 My name's John Mark Troyer. And I'm Amy Lewis. And I'm Matt Brender. And we are here live at VMworld 2015 in San Francisco, inside Moscone Center, actually live and on video, courtesy of the fine folks at theCUBE. So thank you very much to them. You may be listening to us live right now. It is September the... Second. Second. It is September the second. You may be watching this video online somewhere. Or you actually may be listening to this on audio on the podcast. So if we'll try not to make too many games, hand gestures, things like that, if you're listening to this on audio. Anyway. Let's get them all out of the way right now. Jazz hands. It's pure fingers. Pure fingers. And now, not for the regular show. Keep it to audio. Anyway, we are really pleased to have with us today a person who has not been on the podcast, I think. I have not. Not the whole time. The whole dang time. The whole dang time. 90 something now. I know. I don't know. Our people must not have called your people. I guess. We saved time. We saved time for these pinnacle moments like being on the queue. Exactly. An old colleague and friend of mine. Scott Lowe. Scott, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So Scott, for folks, why don't you give us a little bit of what's your current title, maybe name rank, serial number. So we'll get started there. Sure, sure. So I work at VMware. I've been there just over a couple of years. I came from EMC. Prior to that, I was a reseller on the East Coast. I've been in the VMware space probably 10 years, maybe a little longer. I was fortunate enough to have given a few opportunities to write some books and do that sort of thing. I blog, which is probably what a lot of people know, recognize the name. Working in the NSX team at VMware right now. And really excited about that opportunity. Focusing mainly on open source type stuff. And do you currently have a title? Yeah, so the official title is. It is a meaningful. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not one personally who plays a lot of stock in titles. So I don't like often talk about them at all. But the official title is Engineering Architect. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. Interesting title. Did you pick that or did they give it to you? No, no. They did give it to me. Is that an actual official band? It is. It is, yeah. So I'm actually like an R&D resource. I'm in the R&D center, not like a field sales type role. And the job is to look at where our products are going in the next 18 to 24 months and kind of shape that. And hopefully, you know, put them where the fuck will be at that time. Yeah. One of the things we're going to talk about in this session is kind of picking the direction to go and knowing when to zig and zag and kind of discovering new things. Cause you have had a couple of interesting, I hesitate to call them zigs and zag cause they follow on perfectly sequentially. It's not like you completely changed direction or anything like that. But you were early into virtualization. Yes. So talk, what was the moment when you saw that wait a minute, this is the direction I want to go. You were a technologist already. You were probably working in a reseller, I'm guessing. Let's see. I was actually running my own consulting company at the time. So this would have been 2002, 2003, somewhere there about maybe a little bit earlier but right in that timeframe, I was running my own company, a very small company. And somebody mentioned kind of offhand, hey, have you heard of this VMware thing? And so I started looking at it. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. You know, I could see a lot of use cases for that. But it wasn't until a little while later, probably about six months. And you ever had this idea that just kind of sits in your head and it has to kind of grow and germinate a little bit before you can really see where it's going. Yeah, the slow thinking brain is just like, maybe there's more there. Maybe you just let that sit there for a bit. And so I came back about six months later, I was like, you know, this is really, this is a lot of flexibility. And I remember very distinctly having a conversation a couple of years later, it was a friend of mine. We had worked together in the past and we kind of kept in touch. And we had him and his family over to the house for dinner. And I was running my consulting company out of the home office. And, you know, so we had the servers and all that usual stuff, the geeks like, right? And I remember telling him at the time I was running GSX server. So you guys remember that? And I said, look, you can run multiple servers on one piece of hardware. And his question was, why in the world would you want to do that? And we've been answering it ever since. But you knew, you had some sense that this was going somewhere. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really felt like this was going to be the thing and it was partly that, to be perfectly honest, it was partly that that led me to shut down the consulting company a couple years later. I mean, business was okay, it wasn't great, but it wasn't awful. But I felt like I couldn't do what I really wanted to do, which was virtualization and more enterprise technologies where I was. So Crystal and I actually, Crystal's my wife, and was working with me in our homegrown thing there, right? And we decided to shut down the company. I went to work for a reseller and in that role I was charged with being the VMware guy, so to speak, for that reseller. See, and this is such a great example. I think when we have these conversations about careers, that how often choosing a job that you're going to learn on, as opposed to choosing something that you're comfortable and already know. What an