Home Office TV

Okay, good morning, I'm Amy Bibeau and you are potentially watching another episode of our Cloudflare Home Office TV where we talk to or I talk to different people at Cloudflare about how it's been going for them to transition from a really busy office life to working from home during a crazy global pandemic.

And today my guest is Federico, will you say your last name for me, is it Bauder?

Bauder, yeah, it's a funny one because it's German but I pronounce it in Spanish so it's weird.

How do you pronounce it in Spanish?

Bauder. Bauder, okay. Bauder, but it's Bauda. Yeah, you're one of our multilingual Cloudflarians.

That's right. What do you got?

There's a lot of multilingual Cloudflarians, there's people from everywhere.

In our marketing team there's two very talented young ladies and they speak Spanish and Korean as well which is an unusual combination which is very cool and everybody seems to speak at least Portuguese and Spanish.

Yeah, Portuguese and Spanish and English.

So how's it been going? Now we clarify that this is not your home office that you're in right now.

No, no, mine is way more strange than this.

This is my mom's office, I'm visiting my parents in Houston and she has like a couple of crystals, I would have a lot more but yeah.

Right, right, I mean. This is how it all started for me.

Federico and I are crystal buddies, actually he gave me this one, I'm bringing it to TV.

This little crystal friend was a gift when Federico was in his orientation.

That was your last time in San Francisco, right?

You thought maybe you'd be able to come back and global pandemic. Well, yeah, I didn't think I was going to be coming back too often but I don't think BDRs get to travel on corporate trips to the home office.

But yeah, I certainly didn't see this coming.

I saw something coming but I wasn't sure it was going to be like a lockdown pandemic global freak out.

Yeah, how's the global freak out? So you're a BDR, business development representative and what is that like?

I mean that's normally like a very, like everybody's in the office and you guys are working and it's kind of high energy.

Like how is it for you keeping up like that energy and pace like when you're working at home?

Yeah, well, it's interesting. We still like communicate very regularly.

We're on chat like all the time and we have meetings regularly just to sort of like see how everybody's doing.

And as far as the pace is or the energy is different, you know, it's actually easier for me not to have like, because it's a sales office, we had a whole office sales floor.

I don't even remember what floor it was.

It's been so long. I think it was the fourth floor in Austin.

The fourth floor originally. I don't know if you moved it with me. Yeah, so it was all the sales people and they're very chatty after some time.

Like the IT floor is like that's what I would, where I would like to work.

But no, it's the sales floor and it's fun but it's like super chatty sometimes and it's very distracting that energy and stuff.

So I actually focus and concentrate better at the house and I've been in quarantine for the last 10 years anyway.

So I've been preparing for this.

Okay, so you're not new to isolation. Oh no, I live in a little like house in the woods.

It's like a little tree house. So it's perfect. I do miss the office sometimes.

So I'd like to be able to like go in like ideally like once or twice a week or at least once a week just to see everybody and you know.

Right, yeah.

I mean, I think the nice thing that's probably going to come out of this, especially for people that have jobs that can work remotely, is I think that after this pandemic that in the office versus working from home is going to have a lot more flexibility around it.

So that's going to be great for you. I feel like this whole thing is really tailored towards, you know, like you have less of a commute.

You can be at home with your dog. Yeah, she's very happy about that, my dog. Yeah.

Do we get to, is she going to make a cameo at all? Oh no, she's outside right now playing with my nieces.

My parents and my nieces are here as well. So they're outside playing and swinging in the hammock before the hurricanes get here.

If they do, I don't know.

We got a couple hurricanes, a double hurricane, I was telling you earlier.

So you decided to move towards the storm. Yeah. For Houston to help your family.

Well, I figured if they were going to be whipped away by the hurricanes, I'd go with them.

Yeah. Makes sense, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be easier not to deal with all this stuff if I was like survived it.

It's like, no, I don't want to not survive it together.

I don't want to. But they didn't. So I'm like, fine, I will drive towards the storm because that makes no sense.

So yeah. And you're helping them with the patio furniture, as you mentioned.

So that's nice.

I have to rescue patio furniture. Yeah. I mean, that stuff can be dangerous if it gets whipped up in a double hurricane and goes flying through the air.

Yeah.

Well, that's awesome. And so what's your typical day like now that you're working from home?

How do you know when to start your work day and how do you know when to end it so that you have that's one of the things we talk about a lot on the show.

It's kind of like people think they're going to get this time back because they're not commuting.

And then sometimes people end up working too much. Well, I end up working like really strange hours sometimes.

