Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey guys. I'm so excited to host another Her Heads in the Cloud podcast session. Today we're bringing you live with Joti from Tilt Renewables. Very excited to have her as she is the IT Infrastructure and Operations Manager at Tilt Renewables. On that note, I'll let you do a proper introduction, Joti.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Hi. Hi guys. Thank you very much, Echo, for introducing me.
Myself, Jyoti, working in Tilt and I'm basically from IT infrastructure field.
I've been in the industry and in the IT space for almost 15 years now and for women being in not only in it, but especially in infrastructure, it's quite not that common. To be honest, when I started now it feels like, yeah, it's a train and everyone is actually not everyone. Like whoever likes it doesn't matter if it's a girl or boy or whoever, they like it, they just want to just jump in and do it. Which is awesome. Yeah.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Hey, it's Agla from Precision Sourcing and welcome to her Heads in the Cloud, the podcast where we dive into everything happening in the world of DevOps, cloud and site reliability engineering. With over six years in the industry, I've built a successful DevOps practice from scratch, helping companies connect with the top tier talent they need to build diverse, high performing teams. Each episode I'll be bringing you insights from some of the brightest minds in tech, engineers, leaders and industry experts. Whether you're here to learn practical tips or hear inspiring stories, you're in the right place. Let's get into it.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And would you be able to dive a little deeper into that and share your journey into the infrastructure industry and also, I guess what drew you into the renewable space?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. So my prime qualification is in IT as well, like Bachelor's of Computer Science and after that I did my Master's of Computer Science Professional computing from Melbourne from Swinburne University.
As a child, I don't know why I had that curiosity. If I see some things are broken, I would just run and try to fix it. Yeah, that's where I sort of got the drive into more of if I see a problem, if I see any hardware or anything, doesn't have to be a computer. Computer came down like little bit later in life. But yeah, even for example, we use grindr, mixer, things like that. Okay, how does that work and how am I just going to go and fix it and see what's the problem? Even though as a child you don't know what you're doing, but it's just the fixing drive thing, like, okay, I really want to go and fix it. That's, that's why. And by saying fixing, I, if I see anyone even, even till today, I being working in infrastructure for so long from back home country, I get a lot of calls from my parents, my grandma and my aunt. If they have any IT related issue, they would call me and I'm like, okay, no worries, I'll do it. Yeah, that's sort of fixing. If I see any problem, I just go and just try and just do it rather than thinking about it. Okay. Whether should I do it or not? It's, that's something like passionate about it. And especially when I was growing up, not, I was not. I never had any laptop or anything when I was growing up and all my family, friends, relatives, a lot of them were in medical field rather than coming into this ID side of it. So I'm the exception in my whole family.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Oh really?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Still today they tell me that yeah, you never went into the medical field. But I said like, you know, I think I still got that element of nurturing or helping sort of a thing. Yeah. That's why if I see a problem, if, if user. Even till today I'm at that position. But I still, if I see any user having this, having a problem with the computers or anything, I wouldn't think what I'm doing. I'll just go and try and help them out. So. And also the. I am so amazed with everyday changes we face in the industry.
Technologies especially nowadays AI is sort of, you know, capturing the whole, I would say the world basically.
So I'm always curious to learn about how this thing is working in the background. How like for example, Netflix, Google. So what's driving them 247 they're up, they're running. Imagine if even for five minutes if Netflix goes down, people like okay, what happened? And you'll see on the Twitter or Insta or Google people just update. Oh my. You know, this is things down for how long? So that's sort of, this is where actually our role comes into the picture. Being an infrastructure, you have to make sure things are available 25, 24 7. Yeah, it's sort of working in considering if you just think about 24, 7, it's. You can feel it's pressure environment sometimes.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially at scale.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah. But trust me, that's to me pressure is the one thing drives me even more into this industry.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Really.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I've got two kids. One is 10, almost 10 and another is four and a half. So there has been instances in the Past where I had to attend sign I had to go to office in the nighttime because of some urgent calls, yada yada yada. So I took my older one when he was I think one and a half or two year old and it was raining then the storming outside. I just let's go take you for a ride. We went into the server room, combs room fixing the cables. So it's amazing experience. As I said I literally thrive for pressure and I enjoy that. Okay. Yeah. Something throw me a problem. Okay. This is you have to do and imagine everyone is waiting outside for you to you know the whole business is down. Just do something quickly. Don't worry, I'll be okay. No problem. Just do it.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: I guess that's a quite a perfect example of how the infrastructure industry can definitely be challenging especially when it comes to physical environments. But evidently you don't have any problem overcoming those challenges.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. I honestly for how to handle or the way I've learned to handle pressure. I have to give credit to my training which I took My first job in Australia was in McDonald's as a customer service that doing the city, Elizabeth street. Quite a busy McDonald's.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: So they sort of give you three day training like just you know imagine you got a customer. I think you got a 20 seconds within 20 seconds of the person has been putting the order. You just have to from start to end you have to give it to the customer. That's why the fast food chain, that's why they call it a fast food apparently. But and every month or maybe sometime every two, three weeks we had a secret like monitor or someone actually coming on site and checking whether these protocols are being actually followed. Right. So we on all the time we were prepared in our head. Okay, that's it. We have to do this, take this order, make sure you do all this thing correctly. Tick, tick, tick, dispatch the order. So I was there for about one and a half years or I am actually very very grateful that I worked there. So that sort of experience took me where I am today. So yeah that's, that's everyone whoever is listening or as I'm just sharing try and work into those customer service fast paced environment and sort of you're preparing yourself for the next big step.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. Jy what other I guess unconventional lessons would you say you've learned while leading infrastructure projects and how has it shaped your leadership style throughout your career?
