Vetflare: Service in the military and beyond

Hi everyone, today we're focused on a topic close to our hearts, the transition of veterans from military service to civilian life in the corporate world. This journey often comes with unique challenges, remarkable insights and incredible opportunities. I'm proud to welcome many of my colleagues here at Cloudflare featuring veterans who have served in militaries from around the globe. Their experiences offer a powerful look at the resilience, leadership and diverse skill sets that service has brought to their post-military careers. With that, let's introduce ourselves. I'm Chris. I run the React team here at Cloudflare that focuses on incident response and threat hunting. And I served in the U.S. Army where I worked in cybersecurity and military intelligence. Hi everyone, I'm Starr Corbin. I oversee enterprise applications under the scope of the IT group here at Cloudflare. I first enlisted in the Army as a medic and then received my commissioned as a signal officer. Hi, I'm Kelli Hooke. I'm associate general counsel, public sector in the compliance section. I was in the Army for 20 years. I started out in transportation, then switched to JAG. So that's why I'm returning. I'm Trent Wooten, customer success manager for Central. I was in the Navy from 2001 to 2007, where I was a Tomahawk computer technician and have loved computers ever since. That's great. You know, at Cloudflare here, we have a team we call VetFlare and it's one of our many ways we show pride in our military history and experience. But we realize that a lot of people need to hear these stories to understand what that transition is like. So with that, I've got a few questions here and I'm hoping that you guys can give me some feedback on. So let's start out with the first question. Traditionally enter the military, you're leaving the home and you're stepping away from the nest, so to speak. This is the second time that you get to do that, though. When you leave the military, you're leaving your second home, your second family, and you're kind of stepping out into the civilian world. And it is oftentimes a huge adjustment. I'm curious what you guys had experience-wise with that transition from military back to civilian life. I was pretty fortunate. At the time, I was a third-generation military service member. So my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my dad, my uncles had all served. So it was a natural progression when I decided to go, although it wasn't expected. I wasn't planning on going. It was just sort of a last-minute decision. And so I was fortunate in that I'd grown up living all over the world as a military brat. So going off and joining the military was almost like coming home. I sort of joke that I joined the Army to see the world and I got stationed back at Texas. So besides the biggest part of the world that I saw during my 10 years of military service was being deployed to Iraq. So getting to experience the Middle East was definitely an area that I hadn't experienced even growing up. And then I think for me, I was very fortunate being from Texas. My transition out of the military back into the civilian world, I actually stayed pretty close from where I'd left my service. So I stayed in the Austin area. I was stationed at Fort Hood previously. And I was also fortunate in that because I was in, as a signal officer, I was in the Army's IT branch. So I was able to transition a lot easier into the tech sector. And it's actually why I chose to be in Austin. So the transition was a little bit more, I hadn't anticipated certain bumps in the road, especially with just finding a job in the local Austin market. I was very fortunate in that when I did leave the Army, I was already armed with a lot of skills that made transitioning into the civilian world a lot easier than maybe for most. That's pretty great. I think we all have a similar experience where we get to transition some of the lessons and things that we learned inside of the military into that civilian role. And I think that plays an important part with all of our roles here at Cloudflare. Kelly, what was your experience like? So after 20 years, you get really indoctrinated. And I saw that with some of my colleagues and friends, that it was hard. So I kind of geared myself up. Okay, it's going to be hard, but I'm going to do this. And so about two years out, I started hanging out with more non-military folks. I found out no one likes to be called a civilian. They like to be called people. And I was like, people? No, I just started having more and more interactions outside the military community. So I feel a little more comfortable. I was just bound and determined on the inside of myself to be resilient and flexible and be okay with this new thing. And I thought I was doing awesome. I thought I was doing so awesome. But about four months, five months out, being out and working and having everything go my way, I just kind of felt lost. Like it was like this internal, but I didn't even identify it. But my brother -in-law, who had made the transition years before, said, Hey, Kelly, if you need someone to talk, just I'm here. I know I've been here. And there was just something immediately like him seeing me that was like, I do need help. I feel lost. I'm no longer who I was. And just knowing that he saw me and that was okay. And he told me it's going to take at least a year. Then I was able to kind of like sit with those feelings and be fine. And I would never use the term sit with those feelings back when I was in the army. But I found out that you do. You sit with feelings. You need to acknowledge them and then kind of move through them. And I did. But it did feel weird