Insightful conversations. Less snark.

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.

Guy Raz is a senior systems engineer at ExtraHop, makers of cloud-native cybersecurity solutions. Prior to joining ExtraHop in 2017, Guy worked as a network engineer at Cox Communications and a software consultant and professional services team lead at AirWatch. He holds a master of science degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and is a AWS certified solutions architect. Join Corey and Guy as they talk about what exactly ExtraHop does, how too many organizations treat security as an afterthought in the cloud, how most organizations have a ton of network data sitting there but few analyze it, the delicate balance between minimizing the attack surface and understanding and reacting to damage as quickly as possible, how Corey’s opinion of ExtraHop has evolved over time, how long it takes for ExtraHop to learn what anomalies look like in your environment, and more.

Austin Parker is a principal developer advocate at LightStep. Prior to this position, he worked as a software architect at Apprenda, an adjunct instruction and researcher at the University of Albany, a telecommunications specialist at Alltech, and as a support specialist for Verizon and Sprint. Join Corey and Austin as they discuss how the rise of distributed workforces has made observability a top concern for organizations, the many lives Austin led before getting into DevRel and how he ended up in DevRel in the first place, how Deserted Island DevOps came to be during the pandemic, what Austin believes many companies get wrong about developer marketing, why Austin believes teams don’t talk enough, the importance of biasing toward openness and transparency, and more.

Donnie Berkholz, Ph.D., is VP of Products at Docker. Prior to this position, he was an executive in residence at Scale Venture Partners, VP of IT Service Delivery of CWT, director of development, DevOps, and IT operations at 451 Research, an open-source leader at Gentoo Linux, a senior analyst at RedMonk, and a research fellow at the Mayo Clinic, among other positions. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from Oregon State University in 2009. Join Corey and Donnie as they talk about the new iteration of Docker and how the company has reinvented itself in the past year and a half, the blurring line between developers and operations, how no container runs in isolation, why multi-cloud is possible but not realistic, how Docker doesn’t want to be the runtime platform in production, what Donnie thinks Docker will look like 15 years from now, and more.

Owen Rogers wears many hats at 451 Research; he’s the vice president of cloud transformation and digital economics, the research director for the firm’s digital economics unit, and a senior analyst for digital economics. Prior to these positions, Owen was a doctoral researcher in cloud computing at the University of Bristol, completing his PhD thesis in 2013; a product portfolio manager at Claranet; and an independent product management and cloud computing consultant, among other positions. Join Corey and Owen as they talk about what it’s like when two cloud economists meet at an event but only one has a PhD, what exactly an industry analyst does, how 451 Research found that 53% of companies increased cloud spend during the pandemic and what resources they’re investing in, the Law of Cloud Entropy and why Owen believes the cloud will only get more disordered in the future, why it’s easy for cloud costs to spiral out of control, how organizations are trying to rein in cloud spend despite using more cloud services, why Owen doesn’t believe we’ll reach cloud commoditization anytime soon, and more.

Chadd Kenney is the VP of Product at Clumio, makers of a backup as a service solution for enterprise cloud environments. Previously, he worked as VP of Products and Solutions at Pure Storage, field CTO and divisional systems engineering manager at Dell EMC, and team lead, production services at CaseCentral, among other positions. He was also a board advisor for Rubrik, Inc. Join Corey and Chadd as they talk about what Clumio does, how no one’s been able to truly provide backup services for cloud environments, why someone should choose to work with Clumio instead of using AWS Backup, the shortcomings of AWS Backup, how no one cares about backups until the minute they need them, how backups are never really strategic for businesses but are necessary regardless, how Clumio Discover gives teams much better visibility into their environments than AWS Backup, how to get started with Clumio, and more.

Aviad Mor is the CTO and co-founder of Lumigo, a serverless intelligence platform that helps developers understand and troubleshoot serverless applications. Prior to this role, he wore many hats at Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd. over the course of 12 years, rising to the group manager of R&D for next generation architecture by the end of his tenure. Aviad Mor is the CTO and co-founder of Lumigo, a serverless observability platform that helps developers understand and troubleshoot serverless applications. Prior to this role, he wore many hats at Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd. over the course of 12 years, rising to the group manager of R&D for next generation architecture by the end of his tenure. Join Corey and Aviad as they talk about what Lumigo does, how the most interesting serverless environments are in AWS, what a hybrid serverless environment might look like, what the true promise of serverless is, why observability is really just hipster monitoring, what sets Lumigo apart from other players in the serverless space, how the serverless space continues to grow and diversify, why the future of serverless is exciting, and more.