Eyvonne Sharp: From Farm Roots to the Cloud

Alexis

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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. I'm Kevin, joined by Alexis, and every week we sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers, how they started, what they've learned, and where they're headed next. Our goal is simple, to help you see how far tech can take you no matter where you start from.

Alexis

All right, guys. So today's guest grew up on a farm, found her way into technology through a computer job, and became a Fortune 100 network architect, then helped co-found Network Collective, worked through VMware and Google Cloud, and now helps customers navigate infrastructure modernization. Yvonne, welcome to Life in Uptime.

How are you doing today? I'm great.

Eyvonne

That sounds like a lot. Yeah, no, excited to be here with both of you today.

Kevin

I was going to ask, that sounds like a mouthful. People who are new into tech, or just getting started with tech, what does all that mean? That sounds like a lot of words.

Eyvonne

It is a lot of words. And what I would say is, first, it's three decades worth of time, right? So you could do a lot in that amount of time.

And I could almost split it now into three different career sections. So yeah, it is a lot, but it's also a long time, right?

Alexis

I was going to say, it reminds me, I think there's an Alex Hermosi quote, and he's like, you can do anything given a long enough time horizon. You could literally achieve any goal if you just give yourself long enough to do it.

Eyvonne

Well, and it's the, I think, you can have it all, but you can't have it all at once, right? Because there's a personal component to all that too, right? I've been married that whole time, and I've got four kids.

So it's a lot of just time management and doing the next thing and taking the next opportunity and learning along the way. Yeah, for sure.

Alexis

I have to ask, out of all those things I listed, do you have a favorite? Was there a favorite job or stage in your career?

Eyvonne

Well, I think, so the way I've always talked about this is there are moments and times in your career that are kind of just magic, right? You're on a team that feels like it's firing all cylinders. I feel like my first enterprise job three or four years into that was one of those times.

I was paired with a technical lead who was fabulous, and he and I worked really well together. And I was learning a lot, and we were getting projects done. And we had this team of really eclectic people and a great leader.

And that was one of those times for me that just felt like magic. I've had those times too in my current career, my current role at Google, where you're working with a customer on a project and with a team that's just really amazing. And I think the thing that I've learned throughout that 30-year career is that those times come, and you enjoy them while they last, and then they go.

And it's like the wind, right? You enjoy it while it's there. You don't always know where it's come from, and you don't always know where it goes, but that there are these moments that are really incredible.

And I think Network Collective, we went through a phase that was like that as well. And we didn't really, I personally, didn't quite realize the magic that was there in the midst of it. Because there's the recording, and there's the scheduling, and there's the time commitment.

And sitting in my office when it's dark outside, and it's almost bedtime, and there's all that too. And so I think the thing that I've learned through all of that is you've got to just enjoy those moments while they're there, because there will be a next phase. And there will be good parts and hard parts in that next phase too, but to enjoy the good parts of the phase that you're in.

Kevin

Do you recognize when you're in a good phase? Because for me, my big thing is I only recognize it in the hindsight. I'll be like, oh man, my old job used to be awesome.

My team was awesome. And I really miss that. But in the moment, I'm like, I have deadlines.

I have this. I have this going on, this going on. And I don't actually sit down and go, wow, this is actually pretty cool.

Eyvonne

Yeah. So I think I'm better at it now because I've been through a few cycles of it and seen it. And I do think the current phase that I'm in is one that I'll look back on and go, man, can you really believe that I was there then, right?

Because we've had the AI explosion. That brings with it all kinds of ambiguity and change and challenges that feel very, you know, well, they're challenges, right? They feel very difficult in the moment.

But also I think I'm able to look at it and go, man, this is a moment in history that I will remember, you know, because I think probably my next big transition will be to my rocking chair with my lemonade and my tea. But yeah, I think I'm better at it now. But I think that happens with time and experience.

