(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to this CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto, California at theCUBE studios. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here for a special conversation with Michael Letschin who's the Director of Technical Advocacy at Cohesity, and John Troyer, Chief Reckoner at TechReckoning, also does a CUBE host, co-host's with us some events, certainly VMworld. Guys welcome to this conversation. >> Thank you. >> The title is Work-Life Balance: Is It Really That Simple? A topic that Cohesity, you guys are donating your session at VMworld on, to kind of give back and share data around, really an important issue, around work which is burnout, you know mental stability. There's always been a stigma, but that stigma now people are recognizing that, hey, you know what? if you need to take some time off, why not? >> Exactly. People are just getting just completely overworked at this point in IT. So we really talked about it about it and we thought it was a good thing to do something different than standard for tech companies nowadays sometimes. >> John, you and I have talked off-camera with The CUBE sets around the old IT adage, 'Do more with less!' Almost like banging people hard to do, and squeeze more profits out of it. You guys, VMware, certainly. When you were there, you had virtualization changed the game on the server landscape. But the old IT, they work hard. There's a lot of technical people working hard, and they're asked to do so many different things. And now as careers start to change, more pressure. >> Right, right. We're in a 24/7 world. The cloud is there. IT only really only gets noticed sometimes when things go wrong, and that's kind of a resume generating event. So people in our society, I think, there's a lot of pressure. >> So, tell about the session. I know it's a teaser, I wouldn't want to reveal too many cards here on the video, but what's going to be talked about in the session? What's the topic? What's some of the data? >> Well, we did a survey, we didn't even really promote it very much, out for IT professionals. We got 360 responses from IT professionals all over the world: North America, Europe, and beyond, from, ya know, people doing cabling in data centers, all the way to CEO's of companies, talking about IT burnout. And about what they're feeling, what they're experiencing, what symptoms they're having. And burnout is really not just being tired. Right, we think, ugh, I didn't get enough sleep, I'm burnt out. It is really a psychological disconnection from your work, from your purpose, from your coworkers. It's a feeling, I don't want to do this. It's really an F-U moment. Excuse me. [Laughing] >> You can, we're digital, you can say that. We have no FTC to worry about. Yeah, but this is important. I mean, people do want to do the good job, and we hear all this stuff, oh, 'admission driven companies,' but at the end of the day, if the work environment is not going to be conducive to people feeling good about themselves or being, ya know, kind of together, that's just huge. >> Exactly, and I think there's something to be said about getting that time. Not just enjoying what you're doing every day, but to keep doing that, sometimes you have to get away from that. And, I think that's a lot of what we found when we did the survey was people weren't always seeing that they could get away from it. They really felt pretty pressured to stay in. And sometimes it wasn't just from their management, either. We saw a lot of people that came back with comments even that some of the issues they had were, the community actually kind of pushed them into, they need to do more, they need to be out in the community. So, they were doing their day job, and now I've still got to do more, still got to go out and do more blogging, and I've got to do more training, I've got to do more certifications. Is it really helping your career? Is it helping your life? Is it helping your family? >> Work-Life balance has always been a topic, and you mentioned the community. Also, you add open source to that, too. There's more pressure there. That's like its own company. So you have the work-life balance, what are some of the pressure points you guys see? 'Cause I know living in Silicon valley, for me personally, the past 20 years, I know people personally, as well as stories from friends. This huge burnout, as entrepreneurs, CEO's, start up founders, they burn out a lot, there's failure involved, and you see depression and mental illness become a big topic, people are talking about it. And it's out in the open now, it's not hidden, it's not one those things. What's the IT equivalent, what's going on in the world that you guys have uncovered in the survey? >> Well, certainly some pretty similar, a lot of it is hours worked, right? You're on call a lot, you're traveling a lot. Pressures get worse as you get higher in the organization. We in the survey, we just saw, there's a lot of science to say you shouldn't be working more than 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week, once you get over that you're actual overall work productivity plummets. And we saw a lot both in Europe and the U.S., people work not only more than 40 hours a week, but outside of business hours as well. And they are even connected on vacation. >> And, interestingly, a lot of them weren't because they had to. Like, it wasn't, they were oncall or a shift job. So, you kind of expect, you're going to work weird hours. If you're an early on help desk person, you're on call, you have that two weekends a month, or whatever, you kind of expect that it's kind of the norm. But a lot of these people are management, director level, VP level, that are still working all these extra hours and are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and feel like that's what they have to do. >> And often they don't feel like they're in control. So, even the executives, so it's a normal, right, if you're, again, if you're an individual contributor, a lot of stuff is out of your control, if you're a middle manager. But even the folks who are