CodePath EES2024 SERVICENOW - Managing Change as a Software Developer

Hello everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to this breakout session entitled managing change as a software developer hosted by service. Now I’m Emmanuela and I am a career liaison with CodePath and I’ll be the moderator for this session.

We are so excited to have you join us today. I will be introducing our speaker shortly but wanted to first share a few reminders with you. So first of all please utilize the chat to have conversations and share your thoughts during the session.

I know you all have been blowing up all kinds of different chats today and so feel free to do that. Share any aha moments that you have and please make sure that you keep the messages relevant to this topic and the session that you have today or that you’re in today. I wanted to let you all also know that the chat is open to where I myself as well as the presenters can be able to see it.

So just be mindful of that. Our team will be monitoring the chat and questions may be answered live during the session. So feel free to ask your questions following the session.

We ask that you complete the brief feedback survey as the f the feedback that you share is very important to us. And wanted to make sure that you all know that. Now with the reminders out of the way, I want to take some time to introduce our speakers today who will be presenting.

Again, they are presenting on how critical the role of software developers are and how they play into managing the organizational changes across different corporate and or different organizations. So, first up we have Nikki Harris Kemp, who is a certified professional in human resources with over 15 years of related experience. Nikki has worked in several different industries including technology, consulting, energy, financial services, telecommunications, and healthcare where she has led and managed several early career talent programs.

She is currently in North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina to be exact. And when she’s not traveling, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons, as well as cheering on the car Carolina Panthers. And we also have Ian Thurlo, who is currently a senior software engineering manager at Service Now.

He is a software engineer with a specialization in data analytics and persistence and he has been in this in this role similar role for over 10 years and spent the five years of those in as a engineering manager. He’s based in San Diego and has been with service now for four and a half years. And so now without further ado, I will go ahead and turn the stage over to Mickey and Ian.

Welcome and we’re excited to hear from you. Thank you so much. We are happy to to be here.

So thank you. As Emanuela mentioned, we are going to be speaking today about managing change in the workplace. We’ve got Ian here to speak to us from the purview of a software engineering manager.

And before we get started to chat a little bit about Service Now and managing change, I did want to just take us into our slide deck here. We’ve got a QR code that we’d love for you guys to scan. Let us know that you stopped by our session today and let us know where you’re chatting us from or where you’re located, where you’re from and how do you feel about change.

I know coming into the workplace for the first time years ago, I did not like change at all. And so I have had to learn to navigate change, day-to-day change, strategy change, strategic change, organizational change, all the things. And so we’re going to speak a little bit about that today.

But just want to kind of hear from you all. Where are you from and and how you like change? And Emanuel, can you give me a little update here on what we’re hearing?

Unfortunately, I can’t see because I’m sharing my screen here, but where are some folks joining us from? Hopefully you can hear me. I can.

Okay. Yay. Okay.

I see Dallas. Texas. We have Portland.

We have Columbus. Seattle is in the house. Let’s see.

Okay. West Coast. West Coast.

Austin, Chicago, Miami, Austin. Austin. Nice.

San Diego. They’re all over the place. Wonderful.

Well, we are so happy that you are joining us. And what are we hearing about change? Does anybody love change?

Not so much. See, I have not seen that. They are representing their their cities and states.

I think the consensus is probably that they’re waiting to hear about all this stuff. Let’s see. Oh, I see something here.

Change is constant. Yes. Love change.

Always something new. Change is important, inevitable, but necessary. Yeah.

Okay. Positive. So, you guys were not like me.

Like me. Like what we’re changing again. So so well that’s good to hear.

Well thank you so much Emanuela and as as she mentioned I’m your host today on on the top of the call here. I’ll talk to you a little bit about Service Now but I’m gonna turn over to my my colleague here Ian. He’s our featured guest to just say hello to everyone before we we jump in.

Hey everybody. My name’s Ian. I just want to thank everyone for joining today.

Super excited to be here and sort of share my experience. Obviously change is everywhere. And it’s in constant change everywhere we are in in the in the software industry.

So thanks everyone for coming. Appreciate you all. Absolutely.

And if we can be completely candid, we’re kind of changing up this presentation a little bit today. So, I am really navigating interesting waters over here, but happy to be here. As Ian mentioned, we are just glad to be able to present to you all today.

And so, here’s just a quick agenda of what we’re going to be talking about. So, the wrong window. Sorry, Nikki.

