 Thanks so much for coming, Jim. We really appreciate you joining us in the car Why don't you tell me a little bit of you know kind of who you are and what your background is? Yeah, sure So my name is Jim. I'm 31 years old We were looking for the dating version. Oh, sorry No, I will leave out the the year No, so I'm I'm living in the Netherlands, obviously a big proud fan of Rotterdam our office is in Amsterdam Working for ABM row clearing for about four years now. Okay. Do we want to play on something about Rotterdam versus Amsterdam? We could sweet Yeah, yeah, I always make the joke in in the office that I'm only hiring people from Rotterdam Slowly we move our headquarters to Rotterdam But it takes about a four. Yeah, I think a more 10 20 years later Right, right. You need to like maybe start a you know like a sponsored like educational program in Rotterdam, you know Specifically tailored to the kind of people. That would actually be a very good idea. Yeah. Yeah Well, actually, that's that's win one already from this Your future startup or you know kind of an endeavor for ABM exactly exactly so that I'm I have a technical background So I started as a developer And now I'm a so-called chapter area lead which might not say yeah, I saw that in your profile I was like a wonder what that means. Yeah, sorry in short I'm responsible for our development teams in Europe. Okay, so we set up a sort of chapter model At the beginning of this year, which means that the the developers report into their chapter leads and this can be for example A Python chapter lead Java by my chapter lead. Oh, it's kind of by technology. Exactly chapter. Okay I was thinking it'd be more like by region Yeah, actually, yeah, so we do it by by technology now So that also means that because we have a global presence from an ABM recurring perspective Is that yeah, even though might maybe the Python developers might be in Sydney Chicago Amsterdam? Yeah, that even they also communicate with each other and learn from the best practices amongst each other. I got you And so what which technology stack are you the chapter lead for so I'm actually the chapter area lead So I then coached the chapter leads again. So, oh Just to make it even more complicated. Yeah, but I'm originally my my base tag was Python based Okay, and did a little bit of Java as well a little bit of anger. No, they thought better. I went back to Python. Yeah, exactly Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's exactly what I thought. Yeah, no, no, no offense for right I did Java for 10 years or something. Oh, so yeah, I did I did a lot of Java nice and every other language But yeah, I mean in general, I still believe that if you if you develop once is sort of a mindset that you learn Of course, there are there are nuances in every language Yeah, at least you have a mindset of developing and that helps a lot That is one of the things that I continuously rant about with the tech hiring market is like, you know Do you really need to find somebody who specifically has, you know, five years of experience with Python with this particular module? Or can you find somebody who knows how to program for a bunch of years and you can just teach them Python in that particular module? Exactly. Exactly. Couldn't agree more. Yeah, it's it really kind of drives me crazy. This is like I know how to do a for loop. I just sometimes need to know the syntax for that particular language And let's be honest if you don't know something the first thing you do it used to be stack overflow There's now a new tool on the market for let's say Popularity purposes. I won't name it here because I think LinkedIn has been flooded with recently. Okay. I still do it chat ETP Yeah, I think LinkedIn has been flooded with that. Yeah Well, I actually have a nice little Python tool on the command line called How do I which will actually search stack overflow and give you a response all from the command line So you you don't even have to like break out the browser. So, you know, so you should share it Also, it's sure. Yeah, it's called. How do I it's very nice. I didn't write it. I just use it I promote it all the time. Um, but yeah, I mean that that's what developer makes a good developer right in the end. Yeah, yeah, exactly Yeah, it was funny. I used to you know, because I was traveling all the time And you know, I always have these grand plans what I was gonna work on while I was on the plane And then realize I can't actually code unless I have the internet. Yeah Yeah, you know, so very sounds very familiar. Yeah. Yeah, exactly All right, so we talked a little bit about Sorry, my directions just decided it was gonna Not do them anymore. It might also be that we end up a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah, I've never been there. So why don't you shoot? So So you I mean, so you work at a you know a clearing right to a bank And but what is it about kind of the open source world or what, you know, how involved have you been in open source? I mean you use Python. So you probably have some exposure Where does that fit into your kind of professional or even non-professional life? So I think the Good question. So from an open source perspective the I've always found it more important to be able to use the open source version of anything that's available Not only because it's from a business perspective usually cheaper than than the commercial version but also because the sort of the The intelligence of the crowd is always so much larger than an individual could ever do. Yeah, 100% exactly So I'd like to contribute. I did a bit from a Google perspective in my early years Also from a Python perspective. I've contributed a bit And I must admit in my new role. I've tried to develop a bit from time to time I always told myself we want to keep it in development one day a week, right? Right. How's that going for you? Yeah, what