Vetflare Week: Transitioning to Tech

Hi everybody, welcome to kind of the Vetflare, Cloudflare TV segments where we get to highlight a lot of our veteran colleagues here at Cloudflare and understand a little bit more about the transition and the story that brought them to Cloudflare, whether it's transitioning out of service or transitioning amongst industry.

We'd love to kind of get an understanding of your story and get to know a little bit more about our panel.

As many of you may already know, my name is Trent Wooton.

I'm a customer success manager here at Cloudflare on the West Coast.

I'm also one of the founding members for Vetflare ERG, where we cater to the veteran community, spouses, and we also help to develop a talent pipeline to help encourage veterans from other industries or that are trying to look into getting out of the military to ideally pluck them and bring them into the Cloudflare fold.

But at the same time, I'd love to open up the panel to hear some introductions from the team.

Elijah, would you like to start? Yeah, for sure. My name is Elijah Lake.

I'm a business development rep for BDR on the digital native team based out of Austin, Texas.

I was former field artillery or army field artillery, more specifically my rocket artilleryman.

Yeah, cool.

And then Geneva. Okay, my name is Geneva Hurtado. I work on the finance team.

I'm a senior manager for sourcing and I help with all the IT procurement for SaaS IT hardware and telecom here at Cloudflare.

I was in the army probably over 20 years ago.

I'm telling how old I am, but it was quite a long time ago. So I'm a family of military.

My son also served and recently got out. So again, it's a family service thing.

Awesome. Thanks to your family. All right, Femi. Hi, maybe the odd one out.

I'm still serving. My name is Femi. I currently serve in the army as a reservist.

I've been in since 2016. I work as a unit supply specialist, the logistics guys.

And I currently work for the security incident response team at Cloudflare.

So kind of like the guys you always email for like, say that.

All right. And Chris. Awesome. I am Chris Short. I am a senior program manager for the professional services division at Cloudflare.

I was previously a field artillery officer in the army.

I got out in 2021 and started my journey. So yeah, that's me.

Awesome. Well, it's nice to meet everybody. A bunch of new faces for the VetFlare team.

Definitely proud to have you all. Welcome to those of you that have joined more recently.

One thing I would love to hear about is kind of some of the transition experience.

What was your guys' experience whenever you're first separating from the military?

Femi, on your end, since you're still in, I would love to kind of hear what your experience is kind of integrating service with kind of working on the civilian side.

Whoever would like to start, go ahead and jump in first.

Yeah. So I'll go ahead and start.

As I mentioned, I was in the army from 2016 to 2021. Upon exiting in 2021, I did a skill bridge program.

So I did it through Hiring Our Heroes. The experience was definitely interesting.

A lot of moving parts and a lot going on as you transition out.

It's a little bit terrifying, but also very exciting. So I did my skill bridge with Tito's Vodka.

I was a project manager for them. Did that for about three months.

And that's when I decided I wanted to get into tech. So I started looking to see what was out there.

That's when I learned out about the Oracle transition program that they had.

Ended up at Oracle, Oracle NetSuite specifically as a project manager for the delivery of NetSuite.

So that was kind of my transition pathway.

But I would say probably the most interesting and weirdest part about it was going from working with soldiers every day to working in a fully remote position.

Yeah.

That's where the self-starter in us takes over. Exactly. Exactly. Got to be adaptable.

So much like Chris, I also got out in 2021. For me, I guess it was a little bit weirder because I was like COVID time and they had just started doing classes from home.

And I was like, this feels kind of cool. How do I keep doing this on the civilian side?

My wife was also working from home at the time. So I'm like, I need to do this now.

So I ended up making my way out. Kind of unplanned as far as I was really trying to go.

But I was like, I think this is my time. So I decided to get on out.

And I originally landed a role at Chewy as an area manager. However, we were in the middle of moving and job searching.

So we ended up living in Austin, but the job was in Dallas.

So I was traveling a lot. And so at some point through the power of LinkedIn and networking with other veterans and things, I was able to land a role at AWS as a skill bridge recruiter and program manager.

So at some point, Chris and I were talking a little bit earlier that we might have crossed paths somewhere at Fort Hood as he was trying to make his exit.

Because we were like, we've seen each other before, but they don't know where exactly.

But unfortunately from there, AWS was doing layoffs. They caught the gingerbread man at round three.

And then again, through the power of LinkedIn and veteran networks, I was able to find my way here at Cloudflare.

Welcome. Yeah. I'll go next.