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting question.
I'll start from the start.
As I said I have Been into this space for almost 15 years. But even before that I've always been into it. So I've seen the softwares like very old software. So I'm going back Lotus where it's not a GUI based, it's sort of a command prompt based, it's all black screen you're working in.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: So I've seen, I've gone through the different phases of my own learning being that as well as being actually working in a team. I started my job as a level one, like a support person to fix problems, to fix computers, creating users and helping the users out, etc. But yeah, I was in the same company for almost 10 years, knew everything about the business, how the businesses operated inside out and as well as all the infrastructure. I literally from level one to level two to Ops and then operation lead and then IT Infrastructure Manager. So it has been very gradual growth which is amazing. At the same time I was doing my Masters as well. So luckily with me I had this opportunity to whichever trend is going on at the moment. For example, we were sort of one of the few companies back then picked up the cloud like Amazon Cloud or Azure Cloud and rather than having a physical infrastructure now you host everything on cloud, you don't have to go and physically manage devices anymore. That's a big drastic change and saves a lot of space and resources. You can manage these resources from anywhere in the world. Fantastic. So these sort of projects which I'm talking about, I sort of have been very integral part of leading those projects as well. So it's one of the different hats I had to put across. So I have to give the credit to my mentors, my managers that I've had put that much faith. Yeah. In me to let me learn. Even that's a new technology. They said okay, no worries, we have to do it. Just bring everyone together. Just, you know.
So with the infrastructure I, in my opinion and a lot of other CIOs events I've attended and heard similar sort of stories is make sure you are keeping yourself up to date what's going on in the market and keep yourself sort of like I. If anyone asked me which is the biggest room, I would say the biggest room is to. For a room of a growth rather than.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: So I obviously look at the trends and try and adapt. But having said that, sometimes you can be overwhelmed with a lot of stuff going on. Technology, information. You just need to grasp what exactly is required for your current environment rather than having to absorb everything. Yeah. So with my different projects and infrastructure. So A is one of the biggest one was the cloud transformation. So we from physical to cloud transformation which was fantastic back in those days, as I said, we were only few of those companies who actually did that. A hundred percent we did that. Not only like partial, which was amazing. And the second one was especially during the COVID time everyone was working remotely. Right. So we had to make sure that people disconnect like you know, have the devices make sure they're all secure and using the VPNs things like that people still being in it. You just have to make sure A because now you can use this can work from anywhere in the world. We have to make sure that when they're using Internet, whether it's secure or not, it's a public WI fi, yada yada yada. So these things we had to quickly adapt and change and take proactive actions. So these are the two main projects I have led in my entire career. There have been a full turning point and adopting the new technology from cloud, from VPN point of view. So these two are now even though now where I work and even the future also they are going to be more relevant to everyone's life in their career. Yeah.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Do you and what do you think? Obviously Covid was a bit of a crazy time that we all went through.
Do you think Covid shaped the infrastructure industry?
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Oh absolutely, absolutely. Not only the infrastructure industry, but as an employee you are more flexible. You can work from anywhere in the world. But having said that from infrastructure point of view, I in fact feel we have to be more cautious, more careful.
Before that you had people coming into office. So we knew we had to just look after this office infrastructure on network. I had to make sure that it's all secure. But now people want to do flexible working settings. They want to work on their laptops, work from anywhere in the world.
