POPULARITY
4 episodes with polywork
3 episodes with polywork
3 episodes with polywork
2 episodes with polywork
3 episodes with polywork
2 episodes with polywork
3 episodes with polywork
2 episodes with polywork
2 episodes with polywork
Buckle up, job nerds—Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are back with J.T. O'Donnell, serving up the week's employment chaos with a side of snark. Joann's 800 fabric havens are kaput after 80 years—no buyer, 19,000 pink slips. DOGE is slashing like it's Black Friday: 75,000 “voluntary” goodbyes, 1,000 at Veterans Affairs, 1,300 at Energy, 700 at the CDC—pundits say the total could top 100K, while Blue Origin (1,000) and Starbucks (1,100) join the layoff party, and Polywork's a December corpse. Buy or Sell: Mercor's 21-year-old Thiel babies nabbed $100M, hit a $2B valuation ... Joel's screaming "SELL" ‘cause remote work's deader than disco. Perfect's $23M AI dream promises hires while you nap; J.T.'s all "BUY" for their 44-person squad surfing the consolidation wave. Loxo's $115M talent tech flex? Joel's like, "SELL—big hype, but the founder's greener than a lime Slurpee." Indeed yanked search fields from its homepage, forcing logins—Alex Chukovski's jazzed, but Chad's cackling, “Monster 2.0, meet your doom!” And Musk's AI grading federal job essays? J.T.'s rolling her eyes—unions are raging, and it's sketchier than a back-alley job board. Laugh, cry, and listen up! Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Uncertainty in the Job Market 01:00 The Rise of Deep Fakes and Their Implications 04:08 Job Seekers' Struggles in a Changing Economy 10:17 Corporate Accountability and Leadership Failures 18:41 The Impact of Layoffs on the Workforce 23:19 The Future of Employment in an Automated World 24:09 Economic Pressures and Education Choices 27:42 The Rise of AI in Recruitment 30:12 Challenges in AI Recruitment Tools 34:20 The Future of Job Platforms 38:16 Indeed's Strategic Shift 47:21 AI's Role in Employment Decisions
The Shred is a weekly roundup of what's making headlines in the world of employment. The Shred is brought to you today by Jobcase.
RedNote statt TikTok, Polywork statt LinkedIn, Bluesky statt X. Wo kommen wir her, wo wollen wir hin?
The tech industry is getting long enough in the teeth that now there are some bonafide old fogeys. Nevertheless there, fortunately, are plenty of younger tech folks out there pushing the thought and mentality of the industry forward. Andrew Brown, Co-Founder and Cloud Instructor at ExamPro Training Inc certainly is, but his presence in the community is so much more! On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, Andrew talks about the various internet platforms that he stays active on, and his mission to provide education on the cloud. Importantly so, Andrew does so with an immense amount of generosity. As he puts it, he couldn't imagine taking money for the courses that he has created. Andrew and Corey discuss at length their thoughts on cloud certifications, the worth of multicloud, and much more!Show Highlights(0:00) Intro(0:41) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(1:15) Why Corey struggles to keep up with Andrew's impressive online presence(2:47) Explaining ExamPro(6:39) The troubles of online “experts”(13:01) Andrew's thoughts on using certifications as proxies(18:14) The value of certification vs. your level of experience(22:47) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(23:30) Should engineers learn more than one cloud provider?(27:10) Is multi-cloud actually the way to go?(34:31) Where you can find more from AndrewAbout Andrew BrownAndrew Brown has been working in tech 15 years. Today, he creates free cloud certification courses where he teaches people Cloud, DevOps, Data, ML, Security, K8s and Serverless.LinksExamPro Training, Inc.: https://www.exampro.co/PolyWork: https://www.polywork.com/andrewbrownLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-wc-brownTwitter: https://twitter.com/andrewbrownOriginal Episodehttps://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/learning-to-give-in-the-cloud-with-andrew-brown/SponsorThe Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com
Polywork, or working more than one job is on the rise. Is this the path to more meaning in our work lives? Or is this just a fancy label for exploitation of the work-force? We discuss the trends in the US and China. Find out more with Alex Shi and Jason Smith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Henry is confused by a headline that makes little sense to him, he says we don't have a housing issue, rather it's affordable housing that's the issue, and he talks flag football with Executive Director of My 7 on 7 Flag Football Ty Thomas.
Polywork, ou "múltiplos trabalhos", é a promessa neoliberal de mais renda e autonomia como troca por saúde e tempo do trabalhador. Isso não é novo: Julius, pai multifacetado da série "Todo Mundo Odeia o Chris", já tinha dois empregos. Ele e a esmagadora maioria da classe trabalhadora do mundo inteiro. No entanto, é a necessidade que força muitos a abdicar do direito de viver. Agora, o discurso do "polywork" passa a ser vendido como novidade entre os GenZ.Recebemos hoje o advogado Marcelo Branco, especializado na defesa dos interesses de trabalhadores e trabalhadoras e membro da Associação Brasileira de Juristas pela Democracia. ______Cast: Pablo Magalhães, Cleber Roberto, Felipe Bonsanto, Katiane Bispo e Marcelo Branco (conheça o trabalho dele no link)Edição: Reverbere Estúdio______Leia os artigos do Portal Águia, nosso parceiro de conteúdos!______OUÇA O HISTORIANTE NA ORELO! A cada play nós somos remunerados, e você não paga nada por isso! https://orelo.cc/ohistoriante______APOIE O HISTORIANTE! No apoia.se/historiante ou no app da Orelo, contribua com R$4 mensais. Além de nos ajudar, você tem acesso ao nosso grupo de recompensas! Você também pode colaborar com qualquer valor em nosso PIX ohistoriante@gmail.com______OUÇA NOSSA PLAYLIST______- OBRIGADO APOIADORES! Alex Andrade; Aldemir Anderson; Andreia Araujo de Sousa; Aciomara Coutinho; Arley Barros; Bruno Gouvea; Carolina Yeh; Charles Guilherme Rodrigues; Eduardo dos Santos Silva; Eliezer Gomes Fernandes; Frederico Jannuzzi; Flavya Almeida; Flávio José dos Santos; Helena de Freitas Rocha e Silva; Hélio de Oliveira Santos Junior; Jarvis Clay; João Victor Dias; João Vitor Milward; Jorge Caldas Filho; Juliana Duarte; Juliana Fick; Katiane Bispo; Marcelo Raulino Silva; Marco Paulo Figueiredo Tamm; Maria Mylena Farias Martins; Márcia Aparecida Masciano Matos; Núbia Cristina dos Santos; Poliana Siqueira; Raquel; Ronie Von Barros Da Cunha Junior; Sae Dutra.
