Technically Religious

The phrase “release to production” conjures a very specific set of thoughts and even emotions for folks who live, breath, and work with technology. Some of those thoughts and feelings are positive, while others are fraught with conflict. At the same time, those of us who are active in our religious community experience a different kind of “release to production” - releasing our children to the production environment of our faiths, whether that is teaching abroad, missionary work, or adult religious education that takes our young adult across the globe. And like our IT-based production release experiences, we watch our kids transition into chaotic systems, where parental observability is minimal even as the probability of encountering unknown-unknown error types grows. In this episode, Leon and Josh to look at what our IT discipline can teach us about how to make this phase of the parental production cycle easier. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Josh: 00:21 The phrase release to production causes a very specific set of thoughts and even emotions for folks who live, breathe and work with technology. Some of those thoughts and feelings are positive while others are fraught with conflict. At the same time, those of us who are active in our religious community experience a different kind of release to production. Releasing our children to the production environment of our faiths, whether that is teaching abroad missionary work or adult religious education that takes our young adults across the globe and like our it based production release experiences. We watch our kids transition and to chaotic systems, where parental observability is minimal, even as the probability of encountering unknown, unknown error types grows. In this episode, we're going to look at what our IT discipline can teach us about how to make this phase of parental production cycle easier. I'm Josh Biggley and the other voice you're going to hear on this episode is Leon Adato.

Leon: 01:19 Hello everyone.

Josh: 01:20 Hey Leon. Um, so as we always start our podcasts, uh, let's do a little shameless self promotion if you don't mind.

Leon: 01:27 I, I never mind shameless anything and self-promotion either. So, uh, I'm Leon Adato as you said, I'm a Head Geek at SolarWinds. Uh, you can find me on the Twitters @LeonAdator. I also blog and pontificate on my website www.adatosystems.com. And my particular religious worldview is Orthodox Jewish.

Leon: 01:52 Fantastic. And for those who are new to our podcast, I'm Josh Biggley. I'm a Senior Engineer of Enterprise Monitoring. You can find me on the twitters, um, @jbiggley. You can find my faith transitions community at www.faithtransitions.ca, where you will be redirected to our Facebook group. Um, I am currently a post Mormon transitioning into being an ex Mormon. That's where we start. So, uh, Leon, we've both had some, uh, some challenges, um, that I think have precipitated where we're at with this particular episode.

Leon: 02:28 Yes.

Josh: 02:28 Um, and as we were having the discussion, I was thinking I do love poetry. Uh, I mean, uh, it's a wonderful thing. I, I found a poem by Robert Burns is from 1786, uh, entitled "To a Mouse". And I, I'd love to, I'd love to have someone else read a portion of that because you know, the, to get the Robert Burns from 1786 just right, uh, is important. So let's listen to that now before we begin.

Poetry Reading: 03:00 [Thick Scottish Brogue accent].

Poetry Reading: 03:00 But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft

We often want to see results all at once, or at least quickly. But that's not usually how it works. In this episode Leon, Josh, and returning guest Al Rasheed explore how the philosophies of slow growth in other areas of our life - from religious to healthy living - inform our expectations with regard to gaining new skills in IT. Listen or read the transcript below.

Josh:      0:00        Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religious.

Leon:     0:22        We often want to see results all at once or at least quickly, but that's not usually how IT works. How do the philosophies of slow growth in other areas of our life from religious to healthy living inform our expectations with regard to gaining new skills in it? I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partner in podcasting, Josh Biggley.

Josh:      0:42        Hello, hello.

Leon:     0:44        And returning guests. Al Rasheed,

Leon:     0:46        Hello, thanks again for having me.

Leon:     0:48        Welcome back again. Um, okay. Before we dive into this topic, uh, as always, we wanted to have everyone, uh, take a moment for shameless self promotion. So Josh, why don't you kick it off?

Josh:      0:59        Hey, so I'm Josh Biggley, I'm a senior engineer in the enterprise systems monitoring space. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at @jbiggley or if you want to follow the chaos of my, my faith journey, uh, you can go to FaithTransitions.ca where you'll be forwarded to our Facebook group.

Leon:     1:16        Fantastic. Al, tell us about yourself.