senior said 'I don't feel like I can control my work.' And that seems to be a big part of psychological fulfillment that you need to have the strength to keep, you know, to keep working hard every day. >> And the digital tools make us more connected, it's only compounds that I think. Because, you could be at the sideline of your kids soccer event or sport, you're still checking your email, still the distractions of the screen are there. >> Well, I think that was something, one of the things that came out of it was the number of people that do not disconnect, and are on 24/7, with their personal and their work, especially in North America, was incredibly high on it. You get into Europe, it was a pretty significant difference. Pretty much across the board, I think it was like 85% stay connected on their personal and everything 24/7. >> Instagram, Facebook... >> People aren't giving up their Instagram or their Facebook when they're on vacation. But, they definitely for work side, I mean we saw 70-80% of people that were still somewhat connected for, even when, especially in North America, whether it was just their email, or they check their email once a day. And that's if they even took the vacations, cause that was something that I thought was pretty shocking on how little people took vacation. I mean, I just saw another study that just came out the other day, that there was somewhere like, 270 billion dollars worth of vacation hours wasted last year in the U.S. >> Yeah >> You mean not used up? >> Not used. I think it was 270 billion, I think was the number I saw. Which is an absurd number of days off that people aren't using. >> It's a fascinating topic, and I think it's one of these cutting-edge societal challenges of the tech industry, needs to kind of put on the table. Because, you think about all the stuff we talk about in these conferences like DevOps. You automate away the heavy lifting, the undifferentiated heavy lifting. In life, you see that same kind of potential, I mean, if you can, if we can be more creative, you're seeing projects being more project based, less hourly work. So, is the working changing, does IT shift, what do you guys see there, what's the survey, is there any anecdotal data, or data around, how the types of jobs are changing? Is there more flex time, is there more project basis, more team oriented? Is there any shifts in, kind of, what you're seeing there? >> Well, in the survey we asked about are people talking about it at work? And are there programs? Are people acknowledging that this is happening? And for the most part people aren't really talking about it. I think there is more automation as we grow our data centers up and our cloud, but I don't see people, it just means people are doing more, which is where we started they're doing more with less. >> Well I do know that one of the things that we often see, from my previous shop as well as for here, with Cohesity it's the simplicity of what we can do, does tend to make those projects and those jobs easier, so it frees up some of that time that we weren't getting otherwise. I think, kind of going back, you mentioned a comment about the start up founders, and how quickly they burn out in Silicon Valley. I think it's not just the CEO, the people look at it and they see a startup founder and they think it's the CEO and the three people, but in all reality, if you're a startup that's 50 people and below, you're probably doing just as much time and you have that commit, like, it feels personal to you. I mean, it did to me. And I know for sure when I started at Nexenta, when it was pretty small when we there and as we grew, but also man, I felt some ownership in it. Which meant I did more, and I did more. I definitely got to a point where I was burnt out, I was very much burnt out and it became very obvious. I ended up on a, I hate to say it's a bender, but I was definitely on a bender for a nice long week for a vacation. >> Well, startups are kind of addicting but also so is the dopamine effect with digital and also work. Is there anything that you guys gleaned out of the surveys that were potential solutions to the problem on burnout? Were there any kind of unsolicited [Laughs], like, you know, this needs to change, was there any kind of obvious mandate that came out of the survey? >> So, I think there was some definites on management needs to be more prescriptive. That, that chaos is a big issue. If people don't know what they are there for and what they're doing it's a big issue on it. There was a lot of things about mindfulness, surprised we got quite a few comments on you just have to find that time to step away. There is going to be a little giveaway that I'm not going to give away at the session yet. But so if they are at the session, we have a little giveaway to help people with the mindfulness. >> What time is the session? What day? Where do they find the location? >> So it's on Wednesday at VMworld at 12:30. The location, I actually don't know the room yet because I don't think VMware has told us the room yet. >> Well, VMware World is moving back to Moscone from Vegas after the reconstruction is done out in San Francisco, so that's new. So check the location for the session Wednesday at 12:30. Any other burn out characteristics that we missed that you could share that's important? >> Well, I think the prescriptive thing, the management being more prescriptive is important. Taking, actually taking vacation. Unlimited vacation in some ways can backfire against you, because people don't take it, they don't have their two weeks. You know, the other thing is, I think, just, management has to build in enough profit to let people take some time off. >> It's an HR planning challenge too. >> Yes >> Did work at home come out at all on the survey? People working at home did that come into play? >> So I think it came more into play around the travel side of things than it did the work from home. We did see some interesting things on the travel, it seemed like if you did not travel at all those people tend to get burnt out at a higher rate. The people that travel all the time, really were