O que você já fez pra se enturmar e se sentir mais jovem? Comprou um conversível? Entrou num clube de motocicletas? Conseguiu mais de dois empregos? Vem descobrir o que nosso host favorito e sua trupe tem a dizer sobre isso! Tópicos de interesse: dentistas, pokywork, lowrenteism, resenteism, quiet ambition, mindset Quer Fazer parte do nosso Grupo VIP no Zap, ter acesso a conteúdos exclusivos, e ainda ajudar nosso podcast a melhorar e produzir cada vez mais conteúdo bacana? apoia.se/escapismopodcast. O quanto você puder contribuir nos ajuda bastante! E a partir de R$5,00 você pode participar de sorteios! E se você não pode contribuir mensalmente, mas quer nos ajudar de alguma forma, temos PIX! escapismopodcast@gmail.com! sinta-se à vontade para doar, significa muito pra gente!
Live from TA Week in San Diego from the Qualifi booth, the boys chat with Brian Fink, a TA partner at McAfee, and discussed the recent changes to LinkedIn and the impact on sourcing and recruiting. The conversation also touched on the competition between LinkedIn and other platforms like Google, Bing, and X. Specifically, Fink details the recent changes to the way LinkedIn displays profiles, which can affect how recruiters find and engage with potential candidates. He also highlighted the importance of using different search engines like Google and Bing to find candidates and the potential benefits of each. The role of Microsoft in the competition between LinkedIn and other platforms was also discussed, with the potential impact on recruiters and job seekers being a key point of interest. The rise of alternative platforms like Polywork and the potential for new competitors to emerge in the recruiting space were also mentioned. Fink emphasized the importance of recruiters being adaptable and not relying solely on one platform like LinkedIn for sourcing candidates. He also stressed the need for recruiters to be creative and think outside the box when it comes to finding and engaging with candidates.
Have you heard about "Polywork"? Do you do it? Do you know someone who has? Have a listen and learn about it! #polywork #learning #work #employment #employer
Guest: Chandralika Hazarika – MD & Co-Founder, Bigthinx Host: Akshi Mohla – Global Head, Branding and Communications, SAP Digital, Customer Success When I speak of avatars, what comes to your mind? Perhaps your social media cartoon mini-me or something you use in gaming? Or maybe even a popular animated series or one of the highest-grossing movie franchises of all time! But what if I were to tell you that with Artificial Intelligence, avatars can be leveraged to make fashion more sustainable, personalized, and inclusive, while simultaneously providing a compelling customer experience, thus, boosting profitability and brand engagement? Bigthinx makes this a reality with a digital shopping experience, complete with mobile body scanning, immersive showrooms, and virtual try-ons. And to tell us all about this SAP.io startup, joining us today is Chandralika Hazarika, the MD, and Co-Founder of Bigthinx. A seasoned branding and marketing professional with over 15 years of experience, she redirected her focus toward digital entrepreneurship, aiming to establish digitally empowered brands. At Bigthinx, she's revolutionizing consumer engagement in the metaverse, creating intuitive high-tech products for various sectors such as fashion, retail, gaming, and wellness. Additionally, she expresses her passion for fashion through her label, Velvet Piano. An advocate for women in tech, Chandralika earned the Accenture "Women in Tech" 2021 award. So, let's jump in, and don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. I am your host Akshi Mohla, and you're listening to SAP Experts Podcast. Follow SAP Digital: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sap-digital-customer-success/ Learn more about Bigthinx: https://bigthinx.com/ Follow Chandralika: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandralika-hazarika/ Follow Akshi: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshimohla/ Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/akshi Please like, share, and subscribe! Send feedback and questions to akshi.mohla@sap.com.
Guest: Kunal Waghmare – Practice Director, Emerging Supply Chain Solutions, Bristlecone Host: Akshi Mohla – Global Head, Branding and Communications, SAP Digital, Customer Success Welcome to SAP Experts Podcast! I am your host Akshi Mohla, and we're back – back again to dive deep into the world of Digital Innovations and best practices that make the world run better. Together we will explore the latest trends, insights, and success stories with industry experts and thought leaders. Joining us today is Kunal Waghmare, the Practice Director at Bristlecone – an SAP partner headquartered in San Jose, California, and a part of the Mahindra group. He focuses on solving end-to-end supply chain challenges for customers via emerging SAP solutions. With extensive experience across various industry verticals, Kunal has been at the forefront of business and technology programs, enabling companies to achieve their digital transformation goals. In this episode, we'll discuss the three-legged stool companies, partners, and SAP form in a digital transformation journey. We also delve into the critical importance of an early and holistic understanding of current challenges and desired business process improvements in achieving successful outcomes. Finally, we also explore the SAP Digital Value Discovery Platform and its role in enabling an immersive and comprehensive discovery while providing tangible, value-centric, customer-specific outputs at scale and unmatched velocity. So, let's jump in, and don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. You're listening to SAP Experts Podcast. Learn more about Digital Value Discovery and book your introductory session: https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_zd5hkm2r Learn more about Bristlecone: https://www.bristlecone.com Follow Kunal: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunalwaghmare/ Follow Akshi: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshimohla/ Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/akshi Please like, share, and subscribe! Send feedback and questions to akshi.mohla@sap.com.
Leaning into different interests, exploring different passions, and finding ways to connect these elements of our work lives in at the core of so many happenstance moments and is the core of a multi hyphenate life. Sabrina Kieffer is the COO and President of Polywork, a platform build for multi hyphenate professionals and place for multi hyphenates to connect, collaborate and to create their own happenstance moments. Sabrina's career includes 15 years of experience as an operations executive with start ups and multiple happenstance moments along the way.let's see where happenstance takes us...Connect with Sabrina:PolyworkLet's Connect:@HappenstanceThePodcast@CareerCoachCassie
Adrian Alfieri is the founder & CEO of Verbatim, a B2B content studio that has helped 100+ startups like OpenStore, Polywork, Goody, Tydo, Parker, Disco and Settle launch & scale their content functions. He is also the creator of The Proof as well as an advisor and angel investor in early-stage startups and venture funds.
