00:13
Is that awkward to write up on your own? You know, only a little bit to pull it. Oh well, um, I want to welcome you to the Fun with the Bun podcast. So, uh, an additional fun fact, I actually used to have a man bun in a previous life. I got to say, you telling me this actually disappoints me a lot that it's not there.
00:35
Look, I honestly guys, I actually, I missed the man bun so much so that I've dreamed about it since. Wait, I feel like you actually should bring it back. Why, why did you get rid of it? So it doesn't really play well in boardrooms for me. Charlie, should I, I, I mean, I'm in the boardroom quarterly.
00:53
This is very concerning. Duly noted. Maybe it's a government thing. OK, fair enough, fair enough. Now I do know that you had the man with the with the DOR because Tom Brady also mentioned this to me at some point and so. Um, but I wanna take it way back before DOR.
01:13
We're gonna talk a little bit about how did you find your way into IT? So if I had that if you know you know moment, it was probably in middle school. I wanted to download and play uh Age of Empires 2 in the computer lab with my friends, and those darn IT guys put a web filter in place and wouldn't let me download it, but I think there's a bit of poetic justice in the fact that now I'm the guy running the web
01:36
filter. Have you, have you blocked out Age of Empire? Look, I've tried convincing my boss to let it through, and he won't. He says it's a time sync, but I'll keep fighting it. But from there I went into my high school IT program, got A plus certified, and actually went right into the University of Southern Mississippi's IT program to the top if
01:57
we've got any other golden eagles in here. Are there any golden eagles? But from there, uh, well, I'll hold strong, um, but while I was in college, I was actually, uh, working for a local copier company as a lone wolf IT guy. So for anybody that's ever fought with a printer before.
02:15
I know it sounds like the setup for a bad joke, but that was actually my lived experience. I, I was fighting with the printer last week. We have a whole new system, so I might actually have to call you. Did you put a support ticket in? You know what I did? I just, I, I just, I unplugged it and then I
02:31
tried to replug it back in. I may have banged on it a little bit. That's that usually fixes it. Yeah, you've got to assert dominance. I promise I didn't bang on the printer. Well, so you eventually find your way over to the Department of Revenue as a network specialist. How did that happen? So about 9 years ago, uh,
02:49
my story with Pure and the agency's story with Pure started at the same time almost to the day. So I was baptized in Flash and came up dripping orange. All right, I am on the job. Here we go. I like that energy. So you know I'm thrown in the deep end and asked to deploy a flashjack with a robust
03:10
experience of fighting with printers, um, and I really felt like I was in a sink or swim situation, but I found it a lot easier to swim when the waters were orange. So with that CBD gripped awful tightly in one hand, I marched forward into that wild orange yonder from there, and this is actually where I started to really think like an engineer, right? Um, I didn't realize it at the time, but this
03:33
was such a pivotal moment for our agency. Up until this point, we'd only run our internal applications, right? It was just a cutesy little 4 note environment, but we're starting to take over our customer taxpayer facing applications and so by show of hands, anybody in here competitive? OK, yeah, I thought I'd get that. I'm glad I'm not alone.
03:53
So this first application that we brought over onto it, um, is actually a boxed application that a lot of other states and some countries use, um, so I actually found out there was a leader board for this application, right? So I reached out to my PMs and got back to see where we sat, right?
04:11
3rd in the world. And now I was really happy for like 30 seconds until I decided I wanted first place. Yes, exactly. So we've been going back and forth with that now we're usually bobbling up around in the top three globally. Nobody likes being 3rd place.
04:25
I do love though that you were baptized in Flash. I feel like that makes you solid to the core. I love it. Thanks, we're at the sphere tonight. Um, all right, so, all right, after the first win, so you have one flash array. You get a win.
04:45
How does this, how do you keep the momentum going? All right, so it happens. What's better than one flash stack? Naturally, 3 flash stacks. I love it. So we had this. Our application owners were loving it, right? Everybody wanted their data moved on to these
04:58
systems. The next big system that we brought back in-house was our tax system for the state. So that little competitive streak in me came back up again. And we wanted to do a study to see how many hours we were saving in loading screen times, right? That translates pretty well to management.
05:15
So we did the study and we saved 200 hours per week in just loading screen time reduction. That's amazing and that's actually really important for, you know, an organization, an agency that's bringing in what 12 billion, uh, in revenue every year. So I have to say this because my chief legal counsel would get on to me if I didn't.
