Insightful conversations. Less snark.

RedMonk has been a long time friend of the show and we’re always happy to have their folks on for a round of “Screaming!” Kate Holterhoff is a newly minted analyst, and RedMonk’s most recent hire. One of the interesting things about RedMonk is the many directions they go in seemingly all at once, and Kate joining the team is adding a path. Kate talks about her academic background and her PhD and her post-doc work. She is also a recently published author. So, why did she make the jump to frontend engineering? Kate offers some solid reasons behind her transition after developing an interest in the digital humanities. Kate provides some excellent insight on balancing these seemingly separate spheres of work that, in actuality, can overlap.

When you look at all the colossal blunders that pop up along the way in tech, oftentimes the adverse reaction is to “I’ll build my own database.” Oftentimes the result is not stellar. For Venkat Venkataramani, CEO of Rockset, the result was quite the opposite. Rockset has been a soaring success for Venkat and his team. Rockset is a real-time analytics platform built for the cloud. Venkat talks about what real-time analytics really means, and the speed and scale that is needed in a data analytics platform to meet that. Venkat discusses how Rockset is tackling the incredible complexity of providing real time data to their customers. Venkat offers some anecdotes about Rockset meeting their customers’ needs, the value real time data brings to a business, and breaks down the technical aspects of working in real time!

Couchbase is a database company first, there's no doubt about it, and Chris Harris, VP of Global Field Engineering, is here to tell us how they’re staying the course. In the wishy washy week to week changing in what companies constitutionally are, Couchbase is sticking with their original intent. Chris discusses the spawning of the database industry, and the many types of databases that are out there. He discusses how Couchbase took a step back and asked, why is everything rooted in the noSQL or SQL conversation? Why not just build a database. Chris’s focus on a particular problem across his career has led to one steeped in database knowledge. The end result is an insightful and wide ranging take on the database needs of the technology world.

Senior Solutions Engineer is the job title of today’s guest Tom Totenberg, who comes to us from LaunchDarkly. Despite what at first glance might be a guise for “sales engineer,” and thus lead to booing and hissing, that isn’t strictly the case. Tom is here to shine some light on those distinctions, and how he strives to develop an attitude of building relationships instead of only cold numbers. Tom discusses his “aspirational” approach to his job and how to infuse that into sales culture. He also talks about what drew him to LaunchDarkly, and what exactly it is they do there. For him, it is the “last mile” of what they call feature management and getting your software out the door. Tom talks about the delightful former “Screaming” guest Heidi Waterhouse, the transference and learning of skills across your career, cultivating an environment that aspires, and more!

Casey Lee is the CTO at Gaggle, which actually is saving lives. While loads of companies make the claim, in this case it rings rather true. Gaggle sells software to school districts that use the software to help protect their students by looking for indicators of bullying, self-harm, and a litany of other challenges facing young people in today’s world. Casey expands on the 6 million and growing students that they and their software is working to protect. Corey and Casey also share about their serendipitous encounter at re:Invent. Form helping Gaggle save on their AWS bills, they then dive into Casey’s area of expertise: containers. And at the end of all, they land on “quinntainers” and the 18th way to run containers on AWS.

Scott Piper, now a Principle Engineer at Block, and firmly established as the independent AWS security researcher, is becoming a regular fixture on the show. Now having taken a corporate gig, at the news of which Corey was a little let down, Scott is able to quell his concerns. Scott is still as public and prolific as ever. Scott holds true to his security research, and as he tells it his public presence is something companies can learn to value instead of sweat. Corey frequently mines Scott’s Twitter for his weekly security newsletter, an excellent source for the latest in security. Scott offers kind works on the newsletter, IMSDv2, and some request for areas for AWS to improve their security game!