Just me today! Going to dive into how to use Polywork more effectively as a form of networking! Come say hey! Like what you hear? Connect with me - Website: www.vaco.com/taylorLinkedIn: Taylor Desseyn Tweet me: @tdesseyn Pics of the life, wife, daughter & dog: @tdesseyn
Hey friends! Diving into how to use Twitter to find a job! Come hang! Also will do a quick refresh on Polywork! Like what you hear? Connect with me - Website: www.vaco.com/taylorLinkedIn: Taylor Desseyn Tweet me: @tdesseyn Pics of the life, wife, daughter & dog: @tdesseyn
Are you tired of feeling trapped in the traditional 9-5 workday? Meet Peter Johnston, the founder of Polywork, the revolutionary professional network for multi-hyphenates. With $44.5M in funding from top investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Polywork is changing the game for those looking to pursue multiple passions and collaborate with like-minded individuals. Join me as I speak with Peter about his own journey from product designer to CEO, the inspiration behind Polywork, and why traditional online communities like LinkedIn fall short for those looking to explore multiple career paths. Plus, Peter offers valuable advice for those ready to take the leap and start their side hustle or passion project. Don't miss out on this exciting episode of Tech Talks Daily.
Just me today! I'm going over how to leverage Polywork and various parts of Linkedin/Twitter. Come hang! Like what you hear? Connect with me - Website: www.vaco.com/taylorLinkedIn: Taylor Desseyn Tweet me: @tdesseyn Pics of the life, wife, daughter & dog: @tdesseyn
From my earliest days of work, I was warned about an affliction that might threaten my career.This affliction was known as the hole in the CV or the gap in the résumé.Anyone who contracted this dreaded disease, I was told, would likely never get a decent job again.As a coder in my early twenties, I calculated the consequences of this admonition. If I were to be allowed no gaps in my résumé, then I'd have to spend my entire life working. I'd be coding every day, every year, every decade until I dropped dead.It was as if I were being warned never to do anything interesting with my life.So I did what any self-respecting twenty-something would do. I quit. I left my decent job as a coder and didn't get another one. I wrote a book. I went to Antarctica.I've spent the decades since peppering my CV with as many holes as I possibly can.Here's how one technology has entrenched the idea of job after job after job, and how another technology promises to explode that convention.—The technology that has entrenched the idea of job after job after job is, of course, LinkedIn.The technology promises to explode that convention is Polywork.The many things I'm working on include Open Web Mind, Tangled Web, The Last Theory, The Quit Work Project, things made thinkable and goodwoodglobes.You can find me on Polywork at polywork.com/markjeffery.—I release Tangled Web as a video too! Watch here.The full article is here.Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.
Shit2TalkAbout: How tech relates to intersectionality between race and neurodiversity Gratitude: I'm grateful to you, Jenn, for giving me the space to talk about this and to, sharing your own story about like the impact that my words had on you and your journey that makes it feel very worth it to kind of, expose myself on a regular basis. About Wesley: Wesley Faulkner is a first-generation American, public speaker, and podcaster. He is a founding member of the government transparency group Open Austin and a staunch supporter of racial justice, workplace equity, and neurodiversity. His professional experience spans technology from AMD, Atlassian, Dell, IBM, and MongoDB. Wesley co-hosts the developer relations-focused podcast Community Pulse and serves on the board for SXSW. Office Hours: https://ko-fi.com/wesley83/ Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@wesley83 Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/wesley83
On this week's dose, (1:52) we kick things off with a discussion on Axoft, a company that aims to create a safe brain implant that can be used to treat neurological conditions like cerebral palsy, and their recent $8M seed round. (6:24) Next, we dive into a discourse on Vincere Health's $1.75M seed round, and how the platform is helping hard to reach healthcare populations quit smoking. (10:47) Then, we talk about Jasper's massive $125M Series A, and how the AI platform is helping people and companies create content with more ease and efficiency than ever before. (16:41) Last, we wrap up this week's dose with a breakdown on Polywork, a startup that's building a novel professional network designed to allow multi-hyphenates to connect and collaborate, hot off their recent $28M Series B. Sources:https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2022/10/18/move-over-elon-this-under-30-ceo-just-raised-8-million-to-build-a-next-generation-brain-implant/?sh=21a02bb617a5https://www.finsmes.com/2022/10/axoft-raises-usd8m-in-seed-funding.htmlhttps://www.vincere.health/https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221003005154/en/Harvard-Health-Tech-Startup-Raises-Strategic-Capital-to-Expand-Risk-Based-Contractinghttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jasper-announces-125m-series-a-funding-round-bringing-total-valuation-to-1-5b-and-launches-new-browser-extension-301651733.htmlhttps://twitter.com/DaveRogenmoser/status/1582362508362280960https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220915005370/en/Polywork-Secures-28M-Series-B-Funding-as-it-Launches-Out-of-Private-Beta
Peter Johnston is the founder of Polywork. Polywork is a place to discover opportunities to collaborate with other professionals. Existing networks like LinkedIn focus on connecting us to 9-5 opportunities — but where do you go to find opportunities to speak on podcasts? Or discover partners for your side project? Check out who at Google or Netflix is open to angel investing or starting a company? If LinkedIn is built for the 9-5 generation, Polywork is built for the collaboration generation. It's been in private beta for just over a year, but this week it publicly launched for everyone, was #1 on Product Hunt, and announced its Series B funding. So what's its magic? Polywork understands that as professionals, our list of job titles don't do a good job of telling our full stories. Furthermore, it's purpose built for professionals who want to connect with one another beyond their 9-5. There's a growing network of amazing professionals from places like Figma, Snapchat, and Github all sharing what they want to do — making it incredibly easy to collaborate with anyone, on anything. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.Coming to hang with us at Disrupt, where Equity is kicking off the entire event? Use code 'EQUITY' to save 15% on your tickets. Hell yeah, and see you there!Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann jumped on the mic, with Theresa running production, to talk through the biggest headlines from the week!Deals of the Week! This time 'round we had Polywork raising $28 million, Block Party raising $4.8 million, and Remofirst and its own recent fundraise. Naturally we had to leave 234 deals on the cutting room floor, but these were the ones we could not wait to chat more about. Also, don't Polywork, Block Party and Remofirst sound like fun people to get dinner with? Just us?Insurtech goes Niche: From there it was time to riff on a series of stories from Mary Ann, focused on specialized insurtech companies, and the fact that Pie just proved that it is still possible to raise nine-figures as an insurance-focused startup.The Great Delivery Wars: Next up was News From Instacart, including the fact that its IPO is still underway, and that it is busy launching products as it meanders towards the public markets. It turns out as well that a bunch of companies would love more than a slice of its business. Doordash, for one.Layoffs and more: And then layoffs. Layoffs at Metafy, layoffs at Sundae, and layoffs at Ola. We, however, found a silver lining and ran with that.Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together, and more!