pretty low on the ones that felt like they were getting burnt out. >> They were numb, they didn't know they were burnt out. >> I mean it could be because they didn't have the life part of the work-life balance, because they were always on a plane, I know that feeling, but I try to find the time. >> Yeah, people who work hard always have a spouse 'hey get off the computer,' or you know, there's paying attention to the things that are right in front of you like family for instance comes up a lot, that I see. >> Connecting to your purpose, whether that's your family purpose or your work purpose was a big part of it. Being able to kind of split your attention that way or get your attention back. >> Well, thanks for doing the survey, and that's a great service to the industry that Cohesity is doing, to use the session up rather than plugging the company's products and gear, to give back. >> Really I think it's super important for companies to have that social responsibility on it. And I think it's, it was a pleasure for me and our team to be able to talk to management and to be able to say, 'this makes sense,' and them agree. Which I don't think there's a lot of companies out there will, so I'm super excited to be able to have it. >> When you start getting the therapy going let me know I'll be the first customer. I need all the help I can get, everyone knows that here. Burnout's tough, it's an important issue to be talked about, and there shouldn't be a stigma associated with it. People can perform best if they are rested. That's well proven. So, congratulations on a great survey. While I've got you guys here I want to get your thoughts on VMworld 2019, it's theCUBE's 10th year covering it. John, you were working at VMWare, running the community, social media, podcasting, blogging, tweeting. >> Laughs: Some of those, yeah. >> When we there for the first year, you were there from the beginning, you've been with us the whole time, I want to personally thank you for being part of our journey, it's been great. A lot's changed in ten years and if you look back at the industry, two acquisitions today by VMWare, Paul Maritz took over the helm that year in 2010 from Diane Greene, laid out essentially Cloud, although it kind of didn't happen the way they thought it would happen, but, guys what's your take on ten years looking back at VMworld? What's the big moments of good, bad, and the ugly? >> To me, VMworld has been a great connecting point for the community. I don't think there has been another community and another network that has grown nearly like VM, where has done and what has happened with it. And VMworld's been a big part of that, I mean it was, whether it was VMworld in one part of the year and Partner Exchange in the other half, but it was that chance to actually see all those people that you talk to so often. I think it's been a world of difference for me. I think I've missed the first one, I think, is all I, maybe the first two. >> Yeah. >> If I remember right? So I've been at pretty much all of them along the way, but it's been unbelievable what VMworld has done for technology on making other companies realize how much bringing the network, your community together, really matters. >> The community piece, John, I want to give thoughts, was to me my observation in the past ten years has been, resiliency comes up, all the different changes in the landscape that we've seen, from the early days of theCUBE, now, to now, much different world. But you look at some of the things, the v0dgeball, the vBrownBags, the vundergrounds, all these things that were organic. VMworlds community when they find something that's good they double down on it, it hangs around, it doesn't really go away, you've got all these cool things happening. >> Well that's the secret of bringing people together both as a community of practice around their professional activity and raising the bar in their profession, their domain, and all that other good stuff happens. I think there's definitely some Vschool and PhD case studies to be written about the value of relationships and trust and ecosystem within VMware. Sure, Microsoft exists, there's other conversations going on in technology. But I think VMWare's is particularly interesting. I wanted to say though, from ten years, I mean ten years ago there was a lot of talk about private cloud, and true cloud, and all that sort of stuff, and you guys handle that at Wikibon, and SiliconANGLE, and theCUBE. But, the funny thing is now there's still a conversation going on around how dumb multicloud is and hybrid cloud is for this certain set of people. On the flip side there's trillions of dollars, much of whom is showing up, will be showing up in San Francisco next week. Trillions of dollars of business, you know, this year, solving real world problems today and not being such a pure architecturally or, I don't know, it just seems like, it's just, I'm just mystified that there's still all this multicloud is bad conversation. >> Well I think you brought up a point. The survey we were just talking about really kind of highlights what is becoming a thousand flower blooming kind of enablement happening. The societal challenges that are out there are being solved by software. And if you look at the focus this year of applications, microservices, it's really an application conversation. And it's so much that the infrastructure has to enable that, so finally, maybe this next ten years will be not about the under pinnings. >> So you're saying the next ten won't be the year of VDI? >> Laughing: I think that already kind of happened didn't it? >> It's a huge success, it's called the internet, right, smartphones. Good stuff guys. Thanks for coming on, appreciate it, good survey. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> John, thanks for coming on. A special CUBE conversation here previewing VMworld 2019 and the survey that they are talking about on Wednesday at 12:30 looking at burn out, check it out, by Cohesity, and John Troyer, TechReckoning, great survey. It's theCUBE, CUBE Conversation, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. [upbeat music]