felt like I had no guidance.

Neither of my parents have college degrees. And so we really didn't have a lot of guidance of like, maybe you shouldn't get a six-figure student loan. Like there was nothing.

I had no savings for college. It was all on my own. And like, yeah.

Anyways, so I was like, well, that sounds very nice. I can make a commission and I can pay off my student loan and I don't really care that much about aerospace. I mean, planes are cool, but it's not like end-all be-all.

And what I really like is talking to people and teaching people and like tutoring others. So if I could just do that in a different field of technology, I'll just go do that. And so I was super, super lucky.

I got into a training program with Cisco called the Cisco Sales Associate Program. And basically what it was is that Cisco recognized that to be a solutions engineer, it's typically a very senior role. Like most people going into solutions engineering positions have 10, 5, 5 at least, if not 10 or 15 years of experience.

Like you were really in it before you move into sales. And because of that, there wasn't a lot of diversity in their workforce. And not diversity just from like bringing in more women, but diversity in like bringing in young people.

Because what happens is that when you're only bringing in people who are 10 years into their career, you have a lot of your SEs who are a lot older. And so they developed this program to help inject younger talent into their workforce and bring them up to speed very quickly. So I got in this accelerator program.

I took my CCNA, CCNP in a year, did a lot of whiteboarding, labbing, mentoring, shadowing, all of the things with these very senior engineers. And then I got kicked in front of customers at like 23 and told to go sell switches. And that's how I got into Cisco.

That was my introduction to IT.

Kevin

Again, very casual. You're like, I just started working for the largest networking company in the world, Cisco, and then got my CCNA and CCNP in a year, big deal. And I was, you know, in dealing with, you know, all these advanced level networking people at Cisco.

Alexis

I think my first bomb I priced out was like three and a half million dollars. And I remember sitting there on my couch, again, COVID, I'm sitting there on my couch in this like work order. And I'm like, money's not real.

Money is not real. All of this is fake.

Kevin

It's insane once you get into networking, or at least in technology in general, and start looking at like these purchase orders. Like I work for the government, like local government, Hillsborough County government. And we are, we don't blink at over a million dollars.

We're just like, oh, that's only a million? Okay, cool.

Alexis

It's insane. Yeah. So I did, I mean, I was a solutions engineer.

I supported 50 some odd customers. I rotated through them every quarter. I seem to pick up, lose some, pick up some new ones, worked with all types of businesses, like all different businesses.

And eventually I started making content. I made memes. I helped Cisco social media team make memes for a while until I started posting them on my own channel.

And it just took off from there. Again, I grew my channel under the guise of if one customer has a question, more do too. So that's how I initially started making videos.

And then there was a lot of funny things that happened when I needed to move. Yeah, it's a long story, but I was managed out, which was not a very pleasant experience if anyone else has ever been managed out of a business. I got managed out of Cisco, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Hands down. I ended up at Megaport. My CEO met me through LinkedIn.

I was making content about SD-WAN and the Cisco-Megaport partnership. And he basically messaged me and said, who are you? Who are you?

We need to talk. And he was my biggest advocate throughout the process of me leaving Cisco. And when I finally left, voluntarily resigned, he sent me a piece of paper and said, write a job description, put a number on it, come work for me.

And so that's how I ended up at Megaport.

Kevin

Are you willing to talk about that process?

Alexis

The writing my own job description?

Kevin

I know you get a lot of questions about how do you get a job that you have? I've never heard of anyone just creating their own job before. Number one, what did you think your CEO saw in you?

What qualities did you have that he was like, that person, we need to hire her at whatever cost and get her in here?

Alexis

Kevin, you are really good at asking questions.

Kevin

Yeah, I do this for a living.

Alexis

Thank God we have you on the pod.

Melina

Like I said, he's the life to the uptime.

Kevin

I said this. I'm the life. She's the uptime.

And now you're the in. So funny.

Alexis

I'm the in. So it's funny. I put a podcast out about or not a podcast.

I put a tick tock out about this while I was out in Hawaii. Here's another casual thing. Kevin's gonna make fun of me for.