The HR Tech Conference hangover is cured and it's back to business. Fortunately for you, there's a lot of cover. Namely, big funding for Polywork, Atlas, The Muse gets lots of of attention, followed by some Buy-or-Sell with Gig and Take, Knoetic and Ashby. Spoiler alert: Selling, lots and lots of selling! Oh, and robots ... gotta talk about robots.
The HR Tech Conference hangover is cured and it's back to business. Fortunately for you, there's a lot of cover. Namely, big funding for Polywork, Atlas, The Muse gets lots of of attention, followed by some Buy-or-Sell with Gig and Take, Knoetic and Ashby. Spoiler alert: Selling, lots and lots of selling! Oh, and robots ... gotta talk about robots.
The Shred is a weekly roundup of who's raised funds, who's been acquired and who's on the move in the world of recruitment. The Shred is brought to you by Recruitology.
The Muse, a values-based job search and career development platform used by 75 million people annually, is proud to announce $8 million in new investment led by MBM Capital, founded and run by managing partners Lauren Bonner and Arun Mittal. The investment is a result of The Muse's progressive vision to bring together key players in the future-of-work arena. https://hrtechfeed.com/the-muse-gets-more-funding/ Knoetic, the #1 Chief People Officer (CPO) platform and “single source of truth” for people analytics, today announced its $36M Series B. https://hrtechfeed.com/knoetic-raises-36m-series-b-empowering-chief-people-officers-to-make-better-data-driven-decisions/ SilkRoad Technology, the world-class talent acquisition leader, announced today the addition of person-to-person texting and SMS notifications in its RedCarpet Onboarding solution and On-demand Talent Campaigns (OTC) at its annual user conference, Connections. These powerful capabilities will enable organizations to source, attract, convert, engage and retain talent amidst the most dynamic talent economy in recent memory. https://hrtechfeed.com/silkroad-technology-announces-texting-features-for-onboarding/ Polywork, the professional network, just announced $28 million in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO) and Caffeinated Capital with participation from existing and new investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Baron Davis, Bungalow Capital, Daniel Gross, Elad Gil, Fidji Simo, Maverick Carter and the founders of Stripe, Lyft, Clubhouse, Instacart, Lattice, Minted, and Divvy Homes. https://hrtechfeed.com/professional-network-platform-gets-28m-in-funding/ Sourcing platform Findem has raised $30 million in Series B financing. This round brings their total funding to $37.3 million. Four Rivers and Quarry Ventures led the round, with participation from our existing investor Wing Venture Capital. https://hrtechfeed.com/findem-lands-30m-investment/
Monday Audio Essay: "Indistinguishable from Magic" Packy explores "magic" in tech and how it impacts the startup lifecycle: "It's the Magical Startup Circle of Life. A startup, if it's lucky, creates magic, turns that magic into dollars, and transitions to life as a successful Big Muggle Company, capable of enormous profits and power but no longer able to conjure magic. Then a new Magician comes along, using sufficiently advanced technology to build something indistinguishable from magic, and uses that magic as a wedge to challenge the Big Muggle Company." To read the full essay with graphics, head over to notboring.co. Thanks to Polywork for sponsoring this Monday's essay! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message
Stop trying to make Polywork happen. It's already happening. You may even be polyworking as you read this.
Stop trying to make Polywork happen. It's already happening. You may even be polyworking as you read this.
The Nice Podcast is brought to you by Futureforth.com. We help fast-growing tech companies onboard, create, and keep happier, more connected employees. Wesley Faulkner co-hosts the developer relations-focused podcast Community Pulse and serves on the board for SXSW. His experience spans multiple facets of the technology industry. With over 20 years of domain knowledge in product marketing, product management, strategic planning, and software/hardware implementation, Wesley's ability to communicate advanced concepts to general audiences, stakeholders, and engineers makes him ideal for his role as a Developer Relations professional. What we talked about... It's a game changer when a manager has confidence in you and fully invests in your success. On the importance of providing feedback and recognition. Kindness is a currency. Overcoming self-doubt with your LinkedIn recommendations and by reviewing your Instagram photos. Be just like me, different - Video. You don't grow a community by isolating yourself, you grow it by bringing people in and allowing them to be themselves. The first step of trusting someone is trusting them. Model the behavior you want the community to have. Radiate your morals, principles, and values as a community. How to meet the needs of developers and build those relationships. Hugh Forrest and SXSW Interactive. The rising cost of living in Austin and Nashville. Neurodiversity. Thoughts about job interview processes. Fundamental Attribution Error. Meme about feeding house guests. The biggest business lie. Wesley's article about his journey through a Devrel role. On having the courage to be authentic and brave. READ The End of Bias: A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias by Jessica Nordell and Just Work: How to Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying to Build a Kick-Ass Culture by Kim Scott. Find Wesley83 on Twitter and Polywork. We ❤️ Our Listeners. Please follow the show and leave a review wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Reviews and sharing the show are the nicest ways to support the podcast and are deeply appreciated. Thank you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Asking questions and staying curious can be a game changer for your career. Just ask Jennifer Opal, the UK sensation that was winner of the Tech Women 100 Award, named a Rising Star in Tech, and is a keynote speaker at some of your favorite conferences. On this episode we discuss: - her role as DevOps Engineer at Dropbox - Being neurodivergent in tech and how you can support a neurodivergent team member - Her experience as being the "only one" and how that led to anxiety - Tokenism in the workplace (because it still exists!) Full show notes for this episode: https://blacktechunplugged.com/2022/07/28/ep-060-jennifer-opal-unplugged/ Connect with Deena for Career Coaching: https://calendly.com/deena-m-mckay/15min ————————————————————————- Connect with Jennifer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferopal/ Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/jenniferopal Twitter: https://twitter.com/_jenniferopal TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_jenniferopal Website: https://www.jenniferopal.com/ Blog: https://www.theopalblog.com/ ————————————————————————- Stay Connected with Black Tech Unplugged: Twitter: twitter.com/blktechunplged Instagram: instagram.com/blacktechunplugged Facebook: facebook.com/blacktechunplugged Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/blacktechunplugged Email: blacktechunplugged@gmail.com