I've always worked in the tech sector right out of college, joined the reserves while I was in college.

And I got really into it when I got out. But it can be challenging.

Sometimes we're combining training days, annual trainings, all that good stuff with regular working schedule.

Sometimes the monthly drills, too.

Sometimes clashes with work. But there's something I've learned with working with veterans or people that are leaving the armies.

A lot of people are usually not prepared for the life after the military. The military doesn't do a lot to prepare you.

They try, but I felt like there's a lot of resources you have to self-grab or yearn or lean into to be able to prepare for the life after the military.

A lot of people have jobs with skills that don't directly translate into a job role outside the military.

And how to sell those kind of skills or how to sell your person, getting out of the military is something I've always seen a lot of veterans struggle with.

And I'm glad Chris talked about Oracle.

Oracle has some pretty great programs. I worked at Oracle Cloud before joining here, and I had the opportunity to meet with a lot of people through their military programs.

They had some for hiring even military spouses, especially people that tend to move a lot because their husbands or wives or significant fathers are always moving and they don't have stable opportunity.

Oracle tries to match them into closed offices or give them remote positions.

So there's a lot of resources and stuff out there for veterans.

It's like people have to just get out there and get those.

The Army see it right now, like the certification assistance.

There are a lot of certifications and skilling up that people can get for free while they're in service.

It's one of the really good ones to use to skill up in an area you want to be useful for when you leave the military.

And a lot of service members don't use that either.

Now, I appreciate bringing up some of the resources because that's another big challenge that a lot of veterans have is kind of the preparation that they get from their current post or duty station is pretty underwhelming, especially the separation debriefing, where a lot of the resources like GI Bill or certifications aren't necessarily covered.

They just say they basically are confirming the dates that that you're looking to separate and say, hey, thanks for your service.

There's the exit to the gate now. Good luck. Geneva.

Now, here's how you're going to learn how old I am.

So my my role was different. I joined the military maybe a year or two after high school.

I didn't join right away.

And then I had a very interesting thing. It was not in tech. So I had a very admin job, curly nails and everything in the army.

I had to do the soldering stuff, but I had an admin job.

And one day they needed someone to run our I worked in a chapel as an admin person and they needed someone.

The chapel was over 150 years old and they needed someone to crawl under the building and do all the networking and stuff.

So they quickly gave me a class on how to do the clamps, how to do the thing, how to do networking.

And I was like, this job seems fun. Bringing the Internet into infrastructure, right?

Coming back and doing the backbone of the Internet to get all these buildings up and going and to make the post more modern.

Right. So I was part of that.

And this is 20 years ago, 20, 30 years ago. Right. Twenty five years ago, as we're doing things, you're seeing the transition.

And I said, I think I want to do that after I get out the military.

The military is not going to be a forever career, but this seems fun.

And then as I stayed in the military, any job that I could do to get my certifications and to get my stuff in the I.T.

field is where I left off.

So as I got out and I transitioned, I just was like, I need a networking degree.

I need this thing. So my transition was was slightly different and I easily was able to transition.

Because in my interview panel, they said, what do you do?

And I was like, oh, here's the stuff. So for me, it was a little bit easier.

My problem is what Femi said, is that I was ex-military and then I was a spouse.

So I had to move from post to post. And once I got out, my ex-husband got duty stationed.

So I had to find a job every two or three years. I couldn't maintain in the same space and I had to start over every time.

I was at Fort Hood, but there was no stable jobs in the Fort Hood area.

So I had to drive to Austin, which was an hour and 10 minute commute each way.

So my introductory into I.T. was very different, very in this space.

So that's different than, I guess, how the rest of the team got it.

But mine was they gave me some wires because I was of small frame to crawl in their building.

And I go, this is fascinating. I saw it coming, right?

The modernization of duty stations, bringing the Internet. And now look at where we're at.

Cloudflare is starting to grow, especially on our public sector side, getting more involved and working with our local governments and service.

So it's funny to say that your stature was what kind of got you interested and then kind of your skill sets are what has kind of driven your success.

That's awesome. Well, and kind of moving forward, one thing that I think a lot of times isn't thought about is a lot of the headwinds that we run into when pursuing our next opportunity, whether it's next job roles, changing industries or transitioning out is communicating some of some of our experience to non-service member or even adjacent.

So in the military, we all are very familiar. We work and live and breathe in acronyms that mean a lot to us while we're in.

But whenever we get out, it's not something that really translates well.

What are some items that you have been able to communicate beyond military jargon?