Which means we are opening up to more vulnerabilities such as threat viruses and scandals and spam and junks more not. Yeah, it's a lot to add on to it. But say for example if your home network has been affected impacted or something has exposed so and you are using work laptop on using your home WI fi so which means ultimately work laptop is also impacted. So in fact for us as an infrastructure it's a challenge to maintain. So we had to up our skills even quite faster the change. Okay A make sure you got this proper virtual network is set up correct. It's more secure.
So a lot of businesses, not a lot, almost every businesses had to adopt that change.
And also they had to invest into the infrastructure team a little bit more in terms of not only just taking care of users computers, yada yada yada, but cybersecurity space. Yeah, more so because we are more exposed. We are.
And people working from home, not only that, but during COVID a lot of people were having a hard time to deal with different post personal stuff as well. But there was some other part of the world was also like, okay, imagine you're just sitting at home doing that thing which means you might having some crazy ideas. Oh, you know what, I want to try this hack this, I want to try this hack this side or to do this. Which means you're not busy, you can do sometime, you can go both ways. Right. So you just had to be more, more aware, more challenged. I feel that's what I have felt and experienced throughout the COVID period. But having said that, I feel now, if I look back at it now, now we are more secure, we are more cautious, we, we know okay, what not to do what, what to do now in fact. So now by default, by default it's like thousand percent more secure than what it was before.
As I said before COVID pretty much 90, 80 to 90% people were going to office doing this stuff from there and we just had to maintain office network, not the house network now, now we sort of had to find the balance to support people for their home issues as well so that we can keep our office, our corporate machines safe and secure.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah, 100% challenge. I definitely think with the Hot Topic AI having come about cybersecurity and cloud security has equally been prominent and up there for sure. And that will definitely continue for the rest of the year.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: So that's all good. Moving on to the next question. What advice would you give to young women looking to a jump start their career in the renewable space or infrastructure space even?
[00:16:59] Speaker B: I'll in my opinion and with honest opinion, do what you feel is right.
Do not think I have this. I, I've learned heard this wonderful quote recently, Blue hair theory. If someone says you got the blue hair and you know you haven't got it, she's like, do I really have it? No, I don't really care what anyone else says, but as long as you know what you're doing. Yeah.
So I really want to give an advice to everyone out there.
Try and respond the inner calling and what you are passionate about. And if you really want to, if you really love the technology and if you really want to know what's going on into this space. Doesn't matter if you're a man, woman or whoever. Like, you know, whichever field you want to go to, you just have that hunger, passion and just want to do it. Just desire to do it and just take the day as it comes. Do not. Sometimes we do plan things ahead too much. Like yeah, for example, Covid was the classical example. We sort of plan for a lot of events. What happened? Nothing.
So I always think as it is, like okay, just are you ready to learn? Are you something you want to learn about how this particular operation or this computer is working?
So in my opinion, to young women out there, if you are really passionate about learning about the technology, computers, please go out. There's heaps and heaps and heaps of online material. I would want you to start with your home. For example. I always tell my mentees, they said I want to, we want to just start somewhere like you know, you, you know what you want to do it. But it's very hard to get a first job, especially like without any experience. I said it is, it's. It is very simple. If you look at it sitting at home, you got everything, you got tv, you got smart TV actually you got your smartphone, you got your Internet, you got a modem in your, in your house and you got other few gadgets like printers and 3D printers, yada yada yada. If have have the passion about learning about or working in the infrastructure is to start from your home lab. Basic. Okay, this is a router. I've got this router. It's connected to my laptop and how the Internet is coming to my laptop if I have any problem, for example, I don't know if, I mean I'm sure you would have experienced if when you got your new modem, when you're setting up your new modem in the house, you sometime on the call with the provider help me through with the setup. So by default, 70, 80% people leave their modem password default which is I don't want to disclose what the password is otherwise. Yeah.
So yeah, just start with the basic home environment.
Try troubleshoot it, try troubleshoot your own printers, try troubleshoot the basic laptops what you got at home and see if that sort of takes take you take your passion to the next level. And also for example, if you're not in infrastructure space and if you're working in a different state, for example hospitality or you're in medical or in a different field or fashion designing for example, but you want to Do a change of career into IT or into infrastructure space. So I would highly recommend you yet stay in the same business lane. For example, I, I want to take this example as a hospitality or like as I said, fast food chain is McDonald's, Hungry Jacks, KFC, a lot of others. So if you want to stay in the same industry but still you want to change your career into it.