And sometimes like you can be in a really good space and not realize it until you make a pivot. And then like, oh, like I did not realize all the great things that were happening in that moment. So the best antidote to that is gratitude and remembering the things that are going great and paying attention to the good things and not over indexing on the on the hard things.

Yeah, for sure.

Alexis

Do you have any tips for recognizing when you're in one of those moments that you feel like you've gotten faster at recognizing it?

Eyvonne

Yeah, I think some of it is like you're energized by the work, you know, that you feel a sense of momentum, even if it's hard, that you enjoy the people that you work with. I think those are all good signals. And that, you know, even if it's hard, you can see progress.

You have to have enough perspective to look at the hard things as just hard things. And there's always going to be hard things too. I think that's the other thing is to look at like, yeah, of course there are problems to solve.

Like why would people pay us good money if we weren't solving problems?

Alexis

Something I keep telling myself lately is if it was easy, you'd be bored. If it was genuinely easy, you would just take on more work or find a different way to challenge yourself. So these are problems that you inadvertently chose because you were looking for things to do.

Eyvonne

And at the end of the day, we really all want to be challenged. I think there's something innate in us as humans that want to accomplish a thing. I think we're made for work.

We're made for good, productive work and that we need it. And that it is when we feel like we're working at a thing that's never accomplishing anything, when we get burnout or when we get depressed or when we have challenges. But I think like we need work.

And the people that I know that are the happiest in their careers and most fulfilled are not the people that have it the easiest, but the people that really are accomplishing amazing things.

Kevin

That's one of the things I love about networking is like there's at least from the beginning of your career outside of help desk, but once you start working with actual gear and equipment, you can actually see things that you're building and you can get that visceral actual build a thing. That building over there has the network that I installed. I was part of that.

And that continues on through your career where now I'm an architect and I'm designing and I'm doing all this fun stuff, but I can actually see the product of what I'm doing. So it just makes that feeling of accomplishments so much higher than if my job was dealing with spreadsheets or accounting or my number, you know, something that's that's more less tangible.

Eyvonne

So and it's and it's interesting because maybe that's that's something to unpack a little bit more when we start talking about leadership, because when you move into a leadership role, like your work product becomes less tangible and your work product is really the work product of your team. And and so you're a degree removed from that. And so you you have to start thinking of different.

Metrics, different the wins are different, right, and the wins become, oh, I saw this person go from being very nervous about doing this task to be to trying this task, to doing it, to saying, hey, I think I want to do more of that. Right. And that's the win or being able to say, hey, I was able to see this challenge coming, warn some folks about it.

We built a structure and we got through it right as a group or seeing people start to collaborate together like those become the wins, not a hey, I did this thing. And so that can be a very hard transition for a lot of folks.

Kevin

Yeah, definitely. Especially coming from typically at least at least how it works that I've seen in technology is that we don't hire managers who are career managers. We don't hire leaders.

They're usually engineers that are just they're good at their job. So we put them up and now you're a manager. Now, here, go to this 30 minute training on how to be a manager.

And now this is it. So it's really hard.

Alexis

Yeah, it is. Yvonne, that was going to be my next question was, how did you decide to go from stepping from an individual contributor into a leadership role? Because I feel like especially in a technical sense, like Kevin mentioned, sometimes when you're looking at career wrongs or the next wrong on the ladder, it is management, right?

There's not always a distinguished engineer position or like a more technical level that you can pursue in your organization outside of leadership. So what was that decision like for you?

Eyvonne

Yeah, I think I think for me, there were a couple of key moments that stand out. One actually involves Network Collective and the podcast. We were we were recording a show and I think it was on something like segment routing.

And it was first of all, I was like in my car. I was on the roads doing, you know, like doing a sales engineering job. And we were recording with Nick Russo that day, for those who knew and loved and remember Nick Russo.

And but it was just a really deep segment on segment routing. I was like, I don't know if this is for me anymore. Right.

Like I wasn't energized by the conversation. I wasn't super curious about it. I was I was like, hmm.

