The journey so far, the things we’ve learned

Real Technologists

Trac Bannon:

I've got to share with you that I did not expect the Real Technologist podcast to stretch me in so many dimensions. And if I'm being genuinely open and honest, there was no way to anticipate the impact on my husband, my sound engineer, my best friend, Bob.

You see, Bob joins each recording session to check on our sound levels. He also runs a second audio capture stream in case our primary recording platform fails. Yes, he's my operations guy, the ops to my dev. He is very much the consummate pro who goes off camera but is listening in the wings. At first, I thought he was only monitoring the sound levels and quality.

When we finish, he'll often pop back in to say thanks and "that's a wrap".

As it turns out, he has been listening... I mean really listening... hearing firsthand the origin stories of my incredible guests and truly pondering their lives, situations, and stories.

The first time I noticed, it was very subtle. Jennifer Leggio and I had been chatting for an hour or so and we were exploring her most recent focus: normalizing sobriety... her sobriety. This part of her journey is less than a year old though in our safe conversation, where the guest has the option to say "don't include that", Jennifer said keep that in. I need to open up, be honest and share my story. I want to help others.

When Bob popped in to close out, he cleared his throat. This is a very, very subtle little noise that only a few folks on the planet would know. There are moments that truly "choke him up".

That sounded great guys, that's a wrap, Jennifer. Thank you. You are truly incredible.

Jennifer Leggio:

It's a newish thing. And so I've been out there advocating, let's normalize this. Let's take the shame out of this. Hey, don't be ashamed to say that you choose not to drink and just go out and be your amazing sober self.

It's a new part of my journey. I'm,just under 6 months into this journey, it's, I'm just getting to the point where I'm comfortable. I shouldn't say comfortable. I'm very comfortable in my sobriety, but getting to the point of being more open about it. I posted something on Twitter the other day with a t-shirt that said, normalize sobriety, and I put it like, felt cute, won't delete later.

Because people die from these types of things. I wanna take the shame out of recovery. And I'm very fortunate. I just woke up one day and was like, I'm tired of hurting myself and others and not having the life I want because of alcohol. And so I made a change.

Trac Bannon:

That evening, Bob and I talked over dinner about how to knit the story together. Jennifer is strong, she's authentic, her sobriety is one small piece of a bigger story that makes her unique.

Then Bob said, make sure you include my favorite quote. I took the bait. She was at CISCO, Trac, Cisco, and that wasn't enough. In the world of infrastructure, security, and operations, CISCO is a household name and working for them might seem like hitting the apex.

Jennifer Leggio:

He would push me and say, "I see more in you. I see more in you." And so because of that, Cisco wasn't enough for me anymore. And it wasn't Cisco, it was the role because it's such a huge org. My role was very finite there, focusing on security strategy and communications and messaging and such.

I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna quit.

Trac Bannon:

In fact, this is another moment when you need to know a bigger story about Bob. Operations alone are no longer enough for him. He sees that role as finite and is all in on his next adventure: co-owning a furniture design studio with his son. He's still my Ops SME. Jennifer's own choices seem to validate his, who leaves a full-time job in technology as a senior ops leader?