Al:           1:20        I'm Al Rasheed, I'm a systems administrator here in northern Virginia for a federal contractor. Uh, you can find me on Twitter, @Al_Rasheed and in my profile for Twitter you'll also, uh, you should find my blog URL.

Leon:     1:33        Fantastic. And as a reminder, uh, all those links and everything else we talk about in this episode are going to be in the show notes. So you don't need to scribble madly and just rounding things up. I'm Leon Adatoo, I'm one of the head geeks at solar winds. You can find me on Twitter @LeonAdator and also I blog and just pontificate about life in general, uh, at AdatoSystems.com so you can find me there. All right, so, uh, we're going to divide this up basically into two sections, talking about growth and personal growth in the religious philosophical context first. And then in our IT life second, but in religious context, I think it's important for us to frame out what is there to grow in, in terms of religion or philosophy? I think, I think a lot of folks feel like, well, you know, you just, you show up, you sit down, you listen for a little while, and then ya go, you know, have some fried chicken or whatever. Like what, what is there to do better in religion? What are your, what are your thoughts on that?

Josh:      2:31        You know, Leon, I honestly, I think that, um, the whole premise of religion is about being better. Um, again for the listeners, right? We know that, uh, I was Mormon and Joseph Smith, who was the founder of Mormonism, uh, famously said, and I'm probably going to do a terrible job at paraphrasing him, but, um, no religion, um, that is, you know, worth its weight. Um, that doesn't require a man to sacrifice and become better, uh, should be practiced. So the idea being that if you're going to do religion and you're just going to stay static, why do it that at all?

Al:           3:08        Right. And I, I think there's some people who do show up, you know, look, I belong because my parents belong to this church or synagogue because my grandparents belonged here. I'm j

Work in IT for just a bit, and you’ll know that there are some days when everything just clicks, but sometimes (maybe a lot?) it doesn't. Similarly, there are days when we show up to the synagogue, church, or dojo and we are focused; versus days when every moment seems like a slog through the mud. But... maybe we're expecting too much. Is it reasonable to expect most days to be unicorns and sunshine and hot java? What does our religious/moral/ethical POV teach us about how we set our expectations for a "normal" day in IT?In this episode Leon, Josh, Doug, and new voice Steven Hunt discuss these ideas and explore whether there are there lessons we can take from one area of our life to the other about how to get through (and move past) a bad day - whether it's in the office, in the gym, or in the pews. Listen or read the transcript below.

 

Leon: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate it. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religiousJosh: 00:21 Work in IT for just a bit and you'll know that there are some days when everything just clicks, but sometimes all right, maybe a lot it doesn't. Similarly, there are days when we show up to the synagogue, church, or Dojo and we are focused versus days when every moment seems like a slog through the mud, but maybe we're expecting too much. Is it reasonable to expect most days to be unicorns and sunshine and hot java? What does our religious moral, ethical point of view teach us about how we set our expectations for a "normal" day in IT? Are there lessons we can take from one area of our life to the other about how to get through and move past a bad day, whether it's in the office, in the gym, or in the pews. I'm Josh Biggley. And the other voices you're going to hear in this episode are my podcasting partner in crime, Leon Adato.Leon: 01:11 Hello everyone.Josh: 01:12 Another regular voice on this show. Doug Johnson.Doug: 01:15 Hello.Josh: 01:16 And our newest guest to technically religious Steven Hunt.Steven: 01:19 Hey, how's it going?Josh: 01:20 All right everyone. So this is the point in the show where we're going to do some some shameless self promotion. Um, so again, I'm Josh Biggley. I'm a Senior Engineer for Enterprise Monitoring. You can find me on Twitter at @jbiggley and uh, ya know, faithtransitions.ca is a website that I recently started with my wife for Canadians, uh, who are going through some form of faith transition. Doug, anything you want to, uh, to, uh, talk to us about?Doug: 01:47 Uh, I'm Doug Johnson. I'm CTO for wave RFID. We do inventory management using radio waves in the, uh, optical shop. Uh, I've recently dropped off of just about all social media. So the only thing I've got right now is a cooking website called .cooklose.com. So if you'd like recipes head on over.Josh: 02:05 Right. Nice. Steven.Steven: 02:07 I'm Steven Hunt, I'm Senior Director of Product Management at Data Corp software. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at, @SteveWHunt. Uh, and when I actually have the site up and uh, I haven't let it lapse in payment, you can read my blog on RamblingsOfATechJunkie.com.Leon: 02:24 So it sounds like it's my turn. Uh, I'm Leon Adato. I'm one of the Head Geeks at SolarWinds. You can find me on the Twitters @LeonAdato and uh, you can also find my blog adatosystems.com. And for those people who scribbling madly either Ramblings of a Tech Junkie or Cook Loose or any of those, we're going to have that in the show notes. So don't, scribble no more. Just listen and enjoy.Josh: 02:46 I mean, fine. Yeah. Find your zen this, this is going to be a good episode because some of us have bad days at the office, right?Leon: 02:55 All of us, all of us have bad days at the office. [