because I identify more as a soldier than an attorney, even to this day. And people are like, you're not a soldier anymore. But it's just it's like this core being. Well, what do the Marines say? Once a Marine, always a Marine. But, you know, your experience brings up an interesting point, you know, and I think it's important, not just from the government side, but the civilian side. It's having those battle buddies or those mentors who are there to help guide you as you kind of stumble and go across these little hurdles that come in life and obviously transitioning from the military and being used to everything, having an acronym and then coming into the civilian world when nobody knows what those acronyms are or they have a completely different meaning. It can be a bit jarring and you have to kind of untrain your brain for sure. I'm curious, Trent, what was your experience like when you left the Navy? Yeah, you know, it's funny that you brought up battle buddy because that was kind of one of my biggest transitions is like whenever you're in the military, everything is so structured. The pipeline kind of career achievement or upper mobility is kind of laid out for you. As long as you pass the test and pass your PTs, you're kind of on track to get rank. Whenever you get out, as long as like if you have a tight network of kind of buddies that have been in the military, you can have some guidance. But whenever I got out, I moved back to kind of my hometown in Southern California and didn't really have a lot of kind of military or family of military. I kind of understood the transition. And so I, it took years for me to find, like I started going back to school and then found another army vet who turned into one of my roommates. And then to this day, now we are each other's guys to kind of help each other and make sure we achieve our goals, remind each other of what's important and kind of fill in a lot of those gaps that civilians might not really understand that we have as kind of prior service members. We need that community. And sometimes we just need that guidance. I think it's absolutely right. You know, one of the great things here is obviously many of us get to hang out in our vet flare chat and we can kind of be support and ears to kind of listen when these things pop up. But, you know, there's kind of a bigger experience we have where it's not just us, it's our families. So, you know, I'm curious as, as your military service and then your transition outside of the military services, what kind of impacts did you have or changes did you have on the ability to kind of build significant relationships? You know, personally, I know that in the military, we had that rotation of every couple of years, you're moving to a new duty station. So you make a few friends, but you know, going into those relationship that those friends aren't necessarily going to be there forever, or those bosses or those coworkers won't be there forever. So I'm curious what everyone else's experience was with that, both in the military and post-military, maybe even here at CarbFlare. I'm going to volunteer for first one on this. I think I have a funny story. So when I went to STRATCOM, it's strategic command. It's the, at the time I was there, which it's changed, it had the nuclear arsenal, cyber command and space command were all underneath it. And I had to get top secret compartmentalized clearance. And so there was an additional investigation and mine was held up. Mine was held up because I had an investigator that didn't really understand how frequently military move. I think he was doing a lot of TS investigations for civilian national security folks. And he kept on wanting me to have friends that are five, 10 years old that I contact on at least on a monthly basis. And, and, and I didn't have anybody. I didn't have anybody that, I mean, I had people like military buddies that like, when we see each other, it's like we never left, but moving every two years, you just don't have those folks. And he was so frustrated. And my, so my TS was being held up because I didn't have any friends and I was like, well, okay. And so they ended up inviting, interviewing my husband, which they never interviewed the spouses because spouses are inherently untrustworthy because if things are going good, they're going to, they're going to build up your career and not tell any of the bad things. And if things are going bad, well, they again, may not be all that trustworthy. And, but my, my general would make fun of me about me not having friends for the rest of the time. So it did affect those, those relationships though. Any of those military colleagues, like if I call them up today, they would be there for me if I needed. My husband was also, we both were in the military together and we both got out around just like about a year apart together. And so we had, we sort of had that, you know, I like to joke, a lot of people call it trauma bonding. So we can really lean on each other and like immediately get each other, you know, whatever we were going through the military and then afterwards. But it is funny, I, when I look back today at who my, like who my closest friends are, you know, I mean, I have, I have a lot of friends, you know, and the place that I grew, that I live in now, who's still friends with people from high school or from college. But for me, my longest friends have been the ones that I met when I, when I early on, when I was in the military. My best friend to this day was someone that I had met at my first duty station. And even though like he lives in a completely different state, right? Like we, we all, you know, him and my husband and I, we went through some of the very similar military