Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Adam Jacob co-founded Chef Software and created Chef, a platform that helps DevOps teams ship software faster. Though he still serves on Chef’s board, Adam has a new role these days: serving as CEO and co-founder of a new startup called The System Initiative. For more than a decade, Adam has been designing, building, and managing large production systems. He has more than 20 years of experience working in tech. Join Corey and Adam as they explore the pros and cons of taking venture capital, why Adam believes VC money unfairly gets a bad rep, how great 1Password is and why Adam believes the company’s $200 million raise makes sense, when to take VC money and when to turn it down, how expanding from a tool that performs a specific function to a platform business can be a scary thing for end users, how not all VCs are alike, how “bad founders” exist, why the people who tend to dislike venture capitalists usually aren’t the ones making the tough decisions, and more.

Jessie Frazelle, Steve Tuck, and Bryan Cantrill founded the Oxide Computer Company. They’re building a rack-scale server design to deliver cloud hyperscale innovations around density, efficiency, cost, reliability, manageability, and security to everyone running on-premises compute infrastructure. Join Corey, Jessie, Steve, and Bryan as they discuss how and why a lot of companies still run on-premises infrastructure in the cloud era; the last time Corey bought a box; what happens when you rely on myriad vendors for your hardware and software needs; why two-person startups should start in the cloud and when they should move on-prem; how if the cloud is renting a hotel, on-prem is owning a house; musings on tech and sustainability; how the cloud is not a panacea; the current status of Moore’s law; and more.

Rachel Stephens has worked as an analyst at RedMonk, a firm focused on software developers, for the last four years. Prior to that, she held several other analyst positions for companies like Western Union, Dish Network, Frontier Airlines, and LaSalle Investment Management. She’s also volunteered as a grant writer and mentor for Minds Matter, a nonprofit that helps students from low-income families. Join Corey and Rachel as they discuss what an analyst firm actually is, how RedMonk helps companies understand the link between developer preferences and business strategy, the disconnect between financial and engineering departments and how to bridge the gap, how finance has become more interested in the way IT costs come together, why engineers don’t like being referred to as IT people, why finance isn’t always keen on digital transformation initiatives, how engineers aren’t always interested in making money or generating revenue, Rachel’s number one recommendation for effective financial controls in engineering, and more.

Pete Cheslock is an advisor and consultant who helps startups with product strategy, messaging, and other go-to-market needs. Prior to going out on his own, he worked at a slew of tech companies, holding positions such as VP of Products at CHAOSSEARCH, VP of Technical Operations at Threat Stack, Inc., Director of DevTools at Dyn, and Director of Technical and Cloud Operations at Sonian. Pete holds a master's in business administration from Babson and a bachelor's in communications from Michigan State University. Join Corey and Pete as they discuss the differences between CHAOSSEARCH and Elasticsearch, proper etiquette for the conference badge-scanning experience, how tech can be a bubble and not everyone might know the tools you do, the increasingly prominent roles artificial intelligence and machine learning play in the AWS ecosystem, why the re:Invent experience is like a marathon, what it’s like listening to a talk on a pair of headphones, which re:Invent announcement made the least waves, why diversity amongst chip manufacturers is a good thing, and more.

Chloe Condon is a senior cloud advocate at Microsoft, where she evangelizes on behalf of Azure. Prior to that, she held developer evangelist roles at companies like Sentry and Codefresh. She’s also a freelance writer and has performed in over 30 musicals in the Bay Area, in theaters large and small (50 seats to 4,000 seats). Chloe, who holds a degree in theatre performance from San Francisco State University, is also a graduate of Hackbright Academy, a highly selective accelerated software development program. Join Corey and Chloe as they discuss what it’s like to be a developer advocate, why Chloe built a fake boyfriend alert and how she got a retweet from Smash Mouth, the importance of making the cloud “fun,” what it was like to leave an industry dominated by women and join one dominated by men, how the tech industry stands to benefit from outside perspectives (e.g., stage managers and sommeliers), the role Chloe played in the resurgence of Clippy, and more.