There's an old joke (and a famous website) comparing programming languages to religions, but the analogy is truer than it might seem at first blush. Logic structures are everywhere in scripture. Pair programming strongly resembles the intensive 2-person style learning found in all orthodox Jewish Yeshivot.In part 2 of this conversation, we continue to explore how your religion - the one you grow up with or grow into - is very much like a module you've inherited as a code owner. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 This is a continuation of the discussion we started last week. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation.

Josh: 00:06 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate it. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:29 Um, I'm curious about, uh, again, some of the things, you know, the ways that we look at this, for example, uh, with consequences. You know, if you, if you do, if you are that cowboy coder and you break that module, you say, "Ah, I can write a better one of these and I can...", You know, and all of a sudden what happens? Like the entire code is an operable and I think that religion has a similar thing. Somebody who comes in and says, uh, you know, I know that there's these religious tenants, but we don't have to do this thing that's not important anymore. And the whole thing falls apart.

Josh: 01:05 Hey, Mormon Mormonism had that.

Leon: 01:07 Okay. In what way?

Josh: 01:08 Well, so Mormonism was founded on the idea of a, of restorationism. Um, so that the, the idea of, um, truth had to be restored. And one of the truths that was restored by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was the idea of, of polygamy. And that was carried on after his, his, uh, death, uh, murder martyrdom, however you wanna frame it, um, in a, in a jail. Um, and Brigham Young carried that on. So, you know, Joseph Smith had like 34 wives. Um, Brigham Young had 57, I think, some number like that, but when Utah wanted to become a state, um, the US government said there's no way. We are not letting a bunch of polygamists, um, uh, obtain statehood. So in, um, the mid 1890s, 1895, I think, um, Mormonism dropped polygamy. And when they did that, there was a huge rift that was established, uh, in the church. Um, there today there are Fundamentalists, uh, Mormons or Fundamentalist LDS, um, who still practice polygamy. Uh, even when Joseph Smith was, was killed, the idea was, you know, who's going to take over, um, the church split then the, um, his, his, uh, son Joseph Smith, the third cause Joseph Smith was actually Joe Smith Jr. So his son Joseph Smith, the third, um, started a, another religion. Um, so like these riffs, um, they, they happen and they tear apart, um, really good teams, you know. So again, you know, Mormonism had it right. It was as, "Hey, this thing works really well for us except for we're going to get rid of it..." And it breaks. So when you, when you do that within technology, when you do that within a programming language, when you fundamentally change the core of who a, of your technology, you can piss a lot of people off.

Patrick: 03:09 Nobody likes a fork.

Corey: 03:10 [Background] No!

Josh: 03:10 Nobody like soft fork.

Leon: 03:12 Oh, he took it. Okay.

Corey: 03:13 Yeah. Patrick got it. Before I could, yeah. This is, this sounds exactly like you're forking or branching off code eventually off of, you know, GitHub or do you think about just Linux in general? I mean, especially apropos with Josh, uh, talking earlier about, you know, being scared of Linux, you know, this is, this is exactly what Linux did. You have your Debian and you have Red Hat and you have Minz and you have Cinnamon. You hav

There's an old joke (and a famous website) comparing programming languages to religions, but the analogy is truer than it might seem at first blush. Logic structures are everywhere in scripture. Pair programming strongly resembles the intensive 2-person style learning found in all orthodox Jewish Yeshivot. And you can say that your religion - the one you grow up with or grow into - is very much like a module you've inherited as a code owner. As Patrick Hubbard, our guest on this episode, says, "It's a balance of acceptance, idealism, reverence and challenging architectural decisions made long ago." Listen or read the transcript below.

