LIU010: Personal, Technical, and Slightly Unhinged: Listener Q&A

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Welcome to Life in Uptime, the show where we talk to ourselves about questions and answers.

This week we don't have a guest, so we're abandoning our normal format,

and we're just going to talk to you guys and answer your questions.

And as always, I'm joined by Alexis, so Alexis, how are you today?

I'm doing great. I'm actually having a fantastic day, and I've been really looking forward

to this. We get questions all the time in our DMs and our comments, and like Kevin said,

we really wanted to dedicate this episode to answering as many as we can.

So thank you to those who submitted, and we are going very off-script, so I hope you enjoy it.

Unfiltered. This is Life in Uptime.

Oh my God. Kevin, do you want to start?

Yeah, sure. Well, we got the sheet. We got the sheet. We took all of our Alexis and I

both did a prompt on Instagram stories, and we've combined those questions, and we kind of

picked out some of that, because there's a lot of repeats, to be honest. A lot of general

questions about the CCNA, and what certifications, and best paths, and all that kind of stuff.

So we tried to consolidate a little bit, so if you don't hear your question, but you did have

something related to those, you still appreciate it. Thank you for your question, but we can't,

we can't list over repetitive, like, to make time. So, all right, I'll start.

So the first question I see here is from Ivan Salum, and I hope I pronounced that right.

What do you tell people saying networking jobs aren't available like before?

You'll need to start. I want to do you want to hit that Alexis?

I've got a hot take on this one. If you got a hot take, go for it.

I think that networking jobs, I feel like a lot of people right now are kind of scared with AI.

That's another question we get all the time is, is AI going to replace network engineering?

Is this still something I should study? And AI isn't going to replace networking. It's just

going to make it different. And I think that there are plenty of jobs that involve network

engineering concepts, but what I'm personally hearing and seeing is that network engineers are

being asked to take on much more infrastructure. So you're no longer just a network engineer.

Maybe you're working a little bit with the cloud. Maybe you're doing a little bit of cybersecurity.

It's more integrated systems, right? And you, because the network touches everything,

kind of become the tie in between all of these systems. And I think with AI,

the scope creep of the job of the network engineer is just going to continue to creep,

which is kind of cool because it means that you get to dabble in a lot of other technologies.

But I think that it's not that there's not as many network engineering jobs.

I think that there's even more, they're just kind of expanded into other functions.

What do you think? Yeah, I agree with that. I think that the roles of a route switch network

engineer is less of those jobs because there are very few just straight routes switch

network engineers anymore. Now you have to have a laundry list of abilities and knowledge

to be effective in the modern enterprise network. And I think we get AI questions a lot.

And I think we're not really sure where AI is going right now. I think that AI,

there's too many questions around it still of what AI looks like in the skills that you'll need

in a modern AI workforce to really use it effectively. There's that I think we've all heard

before that AI is not going to replace your job. It's the person who knows how to utilize AI

is going to replace your job. And while I agree with that, it's very, very generic. We don't know

what that looks like yet. We don't know you need to have X, Y, Z skill in AI to be competitive or to

be in the workforce now. So that person that's replacing, quote, unquote, replacing you that has

AI knowledge, there's no concrete information about what those skills are. So while I agree with

that saying, it's still a lot of unknown stuff. So what I would tell people saying that

it worked jobs are available is that they are available. They're just harder to get

that the entry level jobs might be less. It's the senior level jobs. It's the people who

need a laundry list of knowledge and abilities to get those jobs are rarer. But there's still a lot

of jobs around. It's not going anywhere. There aren't less networking positions, just more duties.

They're different. They're different. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. You went really serious with the first

question. I'm going to, I'm going to bring us back. I would, I would, deep. This one's from Dave

405. He wants to know, what's the vibe? You would complete opposite. That was like, I know. I thought

you were going to do a fun one to kick off and you just do it right in. It was the first one on the

list. And that's how I work. You know, I, I get that interview. You're such an engineer. Step one.

Boom. Get it. Uh-huh. What's the vibe? So I'm old. I don't even know what that question really

means. What the vibe? Like the vibe is, is I don't, what I try to make the vibe. I can go with that.

I try to make the vibe where I'm having fun and making the best out of any situation. That's,

that's my vibe, I guess. That's what I try to do to anything. But what does that mean? What does

the vibe mean? Oh, it says, like, how are you feeling? Like, how are you doing today? Like a checkup.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm having a great day. I, um, this was my fifth day skiing. Um, I'm just learning.

I spent a lot of time falling down a mountain. I feel like my face is really wet red and when

you actually fall down a mountain or is that you mean like, no, it's not. I'm not being dramatic at all.

Please tell me someone got it on, on recording. Oh, 100%. Um, this is a picture of, like, I know,

people, they're like, it's, I know, I know, I'm pulling it up. You're like, it's blue. It's easy.

I don't know if you can tell how steep it is. No, anyways, that's,

Kevin's in Florida. Completely. The vibe was you fell off a mountain and you're having fun skiing

and being with your people. Yeah, we're having a great time. That's awesome. All right,

pick a question. Um, all right. So segueating since we're talking about you skiing down a mountain

on a work day, the middle of like, the middle of a work day. Um, I think that we had a couple

questions about you traveling and how you, um, stay, I think you're, you're staying eating on a good

diet while you're traveling. Um, Mr. Steven macaroni macaroni. Um, how do you keep a good diet

traveling so much? So that's a really fun question. It kind of, it depends on where I am and how

strict I'm being. So technically, what I try to do is no sugar, no alcohol, no dairy, no glue,

and, um, basically, yeah, basically no fun, right? If it, if it isn't whole foods, I really try to

avoid it. Um, I try to be kind of mindful of like portion sizes and, you know, eating only when

I'm hungry, sometimes I do travel with like a portable food scale. Um, sometimes I'm tracking

macros, sometimes I'm not. Um, you really, really, really have to force yourself into time zone and

like make sure you're getting up and working out. Um, this weekend's what's our land is actually

really weird for me because there's no gym in the town that I'm in. So I'm trusting that I'm

just getting ready to do. Oh my gosh, it's been hard. It's been hard. It's gonna be like the longest

period of time I've gone without like actually lifting. Um, but do you do like calisthenics and stuff

like this? You could do like pushups and sit ups and like, yeah, I'll travel. Um, I travel.

Manduka has a travel yoga mat that's, I think it's like two millimeters and it's only four pounds

and so I'll travel with that and then like two pound Pilates hand weights. Um, and generally like

if you just follow along with the YouTube video, you can get like a decent workout in and they're

pretty nice because they're 30 to 40 minutes. You can do them with like minimal space in a hotel

room. Um, the diet is really, really the hardest part. Um, I think my favorite, if specifically for

conferences or like work travel, if I'm assuming whoever's asking this is like doing some work travel,

I'll actually order meal props from local meal delivery services to the hotel that I'm going to.