Cody Ogden is the founder of Killed by Google, an open source project that tracks the life and death of Google’s product portfolio. He’s also a software engineer at CannabizMedia and a founding partner at Rocket Squirrel, a company that specializes in delivering exemplary user experiences. Join Corey and Cody as they explore everything there is to know about the life and death of products like Google Reader and Hire by Google, why companies might want to think twice about relying on the G Suite platform, how “long-term” means different things to different people, the fate of Fitbit, what happens when Google and AWS decide to decommission products, the rise of Alphabet and what it means for certain Google brands, how Google and Amazon’s customer service offerings stack up, and more.

Russ Savage is the product manager at InfluxData, makers of InfluxDB, the open source time series database. Prior to holding that position, Russ wore many hats in the tech industry, including working as an application engineering team lead at Cask Data, a systems architect at Elastic, a marketing engineer at Box, and a product manager at Orbitz. Join Corey and Russ as they discuss how the evolution of computing power is rendering Hadoop irrelevant, what it’s like selling open source software, what it means to be a “true” open source company, the important role community engagement plays in open source projects, the pros and cons of mutli-cloud, why you might want to monitor events at the nanosecond level, the best use cases for time series data, how time series databases have evolved over time, and more.

Since 1996, Tiffany Farriss has been one of the driving forces behind Palantir.net, an open-source powered web design and development firm she co-owns and currently serves as CEO. From 2009 to 2017, she also sat on the Board of Directors of Drupal, a popular open-source content management system. Prior to that, Tiffany held similar advisory roles at AIGA Chicago and Northwestern Student Holdings. Join Corey and Tiffany as they discuss how to build stronger open source communities; Tolkien, Snow Crash, and Ender’s Game; why companies have several different levels of obligations for giving back to open source projects; why it’s hard for companies that build products on top of open-source tools to be incentivized to give back; the history of Drupal; Usenet and rise of Eternal September; Slack vs. IRC and losing the open-source mentality; succession planning in open source projects; and more.

Sasha Rosenbaum began her career working as an IT systems administrator for the Israel Air Force. Shen then took a position as an R&D software engineer at Elbit Systems, an Israeli-based aerospace company, before joining 10th Magnitude, an IT services company based in Chicago. Over the last four years, she’s held several positions at Microsoft. Currently, she’s the senior program manager for the Azure DevOps engineering team. Join Corey and Sasha as they explore what being a senior program manager for the Azure DevOps engineering team entails, what the relationship become Azure DevOps and GitHub looks like, what happens when a company sells two competing products, how building Azure DevOps on Azure DevOps results in a stronger product, the pros and cons of open-source software, when to use SaaS tools and when to build from scratch, how attending conferences strategically can eliminate many life expenses, and more.

Tanya Janca began her career as a software developer at Canadian Bank Note before holding the same role for the Canadian government for nearly 10 years. She then shifted her focus to application and IT security for the government before joining Microsoft as a senior cloud advocate specializing in application security. Today, she’s the CEO and co-founder of Security Sidekick, a company that helps developers create secure applications. Join Corey and Tanya as they discuss what it’s like to work at Microsoft and how putting in two years there is like putting in 1,000 years somewhere else, how Security Sidekick takes 48 hours to do what a consultant does in a year or more, the challenges that stem from multi-cloud environments, how SaaS tools are improving everything—including the massage space, how Superman inspires Tanya, effective altruism, and more.

For 15 years, Josh Doody held several different software engineering roles at companies like Raytheon, ADP, and Appirio. Today, he owns a consultancy called Fearless Salary Negotiation and helps software developers get paid what the market commands. Join Corey and Josh as they discuss how software developers can get paid more, what the current tech job market looks like, when devs should start thinking about compensation in their next roles, when salary negotiations actually begin, why the goal of a negotiation isn’t always about getting more money, the biggest mistakes people make in negotiations, and more.

Paul Dix is the cofounder and CTO at InfluxDB, makers of an open source time-series database. Over the last 20-plus years, he’s held technology, consultant, and leadership positions at companies like Microsoft, McAfee, Google, and Thomson Reuters. Join Corey and Paul as they discuss everything there is to discuss about time-series databases, the two different kinds of time-series events, the importance of timing when launching a product, how to build applications on top of time-series data, creating a new programming language (Flux), why you should create new programming languages when it makes sense, and more.