Oh, sorry. It’s showing it’s showing your PowerPoint screen, not the not the full screen. Oh, can you see my agenda?

No, we we can only see the like PowerPoint like application. We can’t see the the share of it. Oh, okay.

Hang on. Okay, hang on. What about now?

No, I’m not seeing anything right now. Let me try again. Now we see the PowerPoint.

I don’t know if this is where you’re Are we good now? Oh, I I do see the agenda. I think it’s just not in full screen right now.

Okay. Sorry, I’ve got it on full screen on my end. It’s all good.

This ties in with the the topic, right? How do you deal with ambiguity? What about now?

Still no. Okay, hang on. Okay. Well, okay.

We could just go with it. We’ll share this out with everyone. I know they’ve been asking about the QR code, too.

So, we’ll share it out, but hopefully everyone can get the gist of what’s going on. Can you guys see the QR code from here when I do it like this? No. let’s see.

I’m waiting for any responses. Okay, I see thumbs up. Thank you everyone.

Yes, they can see it. Okay, so here’s your chance. Go ahead and take that picture.

Please scan here. So, it looks like when I move into slideshow presentation, it’s where we’re not connecting. No problem.

Okay. So, I will give couple more seconds. You guys scan the code and it will be on a couple of other slides if you don’t have a chance to grab it now.

But again we are going to stay in touch with everyone from our presentation today through that code and so here’s our agenda again the code here at the bottom we are going to talk a little bit about service now who we are why we’re important what we do and then I’ll talk a little bit about change management and the different types of change and we’ll get into conversations with Ian with regard to his background and navigating change in his role here at Service Now. So, as far as Service Now, who are we? So, we if you don’t know, we make the world work better for everyone.

Ultimately, our approach is through a customer- centric approach to the work. Our founder Fred Luddy had a vision of just wanting work to be easy throughout the enterprise and you know meaning you don’t have to be a developer to benefit from the services that we are creating. So the workflows from start to finish as it relates to the service now platform platform are very easy.

It’s a single platform end-to-end digital transformations and so we want to deliver best-in-class capabilities, easy integrations for top tier systems of record, low to no code configurations and creations and then just large scalability. And from that perspective you know our ambition is to be the best in the in the business, the best defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. And so ultimately that’s utilizing some of those things that I mentioned as it relates to our our platform.

All right, the numbers, right? So that’s the most important thing you want to know about a company. We’ve got 8,100 enterprise customers at a 99% renewal rate.

So our sales team is amazing. As you can see, we are at 8.68 billion in subscription revenues. And of the Fortune 500, we are working with approximately 420 of those.

We’ve got a year-to-year subscription re revenue growth of about 26%. And we are growing our employee base, which is currently now around 23,000 worldwide. So definitely a great place to be, great time to be here.

Some of the accolades that you’ll see we are humbled by, but definitely grateful that we’ve been recognized by many different organizations as it relates to being best places to work or best place for parents company that cares and from a DE and perspective being a a great partner and best company. So, these are just a few of the things that we like to to celebrate and and, let folks know. All right, so let’s get into to why we’re here, right?

So, managing change in the workplace of software developer. So, as I mentioned, Ian will speak specifically about being a software developer and and in that space and kind of the technology space and and managing change and how he does that. But before we get to chatting with him, let’s just talk a little bit about you know, managing change in the workplace alto together and some of the the highlights and and some nuggets we can we can take with us.

You know, we’ve all heard the quote and I think a few of you have put in the chat, right? The only constant is change or you know got to go with the flow or keep things moving. And so that’s one of the things that we consistently hear here in the workplace here at Service Now or across all businesses, right?

So the process of implementing modifications, adjustments, transformations, right? That’s kind of the definition of change in the workplace and it can look different ways, but change in the workplace really is driven by many different factors just depending upon what’s happening. Maybe it’s market conditions or technological advancements, you know, needs to cut company costs or things like that.

Sometimes you’re responding or companies are responding to external pressures and so that could be a reason why there’s some some change in the workplace and then you know the thought of the change is how well are we going to make the change and the effective management of what that change looks like. So making sure right that that change involves clearly communicated clear communications ahead. So making sure that there’s employee engagement and support and really understanding for what that change in the workplace will look like and how we’re going to navigate to it.

You’ve got different types of changes, right? So not only are there the ones that happen within the workplace, but it might be something similar that happens to you at home or at your university such as environmental change or procedural change. But here’s just a quick overview of just the different types of change that are out there.