experiences together, probably the hardest times in our military career. And so fast forward, you know, we've been friends for 20 years and there's, there's different people that I served with earlier in my career that I'm, I'm actually closer to than probably people that, you know, I've been friends with either, you know, from high school or from college. And I, I do think that even though if you were to line us all up in a row, we, we each live very, very different lives and chose very, very, very different paths. But that, that commonality of our military service that it's, it's just always there. And it's, it's the glue that keeps us together. And even though it's been 20 years since some of us have served together, we somehow, we still find new stories about that service to share and laugh about. And there's just, there's just some comfort in it after even, you know, being out of the, out of service for so long or having, you know, a completely different life than what you had before. One thing that I find interesting about the relationships is that the older we get, it doesn't kind of diminish the value of the relationships that we established, especially for me, it was kind of coming out of going to my first duty station or my first ship or first three ships. I still keep in touch with a lot of the people that I, that I served with a couple of them. I've gone out of my way to fly to the East coast. I'm on, I'm in San Francisco. I flew into the East coast to visit one of my best friends that I met literally day one of bootcamp. And then kind of the enriching relationship or the enriching nature of kind of being veterans is like, I met my now wife. First time I met her parents, always intimidating meeting, meeting the girlfriend's parents. Her dad was an army vet, spent time in Vietnam as though that was like an instant wall breaker and kind of just, it helped us understand each other a little bit better. Like what are our commitments? How serious are we trying to take kind of what we commit ourselves to? And it, I think it really improves the relationships and it doesn't always need to be somebody that's around all the time, but we are reliable for each other. And that's kind of one thing that I love about the veteran community is like, we, in the chat, we might go back and forth, but then there will be times where the chat is quiet. Nobody takes it too personally, but as soon as somebody chimes up or somebody new is introduced, everyone kind of dives in and I'm like, make sure that they're, they're, they're recognized and kind of notice like, Hey, I'm a veteran, you're a veteran, need anything, need help at like navigating Cloudflare. I think any of us could go to any of us and we'd get kind of respectful help rather than like just being the new person and kind of being the burden for our Cloudflare buddy, I guess. ISKRA You know, that, that absolutely makes sense here. There's kind of that ingrained military kind of sense of urgency and how to operate under pressure that when you talk to someone else who's been there, they understand it. And that's not to say that many people in the civilian world aren't operating under those tense pressures, but when you have been put in, you know, very difficult times, you kind of build those, those bonds or trauma bonds, as Star had mentioned. You know, so that actually does bring up a very interesting, you know, question I have as well, where, you know, the sense of urgency here, our mission is pretty high at Cloudflare. You know, we have a mission to help build a better Internet, you know, and just like in the military, every role we have here is tied to a larger, often critical mission. So each of us work in different areas within the organization, but what we do cohesively ends up being the output that is this great Internet capability that we provide through our services. So I'm curious, you know, how do you translate some of those military lessons learned into the way you work at work today? Are there things that you do with leadership on the fly, you know, kind of the hip pocket trainings that we maybe did in the military, or is there ways that you try to figure out how to translate that jargon into a more digestible manner here? I'm very curious to hear what your experiences were. Absolutely. My military service is the bedrock of the leader that I am today. And so much of what I feel like I learned in service is, is absolutely translatable in the military. And Chris, you said it very accurately, that the sense of urgency. I remember when I first got out, I actually went and worked in a state job. And that transition was difficult because of, like, I was go, go, go. I was like, you know, someone would say, well, I'm waiting on something. And I'd say, well, who are you talking to? When was the last time you talked to them? You know, give me the name, I'll pick up the phone. And that approach didn't always work to my advantage. But I do think that naturally, I did gravitate when I really moved back into the tech sector. And I've worked in startups before. And so acclimating to the culture at Claude Fleur, there is that sense of urgency. It still resonates with me. I think the other piece, you know, regardless of what job you do in the military, there's, you know, massive logistics to coordinate. There's a lot of people to coordinate. There's, you know, and so a lot of us come out and we're just really amazing at project planning. And so some of the things that I like to say that I took with me that I've carried on throughout my career and what I would say has contributed to the different successes that I found in my career is with these concepts of, you know, no plan survives first contact, right? Like you