All the business, all the businesses around the world are being operated by it. Their backend is always infrastructure. Hospitals, they are operating on computers. All the stuff constantly on the computers. Same TV network, channel 9 or big, big networks. Everything behind the scene is the infrastructure. So having said that, if you are working in the same industry, I highly recommend you continue working in the same industry but choose the technology part of it. So you will have the benefit of the business knowledge plus the technology. So you will even do more wonder.
So please everyone out there, keep, keep dreaming, keep achieving what you want to do and also keep, keep disconnecting from the technology sometime and connect with the real people and that sort of help you grow as a person and also grow as a human being you want to be. And that's sort of a reflection of where you want to go ahead in your career as well. Because at the end of the day we are working with people, right? Not, not the, not the computers. So just take your time off and try and connect with the real audience. I would say. Yeah, other than just behind the scene.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Those are some really great practical tips. To be honest, I've not heard before. So simple yet effective. Like you know, trying to troubleshoot your modem at home. Maybe I'll have to give it a go. See if that's my passion. I might have to jump start my career into infrastructure.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. I had one of the mentees. I just want to talk about this example. We did few weeks session. I did few weeks session with her.
She was from the hospital industry. She was a nurse. She wanted to, especially after Covid a lot of like, you know, especially in medical field, they were feeling burned out because of. Yeah, they did nonstop like, you know, helping out, serving rest of the people and whatnot. So she said I want to actually really change my field. I want to come to it.
She was working in a big hospital.
I said and she was there for almost 10 years. Over 10 years. If you're working in the same industry, just going, jumping it can be challenging.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yes, of course.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And just you need that desire or you want to do it. I said okay, how about I'll Work with her on the resume part, etc. But how about do you have passion? She said, yes, I do have passion. We did the same exercise.
So I said please stay in your same field.
For example, still stay in the hospital environment, but go and apply for it sort of a level one role just to start from there so that you have, you know, how different department works in the hospital from compartment A to compartment B. So you, you have that user interaction and you will have the business knowledge, you'll have the environment basically. So basically using your knowledge and applying it like, you know, learning that little additional skill of IT troubleshooting, it'll do a wonder. You can do an IT application, you can go on IT network, you can do IT infrastructure, then operations need. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's been now, I would say two and a half years. So now she is IT system admin, Senior IT System Admin.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Oh, amazing.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Same hospital.
Oh wow. It's wonderful because as I said, she had the knowledge how the department works. She, she knows the doctors and she know how from triage point of view, level one, level two. And she had a passion about the technology. So at the same time she's also feeling good that she's helping out the staff.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: And also not feeling guilty to leave the environment. And like, you know, sometimes you sort of have, you build that relationship for staying that long.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: It's amazing that she built up that new skill set. She found her passion and yeah, that's, that's when you asked me for the advice. I would say whichever industry you want to be in, stick with it. But make sure, just add that technology passion into your career then it will surely do wonder. You just have to find the right industry. Yeah. And your skill set, that's all passion is everything.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: It's amazing what a little bit of curiosity can do and where it can take you.
And finally, Jati, I would really love to hear what emerging technology you're most excited about this year.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: AI. That's everyone's favorite topic.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: It is. It is the favorite word going around at the moment.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Is it absolute?
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Are you looking to actively incorporate it this year or how, how.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. That's something a. We want to learn.
Like if I say learn, yes. We've been using it, I'm sure on your phones you got different apps like iPhones, say ChatGPT, Copilot, things like that. That's something new we have. Having said that, I am very excited to use Copilot AI in our business, in our day to day life. As well. But before I do that I want to. I'm very cautious of data protection. People can put out anything and ask. Imagine if I'll just give you an example. Something, some incident. I don't know if you've seen on the news.
One of the Companies Top C CEO called someone from finance. Can you please transfer 1 million or something into my account? It's quite urgent request. Yeah. And it was called from teams. It's a Microsoft Teams call. Not only just a voice call, video call.
You can see and then what I mean how someone can make out it's a spam call. It's not a genuine call. That person did the transition and that finished and invested. After that he was calling like you know, mobile call, not a team's call. Like I did not even ask for it.
This is just an example. I'm not saying this.
It's AI you just have to find a thin line.
It's following your patterns, your movement, motions and way of speech, what grammar you can use, how you can express to someone when you're talking in a way. So with the changing technology. Yes, it's. It's awesome. Yeah.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: I don't think it will stop. It will just keep evolving but with a bit of caution slowly implementing and I'm sure it will be make a lot of people's lives easier. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Jyoti. It's been lovely having you and sharing your insights. And for all of the her heads in the cloud listeners, I hope you've enjoyed this episode and stay tuned for the next one.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Sa.