We might not have hit all of them, but just a few of the most common types. So, you’ve got structural change, technological change, procedural policy change, cultural change, personnel change, environmental change, and strategic change. And so as it relates to strategic change, right, that’s going to be from a corporate or from a workplace perspective, those are going to be the adjustments that are made from an organization’s goals, long-term short short-term goals, missions, vision statements, things that kind of change over time as it relates to the the strategy planning for the company.

You’ve got environmental change as I mentioned that leads into or leads into the physical environment, the work environment. So maybe that’s an office layout, maybe, you know, we’re changing floors, or maybe we’re moving to a larger space. You know, those type of environmental changes happen.

And workplace design is definitely an important thing to consider. Personnel changes. So those are going to be changes, right, as it relates to hiring or downsizing, changes in job roles or responsibilities based on again market conditions or the environment, cultural change.

Yeah, that comes with the shifting of maybe organizational culture. So maybe you know like example being during the pandemic right some of the companies were becoming more virtual or remote and so some of the culture was changing a little bit more. We’re seeing more of each other online versus in person and so some of the cultures kind of shifted a little bit and so how do we address what that looks like and feels like and then now coming out right of the pandemic maybe there’s some different cultural shifts that are happening.

So just really kind of addressing what those those fields and changes are. Procedural and policy changes. Some of that also, you know, can come together as it relates to different work processes or methods that are changing and that can come along as I mentioned in combination with maybe there’s a structural shift or an environmental shift that’s also going to require a procedural change or policy change, technological change.

So, you know, early adapter programs are programs that adapt system updates or changes or changing tools altogether as it relates to technology and making sure that we’re staying up to date with where the business is going or where innovation is is happening. And then structural change. So, that’s maybe management changes or organizational hierarchy, things like that, reporting structures.

So these are just kind of examples of the changes that you would see in the workplace and again more of the common changes that that we see. And so why is change so important? Right we hear let’s change with the times.

We need to change with the times or you know don’t get stagnant you’ll get stuck. It you know it promotes growth it promotes change. It can also boost morale right as it relates to addressing concerns or recognizing contributions of folks or people within the company as things are changing and seeing the company move forward.

Change management holds significant for well organized companies. It’s a transformation to easily help a a large quoteunquote ship kind of navigate or be more more agile as you are looking at a changing environment and being able to kind of navigate different waters and be swift and maybe some constantly changing business landscape. So really being open to what that change looks like and being able to manage it by knowing, you know, why it’s important and what we’re doing and being able to adapt the changes to be an essential part of a long-term success.

And I think we all know that, you know, at the end of the day, a successful company is one that’s able to move and change with the times and be agile. So how do you manage that change? Here’s a quick list of just dos and don’ts as you’re in the seat of someone in the business, you know, going through the change and seeing what’s going on and and happening.

And I think, you know, a lot of the assumptions are the Jews, right? So, you want to make sure you stay informed and you’re seeking support, you’re taking care of you, you’re planning and organizing. And the things listed here, I think, are pretty kind of easy to to think through, but it’s maybe the don’ts that you’re you’re not maybe thinking about or considering as change is happening.

And so that resisting change or spreading gossip or rumors, you know, you know, saying things that maybe aren’t necessarily true are not helpful when you’re kind of managing change. Staying silent also that’s not, you know, helpful. Underperforming or maybe not performing at all, just waiting to see what’s going to happen.

You know, business still has to move forward. And so, you know, just knowing what’s happening and again being a part of that good communication is helpful so you’re able to not isolate yourself or have kind of a negative attitude as to what’s going on because if you’re staying in the no then you will you will be able to sustain the movement and navigate those waters. Sometimes it is a little bit frustrating right as things are moving along and changing.

But if you kind of keep in mind and what’s helpful, being positive and flexible and staying engaged, those will definitely be long lasting tips to help you navigate those waters. So, that’s my spiel with regard to change management and just some things to think of. We’re going to bring Ian up briefly now to just give a overview of his experience with change and just in the in the business and the things that he has has experienced.

But we’ll start with Ian just kind of an introduction of who you are here at the company and then what you do in your role. And guys, as Ian is speaking and talking and sharing, kind of think about maybe some of the things that you might want to ask as we get to the end of, you know, if you have a question or a thought if you could ask a hiring manager that’s in software engineering something, you know, definitely we want to hear your questions. So, but let’s go ahead and get started and and hear from Ian with regard to to what you do and how you got here at Service Now.

