Welcome to Season 3 of the podcast. Google's podcast about site reliability engineering and production software. I'm your host, Steve McGee.
This season we're going to focus on designing and building software in Eserie. Our guests come from a variety of roles both inside and outside of Google.
Happy listening and remember, hope is not a strategy.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to a special episode of the podcast. Google's podcast on Eserie and production software.
It's special because we're kind of between seasons right now. Jordan's here. Hi, Jordan.
I'm here. Hi. Hi, everybody.
And we have a special guest. We have Javi.
Hi, everybody.
Javi, why don't you introduce yourself? How's it going, man?
Good. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Javi Beltran. I actually work.
I'm calling from Suric, so I work in the Suric office. I've been an engineer at Google for almost 18 years.
Nice.
A couple of teams. So I didn't jump so much.
I'm the original creator of the Telebot song and I guess that's the reason why I'm here.
That's right.
Maybe partially because you created the song and partially because you're an engineer, but both things are relevant.
And the podcast has been going on for a few seasons now.
And how I remember your name most is Javi Beltran composed theme on the outro of the podcast every single time.
Your name is ever present on our podcast.
Yes, every time.
So you were always credited in our episodes. So thank you very much for lending us your magnum opus.
So the one question that I've gotten from some people about it is what is that song? Why does it exist?
There is an explanation.
So back in 2012, I was part of the team, Telephony Operations.
We basically ensured that the routing of the Telebot calls that were paging the engineers,
it was basically done properly.
So Telebot is making a call to the mobile of someone, right?
And then we were as well responsible for the other direction.
If someone calls the number that appears in the screen, the Telebot number,
Telebot will basically tell you, hey, I'm Telebot, you missed a page.
This is what you need to hear, right?
At that time, as I told you, I could control the routing.
So as Telebot was a little impersonal, let's put it that way.
It's just a robotic system.
Well, it was not robotic voice.
It was a normal voice of someone telling you, this is the page, this is the alert, blah, blah, blah, right?
So I decided to put a little of personality into that.
That's why I came up with the idea that Telebot is like a robot.
And I compose music. I know how to make sounds and effects, etc.
So I basically, my head is like, OK, I can easily replicate a robot voice over my voice, right?
That's why I decided that it would be fun if someone called back that number
and they don't have the number in the agenda.
Instead of a system voice, that it's a little, as I said, a little flat,
I decided to make some fun out of it.
And that was the original idea in my head, because Telebot was like a robot.
I decided to do something similar to electronic music, vintage kind of electronic sounds.
It's not my style when I compose music.
I'm usually into guitars or bass, drums, you know, like rock from the 90s.
But this time I'm like, OK, how do I make something very simple?
Because I didn't want really to...
It's not that I wanted to present my music to the world.
I was trying to do something and leave it there, right?
An experiment.
That's why I came up with this simple idea.
It's a little bit googly in that way.
You know, something just to make it a little bit more fun and interesting.
For something that could not be fun and interesting if you missed a page, could be bad.
It could have just been boring, right?
Like, that's no fun.
You might as well make it fun.
And it could be an nightmare sometimes when Telebot is pinging you or calling you like 20 times in a minute.
So I was suffering that myself.
I was an engineer on calls.
So that was the original spirit to make something out of it, make it a little less painful.
Let's put it that way.
And for people to remember that that number is Telebot.
So they could update their agenda.
So next time you don't need to call.
Who is calling me 2 times at 3 a.m.
It's Telebot, no.
I mean, that was basically another motivation, no, to help people remember that it's the Telebot number because it, yeah.
So back up a little bit like how did Google engineers use Telebot?
Like what did it do and like what problem did it solve?
Like what was the lack of Telebot before there was a Telebot?
Like why did Telebot happen?
So Telebot is a page system.
So it's basically engineers are going to get notified of an alert through an application which is popping up in the screen and making sounds like a ringtone as well.
Similar to a phone call.
But on top of that you can make a phone call or you can get an SMS.
So in a nutshell, the phone call is basically to reach out to people who doesn't have a data connection.
So for sure, a lot of people decided to receive a phone call or an SMS, but you want to wake up in the middle of the night.
And if you forgot to enable the Wi-Fi, the ringtone, the incoming call will wake you up, right?
That was basically how it's a paging system with multiple options.
But I knew that a lot of people would get the phone call.
Do you remember what year it was when Telebot was envisioned or created about?
I guess the Lebot has been there since 2005, 2007.