And if the hotel doesn't have a fridge in the room, you can tell them that you need a medical

fridge because you're on a special diet, which is true. Well, a lot of foods upset my stomach and

I can't function at work if I'm not performing, right? And so I need the food. Um, and then you'll

have a mini fridge with like meal props. Sometimes you have to eat them cold if there's no microwave,

but like it's better than, you know, eating greasy french fries and having an upset stomach and

feeling like all the time. So. Yeah. Can I pull the curtain back here a little bit? Cause you say

all that. I know. Well, I want to give our audience an accurate representation because we just got

back from Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. And we were at the celebration, right? The celebration

story. And every single time we go to a celebration, Alexis is first to get her her mouth is

at one ice cream. Where's the ice cream? So she had ice cream and then she had

churros, like she had all this junk food. And then I, and then, you know, you're leaving out. And

then I got food poisoning and immediately after school at Amsterdam, I spent, oh my god, 10 hours

in my hotel room, just like sick sick as a dog. I slept for 48 hours straight. The only reason I

survived is because I called one of my coworkers. And he brought me like activated charcoal

in medicine from a drug store. I honestly thought I might have had to go to the hospital. It was like

top two times I have ever been sick in my whole life. So it kind of backfired. But I have a nasty,

nasty sweet tooth. And the hardest thing for me traveling is going to like a grocery store in a

new country. And they have all the different candies. And like I can't, I can't try all of them.

And so I, I kind of struggle with like all or nothing, like I'll either eat nothing or

all by like six packs. It's a work in progress. I'm just giving the people. Like, really,

to give people an idea of like how it was on the conference floor with you, like we're trying

to like videos. So we're hanging out together and making videos and stuff. And like we're scouring

the place, trying to find stuff to eat. You end up just eating chocolate. Like someone gave us

this very, very nice person. Oh, they were wonderful. Yeah, we had so many people that

came up to us. And they were awesome. But they gave us chocolates and like Dutch candies. And

that ended up being Alexis's lunch in dinner most. Well, because what happens is like you get,

if these big tech conferences, like you get so busy and you're in and out of sessions and you're

walking and there's a lot of movement and people are stopping you and you're talking. And like,

it's very chaotic. And then you look and it's like two o'clock and lunch is over. And you're like,

and then there's nothing to eat for miles. Whether you're in Vegas, I don't care what conference I'm at.

There's no good food. Like if it's AWS reinvent, if it's Cisco live in Las Vegas, like you might get

like a Starbucks and you know, you get like the most mid food ever from a Starbucks in Vegas when

the line is 50 people long. Or it's like overly priced and greasy. And it's just like not good food,

which is again, why I prefer to have the meal preps. I did not adequately prep for Amsterdam,

which is why I was eating chocolate and strip waffles on a conference room floor because there was

nothing else. Okay. I just want to make sure that we're honest in this Q&A. That we're not like I

only eat prepared food. And I'm like, I'm like, I'll call you out. I want you to call me out too

in this Q&A. If I start BSing, tell me out. Okay. I'm not BSing. I do order meal preps most of the time.

I was not accusing you. I was just saying, you know, want us to be honest.

Okay. So we do we do a hard one next one. Like a yes. I'm going to pick an actual

technical question. The moon. Okay. I like this one. Um, from tips. Shush. Tips. Tips. Just

tips. Shush. Tips. Shush. Just the tips. Shush. What key personality traits are most valued

as a pre sales network engineer? I think this is a great question. And I'm going to answer it from

my point of view. And then Kevin, because you're on the other side, you've been a customer working

with an ACI. I want you to. I have a favorite art. We talked about this before. And I have a feeling

we're going to be aligned on what we say, but go for it. Okay. Um, I think the most important

trait to have if you're going into pre sales, like I was a solutions engineer at Cisco,

and you can be a pre sales engineer at almost any any vendor. They all have them.

Number one is being a teacher. Like you like teaching, you genuinely enjoy like teaching

technology to others and wanting to help people. At the end of the day, if you're working as an

ACI for these vendors, a lot of times you have other architects or other engineers that you can

lean on who may have more experience in you or maybe more technical than you. And you are acting

as the voice of the customer to help advocate for them in your organization. And a lot of times

what happens is you'll get asked questions. And you don't know the answer, right? Maybe it's like

over your head. Maybe it's a new feature that you just haven't been up to speed on yet. Like there's

a million things going on in the industry. You can't always know everything all at once. So, you know,

just being able to be honest and say, Hey, great question. I don't know. I'm going to go find out

for you, going, finding the answer, learning the answer, and then teaching it back to your customer.

And if you can do those things, I think that's what makes it great as a, personally.

Good answer. Good answer. Good answer. Okay. Tell them what's your answer.

Yeah. From the customer point of view, I would say that number one being honest about everything.

Like don't, don't be asked me if I can tell your BSing or I get that even the hint, the whiff

that you're BSing, you lose all credibility. And once you lose credibility, we're done. Like there,

there, it takes a lot to come back. You make one mistake and it takes, you know, a while to earn that

trust back. Number two, I would say don't, I don't want to be sold to. Like I don't want to

the hard sell, the like the kind of used car salesman like thing. You shouldn't be forcing solutions.

It's educating, not selling. But even your AM's job is to sell. Your job is to educate.

Yeah, but it's not even don't educate, I don't know, the solution that you're telling me about

or educating me has to tie back into our environment and makes sense for our environment.

Don't try to take a round peg and put it in the square hole and tell me that it's going to work

or it'll fit. Like, because I will listen to you, we'll do a test. And if it doesn't work,

you're losing credibility there too. We're like, okay, this person, they were just trying to sell

this solution or implement this solution and they didn't really know our environment or how it's

going to integrate, how it's going to work. Well, and something, something I always said to my

customers when I work at Cisco was that, you know, I can teach you this. You are the one.

Ultimately, I'm not in your environment every day. Right. You, you can tell me all of the things

and I can help educate you on what I think is going to work best, but ultimately, you need to be

the owner of the decision with the technology that you're moving forward with because you are the

one that is going to have to implement it and use it every single day. And I have my opinions

on what I think you should use based on my experience, but ultimately, you are the one running

your network. It doesn't hurt my feelings if you make a different decision. Unless we're like

six months into the sales process and, you know, jerk us around and hold on to my bent over

backwards for you multiple times, trying to help you out. Then it might hurt my feelings a little bit.

Hmm. Yeah, so pretty aligned. Yeah, since then.

Okay, I'd pick the next one. Yes, you do. Okay. What's the smallest thing that can

absolutely ruin your day? This is from Natalie Doidi X. Doidi. Doidi.

Hmm. Smallest thing that can absolutely ruin your day.

Um, man, I really don't like washing my hair. If you're a girl, Natalie's a girl,

Natalie is the girl. So she understands that they're not going to understand, but I wash my hair

maybe, I don't know, once every four to five days. And right now it's really long. And like,

I'm in another country and finding a blow dryer that works with the voltage and the outlets that

I have available has been a struggle. And it's just kind of like a, I have to do that today.

And it takes a really long time and I can't get anything else done, but just also why I'm wearing

hat because I had a helmet on all day and I, you know, we're not dealing with that.

Um, that wasn't a very good answer, but it's an unfiltered, accurate answer. That's

what we're looking for here. It's because I have to wash my hair tomorrow. That's on my mind.

