Hey, Forrest. Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Yeah, It's my pleasure.

Thank you for being here and for making the time to talk about, uh, some really important topics. Of course. Uh, and I think one that's really important to you is, uh, is the Cloud Resume challenge. Yes, that's right.

Uh, the, the Cloud Resume Challenge is a community initiative, uh, that I, uh, started about three years ago, uh, right at the start of the pandemic. Uh, and at this time we had a lot of people that were maybe out of work for a little bit. They were furloughed, they were home. Uh, they were trying to figure out, you know, what does the next career step look like for me?

And so, uh, what we did was, uh, we put together kind of a set of steps, basically a spec that you could give to someone looking to make a transition into technology from a non-traditional career path. So, you know, someone who didn't come through like a traditional four year computer science degree, right. Uh, but someone who can actually get some hands-on experience learning and building with cloud technology. Give them the confidence that they can build and learn like an engineer would.

Um, and it started out as just a, a simple spec set of steps. Uh, but it's gone on to be, uh, used by, you know, tens of thousands of people all over the world and, uh, has helped many people find that, uh, first step in technology. That's terrific. Now, what, what's the, what's the origin story?

Why, what motivated you to, to wanna do this? Yeah. Well, I, I've been, um, trying to teach people about the cloud for a long time. Mm-hmm.

Um, at the time I was working for a, a cloud education company called a cloud guru. So it was very close to my heart to try to find better ways to help people cut through the noise and, and learn most efficiently. Right? So, there were a lot of video courses out there, a lot of certifications out there.

Um, and, and those things can be great for, for the right people. But what I was seeing is that there was this, on the one hand, a disconnect between learning and doing, right? Mm-hmm. And on the other hand, uh, you had folks who were going off and they were, they were getting these certifications and they were being told you, you don't have the experience for the job.

Right. Come back when you have more experience. Um, and I found that so frustrating, and these people were finding it so frustrating because here they were, they, they couldn't get experience 'cause they didn't have the job and they couldn't get the job because they didn't have experience. So the, the problem was not that they had some sort of, uh, like skills gap, right?

Which is what they were being told, right? The problem was it was more like an experience gap, and that was coming more from the, the hiring side. It was coming less from the side of the, the job applicants. So really the, the sneaky goal with the cloud resume challenge, and what I really hoped for was not so much that it would magically qualify a bunch of people to start careers in cloud who weren't qualified before, but that we'd be able to start creating a culture and a movement that would show hiring managers that they can count on people who come from these very diverse, non-traditional backgrounds, to be able to come in, bring some kind of rock solid, real world operation skills from their other

careers, that they'd be able to use those to be impactful and valued investments as members of a team. And that's exactly what we've seen, but there's a long way to go to help to convince people of that Progress has been made much work remains. That's right. Yeah.

So what you, you mentioned some of the, some of the experience that people are bringing from Yeah. Maybe their, their previous career and into, into a new technology career. What are those common characteristics of the people who are going through those, through the cloud resume challenge and are being successful on the ground with companies in, in new technology roles? It's interesting.

You know, I, I come out of a, like a, a DevOps and ops background. I've spent my share of time carrying a pager and being on call, spent my share of time, you know, getting up at, uh, three in the morning mm-hmm. And all that sort of thing. So I, I tend to have a lot of empathy for, for people on the ops side of the, the DevOps house.

Yeah. Uh, and it turns out that those are often the skills that are really, really strong that these candidates bring in. I I tend to work with a lot of people who come out of the trades, um, or who come out of fields like, uh, mining, logging, construction, things like that. And these people tend to have really solid real world operational and logistics skills.

You know, they tend to have a really good grasp of a business continuity. They understand that you don't just get to shut down the world for an undefined period of time, right. While you, you know, tinker around and figure out where the source of a problem might be. They tend to be really good at, uh, working in groups of people.

They tend to be good at troubleshooting and breaking a problem down. They're not, uh, stymied by kind of a large diffuse problem. Uh, you know, that's how problems present themselves in the real world, right? They're not just gonna have this neat pre-packaged solution ready for you.

