Insightful conversations. Less snark.

This week Nader Dabit, who works in developer relations at Edge & Node, joins Corey to chat. What is Edge & Node? Nader breaks it down for us. He also discusses his career and unconventional background that lead up to joining Edge & Node, and how he is always looking for the next challenge. That striving has informed his entire trajectory, and also lends an edge of excitement to Nader’s next steps. Nader talks about the decentralized financial issues in countries like Lebanon or Venezuela, dabblings in the dark arts of Front End Web, and how his blogging inspried him to become more community focused. Nader talks Java Script, paths into tech, the joys and benefit of teaching others and more! Tune in for Nader’s unique and energized take.

This week Serena Tiede, an SRE at Optum, joins Corey to talk about the world of SREs. Serena discusses their mix of traditional and non-traditional background and making the jump from electrical engineering to tech. Serena tells us about their beginnings at Optum and the different, and welcome, challenges of moving from system to system as an SRE. They talk about what Serena carrys forward from their background, starting in security and moving over to becoming an SRE and learning Docker. Corey and Serena also discuss the interminable nature of the cloud and the vast differences between when we’re footing the AWS bill—and when its the company’s problem! It turns out Serena learned some tricks on keeping costs down by tuning in to the various “Last Week in AWS” podcasts. You can do the same!

Amy Negrette is a cloud economist at The Duckbill Group. Prior to joining our team, Amy worked as a cloud architect at Trek10, Inc., a cloud software engineer lead at Cloudreach, a software developer at ASRC Research and Technology Solutions, and a software engineer at Yahoo, among other positions. She’s also an organizer of Write/Speak/Code, an organization committed to helping Under Represented Genders sharpen their technical speaking and writing capabilities. Join Corey and Amy as they discuss the pros and cons of remote work, what Duckbill’s organizational structure is like, remote work during the pandemic vs. remote work during the before times, why it’s nice to be able to work whenever you want to work instead of during fixed hours, why the future of travel in the tech industry should change, how Corey and Amy met, what makes cloud economics come natural to Amy, a tool that helps recreate physical events online more effectively than Zoom, and more.

Jesse DeRose is a cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, where he wears many hats: consultant, team liaison, technical lead, and project manager. Jesse brings more than 10 years of tech experience to Duckbill, having previously worked as a platform engineer at Omada Health, a DevOps engineer at Capital One, a DevOps engineer at AnyPerk, and a DevOps engineer at Taos, among other positions. Join Corey and Jesse as they talk about how many organizations expect tech workers to be able to write code in every language right off the bat, the importance of being able to speak to both sides of the table (i.e., the business side and the engineering side), how the Duckbill Group also thinks about organizational dynamics when suggesting how a client can save money in AWS, what Jesse thinks is one of the biggest challenges the Duckbill Group faces when working with clients, how Jesse helps both sides understand that both sides are important, and more.

James Governor is the co-founder of RedMonk, the developer-focused analyst firm. He’s also the managing director of Shoreditch Works, a coworking business that doubles as an event space. Previously, James worked as a deputy editor for InformationWeek UK. He lives in London. Join Corey and James as they discuss how RedMonk is different from traditional analyst firms, how Corey and James met and how James credentialed Corey as a bona fide industry analyst on Twitter, how anyone can be an analyst in theory, the mindset required to give advice as an analyst, what attracted James to becoming an analyst in the first place, why RedMonk focuses on the qualitative instead of the quantitative, why James believe the two biggest defining forces in culture are outrage and confirmation bias, and more.

Sean Kilgore is a senior principal engineer/architect at Twilio. Sean brings more than two decades worth of tech experience to this role. Previously, he worked as a principal engineer II/operations architect at SendGrid (which was acquired by Twilio), an operations engineer at Beachhead Studio, and an associate system administrator at Blizzard Entertainment, among other positions. Join Corey and Sean as they talk about becoming a manager and underestimating the emotional outlay that's needed to manage humans effectively, the difference between engineers and architects and what it's like to influence without authority, what the transition was like after Twilio purchased SendGrid, what it's like to have 11 job titles in eight years at one company, how staying at the same company for too long often results in underpaid employees but how Twilio has shattered that mold, how you can tell a lot about a company by the way they buy their people, and more.

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.