Right. And that that was kind of a moment that I remembered. And then as I started my role at Google Cloud as a as an individual contributor, as an infrastructure subject matter expert.

But I noticed the projects that I really enjoyed the most were when I got involved in a big, complex project with a large customer. And I wasn't just doing the SME role. I was also like coordinating with lots of different people and communicating and being like, ah, here's the big picture of what we were trying to accomplish.

And you can do this part. You can do this part. You can do that part.

And then let's put it all together. And then being able to articulate all of that to a diverse group of people became really interesting to me. And so after all of that, I was like, you know, maybe maybe it is time to start thinking about stepping into that leadership role.

And it and I became much more interested in the we than the me. Like, how can we accomplish this thing? Not what is my individual piece of it?

Because you you get to a point where either you got to go deeper technically and you become the go to person on a topic or you go broad, but you almost always have to have to land in a leadership position if that's what you're going to do.

Alexis

And so generalist versus specialist.

Eyvonne

And so for me, that the sweet spot right now is I am a leader, but I'm also leading very deeply technical people. So I kind of understand the day in the life of that. But I'm also doing a lot more communicating, coordinating.

Eyvonne

And then there's there's the manager administrative. That's just part of the job. That's that stuff.

Eyvonne

You just this the stuff you have to do, the expense reports and the you know, one on ones are great. But the performance evals, all of that stuff, it's just part of the job and you have to be willing to do that.

Eyvonne

But to me, like some people think that is the job and I don't think that's the job. That's just the that's the stuff, that's the time sheets, you know, whatever, just the administrative stuff that you have to do.

Kevin

I'm I'm currently just got recently promoted and I am now taking over a supervisory jobs job. And so I'm now having to do all that stuff. So I'm like, this is like you're like talking directly to me at this point.

Eyvonne

Well, and all I can say is, like, you got to structure your role enough that like, OK, this is when I do like, you know, like this is when I triage incoming requests. I'm going to set aside some time to do X, Y and Z like that. That's just like you.

Because if you don't do the those things, stuff starts to fall apart. But you can't get so wrapped up in that stuff that it becomes the job, because then you just become another like middle manager, you know, and that, you know, you've got to find a way that for you, you're making a contribution and that you can see it, but you don't get so wrapped up in the administrative stuff or or you just ignore it. Like you can't do either of those two things.

Kevin

Yeah, the two extremes. You got to find a nice balance. Yeah.

Alexis

I think that's a hard transition going from being an I.C. into leadership is that what I've noticed is for some managers, they'll really struggle with where is my value now that I cannot see my direct output? Where is my value to the organization? And they'll almost over rotate on harping on their team or, you know, the paperwork aspect.

And it comes down to what you said, Yvonne, is like your output in the organization shifts. Yeah. Like it's no longer clear cut and it's no longer something that you directly own.

Eyvonne

Well, and the biggest challenge for and I'm still trying to navigate some of these things, but the biggest challenge, I think, for an I.C., a deeply technical I.C. that stepped into leadership is they think their job is to tell everybody how to do all the things. And that's not your job, especially it depends on the distribution of junior to senior people that you've got. My team is very, very senior people, like the best in the world at what they do.

And so my job is to listen to them, to enable them and to get out of their way. Like I, you know, I would not endeavor to get in the weeds with my people and tell them how to do what they need to do. But sometimes you do have to coach technically.

And that is a hard balance to figure out. But like I'm really there to be a force multiplier for my people and to enable them to be. As the best that they can be and to keep the organization from hindering them, because any time you're in a big organization.

There's stuff that doesn't match every person and every team, and you've got to provide some, you know, buffer or some guidance or some clarity and be like, OK, these things, I know nobody wants to do them, but we really have to do these things because they're important. And then other times you've got to stand in the gap and go, hey, this person is doing something really important. And I know it doesn't they're not showing up on your dashboard the way that you want them to.