Doug: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:24 There's an old joke and a famous website comparing programming languages to religions, but the analogy is truer than it might seem at first blush. Logic structures are everywhere in scripture. Pair programming strongly resembles the intensive two person style learning found in all orthodox Jewish yeshivot. And you can say that your religion, either the one you grow up with, or the one you grow into is very much like a module you've inherited as a code owner. As Patrick Hubbard, one of our guests today says, "It's a balance of acceptance, idealism, reverence, and challenging architectural decisions made long ago." I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my cohost and partner in internet crime, Josh Biggley.

Josh: 01:02 Hello,

Leon: 01:03 Doug Johnson.

Doug: 01:04 Hello

Leon: 01:05 Cory Adler.

Corey: 01:06 Klaatu barada nikto, Leon

Leon: 01:09 And my fellow Head Geek at SolarWinds, Patrick Hubbard.

Patrick: 01:12 Hey, Leon. It's good to hear ya.

Leon: 01:14 And it's good to have everyone here.

Leon: 01:16 Um, so the first thing we want to do before we dive into the topic at hand is give everyone a moment for shameless self promotion. Um, so Patrick, why don't you lead us off?

Patrick: 01:25 Yeah, so I'm also a head Geek at SolarWinds, which looks like dev advocacy pretty much anywhere else. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at @FerventGeek. Uh, that's probably the best way to find me. I am in too many places on YouTube and a bunch of other stuff because I didn't run away when they broke the cameras out. I'm not sure that I'd make that choice again if I could. And I am a Episcopalian, which means I'm a Christian, but not necessarily the kind that most people know because we're super progressive and we're kind of on a timeout from England right now.

Leon: 01:55 [Laughing] Okay, great. Doug, how about you?

Doug: 01:58 I'm CTO at Wave RFID, a startup that I started up with my business partner at the age of 60 something. How stupid is that? Uh, it can be found on Twitter at, at @DugJohnson or you can email me at [email protected]. I'm an Evangelical Christian, but not one of those in your face hitting you with the Bible kind of people. But I will talk with you all day long if you, uh, want to have that conversation.

Leon: 02:20 Uh, Corey, why don't you go next.

Corey: 02:22 Hi, I'm Corey Adler, the constant pain in Leon's side, but during the day I am a team lead engineer at Autosoft. You can find me on the Twitter at @CoryAdler and much like Yechiel and Leon, I am an Orthodox Jew. However, I prefer to call myself the Jew, extraordinary

Leon: 02:38 Dah, Dah, Dah. Okay. And as I, as I introduced earlier, Josh Biggley is one of the cofounders of the Technically Religious podcast. Josh, tell us who you are and where you're from.

Josh: 02:48 Uh, so I'm a senior engineer responsible for enterprise monitoring. Um, I'm a wanna be a Head Geek. Is that a thing? [Multi

Last year CiscoLive overlapped with Ramadan which was not a lot of fun for the Muslim attendees. This year it conflicts with Shavuot, requiring observant Jews who planned to attend to arrive a week in advance. Add those challenges to the normal stress an IT person with a strong religious, moral, or ethical POV has: finding a place to pray, navigating how "outwardly" they want to present as a religious person (and if that's even a choice), managing work-mandated venue choices for food and "entertainment" that push personal boundaries, etc, and it's a wonder we're able to make convention attendance work at all. In part 2 of this discussion, I continue the conversaion with Mike Wise, Al Rasheed, and Keith Townsend about how they make conventions not only possible, but a positive experience religiously as well as professionally. Listen or read the transcript below.

Josh: 00:01 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have is people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:23 This is a continuation of the discussion we started last week. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation.

Leon: 00:29 I think there's another thing. So Mike, you were talking about being, you know, visibly openly religious and I think that sometimes, again for variety of reasons, uh, they decide that this is their opportunity to sort of poke the bear. You know, like, "Oh, you're, you're one of those religious people. So! What do you think about the ?", right? Whatever it is. And you know, we don't even need to get into the specifics of it, but they just want to see... There's, there's a respectful conversation and, and we'll talk about that in a little bit, about some, some of the wonderful opportunities, conventions offer us to have deep, really meaningful philosophical conversations. But there's also these, which is where someone is clearly, you know, "oh, you're religious. Well, fine, answer me this."