Uh, and so we tend to find that those skill sets trans, uh, translate really well to the technology field. I, I, I think you just described all of the key points in the story about Daniel the plumber from your, from your talk. That's right. Yes.

Am I right about that? Yes. Daniel Singletary, uh, who is a, uh, former residential and commercial plumber who's now been in technology. Uh, and the cloud resume challenge was one step on that journey.

Again, the cloud resume challenge is never the step. Yeah. But the hope is that it can be something that unlocks, you know, the, the next step for, for someone. Uh, yeah.

So, so Daniel, um, and we've had many, many other people from all sorts of backgrounds. Uh, some of my favorite stories, uh, I, there's a, a gentleman named Jacob who was actually an infectious disease researcher, uh, which is a, you know, a little bit of a, a different career path than, than what we've been talking about. Uh, but he had been a combat medic in Oh wow. Um, uh, Baghdad during the, uh, Iraq war in, in the us.

And, um, he, he came back and, uh, used that experience to spend several years working in, uh, Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, first working on, um, aids, and then right at the start of the pandemic working on, uh, c Ovid 19, helping to identify, uh, ways in which that, uh, virus was affecting children. And, um, what he ended up deciding to do when he made his transition into the technology field was not only to do the cloud resume challenge, uh, but to go on and create some other projects that more specifically used his expertise as a, uh, disease researcher. Mm-hmm. So he was able to build some dashboards that showed the spread of covid in the Chicago area school system.

And that was really interesting. 'cause he was a dad. He had kids in that school system at the time. What I always encourage people to do, whether they're doing the cloud, cloud resume, challenger, another project, is pick something to do that will bring out something that's personally meaningful to you.

Something that will, uh, keep you invested enough to maintain that project over time. This gets back to the real world ops thing we were just talking about. Right. You know, you want to be able to show that, uh, you can, um, apply, you know, updates when something changes or a library goes out of date, right.

That you can be responsible for keeping something up over time. Uh, that doesn't come through a lot of times with people's personal side projects. Mm-hmm. But it's such a really key, important piece of, of real world Right.

Development and operations. Uh, so that, that's why the cloud resume challenge is, it's a personal website. It's the ideas to get you tied to it. It's not like, you know, building a resume site, publishing it in the cloud is, is the most incredible, amazing, groundbreaking, original thing anyone's ever done.

But it ties you to it, it keeps you building it over time. Makes it, and that's where you really learn, Makes it personal and Yeah. Yeah. Gets you vested in whatever that, whatever that final product is gonna be.

That's right. Yeah. Uh, what, what are the differences between, um, you know, a company that would be hiring for more conventional channels, uh, you know, posting, you know, posting a job announcement on Indeed or, or any of your other career sites versus, uh, going through, um, the cloud resume challenge or, or finding people through the, through this maybe not atypical channel, Right? The, you know, a lot of companies, if they have a way to bring on, let's say, junior engineering candidates, sometimes they call them early career candidates, but I, I don't like that term because I find it's often a euphemism for people that are young, for people that are just out of college, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so you'll find that these quote unquote early career programs are often only open to people who are maybe juniors in college or have just graduated, uh, with a college degree, and that's the only people that they want to talk to. And so we can have these, these great self-taught candidates that are maybe 10, 15 years out of school or, or actually didn't go to college, which, you know, this is honestly not that important for a lot of, uh, tech jobs, right?

Mm-hmm. But, uh, companies seem to really struggle, um, to have, uh, consistent, repeatable ways to bring in these non-traditional candidates. They tend not to have the programs built. So when we see people come in that do get hired out of things like the cloud resume challenge, uh, it's often because they end up building a rapport or a relationship with a specific hiring manager that, that kind of gets it, that knows what they're going through.

Mm-hmm. A lot of times the hiring managers that are willing to take a chance on what we call our challengers, our cloud resume challengers, are people who came through non-traditional pathways themselves. Interesting. Right.