Guest: Alexander Greb – Vice President – Digital Transformation Consulting, Westernacher Consulting Host: Akshi Mohla – Business Development Director, SAP Global Industry & Value Advisory On August 21, 2019, Alexander Greb launched the very first episode of SAP Experts Podcast. And today marks the episode 111 of the podcast. We had to bring the original founder back for this special number episode! Today, Alexander will share what it was like to launch a technology podcast, with a relatable, coffee-chat format back when it was still something niche in the SaaS world. We also discuss the three-legged-stool that SAP, our partners and our customers form while crossing the transformation chasm. As Customer Advisory Lead and renowned Tech Evangelist, Alexander has collected vast experience in customer centric strategy implementation, processes, and technology at SAP and several leading business consulting companies for the past two decades. Having implemented digital transformation programs with strategic customers from the shop floor up to C-Level has helped him to gain in-depth knowledge of Best Practices that help customers gain “the unfair competitive advantage”. Being the author of several publications in Digitalist Magazine and Forbes as well as keynote speaker at global conferences and events such as SAPPHIRE, have made him a sought after Thought Leader and Trusted Advisor for many of SAP's customers. At Westernacher Consulting he is responsible for sharpening Westernacher's profile as value-driven “To-Go SAP-Consulting and Implementation Partner” for customers that are not satisfied by approaching their Digitalization Initiative as a Lean Migration but want to put the horsepower of Digitalization and SAPs next-gen ERP fully to the street to become Digital Champions. As always, my name Akshi Mohla, and you're listening to SAP Experts Podcast. Follow Alexander: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergreb/ Follow Akshi: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshimohla/ Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/akshi Please like, share and subscribe! Give us feedback or provide us your questions at akshi.mohla@sap.com
About WesleyWesley Faulkner is a first-generation American, public speaker, and podcaster. He is a founding member of the government transparency group Open Austin and a staunch supporter of racial justice, workplace equity, and neurodiversity. His professional experience spans technology from AMD, Atlassian, Dell, IBM, and MongoDB. Wesley currently works as a Developer Advocate, and in addition, co-hosts the developer relations focused podcast Community Pulse and serves on the board for SXSW.Links Referenced: Twitter: https://twitter.com/wesley83 Polywork: https://polywork.com/wesley83 Personal Website: https://www.wesleyfaulkner.com/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Finding skilled DevOps engineers is a pain in the neck! And if you need to deploy a secure and compliant application to AWS, forgettaboutit! But that's where DuploCloud can help. Their comprehensive no-code/low-code software platform guarantees a secure and compliant infrastructure in as little as two weeks, while automating the full DevSecOps lifestyle. Get started with DevOps-as-a-Service from DuploCloud so that your cloud configurations are done right the first time. Tell them I sent you and your first two months are free. To learn more visit: snark.cloud/duplo. Thats's snark.cloud/D-U-P-L-O-C-L-O-U-D.Corey: What if there were a single place to get an inventory of what you're running in the cloud that wasn't "the monthly bill?" Further, what if there were a way to compare that inventory to what you were already managing via Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation, but then automatically add the missing unmanaged or drifted parts to it? And what if there were a policy engine to immediately flag and remediate a wide variety of misconfigurations? Well, stop dreaming and start doing; visit snark.cloud/firefly to learn more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I am joined again for a second time this year by Wesley Faulkner. Last time we spoke, he was a developer advocate. And since then, as so many have, he's changed companies. Wesley, thank you for joining me again. You're the Head of Community at SingleStore, now. Congrats on the promotion.Wesley: Thank you. It's been a very welcome change. I love developer advocates and developer advocacy. But I love people, too, so it's almost, I think, very analogous to the ebbs and flow that we all have gone through, through the pandemic, and leaning into my strong suits.Corey: It's a big deal having a ‘head of' in a role title, as opposed to Developer Advocate, Senior Developer Advocate. And it is a different role. It's easy to default into the world of thinking that it's a promotion. Management is in many ways orthogonal to what it takes to succeed in an actual role. And further, you're not the head of DevRel, or DevRelopers or whatever you want to call the term. You are instead the Head of Community. How tied is that to developer relations, developer advocacy, or other things that we are used to using as terms of art in this space?Wesley: If we're talking about other companies, I would say the Head of Community is something that's under the umbrella of developer relations, where it's just a peer to some of the other different elements or columns of developer relations. But in SingleStore specifically, I have to say that developer relations in terms of what you think about whole umbrella is very new to the company. And so, I consider myself the first person in the role of developer relations by being the Head of Community. So, a lot of the other parts are being bolted in, but under the focus of developer as a community. So, I'm liaisoning right now as helping with spearheading some of the design of the activities that the advocates do, as well as architecting the platform and the experiences of people coming in and experiencing SingleStore through the community's perspective.So, all that to say is, what I'm doing is extremely structured, and a lot of stuff that we're doing with the efficacy, I'm using some of my expertise to help guide that, but it's still something that's kind of like an offshoot and not well integrated at the moment.Corey: How has it changed the way that you view the function of someone who's advocating to developers, which is from my cynical perspective, “Oh, it's marketing, but we don't tell people it's marketing because they won't like it.” And yes, I know, I'll get emails about that. But how does it differ from doing that yourself versus being the head of the function of a company? Because leadership is a heck of a switch? I thought earlier in my career that oh, yeah, it's a natural evolution of being a mediocre engineer. Time to be a mediocre manager. And oh, no, no, I aspired to be a mediocre manager. It's a completely different skill set and I got things hilariously wrong. What's it like for you going through that shift?Wesley: First of all, it is kind of like advertising, and people may not think of it that way. Just to give an example, movie trailers is advertising. The free samples at the grocery store is advertising. But people love those because it gives an experience that they like in a package that they are accustomed to. And so, it's the same with developer relations; it's finding the thing that makes the experience worthwhile.On the community side, this is not new to me. I've done several different roles, maybe not in this combination. But when I was at MongoDB, I was a technical community manager, which is like a cog in the whole giant machine. But before that, in my other life, I managed social and community interactions for Walmart, and I had, at the slow period, around 65, but during the holidays, it would ramp up to 95 direct reports that I managed.It's almost—if you're a fan of The Princess Bride, it's different than fighting one person. Sometimes it's easier to fight, like, a squad or a gang of people. So, being Head of Community with such a young company is definitely a lot different than. In some ways, harder to deal with this type of community where we're just growing and emerging, rather than something more well-established.Corey: It probably gives you an interesting opportunity. Because back when I was doing engineering work as an SRE or whatever we call them in that era, it was, “Yeah, wow, my boss is terrible and has no idea what the hell they're doing.” So, then I found myself in the role, and it's, “Cool. Now, do all the things that you said you would do. Put up or shut up.”And it turns out that there's a lot you don't see that our strategic considerations. I completely avoided things like managing up or managing laterally or balancing trade-offs in different ways. Yeah, you're right. If you view the role of management as strictly being something that is between you