Transcript
Shane Hastie: Good day, folks. This is Shane Hastie for the InfoQ Engineering Culture Podcast. Today, I’m sitting down with Pablo Fredrikson. Pablo, welcome. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.
Pablo Fredrikson: Thank you for an invitation.
Shane Hastie: Now, we came across each other because you spoke at the recent QCon San Francisco talk or conference. But before we get into that, who’s Pablo?
Introductions [01:35]
Pablo Fredrikson: Okay, thank you for asking. So, my name is Pablo Fredrikson. I’m a principal engineer at Bitso. I’ve been working in the field for about 18 years now. Feels like a lot of time. And it’s been a long time. I started working for a cyber cafe here in Argentina, where I live. I started moving forward in my career. Started, as I said, in a cyber cafe. Then I moved to a few software companies. And I learned, I understood also that I wanted to help engineers to do their job. So, basically, that is what an SRE does. He tries to allow developers to move forward and to put their code in production faster.
I remember in my previous company, when I had the interviews, I was asking the developer team, “Hey, what is your biggest problem or your biggest gripe that you have with the infrastructure team where I wanted to join?” And they all said something along the lines of, “Yes, it’s taking a lot of time for me to put my code into production. It takes a few days”. And I remember joining the company and saying, okay, our goal now is to make it possible to start writing code and put it in production in less than one day.
So, that’s basically what an SRE does. He enables developers to put that code in production quickly, of course, in a safe way and efficient way, to making sure that both the code is quickly in production, and also it’s stable, and the infrastructure is stable and everything works fine. So, that’s what I do. And I also have a YouTube channel, where I make videos about what I do everywhere at work, good practices about engineering in general, and technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, and all of that. Try to share my knowledge there.
Shane Hastie: Now, that YouTube channel is in Spanish?
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes, my YouTube channel is in Spanish.
Shane Hastie: And I know that there’s a story to why you chose to do it in Spanish. So, tell us that story.
Making technical content available in Spanish [03:41]
Pablo Fredrikson: So, when I started, I noticed that there were a lot of channels talking about what I do, like SRE technologies and good practices, but there were no channels in Spanish. And in Argentina, where I live, even though the English level is pretty good, I mean most people can understand English, not all of them can speak it. But we do have English classes mandatory at school since you are a kid, so most people can kind of understand English, but it’s not 100% of them. And there are some people that need more help. And as you know, also in technology, most of the content is in English. Documentation, guides, tutorials and all that.
So, I wanted to help those people. I wanted to help the people that maybe are not too familiar with the English language, they are not too comfortable speaking or understanding it, and they maybe need someone closer to them to explain some of the subjects. So, I started this channel in Spanish and I only make videos in Spanish. I do have some interviews with some English-speaking people. I do have subtitles for them. So, I make sure that always share my content in Spanish, so people that maybe don’t have the knowledge or maybe don’t have the means to get the English classes, they can understand and get at maybe the same or at least closer to the level of English-speaking people. So, that’s my area.
Shane Hastie: So, giving back to the community in a way that they can consume it and use it in their local language?
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes.
Shane Hastie: You talk at QCon five steps to building a personal brand for elevating your influence. Tell us why does a personal brand matter.
The importance of a personal brand [05:39]
Pablo Fredrikson: Oh, it’s really important. And actually, of course, as I mentioned, I started working in this field 18 years ago, but my YouTube channel is pretty much like it’s new. It has a few years. But actually, my previous job, I got it because of my YouTube channel. I had some people that watched my channel and they liked, I don’t know, my personality maybe. And also, they thought that I have knowledge, so they reached out to me and invited me to have an interview. So, that by itself is a good example. Just for having a public brand, it definitely gives you more opportunities. And this is not only for public things. You don’t need to be only sharing your knowledge publicly. You can do it locally in your company. So, it’s really important to not only help other people outside your company, but you can also help people inside your company. And that definitely gives you more visibility.
I have some examples of things that happened during my experience in previous jobs, and all of them are because I made something that got noticed. So, for example, I remember having an issue with some load balancers, a technical thing that happened in one of the companies. And I remember fixing the problem, but also then talking about it in an engineering all hands. And I’m exposing the problem that we had, and obviously, talking about the mistake I made. It was a human error, but what we learned and all of that. And people like that and they remember that. And I remember after a few years, after that, I wasn’t an offsite. And the company was 100% remote, so we never met each other before that.
And the CEO of the company just was walking by, and he saw me and said, “Hey, Paolo, I remember you. I remember that you gave that talk about the error that you made and what you learned about it. That was really cool. Thank you for that”. And just that small interaction meant a lot to me, because I didn’t think that the CEO will care about this technical problem that we had, but he remembered that a few years after. So, I think that’s really important, because I remember after that also, he mentioned me a few times during some other meetings and all of that. So, having visibility and working on projects that have visibility is really important, and will help you in your career. It will help you grow and get to those higher levels.