interesting kind of path is that, would you say is that a marker of your whole career of sort of selecting roles where you can see you maybe even a little bit in over your head, but it gives you that opportunity for education and growth? Yeah, I would say that it is. It's really challenging because you're constantly putting yourself in a position where you're uncomfortable and you have to kind of head on, face, fear of failure. Like, okay, I don't really know if I can do this, but we're going to give it a try. That sort of thing, but it is challenging. But I would say if you look even farther back in my career, I mean, I spent early on in my IT career, I was actually an instructor and a technical trainer, and I found that it was that sort of in that role, you're constantly having to pick up something new to talk to your customer about whatever it might be or to the students who are coming in. You're constantly having to make sure that your knowledge is up to date and that you're staying on target with that. And I think that kind of set me in this path of always be learning. And as I looked at my career roles and wanted to dive deeper into something, it's like, okay, I really think there's something here. You may not be able to necessarily quantify it just yet, but I need to spend some time looking at it. I need to spend some time kind of digging into it, move that direction. And then when the time is right, make the career jump, if it involves a career jump to do that. So Scott, what went from Scott, the virtualization enthusiast and the VMware guy at the time to Scott, the virtualization author and presenter and person that when I had a question, somebody always sent me a link to your blog. You know, I wish that I knew something about search engine optimization, but I might actually get like more hits if I did, but it's just blind luck. I think I'd have to go back to like being an instructor and a trainer. There's something about me that I just enjoy being able to share information with others. Like I found as an instructor initially, I was working for this company and this was like early days, like early 90s. And so, you know, people were laptops, weren't everybody's got a laptop now, but then if you were carrying a laptop, it was a specific reason. And so we're training people how to carry laptops and talking about all the software. And I'm traveling all over the country and I'm carrying like three or four laptops. But it's a time, it was not a lot of fun because it's not like it was a MacBook Air. It's like the lug-able suitcase kind of thing, right? And exactly, right? And then when I moved from, and that was fun. We had a lot of fun with that. But then I moved from that into a really technical kind of role. And just you guys will appreciate this. I think John especially, you guys are a little too young. But the very first kind of technical, I don't know, very first technical course that I actually taught was MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. Oh, dang. Exactly, right? And I was helping people. I've read about that. You've heard about those, yeah. I saw a picture of them once. But we were helping people get through the Microsoft certified professional exam for DOS and Windows 3.1. And I found that I was just, I was so fascinated by how everything worked, first of all, right? This is so sad. I actually read the Windows 3.1 resource kit. Oh wow. Yeah, I downloaded it over a BBS connection and just so I could read it. That's how sad it was. But I found that I really, really enjoyed helping people understand that deeper part of it. Not just how to use it, but how it actually worked. And that kind of set me, and it's been that way ever since. So you dove all the way in. Seems like you get a bug to kind of like really dig into one or two technologies. And then you have this natural urge to share it. So yeah, I guess that would be a very self-fulfilling cycle. Yeah, it was. It was in 2005, I first launched the site. I actually ran it for a few months kind of internally. I hosted on VMware, of course. And then I was like, you know, there's no reason why it should be internal. Let's just probably set it externally. So I moved it out to a WordPress site outside. That was in, you know, like probably late 2005, maybe early 2006. And as most sites do, it's like nobody knew. I mean, it was like nothing. Those very early blogging days, was your employer cool with that, or were they a little leery? Cause even now, 10 years later, employers sometimes are a little leery about their employees. I think it was before they knew to be leery. Yeah, right? It's good to be in the wild west. Yeah, exactly. And so we started blogging, and then, you know, VMware 2006, I first met you, John, and the VMTN forums and bloggers, and there was a very distinct divide of that group, by the way, when we first got together. You're the forums guys, you're the bloggers, you know. But then 2007, I was here at VMRL, then I started live blogging, and I think that's kind of what kicked the site off. And then it was just a series of things that led one to another. Did you have any idea what you were getting into when you decided to write a book? No clue whatsoever. Other than, as we all do, like I had it on my bucket list, I want to write a book. At some point, when we're not under a time constraint, I'll share with you kind of the long, much longer story about how that came to be, and my own personal journey to that. But it was in early 2009, I was approaching, guy says, hey, do you want to write a book? Oh, yeah. It's like my bucket list, I want to write a book. Exactly, right? You wrote a really thick book. It was a really thick book, and I spent a lot of hours on that book. It was amazing. But it was a change. It