And, and they have full faith and confidence they can build that, that they can, they can, yeah. Bring that person along and teach them what else they need to know. I, you would be surprised, or probably you wouldn't be surprised, but there, there's an awful lot of people, you know, in this industry who got here, uh, through unusual channels. Right.

It's, it's a really, really cool thing about tech is that it doesn't always have to come from this very strict narrow, uh, educational background. And, uh, helping those people connect with the next generation to mentor is one of the things that I really, really love doing. It's neat to see. Yeah.

Well, what are the expectations that a company ought to have, and what preparations do they need to make to, uh, once they hire folks from the cloud resume challenge challengers, I think you said? Yes. Um, so that they're set up for success when they, when they do hit the ground, You know, There's this concept of apprenticeship, uh, that we all like to talk about. Uh, and I, I see companies using, um, but sometimes the, the concept of apprenticeship in tech, it's a word that's used, but it doesn't match a lot of what we see out there in the rest of the world.

Mm-hmm. So you mentioned my friend Daniel, the plumber, right? Right. Who, who had been through one set of, uh, apprenticeships when he got an plumbing, and then he had to kind of, uh, almost teach his new team in tech about what it would look like for him to be an apprentice when he got there.

And, uh, in order for, for that to work, um, some of the things that had to get brought over from the, the world of the trades are, uh, you know, they had to find ways for Daniel to basically pair program with different senior members of the organization. Uh, and that can be a big ask mm-hmm. For your seniors. I think one of the biggest challenges when I talk to, to managers who are thinking about trying to bring on non-traditional applicants is they say, well, uh, we just don't have the bandwidth.

All of our people are working on, you know, high priority things. Uh, we can't have them all of a sudden become less productive, right. To train somebody else up. And honestly, that's not what my senior engineers signed up to do.

They don't wanna do that. They don't see the value in it. Uh, and that very well may very well may be the case that there, there is no benefit to them in, in doing it the way your team is structured. Right.

So it becomes an organizational level decision for you to say, okay, we're gonna put opportunities on the table for you to mentor someone, uh, and that's going to be seen as a positive in the organization. It's gonna open up leadership and advancement and promotion opportunities for you. Right? Uh, that there's, there's a clear career incentive to participate in this.

If that's not the case, why would I do that as a senior engineer? Unless I'm just, you know, somehow motivated outta the goodness of my heart. But we're all professionals here, you know, we're not operating under altruism. If you wanna build a sustainable engineering talent pipeline, you've gotta be willing to incentivize your, your existing talent to, to help make that happen.

Uh, so, so that's one thing, motivating and, and, uh, incentivizing your seniors to participate, uh, in, in much the same way that, uh, uh, like a plumbing internship in the trades, you'd pin on to different plumbers through your local trade board, and they're incentivized because, you know, they, they need that help and they understand what's happening. Uh, and in the same way, you gotta make sure that you can actually pay these people. We're not talking about unpaid internships here. Mm-hmm.

Uh, there's, there's gotta be expectations set with your leadership that we think it's worth investing in this person, even though they're not gonna be contributing at a, you know, senior level right now. Uh, but that this is the way we're gonna grow our talent and still our organization's values is by doing that. Yeah. And then finally, there has to be some, uh, consideration of advancement and structured goals for that.

You've gotta know when they're not an apprentice anymore. Right. If I'm a plumber, I know when I'm not an apprentice anymore, it's when I pass the exam and get the required number of hours in, and now I can be a journeyman mm-hmm. And go out and do plumbing or electricity or whatever on my own.

Uh, in the same way, if you're hiring an apprentice onto your team, I mean, you've gotta know, does it look like they've passed certain certifications? Does it look like they've completed a certain number of years and now they get promoted and don't have that associate at the front of their title anymore? You know, whatever that is, you've gotta know, so the team knows, right. And so you can, you can create this, uh, expectation of, you know, maybe it's this person can now be on call by themselves.