Great. Yeah. So I started I was I was kind of laughing when you talk about environmental change because I joined Service Now February 2020 and we were in the office for a few weeks and then and then COVID hit and we all went home.

So that’s probably the ultimate change that could happen where all of a sudden we’re working together all of a sudden we’re everyone’s at their houses instead of in the office. So that was a massive change in just you know industry shaking industry shaking pandemic right so but anyways my my name’s Ian as I mentioned before I am a software engineering manager and my team specifically works on persistence and what that means is you know saving data so almost all of that includes databases so the service now platform runs on top of Mariab postgress and Oracle depending on the customer so we’re our team builds all of the queries and we manage all the tables and then if anyone needs to go then go access that data our team creates all of those all the queries and and all the all the markup language that needs to happen for us to actually grab that data and bring it back. So that’s a little bit about what my team does.

Right now I have about 14 people reporting in my organization. We have two teams. One focuses more on building the data and the other focuses more on querying of the data.

Yeah and so I started as I mentioned just over you know four and a half years ago. And I actually joined as an engineer. I I didn’t necessarily want to be a manager when I joined.

But it just so happened that I had the skill set that they needed to to be a manager. So but I did have a little bit of hands-on experience writing code for the first you know maybe eight months that I worked here before I decided to take a management role. So besides that, I’m heavily involved in our internship and EIC programs.

That’s part of the reason why I’m here. Basically Nikki gave me a call say, "Hey, I know you’re one of our intern champions. We’d love to have you speak to some new grads and interns or potential new grads and interns at this conference.

So happy to be here and you know, I’m very familiar with basically everything EIC in the company and and interns and how that all works. That’s that’s been a passion of mine is is basically growing the young talent. And I think it’s been it’s been great for the for the last three years that I’ve had interns over the summer.

Yeah. No, amazing. No, we love having you here.

I think we you and I spoke a little bit about this the other day, but what would you say is your superpower? So, I was thinking about this because I actually don’t know what my superpower is, but I think it’s being extremely chill. So when people are freaking out, when people are like, "Didlines are coming," you know, I’m always like, "Hey, it’s going to be great.

You’re going to be fine." You know, I’m not I’m not matching that freakout energy. I’m here to to mellow everyone out and make sure that that everyone’s having, you know, a good time and their mental health is good, right? That’s the most important thing is like I don’t want to burn my team out.

And so I think sort of the mellow you know, qualities that I have keep the team happy. No, definitely agree. I definitely agree.

Now would you consider Service Now a place and this kind of makes me chuckle a little bit where change happens often and if so what are some of the changes that you’ve seen? Yeah. Basically constant change.

And what’s interesting is is Service Now runs a little differently than a lot of big companies. We don’t we don’t really run like the standard agile development process where it’s like release every two weeks at the end of your sprint. Like do your code and then release at the end of the two weeks.

Because we have these huge customers, right? And they can’t just be taking whatever code we’re throwing out every two weeks across, you know, tens, you know, you know, thousands and thousands of developers, right? So, we basically at the beginning of of a release cycle, which we only release twice a year, right?

So, we have these like long release cycles where we we basically do large projects. And in the time of you know three or four months while we’re doing these these release cycles you know a lot of stuff can change priorities can change you know sometimes like there were there was the the whole thing where the all the stock started going down in in 2021. So all of a sudden all of our priorities changed at that point.

The pandemic hit, then all of a sudden we shuffled and we’re like, "Okay, we’re doing you know getting people vaccines is going to be our number one thing or or you know managing a governmental type of things to you know or or making sure people are safe by checking in you know that we started to focus on that stuff." and then most recently the generative AI revolution has happened and we decided we’re going to be at the front of that. So my team which like we do persistence right like that’s that’s barely relevant to to generative AI but they pulled us in to be like okay how can we store our data in a better way to be accessed by by these generative AI or LLMs or whatever it’s going to be right so that’s that’s been a big project my team’s been working on is is you know accessing data in a way that doesn’t usually work in relational databases that and from and these these utterances are being changed into these different types of queries that are not SQL queries, which is what we normally write. So that way we can more more easily pull the data back that the LLM is is requesting.