05:36
technically I think it was 10.9 billion. I I it up. I 10.9. For some reason we're real specific about numbers at our agency. Well, and you, uh, you did share with me yesterday that you're actually on the steerco for the construction of the new distribution center, which I know that you're thinking about
05:57
kind of painting that orange as well. So that is definitely something we have coming with that. So Mississippi is an alcoholic beverage control state. Uh, the warehouse that we have right now is actually older than me, and I know that's not saying a lot. I understand my place there,
06:11
all right, but it was built before networks were a thing, right? So I've been given this once in a career opportunity to rebuild everything, the entire business process, everything from the power coming in to the bottle shipping out the door in this new facility and refactor everything.
06:26
It's so exciting. That's awesome. Love hearing that. Now you grew up with Pure effectively. You've been at the DOR for the last 8 years. I've been at Pure for the last 8 years, so we've seen some fun things that have come. Now how has Pure played a role, if any, in your own growth trajectory at DOR?
06:44
Well, you know, this might surprise some folks out in the crowd, um, but government agencies aren't exactly known for being a challenger mindset and pushing limits, right? But pure is so it was really able to ingrain a mindset in me for how we could use these capacity platforms that we have built to drive better customer outcomes and I,
07:05
I use that word customer right? that implies that people have an option to go to another Mississippi Department of Revenue, right? Taxes aren't an optional thing. I want it to be a low friction engagement, right? There's what's the old adage, uh, help me out here guys.
07:20
There are two certainties in life, right? Death and. There we go, death and taxes, right? So because of that, I take it really personal because when we have better customer outcomes, I, as a taxpayer in the beautiful state of Mississippi get better outcomes in the first place where this really showed it in my career was we got to our first hardware refresh in our
07:42
data centers that had were really growing at this time. We had lots more business processes coming in. And unfortunately, not everybody has an evergreen model, right? So I did have to replace some servers and some network hardware. But I made some big bets with it,
07:57
so I wanted to go true private cloud, cloud defined, right? So for those of y'all in the crowd that know me, all right, I am a nerd, self-proclaimed. That is not an insult. That's a badge of honor, right? I think so. I think it's fair to say we got a lot of those in here.
08:13
Yeah, yeah, I like you. We should talk. Um, but we made some huge bets with this. I actually decreased our server footprint by 20% and increased application performance by 15%. That's amazing. My boss was quite happy, but that's not the end of the story. So we had so many new systems come online after
08:35
this on this form factor. So in the time since what I call BP before Pure until now, we've actually grown 1,800% in that form factor. That's amazing. Well, now, obviously with all these wins under your belt, uh, your manager sees something in you.
08:53
You've gone from an icy and now he wants. You to lead a team, you become a manager. Talk to me about how that has sort of changed the way you operate. Has that changed in the way you, you, you know, you view things and how are you leading these new this new generation of technologists at the DOR?
09:11
So at this point in my career, I, I'm so blessed at work. I love it, right? I've got what I call my three B's, right? Business need, budget, and a boss that trusts me. Well then that boss that trust me sauntered into my office and tricked me into management. Oh no,
09:27
all right, so, but he, he had a point. It was a good move for me in my career, but I told him you're gonna have to take architecture from my cold, unemployed hands. OK, right. But I'm gonna be vulnerable with you guys for a minute. I think that's important as a manager and just, you know,
09:43
being in the community is. I was nervous moving into this at this point in my career. I was only worried about my work product and my contributions to the agency. But now I had a team I was accountable for, but I think even more than that. I I was accountable to them and their work life balance.
10:04
I don't wanna be the reason these guys don't wanna come into work on Monday morning, right? I wanna be the reason they're excited and fired up, and I wanna give them those connections to ignite a fire in them like the one that was ignited inside of me with the community and giving them the opportunity to work on really cool innovative stuff, right? And I mean as somebody who has the privilege of
10:24
leading our people team at at Pure, um. You know, hearing that from a manager makes me all sorts of happy because it, you know, I always tell my team your success is my job and so that's what it sounds like what you're doing. It really is just yesterday actually uh my lead was working on something because of course you know we all leave the office to come to
10:44
conferences, but we can't really leave, right? Uh, so he messaged me about something and I told him, you know, at the end of it I said, ultimately I'm gonna fully back you on this king, do what you got. Yeah, right, and it's that's one of those things I love having with my guys.