Right. And, and, uh, you, you trust them to, to, to take that call and be that first line of defense when something comes in. Whatever that looks like for your team, set that expectation, uh, so that you, you don't have these apprentices who are mired in this, you know, low level forever with no clear goals on, on when they're gonna move on. It sounds like, uh, uh, cl clarity around expectations, uh, both in terms of, you know, the people who are involved around these challengers and, and then the challengers themselves is a really important ingredient to, to making this thing work.

Clarity Of expectations. Yeah. And clarity of, uh, buy-in, both from above and from below, right. From your executive leadership and from your existing team.

If you don't have that support, even if you do bring on someone that you're calling an apprentice, they're going to have a frustrating time. They're going to feel stranded, and you're going to be constantly trying to defend what you're doing from leadership and from team members who are annoyed that they have to contend with this person. Yeah. Um, a little earlier you mentioned, uh, you know, the, the sort of this barrier of, um, companies hiring, hiring these challengers in 'cause they don't have experience, right.

How, how would you respond to, to a company who says, look, I, I, uh, I I just want experienced talent. Mm-hmm. You know, I don't, I don't have time or the money or, um, the, the runway to be able to train to train people up. Uh, I, I just, I really want experience.

Yes. Or sometimes you hear this express in the negative, uh, if we train our people, you know, and then they leave. Yeah. Right.

What, what are we gonna do? Uh, and I, I think, you know, if you get people one-on-one and talk to 'em about that, like most people are, are smart and, uh, you know, realistic enough to recognize that that's not really a sustainable strategy, that at some point you're gonna have to invest in people. I think most people will pay lip service to that. Uh, but to your point, what it comes down to is, you know, hey, we've got deadlines, we've got resource limitations.

Mm-hmm. And right now, you know, in this moment, I, I feel like I have to prioritize my limited resources toward this, this really, um, uh, immediate goal that I have. And so I try to be sensitive to, to people's needs there. It's not that we have this giant culture of, of people that can't see farther than the end of their nose and just, you know, refuse to, to entertain the idea of bringing on juniors.

I think everybody I talk to says, oh, I would love to have this wonderful crew, this wonderful pipeline of, of, uh, uh, new engineers that I can train up in the, um, philosophy of my organization. You know? Mm-hmm. They, they see often that these people tend to be loyal to the company because, you know, they, they feel some sense of reciprocation, and so often they can come in and be a really, you know, cost effective and valuable source.

These are people who often grow up to become engineering managers. Uh, these are people who are often committed to being, you know, they're locally in the area where you are. Right. Like, there's, there's a lot of advantages toward growing your own, uh, yeah.

Growing your own gurus, as I sometimes say. Yeah. As opposed to trying to go out and, and contend for them on the open job market where they appear scarcely and are, you know, expensive and often come in with, uh, opposing, uh, goals or, or, uh, you know, have different opinions about your technology stack, that that may not be constructive. So people get it, for the most part, that there's, there's this importance in doing that, but how do you get past the limitations and constraints of your current position to be able to bring those people on?

I think that's really the valuable question. Um, and again, it comes back to boldly setting that expectation at, at a VP level or where it is mm-hmm. Wherever it is to be able to get that buy-in. Um, setting that expectation with your team, uh, and then having the patience to make it work.

Yeah. Right. Uh, it's, nobody said this was easy. Yeah.

It was easy. We'd all be doing it, but, uh, there's, there's tremendous value in it if you have the, the boldness to see that vision and execute on It. Yeah. That's right.

So what are, uh, so what are some of the stories that you're hearing from, from companies that have, that have hired your challengers, you know, after they've hit the ground and they've, they've been in, you know, incorporated into the organization, what are the stories that you're hearing back about their performance? I mean, I've never had someone come to come back to me and be like, how dare you recommend us this person. You know, that I'm, I'm still waiting on that, still, still waiting on the, the first person to just, you know, flame out it and people to be enraged. But the reality is, the cloud resume challenge is freaking hard.

I mean, it is, uh, you know, I've done all sorts of things to actually try and boost the completion rate of it over the years. Mm-hmm. Uh, without going so far as to just give people the solutions to it. You know, I could, I could make like a video course that walks people through it step by step, but the, the whole point of the cloud resume challenges, as I said, it's like a spec.

