Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Today’s guest doesn’t mince words and always reads the manual. Sharone Zitzman, CEO and/or Chief Manual Reader at RTFM Please, begins by discussing her decision to start a company. Sharone talks about what led her to marketing in the first place, then Sharone and Corey discuss the importance of showing product value over explaining what’s “under the hood.” Corey asks what themes Sharone has seen lately and what companies are currently getting wrong. The conversation concludes with a discussion about the value of utilizing community in marketing and what the point of being involved in community really is!

Desktop apps don’t typically see a lot of air time here on “Screaming,” but that changes today with Rafal Wilinksi, the founder of Dynobase. Dynobase is how Rafal pinged on Corey’s radar. Dynobase an Electron app that you use on Mac that provides a user friendly interface with DynamoDB. Rafal talks about his inspiration for building a desktop application for a cloud service, a mad man’s ambition some may claim. Rafal talks about the beginnings of Dynobase, how it manages to “just do things right,” the focus on user experience and ease, the decision to put it on the market place, and more!

In tech there seems to be a trope that the “real” engineers follow the same path, but the reality on the ground is quite different. Carla Stickler, a Software Engineer at G2, defies that stereotype in so many syncopated ways. Before she tackled tech, Carla made waves on Broadway! Carla talks about her 15 year career on Broadway in shows ranging from “Mamma Mia!” to “The Sound of Music.” She expounds on her decision to leave the world of Broadway, and some of the physical and emotional taxes it takes that reinforced her choice to leave. She wanted to take on a new challenge, and did she ever pick one! Carla discusses her switch and the many obstacles she had to surmount in such a sudden shift, but also the incredible growth that she undertook in her transition to tech.

Backups matter, or at least they should, and if you’ve ever lost your data, you’d be inclined to agree. Simon Bennett, CEO and Founder of SnapShooter, has found a way to address those issues. SnapShooter backups for your servers, databases, and website, and makes it easy to do to boot. Simon talks about their offerings, notably that they’ll help you sleep well at night. Simon expands on the needs to make data safe and secure for his customers so that they can go back to doing what they do best. Their actual work, instead of fretting about data. Simon talks about areas where cloud providers fail in the backup space, the flexibility he gives his customers, how he prevents the customers having to deal with the finicky parts of backups, and more!

Previous “Screaming” guest Wesley Faulkner, now the Head of Community at SingleStore, is back to fill us in on his new role! With a history as a developer advocate, Wesley is able to angle his background at community development at large. More so, Wesley is the first “head of” any kind of development at SingleStore. So, he is charting new territory with them. Wesley chats about stepping into his new role, and how he interprets “advertising” that role to the community. He and Corey wax about the nuances of management, and how to balance that with organizational goals. As the first “head of” for any kind of community or developer advocacy within SingleStore, Wesley brings some fresh methods to build out that space, and address the needs it demands.

Corey has been angling to get someone from a particular department at AWS for a long while now. In the halls of AWS one may see “Commerce Platform” on a few of the doors. A point of interest for Corey, for sure. His tenacity has paid off as he is joined by James Greenfield, VP of AWS Commerce Platform, who has decided to step into the “Screaming” line up. James defines Commerce Platform as owning all the infrastructure, processes and software that takes what you’ve stored, and turns it into a number, and in turn makes that number as easy to pay as possible. James discusses moving from EC2 to Commerce Platform, how they’re constantly listening to their customers, the caliber and commitment of the Commerce Platform team, and more!

Periodically Corey speaks with people from various aspects of “Devreloper.” Today’s guest Priyanka Vergadia, Staff Developer Advocate at Google Cloud, provides her own functional definition of where the role starts and stops. More so, Priyanka has written a highly successfully, visually stimulating book! Priyanka offers up a lot of her definitions about the various modes of “Devrelopment,” and the different styles each brings forward. Priyanaka started her own take on DevRel by creating videos, and how it has evolved into ways to connect through visual mediums. More so, she has written a book, Visualizing Google Cloud: 101 Illustrated References for Cloud Engineers and Architects, which is not like most technical books! It's a visually driven guide that anyone can connect to! Check out the conversation for Priyanka's creative take on visuals, relaying information, and more!