and your direct reports, you can be an amazing manager from their perspective, but completely ineffective organizationally at accomplishing the goals that have been laid out for you.Wesley: Yeah. The good thing about being head of and the first head of is that you help establish those goals. And so, when you take a role with another company saying, “Hey, we have headcount for this,” and it's an established role, then you're kind of like streamlining into a process that's already underway. What's good about this role specifically, a ‘head of,' is that I help with not only designing what are the goals and the OKRs but deciding what the teams and what the team structure should look like. And so, I'm hiring for a specific position based on how it interacts with everything else.So, when I'm coming in, I don't say, “Well, what do you do?” Or, “How do you do it?” I said, “This is what needs to be done.” And that makes it so much easier just to say that if everything is working the way it should and to give marching orders based on the grand vision, instead of hitting the numbers this quarter or next quarter. Because what is core to my belief, and what's core, too, of how I approach things is at the heart of what I'm trying to do, which is really great, in terms of making something that didn't exist before.Corey: The challenge, too, is that everyone loves to say—and I love to see this at different ways—is the evolution and understanding of the DevRel folks who I work with and I have great relationships with realizing that you have to demonstrate business value. Because I struggle with this my entire career where I know intrinsically, that if I get on stage and tell a story about a thing that is germane to what my company does, that good things are going to happen. But it's very hard to do any form of attribution to it. In a different light, this podcast is a great example of this.We have sponsors. And people are listening. Ideally, they aren't fast-forwarding through sponsor messages; I do have interesting thoughts about the sponsors that I put into these ads. And that's great, but I also appreciate that people are driving while they're listening to this, and they are doing the dishes, they are mowing the lawn, and hopefully not turning up the volume too loudly so it damages their hearing. And the idea that they're going to suddenly stop any of those things and go punch in the link that I give is a little out to lunch there.Instead, it's partially brand awareness and it is occasionally the, “Wait. That resonates exactly with the problem that I have.” So, they get to work or they get back in front of a computer and the odds are terrific they're not going to punch in that URL of whatever I wound up giving; they're going to type in whatever phrases they remember and the company name into Google. Now—and doing attribution on something like that is very hard.It gets even more hard when we're talking about something that is higher up the stack that requires a bit more buy-in than individual developers. There's often a meeting or two about it. And then someone finally approaches the company to have a conversation. Now, does it work? Yes. There are companies that are sponsoring this stuff that spend a lot of time, effort, and money on that.I don't know how you do that sort of attribution; I don't pretend to know, but I know that it works. Because these people whose entire job is making sure that it does tell me it does. So, I smile, I nod, and that's great. But it's very hard to wind up building out a direct, “If you spend X dollars sponsoring this, you will see Y dollars in response.” But in the DevOps world, when your internal doing these things, well, okay because to the company, I look an awful lot like an expensive developer except I don't ever write production code.And then—at least in the before times—“So, what does your job do? Because looking at the achievements and accomplishments last quarter, it looks an awful lot like you traveled to exotic places on the company dime, give talks that are of only vague relevance to what we do, and then hang out at parties with your friends? Nice job, how can I get that?” But it's also first on the chopping block when okay, how do we trim expenses go? And I think it's a mistake to do that. I just don't think that story of the value of developer relations is articulated super-well. And I say that, but I don't know how to do a much better job of it myself.Wesley: Well, that's why corporate or executive buy-in is important because if they know from the get-go while you're there, it makes it a little bit easier to sell. But you do have to show that you are executing. So, there are always two parts to presenting a story, and that's one, the actual quantitative, like, I've done this many talks—so that output part—I've written this many blog posts, or I've stood up this many events that people can attend to. And then there's the results saying, people did read this post, people did show up to my event, people did listen to my talk that I gave. But you also need to give the subjective ones where people respond back and say, “I loved your talk,” or, “I heard you on Corey's podcast,” or, “I read your blog posts,” because even though you might not understand that it goes all the way down in a conversion funnel to a purchase, you can least use that stand-in to say there's probably, like, 20, 30 people behind this person to have that same sentiment, so you can see that your impact is reaching people and that it's having some sort of lasting effect.That said, you have to keep it up. You have to try to increase your output and increase your sphere of influence. Because when people go to solve their problem, they're going to look into their history and their own Rolodex of saying what was the last thing that I heard? What was the last thing that's relevant?There is a reason that Pepsi and Coke still do advertising. It's not because people don't know those brands, but being easily recalled, or a center of relevance based on how many touchpoints or how many times that you've seen them, either from being on American Idol and the logo facing the camera, or seeing a whole display when you go into the grocery store. Same with display advertising. All of this stuff works hand in hand so that you can be front-of-mind with the people and the decision-makers who will make that decision. And we went through this through the pandemic where… that same sentiment, it was like, “You just travel and now you can't travel, so we're just going to get rid of the whole department.”And then those same companies are hunting for those people to come back or to rebuild these departments that are now gone because maybe you don't see what we do, but when it's gone, you definitely notice a dip. And that trust is from the top-up. You have to do not just external advocacy, but you have to do internal advocacy about what impacts you're having so that at least the people who are making that decision can hopefully understand that you are working hard and the work is paying off.Corey: Since the last time that we spoke, you've given your first keynote, which—Wesley: Yes.Corey: Is always an interesting experience to go through. It was at a conference called THAT Conference. And I feel the need to specify that because otherwise, we're going to wind up with a ‘who's on first' situation. But THAT Conference is the name.Wesley: Specify THAT. Yes.Corey: Exactly. Better specify THAT. Yes. So, what was your keynote about? And for a bit of a behind-the-scenes look, what was that like for you?Wesley: Let me do the behind-the-scenes because it's going to lead up to actual the execution.Corey: Excellent.Wesley: So, I've been on several different podcasts. And one of the ones that I loved for years is one called This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte. Was a big fan of Leo Laporte back in the Screen Saver days back in TechTV days. Loved his opinion, follow his work. And I went to a South by Southwest… three, four years ago where I actually met him.And then from that conversation, he asked me to be on his show. And I've been on the show a handful