And what would you say are some of the advantages of working in that kind of environment, you think? Well, you definitely learning new stuff all the time. And and you you’re shifting priorities and and you really have to work on your ability to you know influence and and be like hey so you told me this is a priority but we had this other thing happening too you know so are you sure that you want us to basically stop what we’re doing over here give up and move to the other thing right and and that’s the that’s the number one rule as a manager is is making sure that you’re working on the right stuff like because priorities shift and change all the time but do they really right like is the thing that we cared about two weeks ago, we don’t care about it all of a sudden anymore because something new and shiny came along.

And and sometimes it’s true. Sometimes the new and shiny thing is like absolutely what we should be working on. But but sometimes it’s like, hey, why don’t we finish this other project first and then we can move on to the next thing.

Sure. And I I imagine that can be part of the challenge that comes with that as well. Absolutely.

Yeah. So in a rapidly changing work landscape how do you feel like interns or new grads can embrace the mindset of adaptability? Yeah.

Like so there’s a sort of a proverb but it’s also a truth is you know the the wider the base of a pyramid the higher it can go right. So so I would say that if you you should eventually specialize in some talent to become the best at that particular piece. Like for me it was persistence and data analytics but for you it might be LLMs it might be you know front-end web development all kinds of stuff that you could specialize in right but I think at the beginning you should basically just consume as much knowledge as you possibly can so you know learn about Linux subsystems you know learn about databases learn about JavaScript and and the browser and all that stuff and of course your middle tier is your scripting like just just consume as much as you can and work a little in all these places, you’re kind of familiar with what’s available to you.

And so once you get to the point where you’ve learned so many things, you can start to specialize in one particular place. But since you have such a firm grounding of all these different places that you’ve, you know, experienced a little bit about, you’ll be able to be better at that specialization. And then if someone needs help outside of your specialization, you’ll be able to help out because you have some experience there.

No. Yeah. No, definitely. Definitely.

And so what advice would you give someone starting an internship right now in in this type of environment? What’s that with internship and then full-time role? Yeah.

I mean like like I said, I’ve worked with a lot of interns and the most successful ones before their internship, they have emailed me and said, "What books am I supposed to read before I start this internship?" Right. And they and I’ll send them a list. Usually the list is pretty short, right?

The canyon of Java is maybe like six books. And if you can read those books you know and and understand them and work with them, you can you can do really well in your internship. So I’ve had you know three or four really successful interns that are now full-time.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

And then what would you say is a definitely do not do. Please don’t. I’m throwing a little curveball at you.

Yeah. I mean, the the don’t do are the same they would be for any job, right? Like, don’t be a slob.

Like, make sure your code is not sloppy. Like, that’s one thing that interns sometimes do is they’re like, "Okay, I’m just trying to make it work, but like they don’t make it production ready." Like, remember, you’re working as a professional developer now, right? You’re not just hacking your, you know, college projects anymore.

So, if you if you bring me some hacky college quality work, right? Like, that’s not going to fly. Like you got to make sure that your you know your variables are well named, your you know your functions make sense, you don’t have like too much complexity in the code.

You’ve like basically you know made it so it’s readable and usable for for other engineers. And because think about it, every every line of code you write is now legacy code, right? So so someone in the future is going to say, "Oh, this was written by so- and so and then I don’t understand what this means." Like you don’t want that to be the case.

You want someone in the future to look at it and say, "Oh, wow. Code makes sense to me and it’s got tests and it’s got all the things that matter. Cool.

Cool. All right. Well, I’ll pause there and check in with Emmanuela to see if we have any questions in the group in the chat and just kind of get a a feel.

Yeah. Okay. Great.

This is just a reminder to everyone to drop any questions that you have in the chat. And you have an opportunity to upvote as well. And so I’m going to go with the the top one that I’m seeing.

Okay. So question here is when leading a software a software team project, how do you find a balance between giving engineers freedom while guiding towards a unified product? So I think that’s probably for Ian there.

Like how do you do that balance? So, first of all, awesome graphic. I did not expect that.

Stephen or Stephan, like, thank you for this for this question. I actually posted it as a comment like this is this is a great question. I really appreciate you asking it.

This is a real problem, right? And this is like like so the classic Google solution, right, is is to give every engineer Friday to do whatever they want, right? And so 8020 rule.

You work on your sprint work 80% and then 20% of the time you do whatever you want and then this gives you the freedom to work on site projects or you know and so some crazy stuff come out of this like Google News and and Google Meet and stuff like that like wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for the 8020 rule. But in reality like that’s not that’s not usually the case. But for for me personally what I like to do is just do everything very collaboratively.