one day every two months? Probably yeah, yeah, I think I'm happy if I do two three hours a week Part of me going back to going to academia was like, oh, maybe I can write code again. Exactly Not so much. No, not a lot. Not a lot Yeah, I'm I think it's you know part of it is I think you know, even though, you know I'm fairly senior in in the tech world, you know, I'm you know A two year out of college college professor, right? Like isn't you know I'm still learning how to do all that stuff and I didn't have a lot of the exposure that I think a lot of You know kind of professors do going up through the normal path of like, you know, I was never a TA anywhere Yeah, so it's like it's all been kind of self-taught, you know, except that you know I've done a lot of like conferences and workshops and all that jazz But I haven't you know, but teaching a classroom is a different experience completely Yeah, yeah, so but yes, I have not had enough time to do the programming So, you know, but we're I'm getting more efficient. So I'm getting closer. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. That's cool Yeah, I think it's very from a leadership perspective, right? I know you talked about open source before but I think It's really hard to find people who actually know how to coach a bit and like to explain stuff And also are quite technically advanced still And I know I now know why because as soon as you sort of Read let's say one level higher. It's your consumes by other things and development, right, right? Or the one of the things I used to say too is like I you know I had a cube for a long time in the various jobs I had and eventually I was promoted to like a management level or whatever and I finally got an office with a door And I found out what why the door is terrible because it means you have to have closed door conversations Yeah, you know about, you know, someone's under performance or you know, you know things like that And it's like these are not I don't want to have these conversations. I want everyone to be awesome And yeah, and so I realized that I didn't actually want the door not once I had one I was actually quite a nice way of explaining it. Yeah, I completely agree Yeah, as soon as you have to close door conversations the conversations usually don't get better, right exactly So okay, so you've been trying to do some coding. It's been going, you know, you've done a bit Yeah, and mostly I kind of contributing to things you use or trying to build stuff on the side or yeah both I think a bit I contributed a bit in the early days of Kubernetes back then was was really nice to Back then it sounds like I told you I'm 31 But the Kubernetes of course was really the state disruption From a technology perspective and you see that multiple companies including ours in all honesty are still making that transition To wash containers and we're doing quite well now. That's which is nice. Yeah, that is nice But that's one of those I say big disruption that category said we're there And so and that's kind of leads to my my next question is that, you know What do you find kind of characteristically or fundamentally or whatever different about, you know, what they call cloud native development or You know that kind of style Versus not right. Yeah, it's a good question again a good question actually, but I have 100% score so far No, but I think the from a cloud native perspective And I think that's both from a private and public cloud perspective the the cloud native part is that if you're going to use Native services regardless of the platform that you're using you actually get most out of it And I think there's always a discussion, which is a valid one, of course Yeah, yeah, yeah exit strategy vendor lock, which is fine, of course But I think and I think I've had those discussions with our architecture teams No bad words about our architecture team because I love you still. Yeah. Yeah But there's always a certain don't worry no one over here this. Okay, cool. I'll get it. It's fine. No, I still know but still I think the if you're looking at a vendor looking for only when you're doing cloud native stuff I think you're lying to yourself because Vendor login is not something that only exists when you do cloud native It might be a bit more apparent because the focus is there, right? But if you have a complete landscape of let's say a Linux servers of EMS that are hosted by maybe even external contracting party and external vendor Then trying to move to a new technology. I mean good luck with that That's also going to be a 10-year program to do that. Right. Right. Lock in is always is always there, right? Yeah, one of the things you kind of are putting it nicely like it's more obvious like when when I was in some of the consulting I was doing we were first trying to get people to move to the cloud and they would talk about like how Concerned they were about the security of the access into their environments and You know and and I'm and so then I would essentially proceed into a discussion of how many nightly batches Do you run with how many different partners that all have custom firewall punches? You know what you might actually find is that when you move to the cloud Well, everything will break, but you will actually find out how many holes you actually had you know, and and I think that the What's nice about those native services is is is your I think you're you're more clearly making a choice Yeah Choose that vendor or whatever then you did sometimes in the past where you were just kind of firing off to this API Over here and nobody really knew what it was And so I think it's a little it's a little simpler to have a like you said visibility into Well, where is our vendor lock exactly exactly and I think I think the one sort of common phrase within Development has always been that you should focus on where you can deliver