But what they're doing is really strategic and really meaningful. And this is why. And that becomes a bigger part of the job.

Alexis

I was going to ask Yvonne. So we've talked a lot about going into leadership, the network collective. How did you actually get into networking?

Eyvonne

Yeah. So we we led off with the fact that I was I grew up on a farm. Right.

I so when I was a teenager, I grew up in a family that really believed that we get up early so that we can get our work out of the way and then enjoy the rest of the day. And so I was it was like a Saturday. It was going to be 90 degrees that day.

And my mom was like, come on, let's go to the garden and get things done before it gets hot. And so like the dew is heavy, like the green, the green bean leaves are sticking to your clothes like Velcro. And I'm just I'm sticky and gross.

And I just had this moment where I'm like, when I grow up, I'm going to get it. I'm not going to marry a farmer and I'm going to get a job working with my head. Right.

And it's just a very clear moment for me that I don't I may not know exactly what that is, but I'm absolutely not going to make this my life's work. And so after that, I started college on a chemistry scholarship, realized that I didn't want to spend my life working in a lab after my first like lab class, like gloves and the chemicals. And I love the science of it.

Like if I ever went back and got a recreational degree, it would probably be chemistry related. And so I switched my major to computer science and it was it was a good fit for me. I took a couple of summer classes and was like, yeah, that's the way I want to go.

And then I begged my way into a job at a mom and pop ISP. This is the mid 90s. We knew somebody who was starting an ISP just dial up modems and doing some basic web development.

My mother-in-law had them build her a computer. This is back. We like the burgeoning days of gateway computers, if you remember those.

And I don't know, she needed something. And I went in there one day and I'm like, please give me a job. Like I've worked faculty support at the University of Kentucky.

Like I can answer phones. I could do some basic website stuff like please give me a job. And that's really how it started.

And then I learned some networking and did some web development, got a job at a local engineering firm doing IT stuff. And it just just grew from there. Got experience and, you know, was really eager to learn.

And, you know, that that began that first, you know, third of my career of that that first decade of just learning all the things and asking, how can I help? You know, like, what do we need and how do I how do I help?

Kevin

Do you think it was like a slow progression or is there like a moment that you had a job that's like propelled your career that was like, you know, now you're working at Google and you're a leader in Google. That's huge. That's not like, you know, like I work in the public sector.

So when I hear someone say, like, I work at Google or one of the big, big companies, I'm like, oh, geez. Yeah, don't do that.

Eyvonne

Don't do that. So there were a couple of inflection points. One of those, my husband and I moved from a more rural area to Louisville, which is not like super thriving metropolis, but a bigger city.

And I got an enterprise IT job. And that was that was a big transition for me because it was a larger environment. I learned a couple of things, like all this stuff that I learned in on small gear, like at the time it was like a PIX, like I'd started with a Cisco PIX, moved up to the ASA firewall, but like the small ones, like the 5505s.

And then I started in this enterprise environment and they were bigger devices. But like the command set was exactly the same. And so I had this epiphany.

It's like, oh, it's not any different. Like all that stuff I was doing on my home computers, on Linux and all that stuff, all those skills are transferable. It's just the structure and organization that makes it different.

And so that was a big epiphanal moment. And I spent eight years there and just learned and grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. And that was one of those magic phases for me.

Switched to another health care org that was culturally very different, learned some really hard lessons. But then the next big pivot was deciding to go from enterprise IT to vendor pre-sales. And so then that's when I made the jump to VMware.

And so that was the next big pivot.

Alexis

What was that like? Because I, well, I think it's no secret. I've been trying to convince Kevin that he should consider moving from being a customer to coming to the dark side and being a solutions engineer, a systems engineer at, I don't know, Cisco, Palo Forte, anywhere.

You've got the skill set, you've got the people skills to do it, Kevin. I really, really think you would be happy with the transition.

Eyvonne

But what was the deciding point? We're people too on the dark side, just so you know. A couple of things happened.