fail to plan, you know, you fail to plan, you plan to fail, like all these different things around check, check and recheck, right? And that are very intuitive around, you know, trust that verifies. So those types of things, especially in the work that I do, where I see a lot of, you know, oversee a lot of large IT projects, I've had to lead a lot of large IT projects in my career. I have, I have, I cease to be amazed at how applicable what I learned in the military still translates today. And if anyone's worked with me for more than a week, I still use a lot of the same military analogy that I've just translated into something more applicable and in the people's world to use Kelly's term, not civilian world, the people's world. I stand to this day that the military in terms of me as a professional was the best experience I could have had to set me up for success early on. Now, Kelly, you kind of sit in that little interesting area where you probably still interact with the government in a way where some of these acronyms are still very applicable. And so you're kind of having to do multiple translations. What has your experience been like? Yeah. So I, I, I am totally with STAR, like those foundational leadership positions, learning how to push when, when you have an obstacle, find your way around the obstacle. Those are just things that are ingrained, but yeah, I get to keep my acronyms. So now I have two sets of acronyms that I'm using all the time. Things that I use the most are like when I'm managing, having a counseling cadence that I always had in the military has been incredibly useful. Like my, my people get feedback because that's how I grew up was giving feet, receiving feedback, giving feedback things that I, for as a lawyer, my favorite jobs in the army were the ones when I was embedded with the unit, trying to understand their mission and what legal issues they're going to have and trying to anticipate what's coming up so we can resolve it before it became an issue. That's what you do as in-house counsel. It's my favorite thing to do is to be a part of the team. I don't think I would like being at a firm because that's, you kind of like just on the outside and I don't like doing that. I like to be part of the team. And then occasionally I'll read an RFP and I'll be like, oh yeah, I totally did that before. This is what they're looking for. And there'll be like, I was like, yeah, someone was like, we're bidding on this one thing. And I'm like, oh yeah, I know that I've got a certificate of a 40 hour class I took on that. And they're like, really? That's weird. I'm like, yeah. And so my job does kind of translate. I get to do some of the same things I used to do. I just do it in a sweatshirt instead. Trenton, you interact with a lot of our customers on a daily basis. What is your experience been like? I mean, it's almost parallel to exactly a lot of the needs or kind of skillsets you learn from being in the military. It's like, understand your mission, understand the tools at hand, and then be able to be flexible. Things change constantly out, whether it's a Tomahawk strike operations or search and rescue or kind of a boarding team, things can go sideways really quickly. And so you have to understand and kind of take that leadership role and making sure that since I'm customer facing, make sure our customers trust us in that the decisions that I'm making are in their best interest. The way that I'm trying to navigate the conversation or get resources available for them is in their best interest to help solve their problems. And so it's kind of keeping to like the rigorous nature of like leadership and doing what's right for either your soldiers, like the people that are under you or your customers or the team that you're on. And so it's, I see it firsthand, especially kind of being Cloudflare's boots on the ground per se. So it's definitely carries forward. You know, it's funny, you know, we all had different roles. We have such similar commonality. And I think, again, that's kind of the evidence of the bond of just the experience, that shared experience of having to go through the military. And, you know, I think some of that's built around the fact that the military is extremely structured. But what's interesting about Cloudflare is, and in the civilian world in general, and in tech companies in particular, is that they're traditionally pretty unstructured, right? So it's almost like a direct difference between the way we work. You know, when I left the military, it was a quick awakening to remind me that everybody doesn't get up at the same time. Everybody doesn't show up to work at the same time. We're not all, you know, nine to five, clock in, clock out, like always available or on call even, right, in 24-7. And so, you know, I'm curious what kind of things you guys have done to kind of navigate that balance of going from an environment where everything is almost dictated to you about what you can or can't do to an environment where you're encouraged to kind of step outside of that comfort zone and solve problems. And any challenges you have, I'd love to hear about. It's a tough one. I guess one thing is like, rather than somebody else telling you what to do, you have to kind of instill that, like, this rigorous nature of like, nobody else is going to hold you accountable. We've been in the Navy, we know, or we've been in the military, we know how to hold ourselves accountable. And so how do we maintain that structure within our day? Nobody's going to tell us what to do. It comes down to like, knowing what our jobs are, knowing what we can or can't do. I mean, I look at internally at Cloudflare, especially when I'm trying to solve problems for