Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Ana Visneski is the senior director of communications and community at H2O.ai, which focuses on open source AI and machine learning solutions. Prior to this position, she worked at AWS for more than four years, serving as the principal of AWS disaster response, head of launch blog and podcast operations, and senior digital marketing manager there. She also served in the Coast Guard for nine years. Join Corey and Ana as they talk about democratizing AI and making it as transparent and accessible as water, why Ana believes AI has a lot of potential but also a lot of challenges, what it was like to be the founder of the Coast Guard’s social media program, how Ana ended up working with AWS, what it’s like to work during an Andy Jassy keynote, how half of Corey’s job is introducing people who work at AWS to each other, the hidden value veterans bring to tech, how Ana played guard dog for Jeff Barr, how the size of the Coast Guard makes everyone who serves a jack of all trades, and more.

Dr. Sarah Kaiser is a quantum technologist with a PhD in physics and, more specifically, quantum information. She’s also a technical staff member and quantum community lead at Unitary Fund. Over the years, Sarah has worked as a research engineer at Pensar Development, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University, a fellow at the University of Waterloo, and a junior kernel developer at Wolfram Research, among other positions. She’s also the author of kids books, including Neural Networks for Babies, and has a book for grown-ups due in April 2021: Learn Quantum Computing with Python and Q#: A Hands-on Approach. Join Corey and Sarah for a discussion about the ins and outs of quantum computing and how the field is still budding. They talk about the ethics of quantum computing, the similarities between the hype behind machine learning and quantum computing, when Sarah believes quantum computing will become a technical inevitability, why Sarah wouldn’t know what to do with a quantum computer today, how quantum computing is truly an interdisciplinary field and the various kinds of people you’d need to build a quantum computer, the prerequisites Sarah believes are required to get into the field of quantum computing, and more.

Caroline Carter is an account executive at The Duckbill Group, having joined the team in July 2019. Prior to this position, she was an enterprise account executive at CB Insights, a senior account executive at Square, a client operations associate at BlackRock, and an account manager at Savoir Faire Paris, among other positions. She also worked as an English-speaking teaching assistant in Paris for a year. Join Corey and Caroline as they talk about what it was like for Caroline to learn Ruby on Rails in France, how Corey and Caroline met and how their relationship has evolved over the years, how there’s a whole society of people who hate their jobs yet stick with them for years and why Caroline never wanted to be part of it, why Caroline believes you should take job interviews regularly—even if you love your current job, why Corey thinks a successful mentorship depends more on the protege than the mentor, how everyone is doing sales even if they don’t realize it, the difference between working in enterprise sales and working for a startup, and more.

Regis Wilson is the founding engineer at Release, an environment as a service provider. Regis brings more than 25 years of tech experience to this position, having worked as an infrastructure architect and SRE at TrueCar, Inc. and a cloud systems architect at Live Nation, among several other positions. Oh yeah: He also used to be Corey’s boss. Join Corey and Regis as they talk about what it was like to have Corey as an employee, what Release does and what environments as a service means, how Regis likes working with the people he enjoys working with repeatedly, how the speed of provisioning resources has accelerated over the last decade, what it was like for Regis to switch jobs during a pandemic and why he decided to make the gamble, how at—at one point in his career—Corey’s core competency was getting fired, what Release’s monetization strategy is, how to spin up a Minecraft server for free, and more.

Tim Banks is a Principal Solutions Architect at Equinix Metal, providers of automated and interconnected bare metal solutions. Tim brings more than 20 years of experience to the role, having worked as technical account manager at Mission Cloud (an AWS Premier Consulting Partner), a technical account manager at AWS, a site reliability engineer at Elastic, a DevOps engineer at ObjectRocket, a senior database administrator at TEKsystems, and a LAMP systems architect at Charles Schwab, among other positions. Prior to launching a career in tech, Tim enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps as a musician before being reassigned to avionics. Join Corey and Tim as they talk about why Tim decided to make the leap to Equinix Metal, how you’re more likely to get a bigger raise by switching companies than pursuing the traditional promotion track, why Tim starts interviewing for new jobs on his one-year anniversary of any gig, how many corporations conduct a hazing of sorts during the interview process by asking candidates to perform ridiculous tasks they’d never perform if they got the job, why job titles are important, why Netflix doesn’t stream anything on AWS, why cloud costs are never predictable, and more.

Scott Piper is an AWS security consultant at Summit Route, a company he founded in 2017. He’s also the developer of flaws.cloud and an organizer for the virtual fwd:cloudsec conference. Scott brings 15 years of tech experience to his current position, having worked as director of security at a cybersecurity company, a security engineer at Yelp, and a software engineer at the NSA, among other positions. Join Corey and Scott as they talk about why Scott decided to start an AWS security consultancy, what it was like for Scott to quit his job only to find out the people he thought needed his services wanted him to work for free, how Scott came around to building CloudMapper and CloudTracker, what both of those tools do, why it’s important to define what kind of consultant you are going to be and find your niche, the psychological aspect of running your own business, and more.