Like I'll be working on like the weekends or late in the afternoon when I can concentrate better doing outbound stuff.

So sometimes I end up actually working more hours. But and I forget to take breaks sometimes, which is not great because you're at the house and all of a sudden you've been working for like six hours straight and no breaks.

And my dog reminds me, it's like, hey, I've got to go pee.

I'm like, oh, yeah, let's walk.

Yeah, this quarter has been a little a little bit like harder the business to get the business.

It seems like it's it's also summer. It's August. Usually it is slower than usual than the normal and other months.

But yeah, it's it's different.

I don't have to wake up at six in the morning anymore. That's great. You know, I would have to wake up really, really early to get all the stuff that I need to do before driving to the office.

And that's that's wonderful. I get I am more rested and I have more energy.

I'm not exhausted at the end of the day when I was really, you know, with all the commute and stuff.

And it kind of makes more sense to me, like macro wise, that we're not all getting in our cars all at the same time every day, creating traffic and smog.

And like, you know, enriching the fossil fuel industry like beyond compare.

Yeah. So I think it's like a big paradigm shift towards utilizing the technology that we've had for a decade, you know, to to work remotely.

So I I don't know what it's going to look like, but I definitely don't think it's going to look like before and before is what got us into this mess.

So I don't really want to go to but back to before.

But, you know, some some sort of normalcy would be nice, at least like the social restrictions being lifted at some point.

Yeah, I think it's really challenging as you know, as a person who lives alone, you know, and used to get a lot of my social interaction from going to work and being in the office and having a lot of fun people around.

And then suddenly, like, you know, like that structure is gone.

Those interactions are happening via chat or maybe Zoom, but you don't have kind of organic ones.

And and yeah, it's it's definitely, you know, again, I I look at this, you know, break that we're all taking as kind of a boon, you know, for the planet, you know, like, you think about all the sport, ball stadiums all across every country, like not having all that disposable garbage from every game, you know, like going straight into the waterways, wherever, wherever those, you know, ultimately end up.

And so it's kind of like, it's, it's, I'm always grateful, you know, from that aspect.

And I would love to be like less community. I've always really been so confused by that paradigm of like, yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

We don't really change because we take initiative, we change out of necessity.

That's the kind of species that we are, I guess.

So this is it. This is the necessity. And there's some things that are there's, there's always good and bad.

You can focus on either one.

It's good to be aware of as much as you can. But yeah, I do miss like the social interaction with the team and the sales, like our floor was a lot of fun.

Like everybody, I mean, the people at Cloudflare are like, one of the probably the top asset of the company and the technology, obviously, and the intention behind the foundation of the company.

But yeah, I'm lucky to have a really great, great team.

The LATAM team is tight knit. We all get along and we all support each other and the rest of the BDRs as well and the AEs.

Yeah. Do you work with Guy a lot? Uh, not a lot.

I think he was not working with LATAM for a while, but I think he's making a comeback to LATAM.

So I think he might be back. I've seen them in a couple of the meetings.

There's definitely some Portuguese speakers and Spanish speakers in the Austin LATAM.

Oh, yeah. Brazil is a big part of LATAM is probably over 50%. And you're originally from Venezuela?

Yeah. Okay. Not originally. I mean, who knows where any of us are originally from?

The 80s probably. Yeah, most likely. Smoothie of the universe.

Yeah, exactly. Somehow we ended up on the earth. We're from everywhere and nowhere.

Yeah, exactly. We like to get deep on Cloudflare TV for sure.

Oh, yeah, for sure. We're not even here right now. This is all holographic.

Yeah. And none of this is even real. It isn't. I can't open my windows today because of smoke.

I really want to go outside and it's just smoke. How bad is it over there?

Because you guys are from Northern California. I saw pictures from space and it looks horrible.

It's just gray. When I open my window right now, it's like a total...

I can't open the window. It's hot in here. But I can't open the window today because of the smoke.

Well, at least everybody's got masks.

Yeah, we do. We have more masks. I actually still have my mask from the fires from 2018.

So I got an N95 mask that we purchased for the employees when we were having that issue.

I kept it because I was like, this could be a valuable resource for me.

And it's come in quite handy. I'm trying to find my light. I was noticing I was in the shadow too much.

No, that's a little bit better. That's how you do shadow work.

I've been doing a lot of shadow work during this pandemic. Oh, yeah.

I feel like we're kind of going through... That's actually like a point I make on my show kind of regularly is actually this pandemic is kind of putting people through kind of a collective shadow experience is what it feels like.

Because so much stuff is just like coming out to the surface.