How about you, Kevin? I give you some time to think. Yeah, I'll go, so there's actually two that I'm

dealing with right now. One's work related, one's personal and the personal one's kind of

gross. I'm not going to talk about it. Well, it's not, that sounded like that sounded like I was

weird. Yeah. Now you have to explain it. Okay. I'm getting over a cold right now. Okay.

I'm good. I'm like sick and I have a mustache and the nasal like stuff with a mustache is gross.

This thing is terrible. It makes me want to shave my mustache off. I've never in the last like

two years of having a mustache. This is the first time I'm like, I want to get this thing off me.

So I can act like fully blow my nose for once and not be gross. I remember you without a

mustache. It's been a while. It's been two years. You shave your mustache. I think the internet would

go crazy. You all know who you are. It's like when I took my glasses off and everyone was like,

who's that? Yeah, exactly. It had a rebrand completely. I did it. Okay, but I'll do work related

one and that is, so I'm very, I plan my days out very meticulously. And I hate drive buys or

if I'm working in the office, people talking to me. I'm sorry. Co-workers, I love you. But like,

just I'm not a social person. We're like, I want to talk about your kids for 30 minutes or like

I have a meeting on Kevin's calendar. Yeah. Don't go in. Exactly. If you want to shoot the

stuff or talk and socialize, just send me an invite. It's a 30 minute invite and like I catch up

meeting. That's why this is why you decline my face times. Yes, all the time. I'm busy. If I'm doing

something, I can't I have ADHD. I have like a schedule that I'm following. So I have to stay on

task or else I will be completely derailed and it will derail my entire day if I go down this

rabbit hole of talking to people or just unpredictable meetings. I can't do it. So I give a

work related one. Yeah, of course. It's our podcast. We don't want. I hate Jira. Anytime I have to

open up Jira for anything, I'm like, I purposely avoid it. I avoid it and then it all piles up and

I had to spend like 45 minutes. Yeah. By delaying it, you're like you're piling all into one and

now you're like stuck doing this for a while. Yeah. Yeah. That's procrastination. Question.

I'm going to do a CCNA question from Martin Monsack. Is it still worth doing the CCNP or CCNA

certification exam after you did all of the courses? I'm assuming he's what he's saying is like

he did the training and he has the knowledge, but he hasn't paid to take certification. Right. Yeah,

that's what I'm getting to. So normally I would say the certification is not worth as much as the

knowledge for a lot of certifications. The CCNA, CCNP are not those certifications. I feel like they

carry the weight of it's worth actually getting the certifications. Now like something like a Linux

plus or some of the entry level like Google Microsoft certifications, those I would say you don't

have to do a plus, for example, like if you're completely new to computers and technology, study the

A plus exam, don't actually take it though. You don't need it. No one's looking for an A plus

on their resume, but CCNA, CCNP, any of the Cisco heavy certs, those are worth it, am I thinking?

Yeah, I think that's the big. I mean, the CCNA was how I transitioned in the IT.

Like I was an aerospace engineer. My four-year degree is an aerospace engineering.

I pivoted. I got hired by Cisco. I took my CCNA and CCNP and that was my like, I can work here now.

I deserve to be at this table. And I remember being, was I 24? I think I was 24 when I went to my

first customer lunch. It was very early when I started supporting customers. And I remember sitting

at a a table full of guys that were like old enough to be my dad. And they were like, oh, you're

our new SC. And I was like, yeah, I have my CCNP and they all went, oh my god. Okay, wow,

sweetie. That's great. And I, yep, I was like, oh, okay, this did mean something.

So I'm with Kevin. I do think it's worth it to get the piece of paper. Have the knowledge to

back up this paper, but you should get piece of paper. It also depends on where you are in your

career. If you're looking, basically, certifications are great. If you want to advance your career,

either getting a new job or a promotion. But if you're in a workplace that you've been there

for 30 years, you're already an engineer, then the actual certifications probably won't help you

if you're planning on staying there and retiring there forever. It's your work production and what

you know is what's going to keep you there. So, I mean, we don't know that the backstory

of this person's question, but if you're entry level or starting your career or wanting to change

just in careers, definitely give it his name. Cool. Your turn. Oh, okay. It's a just one. Is online

university a good idea? Will it look as good on a resume? That's from Caleb's. Well, Caleb's

Huffett. Caleb Schuffett. He was Schuffett. I love these last names. They're all harder for

now. You couldn't get a John Smith, just in as a freaking question. Could we? I also want to point out

that Kevin is still going great on the list. Like, he's not skipping around at all. I want you to

know that this is how I am. He is seeing the first question in front of him and just reading that one.

I am organized. This is how I live my life, Alexis. I have a hard time answering this one because I

am not a recruiter. I don't know. I went to college in person. I don't know if it's kind of like

staggering. Or if there's any sort of like filtering on the back end of resume platforms or like

the job filtering process. My knee jerk reaction would be how good of a student are you?

Like, can you hold yourself accountable to going to classes online and sitting and paying attention

to hours and hours of lectures online where you're working by yourself and you're not

there in person? And can you hold yourself accountable to doing the work? The other thing is I think

going to school in person, like part of it is the friends that you make and the networking you get

to do and the experience you get to have. It's not all just, oh, I can put this paper on my resume

and I went to MIT and it looks good. Part of it is the relationships that you build while you're

in school, whether it's the professors that can introduce you to other people or the career

fairs that you get to attend in person. Now, online university might have some of that,

but I think it's going to be much more difficult the same way it's difficult to like,

I don't know, make friends and develop community online.

Okay, okay, I see that. Especially for like the, I think the biggest thing there was

being able to, what's it called, socialize and like, no, not even focus.

You just mentioned it. Now, this is why it's why the people are in fact, right?

Community and like, what's it called?

The thing where you connect with people.

Connection, making friends.

What's it?

Networking, networking, the thing that we do.

Networking, oh my God.

The people in memory, not the good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I have a different take than you and so I've been a hiring manager and this is going to

largely depend on the hiring manager.

But my personal take is I don't care at all.

I don't care if you got your degree from a community college.

I don't care if you get one to Harvard.

I don't care if you went to WGU.

It does not matter as long as you typically HR once the college degree.

They want to have the check mark that you did the row.

You did the hoops and while that kind of crap for it, but I don't personally give a

crap if you have a college degree or not, really.

To me, what I care about is do you have a passion for technology?

Do you have a basic understanding of networking?

Are you someone who's going to do the extra mile and do research and figure questions out on

your own or are you going to ask everyone for questions and be stuck spinning your wheels?

That kind of stuff and you can get that from the interview.

I don't want to see your transcripts.

I don't want to know that you got all A's and B's and have a 3.7 GPA or whatever.

I don't care about any of that.

Because who you are in college might not necessarily be who you are the workplace.

So it's a personal thing, but it's going to vary in the higher manager.

I think speaking of building community, Tinkfu asked, how did y'all become homies?

And I love this question.

The power of TikTok.

Kevin, do you want to tell a story?

I honestly don't even know where I remember it.

So I want to hear your take.

I mean, I'll be interested.

This is my take.