customers, it's like, I'll call it a chain of command. Like, I need to get a hold of X team here at Cloudflare. I'll go into Pingboard and be like, okay, what does their chain of command look like? Do their titles maybe give me a little bit of idea? Oh no, I have no idea. I'll just ping their manager, say, hey, this is what I need, who on your team? And so it starts like, hey, you start from the top, this is the need, who on your team can I utilize? Then at the same time, it also has a lot to do with communication. We in the military are kind of fine-tuned to be a little bit more direct and concise in our communication. I don't add a lot of fluff. And so it's like, hey, this is the issue. Or I might start with, hi, hope you're having a nice week. This is my issue. This is the help I need. So sometimes it might come off a little bit brash, but I'm very direct because I don't want to waste anyone's time. We've got problems to solve. It's interesting, because we have the mission focus of what we're working on and the challenge that we're trying to overcome. But it's also interesting in that you can reach out and ping people. You can kind of message people without kind of that fear of repercussions. In the military, if you step one or two bounds away from where you're at, you're going to find out really quickly that that's not how you get information to the people you need to get information to. So I think that's a very good assessment of kind of how much of a difference civilian life can be in that you do have the encouragement to kind of go out and solve that problem. And I think we're all still trying to solve whatever the mission is, obviously here to build a better Internet. And I think the military is not different. The military has their mission, whether it be defense or the orientation. It's just a different approach. And so adjusting to that has probably been difficult for a lot of us. I know it has been for me, but I think there's some really cool nuance in that, in that it actually has empowered me to be able to do even more than what I may have been able to accomplish in the military. So another thing that we kind of briefly mentioned is kind of leadership on the fly, right? So as you're building your team and preparing them, both yourself and the team for their current roles and their future roles, what are some of the things that you've learned or some of the skills that you've taken from the military to encourage your employees to kind of push themselves, to get them to the next level? And I think in the military, we're always trying to figure out how do we promote our juniors? How do we promote the people that report to us as soon as possible? And I think that doesn't really change here, but I'm curious to hear what your experiences have been like and kind of doing that here. I feel like probably one of the best lessons that I learned was this concept of, even though the military has their rank structure, the reality is that down to the lowest ranking member, they have to be connected to what their role is, where they fit in the larger picture, what the mission is, because people need to be able to act in a leader's absence. And so this idea of, you know, down to the lowest ranking person, they will always have, you know, the guidance was they would always have enough information to act, to do, right? To never be paralyzed because of all of our collective missions in the military. And so for me, going into the civilian worlds, this idea of, you know, everyone on, you know, I want everyone on my team to be empowered to make decisions, to have a bias towards action without always feeling like they are paralyzed in their work because they have to ask their boss, and the boss has to ask the boss's boss, et cetera, et cetera. And so for me, this idea, and when you first go to the military, you're just sort of taught that, you're trained that, and then it becomes intuitive, right? And for me, the idea we had when I was an officer, we had this notion of being able to operate based off of the commander's intent, where it was like, my goal as a leader is to tell you the outcome that needs to happen. I'm entrusting you. I'm giving you the autonomy to determine how best to get there. And I think that that translates well when, you know, in an organization like Cloudflare, like you said, Chris, we've got to move with a sense of urgency, and you can't move with a sense of urgency if your people don't have the autonomy to act and if they're not empowered to act. And so those are some of the lessons that I've taken from my military service that I really, really try to implement every day in my current job. Actually, when Chris was asking this question, immediately came to my brain, commander's intent, because if everyone knows what the end goal is, they can take steps towards it. Now, are those steps always going to be the right steps or the perfect steps? No, but you can honor that someone's taking steps forward and then adjust from there. It's much better than sitting and waiting for three levels to approve it. And I think there are organizations out here in the world where they still have this hierarchical and they want the three levels because they're either more risk adverse, or they've got other considerations, or the people just like to make sure everything is in that way. But I love just working with, like, empowering people to be able to move forward and adjust if it's not exactly right. Yeah, I think that's really cool. What has your experience been, Trent? A lot of times when it comes to kind of leadership and advancing here, it's like, I think Cloudflare is really good at building teams, and kind of developing those teams to facilitate strengths. Like