So I remember when I said like, you can be in an environment and not know how good things are until you move to a different one. Well, that transition between these two enterprise orgs was very much like that. Like I started the job, the leader was like, oh, we want to do all these things.

We want the network to be self-healing. We want, like, we have this bold vision of all the things that we want to do and accomplish. And he said, if you run into any trouble, let me know.

And I got the job and started working. And I'm like, oh, wait, like these people, they say they want the network to be self-healing. You know, that was the phrase at the time.

And they still want to use static routes because they feel like those are safer. And there were a couple of those things. And I just went to this guy who hired me and I'm like, hey, like you said, you know, if I ran into any problems, well, here's some things that I've observed.

You've got a leader at this spot who like, you're not going to be able to get where you want to go with them making the decisions they're making. I kid you not, that leader never spoke to me again. Like I violated some kind of a cultural norm.

Alexis

Unspoken policies.

Eyvonne

That's right. And I did it pretty early. I did it like four or five months in.

Alexis

Right.

Eyvonne

So I didn't step back. I assumed that the open culture where I could challenge in my previous org existed there. And so it became really clear to me nine months in, like this particular role wasn't going to be a fit and I need to find something else.

And I actually was looking at other roles in the org and had a couple offers at the same time. I had a former colleague who I'd worked with, who was part of that magic base, who had moved on to VMware, who was doing sales engineering, who was willing to refer me. And, you know, I got an interview and actually the initial job that I interviewed for, I made some blunders and did not get that role, but impressed them enough that they kept me in mind for a different role.

And then eventually just made that move. And some of it was, I knew that I had sort of misstepped in that particular role and I needed to do something different and was fortunate enough to find a pre-sales role.

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Alexis

I think it's good on you for recognizing too, like, it takes a lot to come into an organization when you're new and rely on your past expertise. You spent four to five months. You weren't just sitting there.

You were observing. You were watching how things were done. You were learning from your peers on how they set things up.

And then it's like, okay, you brought me in with my experience to make recommendations. Here are my recommendations. And they're like, just kidding.

We don't want them. To me, that would be such a big knock on my confidence of like, you brought me in to do this thing. I'm trying to do it.

And now you're not listening to me.

Eyvonne

So during that time, that's when I discovered Westrom's typography, I think it's typography, which is the idea that organizations, basically, there are three cultural modes that they exist in. They can be generative, which is this culture that, you know, and there's a great table. I'll messengers are rewarded, right?

And that we ask for feedback. And then there's a bureaucratic organization where we all just follow the rules, right? We have rules, we follow the rules.

And then the third type is a pathological organization, which is like messengers are shot. And, you know, we don't seek information and things like that. And so, fortunately, I happened upon Westrom's typography in that role.

And it gave me a framework to understand what was going on. And the way I would describe it is that I was in a bureaucratic organization in a pathological arm, right? So I was, you know, the leader to whom I was ultimately reporting was pretty pathological.

And the org was bureaucratic, right? And I had been in an org that was more bureaucratic, that leaned generative. And so I just assumed, like, this is the way we did things.

Of course, we want to fix the problems that we talk about. Some people don't really want to fix the problems.

Alexis

They just want to talk about it. They just want to talk about them.

Eyvonne

They want to come and they want to do their eight to five, and they want to get their salary. And then they're going to hire a vendor or a partner to come in to take all the blame.

Kevin

And, and so it was public sector before it sounds really familiar.

Eyvonne

You know, they have their own special characteristics and qualities. But it was a real learning experience for me about different orgs and different cultures and, and how important it is to understand that, which really served me well when I moved into a pre-sales role. And then when you're in a pre-sales role, you're like, oh, entire companies have personalities, right?

And, and it's pretty important before you make any big moves to kind of understand the personality of the org that you're in. And, and I had a colleague who in that same company was way more effective than I was, because he took, took the time to understand that. And, and there was also some like, he was a he component, right, to it as well, I think.