I guess one instance that I think about is whenever we come up, whenever you're working up towards going on deployment, like I was in the Navy, and so we had to go through a series of test certifications, getting battle ready.

And so each part of that process was managed by our training team.

So whether it's MTT, FTTs for fire training team, medical training team, what are some of these items or processes that you've kind of had to rearticulate to help kind of convey your experience to upcoming employers?

Standard operating procedures.

I didn't mean to speak over Chris. No, you're good. You're good.

Go for it. Standard operating procedures. So as a military, you come into a new base and you come into a new space and they go, here's how things run here.

And you kind of, as a new leader, you look at it, you see if there's improvement.

Same thing. You come in and you go, well, what's the standard?

That's unknown here. We call it 10 other things, but what is the standard operating procedures?

And now people go, there's a wiki for that. There's a this for that.

So it's just changing jargon for different things and getting to know it. For me, SOPs.

We were like, where's the SOP on this? Where's the this? So that was one of mine.

Sorry, Chris, to interrupt on that one. No, you're good. I still look for SOPs everywhere I go.

So I think that's 100% valid and it is just rewording of it, right?

I think most companies, especially in tech, they're all, they have different versions, whether it's Confluence, Wiki, Oracle has their own database as well.

So I think that's definitely a huge one. Another one would be just like as a field artillery officer, nobody really understands what you do necessarily.

So it's articulating that in a way that expresses how, what you've done, whether it be leading teams, whether it be moving equipment and how that can relate to the sector that you're trying to go into.

So one thing I always look at is, you know, looking to go into tech, how can I show that I have worked and implemented different technical solutions?

A couple of things I look at for that are GCSS Army, which is realistically the Army's first ERP system.

It's how you order equipment. It's how you validate and track if your equipment is, you know, up to date and what needs to be done with it.

So it's articulating how you used GCSS Army, which is an ERP system to better the organization or TC Ames, which is used to move equipment from one location to the next.

I did a rotation to Korea and I did a rotation to Poland.

Each time we had to move equipment and each time TC Ames was used.

So that's a database that you're using, validating, making sure everything's correct so that once the equipment is moved, you can verify everything was done correctly and it tracks it accordingly.

So it's just little things like that of the military is known for leadership.

I feel like most people are going to know coming out of the military, you have a little bit of leadership experience, but beyond that, what does a field artillery officer do?

But also what are some subsets of that as well that translate well into the civilian sector?

Okay.

Yeah. I'll take it. I may not have like a perfect acronym match, but I'll just say there's a lot of skills that one can sell from being in the military.

The military is very documentation and metric driven.

And I feel like there's a way you can sell those good metrics to as a soldier.

Everything is tracked. You have to keep progressing.

You have to, you have to, I mean, for every good soldier that wants to make a good career out of it, you have to keep growing.

You have to keep in good shape.

You have to be in good physical shape. You have to be in good shape with your NCOERs if you're one of them.

There's a mechanism that's always tracking that you're in good shape, that you have been successful to continue to stay in.

And I feel like just staying in as a member of the army, you can continue to show a track of progress, a track of resilience, leadership, being a go-getter, being someone to get things done.

The army has a lot of very tough missions and stuff.

They're hard tasks. I'm sure every person in the military has had days that you think of, how did I get here?

What am I doing here kind of days? And you got through it.

Those are things that we can sell to. Everyone is looking for someone who can walk under pressure, can get the job done no matter the turns and twists it takes.

So I feel like there's a lot of skills that just showing up and being present and continuing to stay in and go through all the rigor that the military has brought is what we can sell and is what we can put in metrics of.

This is how I was successful from this year to this year.

This is what I accomplished in this year to this year.

Just people hearing those stories, hearing those numbers, hearing that success metrics, it kind of makes you a lot more attractive as a candidate.

I feel like that's where a lot of military people fail because they don't know how to quantify a lot of the skills, whether they be people's skills, whether they be soft skill, hard skills, whatever they've learned in that process.

Even if it's just being in the field, leading things like that, how to transfer those into metrics that translate into the role, the job, the skill, or the opportunity you're looking for is one that I find the military has really helped me.

I've done a lot of soul searching to be able to understand how I can transfer that, but I feel like there's a lot of things that just showing up and staying in, there's a lot of things you could harness to be a better candidate for opportunities.

Yeah, I definitely 100% agree with that.

The power of being able to transfer your hard and soft skills into whatever role you're applying for or just into the language, some sort of what you're applying for, right?