everyone has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. And all the teams that I've been on, there's been kind of a good kind of ebb and flow on, hey, I'm better at X engagement, or I'm better at kind of facilitating something on the back end. And the way that kind of teams are developed here at Cloudflare is like it turns into a good synergy that though you might not be super skilled in an area, you'll be able to get that help and learn. I've never been in an area or a role where it's like, my teammates, my leadership is encouraging me to learn, not under kind of threat, but it's like, hey, you're encouraged. This is a gap that I've noticed over the last quarter or so. Like, how can we help you improve in this area? And then with that improvement, it makes you that much more applicable, you can be utilizing it in many, many different ways, you don't have to always go to a manager at this point. So I've been here for six and a half years. And sometimes I have to ask my managers like, hey, do I need to come to you more with things? Because I feel like I've done so much, and I feel so empowered. And I've, I know a lot of people, I can reach out directly. Or if I know people on my team are having a question in chat, they might ask my manager, I'll ping and say, hey, this is, this is where I found this resource, or this is who I thought to go to. It's taking a little bit of that load off of leadership. So they can kind of focus on making sure that the team dynamic is appropriate, or they're focusing on their goals. But it's a way that we can end up helping ourselves. So like within that development, I don't know, strengths and weaknesses, we're aware of, we can kind of tune ourselves. Yeah, I like this a lot. You know, it actually kind of leads me into my next question. In fact, my next question is, you know, Cloudflare has a lot of roles we open up, we're constantly expanding. So if you're looking for a job, definitely check out our careers page, we've got quite a few open. But a question that often comes up that I get asked a lot of times are what are something I can do in the military or, and I'd expand it to even outside of the military, what are some of the things I can do to improve my skills, or things I could be learning that would increase my opportunities of getting a role here at Cloudflare? Anyone have advice? I know, it's a tough one, too. I've had a lot of these conversations, especially with my involvement in VetFlare, I get a lot of people from all walks of life, all experiences, trying to understand, like, how do I get a foot in the door? And everyone can go to the easy ones. Yeah, go ahead and get a computer science degree. And you'll know everything you need to know. But there's so many different levels to Cloudflare. It's like, well, first thing I start off with is like, what are your interests? What are your kind of ideal roles look like? And some people are like, well, I'm technical, I don't know if I want to be customer facing. Okay, so I'll start to guide them towards like an internal engineering role. Or a lot of people are very social, might not be super strong technically, but they have very good personal dynamics. And so I might guide them to say, like, top of funnel sales, so that they can, they're good communicators, they're smart enough to learn. So what I like to ask people is like, what are you even interested in? And then I can start kind of piecing them into the role if they have a legal background. And I've spoken to a few people there. It's like, okay, what area of law are you interested? What part of Cloudflare can kind of fit that need? And sometimes the conversations come down to where there might not be something perfect for them. But at least we can start some conversations and just get introductions so that we can slowly piece them. Because if someone's just to look at like our career page, there's a lot of information, but it might not necessarily be specific on how it applies to them, especially somebody in the military. So what I recommend is maybe have conversations with anybody in Vetflare. Yeah, that's a great one. I think overall, Cloudflare has a lot of opportunities. And one thing that's interesting here versus some of the other companies that are out there is that we don't put the emphasis as much on where you went to school, but it's what you've learned. And I don't just mean within school, but I mean in life, right? It's the combination of all those experiences that you've had that have kind of led to each one of our teams being the great teams they are simply because it's not always that you have an intrinsic knowledge about this one little technical thing in this book, but it's understanding, okay, this is how the book says it's supposed to operate, but this is the business case as to why they're not following that procedure. And I think oftentimes a lot of that's missed. And when you look at some of the products that we offer, some of the things like Zero Trust and the security controls around that, oftentimes it's the behaviors that are missed that are the most risky from a security perspective, right? And so I'm pretty excited about working here simply for that fact. And so my recommendation is check out SkillBridge and to your point, talk to people that work here and kind of reach out and just say, hey, this is something I'm interested in. And don't be afraid to apply. It may not work today, but that doesn't mean that you can't continue to find those skills and continue to harbor those interests and pursue them. I regularly get encouraged to play around with some of my tinkering hobbies here. Like just the other day, I was playing around with the firmware on a small little electronics