Mike: 01:18 Right. You know, if you're so religious, you know, uh, you know, gee on the Statue of Liberty it says, bring me your tired and poor and you know, and then so you don't, you don't, uh, believe in all of this, you know, preventing immigration, right?

Keith: 01:37 Yeah. Or the or it'll be, the more lighthearted stuff. You know, I get teased on, so my peers on The Cube, when Pat from VMware, uh, Pat Gelsinger is on and were like, "oh Keith, you, you and Pat are on together. You guys go to the same church. Right?"

Everyone: 01:56 (disbelief)

Speaker 3: 01:56 You know, cause pat is super, uh, transparent about his faith. So, you know, it's all in fun, but you know, they, you will get to this. But you know, I say no to certain events and things and uh, you know, so does Pat, or who, whomever else, you know everybody else on this, on this podcast and you know, you're going to get, you're going to get a ribbing about it.

Leon: 02:17 Right? Or Al, you know, "Come on, come on. You've had a beer. Just one. Who's gonna know?"

Al: 02:22 "It's not gonna hurt. Come on."

Keith: 02:24 I, uh, I ordered Al an O'Douls all the time. Horrible, horrible substitutes.

Al: 02:29 Do they still have those by the way?

Keith: 02:31 They do.

Mike: 02:31 Yes.

Al: 02:32 That's crazy.

New Speaker: 02:34 So, right. So, so those are, those are some challenges. And I'm just curious, you know, uh, not what conversations, what are those conversations have you had? Cause I think we all have horror stories, but you know, what do you, what do you do about those? Especially I'm going to say, especially when it's not someone you know. Like if it's somebody, you know, you can shut it down in very specific ways, but one is a complete stranger who may be coming to your company booth.

Last year CiscoLive overlapped with Ramadan which was not a lot of fun for the Muslim attendees. This year it conflicts with Shavuot, requiring observant Jews who planned to attend to arrive a week in advance. Add those challenges to the normal stress an IT person with a strong religious, moral, or ethical POV has: finding a place to pray, navigating how "outwardly" they want to present as a religious person (and if that's even a choice), managing work-mandated venue choices for food and "entertainment" that push personal boundaries, etc, and it's a wonder we're able to make convention attendance work at all. In part 2 of this discussion, I continue the conversaion with Mike Wise, Al Rasheed, and Keith Townsend about how they make conventions not only possible, but a positive experience religiously as well as professionally. Listen or read the transcript below.

Doug: 00:00 W1elcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have is people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:24 This is a continuation of the discussion we started last week. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation.

Leon: 00:30 Okay. So I think another aspect with food is, um, and you touched on it, dinners out with the team, right? When it's like, "no, no, no, it's gonna be a team meeting. It's going to be a team dinner. We're all going out." And uh, again, just speaking for myself, it's like, "okay, I'm going to have the... Glass of water.

Al: 00:51 Yeah, that's me

New Speaker: 00:51 "It's, yeah, it's, no, it's fine." You know, like you want to be a team member, you want to be part of it, but all of a sudden the meeting becomes, at least part of the meeting becomes about Leon and his food issues. Like, I don't want, I don't want that to be that either.

Al: 01:06 Right. I was just going to say in some cases, uh, at some conventions or maybe the parties at the conventions, they hand out those drink coupons that you can redeem at the bar. I ended up giving it to others that are with me and I'd get this look like, "Don't you want to drink?" I'm like, "No, water's is fine."

Mike: 01:24 Al, come on. You're missing a major opportunity here. You got to SELL them. Right. You know, these, these are trades, right? You're, you know,

Leon: 01:33 So the first episode of Technically Teligious was myself and Josh Biggley, who's, uh, he's now ex-Mormon. At the time that we were working together, he was Mormon. And so we we worked together in the same company. And so we had this whole shtick. We'd walk into these spaces and it's like, "Oqkay, so I'm drinking his beer, he's gonna eat my chicken wings, and he's driving me home." So you just have to find our roles, you know? Yes, yes. Yeah. We just have to find that synergistic relationship where we can, you know, hand things out. So, uh, but yeah, it's, you know, when they're handing out coupons for things like, "yeah, thanks."

Al: 02:13 yeah, "Don't you want to use it? It's free. It's like you're saving yourself 20 bucks." "No. I don't really want it."