I'll be interested to hear if I'm remembering it the way you remember it or whatever, but

so say it's been two and a half years now.

Three, honestly, I think we keep saying two and a half and it's been two and a half years.

Time keeps going, we keep saying two and a half.

Because I want to admit how old I am, how long we've been doing this.

Two and a half, three years ago, Alexis and I were both making videos on TikTok.

I was, we were both making memes, really.

Like crappy memes that were just, I don't know, that zero educational value, really,

just making fun of ourselves, making things about networking.

I followed her, she followed me, and I think I don't know who messaged either first,

but I was like, oh, you're networking now.

Yeah, no, but like, it was basically like, oh, you make networking stuff too.

There's only like three of us on this tire platform.

So we should be friends.

And then we sort of send each other, like ideas for memes and helping each other spot check,

like, hey, I'm going to do this meme.

What do you think of this?

This is actually funny or am I just being weird kind of stuff?

And then she was in SC.

So she was sending me stuff like, hey, does this make sense to you as a network engineer?

And we just kind of use each other's resources to help us grow on TikTok.

And it transitioned from helping each other with memes to like, business ideas of like,

how do we grow our platforms?

How do we, you know, how do we reach people who are interested in networking,

who have never talked about networking or never thought about networking?

Like, we just brainstorm together.

We both have, I mean, even though Kevin and I had very different roles,

um, being like an network engineer and a solutions engineer,

I mean, they're similar roles, but they are different.

Um, the ultimate end goal of the platform is the same, which is to inspire people to go into

IT and educate people about technology, right?

And, um, we're both doing it,

or it's like a similar but different way, right?

And, um, kind of like Kevin said, I would have ideas that wouldn't necessarily perform well

on my platform, but I think would do very well on Kevin's, just because of,

it's a slightly different sense of humor and slightly different delivery.

Um, and again, the end goal is the same, which is to help people get into the industry,

have fun, have a good laugh, right?

And it's, it's very nice having someone else in your corner.

And I think it goes for anything, right?

Like whether you're studying for a certification or breaking into into into into a new industry,

it helps to have a buddy that you can shoot ideas off back and forth and kind of motivate you,

like, I will say Kevin's outpaced me on followers.

It's fine.

I'm okay with it.

Different, different markets, right?

Like, and your LinkedIn is killing me.

I can't compete with you on LinkedIn at all.

It's a different market completely.

I like LinkedIn.

It was my favorite trial for a while.

You weirdo.

But yeah, it's, it's nice to have someone else that like understands and has the same goal

and that you're able to like co-work with, especially in content creation, especially in

content creation about IT, because like Kevin said, there's not really that many of us out there.

Well, let's get in bigger.

When we first started this, it was me, you, in Lexi and um, uh, she had a bottle of network child.

They weren't even on social meet.

They were on YouTube still.

They weren't on TikTok much or Instagram much at all back then.

They've since then grown.

And now they're seeing how the how short form is taking off.

But yeah, now there's a million people out there.

A lot of early career people, which I love to see that they're creating content and show

their journey.

I try every time I see someone that's making networking content.

I follow them back and DM them when I'm like, keep it up.

Keep going.

Yeah, exactly.

Because most of my followers are going, I cut you off.

I keep getting you off.

I'm sorry.

Oh, it's okay.

I remember how I could resist.

I remember how exciting it was when I was like a new creator.

And then someone who had like more followers than me or was more experienced than me

followed me back.

I was like, keep going.

I was like, yeah.

And so I've been trying to do that for new people too.

I do say that.

And I, I, I really only follow other creators on my thing, on my platforms.

It's like, it's like, I will follow basically anyone.

If you make constant content or content on your platform, I will follow you for both

support and to steal I do.

I mean, to, um, I'm not going to steal ideas from you.

I can't believe you said that.

That's my personality.

I can't help it.

I'm thinking I'm joking.

There's questions.

There's questions.

I want to answer on the list that are not in order.

And so I'm just going to start asking them.

This is like, I leave it to Kevin.

He's going to skip them.

Yes.

How was Cisco live Emea compared to Cisco live US?

I think this is a really interesting question.

Because also, I've, I've gotten asked before, like, if I could only choose one,

Cisco live, which one would I pick?

Because there's people that can't go, like, you have to pick one.

Yeah.

You can't, I mean, everyone can go to all of them.

I'm jealous of the people that can just pick which one they go to.

Like, I, I can't, my job won't pay for me to go to Europe,

or to Australia, like, I'm stuck at the US one.

So the fact that like, companies will pay their people to go to a different country,

blows my mind.

I can't even imagine that.

So if you have that option, that's, that's amazing.

But the actual question, I think Cisco live US is more hectic.

I feel like it's more like just everyone's rushing.

Everyone's doing stuff.

There's so much to do where EMEA was more chill.

Like everyone was kind of slower.

I don't know.

It was, it was nice.

It was more relaxed, which yeah, yeah.

So it's a school live, it's a school live US.

I compared to like,

prepping for the Super Bowl.

Like, I know I'm going to Cisco live in Vegas.

I'm like drinking electrolytes the week before.

I'm walking extra.

I'm like up in my step count to 15,000 a day to try to like prepare to be on my feet.

I'm, I'm ordering the meal preps.

Like, I'm like prepping for that.

Because I know it's grueling and it's, it beats the hell out of your body.

Cisco live EMEA and Cisco live Australia.

I got eight hours of sleep every night.

I got to work out in in the morning.

I like casually walked around.

I didn't feel it.

It was just so much more relaxed.

And I felt like because of that, I was able to have

much more in-depth conversations,

either with people that were coming over to talk to me or just people in general,

because everyone's not like on edge, like they are in Vegas.

Maybe it's just Vegas, but I don't know.

I think, yeah, I think Vegas just feels more chaotic in general.

Like because you're going through casinos to the conference and there's, you know,

people running around there and all these noises and lights.

So it's like, even before I get to the conference, I'm overstimulated.

So it's a different vibe.

I definitely recommend it if you if you if you can pick any conference to go to,

no matter where it is, and if it's your first Cisco live, especially, EMEA is,

I think, a better experience to get your feet wet into Cisco live.

Also, the one more point and then I want you to pick a question.

I do think that a big part of going to conferences like Cisco live is the

networking aspect and like meeting other people in your local area.

So if you are in EMEA,

maybe go to the EMEA one for your first time because you'll make more contacts that are local

if you're in the U.S. and you go to U.S. and then branch out. I think branching out is cool.

That's a good point. Yeah, the cool thing of all the vendors were pretty much the same,

which was nice to see. There wasn't like a majority of just European vendors, some of that.

So if you're going, you can still talk to your rep or whomever your company that you're working

with is still going to be there, but definitely good point about the people attending are going

to be more in the industry. That's where it's located. Yep. All right. So speaking of,

I think we just mentioned this before about community and talking to people.

Tucky. Tucky 88. Oh, that's cute, man. Tucky. Do you also struggle?

I get to actually show how weird my personality is on these kind of. I know you do.

People don't understand how weird I am. I am a weird guy. Tucky 88. Do you also struggle with not

being able to explain slash talk to friends slash fam about the work that you do?