Like you said, you have your metrics and then being able to transfer those into what might relate to a KPI that's listed in a job description or being able to think of your commanders or your platoon as customers so that you're given that customer obsession and satisfaction and deliverables.

And just being able to make that translation into something tangible that your interviewer who is a civilian can understand, you know, versus all of our million acronyms that we might know in the various fields that we're in.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, while in service we are all so goal-oriented that everything had an objective, everything kind of, well, not everything necessarily had a codified process.

And so in many instances while I was in, even to this day, I feel like there's times where I feel like MacGyver, where I'm just forced to work with what I'm given.

I know what needs to be done, but I have to look around for what are new resources I can pull into this project or what is available to me to get things done.

One of the acronyms that I was surprised to see is still pretty valid on the civilian side is ROE, which is on the Cloudflare sales side.

A lot of our AEs, BDs, and SEs teams, they kind of live by rules of engagement.

The first time I really kind of drove ROE home was in 2003 was my first deployment.

It was off to war. And a lot of our missions were very, it was razor's edge, make sure that you're operating within ROE so you don't spark international conflict.

And so while what's at stake might not be as high here at Cloudflare, I think ROE is one of those acronyms that is still pertinent because it helps identify rules and responsibilities and kind of swim lanes amongst teams.

And kind of moving on, I do like the, I use the kind of the analogy of being MacGyver-y because we are very kind of resourceful individuals.

I guess, what are some examples or ways that some of you are, it doesn't have to be all, but if you all have something to say, it'd be awesome.

But like some examples of times when your goal was pretty clear, but the path to that goal, whether it was the transition or current projects that you're currently working on, they just had to make do with the resources you were given, or you had to try and find new ways of solving problems.

I mean, I'll go.

I feel like when I first started here, Cloudflare with the security response team, it was a team of, what's a team of two?

Just me and my manager. And yeah, I mean, we've grown now.

We're a team of five now, thankfully. So like when we started- You can breathe.

You can breathe now a little bit better. Right. Yeah.

Like I could sleep at night without worrying about pages. So like when we started then, it was more of like, we needed to better structure the team, but we don't know what structure looks like.

We don't know what that will look like. We don't know what scaling will look like, things like that.

And for me, it was just like a draw a roadmap of what we don't know, but we know we want our processes to be repeatable, to be structured, to have us not be the single point of failures if anything ever happened to me and him.

And then the team is down, nothing can really happen or operate.

You'd be surprised that the whole set of reports was run by about two people at a point or three, the worst case.

So it was really challenging then just to sit down and draw something out of nothing.

It's like, I know where I want to go, but I don't know how to get there.

So you had to be dividing the workloads into what areas are we trying to structure?

How do we communicate to users when they report to us?

How do we do our investigations? How do we write our playbooks?

How do we do this? And I feel like a lot of learning about structure in the army definitely came into place.

It was like, you had to look a certain way. Your uniform had to look a certain way.

You had to salute a certain way. This is how to march a certain way.

This is the cadence you call for this. When you're going to trial, things like that.

So for me, it was just like trying to put structure around a process of something that was completely unstructured was not the hardest thing because I'm probably used to that life of everything has to be a certain way.

Your bed has to be laid a certain way if you're in a training environment.

So for me, just figuring out that structure around our playbooks, around our communication templates, around our investigations, things like that were not hard for me.

And in no time, we're able to integrate that even to our automation platforms and things like that.

So I felt for me, just sitting down and brainstorming ideas of how to put structure into an uncertain environment or something that was very fluid helped me with the experience I've gotten from the army in different training capacities or just even the monthly drill that I go for.

It's like everything is all about structure.

We have a mission for the month and we have to fulfill that.

So that was one that I found super helpful. I have an example of what I found was that it's been a while, but what the military taught me was structure, right?

We would get these missions passed down to us and then your whole, everyone in the military knows a mission of what's expected of them.

That's what I like.

Everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing and you had to do your part.

So coming to Cloudflare or any company I've been at, then trying to figure out how do I accomplish the overall mission, the overall strategy, the overall, what is this company trying to do?

What are we trying to do? How does my role help support that?

So that's been the biggest thing for me as helpful, is I can always align what I'm doing every day back to our founder's mission.

What are we trying to do?

Why did they bring Geneva here to this company in this role? And again, I just lay it out and make it happen.

And I feel like that structure of doing things in the military, there was never an option for no, you just keep going and making it work and fingering out and going back and reworking it.