It's this series of steps you have to do. And I, I realize we haven't really described it on, on this call, but just imagine, you know, by the end of this, you've built a little serverless, a p i Yeah. You've used source control. You've had to create a C I C D pipeline.

You've done infrastructure as code. You've, uh, had got some experience with networking and with security and authenticate with authentication. You've written code in multiple programming languages, and a lot of the people jumping into this have no context with any form of technology in, in, in the past, right? Mm-hmm.

They, they've, they've never written code. They, they've never seen, uh, an enterprise application put together. They're having to figure all this out by opening up a bunch of tabs, basically. Yeah.

Googling a bunch of things going down rabbit holes. And, uh, that, that's may seem like a kind of a mean thing to do to someone who's never, you know, uh, experienced technology before. And we do provide some, some learning resources and links to, to, you know, guide their learning so they don't go off and completely wrong directions. But as it turns out, learning in that way, uh, is a really good proxy for the way people actually have to learn on the job now.

Yeah. Uh, and if you get down that rabbit hole and you realize, I just don't like this, this is not fun. You know, even if I do figure this out, it doesn't give me any feeling of joy or satisfaction. That's actually really good to know, too.

Right. Right. It would be good to know that before you go and, and go down the rabbit hole of, let's say, paying a ton of money for some bootcamp or course or something. Right, right.

And all that. So, uh, you know, it, once people get through that, I, I think the, the completion rate is in the single digits as far as I know, because not if, you know, it's not like you have to go tell me if you're doing the cloud resume challenge, but of the people that I know, and we have a large discord group and other things where I, I keep a pretty good pulse on the community, I believe it's in the single digits of people that actually complete this. Uh, but those people tend to be tremendously self-motivated individuals. Right, right.

Bright, they know how to learn. Uh, and, you know, if those people can get their foot in the door and actually get an opportunity, they tend to kill it. I mean, the, what I hear back from, from the teams is, could I have a dozen more of those, please. Wow.

Yeah. You know, uh, so the, the problem is, I, I, I have tremendous confidence in, in these people to, to just, you know, blow you away. Uh, the problem for them is always they come back to me and they say, well, it's been six months, it's been nine months. Mm-hmm.

And I can't get a legitimate interview. Mm-hmm. You know, uh, I, I can't, I can't get an interview for an actual full-time position. Uh, that's not, you know, uh, for someone who's only, you know, 22 years old and just graduated from college.

Uh, and I think that's shortsighted. I think it's unfortunate. I think it's a little bit of a, uh, embarrassment, quite frankly for our industry. Yeah.

You know, we, here we are at DevOps Enterprise Summit, uh, and, uh, we all, all we talk about is, you know, the abstraction and ification and cloudification of, of computing. You're telling me after all that Right. We still can't onboard junior engineers onto our teams without requiring 'em to recapitulate the entire history of it on their resumes. Yeah.

You know, shame on us. Right. It, um, it's, it's frustrating. It, Uh, frustrating, I think is a good word, af particularly for the, the Challenger who's just spent all that time and emotion and energy.

Yeah. Uh, with all those open tabs, figuring all those things out. I mean, that is a non-trivial list of, of stuff to learn. It is a non-trivial list.

And I, I try to be very, you know, blunt and realistic with people and let them know this is not some magic formula, you know, that's going to go out and, and guarantee that you're, you're gonna get hired, uh, with persistence. People that want it do tend to, to find their way into a spot. Yeah. But, uh, i, I really wish it was not that, you know, difficult, it's, it's, it's unnecessary, uh, hoops for people to jump through.

And again, the problem's, not the supply side, the problem, I mean, there's a billion courses and things. The cloud resume challenges isn't the only thing out there that will, you know mm-hmm. Prepare you well enough to get started. There's, there's lots and lots of options.

The, the problem tends to be more on what we might call the demand side with, with, with companies. Right. And it's, it's really more about, uh, helping people figure out how to create spaces mm-hmm. Where these non-traditional career changers can thrive.