But ultimately, like it was a big lesson for me in organizational culture and how to, how to soft pedal your way in a little bit and not be so forward with your recommendations until you know what you're dealing with.

Alexis

So true. Working with multiple customers. And this is another point I've made whenever I talk about being an early in career SE is that you get a ton of experience just looking at different environments and different cultures and different ways of working and doing things the way that they've set up their networks or installed certain products or solutions.

Like when you're working with 50 different customers, you almost get insight into 50 different networks, not just the one that you own. So I wouldn't say you get as deep, but you definitely get very wide.

Eyvonne

Well, and, and, and, and there's the technical component, but there's also the people component, how are decisions made? Who holds the power? Is there, there's formal power and there's informal power.

There's like the people who actually sign the checks. And then the people that everybody looks to, to go, should we really do this or not? And that person may not show up as in any way that appears meaningful on an org chart.

And yes, everybody listens to them. Right. And it's important to know about those formal structures and the informal structures, if you actually want to get things done.

And I'm sure that's absolutely true in public sector environments as well.

Kevin

Oh yeah, for sure. That's what I was going to say is like, that's one of the bigger, when you're joining a company or an enterprise, I think as a younger person, you're not aware of the different layers, how each team has a culture and then the group has a culture. And then on top of that as a culture, and then there's layers and you have to learn to play the game.

Like that's part of, part of assimilating is learning who's who and how you get things done by the back means necessary and all this other stuff. It's a whole game. So I always take like the first couple of months before I say anything, before I make any changes or big moves, I'm just learning, I'm watching people and I'm trying to learn the game so that when I do want to have my ideas shared, I can do them in a way that is acceptable in that culture.

It's a whole thing in itself.

Eyvonne

It's a whole thing. That's absolutely right.

Alexis

Yvonne, would you rather be the person that has the title and the decision making power or the one who has the decision making power, but not the title?

Eyvonne

I don't, I don't know that I've ever felt like the person with the title. Yeah. I, you know, I think even now, if you, you see that I have a title that, that looks interesting, but I think like for me, it's always about influence.

I think one of my Achilles heels, and I really learned this when I left that first enterprise job is that I had way as an IC, I had way more influence than I realized I had, like a project manager that I really thought a lot of. She reached out to me later and I was like, you know, why did you leave? And I was like, well, I just felt like I wasn't really moving things forward.

What I didn't have a mental framework for is that I'd moved into more of the technical lead kind of a role. And so there was less tangible output. But one of the things she said to me is like, you weren't on the calls that you weren't on.

Like you didn't see how people looked to you before they made a decision, right? And people wanted to know what you thought. And you don't really know what happens in the room when you're not there.

Do you know what I mean? And so I realized like posthumously that I had more influence than I realized I did. And so for me, like I'm a big believer in, in leadership through influence and that that's what matters.

And I naturally lead that way, right? I am not a leader by fiat and I'm actually having to learn to say, okay, we really have to do this as a, like, I sometimes try to go through it through the side door and like influence and, and get people on board. And that's great.

But sometimes like sometimes stuff just needs to get done. And as the manager, you can say, hey, these things need to get done and we just need to do it. And, and I'm finding that I need to do a little more of that, not a lot, but a little more of that in, in like today, right now.

Eyvonne

So that's one of the things I'm, I'm leaning into.

Alexis

We've talked a lot about making yourself not a single point of failure, but becoming indispensable to an organization. Because once, like you said, once you're indispensable, once you're in that position, you have more leverage, you have more influence than you might realize. And that's, I think we talked about, was it last episode or the one before that Kev?

The early years in your career, first, you're proving that you can do the job. The second, you're proving why you're indispensable. And once you have some leverage, you have some influence, then you can start making demands and saying, I'd like to work from home on Mondays and Fridays.

I'm going to work from this country instead. How do I remote work? Well, you are the person in the organization that can do this thing and they can't do it without you.