device. Not a lot of companies would say you're allowed to do that, but here they're encouraging it because it leads to other things. Does anyone else have any experience or input on that? Yeah, I think same as Trent said, I've had a lot of people inquire about roles at Cloudflare on the network and several who have gotten interviews. I always advise them like, listen, obviously make sure your resume is very clear on the technical skills that you have to offer, making sure it matches up with what we're looking for, honing in on your accomplishments and your past experiences. But I'm also keen to say that that is actually 50% of the interview. I said, here's a list of Cloudflare capabilities that we publish, that we really look for at Cloudflare, communicating clearly, doing the right thing, getting work across the finish line, leading with empathy, being curious to learn. I'll coach people who are interested. I'm like, it's one thing to speak to the technical aspects, but after that, we are a company that we want to get stuff done and with a sense of urgency and have that bias to action. And even if you might have, you might meet 75% of the technical requirements, if you can showcase that, you know, how you've exhibited those Cloudflare capabilities, if you can showcase that, no matter what's put in front of you, even if you don't have the answer, you're going to be hungry and you're going to go find the answer and have that sense of urgency and collaboration and proactiveness, you're going to be put at the top of the list for hiring. And that technical acumen is just as important as being able to meet the Cloudflare capabilities too. Yeah. Communication is key, you know, being able to convey it. And I think, you know, Kelly probably experiences that a lot with working within the government, being able to communicate these highly technical things and then distill them down internally. Do you have any recommendations, Kelly? When I get lawyers call me all the time, I always think it's funny because I have like this whole range of middle-aged men that now contact me and ask me about things. And I was like, I don't think any of these people thought they're going to be asking me for career advice and they're great guys. I'm not saying anything bad about middle-aged men. It's just, I didn't think at this point I would be giving this much advice to middle -aged men. And I don't think they were expecting to ask me for this advice, but I usually am able to say, okay, these are the things you do in the military that are like what I do here. And sometimes it's a translation thing. Like an AR-15-6, Army Regulation 15-6, it tells you how to do an investigation. Guess what? There's corporation investigation teams. They call them compliance and ethics. And they're like, compliance and ethics? I'm like, it's just like an Army investigation. Like it is so close. There's some things that are a little bit different, but it's so close. And I'm like, so that's the same. If you did a lot of 15-6 investigations in the military, you totally can think about applying to a compliance and ethics job. They're like, oh, I didn't know that. I'm like, you're going to have to learn some other new things. So sometimes it's a translation. Like you have that experience. But also in the JAG Corps, the Army kind of chooses what kind of law you do. And you get to about mid-career, start not really specializing, but having more experience in the one you like. And if you're a criminal law guy, and you've been doing lots of criminal law, tech company's probably not for you. We're going to expect you to have a certain depth of understanding of contracts and transactions. Could you learn it? Yes. But I'm not going to hire you as a senior person on it, because I know that you have been prosecuting cases, and it's just not the same. Because not all law is the same. So it's a lot of those hard conversations. Like, do you have 75% of the technical requirements? If you do, awesome, because I know these other skills are going to get you the rest of the way. But if you don't, you have to be really willing to kind of like, either do a career pivot and start at a lower level than you expect, or look somewhere else, because you might be happier somewhere else. If you love criminal law, you might not love what I do. Yeah, it's kind of tough, right? You have to have that baseline, but I think you have to have passion too, like an interest. It doesn't mean that you know what you're getting into, but you kind of have to have that intrigue. And at Cloud Third, we're known for having a robust interviewing process, right? You can go through multiple interviews, you can sit in panels. And I think another piece of advice I would give is, understand that that's your moment to shine. Don't just regurgitate what's on that piece of paper. We've read through that. That's not what wows us. Show us that interest you have. Share a story or some sort of response to the questions you're asked that show that you are intrigued, you're interested. And many times, it's okay to not have an answer, right? You say, this is something I would look into, and just be confident in what you do know and kind of show that. It's really fun. Here at Cloud Third, we're also kind of a remote environment. So you're not getting those in-person interviews. You're getting a lot of these remote interviews. So that can sometimes add a little complexity, but to kind of shift things up and kind of take a little fun. In the military, we all have kind of like a go bag or like a travel bag. Given that we're kind of a work environment, I'm curious, what are your must-haves that you have to take with you anytime you have to travel for work? I can start too. I can