I don’t have like a top down excuse me. I don’t have like a top down like you have to do it my my way or the highway, right? Like like I want you to come up with your own design.

And then and then and then we have like, you know, approval boards and that sort of stuff that you might need to run it by. But also run it by your senior engineers to make sure that you know the the idea is right. And and I think that’s how you unify the product, right?

Is is you have who whomever is is leading the project they come up with their own design hopefully collaboratively with at least one or two other people and then once they’re have a design then they actually take that and they move it to our more like our even more senior engineers and our architecture review boards and our change review boards and those people can say okay I I see some problems with this you know with some some decision you made here maybe go back and and change this and then we’ll and then we’re good with the with the design. So that’s how that’s how we do both things, right? We we basically let let the engineers work as they want and then but also we make sure that they’re, you know, in line with with the rest of the company and and where we want to be.

That makes sense. Sounds like a delicate balance there. All right, we’ll go to the next question.

April asked, "What lessons have you learned or what positive impacts, takeaways, have you had from difficult or rocky changes?" Okay, this is also a great question because if you don’t take away from your failures or or, you know, at least not successes, there’s no room for growth, right? So, the times you fail are the times you grow. And and I’ve had plenty of those, right?

Going from not an engineering manager to an engineering manager. That’s just not the same job, right? So that you’re you’re guaranteed to have some some issues along the way.

Like I can think of of a few where you know I’ll actually say one that that was that was definitely my responsibility is you know we had to merge some code and we didn’t get it done like we didn’t go through all the processes we needed to do to get it done on time and that merge was late. And so me and my manager and my peer managers, we all sat down and we said, "How can we make this not happen again?" Like, "What what did we do wrong here? And what are the processes in place that are stopping us from not getting this done?" and so we we got down and we we made a game plan or like next time we’re going to do this, this, this, and this.

And you know, that that wasn’t necessarily a panacea. But we definitely are getting much better at this particular difficult part of our of our job. So another example was, we had a pretty bad production issue happen.

And so this this was kind of a little bit outside of my area. But I was involved in it. And so we had basically at the end we we did we did, you know, an RCA, right?

So root cause analysis of why this happens. And and if you’re not familiar with the root cause analysis, the idea is you ask why five times. So it’s like why did this happen?

Okay, well the code failed in this spot. Okay, why did the code fail? Okay, because this person like this this assumption was made when it shouldn’t have been.

And and the idea is the RCAs are blameless, right? You don’t say like it’s because of this person that we failed. It’s because it’s because of our company we failed.

So why so so why is this happening? Right? And so once you get to the fifth why, usually the answer is we didn’t have enough people, we didn’t have enough testing, we didn’t have enough, etc., right?

And so at those points, you can then make real change, that that can be improvements for the entire company going forward. Love those examples. Thanks for sharing, Ian.

And that’s a great way for people to actually look at their like why are they even pursuing certain things like okay, you want the to work at this company, why like keep digging so that you can get at the root at, you know, what’s really driving you. So I really appreciate that. Then we have Roit here.

He’s shooting his shot. He applied for the position and he wanted to see like how does he maximize his chance chances with getting an interview call. I’m sure other folks are wondering as well.

I mean honestly this is a question for our recruiters. But I would say, you know, just like having that great resume and having that great, you know, experience on there, good projects, and and maybe if you have some type of specific skills that would match one of our teams, which we have hundreds, so hopefully you have at least one of those skills. So I don’t I I don’t exactly have a good answer for you here.

But I think just like the clean resume, the, you know, the the good projects, and generally a good attitude if you do ever because because you won’t get a straight interview, right, with the with the team itself. You’re going to talk to the recruiters first. So, make sure that you’re, you know, super friendly and and able to answer the recruiter’s questions.

That would be that’s that’s kind of the best I can do. Unless Nikki has any other suggestions. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I was going to say, you know, attending events like this where you know you’re going to have an opportunity to go to the booth and and interact with a with a recruiter, right? Or meet with someone like Ian to make yourself memorable or stand out.

So, when it is time to to have your resume reviewed, you know, you you already are getting the the standouts. But, you know, I think this is a good time to plug. We will be in our booth today and tomorrow and Thursday.

Our recruiting team will be there. And so again, it’s an opportunity for yes, you to get your name in face with our our recruiting team to maximize your chances. Great.

Yeah, we don’t have that many recruiters and we do have a lot of people applying, so if you can talk to them, I’m sure that would increase your chances a little bit. Definitely. All right, Roit, you better be there.