I was just flown to Hawaii to present to an organization called VCPEIT, which was a bunch of leadership at venture capital organizations that were investing in IT. It was great. They were awesome.

But you need to build leverage. If you're early in career, I truly believe the first five years of your career, all you're doing is building leverage so that you can have more autonomy later on. Because in a business, if you make yourself truly indispensable, and I don't mean indispensable like, you know, you acquired a bunch of skills and you can get promoted.

I mean, like you are the only person that can do this thing. You have defined the category for X. And there's people I can think of at Cisco.

I don't want to name names, but I've met engineers who were like the backbone for multicast routing in broadcast systems or the number one industry advocate for IPV6. Or, you know, the list goes on and on and on.

Kevin

So are you saying you should specialize very, very specialized in your first like five years?

Alexis

That's a hard question because I consider myself hard. I consider myself a hardcore generalist. However, I would say what makes me special is social media.

I am really good, really, really good at social media and communications. So I truly believe the first five or so years of your career, all you're doing is building leverage. You're building leverage and you're building trust that you can get the job done, that you know you're going to do what you say you're going to do.

If you can do those things, people will rally around you.

Kevin

What is leverage? Define leverage. Before you go on too big of a rant and I can't stop you.

What is leverage?

Alexis

You need to make yourself indispensable. Like you are the pin, right? I'm sure you guys have seen the meme, especially with the cloudflare outages.

If one person, you know, if cloudflare goes out, the whole internet goes out, right? That's fine. You need to do something similar at your organization.

And businesses hate this because what they try to do from a business perspective, you want to avoid this. You don't want to be one single person that is that critical to your business. However, if you can find and make yourself that person, you can start demanding a lot of things.

Because they cannot function without you.

Kevin

Yeah, so I'm a network architect and I'm now a supervisor at my job. And I can tell you actively trying to not have that happen.

Melina

Right.

Kevin

Like if that one person leaves or gets hit by a bus or gets sick for a month, like you don't want to have that big a hole where like we just say, I'm sorry, users, you know, if it's the Wi-Fi guy is out, like, oh, sorry, Wi-Fi is just down.

Melina

He got hit by a bus. That was a great example. It's a real fear.

Kevin

It's a real fear. We say that all the time. Have you heard that in IT too?

Melina

I learn something new every day. What did I say?

Kevin

Ever since I've been in IT, it's been like, you know, we're afraid of someone getting hit by a bus. I don't know why the saying is there, but every job in IT has had the same saying.

Melina

Yeah, it's always, it's always hit by a bus.

Kevin

We're actively trying to avoid silos.

Alexis

100%. But if you can make yourself, and I can name several other engineers, whether that's over like IoT, multicast routing, IPv6, you become known for something in the industry, in the community. And if you can become such an indispensable advocate for that thing in your area of expertise, it's beneficial to the business to have you on board, right?

So for example, I would say part of what makes me, me, I'm a generalist and my specialty is social media and communication. I'm really good at getting a broad message out to a lot of people. It's something that's unique, right?

There's not a lot of other ways you can deliver that without me. Therefore, when I want to do my job in different countries, when I want to work with other organizations or vendors across the industry to help continue growing this message, it is beneficial to let me do so. Because there's only one of me.

To answer your question, what do I think my CEO saw?

Melina

I have the, what?

Melina

I don't think, I just, I want, I want to say like, Pause for dramatic.

Kevin

Yeah, go ahead.

Melina

Oh my God.

Alexis

You see how, you guys have to remember.

Melina

She just wanted to like build it up.

Alexis

People aren't always watching this on video. There can be a dramatic pause and it's okay to pause to think.

Melina

Yeah, no, it's.

Alexis

I have, I have the most respect and admiration for Michael Reed, my CEO. Number one, he was taking a bold bet on a position that not a lot of other companies had. Technical, having someone, basically hiring an influencer to do quote unquote evangelism is not something that's commonly seen.

It's not something that's commonly done at big tech companies. It's not something that's done a lot of smaller companies. You might see developer advocacy programs at some more SaaS based companies, but that's not what he hired me to do.