Shane Hastie: What if I am more introverted, I just want to be in the back, let people tell me what to do, I’ll do it, I’ll do my job really well, I’m uncomfortable stepping up?
Strategies for introverts to share knowledge [08:45]
Pablo Fredrikson: That’s a really good question. And sometimes it’s unfair, because some people are really capable and that doesn’t mean that they want to, as you said, share their knowledge or maybe get noticed. And there are some other ways that you can do. Maybe you don’t want to give a talk, but maybe you can write a blog post or maybe just an email, or maybe mentoring someone to help them. So, in most companies, they have a mentoring program and you can sign up to help someone else. And that is like a really close thing. I mean, you don’t need to be exposing to a lot of people at the same time. It’s just one-on-one situation or maybe a small group. So, I think there are some things that you can still do to share your knowledge with other people, helping other people, and also learning from the experience.
Of course, as you know, as everyone knows, you learn when you teach. And sometimes you need to also refresh some things in order to teach that. So, that’s one of the things I learned about my YouTube channel as well. When I want to share about a topic, I sometimes need to learn a little bit more what I already know. So, it’s a two-ways street. You help, but you also help yourself and grow in order to help others. So, there are some strategies you can do, as I said, like emails, maybe a blog post, maybe small things that definitely can help.
Shane Hastie: What makes a good SRE?
What makes a good SRE? [10:24]
Pablo Fredrikson: I think I remember having a similar question before. And the question was, what makes a senior engineer a senior? And most people think that is experience, that is years in the field. If you ask someone, yes, this guy has 10 years of experience, he’s for sure a senior engineer. And I don’t think that’s always the case. I mean, of course, experience helps and it makes you grow. But I think in order to be a senior engineer, you just need to be a good person. You just need to care about other people. I mean, your customers don’t care about what technologies do you use and if you’re a great coder or a great developer. They just care about if the system works, so you just need to think about that. You just need to think about your customers and just make it work.
Impact beyond technical skills [11:23]
And if you think about them when you’re working, you are by design a good person, a better person. And the same as sharing your knowledge. I think if you are helping someone else, you are definitely a senior engineer. I’m sure that in most engineering-based companies you have those metrics, whatever, knowledge metrics or whatever, that define if a person is a senior or a principal, or a staff, or whatever. And when you start going over senior, you notice that the most important things is the impact that you cause across the company. Not only the technical challenges that you have and solve, but also the impact that you have because of those challenges.
So, funny thing is that I’ve been working for Bitso, the company I work for now, for three months. And I’m a principal engineer here. But in the last three months, I haven’t touched technical stuff for that much, almost at all. I just did a few things. And sometimes I feel like, okay, I’m not doing anything. I feel like in the last three months I just made one or two pool requests. But no, I’ve been doing other things that have more impact. And I see problems that maybe can get my help and try to fix them. A quick example is I joined the company and I saw that the incident management team were getting a lot of alerts, thousands.
So, I saw that and I say, “Okay, let’s try to fix that”. So, I used my experience to fine tune those alerts, and make sure that they get less noise, and they can work more efficiently. And that wasn’t any code involved. It was just some of my experience saw that that was a problem and I think it’s a good thing to fix. So, just be a good person, find the things that people are struggling with and try to help them.
Shane Hastie: How do I find those things if I’m busy?
Proactively identifying and addressing issues in the workplace [13:43]
Pablo Fredrikson: You have very good questions. You with will notice them, definitely. And I maybe can change the question a little bit, because finding them, it’s not the hard part because you notice them. You see, you will go to a meeting and see a problem and say, “Okay, that’s a problem”. You find the problem, but that doesn’t mean that you have the time to work on them. So, working on the problem is the problem, is the hard part. And I think you just need to define your role between you and your manager. And of course, it comes with experience, and it depends on your manager abilities to see and understand that what you’re saying is actually important. And of course, everyone can make mistakes. And maybe I think something is important and it is not, so that’s why I need to check with my manager.
But just talk with your manager and say, “Hey, I saw this problem”. For example, “I saw the team that is receiving thousands of alerts and I think that is something that we need to fix, because if we fix this, we’re going to see this, this and this improving”. So, I think the talk here is, how do you find time to work on that? And I will say that just talk with your manager, and explain that it’s something that is really important and you have to work on that. So, the project will be prioritized for you, hopefully.
Shane Hastie: So, make it visible, communicate the impact and the value?
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes.
Shane Hastie: When we were chatting earlier, you made an interesting point, “You know more than you think”. Tell us more.
You know more than you think [15:36]
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes. I would say that sometimes you know more than you think compared with other people. So, maybe there’s someone that needs help and you feel like you are not capable of helping them, because I don’t know that much about that project, I don’t know that much about that topic. But for sure, there is something that you can help with. I mean, to this day, I watch really basic videos about stuff that I work every day, because you always learn new things, like really small things. So, there are a lot of things that you can teach and help others, even though you think that you don’t know much. But you actually know much about some things and you just need to find someone that knows less than you to help them.
