While Discover principal product owner Glenn Turner Jr. credits his father with instilling in him a love of technology while growing up in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood, he established himself as a true innovator by helping to enable the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) journey at Discover.
Standardizing deployments at Discover
In nearly three years at Discover, Glenn has worked tirelessly to maximize the value of the product responsible for standardizing Discover's approach to CI/CD, known as Trident.
"Trident is our way of standardizing the build and deployment process while maintaining enough flexibility to support application and area-specific requirements." Glenn says, "but it's standardized enough where teams don’t have to worry about the efforts associated with building out their own pipelines and CI/CD environments. With Trident, teams can use our automated onboarding process, configure their applications using our well-documented gitops approach to CI/CD, and take advantage of our standardized processes for building, deploying, and releasing."
What's the elevator pitch for Trident? What should readers know about it?
So, that brings up a situation where there are basically 1,000 solutions to the same problem.
What should people outside of Discover know about Trident?
Trident ensures that we provide our teams with a standardized approach to building and deploying applications. Not only will that save time and confusion, but it also makes it a lot easier for troubleshooting and just implementation overall.
Now, when a community comes together, it's using the same process to collaborate with other communities. They can work with each other on making our process better. This is known as innersource, where we're not the only ones responsible for building out these standardizations. We're actually encouraging the community to help us with the process.
What initially inspired you to get into technology?
I was always a tech person since I was young, but I really got it mostly from my dad. He wasn't in the tech field, but he was very savvy when it came to computers, so naturally, I got my hands on a computer at a young age. By the time I got to late high school/early college, I knew that I wanted to do something in computers. I wasn’t sure what the specific directions were that I could take, so DevOps was never really a thing for me at that time. Once I realized I wanted to go into computers, I focused on the degree in computer science. I went the community college route and eventually enrolled at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) as my four-year university where I took computer science as the actual primary course. That led me to many different avenues within engineering.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I spend most of my time with my family which consists of my wife and my daughter.
Outside of work, I am an active martial artist, primarily trained in Karate. I have been in martial arts for more than 26 years and have been an active martial arts instructor for more than 15 years. I work with our young students twice a week.
I also find myself spending countless hours working on and discussing cars. While I’m by no means a professional mechanic, I have been working on my own vehicles for minor to moderate repairs and maintenance for years. I do plan on taking an automotive course in the future.
What are some of the parallels between computer science and martial arts?
I would say problem solving and networking things together. With martial arts, you have to start with a strong foundation and build upon skills, whether it's teachable skills or personal skills. That helps get you to the next level until you’re eventually able to instruct and lead a class. With both, you’re constantly growing, constantly maturing, improving your focus to the point where you’re comfortable with what you can demonstrate and instill in others.
In both fields, the more you know and the more you improve and share that knowledge, the easier it is to help make other people better—and that helps make you better. So, the partnerships and collaborations that you make improve the connections between you and your peers.
Get to know more about Glenn
What's your favorite movie?
Heat.
Describe the best thing you have ever eaten.
I recently took a birthday trip to Washington DC. My wife and I had dinner at Trulucks Seafood and Crab. By far one of the best steaks I've had in my life.
In virtual meetings, is your camera on or off?
Camera on
Pick a pet
Cat
What else are you passionate about? In 2019, I started a web hosting company where I've learned many layers of being a business owner and servicing clients.