Um, so you mentioned magic formulas and, uh, opening lots of tabs and learning a bunch of stuff and cracking open books and things like that. Yes. Um, so one of our, our favorite tools these days is, uh, is chat g p t. Right?

Like, you know, we've heard all the stories about how chat G P T is gonna, you know, take over all the things, um, and make things so much more accessible and easier. Um, what's the effect that you see of, of chat G P T and tools like it on, uh, the demand side for, uh, we'll just call it, you know, junior technology talent? I, I think we're probably still a little early for it to be meaningfully affecting the hiring market. Mm-hmm.

Uh, unless you're, you know, working for startups that are, that are working on AI tooling specifically, but chat, G P T, or I have Google Bar, and I have to say, since I work for Google. Right. Uh, but either way, um, these, these LLMs, these AI assisted programming tools and things like that mm-hmm. Uh, they're, it's, it's pretty clear that they're changing the way we work.

Um, so even if it's not like, uh, you know, you're, you're being hired and, and asked about your chat G p T skills, yet, I don't think we're quite seeing that Yeah. On people's resumes. Uh, there's this growing realization, um, among hiring managers and teams that, Hey, it looks like I can actually be some percent more productive, um, if I can, you know, have AI spit back to me some, some draft codes and boilerplates mm-hmm. Some examples.

Uh, there's, that seems pretty clear at this point, as long as you can get past, you know, uh, potentially the concerns of dropping your code into a, a chat window and not knowing where that proprietary code is going. Exactly. Yes. So that's, I know that's a, a big challenge and it's causes to be blocked at some companies for now, but I mean, the reality is this is where things are moving, and so we'll, we'll come up with licenses and certifications and assurances, I'm sure as an industry, uh, where people are able to use some versions of these tools.

I, I don't think that's in question at this point. Uh, so, so how, how's that gonna affect people's, uh, hiring of, of juniors? I think there will be cases, unfortunately where someone says, well, you know, maybe I would've brought in, I don't know, a college intern to do this. Uh, let's say, um, one, one thing we see a lot is translation.

So, like, you and I were talking to somebody last night who's, uh, they, they've got a bunch of Jenkins config. They wanted to move to GitHub actions, right? Right. We see this kind of thing a lot.

Or it might be, um, I had this, uh, this, let's say these modules written in Go, and I need to convert them to Python, um, as part of a larger shift that we're making as an org. And it turns out that those are things that LLMs tend to excel at to some extent, as long as you have people sitting alongside them that know what they're doing and can identify when they, they create problems. Right. So the, the bugs and the, um, inefficiencies, uh, and the non-optimal code pads created by these, uh, services are not often apparent to the untrained eye.

Uh, so it's really, really important to have people that know what they're doing, uh, that can use these, uh, tools as, um, aids rather than crutches. Mm-hmm. Uh, and you know, if we don't bring on new people that can learn that, then again, it just becomes this shortsighted tragedy of the commons kind of thing. Uh, so it, it doesn't change anything about the need for, uh, you know, bright, eager, talented people who are new to the field.

If anything, I think it's gonna increase it. Uh, we talk about Jevons paradox, right? Which says, uh, you know, the, the easier you make it for people to consume something, the more that thing they will consume. Right?

Uh, that was true of industrial age, things like, uh, coal and electricity and hot water. Mm-hmm. It's been true of things like C p U power, and it's true of code now too. We're generating all this code.

Uh, we've lowered the barrier of doing that. And the more of this code that we spit out, the more human beings we're gonna need to maintain that stuff and harden it and operate it in production and be on call for it. None of that's going away. If anything, it's, it's going to, uh, explode in need.

Uh, but you're absolutely right that, you know, if we, if we sit back and, and, uh, just kind of let it happen to us, uh, you know, we're, we're not gonna have the, the talent standing by that. We need to help maintain that. So now more than ever, it's important for us as teams to figure out what does it look like for, you know, juniors to still have something to do in a world where maybe their role is not just spitting out code very fast. Mm-hmm.