of times, just talking about tech because I love tech. Tech is my passion, not just doing it, but just experiencing and just being on either side of creating or consuming. When I moved—I moved recently also since, I think, from the last time I was on your show—when I moved here to Wisconsin, the organizer of THAT Conference said that he's been following me for a while, since my first appearance on This Week in Tech, and loved my outlook and my take on things. And he approached me to do a keynote.Since I am now Wisconsin—THAT Conference is been in Wisconsin since inception and it's been going on for ten years—and he wanted me to just basically share my knowledge. Clean slate, have enough time to just say whatever I wanted. I said, “Yes, I can do that.” So, my experience on my end was like sheer excitement and then quickly sheer terror of not having a framework of what I was going to speak on or how I was going to deliver it. And knowing as a keynote, that it would be setting the tone for the whole conference.So, I decided to talk on the thing that I knew the most about, which was myself. Talked about my journey growing up and learning what my strengths, what my weaknesses are, how to navigate life, as well as the corporate jungle, and deciding where I wanted to go. Do I want to be the person that I feel like I need to be in order to be successful, which when we look at structures and examples and the things that we hold on a pedestal, we feel that we have to be perfect, or we have to be knowledgeable, and we have to do everything, well rounded in order to be accepted. Especially being a minority, there's a lot more caveats in terms of being socially acceptable to other people. And then the other path that I could have taken, that I chose to take, was to accept my things that are seen as false, but my own quirkiness, my own uniqueness and putting that front and center about, this is me, this is my person that over the years has formed into this version of myself.I'm going to make sure that is really transparent and so if I go anywhere, they know what they're getting, and they know what they're signing up for by bringing me on board. I have an opinion, I will share my opinion, I will bring my whole self, I won't just be the person that is technical or whimsical, or whatever you're looking for. You have to take the good with the bad, you have to take the I really understand technology, but I have ADHD and I might miss some deadlines. [laugh].Corey: This episode is sponsored in parts by our friend EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB has been powering enterprise applications with PostgreSQL for 15 years. And now EnterpriseDB has you covered wherever you deploy PostgreSQL on premises, private cloud, and they just announced a fully managed service on AWS and Azure called BigAnimal, all one word.Don't leave managing your database to your cloud vendor because they're too busy launching another half dozen manage databases to focus on any one of them that they didn't build themselves. Instead, work with the experts over at EnterpriseDB. They can save you time and money, they can even help you migrate legacy applications, including Oracle, to the cloud.To learn more, try BigAnimal for free. Go to biganimal.com/snark, and tell them Corey sent you.Corey: I have a very similar philosophy, and how I approach these things where it's there is no single speaking engagement that I can fathom even being presented to me, let alone me accepting that is going to be worth me losing the reputation I have developed for authenticity. It's you will not get me to turn into a shill for whatever it is that I am speaking in front of this week. Conversely, whether it's a paid speaking engagement or not, I have a standing policy of not using a platform that is being given to me by a company or organization to make them look foolish. In other words, I will not make someone regret inviting me to speak at their events. Full stop.And I have spoken at events for AWS; I have spoken at events for Oracle, et cetera, et cetera, and there's no company out there that I'm not going to be able to get on stage and tell an entertaining and engaging story, but it requires me to dunk on them. And that's fine. Frankly, if there is a company like that where I could not say nice things about them—such as Facebook—I would simply decline to pursue the speaking opportunity. And that is the way that I view it. And very few companies are on that list, to be very honest with you.Now, there are exceptions to this, if you're having a big public keynote, I will do my traditional live-tweet the keynote and make fun of people because that is, A, expected and, B, it's live-streamed anywhere on the planet I want to be sitting at that point in time, and yeah, if you're saying things in public, you can basically expect that to be the way that I approach these things. But it's a nuanced take, and that is something that is not fully understood by an awful lot of folks who run events. I'll be the first to admit that aspects of who and what I am mean that some speaking engagements are not open to me. And I'm okay with that, on some level, I truly am. It's a different philosophy.But I do know that I am done apologizing for who I am and what I'm about. And at some point that required a tremendous amount of privilege and a not insignificant willingness to take a risk that it was going to work out all right. I can't imagine going back anymore. Now, that road is certainly not what I would recommend to everyone, particularly folks earlier in their career, particularly for folks who don't look just like I do and have a failure mode of a board seat and a book deal somewhere, but figuring out where you will and will not compromise is always an important thing to get straight for yourself before you're presented with a situation where you have to make those decisions, but now there's a whole bunch of incentive to decide in one way or another.Wesley: And that's a journey. You can't just skip sections, right? You didn't get to where you are unless you went through the previous experience that you went through. And it's true for everyone. If you see those success books or how-to books written by people who are extremely rich, and, like, how to become successful and, like, okay, well, that journey is your own. It doesn't make it totally, like, inaccessible to everyone else, but you got to realize that not everyone can walk that path. And—Corey: You were in the right place at the right time, an early employee at a company that did phenomenally well and that catapulted you into reach beyond the wildest dreams of avarice territory. Good for you, but fundamentally, when you give talks like that as a result, what it often presents as is, “I won the lottery, and here's how you can too.” It doesn't work that way. The road you walked was unique to you and that opportunity is closed, not open anyone else, so people have to find their own paths.Wesley: Yeah, and lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice. But there are some things where you can understand some fundamentals. And depending on where you go, I think you do need to know yourself, you do need to know—like, be able to access yourself, but being able to share that, of course, you have to be at a point where you feel comfortable. And so, even if you're in a space where you don't feel that you can be your authentic self or be able to share all parts of you, you yourself should at least know yourself and then make that decision. I agree that it's a point of privilege to be able to say, “Take me how I am.”I'm lucky that I've gotten here, not everyone does, and just because you don't doesn't mean that you're a failure. It just means that the world hasn't caught up yet. People who are part of marginalized society, like, if you are, let's say trans, or if you are even gay, you take the same person, the same stance, the same yearning to be accepted, and then transport it to 50 years ago, you're not safe. You will not necessarily be accepted, or you may not even be successful. And if you have a lane where you can do that, all the power to