Key takeaways: It's important for junior folks to have a breadth of experience early in their careers to understand what they like and don't like, and to help shape what they want to do in their tech careers.Developers can't work in isolation and not care about the "big picture" of the product or service that they're working on. That's like moving to a new country and not caring about the cultural differences.Being invisible is a superpower, because it allows you to quietly learn, observe, and take things in.Being a quiet listener shouldn't be confounded with not speaking up due to shyness.It's important to use your voice to speak up and provide a safe place for others to speak upWe get into tech through different ways, have different skills, and different experiences, and these differences are what make for a successful team.There's not one way to succeed and make an impact in tech (and other professions), whether you're in upper management, an engineer, or anything in-between.As a senior person, you can also learn a lot from junior engineers and mid-level engineers, bringing in a different point of viewMentoring is about helping your mentees find their own strengths, and also learning from your mentees, as they always have something interesting to bring to the table.If you're going to be a manager, you've got to be really understanding of what your organization's strategic direction is, what its vision is, what its values truly are, and decide are you aligned enough to be able to represent that as a manager?University is a humbling experience of suddenly being surrounded by way smarter people than youThere are different skills to being a student vs being an employeeThere is a distinction between FinOps for the Cloud and "traditional" FinOps!Someone who works in FinOps (within the context of Cloud) has an understanding of how cloud vendors work and how things like workload, retention policies, autoscaling thresholds, etc. affect your cloud spend.About our guest: Deana Solis is the youngest daughter of Filipino immigrants and the mom of a biracial son. She credits her decades long career in tech for teaching her how to unplug from the grid in meaningful ways, connect with her ancestors, build community where she lives, and leave places better than she found them. She is a FinOps Foundation ambassador and mentor, known for her contributions in workgroups, certification curriculum, and humanizing FinOps talks. Find our guest on: LinkedInBlueskyFind us on: All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes: Carmen Huidobro on Geeking Out, talking about reframing nervousnessIxchel Ruiz on Geeking Out, talking about the importance of seeing people like us being representedAicha Laafia on Geeking Out (she was directly inspired by Ixchel Ruiz's talks)Charity Majors on Geeking OutKelsey Hightower on Geeking OutLiz Fong-Jones on Geeking OutWhat is FinOps?FP&AComptrollerTranscript: ADRIANA: Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. ADRIANA: And geeking out with me today I have Deana Solis. Welcome, Deana! DEANA: Thank you. Happy to be here. ADRIANA: And where are you calling from? DEANA: I'm in Vancouver, Washington. ADRIANA: Oh, cool. That's awesome. So before, before I introed you in, we were talking about pronouncing names, and, I thought it was interesting, so I wanted to bring it up on the podcast because I thought your name was pronounced “De-anna”, but it's actually “Dean-a”. And tell the story behind that, because I thought it was kind of cool. DEANA: You know, I have always blamed this on my dad because I knew the story. They were Rat Pack fans, and Dean Martin, was a favorite. My dad was a big audiophile. We had his records, so I just blamed him. It turns out that my mom was the big Dean Martin fan. She picked the name, and had I been a boy, I would have been Dean. But I wasn’t. So Deana. ADRIANA: That is so cool. I love that that's such a great name origin story. DEANA: But considering my last name and you pronounced that exactly correctly, it's perfectly acceptable to expect to pronounce it Deanna or Deanna, with all the syllables. But it's not. So. ADRIANA: Yeah. Fair, fair. Well, I mean, I think it's a it's a really great way to remember, though, in, in terms of pronouncing your name like, oh, I always think of like the Dean Martin reference. That's awesome. Well, so are you ready for our icebreaker questions? DEANA: Yes. ADRIANA: AV: Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty? DEANA: Lefty. ADRIANA: Yeah, I always get... you... if you watch the show, you know, I always get excited about lefties. Were you ever, did anyone ever try to force you, to write right handed when you were growing up? Or, like, try to change anything about your leftiness? DEANA: Fortunately, in that area, no. However, I am somewhat ambidextrous. Like in