And once you become that, you can make demands. So how, I was going to say, how did you get to that point?

Kevin

I disagree with that. So it's hard to do that.

Eyvonne

So what I was going to say is the whole indispensable thing is a double-edged sword. Because the way I like to think of it is scale. In other words, once you determine how to do the job and do it well, what you really want to do is scale yourself.

And that is actually a very rare quality. I've had the joy of leading a couple of phenomenal technical leaders that are individual contributors. But they are also able to form informal teams, to lead other people, to have people want to work with them and to take their expertise and scale it to a team of people.

Because the last thing you want to be is the only person who can fix a thing. Because then your phone always rings. And at some point, if you're the only person who can fix a thing, you become a liability, not an asset.

And so what you want to do is you want to be indispensable, not because of what you can do, but how you can scale what you can do. And you can do that as a formal leader or, frankly, the people that are the best at it are the people that I know that are informal, like tech lead kind of folks. Like I know a couple of folks who've built multi-billion dollar businesses as individual contributors by scaling what they do and being fabulous connectors.

And so, you know, I think it's you get to a point where you've done all you can do as one person, one human, and either like you just become one of many folks who can do that or you learn to scale that. And that doesn't mean you don't, it doesn't mean you have to give up being deeply technical, but it does mean you have to grow enough leadership skills to bring other people along. And those people are the ones that are so deeply valuable that I would go out of my absolute way to keep on my team is because like they lower the burden on me as a manager because they are leading in their own right and they are actually building a business that drives real revenue.

And that's, those people are hard to come by. And that's what really makes folks valuable.

Kevin

That I can agree with.

Alexis

What you said is they're a force multiplier of their skill set. Yes. So in and of itself, you are still making yourself indispensable because if you can scale your skills, Scott, you are still, I mean, I guess I'm contradicting myself a little bit in that you don't want to be the only person on the team that has those skills, but you are developing a more unique skill in being a multiplier.

Eyvonne

I think, I think you need to scale yourself and you also need to be able to take a week or two off and not have your phone ring. Like to me, like now that's the measure, right? Like if I, if you're on PTO and I feel like I have to call you, then the, then one or both of us are doing something wrong.

Kevin

Yep.

Eyvonne

Right.

Kevin

I think that, that, that shift happens when you start becoming a leader and start becoming managing where you look at the team as a whole and going, you know, a single point of failure, just like a network, even with people is a bad thing to have. And I'm failing as a leader if I'm not cross-training and if our group as a whole cannot, you know, account for one person going on vacation, that's a failure on, on my part.

Eyvonne

But, but I say this, it doesn't mean I don't like, like emotionally, I took a week off a while back and like did some family stuff and things went fine and nobody called me and I got back and I'm like, do they really need me?

Kevin

Do you feel a little bad about that? Yeah. You're like, oh.

Eyvonne

Yeah. So I still felt that, right? So like, you still got to manage that piece of it, but ultimately like, I know that this is the right course of action.

Kevin

I think you want to be wanted, but not needed, like that you're such a good leader and people depend on you because of your personality, because you're a great leader, but not that, you know, they need you to sign off on their time sheet or sign off on their thing that, you know what I mean? It's a, it's a want instead of a need.

Eyvonne

Well, and I think over time, like it's, it's more about the important than the urgent and there's very little that can't wait a week or two.

Kevin

Yeah.

Eyvonne

Right. Like you're, you're not there for six months, like stuff's going to fall apart. Right.

But if you, if you can't take a week off, there's something.

Kevin

Yeah. You got big problems. So I have a question for you.

It's going to shift gears a little bit, so you don't have to answer this question, but I always, I always find a weird question that popped into my head and I can't, I can't stop myself from asking it. You don't have to, you don't have to say anything. You don't want to have you ever seen the movie, the internship.

Eyvonne

I haven't. No.