They’ll be looking for you. All right, I’m super excited for the next question. Okay, you see the you see the question?

From that one. Yeah. Oh, the hairy one.

Okay, let’s do that. Oh, he has two first one. Oh, the first one.

Okay. What are your thoughts about service now move to Maria DB or from Maria DB to Postgress? Okay.

So, obviously, you know, I’m on the persistence team. So, this has been my entire life for the last three years. We actually acquired this company called Swarm 64.

And they had their own custom extension of Postgress. Service Now has is historically never supported Postgress in our in our like OM which is object relational mapping, right? So there was so much work for us to do to get this thing to work on my side.

So my team worked basically two entire years to get this working to the point where we could release it. And we have released it to I think a few hundred customers like new customers are using it and we have a few of our internal instances now using it. But it’s super exciting.

So Mariab is very limited as far as like what it can do as a database. I mean it’s been working great. We’ve been using my SQL or Mariab for the la for the entire history of the company.

But when it comes to certain types of queries especially queries that do heavy analytics so you know sort of counting across multiple tables and that sort of thing that would be very slow in most table in most relational databases. We can do that super fast in Postgress. And so we have our own custom version of Postgress because of the Swarm 64 team.

We have a custom index type which will allow us to search those basically get those those OLAP queries back much faster. And it’s it’s really cool technology. We were doing it a different way before which was which was slow and expensive.

And this new way is basically going to make it more available for for our customers. So, super super excited about this. And it’s rolling out coming to big production customers soon.

Nice. Thanks, Ian. Thanks for that enthusiasm, too.

I see you’re very excited about that. Great interview question. Let’s see.

Okay, I’m gonna switch it up. I’m going to go down to the bottom. Amy, sorry.

Because I feel like this might apply to some students here. What advice would you give career changers? This particular person Elena is from a pure science background and wants to be able to market themselves for new grad roles.

So any thoughts around that for career changers? I know. Well, you know, typically I usually say find your transferable skills, right?

So, anything that’s transferable that you feel like will be helpful from one role to the next. And typically that’s going to be something functional, not technical, like you know, great communicator or organizer, multitasker. Wow.

Well, yeah. I’d like to hear more about why why the career change, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I think it’s like even digging into like what we were talking about before the RCA, like why why the career change and then being able to tell your story.

In terms of that, it’s a long story. Yeah. You know, and I think that that’s important too, like in your resume, like as a as a part of your summary or, you know, your objective statement or or that, right?

Like to to to make that put that in as a bullet or put it in as a, you know, when you know you’re you’re applying to something specific, to answer that question. Because a lot of people just make assumptions. Great point.

Don’t hide from it. Like put it front and center. So folks, you can fill in the dots for them instead of them filling in the dots for you.

Love that. Absolutely. Okay, I’m going to go back to Harry’s question here.

Ian, how how has generative AI affected your day-today or teams goals, especially in this advancing landscape surrounding AI? That’s a that’s a good question. My team has not been super affected by Gen AI.

And specifically because our team works in code that Genai does not work to solve problems for. Like you can’t say hey fix this code that I gave you it’s broken in this way because our our code is you know kind of complicated but as far as you know like scripting and stuff like you know LLMs are totally great for that and and also the the team like the other teams around us are really doing a lot of work with this especially with our automated assistants that can you know deflect call center calls that kind of stuff those that’s kind of the big use of of the genai but but for for my team specifically, it’s like, hey, let’s make sure the database is fast enough to deal with it and then let’s let’s allow them to have these access patterns that the LLMs need to give people the information they need and and hopefully fast, right? That’s that’s always the case is because LLMs can ask for whatever they want but actually pulling that stuff out of the database could be a little bit of a challenge.

So that’s kind of the piece that my team’s helping with. Awesome. And then I see too you were able to answer the questions about the Java books.

So if folks were looking for that. If you look in the Q&A section under Miriam Ian was kind enough to list all of those books there. I appreciate that.

All right. Let’s see. We can go to Jason’s question.

What separates service now technically and as a culture from other companies? Wow, that’s that’s a deep that’s a big question. So technically, one thing that we are very different about is we do not leverage cloud services for the most part.

We are the cloud services. We have just racks of data centers racks of servers all in data centers all over the world. We do use a little bit of of Azure for some special stuff that only the government is allowed to see because Azure has some special licensing that we don’t have in our data centers.