And as I mentioned earlier, it’s a two-way street. I mean, they for sure will help you and teach you some things. And that makes you both a better engineer, a better person, a better worker. And also, this is really important as well, as a principal engineer, a staff plus engineer, by helping others, you are increasing the value of the company because the engineers that are working on that company are now better engineers. So, the company grows in value because of your impact. So, I think the job of staff plus engineers, staff engineers, principal engineers, is to make sure and raise the bar, to make sure that people learn and get better at their jobs so the company value also grows.
Shane Hastie: So, if I am a junior engineer failing in my career, how do I chart my path to move up this pathway?
Career progression for junior engineers [17:43]
Pablo Fredrikson: Of course, it takes time and you always need to be ready to pivot. Sometimes you want to do one thing and maybe in the middle you’ll realize that maybe you like something else better. So, I will say that try to get together with some senior engineer, and try to work with them, and observe, and ask them to give you ideas and help you. Sometimes really small things, like for example, as a junior engineer you are probably going to get a lot of tickets to solve small tasks. It’s really hard to see the impact on those small things. And probably, there’s no real impact. I mean, no big impact. But you can definitely talk with your manager and say something like, “Hey, can I join that meeting that you’re having tomorrow about this product, because I’m really interested on that and maybe I can help a little bit”.
And also, there are things that maybe makes you a better fit for that project. I give you an example. Maybe someone is really passionate about music or something that is not actually related to their job, but maybe there is a project in your company that is related to that hobby that you have and you can help a little bit. I don’t know. Maybe you are a gamer or maybe you are a soccer fan, or something like that, and there is a project about that. And you can say something like, “Okay, I’m an engineer. I am just code, like front end, whatever, but I also have some experience. In my free time, I play soccer and I’m a gamer, so maybe I can help you a little bit on this”.
And in my previous company, for example, there was some struggles on the marketing department about visibility and how to manage social media. And I was an engineer. I didn’t have anything to do with that. But because of my background on my YouTube channel, I say, “Hey, maybe I can help you a little bit with this. I can help you how to make better social media posts, maybe give you some ideas. Maybe creating a blog post or something like that, because I have this extra experience that I have outside my job and I can help you with that”. So, try to find things that makes you passionate about. You might talk about the five steps to increase your visibility or your personal brand.
I mentioned we all have a friend that cannot stop talking about a subject like dinosaurs or cars, whatever. And their eyes light up when you ask them about it. If a friend is really passionate about dinosaurs, okay, what is this dinosaur name, whatever? He cannot stop talking about it. So, try to find that. Find your dinosaurs, find the thing that you’re passionate about, and maybe do something about it. Maybe, as I mentioned earlier, write a blog post, make a YouTube video, host a podcast, send emails, whatever. Try to find something you’re passionate about and share that with your company, because I’m sure there is something that you can do with that passion.
Shane Hastie: A lot of good stuff in there. Is there any piece of advice that you would give the younger Pablo on your journey?
Advice to a younger self [21:16]
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes, I have a few. Well, as I mentioned earlier, be ready to change and be ready to learn about your experience. And don’t say something like, “Yes, I’m going to work on this project or work on this job forever, because this is what I do”. Be ready to change, because sometimes there are new things that come up and you learn that you like that better or maybe you find opportunities out of them. If I go back and speak with someone, like is starting, especially in Spanish-speaking countries, I would say learn English for sure. And also, as I mentioned earlier, help someone. I mean, you can help someone really easily.
As an engineer, as a person that works in IT, we have the privilege of making a lot of money compared with other industries. And sometimes we have people in our families or friends, or close to us that don’t have that privilege, but we can help them in some ways. Maybe you have a computer that you’re not using. Maybe you have, I don’t know, a book that you are not reading anymore. Just give it to them and help them. Maybe they can learn something about that book. Of course, help them if they ask you questions. But maybe old computer that you have laying around, just give it to them so they can learn.
I remember having a person that helps us with the house. And her daughter, she was 17 or something like that. And she wanted to learn about programming, but she didn’t have a computer. So, I had a computer in a drawer and just gave it to her. I mean, for me, it’s nothing. I have the privilege of that. For sure, I’m not saying that I changed her life, but definitely improved it a little bit. So, maybe it wasn’t only me and other persons, other people also helped. But yes, I did my thing. I did just a small thing that maybe can help someone else. So, to learn English, help someone.
Shane Hastie: Help someone?
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes.
Shane Hastie: If people want to continue the conversation, where do they find you?
Pablo Fredrikson: Yes. You can find me on my website, peladonerd.com. I’m sure that is going to be on the description there, if you want to spell it out. Yes, everything is in there. You can find my social networks and also my email, so you can send me an email and ask me about my talk or whatever you want. I am open to all the questions. So, yes, you can find me there.
Shane Hastie: Thank you so much for joining us today.
Pablo Fredrikson: Thank you, Shane. Bye.
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