Alexis, go for it. I don't know if anyone remembers. I did two videos with my family. Can you

explain what I do for work? The second one was, can you explain what is the cloud? One time,

I don't know if I should say the sun on air. We can decide. Why not? We've already been censored.

I got a phase time for my sister a little bit ago. You guys know, I make all these videos about

technology. She called me and she was like, Alexis, I was watching this video and it literally

sounded like you were speaking another language. Me and my boyfriend were high. I handed him

my phone and said, oh my god, listen to this. Then for the next 45 minutes, we scrolled through your

page. Hi, watching your TikToks because it was so funny to us that we literally couldn't understand

a single word you were saying. That's amazing. I don't know if this one's going to make it on air.

But I feel like I've just kind of accepted it and also I have different levels of explanation

depending on who I'm talking to. You ask a probing question. Do you know what the cloud is?

Do you know what network engineering is? Okay. Well, then I actually kind of explain. If not,

I'm like, well, I work in tech and IT and then I make content too. Their response is usually,

oh, so you're an influencer. I'm technically an influencer.

Do you feel like you lose them already? You start talking about the cloud. They say no.

They don't know what the cloud is. They don't know you that stuff. You start explaining it to them.

I mean, the people I talk to, they're done. They're like, okay, I don't know what you're talking about.

Gone. I feel like most people know what AWS is. I'm like, you know what the cloud is?

Like AWS and if they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't go a little bit deeper. Usually,

I leave it at, I work for an Australian tech company in IT.

Gotcha. I don't, I don't even say I do, you know, my, I used to, I used to go in with the,

well, my job title is technically global evangelist. I leave that part out now. I say I work

in technical marketing. Global even telekist. Oh, yeah, I forgot. You don't know how to pronounce

that word. Say it again. Still can't say it. Evangelicist. Yes. Even jealousist.

You haven't how do you explain your job? I say I make the internet go good.

I do good internet things. I do good internet things.

Like my, my kids, my youngest one is seven. And what he knows is that like, I do internet things.

And like, it's funny because he'll, like, if the internet's down or like, there was that story

about, I forget what, there was a big outage a few months back. He's like, why didn't you fix that,

dad? Like, he doesn't understand that, like, how big the internet is and how, no, I, I do my

little. Yeah, like, that's all he knows. Like the internet is this ephemeral thing in the sky.

And my dad fixes it. It's so cute. But talking to an adult, it is really difficult because most

people, I feel like if you, if you care, then you would already kind of know the basics of technology.

And the people who don't know, don't want to know. Yeah. So like my wife, right?

bless her heart. I love my wife with my entire heart. But the woman does not care about technology

to save her life. And if I'm trying to talk to her about my day, I know that it's not going to land.

Like, I have to lead with my coworker did this or my coworker said this. She wants the tea.

She wants like the person drama. But if I mentioned like, oh, yeah, we had a, you know, a firewall.

one out. Yeah, like, she doesn't care. She's exactly like card. Exactly. Like, doesn't care at all.

So it is, it is a struggle to relate to people and, and share your day with people who are

non-technical. And that's where the power of social media is. That's where the power of

going to Cisco live and the power of these mobile meetups. Yeah. Is so that you can meet up and

finally share that passion, get, get it all out. And some it's weird. You can tell the people

who don't have anyone to talk to you because when they finally connect with someone, I mean,

it just unloads. They're just like, man, it's just, we have the same reaction. Yeah, it's like,

because I'm like, and I find it funny. And I love it because I know that this person hasn't been

able to share that with anyone. Yeah. And so it gets a great opportunity and I love it. But

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Okay. I have one from mate, booblay, or made boobal.

What's your, and I think this is going to be fun because Kevin and I, I have to age Kevin

in every episode. Every episode. It's going to have a little bit of a take.

What is your take on work-life balance when you're young?

So I'm weird, I guess not weird, but my experience was that I had kids pretty young.

My oldest is 15, and I'm 41, so math is hard, but I was in my early 20s when I had a kid.

Time is, I know how she is, that's the important part, I don't know when I.

But what's funny is like, when I was Alexis's age, I was married, two kids, a house.

We're a very different position. Don't start crying.

No, I'm not. I don't know. My eyes are watering.

It's place like it's place like, I have for reference, I have basically the least amount of

responsibility as I've had in my entire life. Yeah. Right, you've gone backwards, not backwards,

but you've gone more free and I've gone more, more responsibilities.

Adults? So it's hard because it's going to, it's going to depend on what your work,

like what your life looks like. But for me, I was in a corporate job that I hated and didn't

give me work-life balance. And my solution to that was to go to the public sector,

was to find a job that allowed me to have the work-life balance that I wanted.

And I feel like when you're young, you have to make the choice what's more important to you.

Your career or creating a family. And you have to make that personal choice for yourself,

because in it stings, you kind of have to pick one, but you do. You have to, especially when

you're young, go all in on your career, where you spend nights and weekends studying for

specifications and volunteering for extra work and weaknesses and all that kind of stuff.

Or you say, no, my priority is having kids and spending my nights doing board games

and eating kids and changing diapers. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, have you seen the meme?

I remember this was really big when I was in college. I saw it all the time on Instagram,

and it was like a circle, and it was split into three pieces. And it said, you can only choose

two, eight hours of sleep, get good grades, have friends. You can have friends and get good grades,

but you're not sleeping. You can get sleep and good grades, but you want to have friends. Or you

can have friends and get sleep and fail all your classes. You can only choose two. Which two

are you choosing? And it kind of reminds me of that. Yeah, it's not sustainable to try to do both.

You really, you can do both a little bit. Half, half bud. We believe curse words. So half

butt, both of them. I know you're I feel bad for our editors.

You're gonna cut this whole section now, Alexis, dang it. Yeah, so you can do both, but like,

I feel like you'll be spitting your wheels and you'll have an unhappy marriage and you won't

be there for your kids, but you also won't be like making headway in your career. So I feel like

the best thing to do is just to pick one, whichever one is more important to you, what more

lines to your core values. And at least for the first few years of your career, go, you know,

head deep into that. Would you agree, Alexis? No. I mean, I can't. I'm also in a very different

scenario than you were. I don't have kids. It's not on the horizon for me at any time soon, knock on

wood. That would be a difficult situation. If I don't know, I was having kids right now,

but I don't I have never really believed in like work-life balance. What I like, what I lean

more towards is work-life integration. Like, I think you all pieces of your life and maybe I'm

very, very blessed that both my job and my side hobby of content creation kind of float together

and allow me to live a lifestyle the way that I want where I'm able to travel all the time and

and do things all the time and keep all in different countries and like do all this crazy stuff

that you guys see on my Instagram. But I'm I'm very much in a work hard play hard season. And I

remember being this was like during COVID. I mean, I was working a very normal like stay at home,

remote job for Cisco, right? I'd visit customers once or twice a week. Outside of that, I was locked up

in my home office in DC. And I remember like staring out the window in Arlington, Virginia. And I was

like every single I live the same day, every single day. Every single day feels like groundhog day.

And I got in like a big fight with my axe about it because he was like, well, is it a good day?