By the time I did that, it was 2011, 2012 and Telebot was already pretty popular.
I guess the Lebot has been, it was probably there one decade before, from early 2000.
So I'm an ancient one as well in terms of being an SRE at Google.
And I remember when Telebot happened.
And at the time, this is going to sound weird to the young's, but like, you know, data wasn't pervasive.
Like you could be in places where like you could get a call and not get a data connection.
And maybe not really even get texts very well.
And also like not even just the connections, but like the phones themselves were kind of like dinky.
And like you could mess up your SMS volume level or something like that,
where you would like get an SMS, but it wouldn't make any sound in the middle of the night because reasons.
And like it just, the UX just wasn't great.
And so Telebot was this like kind of semi low tech solution in that it was like,
well, we have this thing called phone calls that seems to work pretty well for everybody for decades.
Let's use that.
And there was a method that teams could opt into using it or individuals could opt into using it saying like,
first send me a text, then send me a thing.
And then like 90 seconds later, if I don't respond, then sick the Telebot on me and you know, wake me up.
And that was the flexibility of it, I thought was really, really great.
And it worked very, very well.
Is that your question as well?
I'm just saying that it's interesting because the left one is sometimes associated to the old times,
but the reality is that I work now with messaging SMS, MMS, RCS,
and it's a multi billion dollar industry, great dependencies.
So people are still using SMS for authentication and multiple purposes.
People actually, if you ask people out there, they love the SMS because the SMS identify you
because the phone number identify you.
My point is that Telephony in 2024 is still pretty popular,
but still it's associated to this old classic way of contacting you,
obviously, because everything evolves.
But the reality is that, you know, a lot of people in the planet still don't have data
and the SMS and the voice call is still a reality out there, right?
Even in the western world, it's still pretty important.
So yeah, it's not going away yet.
Yes.
All right, I have a very important question, Javi.
The voice of Telebot saying you have received a call from Telebot, is that you?
In the original song, what I said, you missed a page from Telebot, that's me,
and I just added a robotic filter.
But I think Telebot will still, if you Telebot, when it calls you and you accept the call,
that voice is not mine.
That voice is, I think it's a system voice, it's an automatic voice,
but probably from a default voice of someone, like a sample.
So I have a quick question.
Most engineers or techie people in general don't love a phone call.
And so if they are getting a phone call, it means that all of the other fail-saves.
Have gone.
So you are now getting a phone call and you have to pick it up.
Not great.
And a little bit stressful.
Do you have any stories about when you got the phone call and it was like, oh no.
This is the point where I know that I now hate the Telebot theme.
I now hate that I have to pick up the phone.
Is there a turning point where that happens?
Or is it still something you love so much?
I think in that scenario with Telebot, as an engineer on call, you have these contradictory feelings.
You get a page, imagine a phone call, or your application is popping up with the specific ringtone.
And it's like, oh no, I need to open my laptop.
At the same time, if you get the call, it's like, well, thanks Telebot.
Because the last thing you want is another colleague to wake up in the middle of the night and do your work.
Or be concerned about you.
Because when you are on call, everybody assumes that you are alive and ready.
If the primary on call is not responding with all these wonderful options, everybody will get paranoid.
Like that guy is sick or that person is in a remote island and we just realized or whatever.
So one interesting story about the Telebot song is that a lot of people used the song as a ringtone.
And I heard the stories about the partner of the engineer, right?
Obviously, when you are sharing bed with your partner, your wife, your husband, whatever.
And you get that wonderful call at 3 a.m.
If you are putting the Telebot ringtone versus the normal whatever Android ringtone,
the person besides you is going to hear you missed a page from Telebot.
And he's like, answer that call.
It's gonna be a nightmare for the non engineer, right?
And I heard the stories about people telling me, like, yeah, my wife hated that song so much
that I had to remove it from my ringtone.
Even if you want to keep it as a ringtone, your partner will not allow that, right?
Because they will get sick of that.
You know what that call means.

I feel it.
So a couple tips from the chat.
Mohit Muthana actually wrote Telebot in Ruby in about 2007, according to Salim.
So that's a cool little bit of lore.
And one more piece of sort of a future lore, I guess we can call it,
is that there's a new song.
There's a new Telebot song, right?
And we're going to use it here on this podcast.
And so maybe it's playing under a speaking right now.
I don't know.
That's up to the editors.
We'll see how it goes.
But we're going to use it for our intro in season four.
And Bobby made it for us.
Is there anything you want to tell us about this remix?