sports. I think I'm I'm somewhat I'm ambidextrous. I throw right-handed. In basketball you wouldn't know which which I favor. But in, in baseball I would left because the coaches told me that was an advantage. And, so I could adapt and I had to throw right handed because like, in my first couple of years of that sport, I didn't buy my own glove. I got the hand-me-down. And also I am disproportionately surrounded by other left handers. ADRIANA: Oh no way. That is super cool. DEANA: Yeah. My my partner and his oldest son. My best friend's husband. Yeah, it's just funny. ADRIANA: Wow. One comment I was going to make because you said that you're, like, ambidextrous. For certain things, I tend to be, I tend to be left handed for most things, but for whatever reason, archery. Not not that I have done archery often, but when I've picked up a bow and arrow, I do it the right handed way. And my daughter, who is right handed, does it the left handed way. DEANA: Oh that's interesting. My son's an archer. ADRIANA: Oh, really? That's cool. DEANA: He's done that thing where he has, hit the bull's eye and then split it with his next arrow. ADRIANA: He can do that? DEANA: I don't know how close he was, but even close distance, that's not easy to do. And, I'm. I'm kind of proud of that. I had nothing to do with it. ADRIANA: Yeah, that is a cool skill. Just one more thing. One more curiosity on the left handed thread. Do you mouse left or right handed? DEANA: Oh, well, so I don't, I, what is it? Trackpad. What do you call it? ADRIANA: Yeah, trackpad. Do you trackpad left or right handed? DEANA: I think mostly right. Me too. Yeah. Me too, I, I tried, like because that's how I learned, like, when a mouse was presented to me and, you know, my, my dad's the techie in the, in the family. So he introduced me to a mouse and I'm like, so I picked it up with my, with my right hand. And I could not even fathom using a left handed mouse. DEANA: But do you do, like, multiple monitors? ADRIANA: Sometimes. Sometimes. DEANA: So I have found that when I'm moving windows around, or. Yeah, windows from one monitor to another or just from one side of the screen to another. I tend to be a two handed trackpad. ADRIANA: Oh! DEANA: You can, you know, continue to swipe while you're, without letting go of a thing. And I just, I wish I could teach it, but I don't know how I do it. ADRIANA: I've done that on occasion. Not necessarily with dragging monitors, but like, I know what you're talking about. It comes in handy Do you prefer iPhone or Android? DEANA: I think that I can adapt to either one, but I've owned far more iPhones. But hopefully, you know, my frequency of changing them is much less. And I'd be open to to trying one of the Androids because I have seen some really interesting products, but I probably get like a, a couple of generations old one. ADRIANA: Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows? DEANA: I don't think I could live without all three. Because I do quite a bit in the Azure space. And so, being closer to the, the Microsoft ecosystem, and all my keyboard shortcuts that are muscle memory are from Windows. And I love my Mac. It's a design thing, but it's kind of a privilege to be able to answer that question at all. ADRIANA: And that's good. Yeah, that's I, I like that. DEANA: And the Linux thing, you know, all the workloads that scale and that, that I'm, that my clients are using. You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't have a job if there weren't a ton of, of Linux workloads. I haven't been on a Linux desktop since 1999. So that was when I it pretty much lost its, its like, shine as, as a, as a personal, operating system for, for, for me. But, I will say that I still have my last Windows laptop from a few years ago that, you know, it can't be updated anymore. And I keep it around thinking, just maybe I could just put a Linux OS on there and give it a new life. ADRIANA: Ooh, yes, that sounds like a fun little side project. Yeah. DEANA: In all my free time. ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta gotta find that time first. Right? Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language? DEANA: I do not. I think I told you, I, I never contributed, any code to to an open source project or I, I'm, I generally don't write it. Maybe policies, some YAML things and, and, edit existing Python scripts or, but that I'm more... since I have an app... ops background, I'm more comfortable with Python or I think I, I tried to learn Ruby and then the, the project that I was specifically learning it for completely changed directions in terms of like the whole pipeline, the whole toolchain changed and it was like, okay, drop that, learn this. And then also your role is going to change because we really need someone to, to, know about this particular skill