Is it a good day? You have a comfy bed and enough money in your bank account. And we ate dinner

so like it's a good day, right? And I was like, I'm bored. I'm bored. And now I kind of just like flip

my life upside down. And I've been traveling full time since April. And I've had all of these crazy

experiences. And I work, I mean, for example, I woke up today at seven o'clock. I worked for three

hours from seven, 10. I immediately opened up my eyes, went downstairs, made breakfast, and sat on my

computer. While the rest of the house I'm in woke up, we all went skiing from 10 to 430.

I came home, showered, did a little bit more work, um, check my email and, you know, stuff like

that because I'm in Europe and the US just woke up, um, did my check-ins with my boss. I'm on this

podcast with Kevin right now. After this, I'm gonna go heat up some dinner, um, take care of editing,

not editing, but like reviewing edits on some videos for Megaport. And I have a meeting at 12,

30 in the morning today. Am I happy about taking a meeting at 12, 30 in the morning?

Not really, it's not my favorite thing to do. Normally when I'm working US hours in Europe,

I try to work from three to 10, 30. It usually scope creeps until midnight because, you know,

it work just kind of goes like that. Um, I don't love like knowing I have a meeting that's locked

in on the calendar at 12, 30, but that's the price that I pay for having the flexibility that I do.

To be skiing in Switzerland right now. And that's the sacrifice I'm willing to make, right? And I,

I am trying to integrate my job into the things I want to do. And I think that, um,

if your job isn't, maybe this is like a really selfish hot take, but like if your job isn't

giving you the flexibility to live the life that you want to live, you need a different job.

I'm also working in a house with 20 other people that are working very normal jobs in tech or finance.

Um, that like they, they are very normal jobs and they're all doing the same thing that I do

just under the radar. Like I do not exclusively have this privilege because of social media.

I can name now 25 other people that are doing the same thing and half of them don't even have

Instagram accounts. So disclaimer. I feel like the moral of your story is don't have kids.

I would like to have kids, but like you said, it's a decision that you make. You can only pick three.

Yeah, it's a priority. You can only pick three. Remember the circle, sleep, good grades, have friends,

job, flexibility, children, money. I don't know. Yeah. It's just still like your, your

integration, your integration strategy is kind of like it works as long as all you're dealing with

is, is like work. Well, you start adding in family responsibilities and kids and all these other

pieces. I would, it's much harder for all that stuff to work around a, a traveling.

I disagree with that. I mean, I think I'm, I am integrating. I disagree with you again. I,

I'm, I'm, I'm integrating the travel into my life right now. But that's not to say in five

years when I want to have children, I can't make a different decision and decide to integrate

their lives into my work schedule to make my work flow around the time I want to spend with my

children instead. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I know, I know a girl I used to work with. She was one of

my neighbors and she would take her lunch break for two hours in the middle of the day every day

and schedule. She had to stay at home, nanny. Again, work and tax. She had money to hire a stay at

home, nanny, but it's very privileged, right? But she, the nanny would come. She would get her kids

ready and do the home morning routine and get some quality time with them and the nanny would come.

She would go and work and then she would come back and do their lunch time and play time and then

they would go down for their nap with the nanny and then she would go back to work and work another

four hours and then have the quality time after dinner to do homework and all the stuff in the

nanny went home. And that was kind of like how she integrated her normal works schedule into her life.

Yeah, man, I just, okay, I'm on a soapbox here. So I might cut all this from the podcast.

I just don't want, I don't want people to think that like we're dismissing the struggles they

have in their life because like sometimes people are dealing with situations that are not conducive

to a life where they can like do both, you know, like some people have to sacrifice and pick.

And if you have sick parents that are living with you and you're like having to be a caretaker for

your parents and like you're also trying to hold down a job and you're also trying to have friends

or whatever like it's in one situation. You have to pick. And yeah, so I just, there are situations

where you can't, you can't necessarily live the life you want because of your situation.

And you know, I think that's important to recognize that there are people out there struggling

to do that. It's all I want to say. I can sympathize with that. And I don't think you should

not take responsibility for decisions that you made. But and sometimes like you get dealt

to hand, right? And that's yeah. I it's hard. Like he's like the story was named. She works in

track engine. I know. I'm also like an optimist of like I will find a way. Like that's also just my

personality is that no matter. Yeah. I don't care what the situation is. I am going to find a way

to make it work. But that's also just like how I am to my core.

I'm also a little psych. So next question. Okay. So next question is from straight silver. And he's

he's he's asking some straight questions here. Oh god. So his username is accurate. Alexis,

there's been some drama online. There's always drama online. There's always drama. But about a

year ago, I think a year ago, were you fired from Cisco? It's really funny. Kevin, because immediately

after I announced I was leaving Cisco, I think I had like four different people that message me

immediately. And they were like, do you want to come on my podcast and talk about it? And I

said, no, it's all of them. Here we are. I was technically. Well, were you under like an NDA too

or something? Not not like an NDA, but it was just it was a how do I how do I say? I was voluntarily

resigned. That is the literal term that was used. So I was not fired. So you quit. I was voluntarily

resigned. The non technical term is managed out. And I don't know if anyone else has ever experienced

that. Yeah, the to go into the full story would be a lot of drama. And probably some like he said,

she said stuff, which is why I've never gotten into it online. There was things that I feel were

very misleading around my move to Charlotte and my permission to move to Charlotte.

But long story short, I was voluntarily resigned for moving outside of my sales territory.

And honestly, I mean, at the time, I was I was so upset about it. I had been trying to move

off of my team. I was working in commercial. So Cisco has different segments of their business.

They've got commercial. They've got enterprise. They've got federal. They've got public sector.

And I had been wanting to move out of commercial and do a different segment of the business

anyways. And so I was like, oh, no problem. I can get a job in another segment. As it turns out,

Cisco was on hiring freeze the entire time I was looking for a job. So I couldn't get a job

in another segment. And it was it was a what would you say like perfect storm of the hiring

freeze, communication, misleading things in my opinion, and also me wanting to move states.

Ultimately, you know, at the time, I was very upset about it. Like, I'm still a little bit upset

about how everything went down, but I can look back now over a year later and say that it was

probably one of the best things to happen to me, which I think at the time, I never would have

imagined saying that, right? I would have been a lifeer at Cisco. I would have been a lifeer.

I never would have quit. No matter what the situation was, I never would have left that company.

And I would still be working there right now. And I probably would not have grown my

platforms as much. I would still be constrained to only talking about Cisco technology. I don't

feel like I would have gotten as much experience in the industry. Like ultimately leaving Cisco was

the best thing or being managed out of Cisco or voluntarily resigned from Cisco, whatever you

want to call it. It was one of the best things to ever happen to me. And I'm grateful it happened

looking back. I think I've gotten a lot of opportunities and growth that came from that. But

sometimes when things happen like that in the moment, it was, it's really, really hard

to see this overlining. Really, really hard. And so I've, I just never really talked about it. I

just kind of said, I'm not there anymore. I'm left it at that. Also because like, I don't know,

I'm even with my, my, the ending of my very long relationship I was in. I like to wait

before I talk about things with the internet. Right. Sometimes I like to process them a little

bit. And I feel that you guys deserve to know what's going on in the moment when you're like,

oh my god, why are there no pictures of cats and all of the sudden you're not and shit looks like

you're not living in Charlotte. Like I feel a level of accountability to tell you guys what's

going on, whether it's like with work or personal to keep everyone up to date. But sometimes the

behind the scenes are like the processing emotionally. I get a lot of questions about like, how are

you? How are you doing? Are you okay? Are you okay? I'm fine. I'm fine. I just like to take a little

bit to process things by myself before I decide whether or not I want to share that experience with

the internet. Yeah, that makes sense. I actually brings up two questions for you. If you follow

questions, number one, would you go back to Cisco if the situation was different?