certainly marked a change in my career to do that, and for me, it was kind of the ultimate fulfillment to be able to provide a bunch of information to a bunch of people, and so it's been great. I want to move into a ladder portion chronologically, but I want to ask one more question about like switching roles and leverage. It was an interesting thought process that you exposed by saying, I'm an independent person. I need a little more leverage. Part of a bigger organization will let me do more, and then, again, you switched over to VMware. I mean, not everybody gets the opportunity, but you chose to move, and you, again, probably had more leverage, or EMC and then VMware. In retrospect, was the leverage and aspect of the decision? I'm a bigger stage, a slightly... Stages sound so self-aggrandizing. What I mean is, I mean leverage. I was at a startup, and you shout to get attention, and then I was at VMware, and people are like, you have a big stage. You have leverage, you affect people. I mean, that's why when I hear people go to... Radius impact, I've heard that somewhere. Radius impact is better than... I mean, that's why people go to Google or LinkedIn or things like that, right? You touch lots of people. Has that been an element? It hasn't been. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I mean, you know, when I look at it, I honestly, I think the decisions are really more driven by where I thought the industry was going. I mean, when you look at your all career, I wouldn't say I'm so far as like, I have my entire career planned out in advance, right? But you kind of get a feel after you've been in a certain space for a while that, okay, this space may be not growing as quickly, or it may not be as vibrant as it was, or there may be something that is even bigger on the horizon, or there may be a shift in how this is being perceived or utilized, or something of that nature. And I wanted to make sure that I was there. We'll talk about that now, right? Because you were the virtualization for people that don't. I mean, you were the virtualization guy. You had a very popular blog. You wrote the most popular book. People knew you. You were a resource. You had joined EMC, and then at VMware too, or at the time, or anyway. Well, yeah, I went from the result to EMC, and then on to VMware. Yeah, and so that was your thing, right? You were fully busy. I was, yes. And then you decided to shift a little bit to do more both software defined networking and open source, which are kind of interesting shifts. And I don't know. Well, I've got a frame question there. Because I'm kind of interested of, do you find yourself because you move because you're bored? And of course, not that any job has ever bored you, but do you or is it because you can't resist going forward? Like, what in your personal balance? Is it sort of a fear of staying where you are, or do you find yourself just being pulled forward? I would say it's probably more, I just, I thrive on learning. I always have. I try to instill it in my kids. I don't think that we can survive, certainly professionally, without continually adapting, continually changing. I think that the most important skill for anybody in IT, in my opinion, is not how much technology you know, right? Although that's important. It's not how good your people skills are, although those are far more important than most geeks would like to admit, right? But it's our ability to adapt to change. It's our ability to change, how quickly we can change, and how quickly we can deal with that change. Well, and a question for you. So can you give our listeners some practical tips in terms of if they find that they're stuck? Because I think a lot of us, that moment it's like leaping between the cliffs or letting go one trapeze bar and grabbing the next one. What are some of the things that help you make that transition and gracefully from that one place to the next? That's a really tough question, because it is scary. I mean, if you continue the analogy of, you know, going from one trapeze to the next, is that there's that moment, like, okay, you know I have to do this, right? Or we have to wait for the swing to come out. Right, exactly. And everybody's watching. Exactly, right. You know, I think it's probably the advice that I would give is, before you want to make a big change in your professional side, like before I decided I was going to go out of VMware, and I'm not really out of the space, but it's not a core focus, like vSphere's not a core focus for me anymore. Before I decided to move out of that, I spent some time ahead of time just kind of feeling out the landscape, right? Like, okay, what, how different is it going to be? What are the areas that I'm already familiar with? Like, way back in the day, I spent a lot of time playing with Linux, but at the time it just wasn't really ready for anything. Sure. Right, but when I came back again, you know, and looking at where vSphere was, and where I wanted to go with OpenSack, and Open vSwitch, and OpenFlow, and software library network, and all the rest of these things, right? It was like, okay, yeah, Linux is now kind of right in the center of all of that stuff, so the time that I had spent before doing that now, you know, I was ready. So you spend some time feeling out the landscape, kind of getting a feel, making some connections between what's there in that new spot, and what's here where you are now really is helpful, because then it's not all alien, it's not all different. It's like, okay, this is related to that, and so that's a thread that I can use to then pull yourself into that space, and make that leap when you're ready to make it. Great, connect the dots looking forward a little bit. You don't, this is reminiscent of