Is it like, is it Bossa Nova?
Like, is there a full length album coming?
Like, what can we expect?
Like, how did it go?
Well, this was a little of a collaboration between Jordan and myself.
Thanks, Jordan, again, because you gave me the inspiration and the motivation to do this.
And I felt responsible, right?
Because I'm like, okay, I have the original files, you know,
and we make an intro out of the original song.
It needs to be consistent, right?
And coherent.
Lucky me, I found some way files, you know,
that I could basically use again in the mix.
And then I told Jordan, hey, you know what?
Maybe this time I can play with different sounds and make it a little more vintage
or, you know, like video game style.
Like I was already using my imagination.
And at the same time, I thought,
hey, it would be cool to play a real instrument.
Because back in the day, what I did is very simple.
I selected a drum sound, you know, with a MIDI keyboard.
I just created these organs, these psychedelic sounds.
And I recorded my voice.
And I put the effect on top of it, mixed it, bye.
But this time I wanted to make it, I had the opportunity to say,
listen, at least I'll play one of the instruments.
So I decided to take my bass and I played the bass line.
Even Jordan gave me some ideas that I reproduced myself.
It felt really good, you know, to add that human touch to Telebot,
which is, you know, a robot, a well-known robot.
So now the intro is giving us the opportunity to add this human 20 seconds of magic.
Yes, it's a little bit more organic in that way.
And we wanted to make it a little bit more modern
because while SRE is quite the same.
There are some things that have changed.
There are some ways that we have moved forward.
And I think that having a fresh take on Telebot
is a good way to symbolize that change musically.
So look forward to it.
I think also it's like a, it's a good analogy, right, for SRE in general.
Like we try to automate a lot of stuff, but at the end of the day,
it's the human touch that's underneath it all that is really necessary.
You can't just have a robot.
You can't just have a thing that you wrote once.
You gotta adapt.
You gotta evolve over time because the system changes, the demands change.
The robot's not gonna change on its own.
You gotta have a human like Javi, like how we have, who can step in and take the wave files
and like an actual bass guitar and do stuff and make it sound awesome.
So thanks very much Javi.
This is really awesome.
We're gonna listen to it over and over and over again.
And hopefully we'll play it like right now for the listeners
and we can all glory in it.
Anything else, Jordan or Javi, before we break it off?
Play our song.
One thing that is interesting as well is that, as I said,
we made some iterations, which iteration is an important part of life too, right?

And get feedback and iterate feedback and iterate.
So we practiced that.
You didn't waterfall plan it like you actually iterated.
No, no.
En fait,
même though I am a TPM, did not and would not waterfall,
it was very much open to subjective feedback and, you know, endless scope until it was done.
So are there gonna be remixes?
Are there gonna be masters sent out of all the different iterations along the way Javi?
Can we look forward to that?
No.
No?
Worth a shot.
Yeah, I mean, Jordan helped me really to,
because I was a little too original, a little disrupted,
I even added some noises that are like, you know, like,
cause in my head originally, back in the day, I wanted to say,
you missed a page from the P telebot, you know, like making a little more fun of it,
but I decided that I'm not gonna put objectives to the wonderful telebot system
because the system has enough making it work.
So my point is that it was great to do it with Jordan
because then it's not only me and my own paranoia.
It's basically, it's basically feeding the purpose,
which was basically to create a space for the voice
and for people to recognize that intro as an iconic song,
like the original song, like trying to make it nice for everybody,
like make it simple and catchy.
Yeah, it's a collab as the kids say, right?
Yes.
Excellent.
Yes, and it was great.
Awesome.
Well, thanks very much Javi.
Thanks for stepping in real quick.
I know it's late there.
We are many time zones away from each other.
Thanks Jordan for helping out with this, for doing the collab.
I've heard it.
I think it's awesome.
So well done to both of you.
And yeah, we'll see everyone in the next season.
Season four is gonna be out soonish.
All right.
Thank you.
Awesome.
So long everyone.
You've been listening to podcast,
Google's podcast on site reliability engineering.
Visit us on the web at sre.google,
où vous pouvez trouver des papiers, des workshops, des vidéos et plus sur SRE.
Ceci, la host de la season est Steve McGee,
avec des contributions de Jordan Greenberg et de Florian Rathgeber.
La podcast est produite par Paul Gulli-Mino,
Sunny Chow et Salim Virgi.
La thème de la podcast est Telebot,
par Javi Beltran.
Special thanks à M.P. English et Jen Pettoff.
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