You know, people have all this time at home with their families.

Yeah. You know that they probably... Yeah. All kinds of COVID breakups and divorces happening and all kinds of relationships starting up as well.

And like with yourself, like you're being forced like a whole planet having to reflect for the first time probably, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I've been reflecting personally, like, you know, throughout this earth body experience.

But I think a lot of the humans right now are kind of have been forced to be like, OK, I don't have...

I can't go to the bar. My sport ball game isn't on.

You know, I have to be here with my wife or my husband and my children. So, yeah, I mean, people it's going to it's going to definitely bring things up.

And hopefully, you know, we're looking at those things as they come up.

I mean, obviously, also, you know, the shadow of what this country was founded on, you know, which is, you know, genocide and slavery, you know, is coming to the surface.

And so we're kind of having to take a look at that where we're looking at the roots of like the police system and everything.

Yeah. And how that I think it's all the sewage is coming to the surface for everybody personally and collectively.

And it's not pretty. It's not pretty. But it's good that it's I guess it's it is what it is.

You know, right. We can't. I think it's going to get more intense for a while before it starts to get less intense.

But also, I don't want to attach myself to any outcome, you know.

Yeah, I'm I'm a bit concerned as we're moving into November, as we're moving into, you know, the next like political, hopefully, I'm hoping for a political transition to happen in November, you know, and maybe that we could get like a like full dictatorship.

I'm looking for that to not happen.

But I kind of, you know, I'm hoping that that that isn't our trajectory.

But it's, you know, it's a bit of a concerning time. I know that I wasn't doing that well with all this isolation.

So that's why I was telling you I decided to move.

So yeah, my next time I'm in the show, I'll be in my new spot, which is exciting.

Yeah. So I know you're super weird. So how weird do you get on your channel?

Like, I don't know about you. I mean, it's like this because it's like our work.

But weird, I mean, it is a compliment. So yeah, totally, totally.

I can get super weird. Ouch. I just hurt my toe. But because I try to be allowed to talk about string theory and I'm sure we can talk about string theory.

I just try to keep it. I'm not sure who all of our customers are. So I never want to.

We have like three viewers. And my mom's like, sorry, mom, you can't see.

So exactly. As long as we're not looking at each other. We can be weird, weird, as weird as we want.

You got some more crystals to bust out. Yeah, there's definitely some crystals.

These are not the best. I like this one a lot. Is that a, what is it?

Is it Moldavite? No, this is Carborundum. It's a really fascinating thing.

It happens in nature, but it's very rare that it happens in nature.

This would be what would happen if a diamond is not super successful. This is what comes before a diamond.

It's an unsuccessful diamond. So it could have been like my wedding ring.

Yeah, that went dark real fast.

That was an unsuccessful diamond. I'll get weird. Here we go.

2020, let's go dark. Yeah, it's really dark. But I mean, I still think like your suggestion of making this one into a sweet ring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And like we were saying, like the little temperature guns, I thought there were third eye openers.

I was like, oh, what a great idea. Oh, it's just for, ah, just for, never mind.

Yeah. So, so you went to a yoga class and they were going around taking temperatures and they pointed a thing at your third eye.

Yeah. I'm glad it happened at a yoga studio where I got my gun pointed at my head, my third eye and that somewhere else.

Like the airport. It wasn't as, it wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be.

Right. It's actually some kind of like a brain scan where like once they pointed at you, then Bill Gates has all of your information, you know?

Yeah. Which is funny because he already has all your information.

This whole conspiracy, like where all the, um, I mean, again, it's 2020.

Things are weird. You start to see. All the conspiracies are true now. They're all true.

They're like, oh my God, they're all. You start to see like on your Facebook feed, your social media feeds, like which of your friends who you were like, well, that's okay.

You're kind of like, I mean, I'm not going to give up on a friend because they might be like an anti-vaxxer or something like that, that I understand people have their reasons, but then it's like suddenly you see your one friend who's kind of an anti-vaxxer and then they start like sliding down like the queue and not.

Well, I have to take social media breaks regularly, you know, and just like, Ooh, I got a detox.

I mean the amount it's like, if I had a hashtag for 2020, it would be exponential.

It's like, everything is exponential. Like you look at the charge for anything and they go like that or like that.

Nothing is like average. No, it's like crazy.

Like the velocity of money chart, like the charts on the fed website are insane.

Nobody looks at those, but like money velocity is how fast money is spent.

It's like, it's like zero. It's like people are not spending any money, you know?