value Mm-hmm and for a long time We've always thought that we had to host our own infrastructure because so well That's part of what you do when you do it, right, right, and I'm happy that that sort of the view is slowly Well slowly going away Because in the end we want to actually run our code because that's what delivers value right much more than running our own Server stacks fee and so that sort of stuff right you're not a cloud hosting provide exactly that as abstraction layer goes up and up and up Even a bit further by time So I'm also trying in our organization Of course, right There's always a sort of stick mark on a bank because the bank is old and I won't say that we don't have legacy systems in our in our case But I do see that we we are moving towards a more native approach both from a public perspective and Private perspective And you find that most of the kind of engineers or architects or whatever like are they kind of immediately getting it? Or is there a lot of kind of training training for lack of a better term, but basically teaching of how to Understand that better. Yeah, I think that there's there's some developers Of course, there's always a group that's that's so sort of enthusiastic that they found it out by themselves And they've already found it out way before Which is always cool, but I think there's a big misconception that sort of Using private or sorry the cloud native services. Mm-hmm. It's just Re-platforming for example, but that there's a really different mindset involved right in developing cloud native requires different skillset So we do try to train yeah frequently as well Well, I think it's particularly difficult because you you can Develop systems in the cloud that are very traditional. It's just you know, and and it's super easy to fall into that trap Yeah, and you really aren't taking advantage of what it means to to have that, you know kind of distributed infrastructure That it's really where all the benefit is exactly exactly And I think that the mistake that we tend to make sometimes Of course, you probably know to save an arsenal of AWS as well Let's say we pre-platform refactor or that sort of stuff Mm-hmm And what we sometimes make as a mistake is that we just gets our current application We throw it all in the same container and then we hosted container rights and then we say now now We're actually club native although I will say my guidance for a long time to people was if you if you were trying to bring something You know to a container or whatever is actually to do that to start, right? Yeah, then kind of start to pair off the services, you know But don't let the the you know You have to re-architect the whole thing gate you from even taking the first step Exactly, which can be you know a little bit scary because all the documentation tells you well You can't run more than one application per container and all this other stuff And it's like you're better off Kind of starting to think container Even if you're not quite doing it, right? You know as quickly as possible, then you are to wait, you know exactly It was actually I mean in a lot of ways That's why the big push behind like service way in our architecture kind of didn't take off very well So it was all top-down. It was all boil the entire ocean. Yeah, and then you get some benefit You know whereas the microservices model is you know, don't just start this tiny little bit You know and keep building and building and building. Yeah Even though they're as I said actually in another interview. They're just still services. It's just true. Yeah Yeah, but yeah, it makes a difference. I think you touch but you touched upon the microservices I think there's always with as a witness with everything right? There's a balance between where your productivity or productivity is if you're talking about microservices then if you Peel off very specific services from an existing application. That's also a great way to start Building and containerized application because it also makes it a lot smaller and easier to start with right? That's right Right. Yeah, but it but you don't have to kind of do it all at once. You can do yeah, exactly So so you I think have been working primarily with OpenShift or thinking about OpenShift or you're mostly, you know Kind of native Kubernetes. Yeah, we're using OpenShift now for I think six or seven years. Oh, wow. Okay, so yeah Now the interesting part comes yeah Because we've we've been using it for six or seven years That's when we first started sort of the talks about going towards OpenShift because hosting our own Kubernetes platform again It's not something that's our in our core business So why should we do it ourselves then it's better to let someone manage the platform or manage the cluster that well I have have proven experience with it but still not nowadays and that's I think our biggest challenge we have Let's say about 10 to 15 percent of our applications have moved and we do see let's say see the exponential growth now The platform consumability is going up. Yeah. Yeah, but it's been well a tough journey to get to get to move over right because also it's not only from a tech perspective if You also look at the product or never We have to make money in the end and the people in that have the decision power Of course don't see direct value in making that shift, right? Rebuilding replatforming. Yeah, there's no new features. Yeah, exactly, right, right? Yeah, I mean and it's It's always so tough to write a you know a cost-saving story You know and you know because most of the time it's like, you know, I'd rather I'd rather operate a you know a new feature story You know or or sell particularly for those kinds of people So, you know, I think most of my work has always been around trying to make sure that You know in consulting or whatever. It's like, oh, yeah, you're gonna get this thing in this