Leon: 02:18 Okay. So, um, moving on. Uh, I think another aspect of, of conventions that can be challenging are just the interactions. Keith, you mentioned, um, just people in general that you don't like people which, uh, may not be your best advertising or marketing slogan, "CTO, Adviser. I hate people"

Keith: 02:38 Yeah, I'm not what you'd call a people person.

Mike: 02:41 But a lot of people, but a lot of CTOs are introverts, right? Keith? I'm sure of it

Keith: 02:47 That's absolutely the case. You know what it is, is what I find is that, you know, obviously, um, I'm high profile. So I have to interact with people. Uh, people stopped me in the hall. We have great conversat

Last year CiscoLive overlapped with Ramadan which was not a lot of fun for the Muslim attendees. This year it conflicts with Shavuot, requiring observant Jews who planned to attend to arrive a week in advance. Add those challenges to the normal stress an IT person with a strong religious, moral, or ethical POV has: finding a place to pray, navigating how "outwardly" they want to present as a religious person (and if that's even a choice), managing work-mandated venue choices for food and "entertainment" that push personal boundaries, etc, and it's a wonder we're able to make convention attendance work at all. In this episode, I speak with Mike Wise, Al Rasheed, and Keith Townsend about how they make conventions not only possible, but a positive experience religiously as well as professionally. Listen or read the transcript below.

Dez: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as it professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:24 Last year, Cisco live fell squarely in the middle of Ramadan, which created a challenge for followers of Islam. Here in 2019 it coincided with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, meaning that many observant Jews had to skip or cut short their attendance. Between these special situations and the more common stresses of finding a place to pray - sometimes multiple times a day; navigating dozens of interactions where we find ourselves explaining our religious limitations regarding food, venues, and even personal contact; and asserting boundaries between the requirements of our work and the tenants of our faith. Between all those challenges, it's a wonder we choose to attend conferences and conventions at all. In this episode, we're going to hear from a few folks about how we survive and even thrive in this environment. While holding strong to our religious values or moral or ethical points of view. I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are: Al Rasheed, who's a sysadmin for a federal contractor.

Al: 01:16 Hello!

Leon: 01:17 Welcome to the podcast.

Al: 01:19 Thank you.

Leon: 01:20 Mike Wise, a freelance consultant in insurance technology and specializing in blockchain.

Mike: 01:26 Hello.

Leon: 01:27 And finally a returning guest, Keith Townsend from CTO Advisor.

Keith: 01:31 Well evidently the unedited version of the podcast hasn't gotten me kicked off . Halooo

New Speaker: 01:36 Right. I'm not going to give the number, but there is one where I forgot to post the edited version. So before we dive into this topic, I want to give everyone a chance for some shameless self promotion. Al why don't we start with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Al: 01:51 So I'm a SysAdmin here in the northern Virginia area for a federal contractor. I am a Palestinian American, born in Jerusalem and a, I am Muslim as well. You can find me on Twitter @Al_Rasheed. And my blog post is also listed on my Twitter profile. It's http://AlaRasheedBlog.wordpress.com.

Leon: 02:15 Perfect. Mike, how about you next?

Mike: 02:18 Yeah, so thanks a lot for having me on the show. I'm, you can find me at "MikeY07" on pretty much every social channel including Twitter. I'm doing a lot of tweeting. I'm also sharing a lot on Linkedin and my website is http://blockchainwisedom.com It's a play on my name.

Leon: 02:40 Nice. Keith, for those people who might've missed the other episodes you're in, where can we find you?

Keith: 02:45 @CTOAdvisor on the Twitters, which my daughter hates to say And you can find the blog, http://theCTOadvisor.com.

New Speaker: 02:54 Great. And just around things out. I'm Leon Adato. You can find me on Twitter, on "the twitters", I'll say that just to make a Keith's daughter's

In Yeshiva - a system of advanced learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there’s a saying: “Shiv'im Panim laTorah” - which means “there are 70 faces of Torah”, but implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with IT practitioners, because there are many paths that led us into our career in tech. In this episode, Leon wraps up the conversation with guests Corey Adler, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, and returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson about how that made that literal pivot, from yeshiva into the world of IT, and what their experiences - both religious and technical taught them along the way. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Roddie: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:44 This is a continuation of the discussion I started last week with Yechiel Kalmenson, Ben Greenberg and Corey Adler on how they pivoted from a life of Orthodox Jewish studies into a career in IT. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation.