jump in. So I do instant response, right? So I had this Pelican case, very military -esque, right? And it's got a whole bunch of laptops and all these hardware for collecting data. And that thing weighs a whole bunch. And then I have two or three laptops. But the things that I can't get rid of specifically are my little clicker for presentations with a little laser pointer on it, like two or three pens and a notepad. I find that I try to use digital pads and try to use everything else, but having that small little pocket notebook that I used to carry around with me every day in the military, having that habit and having that piece that I could write down is just critical. And without that, I lose myself. So there you go. I see Kelly has one right there. We all got the guilty as charged. I mean, I carried the green book around all the time. For all of you that weren't in the Army, we had these canvas-covered green books that, I mean, you just carry around everywhere. But then they were in your pocket and it was always obvious, right? You could see the shape. It was shaking. It was like, oh, they just got their green book. But, you know, there's a whole aftermarket, like covers you could get for them. It was kind of an accessory when you're not really allowed to have an accessory. For me, as a former medic, I joke that I like to be prepared for any like medical crisis or emergency. So I actually have, it's not like a full-blown first aid kit, but I carry, like I carry, I have this little thing my girlfriend gave me one time and it was, it's like a Monday through Saturday pillbox, but like on steroids. And so I've got, I carry antibiotics, I carry steroids, like I carry every, I carry Tums, I carry aspirin, I carry Motrin. Like I have all of this that if you have a minor medical emergency, like I've got a kit and I'm ready, you know, at the ready in case you have heartburn or you need a quick dose of prednisone or anything like that. That's fantastic. Cause like, think about the cost, if you were to buy each one of those items in the airport, it's like what, $25 for two Tums, you know? So that's absolutely good. I'm sure I, you know, I'm on some list when I go through TSA that this woman carries a lot of meds with her and I don't take any of them regularly. It's just You have anything special you carry Trent? For me, thanks to the, thanks to my time in the Navy, I've got excellent ears. And so I always need some sort of like earbuds. So I probably take two or three sets of earbuds or my AirPod Pro or my, yeah, over ear AirPod Pros. If not that, I definitely take my Cloudflare notebooks and a mouse. Same, I hate the touch pad. My touch pad still looks like it's never been touched. I always take a couple of mouses and since I'm customer facing, it usually requires some sort of swag. So I'll take a couple of shirts or even socks and pens. So I usually raid the swag closet here, here at the SF office. And before I go anywhere. Well, we'll make sure we get you some stickers. We've got some cool Vet Flare stickers and a whole bunch. And as I travel around, I try to bring some. I'll go to the mailroom and get them right now. There you go. You get a whole bunch. Yeah. I think stickers are always a fun one. In fact, I use those a lot to break ice when I'm in events. Although I was visiting one of our customers in Canada a few weeks ago, and we were joking around about something. Oh, Hey, I have a sticker related to that from one of my security conferences. And that just like made their day. And then everybody kept coming up. Do you have any more stickers? So everybody loves a cool sticker. They all love the lava lamp stickers, the lava lamp key chains and the like. It's definitely a fun thing to have. So cool. You know, I've had a good time talking with you. And I think there's one last question that I'll ask that I think most people probably have a good answer for leaving the military. What is the best perk of a civilian life that you don't get in the military? I'll start the fact that if I am not feeling well, I can just say, I'm not feeling well. I'm not going to come in today. That is so amazing. Anyone else have a, have a fun little civilian perk. I like getting my nails done. I know it's small, but I like, I stare at them sometimes and look, look, I get to put color on my fingers. Okay. You're not, you're not stuck with them at limited hue of what just black or, or, or, or white. I love knowing I'll never have to sleep out in the elements, you know, ever again, unless it's truly by choice, which it will never be. You don't like camping on the back ports. There is no camping. There is no camping in my future. I just happened to shave today, but I usually shave maybe once a week. And so my appearance, the control of my appearance, and also I'm naturally an early riser, but I like to not early rise if I don't have to. Yeah. The other two things I think you're probably all agree on too, is being able to use headphones while you're walking and being able to put your, being able to put your hands in your pockets. Cause that's always the fun one. Cause you know, if you do that, the end of the world comes. Well, this is great. You know, I'm glad to be able to share this time with you. And, and, you know, we've got a lot of veterans here, not just us. We have veterans from all around the world and, and you know, Veterans Day is a great day to remember people. And I look forward to hearing from many of you that are watching feel free to reach out to us. We'll include some contact info for you guys to touch base, but thanks for everyone. This has been a great chat. I really enjoyed it and hopefully we get to do another one. Thank you. Cheers. All right, Gary. Happy Veterans Day.