So it doesn't like the economy is not moving at all. It's just all in the stock market and that probably going to explode pretty soon and just go, who knows?

We're not giving any stock advice on our show. So that's an opinion. It's a total opinion.

We don't know. I think, you know, it's like having an economy that's based solely on like consumer consumption is a poor model, you know?

And so hopefully again, like we can look and be like, Hey, this model of like what we're, you know, building an entire economy on cheap plastic pre-garbage from China, you know, just doesn't seem wise to me.

We love it. We keep buying it. So yeah.

I'm not a big plastic pre-garbage purchaser. Some really smart guys. Like I like Ray Dalio.

I follow a lot of economic analysts and stuff. He's the founder of Bridgewater Associates.

That's a big, huge hedge fund. And he has some interesting, like he's studied a lot of stuff.

A history of currencies and things. And it's really fascinating to see his things, his theories and stuff.

And like, nobody knows.

There's people, it's like we're super polarized. You're either like super red or super blue, or you think this is, you know, it's really causing a lot of conflict and dialogue with people and families.

And it's really polarizing. And it'll probably continue to be like that.

But yeah, it's interesting. So he thinks that we're at the end of the life cycle of the fiat currencies or the US dollar.

And they all have kind of like a hundred year cycles and we're kind of overdue.

So it might be that we're moving into like more like blockchain stuff, you know, and cryptos and things like that.

So that can be chaotic for a minute. That's what the blockchain crypto people have been saying.

You know, I have had many interesting discussions with my Facebook fam about fiat currencies over the years.

So I'd be interested to hear something, you know, like from, you know, someone who's more of like an actual expert.

I never know which like links to click. So I just ignore, I just like give a lot of likes and like angry faces, but I'm not really reading like someone's like, did you see the pandemic movie?

I'm like, no, I'm not going to watch that.

I need to save every pencil that I have. Yeah. I mean, the experts are great to listen to, but they're in their bubble.

So they don't really, most of them don't really see anything outside their little bubble.

So it's good to get the perspective.

But, and then again, like who's an expert at anything?

We don't know anything. It's like the more time passes, the older I get, it's like the more I realize I know nothing.

And that gives me actually a lot of comfort to know that I know very little.

Yeah, I agree with understanding the limitations of what we think we know and like understanding that there's such a great amount of mystery beyond, you know, beyond like whether it's the dominant paradigm that we grew up with and what we learned there, or even if we, even if we like went off on like a seeking journey, you know, to like learn as much knowledge as possible, there's still like such a greater amount of things that we have no idea about.

One of the things, as we were moving into 2020, I was at a friend's place and there just happened to be like a channeling of Bashar.

Do you know who Bashar is?

Oh yeah. Yeah, of course. So I was like, ooh, a Bashar channeling. So for those of us who are just watching for like our four- YouTube Bashar.

Yeah, exactly. B -A-S-H-E-R, right?

No, A-R. So one of the things that he was saying about 2020 was basically to stay in the calm eye of the storm.

It was like the advice was that this year is going to be crazy and that everyone should be as much as possible like in the eye of the storm.

So it's, you know, maintaining their own center, you know, is like very important.

It's important anyway, but like during 2020, he was like highlighting the importance of staying in the eye of the storm, which I mean, you might be in the eye of two storms coming up here.

Yeah, I know. I totally agree with that.

And it's just, it's been sort of my, thankfully I've had practice with that over the years.

So if you're just trying to figure out how to keep calm in the eye of a storm in 2020 and learn to meditate for the first time in 2020, you've picked a really, you know, you're an extremist.

You're like, oh, let me try to learn meditation during the meltdown.

But fortunately I've been learning before, but yeah, it totally helps.

Especially like getting bombarded by all the experts, you know, everybody's opinions.

Like we're all like, it's like we were bred as children to compete with others' opinions and not accept or cooperate or, you know, not accept everybody else's.

It's just like, hey, it's just that everybody can have the, everybody has their point of view.

There's as many points of view as there are people viewing it from different places and bodies, you know?

So hopefully we'll become more acceptant of each other. That'd be nice.

It would be nice to see a greater level of tolerance and understanding, you know, at the end of this.

Historically, I haven't been seeing this happening.

Maybe on the other side of this. That's usually what comes on the other side of like this stuff.

What kind of dark portal we're all in right now. Yeah, we're on fire here and you've got double hurricanes.

And I think in that LA that we're reporting, there's also an increase in like climate change stuff is getting really interesting and scary, you know?

All kinds of floods in China. I mean, we don't want to get like all like crazy here.

Like it's the end of the world.