Okay. I failed.

My team is doing, can I innovate in this way? So that innovation that we constantly had to come up with helps.

And now we're doing new systems, new processes.

I came here two years ago and I was like, I'm going to do what? Wow. All right.

I can do this. I felt confident. I've done this before, right? We briefed generals, we briefed this, we can do this.

What's the best process to help things go forward?

And I always try to listen to what's coming at me and say, okay, why is this in front of me?

What can I do to make it better? And it's really helped being here, being here, making a difference and learning different departments, what they do and the relationships.

And again, always understand what the overall mission is and how to get it done.

Not being sad that it's hard. There's days where we're rolling out something new and guess what?

We're going to work 12 hours. There's nothing new soldier, right?

I got 12 hours for you all day and night. I could do this.

And then there's times of where I work my normal eight hours. So again, we understand the overall, we're not meant to complain.

We've never, we cold rain, hail, the mission must go on.

So I think that kind of helps in this atmosphere where we got to get called and we got to be on something and we got to work.

We can do it.

So bringing in vets kind of helped to balance things out because you got a team full of people who will be like, no matter what, we're going to march the flag to the end, right?

And conquer this along with the rest of the company. So that mindset, we all help each other.

So again, I feel like my military career helped where I am now and what we deal with all of us together, constantly getting bombarded by new changes, new structures, new things.

We've done it all before. So that's one of my biggest things.

Great. I would say that's a good word for it. It's great. Just continually pushing forward in the face of adversity.

I love that. Great book, by the way.

Yeah, it is. It is. But coming to Cloudflare, I've only been here for probably two weeks now.

So I'm still learning. But I think one thing that's huge here is collaboration across multiple teams.

If I don't know where to go for something, I can easily chat someone and find it out.

I can go to the wiki. I can find it out.

There's multiple solutions. It's just finding the quickest and most effective way to get there.

But Cloudflare overall, everyone is super collaborative and there's a ton of information to kind of sift through.

I've also been here only about two weeks, but I'm in the firehose learning stage of everything we need to know.

And that's really reflective of also my philatelic career.

When you first go in, you got six months to learn everything you need to know about artillery.

And that's also through a firehose. But at some point, once you take inventory of everything that you know about or know of, you're like, okay, what items do I need to select to, like, hey, what do I need to fight off every day?

And so I'm almost to that point of building out what I need to have in my pocket every day to fight off of if I need to go back to the truck to get something else because there's a new problem.

But so I think that that experience has definitely helped in being able to not be overwhelmed by the firehose of information.

Well, here at Cloudflare, we do so much that I almost feel like the firehose never stops.

But you just get better at kind of finding the information, reaching out to your network to especially who might specialize in areas or products or parts of the organization.

And that's kind of a thing that is with us is that a lot of times we are self-starters.

We don't need to do a lot of kind of follow-up or nudging along.

A lot of times our leaders can kind of assign certain tasks or priorities to us.

And as long as we're giving them timely updates, a lot of times it's hands-off.

Just going to fire and forget on the missile side. It's go do this.

Let me know how it goes. But kind of on that self-starter side, because a big part of what kind of facilitates this conversation is around kind of the veteran, current service members, and our network, especially whenever it comes to looking at next opportunities.

I had the distinct pleasure of getting to speak to Elijah and Chris before they committed to coming over to Cloudflare.

And a lot of those conversations were pretty easy.

And I find that whenever I know somebody else is a vet, I might not know anything else about their life.

But I know that there is a certain, I don't want to say lifestyle, but they have committed to something that I have also been able to commit to.

I've successfully accomplished service. I, there's at least one core value that we've been able to share.

I guess in the point I'm trying to get to is how valuable have you guys found your networks to be whenever it comes to either transitioning or kind of solving problems.

And I guess it doesn't necessarily have to be your vet network, but even leveraging your network within an organization to kind of accomplish goals.

Yeah, I think it, I think it just makes it easy.

The moment somebody sees or understands that you have that, you know, that in common, the conversation just, it moves so much smoother and it's a lot less of an introduction you kind of have to do.

And so even leveraging on LinkedIn has paid dividends and moving into your, you know, next space or the next role just with the, Hey, you know, and then the conversation goes from there.

Yeah, I would agree with that. It's, it's been huge in my transition process.

I mean, as I was getting out of the military, I started looking at different companies and I would go to LinkedIn.

I would look at the company I want, go over to the people and just search veteran.

And a lot of times it pops up and you can just reach out to those people.