something John always says that if you're really inspired about being a goat farmer, don't sell all your land at everything you own, and then go buy a bunch of goats. Like, maybe you just get one goat and have it in the backyard for a while, or see if you guys get one. And the reality is that as most people in the industry, most of the geeks out there, right, they do things at home. They may have a home lab, they may have some systems, some VMs they're running, you know, with fusion or workstation or whatever the case may be. There's plenty of ways you can begin to identify what are some of the key things that are in this new space that I'm looking at. Let me look at them, let me play with them, let me find out who the people are. I mean, it's, you know, people skills, the network is incredibly important, right, so. And it sounds like a best practice. I think you hit on another important practical tip of carve out time in your life for not just what you're doing, but where you're going. Absolutely. Because it sounds like that's always been a thing for you that's allowed you to make that leap, so. And I mean, obviously you have to balance that with family and life, I mean, you have to, right? I mean, that's no amount of, you know, being relevant and keeping up with technology is worth sacrificing that side of it. It's like to keep our trapeze analogy, that's your ultimate safety net. Absolutely. You certainly don't want to be without that. And that's an excellent analogy in my opinion. So you have to balance that, but even with that in mind, I mean, I think there are ways that you can carve out to make time for what's next. Even if you don't necessarily know what that is completely yet, you've probably identified a few things and as you begin to kind of peel those things apart and find out what's there, you'll begin to uncover the bigger trends and that'll give you an idea of really where you're headed. Two quick questions now as we wrap up. One, as you architect your career going forward, I know you put your nose out there and see what's next, but in terms of role in the organization, do you like being the, you're in the engineering department now, right? So you're a solo researcher, are you the spokesperson? Do you want to be lead a team of engineers? What intrigues you, you know, what are you looking for as a senior technologist now? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the role that I have now is really interesting because it allows me to be in that forward-looking role so I get to think about where things are going to be in 18, 24, 36 months, so that by the nature of the role forces me to be, you know, always pulling myself forward. The mad scientist. Futurist. I don't know, we'll see, right? I don't, I've had a lot of conversations about whether I stick on the individual contributor track or go to the manager track and I don't, I mean, I've got my wife to help guide my people skills, you know, so I probably could do the manager track, but I think I would probably foresee continued on an individual contributor for quite some time, whether it remains with a vendor or, you know, some other role, you know, that's it. I mean, for real techies, right? Doing the techie stuff is the fun part. Yeah, yeah. And so when you can architect a job that where you're having fun all day, you know, that can't be bad. I mean, I don't know that, you know, it'll be, that I'll be completely successful in being able to maintain that focus on the technology that would be ideal, but, you know. They do send you out to talk to customers and get up on stage. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, because, you know, when talking to customers, I get to say, you know, what are your problems? What are the challenges? What are you seeing? They use the feedback. And that's bringing information back in, but it also helps me because they might be seeing some trend or some thread somewhere that I haven't uncovered yet that I need to take a look at. So, Amy, do you have a question? Oh, I've got to ask you our favorite question. We're a relentlessly positive group, but we always like to ask people, if you could counsel people and save them for making some mistake you've made, what is the one thing you tell people, never, ever, ever do this again? Never, ever do this again. Wow. That's a really, really difficult question. I would say never, ever underestimate the power of your personal network. Ooh, that's a really good one. Because, and I would say that I didn't place enough value on the quality and the size of my own personal network earlier in my career. Oh, wow. So, meaning to carve time for it or to ask for help if you need it? Both, all of the above, yes. You know, kind of a trust fall thing. You actually are supported, even if you don't know it. It's kind of invisible sometimes. I'm experiencing some of that myself in my own career. Well, that's really fascinating, Scott. We've all benefited. That's what I love about what we do, right? It's all about the, a lot of it, a lot of what we preach is about the community. I feel kind of sorry for the people that don't go grab hold of it. Hey, Scott, if people want to find you online, where can they do that? Absolutely, so I am active on Twitter as at Scott underscore low. And you can check out my blog at blog.scotlar.org. Okay, well, Scott, thanks so much for coming on the show. We've neglected you for 90-some episodes. Let's not make it that long again. Absolutely. We're here once again, this is the Geek Whispers live from VMworld 2015, courtesy of theCUBE. So check out the video if you wanted to see us. We didn't make that many hand signals. Check us out next week. Coming back next time, we're recording all day today from VMworld 2015, thanks a lot. Sign off.