It's funny. I have people, I was literally at Cisco, LiveYMaya and someone was like, would you

just come back and work for Cisco? Like if I hired you today, would you come back and work for Cisco?

After leaving, and Cisco has a great culture. Like I can't tell you how many I have so many close

friends and like ex colleagues that work there. And I really look up to the company. I think that

after experiencing working at a smaller company, I really enjoy working for a smaller company.

One would like slightly less politics and slightly less organization. I just personally think

it's a lot more fun. I also, I'd really love to work for myself one day. I think that's another

big goal of mine. So going back to work for Cisco is kind of completely contradictory to that.

And also, I mean, Kevin and I were talking earlier about

representing the industry, right? And industry trends and vendor agnostic solutions.

And going back to work to a vendor like isn't really conducive to that because

it's not that I can't make content about things that are not Cisco if I'm working for Cisco.

But it's kind of like anti my job, right? If I'm working for Cisco, you got to be pro Cisco.

And I just kind of think it makes you a engineer. Like personally, I, I was studied aerospace,

right? My whole experience in IT was working for Cisco. I didn't really get a lot of like

cross vendor experience until I started working for Megaport. And Megaport has all sorts of partners

with, you know, Fortina and Palo and like all these other guys that we can run on our platform.

And so like I didn't really have experience outside of Cisco until I left.

And I just think it makes you kind of the engineer if like you only know one solution,

right? I mean, you're recommending the best thing you know, but it's also the only thing you know.

And if you only have a hammer, everything's a nail when it could be a screw.

I think that's the analogy I'm looking for, right? You want to ask me an analogy?

An analogy is not good. You want to use the right tool for the job. But if you don't know all the tools,

how can you pick the right one? And that's where us as creators who we try to educate

and help people online. If we are representing a vendor that is, you know, we have to stick to the

script or the solutions and the people can't really trust us to give them an unbiased, you know,

point of view or everything we say is in the lens of that vendor that we represent.

Right. So yeah, it makes sense.

I think it would be really hard to go back to Cisco now because I think it's

almost like a little bit anti my personal goals.

Yeah, makes sense.

Okay, so my second follow-up question here is you mentioned having some processing

your personal and feeling obligated to tell your audience about your personal stuff.

Do you do you feel that like it's an actual obligation that like

you have like they deserve the audience the the followers deserve to know information about

your personal life. People you're in for the first carbon. But if so, like I feel like, you know,

you're in for the drama. My life is chaotic. People want the details.

But it's interesting because okay, I'm not saying we're movie stars. Okay, please don't

on just that's the easiest analogy for me is like is like like Brad Pitt, right? Then I look

just like him. So this is a good analogy. Brad Pitt isn't a movie, right? His job is to act

in that movie. And then he's only famous because people like him for his his work. And then they

kind of feel like they have an obligation or like an an access to him. They seem out in person.

And be like, Hey, you know, take a picture with me. You can be audio or autograph

because he's a public figure. And I'm torn on that personally of like do do people deserve

access to my personal life? Are you old? Are you are they owed an explanation? Yeah, like I'm

providing them a service. I make videos that educate and help them. I do AMAs and I do all this

stuff. And they exchange that by giving me likes and follows and that kind of stuff.

But no, we're in there. Is there an exchange of personal information? They aren't

deserving of my personal life. I choose to give them certain access to it. Yeah, but then he says

when you choose to. Yeah, but like how do you determine what the boundary is there? What

your personal life, what you're choosing to share? Like he went through a very public breakup

with your boyfriend. I wouldn't say it was very public. I made like a couple videos about it.

But video is like crying. Videos of you being emotional. Like things that I would personally never

post. I know, but I just wouldn't I wouldn't do that. I think it depends. I think it depends on

every creator and like also what kind of like how well you want your followers to know you. Like

something I think it's I really enjoy when people feel like they know me. Like I enjoy I wear my

heart on my sleeve. If you guys have met me in real life, I'll tell anyone anything.

Anyone anything all the time. Like there are very little boundaries. If you meet me in real life

and we we are complete strangers, you will know everything about my life within like 35 minutes.

Alexis, everything that's going on. That's called trauma dumping and that's not healthy.

Is that though? You need boundaries in Alexis. I, but I mean maybe maybe I just need to do a

better job. But I really enjoy like feeling like I know people on a deep level and feeling like

people know me on a deep level. And I feel like you only really get there by being open and

vulnerable and sharing things. Like you only have close friends at the level. Like your friends

are only as close as you let them be. And that's that's I mean, I know we're talking about like

where we were talking about followers, but even with like friendships in your personal life,

your relationships that you have with your friends and family are only as deep as you let them

get by sharing vulnerable things. And I'm not saying that like everyone deserves to know that.

Like I don't share like everything I share with my friends and family on the internet. But there

are levels that I will share because I think it's something that's important to me to like

be a little vulnerable and to feel known. And and when I share those things, usually what I get in

my DMs and my comments is that other people are easily able to relate to that experience. Like a

video, um, I'd really like to make that I've kind of dragged my feet on is when and this was like

three, four months ago. I mean, if we're like putting a timeline on this, we're what nine,

10 months out from me moving out of Charlotte and like turning my life upside down. But like

back around the three, four month mark, like when I was making some of those videos about like,

hey, I moved out of Charlotte. I'm going through a breakup. This is a big life transition.

I remember my dad, um, I was at home with my parents and my dad locked in and he was like, why do you

share stuff like that on the internet? It's so unprofessional. What if what if some executive is

going to see that and they're gonna think differently about you because you just posted a video of

you crying and true, true. That's a risk I'm taking. But at the same time, there's so many people

that can have things going on in their personal life and also show up completely professionally at

work. Like you were talking about, you know, having a sick or dying parent that you're you're

caring for like, you know, something at home blows up in your face. A lot of people assume that

if your personal life is blowing up, you're not able to show up effectively and do your job. And

maybe that's true in some cases. It's not true in all cases. I really want to make a video about

that, right? Like my my life completely fell apart and I am still able to effectively perform

the fun story. And I know we're almost running out of time here. When Kevin and I I when I launched

the idea of this podcast, if you guys are still with us or like an hour and 15 minutes into this,

when I launched the idea of having this podcast, literally I had massaged Ethan who owns

packet pushers on LinkedIn. And I was like, Hey, I have this really crazy idea. I can schedule

meaning we scheduled this meeting three weeks out. Okay. The night before I pitched Ethan this

podcast was when I broke up with my ex boyfriend. And so I showed up to this meeting with Ethan.

