Insightful conversations. Less snark.

This week Nigel Kersten, Field CTO at Puppet, joins Corey to talk about their respective companies relationship and what all it entails. They rehash Corey’s time spent as a traveling contract trainer for Puppet and the ins and outs of that time. To include the challenges of describing what exactly Puppet is and how it works to clients. They also dive into the differences between then and now on DevOps, and tech at large. In short, Puppet is a DSL (domain specific language). Nigel and Corey divulge the details on what that is, how it works, and how to translate it over to a larger, not so technical, world. They also reflect on how Docker handed over the keys and some of the attachments we have to a techno-social system. Nigel speaks on the innovations that have changed along the way and the impact they’ve had in the industry. Especially those that have a tendency to cling to “legacy.”

This week Corey is joined by Anurag Gupta, founder and CEO of Shoreline.io. Anurag guides us through the large variety of services he helped launch to include RDS, Aurora, EMR, Redshift and other. The result? Running things almost like a start-up—but with some distinct differences. Eventually Anurag ended up back in the testy waters of start-ups. He and Corey discuss the nature of that transition to get back to solving holistic problems, tapping into conveying those stories, and what Anurag was able to bring to his team at Shoreline.io where automation is king. Anurag goes into the details of what Shoreline is and what they do. Stay tuned for me.

Michael Garski is the director of software engineering at Fender, the famed electrical guitar manufacturer. Prior to this position, he worked as a principal software architect at Viant, a principal software architect at MySpace, a manager of internet development at Countrywide Financial, and a manager of system architecture at Fandango, among other positions. He also had a four-year stint in the US Navy, working as an engineering laboratory technician. Join Corey and Michael as they talk about how artists are angels and Fender’s job is to give them wings, how Fender has diversified its offerings in recent years, how serverless is a mindset and how Fender approach serverless technology, how Fender’s traffic surged during the pandemic and how everything mostly scaled up without a hitch, the challenges of teaching students to play instruments over the internet, the vendor lock-in boogeyman, and more.

Rasam Tooloee is a Cloud Network Evangelist at Alkira, Inc., a company that’s working on reinventing networking for the cloud era. Previously, he was an enterprise sales director at Microsoft, a senior strategic account executive at Salesforce, and an IP telephony architect for RHI Inc. He also had a 10-year stint at Cisco, working as a networking and collaboration sales specialist. Join Corey and Rasam to chat about how networking has changed over the last several years. They discuss what it was like for Rasam to work for Alkira and the solutions they’ve brought to the technology space. Rasam’s circuitous route that he’s taken over his career led him back to networking and thus his work at Alkira. A route that is the result of chasing the leading edge of innovation and how agility is the native value proposition of the cloud. They also discuss how Alkira is recognizing cloud is a competitive imperative and companies need to find solutions in that space.

Jason Yee is the director of advocacy at Gremlin, an enterprise-grade chaos engineering platform. Prior to this role, he worked as a senior technical evangelist at Datadog, a community manager for ops, performance and security at O’Reilly Media, a software engineer at MongoDB, and a senior developer at OpenSourcery, among other positions. Join Corey and Jason as they talk about what Gremlin is and what a director of advocacy does, making chaos engineering more accessible for the masses, how it’s hard to calculate ROI for developer advocates, how developer advocacy and DevRel changes from one company to the next, why developer advocates need to focus on meaningful connections, why you should start chaos engineering as a mental game, qualities to look for in good developer advocates, the Break Things On Purpose podcast, and more.

Cassidy Williams is the principal developer experience engineer at Netlify, an advisor at Polywork, and the co-founder and chief product officer of Cosynd, Inc. Prior to these positions, she worked as an instructor and senior engineer at React Training, director of outreach at cKeys, a senior software engineer at CodePen, head of developer voice programs at Amazon, and a software engineer at Venmo, among other positions. Join Corey and Cassidy as they talk about what Netlify is and what a developer experience engineer does, how JavaScript started off as a toy language and why everything that can be built with JavaScript will be moving forward, the benefits of using low-code development tools, how discovering TikTok helped Cassidy drum up a major following on social media, how Cassidy's humor is never directed at people or organizations and why that's the case, the differences between recording a podcast and livestreaming on Twitch from the speaker's point of view, and more.