Kevin

Oh man, that, that kills my entire question. It's a movie about these two guys who joined the internship program at Google and there's all kinds of like competitions and like, they have like field days where like they're playing quidditch and like they're competing for which team's going to win and all this stuff. And I was just curious to how accurate that is with Google culture of like what they do.

Eyvonne

Well, I haven't seen it and maybe I'm glad because I can't, I can't speak to that. Like, look, every organization has weird pockets. Right.

Um, what, what I, what I can, and, and we are going through such an upheaval in, in technological change and organizational change. There are a lot of things that are just changing, right? Like, you know, I've told my team, like, you guys need to be prepared for rolling reorgs like the rest of the year because we are growing and changing so fast.

Like, I don't know what's coming up. Um, but what I can say is that, um, there is still a, a, a group of folks who really deeply believe in the qualities of Googliness, right. Of thriving and ambiguity of being helpful to one another of, you know, and I think like part of why we're innovating the way we are is because we have, we, we, we still try to build a world in which people can challenge effectively and speak their mind and all that.

And look, leaders come and leaders go, and there are pockets where it's not that way and pockets where it's more that way and all of those things. And like, there's, there's weird stuff that goes on in every organization. Um, but, but it's, it's, I think what I would say is that we still get a lot right.

Even as we're in the middle of just unprecedented. I hate to use the word, but really, yeah.

Alexis

Looking back over the course of your career, I know we're almost up on time. Is there any advice you would give to your younger self when you were first starting out?

Eyvonne

For me personally, I would tell myself to chill out a little bit, like relax, it's going to be okay. You know what I mean? I, I think like if you'd have told, so.

I remember the first time I ever saw the Google search engine, right. It was still on the stanford.edu sub domain, right. There was, you know, there, it wasn't even google.com yet. Um, I had a colleague call me over and say, Hey, there's this new search engine. You should check it out. I think if you would have told 20 year old me that I would eventually be working there, like I wouldn't, um, so I think I would tell myself to chill out.

But the, but the other thing is that a lot of times folks get hung up in the particular technology that they work on. They identify with a very particular thing. Like I am a router guy and I configure routing and I do routers and I do BGP instead of my job is to help our organization communicate through technology.

Right. Now that's probably a little too broad. Um, but I think what has worked for me is what's the business need right now.

And how can I support that? Right. Like, what do we need to do right now?

What problems do we need to solve? And how do I help solve them? And I've, and I've made a couple technology pivots because of that.

Not so much because of, Oh, I find this thing interesting. Um, I know that's not the case for everybody, but it's like, you know, what problems do we have that we need to solve and how can I help solve them? And that has worked really well for me.

Alexis

Ooh, I love that. Especially because you're reframing your skillset in a business sense.

Eyvonne

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, it, it, what is, what does infrastructure mean in an age of AI?

Right. What, what does that mean? And it's changing, right?

Our jobs are changing. Our roles are changing. We're thinking about it very differently.

We're dealing with, with new problems.

Eyvonne

Um, and, and that's okay because, you know, I don't see myself as a, Oh, I'm a person who makes sure we can deploy VMs or that we can run containers or that, you know, all those, it's, it's, how, how do we make sure that this works for the business and we're moving things forward?

Alexis

Well, Yvonne, thank you so much for coming on Life In Uptime. If someone wants to connect with you after the show, where can they find you?

Eyvonne

Um, I'm, I'm more of a lurker on Twitter X these days, but you can find me at Sharp Network. Um, I'm still watching and, uh, LinkedIn, of course. Um, also you can join me and William Collins on the Cloud Gambit, another, um, uh, podcast on the Packet Pushers Network where we talk about all things cloud and AI with a little bit of networking and automation.

Alexis

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. That is it for this episode of Life In Uptime.

Huge thank you to Yvonne for sharing her journey and thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. And if Yvonne's story today gave you something to think about, share it with a friend or colleague who might need to hear it.

And until next time, keep learning, keep building, and keep your uptime high.