>> Hi, Lisa Martin, on the ground, with the Cube at
Google for the sixth annual CloudNOW
Top Women in Cloud awards.
And we are very excited to be joined by our next guest,
Bridgit Kromhout, the principal Cloud
developer advocate from Microsoft.
Welcome to the Cube!
>> Welcome, to me, wait.
You know what?
I feel like, it's so funny.
I spend so much time hosting podcasts that
I'm primed to start welcoming guests.
(laughter)
So. >> Well, thank you.
I feel very welcomed. >> Hi.
Thank you so much for having me.
>> And we love your Microsoft-reflected hair extensions.
That's so fantastic (laughter)
So, Bridgit, you are a computer scientist by
training, what was your education like?
Were you a STEM kid from grade school
all the way through graduating college?
>> Yeah, it's kind of funny.
I actually wasn't and I think that
there's maybe a take away there for people
who think, oh, it would be too hard
to switch into computers.
There's too much to learn.
I mean, yes, there is a lot to learn, but
I didn't have a computer until I was 16, so,
and, I didn't know I was going to major
in Computer Science until I took
a programming class and realized I loved it and
dropped all my other classes and
completely switched my major.
And I think that there's probably a lot of opportunities
today that there weren't back when I did this in the 90's.
You know, all sorts of boot camps and
that sort of thing, but I think probably
just that you can choose to go into tech
from any starting point.
' Cause, like, not having a computer as a kid,
I would go over to friend's houses and
play Oregon Trail and, you know, Dive Dysentery, but
I wouldn't have that at home and I turned out fine.
>> Well, I love that you took a class and you tried it and
that was transformative.
I think that's one of the great lessons that
even your experience can share is, try it.
>> Absolutely.
>> And it probably opened up your world too.
Did it, well yeah, let's talk about that.
>> Yeah.
>> Did it open up your world to expose
more of what computer science is than
what you may have thought?
>> You know, I had gone to some summer math
camps as a teenager and you know, played
around with fractals and you know, programs
to generate fractals, like on the, I think
it was probably SJI workstations, that
the college we were at had and it was
interesting to me but maybe not necessarily
something I could take action on until
I got to college and got access to unit systems and
it's like the little kid in Jurassic Park, this
is a unit system.
I know this. (laughter)
You know, I think that getting the opportunity
to try things, whether it's in an academic setting or
just with all of the free resources that
are available today, it's super important.
>> So, you went to the University of Minnesota,
what surprised your or delighted you
through your curriculum in computer science,
when you were there?
>> You know, it's kind of funny.
I feel like there was a lot of emphasis on algorithms and
data structures and probably, because I was
working for the CS department as a Student
Systems Administrator at the same time,
I kept thinking like, well bigger notation,
this is great, but let's talk about troubleshooting
things on this, you know, Solaris system, because
that's what I would actually do and
I think that there is, I've come to realize over time
that there's a lot of benefit to both.
Like, you could spend a lot of time
going down a rabbit hole if you don't
have a firm theoretical background
of what's actually possible, and
how you can speed up a system.
So, it's good to have that theoretical background, but
I think it's also really important to focus
on the like, the observability and the usability
of systems and your detailed troubleshooting steps.
I think of it like, you spent a lot of time
in college taking classes where they emphasize
the Scientific Method and you learning
to prove that gravity works was never
the point. >> Right.
>> Because, obviously, we all know that but
you learning how to isolate variables and
observe accurately, helps a lot in terms
of solving problems in production systems later.
>> Good insight.
So, you're very involved in the community.
You are, you mentioned, podcasts.
You go to conferences.
You blog.
What inspires you to share your knowledge,
your experiences, and be involved in the community?
>> I mean, I think that I had a manager
some years ago who encouraged me to speak
at a local UN conference and I brought
a co-worker and spoke with him and
it was a very new experience for me and
I was nervous and what I realized is,
that the room was full of people who,
they weren't there to stare at me or judge me,
they were there because they really hoped to get
some insights for things they were trying to do and
I think realizing that, whatever it is that
you're putting out there in the world,
people aren't looking at it to judge you,
they're looking at it 'cause they need something and
realizing that makes it so much more interesting and
also, less scary to share.
>> I imagine rewarding, as well.
>> I think so.
Like, especially because people are often
looking for ways that they can drive change
inside their organization, how they can
convince somebody to use the exciting new
framework or the exciting new, you know,
container orchestration or whatever, that
they're trying to use.
Like, a lot of times, people who are
paying attention to the wider world of tech
really want to use exciting new things, but,
hey, spoiler alert, if you work in a company
with more than two people, there will probably
be at least two opinions.