Nick Frichette is a penetration tester and team lead at State Farm insurance, where he’s worked for more than five years. He’s also the maintainer of hackingthe.cloud. He holds security and solutions architect AWS certifications, and in his spare time, he conducts vulnerability research at Hacking the Cloud. Nick graduated from Illinois State University in 2017, earning a degree in computer science. Join Corey and Nick as they talk about the various kinds of cloud security researchers and touch upon offensive security, why Nick decided to create Hacking the Cloud, how AWS lets security researchers conduct penetration testing in good faith, some of the more interesting AWS exploits Nick has discovered, how it’s fun to play keep-away with incident response, why you need to get legal approval before conducting penetration testing, and more.

Dr. Christina Maslach, PhD, is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, where she’s taught for nearly 50 years. During that time, she also had an eight-year stint as Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. Dr. Maslach holds a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard and earned her doctor of philosophy degree in psychology from Stanford University. She’s also written several books about burnout at work. Join Corey and Dr. Maslach as they talk about employee burnout, how burnout is common in people-facing positions and why it’s not a sign of weakness, how burnout is an occupational risk factor but is not by itself a mental health issue, how burnout can lead to physical health problems and mental health issues, the impact the pandemic has had on employee burnout, how some folks think burnout is the malady of the century, how people are working harder at home to increase the chances they keep their jobs, the genesis of the term “burnout,” and more.

Scott Hanselman is a partner program manager at Microsoft, where he’s worked for nearly 14 years. Scott brings more than 30 years of tech expertise to Microsoft. Prior to this role, he worked as the chief architect at Corillian, an adjunct professor at the Oregon Institute of Technology, and a consultant for e-commerce sites. He’s also the host of the Hanselminutes podcast. Join Corey and Scott as they talk about how Scott is selling enthusiasm around free and open source software to empower the next generation of programmers, how technology can help you escape a suboptimal position in life, moving a blog that was hosted on a Windows Server 2008 server to Azure, using TikTok to encourage younger folks to get into coding, why there isn’t a wrong programming language to learn and why you should learn JavaScript, how the rise of SaaS and cloud computing has made Microsoft a “simpler” company, convincing banks to use open source in the 2000s, and more.

Martin Mao is the co-founder and CEO of Chronosphere, which aims to build the world’s most scalable and reliable cloud monitoring platform. Previously, he worked as an engineering manager at Uber, a director at Pure Interactive Technologies, a technical lead at Amazon Web Services, a software development engineer at Microsoft, and an intern at Google, among other positions. Join Corey and Martin as they talk about what it was like working with each of the big three cloud providers, being on the team that created AWS Systems Manager, the difference between monitoring and observability, why Uber needed to excel at monitoring and observability to get to where they are today, what happens when you outgrow Prometheus, how much of the Chronosphere team built the company’s underlying tech at Uber and ran it in production, how Chronosphere is focused on helping users develop skills that transfer from one company to the next, and more.

AJ Yawn is the co-founder and CEO at ByteChek, a startup that’s focused on making compliance suck less. He’s also a founding board member of the National Association of Black Compliance & Risk Management Professionals, and advisor at CISO MAG, and an advisor at team5. previously, AJ served as Principal for SOC-ISO-Healthcare at Coalfire. He was also a Captain in the U.S. Army and played basketball for Florida State University, reaching the Sweet 16 in 2011. Join Corey and AJ as they discuss the origin story of ByteChek, why organizations need to stop thinking about compliance as a check-the-box exercise, what to look for in an auditor, why you need to keep asking the hard questions when evaluating auditors, why AJ believes that human auditors are going to become relics sooner or later, how it’s more or less impossible to do a comprehensive audit in the cloud by hand, why AWS Audit Manager isn’t usable for audits, why AJ decided to start a software company, and more.

Mike Julian is the CEO of The Duckbill Group, a company you might be familiar with. Prior to co-founding Duckbill with yours truly, Mike was editor in chief at Monitoring Weekly, principal at Aster Labs, a senior DevOps consultant at Taos, a senior systems engineer at Peak Hosting, and an operations engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, among other positions. He’s also the author of Practical Monitoring: Effective Strategies for the Real World. Join Corey and Mike as they assess the current state of data centers and talk about how data centers are on their way out even if they’ll still be around for the foreseeable future, what it was like working at Oak Ridge, how Mike describes the two different kinds of data centers he’s encountered, the client that set up their infrastructure in a basement of a boat (below the waterline), why you never want to forget your jacket en route to the data center, why you should cut cables when you throw them away, why data centers need 180 days of lead time, and more.