For a while Corey has resisted the “siren’s song” to do an episode on web3. Well, the time has finally come to change that. Today’s guest, software engineer Molly White, runs a collection of interesting stories at web3isgoinggreat.com, where she demonstrates a flair for making web 3 somewhat approachable, and levels her own just critiques. Molly discusses the “handwaviness” of web3 as “the future of the web” and how the hype might be overselling. She and Corey talk about the sometimes warranted hesitancies about certain technologies, and how web3 falls into some of those. She shoots down some of the misinformation about crypto and the odd ball stuff popping up around it, and lets us in on some of her own criticisms. Which are finely hewn and actually make sense! Unlike the dark morass of crypto itself.

Today’s guest is the source of what Corey considers some of the most “horrifying feedback” he has ever gotten from his audience. Namely, that one of his Twitter threads was the catalyst for the change in the course of a career. But, thankfully it was for the better, and Johnny Podhradsky, Technical Program Manager for Offboard Infrastructure at Waymo, is here to tell us why. Johnny talks about being a TPM, what exactly it is, and all that at a self-driving car company. Johnny takes a crack at working in a space where the outcome isn’t always tangible and at hand, and how he interprets that as an “anti-entropy agent”. Johnny reflects on Corey’s well timed Twitter thread that caused a major career shift. Johnny’s refreshing perspectives on program management, combating entropy, structuring your life and work, and more are wise beyond his years!

Corey’s good friend Matt “Matty” Stratton, now a Staff Developer Advocate at Pulumi, is back for another round of “Screaming!” Now, with a job title that sits at the top of a “very strange career trajectory.” With beginnings at Chef, to IMB, and now Pulumi Matty catches up on the latest in his adventures! Corey and Matty talk about how he characterizes his previous experiences in his multifaceted career. Matty made a shift from sales, and he and Corey talk about navigating that potentially precarious space. From professional development, to dealing with variable income, to doing DevRel on “easy mode,” Matty brings an extensive know how to the table!

Corey has admired today’s guest, a “study in contrast,” for a quite a while. Now, Joe Onisick, a Principal at Transformation CONTINUUM, joins the “Screaming” line up. Joe’s consultancy focus is on helping companies achieve digital transformation, which is a progressively forward looking space. The contrast in said study is that Joe chose to leave Silicon Valley and “go live in the woods,” which is certainly an uncommon combination. Corey and Joe discuss their connection over Joe’s pinned Tweet, in which he states a transformational shift in his own life towards living better. For starters Joe decided to climb Kilimanjaro, leave Silicon Valley, and start his consultancy. He rakes over the nuances of establishing a consultancy in digital transformation, and what exactly that means. Joe’s emphasis on being straight forward and honest with his customers lends a credibility to his work that, sadly, seems rare these days. But with that honesty at hand he dives into multi-cloud, migration, and more!

Today’s guest works in a world that Corey “got the hell out of” after a brief tenure when he realized he just wasn’t very good at it. That’s why The Duckbill Group hired on Ashleigh Early as their Head of Sales. Ashleigh joined the team about six months ago and since then has only assuaged Corey’s and Co.’s sales needs. Ashleigh breaks down the nuance in enterprise sale, and shares some secret on how does one actually make money in the space. She shares some pet peeves with some of the sales culture, and she addresses some much needed changes within sales culture at large. This includes the need to connect with people, do your research going in, the role of databases, and more! If you want some insight check in on Ashleigh’s take!

Today’s guest, rumor has it, might has something to do with the creation of “God’s true language, XML.” Tim Bray, a principal at Textuality Services, and Corey reconnect after Tim’s recent blog post where he discusses lock-in and multi-cloud. Two subjects that are close to Corey’s heart, and on which Tim’s opinion are fairly countercultural. Tim expands on his blog post, which in short states that multi-cloud is not as complicated anymore. His take, it is now a “reasonable” thing for companies to ponder. For Tim it isn’t realistic for larger companies, especially, to not be multi-cloud. Tim and Corey go into the ins and outs of multi-cloud, tackling the people side of multi-cloud, and more!