He hired me to come on and be a full-on advocate and influencer. To do that requires a lot of flexibility. And a lot of basically trust and just giving someone a long rope and being like, I trust you to do right by my company on the internet.

I don't have a team of people that approve the content that I post on my personal pages. I, our approval process for even technical content that I write is like me. And sometimes I pull in a senior engineer to fact check what I'm saying.

Right. And to do that as a corporation requires a lot of trust. And there's not a lot of businesses out there that are willing to give one person that trust and flexibility, but that's exactly what you need to do to make it successful.

Because the second that you start putting marketing, an approval process and marketing this and that and the other thing, and you need to use these specific words and demo has to be this way, it doesn't work. And Kevin, you know, as well as I do to put content out, it needs to be authentic. It needs to be you.

It needs to be within your creative process. And the things that do the best or hit closest to home or that we care a lot about are pieces of content that we just wanted to create. And we're excited about and we're passionate about.

And when you take something like that and you put a bunch of like corporate BS on it, it just doesn't work. And so Michael Reed really gave me just a long leash and a place to grow and just said, go figure it out. Right.

I trust you. I trust you. You write by the company.

This is what we're trying to accomplish. Go do it. And so as a result of that, I've started, you know, four or five different programs within Megaport.

You guys see the content that I post on my socials, but there's a lot of different things I run behind the scenes for them, but just never even see the light of day either because they're internal. They're training programs. It's pieces of content that I'm coaching other people to create because ultimately when I'm making content like for Megaport, it doesn't always need to be my face.

I can just be the brain behind it. And so he was, I mean, really a pioneer in creating this position. And since I've done it, we've seen how many companies?

Four or five. Kevin and I will find job descriptions every now and then and be like they're trying to hire an influencer. We've seen like four or five other companies will come out with similar positions, but in order for it to work, it's that like trust and flexibility.

If you put too many guardrails around it, it's just not the same.

Kevin

Yeah, and that's what we've seen everyone else do is they're trying to recreate it, but in a marketing way.

Melina

And it doesn't work.

Kevin

It's not organic at that point. Like it has to be authentic and organic, even if it's a product, even if it's a service that you're trying to sell, like you have to truly believe in that product and the service and think it's really freaking cool or else it's just you're selling. You're just pretending.

Alexis

So I really, no, I truly do believe, though, the only reason I was able to get into this position is because I spent all of that time building leverage in one particular area. And again, mine was social media. That's what I happen to enjoy.

But I think there's so many different areas you can build that in, especially from a technical perspective. And I've seen people be advocates for specific technologies, whether it's multicast, whether it's IoT, whether it's IPv6. Like when I think of those things, I think of specific people I've met that are like industry defining engineers in that area.

And I know that kind of goes against your specialist versus generalist view. But I think even as a generalist, like I found things that make me stand out. And, you know, I think other people could too.

Kevin

Yeah, I think it's important. What I want listeners to hear is that being a generalist is still important. Like know all aspects of what your network is.

If you are a network engineer, network admin, whatever, know a little bit about everything. But if you do have a passion for something, like if you are really into IPv6, whatever, you're like, this is the cool, this is the future, this is how to be using IPv6. Dig into that.

That's cool. But don't neglect the rest of it too. Like don't just be like, okay, IPv6 is my thing, and I don't care now about wireless, and I don't care about layer two or whatever.

But you still have to know that stuff. But you can follow your passions and specialize.

Alexis

Yep. Awesome. Well, I think that's all we got for today, guys.

Kevin

I'll leave you with that.

Alexis

That is all for this episode of Life in Uptime. I don't have the outro in front of me, but I hope you guys enjoyed this one. If you have any questions, comments, feedbacks, topics that you would like to see us dive into, let us know in the comments, or you can always shoot us a message on social media.

Kevin

We have emails now. Do you want to talk about our emails?

Alexis

We do. Malina set off emails for us.

Kevin

Thanks to Malina.

Alexis

We have alexis at lifeinuptime.com or kevin at lifeinuptime.com.

Kevin

Very creative.

Alexis

Yay. So shoot us an email, leave us a comment, or DM us on socials, and we will see you next episode.