Leon: 00:44 All right, so looking at today, as you're working today in IT, you are all three established programmers with a career and everything. What, of the lessons that you got from yeshiva, continue to carry over. What other things, I mean we've talked about a bunch of stuff, but is there anything else that carries over into your day to day work that when you do it you say, "yeah, that's cause I went to yeshiva. That's, that's what I still get from it."

Yechiel: 01:24 So essentially I think these days the world of tech is waking up to the realization that you can't separate the work you're doing from the moral applications of the things you're creating. Like for the longest time we would hear news about some big tech company doing something wrong and the engineers are like, "Well, I was just doing my job. You know, I was hired to do this work." And it's just not cutting it anymore. People are realizing that there are real world applications to the stuff you're doing. And these are conversations we have to have. And we have to think about.

Leon: 02:03 You mean like the algorithms on a certain video website that lead criminals to their targets?

Speaker 3: 02:11 Yeah. To quote one recent example. Yes. But you know, these days it seems like every week there are other stories coming up. By the time this podcast is going to air, I'm sure there's going to be five new stories and people are gonna say, "what website is he talking" about what story was that?" But that kind of thinking is actually wired in throughout the Talmud. You know, people have this misconception about the Talmud that it's high lofty thinking and philosophical discussions; where most of the Talmud is actually talking about oxen and fields and how to... I remember once getting into a whole... There's like a whole page discussion in the Talmud about what happens if you go into a room that was previously occupied by three people and you find a coin - who does that coin belong to? And come on, we're talking about a third of a penny over here. Does this really, really matter? And our teacher told us, "Yes! If you realize the value of a third of a cent that belongs to somebody e

In Yeshiva - a system of advanced learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there’s a saying: “Shiv'im Panim laTorah” - which means “there are 70 faces of Torah”, but implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with IT practitioners, because there are many paths that led us into our career in tech. In this episode, Leon continues the conversation with guests Corey Adler, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, and returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson about how that made that literal pivot, from yeshiva into the world of IT, and what their experiences - both religious and technical taught them along the way. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks!

Doug: 00:22 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.

Leon: 00:48 This is a continuation of the discussion I started last week with Yechiel Kalmenson, Ben Greenberg and Corey Adler on how they pivoted from a life of Orthodox Jewish studies into a career in it. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation.

Leon: 01:03 Okay. So, I think a lot of people are asking themselves at this point, now that they have a better sense of what yeshiva was like and how very different it is from a secular education, how very different that kind of world is from sort of a normal working situation: How did you do it? How did you go from this really intensive... Yechiel, I think you said from 7:30 in the morning until 9 or 10 o'clock at night learning constantly, with a couple of bathroom breaks and a little bit of food and maybe a nap... go from that to learning to code or learning IT or whatever it was? How did you get through it? And in fact, Yechiel, since I mentioned it, why don't you go first?

Yechiel: 01:42 So, I guess as I transitioned to programming through tech support, so I was doing that before. Though I knew I would have to move on at some point because tech support... There was, there was a limit to how much I could grow there and how far it can get. And actually, it's funny, before you asked, you asked like, you know, "what would your mother think?" She was actually the one who, it was her idea. She had someone in her office who went to a bootcamp, (actually a friend of mine) who went to bootcamp and later got a job as a programmer. And she was telling me, "No, why didn't you do that? You know, you're smart, you can do that." And I was like, "No, that's not for me." You know, in my head at least "no programmers were these genius hackers who had been born with a silver keyboard in their laps. And like, that wasn't me. And like, you know, I might be smart, I'm not that kind of smart. And I like, I just kept telling her, "No, that's not for me. I, you know, he could do it. I can't." And then I promptly went home and took my first coding class and been hooked ever since.

Corey: 02:42 For the record, my keyboard was platinum, not silver.

Yechiel: 02:46 Well, Ya know, we're talking about the layman... Lay folks.

Leon: 02:50 right, well, he's Brooklyn, you're Chicago, you know, there's a whole economic strata.

Yechiel: 02:55 Right. Anyway, so I took a few free coding classes online and got hooked and saw that this actually was something I could do and th