Not yet, anyway. I mean, all worlds kind of come to an end. No planet is, you know, inhabitable forever.

But we're not. We're a long ways from any of that. Right. Because we still have a bunch of like karma to mitigate of all of our choices that, you know what I mean?

Like there's like a long journey ahead of, yeah. And I mean, that's why like, I mean, I've always been a bit of a concerned, like I've been watching, I mean, since probably the 90s, when I would look into the future, I was like, yeah, I've been concerned.

I've been I've been worried. And so I feel a little bit relieved because now everybody's worried, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel more connected.

You don't feel so crazy anymore. Right, exactly. I was like, oh, I'm not crazy now.

Now I'm like the normal one. Right. Now I'm the one who remember when I said in 1993 that we were going to have the rivers flowing with plastic and everybody looked at me weird.

No, I know. I had I had a lot of visions of, you know, I had a lot of forevision of this kind of stuff that that's now unfolding.

But but when you're kind of in that space and you're seeing it on your own and you don't have a network, at least now I can be like, OK, well, everybody's doom scrolling.

So it's. Yeah, I think it's a great opportunity for a lot of people to have some sort of awakening.

This this year has been a great like kick in the butt, you know, slap in the face, slap in the face, punch in the gut.

Yeah, there's there's always going to be good things and bad things, you know, but.

What's the thing you're most optimistic about?

Most optimistic about, I would say, like the environment is getting a break in on most fronts and it recovers really quickly.

So that's really, really nice. Maybe a shift to something more sustainable as far as like macro economies go.

And hopefully a kind of some sort of like redistribution, a little bit of wealth so that it's not all concentrated in this like it's not even one percent anymore.

I think it's less than that. Yeah.

So that's just, you know, I think something like a block chain, I think like switching over to block chain would never be something very smooth.

It's going to make some people like really scared to lose all the power that they have.

But I think it's sort of inevitable and definitely Cloudflare is in the right sort of business.

It was a great timing for me to switch from oil and gas to cyber security on the cloud.

Yeah, we're glad to have you. I was I was surprised when we had originally talked and I learned your history.

Yeah, I'm making an oil and gas, but I am infinitely more happy here.

Yeah, I believe that. I know Cloudflare for me has been a really great.

Oh, great. I can't see what time it is anymore. It's 12.

OK, I have three minutes, three minutes left. Three minutes. What's that? You have to wrap it up with like some amazing wisdom.

Wow, I feel a lot of pressure.

Didn't I already just share so much amazing wisdom? No, I think we already like, it's like, hey, stay present.

I think the wisdom, again, that we're getting from this, like to sum it up, right?

It's like seeing this dynamic of everybody getting in their cars at once and creating that like stress on the planet, hopefully moving towards a currency that can be more fair and equitable for everyone and an economic model that could offer more transparency.

Blockchain is transparent, more transparent.

Right. So we want more transparency, better opportunities, less concentration of all the resources with a very small.

Kind of like a more real sense of democracy as well. Not this like who knows what's happening with these whatever, you know?

Yeah, I would like to see that.

I think that the principles that this, you know, the United States of America, because again, we have a global, you know, global company.

But, you know, the foundation, aside from like the terrible parts of the foundation of this country, but like the ideals that we have in our constitution, you know, I think are really amazing.

And I would love to see those playing out in a way that really is working for everyone.

Maybe out of this, you know, pause that and shift that we're being like forced through like something more beautiful, you know, can come out of it.

And then don't forget to take breaks. Yeah, it's a really good year to go back to the basics and like remember to be aware of your breath at least for a few minutes out of every day.

Just like really feel the air going through your nose. And you can go deeper than that.

And like you can YouTube things like how to do bone breathing, you know, old ancient techniques of breathing into your bone marrow to release stem cells and stuff.

They're all there. And you're most of them are in your femur and your hips and just kind of breathe into your femur and your hips.

If you can get that deep in your breath and meditation, and that kind of really calms you down.

You do that for 20 minutes. Good. All right. So, you know, everybody look up, everybody, five of you, look up bone breathing, you know, because this is the first time I'm hearing about it.

I think this is going to be our deepest wisdom of the show.

There's something called bone breathing where you can breathe into your hips and femur and release stem cells that are going to do good things for your body.

And it'll help you keep calm in the eye of the storm, for sure.

Keeping calm in the eye of the storm, or in Federico's case, the double storm.

Anyway, thanks for having me on. Thank you so much. We have about 10 seconds left.

And so, you know, I'm going to let the viewers look at this crystal for the next.

My precious. Thank you, Federico.