And most are willing to help kind of to what you were saying, Trent, just, we've all gone through similar experiences and we know there's that level of commitment there.

So going from the army to skill bridge and then to Oracle and then to Cloudflare as well, Trent, I believe you were one of the first people I reached out to just because I found out you were a veteran and I wanted to know more about the company culture.

I wanted to know more about your experience at the company and kind of just build off of what I knew so that when I went into be at the interview process or the company itself, I knew more of what to expect and how to, how to showcase my, my hard and soft skills in the best, best way possible.

Yeah.

Okay. I'll go to, I'll say like, networking is everything. Like networking is very, very germane.

Like the people, you know, like the people you talk to, like all the people you have in your circle is, is very important.

And like, like you said, like when you have things that are common, like between, between you and whoever you're communicating with, it makes it important.

Like I landed at Cloudflare at that time, not because I was looking, it was actually a passive search, but I spoke with my manager then and he does visit in Nigeria, which was where I was born and raised.

And he shared some stories about like his visit there. His name is Saru.

Shout out to him. He's one of the best managers at Cloudflare here. Like I spoke to him and then we talked and we shared his experience about when he visited Nigeria and things like that.

And we found like a lot of communality. I was able to, like he shared some things that I was able to connect to my roots too.

Like I was able to relate with a lot.

And I was like, this is someone I would work with, you know, this search is going from a passive search to an active one, you know, let's, let's go through the rest of the process.

You know, it's like when you find people that you can share things with, that you relate to, that you've had similar struggles, similar experiences, the conversation is easier.

It's easier to take a chance on people like that.

It's easier to open doors of opportunities, you know, to people like that.

So I'll say like leveraging people in your network, you know, is very great, especially like when you're transitioning.

And I'll say even after a transition, actively building like network, I felt like most military people are not really great at network.

We're mostly used to getting assigned jobs and getting those jobs done and being excellent at those without building networks of people around us.

Then when you're ready for the next step or you're ready for growth or more visibility, there's not a lot of people like you built around you, you know, to, to give you like, you know, that visibility for like the next position you're looking for, for that next step or for that next phase of growth, because you're mostly just used to getting heads down and getting the job done.

So building a very strong network is, is kind of very like, I'll say it's almost everything when it comes to like the corporate work.

It's not just about being an excellent person or being very skilled at what you do.

I mean, I've, my, my network, especially with regards to kind of the veteran community has really grown over the last few years.

But even my path to Cloudflare started with a simple outreach to one of the managers on the business development side, where I saw that he was a Marine.

I still have the message somewhere buried in my LinkedIn chats, where it was like, Hey, Chris, Chris, I see you.

I know you're still here.

But I just reached out to Chris. I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm a vet, you're a vet.

I see some opportunity over at Cloudflare. I was wondering if you have 30 minutes to chat to see if that's worth exploring.

And long story short, here I am, here we all are.

While at the same time, that network also helps Cloudflare with regards to a lot of like customer relationship development.

I, on the CSM side, I work with customers every day in, day out, every day.

And many times we don't get a lot of, a lot, a lot of the conversations that we have customer facing, a lot of times are just like based around services or billing.

And, and a lot of times it doesn't dig into a lot of the personal side, but I think I made one slight comment.

Oh no, I saw, I saw a customer's phone number when he dialed in. I was like, Hey, are you out of Virginia beach by chance?

And he's like, yeah, that's oddly specific.

I was like, yeah, I was stationed out there. Come to find out he did 20 years in the Navy.

He was a JAG, got out and now is CISO at an organization.

But not that we are vets, did the relationship get better? But I felt like once there was an established kind of understanding of where some of our history was, there was an ease in the conversation and just familiarity and camaraderie.

And so I do like to kind of drive the point home that we're special. Like we have a natural set of skills that I mean, anyone can really develop, but we know the infrastructure or the way that everyone else was kind of, I guess, molded.

We all understand. But with that, we are coming up on time. So I do want to thank you all for your time and contribution and letting us get to know you a little bit more.

If anyone wants to reach out to the Vet Flare team, you can find us in the Vet Flare chat while at the same time, feel free to direct message us with any questions, recommendations, or if anybody knows of great talent that Cloudflare would benefit from bringing on, please feel free to reach out to me, Jerry Lim, or any one of our panelists.

And we'd be happy to kind of start introducing ourselves and starting this conversation.

So again, thank you everybody from the panel for joining our time, and thank you everyone for listening in.

Cheers. Thanks for having us.