Literally with no sleep. I had no sleep. I had no makeup on by all intents of like for all

intents and purposes, I looked like a complete disaster. And so I get on the phone with Ethan and

the packet pushers gang. And I'm explaining the concept for this podcast and why I want to do the

show and why I'm so excited about it and what difference I think it's going to make. And my voice

is raspy. I'm because I was crying all night. Like I looked like how and I'm like very intently

explaining what I want to do. And Ethan is like, you know, Alexis, I gotta say, I'd love to

support you in this. I think it's a great idea. Are you sure you're able to take on more work?

Like you you kind of look like you're having a hell of a time. I'm not going to lie. And I said

Ethan, listen, this is I'm very passionate about doing this. I just ended a seven year long

relationship last night. This meeting is very important to me. I was not going to reschedule it for

three weeks from now. I want it to happen now. And I know I look crazy right now. I will have my

together by the time you want this because it is something that I want to do. Right. And again,

you you can have things blow up in your life and still show up at work. And I'm equally passionate

about that. I should probably make the tech talk while I'm like heated because you got me going.

But, um, anyways, that was that was anyone who was wondering what are like

for anyone who is wondering what are like FaceTime conversations sound like. That was basically it

where we ask each other questions. And then eventually Alexis will just start talking at me

about something. And she just will go off. And I just sit here. And then I'll start multitasking

something and go back. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get

it. Okay. Anyways, that's the behind the scenes conversations. We are like so off topic now.

Let's let's do. All right. So we're getting one more one more one more one more one more

yeah, one more question. And then we'll we'll wrap. And I think this one's a good one

based on the founders. We just had in an alternate universe. What career would you have?

We're really enough. I've got this question a lot in my

really AMAs on Instagram. Oh, amazing. Yeah, like people are really interesting on this. Um,

and so for a little while, I was in tech and I was going through a live transition. I was going

like divorced and I was depressed and my life was falling apart basically. And instead of

going to the Alps and going skiing and, you know, living the best life possible,

my grand plan at the time. No, this thing we all deal with things differently. But very,

honestly, very similar. I looked at becoming a park ranger that's like,

going, yeah, I want to become a park ranger and just work in a park. You live in the park and

like you just, you know, fix fences and hiking trails and deal with people and like,

so I still get actually I signed up for job alerts of park ranger jobs in my area,

like the national parks in my area. And I still get emails saying like, oh, you know,

the job popped up that fits your description or whatever. And I don't, I don't unsubscribe

because it's still like a little part of me who's like, oh, they feel like that's part of

word. And I just go to a park. I feel like that's part of working on it. Like you, there's a part

of your brain where you always just kind of want to go off in the woods and just disappear.

Yeah, get away from technology. Get away from all the things and just be out in touch grass

basically. Like, what do you think I'm doing? Why do you think I'm out here?

I know, but you're, I don't know, you're doing it successfully. I was like,

you, you do it beautifully. You're doing it like successfully and you're like, you're,

you're, you're a boss, a boss B. I won't curse because I'm going to give our editors a break.

We're going to be a park ranger in Tampa, Florida.

Yeah. And like, there's, there's no great parks around us to be out like, it's swall

and flat land. It's the average. That's scary. I don't want to do that. That's like crocodile

or alligator. We don't crocodiles here. Alligators and steaks. I don't want to do that stuff.

I want to go to like a pavement, like a paved area than

what park is what? Triking trailer. You're going to maintain if it's paved, Kevin.

I can sweep it and blow it off at a leaf blower. I'm not outdoorsy. I like camping every once in a

while. But I'm like, I'm not like a burly outdoors me guy. You know, like, I can't do that.

We're going to go see a park ranger at like Brandon park. Like, it's nothing, like, nothing crazy.

Um, the pay was was terrible. Absolute garbage. I would have to live with roommates and have

my kids share a cot in the living room or something. Um, so it wasn't, it wasn't every fleshed out.

I'm saying, like, you had this beautiful idea of skiing traveling the world. Go

near Europe. Oh, my idea was to live in a like a crappy one-bedroom apartment and live in a

like, I mean, my original, my original idea was to live in a van and van camp and everyone

by the river, by the river, I was like, yes, exactly. But it's exactly what I'm going to do.

Actually, there's a girl in the co-living that's living in a van from Norway and her van is beautiful.

No, I bet. It's, these people do, like, they do it right.

All right. So with the stay on track, we'll be done. What was your career?

Well, growing up, I said I always wanted to be a dolphin trainer.

That was my childhood, my childhood. I don't know what I expected. Just not that. I don't,

like air like a pilot or somethings you were in it. I did not expect that dolphin trainer.

I

Okay. All right. Dolphin trainer. I'm

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Why dolphin trainer, Alexis?

When I let me finish the story. I'm trying to tee you up again. When I was a little kid,

I always said I wanted to be a dolphin trainer. And then I decided I wanted to be a pilot

because my family never traveled growing up. And I thought if I was a pilot, I'd get to travel.

And then I realized how much student debt you had to go into to become a pilot. And I was like,

I'm not willing to take out that much student debt, which like jokes on me because I ended up

at a ton of debt anyways. And my eyes are too bad to join the military. So I can't be a

military pilot and get it for free. And that's how I ended up being an aerospace engineer.

That being said, alternate career. There was a point in time where I considered going back in

aerospace. When I was working in IT for like three years, I was like struggling really, really

bad with my boss. I considered going back in aerospace. Now considering everything and the

journey I've been on, if I was to pick an alternate career, I think journalism would be really

cool. I almost want to dabble in that a little bit moving forward. If you guys have seen any of

the conference wrap-ups I've done, I think doing tech journalism would be really cool and writing.

Like broadcast journalism? Yeah, just broadcast journalism or writing little blogs and wrap-ups

and doing like some more formal stuff on camera, like newscasting. Like I think that could be kind of

kind of cool. Tech bites with digital bite. I hate you. Thanks for making fun of my dream.

I didn't make fun of yours. Actually, I guess I did a little bit. Not as much as dolphin

trainer. That's a relationship, you know? I consider you like a little sister or something where like

it's my job to make fun of you and to tease you a little bit. Yeah. To put you down to pay.

Otherwise, your head would be way up here. Maybe the next time we do a Q&A, it'll be life advice

with Kevin, where Kevin just gives me his life advice about the decisions I'm currently making.

And I'm sure that people listening, I hope that you guys listening to this would get a kick out

of it because either you're in Kevin's situation or you're in my situation.

No, I think you're I think your situation is good. Like your love life in your dating situation is

terrible. We're not talking about that. We're going to have a lab episode on that.

We're not talking about that here. Anyways, well, thanks for thanks to coming. Thanks to coming.

Thanks for listening to another episode of life and uptime.

Um, we're your hosts. Have an Alexis.

Mostly, we're mostly your hosts.

Um, and if you guys have any other questions, you'd like us to answer that we didn't get to.

DM us on Instagram. This was fun. I'm sure we'll do another one.

And I forget words for word what the closer is, but something something, keep your uptime high.