But yeah, for that’s one huge technical difference is is service now like we have our all of our own automation that does all the deployments and it does and we but we also physically go open boxes and rack servers. And it and it it’s one of the things that allows us to be one of the most you know profitable companies in the space because if we were to outsource this stuff to AWS or Google Cloud or something like that those those costs would be astronomical and it would really cut into our profits. So that’s that’s one technical difference.

But the cultural differences are one thing I’ve noticed is I haven’t seen this at a lot of other companies. Everyone in the management chain as far as I can as as far as I can see is technical. So like for instance, I used to be an engineer.

The manager who works for me, she used to be an engineer. My my boss who’s senior director, she also was an engineer for many years. Her boss is a is a VP, he was an engineer.

He actually worked at Alta Vista as a search engine expert. So we actually acquired a company he made. So he he he was an engineer.

Our our senior vice presidents was an engineer. He actually still writes code sometimes. And then our CTO was one of the founding engineers.

So if you look all the way up and down the management chain we we really care about technical prowess and making good technical decisions by managers who are also engineers. Yeah. No, that’s amazing.

That was new information to me. Yeah. No, that’s that’s awesome.

That’s well I feel like for me I can answer the cultural question because I’ve been at a few different companies and I and I feel like you know here there’s this this focus on you know doing your job doing well being professional but then also there’s a focus on well-being and wellness that I feel like it’s very cultural we get wellness days in addition to our holiday it’s just make sure that you know we’re taking care of ourselves and you know the things that we say you know life at now I And it’s a it’s a it’s a great benefit and the benefits here I think really play into just having that culture where we not only take care of our bodies but our mentals and and all the things and the company is very supportive around those important things. Got it. I do have a question.

I know the whole topic was on change management and you guys shared the dos and don’ts, right? How can students kind of assess what employers and companies are doing well as they’re navigating like which employers to look for? And what I mean by that is in terms of change management, if they’re looking at it through the the lens of that, what are some ways that you know students can assess employers to make sure that it aligns with what they’re looking for?

So, number one question that I would ask a software engineer is what is your deployment process and how does it work? How are and then you ask how are the technical decisions made and talk to me about the last project that you did and was that project changed in the you know besides the basic stuff that you expect change right like customer doesn’t like this customer doesn’t like that like when was the last time you made a project all the way through and it wasn’t interrupted by something like that but yeah I think that the change in deployment process is is really explanatory about how someone’s change process actually works Agree. That love that.

Awesome. Okay, let’s see. We are almost at time here.

I know we have a few questions that went unanswered. I’m going to see if I can go to one of the ones that had the most up votes. Let’s see.

Any books you recommend for producing for producing production ready code? Not sure if that aligns with some of the recommendations you have. Yeah, they’re pretty much the same the same one that I listed.

Well, it depends on like it I mean I’m say like I’m a Java guy, so like if you’re doing Python, then some of these won’t apply. Like effective Java. And and clean code is pretty much like recommended across you know, don’t get too dogmatic about it.

Some people look at clean code as like the software engineering bible. But that’s not true, right? But you know, it it’s got some good ideas in there for how you can how you can make production ready code, right?

It says hey look at you being a professional here not you know messing up right u so the then the other one is designing data intensive I forgot what it’s called designing data intensive applications and then there’s some design patterns books and then and then working effectively with legacy code is is an option depending on where you work that that one’s kind of specific to companies where you know they’ve had a code base that’s been around for a long time not not necessarily creating new like net new code. Awesome. Well, we will leave it at that then.

I just wanted to thank both of you Nikki and Ian for this great presentation, engaging presentation. You all have given us so much to think about when it comes to change management, but then also students kind of navigating their careers as as future software engineers. So, thank you so much for that.

I want to encourage all of you all to drop your appreciation in the chat. Share your applause for them using the emoji as well. That will be super appreciative.

We encourage you to also visit their booth during the networking break and you know have a chat with them. I also wanted to make sure that you all take some time to fill out our quick survey. As you all know, we’ve been sharing your opinions really matter.

We want to make sure that your opinions are heard and it influences how we produce this in the future. And then now to close us out, we will go to a brief video from our host Bobby. We will now be transitioning into the open network session.

Let me give you some information here. It says that you can access the networking lounge to build connections. Now remember network it will be your net worth going forward.

Remember that Jim or you can visit the company’s booth to learn more about the organizations joining us here at the summit. And don’t forget to drop your resume when you go visit them too. Thank you so much.

We’ll see you in a little bit.