Tabitha Sable is a systems security engineer at Datadog who moonlights as a Unix historian. Join Corey and Tabitha as they discuss what it was like to join Datadog right when the pandemic shut everything down, how Tabitha got experience with Unix workstations, what was going on in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the early 1970s, whether operating systems matter any more or not, what happens when you type www.google.com into your browser and press enter, why job interviews are awful, how Tabitha conducts interviews, the power of referring people for jobs, why you should hire for strengths instead of absence of weakness, and more.

Scott Piper is an AWS security consultant at Summit Route, a company he founded in 2017. Scott Piper is an AWS security consultant at Summit Route, a company he founded in 2017. He’s also the developer of flaws.cloud and an organizer for the virtual fwd:cloudsec conference. Scott brings 15 years of tech experience to his current position, having worked as director of security at a cybersecurity company, a security engineer at Yelp, and a software engineer at the NSA, among other positions. Join Corey and Scott as they talk about how Scott created a game to help teach people AWS security; how Scott likely got a red flag thrown on his account indicating he’s a hassle to deal with; what fwd:cloudsec is, why it was named the way it was, and how it came about; some of the reasons why virtual conferences are better than in-person conferences; why in-person conferences likely aren’t coming back anytime soon; what Scott thinks AWS does well and what he thinks AWS does not do well; what Scott believes the best security boundary on AWS is; and more.

Hal Berenson is the founder of Gaia Platform, a platform that supports software development for autonomous machines. He’s also a board member of Auger AI. Hal brings more than 45 years of tech experience to these positions, having held a number of different positions over the years, including VP of Relational Database Services at AWS, a distinguished engineer and general manager at Microsoft, and the president of True Mountain Group, LLC, among other roles. He also ran a Colorado farm with his wife for five years. Join Corey and Hal as they talk about what Hal’s 45-year career in tech has been like, how new cloud features tend to be not fully baked when they’re initially released, how designing high-end features for enterprise customers hurts smaller shops, some moves Hal thinks stifled the growth of SQL Server, what Microsoft does to make sure it classifies employees and contractors correctly, what it was like being one of the oldest VPs at AWS, how Hal has “retired” three times and why he comes back, why Hal thinks some engineers get “stuck” at companies, and more.

Kat Cosgrove is a developer advocate at JFrog, makers of a robust platform designed to accelerate DevOps workflows. She’s also a legit cyborg, with an NFC chip implanted in her hand. Kat brings 15 years of experience to JFrog, having previously worked as a software engineer and lead teaching assistant at Code Fellows (where she also studied advanced software development in Python), a technical support coordinator at Online Holdings, LLC, and a business development professional at Remote Backup Systems, Inc., among other roles. She’s also the co-host of fsckdpod, a left tech podcast. Join Corey and Kat as they discuss what it’s like to have an NFC chip implanted in your hand and how Kat uses hers, what it was like to get the chip installed, how Kat weaseled her way into tech from a gig at a video rental store, how working as a bartender at a strip club has helped Kat’s developer advocacy, how Kat is the same on Twitter and in real life and how she’s different, what it’s like to gain 7,000 twitter followers in 36 hours and the tweet that did it for Kat, why both Corey and Kat are keen on the liberal use of the Twitter block button, and more.

Paul Osman is a lead instrumentation engineer at Honeycomb.io, an observability platform that helps engineers get a deeper understanding of their production environments. He brings more than 20 years of tech experience to the role, having worked as a senior engineering manager at Under Armour, a platform engineer manager at PagerDuty, director of platform engineering at 500px, a developer evangelist at SoundCloud, and a web development lead at Mozilla, among other positions. Join Corey and Paul as they discuss what exactly it is that a lead instrumentation engineer does, how Paul initially didn’t like serverless at first and why he does now, why Paul believes in using the least amount of technology when possible, why Corey thinks that setting your database to your local timezone is a terrible idea, how there is no such thing as best practices that work for everyone, Paul’s favorite programming languages, what Paul thinks the right tech stack is, how Paul approaches computing languages he’s not well-versed in, and more.

Brandon Shaw is a senior program manager in security operations at Discovery, Inc., an entertainment company that owns several premium cable brands, including Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, and TLC. Previously, he worked as an applications manager at CRISP and a senior software applications engineer at CompuGroup Medical, among other positions. Brandon has a slew of certifications, including CISSP, CISM, CDPSE, CCSK, PMP, ITIL, and three from AWS. Join Corey and Brandon as they talk about their 26-year friendship and how their lives have diverged and converged over that time, what Corey was like as a kid, what it was like growing up in Maine and why Corey and Brandon are happy they left The Pine Tree State, how Stephen King’s writing is similar to living in Maine, what exactly it is that Brandon does at Discovery, how information security is always moving faster than we think, the journey that Brandon took to end up at Discovery, the CISSP and what you have to do to achieve it, and more.