Uh, you know, how are we going to build educational pathways for people where they can continue to, to learn and maintain alongside these tools? Uh, we're, we're just so early. This is all emergent, uh, but it is, it is absolutely not taking away the need for, for new people. I, I would tend to agree with you.

I think that's absolutely true. Uh, couple more questions to wrap up. If you were talking to, uh, a company, um, about their, uh, interest in, in hiring these, uh, career switchers or challengers, what's, what's one message that if you could, I'm gonna use gene's, wave your magic wand, have them hear and act on, what would that one message be? I think we've said it a couple times here, but take the long view when you're thinking about how you're building your teams, right?

Yeah. And look at, look at ways that you can build a talent development culture and an engineering culture that is sustainable, that is not dependent on constant injections of people that you stole from the company down the street. Mm-hmm. Right.

I've worked in, um, like local talent, cultures like that, where there's this revolving door of four or five people. Nobody really develops any new talent. And when you, when you staff up on a project, you just bring people in from, you know, the, from, from the other company across the road. Uh, and what that does is, you know, it, it eventually creates a, a culture where there's not innovation mm-hmm.

And where you don't build a strong identity, uh, in terms of how, how you like to do things, uh, chat g p t or no cloud, or no, you know, uh, you're, you're gonna need to, uh, take that view toward building a sustainable, cost-effective, uh, pipeline for talent. And, and so don't, don't just be looking at the next six weeks, the next project, uh, the next budget. But think about where you're gonna need to be five years down the road, 10 years down the road. Yeah.

Build your teams for that. I was almost gonna wrap up, but you, you triggered another thought with one of the words that you mentioned in your answer there. Yeah. And that was, uh, that was innovation.

Yeah. And very specifically, there's lots of studies and research that talk about how inclusion, diversity, and equity contributes to cultures of innovation. Yeah. Um, how, how do you think the Cloud resume challenge fits into organizations' plans to increase innovation, and particularly maybe their inclusion, diversity, and equity plans too?

I think that's a wonderful question, and I don't want anyone to like, hear those words and feel like they're buzzwordy. Right. You know, but really what we're talking about here at its core is, Hey, you know, what's your team gonna look like if you put people on it that have a wide range of backgrounds and experiences? Right.

Exactly. So, for example, one of the, um, demographics that's really into the cloud resume challenge that maybe caught me off guard a little bit is we have a lot of single moms or, or, uh, moms returning to the workforce mm-hmm. Um, who, who do the cloud resume challenge. And, uh, you know, it's, it's something that, uh, you know, is, makes sense for them in their schedules.

Right. Uh, I mean, this, it takes a tremendous amount of focus to do this and pull it off, but you get to choose your own hours for how you work on it. So it's, it's very, uh, fits very well for people who have childcare and other responsibilities during the day. Um, and, uh, so it's been wonderful to see some of those folks get, get placed on a teams where then they can bring their unique skills and experience.

Right. Uh, we see folks who are, you know, coming back to the workforce after being out for an extended period of time. Um, we see folks who, uh, just come from, from unusual, uh, backgrounds that are diverse not only in terms of their like demographic, but in terms of what they've done, what, what they've built, what they've seen, what they've achieved. Um, and, and those are the people who, you know, when the chips are down, uh, or, or maybe when production's down, uh, are, are able to not freak out.

Right, right. Or, or, or not to feel like, you know, this is the, the only bad thing that has ever happened in the world. Right. But to, to reach down within themselves, uh, and, and just to calmly address that problem.

And that's what we see over and over again. So yes, this is not about, you know, uh, you know, rolling with some buzzword. Mm-hmm. This is about building a team of resilient people, uh, who have achieved things, who have confidence in themselves, know who they are, uh, people who, um, have things in balance.

And, uh, that that's the type type of people. The cloud resume challenge seems to be good at surfacing all the time. Oh, that's Terrific. Yep.

Forres, thanks for so much for making the time and sharing your perspectives with us. And, and maybe most importantly, thanks for, uh, for doing the cloud resume challenge. Well, Jeff, uh, it's great to be here and, uh, thank you so much for the time.