10:56
Well, what about talent and skill sets? Like what are you looking for then as you hire and build a team and continue on this, you know, with this pure trajectory at the DOR? What's important to you? So one of the things that's really critical for us is to look for guys that are hungry, that want that, that have that drive to build something cool,
11:16
right? And not just that, but how we can really translate that. And one of the things, so y'all forgive me, I think it's recorded. I did a session on this yesterday, so this is a shameless plug, but we look for tools like the pure fusion platform. Um, it allows me to put some guard rails around my junior guys and allow them to start,
11:34
you know, punching above their weight class a little bit, but I can take my senior guys and I can let them start thinking strategically where they can make these big bets, right? That's fantastic. Now I know we're short on time here, so I, um.
11:49
I, I love to ask really weird questions, so we're gonna do some rapid fire. I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep it simple though first. Where do you go for news on the industry? Uh, the new stack. Why? Uh, so they're relevant.
12:02
They push the limits and they also appreciate Pure, OK. We just heard from Jeff from Sirius XM, favorite Sirius XM channel. Octane. Oh nice. Do we have any? Yeah, we got some over here. Mine's Alt Nation followed by lithium.
12:19
Lithium's my number 2 as well. Oh nice. I think Jeff also likes I get a, yeah, of course, um, OK, if you could swap jobs with one person at Pure for a day, who would it be and why? Oh, he's sitting right there. It's Rob Lee. He is the Batman of storage.
12:34
All right. I also wanna, I wanna see what he can do in our shop. The Batman, Rob, the Dark Knight of Data Lee. I can see it. We're gonna create a whole thing on it. We can have this on a podcast. But that does actually, I'm sorry, I'm thinking I've, I've now I've got a vision in my head.
12:51
What, um, does that make, does that make cause Robin? Uh, I'm gonna defer to legal counsel on this one. All right, fair enough, fair enough. Um, OK, so, um. I want you to look into your crystal ball.
13:11
We're 5 years from now. What do you see? They're clouds, they're orange. They're forming, they're forming an enterprise data cloud. Oh my God, I love this. All right, well, look, I know we're out of time, so I just want to ask, you know,
13:28
are there any final thoughts or words to live by for anybody out there that's walking a similar path? Yeah, so I always like to tell people stay curious in the work that you do. Reach out to your engineering teams, right? I always reach out to my SE with, uh, we've got this inside joke. I say, hey, I got a bad idea.
13:45
I wanna run past you. Find your bad ideas and reach out because they'll either have the answers to how you can turn value off that or they'll connect you to the broader community because Pure is filled with experts across all sorts of domains, you know, when I think back across my career and all of the opportunities I've been given by coaches and mentors.
14:07
I'm drawn back to the words of the stoic philosopher Seneca. Seneca said that luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparedness. That first week on the job when I was given the opportunity to deploy a flash stack was when I was given the opportunity to start defining my own luck. Oh. I love that.
14:28
That is so awesome. Um, wow. So what I'm hearing is, you know, find your people, embrace the opportunity, think differently. I say, you know, there are no bad ideas. There are ideas that work and there are ideas that don't work, but you got to figure it out, right?
14:43
Um, oh, I just love how you brought us full circle. It's not just about how you think about storage, but really how it's growing your own career and how it's lending to the growth of your own team as well. Um, so you know you've, you've really shown us what it's like to lead from wherever you are, and I'm so grateful for that.
15:03
I love that you ended with a Seneca quote. This is awesome. I mean, only you can kind of combine Roman philosophy with, you know, flash stacks and bad ideas, and it turns out to be like super genius. Uh, well, I can't think of a better way to wrap up this conversation than to kind of flash something up on the screen.
15:21
Now you are literally a poster child for the Mississippi Department of Revenue and so they recently posted on LinkedIn how proud they are of you. And so, um, you know, I, I think they've, um. I don't know. I may have just messed up my mic, um, but you can see up there, uh, and you can go to Mike's,
15:42
uh, uh, LinkedIn profile of the Mississippi Department of Revenue, um, you know, there you have it. So you know I ask of you today, how do you be more like Mike, you know, he. He is, he is curious. He is community driven, and he's always thinking moves ahead.
16:01
Um, now I also looked into the crystal ball for you and what I found was you may have 99 problems, but a disc ain't one. So there is a vintage pure t-shirt for you from many, many years ago. And I am thrilled to be able to sit up here with you today, Mike. Thank you so much for your trust in Pure.
16:22
We are so grateful to partner with you on this journey and, um, let's give a round of applause to Mike.