thing in this thing Oh, and by the way, we're also gonna reply for him. Yeah, you know, that's the perfect way of doing it It's really true. Yeah, I think I mean we're working for a bank. Obviously, so what what always Works great and it's not even a lie to be honest. It's very true as well Your risk appetites also right is much better than it was before if you actually do make that step, right? Yeah, and that's because well banks are quite risk-averse, which is a good thing, right? Except for they're not and that's usually about that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we saw some examples Yeah, we said, you know, I did a lot consulting and financial services and you know just between You know and and it was interesting even within the same bank different parts of it being way more or less risk-averse Yeah, which is also really interesting You know go kind of where the customers are right? Yeah, but I think it is actually an interesting point because Being sort of risk-averse and innovation usually doesn't go together that well. Yeah, so I think even Well, I'm not generally a fan of doing forced Proof of concepts and forcing people into a room to do something new right as we have to do it Right, but in these kinds of concepts and these kinds of environments It does sometimes work to really get people in a room and do something completely isolated from what we do in a day-to-day basis Just to get them in touch with the new technology Mm-hmm because you can get lost in in day-to-day business if you don't do that from time to time, right, right? Yeah, I mean, it's it's funny like, you know, you have the like lunch and learns kind of yeah And and a lot of the time, you know, they don't seem to be kind of very effective at least in my experience You know or the things like that where it's kind of like it's happening so regularly that you know People aren't really kind of like considering it as like part of their job to go to those kinds of things so I really like some of the you know a lot of organizations are starting to you I Can't think what it's typically called but basically like, you know like a hacktoberfest kind of model Or whatever where they take maybe a week a quarter or a week every, you know year or who knows And actually have all of their employees all the developer employees Or actually we've seen docs and stuff like that to actually go and and contribute to some open source projects Yeah, they're like completely unrelated to the organization So that you can kind of like get that spark back again You know get some exposure to different ways of doing things because you know I think a lot of time when you just if you're working just with the same kind of people and the same Development models and stuff like that. You just don't see new ways to do it It's easy to stay in that box and don't get out of it. Right. Well, sometimes I don't think you necessarily even know you're in the box Right, you know, it's like oh, there's walls out there. Yeah, you know until you see somebody who's doing something completely different Yeah, and it really does change your mind Yeah, you know and I think and a big part of that kind of cloud native adoption or whatever is like you It's fundamentally architecturally different. Yeah, and if you're not seeing that part of it You're not really you often are not going to be able to take advantage. Exactly Yeah, and that makes it difficult right because usually if you if you take the decision makers in the company It's even harder for them to explain why this fundamentally different and if the development teams don't get that new concept either For them that they won't explain it to the decision makers either Right makes it really hard to make that movement going right. So what have you found? You know, so you said recently you've really been seeing adoption curve kind of go up What what do you think has been that driver? Is it are you doing something different? Is it snowball effect? Is it you know, what what kind of hints do you have for people listening to show? For them to be able to get other people who adopt things so I think it's two two main drivers I think one of them is the service oriented part from a platform perspective Mm-hmm. I think one of the pitfalls that we had in the past is that the platform teams actually making sure that the developers have the ability to develop on OpenShift for example or AWS whatsoever That they actually are developing the platform for our developers to work on and because they're technicians themselves as well They also like to make the platform as perfect for themselves to work with but sometimes forget the customer on the LRA And that's one thing that's really going well recently also because of the communication between both parties And I think there's the second part is related but has to do with the consumability of the platform Yeah, so what you see happening There's there's of course always when you move to a new platform and in this case also a new way of thinking Yeah, a huge learning curve for everyone, right and to make it even more complex I think in most corporates you have also various different Departments all want to have a say in security compliance. Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah, and if you have every single team Going through that same process then both security governance and compliance and architecture by the way We'll get tired of telling the same story all over again and the element teams all take about one Let's say a year to actually make that shift. Yeah, so what we did is My experience also developer teams are not all that patient. So, you know, I rest my case That's I can completely relate from my previous experience. Yeah So, so your current company, of course, no, no, obviously, no, perfect. You know, I need to love you ABN Yeah, we're looking for people still by the way. That's oh hinting. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway So what we did we actually put a team between our platform and product teams Which we we call development services, which is sort of I mean, what's in the name But what what they actually do is create consumable constructs that our developers can just pull from any repo So we have of course our own internal get repos. Yeah, but there are consumable docker files Jenkins files Open shift template the almost all that sort of stuff But already with the requirements from the platform team security team governance compliance architecture baked in right So that means they're pre-approved. Yeah consumable and it works in our environment Which means that I don't have to start all the way from scratch And that's something you see that the adoption is is really going going well so far. Yeah. Yeah, I I'm wholeheartedly in agreement one of the things that I actually think is interesting that I've seen a few organizations do is Also do rotation. Yeah, so you actually have some of the, you know, normal developer teams, you know One of their members joins the developer enablement team. Yeah for a few months, you know Or a year or whatever and then, you know, kind of rotating back through it's kind of similar to the model of, you know If you're doing, you know, a software product and you actually rotate your kind of core engineers through maintenance And making sure or even customer support. Yeah Yeah, because it really gives you kind of like a real touch point and it's one of the things I work on with our students It's like trying to get them to understand that, you know This data or this application or whatever. There's there's like people on the other side Yeah, and and you need to be aware that every row in that database a data set or whatever is a human and you know, I think Forcing a developer back to those touch points really makes a difference in how they focus their work Yeah, so I thought that was a cool idea. No for sure. I think if you Well, me as a developer, I will talk for my own perspective Mm-hmm. I think getting that that touch back with your actually and customer be it someone internal or team internal or external Also gives you a great better vibe of a feeling of value, right? You want to be yeah, you want your work to matter and if you don't know how it matters Then it's really hard to to make that value. Yeah, no totally And you know, and I don't know you also get the you know, sometimes not all the time But you know a little bit of the pat on the back, you know, like hey, you know, actually likes the stuff We don't think it's extremely important. Yeah, yeah that recognition of your work. It's just it's very important Yeah, yeah, although, you know, I spent a lot of my career as a fixer and so most of time You know, all I was there was to get yelled at so, you know, but but then I fixed it So you know you make people anyway, right and I disappear and I made sure the team takes the credit so that they can continue Exactly I had I had one that was like dark blue, but it was a 75 so it was like a super beetle Yeah, but then chrome everywhere on it. It was gorgeous First time I turned it on though the entire steering column lit on fire So yeah, the first thing I had to do was rewire a lot of it. Nice. Yeah, I didn't have working windshield wipers for a while And then I went through a sprinkler and realized that maybe I needed working windshield wipers But I had a lot of fun fixing that Yeah, and it's a very straightforward engine so, you know, basically anybody can do it Well, there was a there was a great book and my my father actually had a bit of you know Mechanical bent and so he would guide me when I got really stuck But for the most part, I you know, there was the what was it the Zen? No There was the Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, but there was like a similar book for Volkswagen bugs Yeah, and yeah, I basically told you how the entire car worked. I just break it out and you know start tinkering with stuff I mean the worst you could do was like make it not run. Yeah, so it wasn't running anyway Doesn't make it Yeah, it was it was pretty neat, you know these days, you know with the electrics and all that jazz You know, no one's no one's gonna have any idea how cars work. No I don't think we know how it work anymore. Like I I didn't know this that so even if you have a gas powered engine Yeah, a lot of the time the Whatever you call it like the soundproofing in there is so good that you actually can't hear the engine And so the engine noise you hear inside the cab is actually manufactured you're kidding Yeah, really or or it'll have like a pipe basically just so you can just so you can hear it. Yeah I was like, whoa, I didn't know it's from an extra car right that they have to make outside noise at least to be Yeah, yeah, yeah, I as a regular pedestrian where they don't make a lot of outside noise Yeah, I'm often terrified across street. I also drive electric. It's amazing. It's just to creep up on people It's one of those things that if you were an evil person you would like to do. It's like it's like tauntingly there Yeah, you know, you can't actually do it. No, yeah, and I totally understand Yeah, well, I think this has been great. Yeah, you know and you know, thank you so much for joining us in the in the cool car And hopefully you had a nice tour of answering. I mean, it's no Rotterdam, but you know, I was gonna say I was gonna say Thank you so much for having me and it's Next time we should do it in Rotterdam, but I would advise you over them to Yeah, well, you just have to find us a car. Yeah, don't worry. Don't worry. Yeah, we can do it in my Volkswagen e-golf No worries, right, right. It'll it'll I can only interview at maximum one half of a person. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine I'm not that tall anyway