Corey has been talking to Amy Tobey, Senior Principal Engineer at Equinix, for quite some time! And now they’ve finally sat down for a round of “Screaming.” Amy does an awful lot, but we want to get some structure behind the many, many obstacles that Amy tackles as a senior engineer. Amy breaks down what she does at Equinix, who has multiple data centers all over the world, as well as other products. Amy works on Equinix Metal, and does pretty much everything when it comes to keeping it functioning. But Amy’s contribution doesn’t stop there. For Amy there is a lot of space for improvement in the reliability space that can be at the cultural level. She offers up some excellent insight into ways to make that happen, keeping the grumpiness out of sysadmin, and more!

“What if CloudWatch’s web page didn’t suck?” is the question Corey pondered on until he came across Cloudash, which solved it for him. Today’s guest is Tomasz Łakomy, Head of React at Cloudash. Corey and Tomasz begin by discussing the challenges of monitoring and troubleshooting serverless applications, and how Cloudash was created with these in mind. Cloudash is a monitoring and troubleshooting tool for serverless applications. Corey and Tomasz discuss Tomasz’s “day job” at Stedi and how the work culture there nurtures many successful “side gigs,” such as Cloudash, by employees. They go on to talk about the merits and challenges of cloud provider certifications, using different types of code with CDK, and public speaking at tech events! They conclude the conversation by touching on the overlap between engineering and marketing.

Once upon a time Docker came out and changed the industry forever, but in the before times we had to manage computer systems ourselves! Now things have changed, and one of the biggest voices in that change is Michael DeHaan, creator of Cobbler and Ansible. The current and coming generation of work in tech is to stand on the backs of many giants, of which Michael is one. Michael reflects on the bad old days when server was king, and how Cobbler revolutionized how the provisioning of bare metal systems worked. As Michael tells it, it was basically a way to “glue” everything together. But, of course, it is more complicated than that. Michael didn’t stop there, soon afterward he created Ansible. Ansible was a way to help alleviate some of the stickiness of config management, and deal with scale. If you want to learn more about them both, tune in for that and Michael’s many other offerings! Michael reflects on the bad old pre-cloud days when server was king, and how Cobbler revolutionized how the provisioning of bare metal systems worked. As Michael tells it, it was basically a way to “glue” everything together. But, of course, it is more complicated than that. Michael didn’t stop there, soon afterward he created Ansible. Ansible was a way to help alleviate some of the stickiness of config management, and deal with scale. If you want to learn more about them both, tune in for that and Michael’s many other offerings!

Tailscale and its CEO, Avery Pennarun, join Corey today for some extremely exciting news! They have just raised $100 million in a Series B, a significant accomplishment. Given the super ease of use, and general wizardry that makes Tailscale work, this is excellent news for all of us! Corey has been using Tailscale for a while, and it has been transformative for how he uses these kinds of tools. He can’t stop raving about how useful it is, but it is hard to explain to folks. Avery clears any confusion and provides a thorough understanding of what it is, and how it works. Avery discusses how Tailscale connects your devices, provides a high level of visibility within your network, and how your whole team is able to utilize it. Avery goes into detail on Tailscale’s offerings, breaks down some of the technical aspects of how it works, and more!

Corey often has cloud security issues forced up on him, but he isn’t necessarily in the trenches. Today’s guest Yoav Alon, CTO at Orca Security, has been doing the security grunt work for quite some time. Yoav and Orca are now at the forefront of cloud security and his encompassing perspectives go far to cover the cloud security spread. Yoav talks about Orca’s three principles of security that help alleviate “friction” i.e. in-fighting with your peers. He also reflects on some of their security research in AWS and how in one particular discovery they leapt to the front of the pack. Yoav talks about how “data is king” and the security needs it demands, he reflects on AWS’s quick reaction to security problems, offers some takes on Azure, and more!