>> Yeah. (laughter)
>> So, you have to. >> You can basically
go and do that, right? >> Yeah.
Right? >> Yeah.
>> So, you have to have not just
all the technical background.
I like to joke that, you know, I majored
in Computer Science 'cause I didn't
want to talk to people and, oops,
turns out, tech is full of humans.
Software is made of people. >> Yep, right.
>> Like sort of an ingredient, right?
>> Yeah.
>> And, it's like, you can't, you can't avoid that and
I say, just embrace it.
>> I love that.
Do you have any themes to your podcasts or to your blogs?
>> Yeah, I think there's a talk I gave a number
of times in the last year called,
Containers Will Not Fix Your Broken Culture And
Other Hard Truths.
>> Interesting.
>> And, then I gave, I decided a few months
after I gave that one enough times that
I was bored of hearing myself talk,
I started giving one called Computers Are Easy,
People Are Hard, because I think that the tech
stuff that we're all excited about has
a lot of socio-technical components,
in terms of the interactions. >> Yeah.
>> Like, every single technical choice you want to make
has a certain weight and gravity to it of the way
the other people feel about how you maybe
made their job harder or easier or maybe
that they now feel displaced.
Maybe they're not sure what their place is
in the exciting new world where you changed
everything out from under them and
they were just hoping to hold on a couple years more,
until they retired and I think,
as a mid-career professional, shall we put it that way?
I, of course, I see all the kids these days TM, but
I also see and sympathize with all the people
who, who really prefer the industry not
have another giant C change right this second.
>> Right.
>> 'Cause they kind of just want to vest and get out and
it's like, I think we have to be empathetic and
understanding of everyone's perspective
along that entire spectrum, 'cause there's a lot
of benefit to exciting change and there's
also a lot of benefit to contextual
knowledge of your local environment.
>> Right.
>> And, it's like, people at different ends of,
you know, their career trajectory have
you know, a varying degree of either of those, and
I think it's really important and
positive to listen to everyone.
>> I love that because culture is something
that we talk about a lot with technology
executives that we're talking to in the Cube, whether
it's a C level or a line of business manager or
a product person and cultural change is hard.
>> Really hard. >> To impact but,
you bring up a great point about where you
are on the career trajectory.
You're opinions or experience is going to influence that.
>> It totally will.
I mean, especially because, so, I just started
a couple months ago, working at Microsoft.
I spent the two years before that working at Pivotal,
talking to a lot of our customers in large
enterprises and governments and you know,
banks and that sort of thing and you
have a lot of resistance to and fear of change
when it feels like the stakes are really high and
there's a lot of uncertainty and so,
anywhere that, from a technical point of view,
you can help with that uncertainty.
Whether it's by, instead of the artisanally,
hand-whittled servers in your data center,
maybe looking at public Cloud, anything
that can make steps more reproducible, so
that you don't have to cling so much
to what you were doing before and can, hopefully,
extend past that.
Like, there's a lot of places where that the exciting
wave of IT improvement that a lot of orgs are doing
intersects with people's desire to maybe
have challenges but also, still feel valued.
Like, there's a lot of places where,
considering those human factors, when
making exciting organizational change happen,
which everybody needs to for their profit
motives or you know, their organizational
mission, in general.
I think it's really beneficial.
>> Speaking of feeling valued, who do you value?
Who are some of your mentors that inspire you today?
>> You know, it's funny you should ask that because
I feel like mentorship is one of those things where
I have a giant question mark.
I'm not sure if I've had it done right or
have ever done it right or whatever.
I would say I'm definitely inspired by a lot
of the women I know in technology.
In particular, like, for example, Jessie Frazelle.
I happen to work on the same team
with her now at Microsoft, which we did not,
either of us, know that the other one
was going there when I had her keynote,
Dev Up Stays Minneapolis, last summer and
then, in just a couple months later, it was like,
oh, you're going to Microsoft?
What team?
We're going to the same team.
This is fantastic! >> Wow, that's great.
>> But, I bring her up as an example because
I think that if you, no matter how long
you've been in tech and she's younger than I am and
has been in tech a shorter amount of time, and yet,
like, she both contributes, you know, solid
technical content.
She has commits in the Linux kernel, but
she also makes sure to put information
out there to help other people.
I think that, that's a really, it's
what I look up to and what I try
to emulate is it's great to be technical,
but we also have to be human.
>> I love that.
Well, Bridget, thank you so much for stopping
by the Cube and sharing your story and
congrats on the award.
>> Thank you so much.
>> We thank you for watching again.
Lisa Martin, on the ground, with the Cube
at Google for the CloudNow Top Women in Cloud Awards.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)