you, but not everyone could be themselves, and you just need to make sure that at least you can know yourself, even if you don't share that with the world.Corey: It takes time to get there, and I think you're right that it's impossible to get there without walking through the various steps. It's one of the reasons I'm somewhat reluctant to talk overly publicly about my side project gig of paid speaking engagements, for instance, is that the way to get those is you start off by building a reputation as a speaker, and that takes an awful lot of time. And speaking at events where there's no budget even to pay you a speaking fee out of anyway. And part of what gets the keynote invitations to, “Hey, we want you to come and give a talk,” is the fact that people have seen you speak elsewhere and know what you're about and what to expect. Here's a keynote presented by someone who's never presented on stage before is a recipe for a terrifying experience, if not for the speaker or the audience, definitely [laugh] for the event organizers because what if they choke.?Easy example of this, even now hundreds of speaking engagements in, the adrenaline hit right before I go on stage means that sometimes my knees shake a bit before I walk out on stage. I make it a point to warn the people who are standing with me backstage, “Oh, this is a normal thing. Don't worry, it is absolutely expected. It happens every time. Don't sweat it.”And, like, “Thank you for letting us know. That is the sort of thing that's useful.” And then they see me shake, and they get a little skeptical. Like, I thought this guy was a professional. What's the story and I walk on stage and do my thing and I come back. Like, “That was incredible. I was worried at the beginning.” “I told you, we all have our rituals before going on stage. Mine is to shake like a leaf.”But the value there is that people know what to generally expect when I get on stage. It's going to have humor, there's going to be a point interwoven throughout what I tend to say, and in the case of paid speaking engagements, I always make sure I know where the boundaries are of things I can make fun of a big company for. Like, I can get on stage and make fun of service naming or I can make fun of their deprecation policy or something like that, but yeah, making fun of the way that they wind up handling worker relations is probably not going to be great and it could get the person who championed me fired or centered internally. So, that is off the table.Like, even on this podcast, for example, I sometimes get feedback from listeners of, “Well, you have someone from company X on and you didn't beat the crap out of them on this particular point.” It's yeah, you do understand that by having people on the show I'm making a tacit agreement not to attack them. I'm not a journalist. I don't pretend to be. But if I beat someone up with questions about their corporate policy, yeah, very rarely do I have someone who is in a position in those companies to change that policy, and they're certainly not authorized to speak on the record about those things.So, I can beat them up on it, they can say, “I can't answer that,” and we're not going to go anywhere. What is the value of that? It looks like it's not just gotcha journalism, but ineffective gotcha journalism. It doesn't work that way. And that's never been what this show is about.But there's that consistent effort behind the scenes of making sure that people will be entertained, will enjoy what they're seeing, but also are not going to deeply regret giving me a microphone, has always been the balancing act, at least for me. And I want to be clear, my style is humor. It is not for everyone. And my style of humor has a failure mode of being a jerk and making people feel bad, so don't think that my path is the only or even a recommended way for folks who want to get more into speaking to proceed.Wesley: You also mention, though, about, like, punching up versus punching down. And if you really tear down a company after you've been invited to speak, what you're doing is you're punching down at the person who booked you. They're not the CEO; they're not the owner of the company; they're the person who's in charge of running an event or booking speakers. And so, putting that person and throwing them under the bus is punching down because now you're threatening their livelihood, and it doesn't make any market difference in terms of changing the corporate's values or how they execute. So yeah, I totally agree with you in that one.And, like you were saying before, if there's a company you really thought was abhorrent, why speak there? Why give them or lend your reputation to this company if you absolutely feel that it's something you don't want to be associated with? You can just choose not to do that. For me, when I look at speaking, it is important for me to really think about why I'm speaking as well. So, not just the company who's hiring me, but the audience that I'll be serving.So, if I'm going to help with inspiring the next generation of developers, or helping along the thought of how to make the world a better place, or how people themselves can be better people so that we can just change the landscape and make it a lot friendlier, that is also its own… form of compensation and not just speaking for a speaker's fee. So, I do agree that you need to not just be super Negative Nancy, and try to fight all fights. You need to embrace some of the good things and try to make more of those experiences good for everyone, not just the people who are inviting you there, but the people who are attending. And when I started speaking, I was not a good speaker as well. I made a lot of mistakes, and still do, but I think speaking is easier than some people think and if someone truly wants to do it, they should go ahead and get started.What is the saying? If there's something is truly important, you'll be bad at it [laugh] and you'll be okay with it. I started speaking because of my role as a developer advocate. And if you just do a Google search for ‘CFPs,' you can start speaking, too. So, those who are not public speakers and want to get into it, just Google ‘CFP' and then start applying.And then you'll get better at your submissions, you'll get better at your slides, and then once you get accepted, then you'll get better at preparing, then you'll get better at actually speaking. There's a lot of steps between starting and stopping and it's okay to get started doing that route. The other thing I wanted to point out is I feel public speaking is the equivalent of lifting your own bodyweight. If you can do it, you're one of the small few of the population that is willing to do so or that can do it. If you start public speaking, that in itself is an accomplishment and an experience that is something that is somewhat enriching. And being bad at it doesn't take the passion away from you. If you just really want to do it, just keep doing it, even if you're a bad speaker.Corey: Yeah. The way to give a great talk because you have a bunch of terrible talks first.Wesley: Yeah. And it's okay to do that.Corey: And it's not the in entirety of community. It's not even a requirement to be involved with the community. If you're one of those people that absolutely dreads the prospect of speaking publicly, fine. I'm not suggesting that, oh, you need to get over that and get on stage. That doesn't help anyone. Don't do the things you dread doing because you know that it's not going to go well for you.That's the reason I don't touch actual databases. I mean, come on, let's be realistic. I will accidentally the data, and then we won't have a company anymore. So, I know what things I'm good at and things I'm not. I also don't do hostage negotiations, for obvious reasons.Wesley: And also, here's a little, like, secret tip. If you really want to do public speaking and you start doing public speaking and you're not so good at it from other peoples' perspective, but you still love doing it and you think you're getting better, doing public speaking is one of those things where you can say that you do it and no one will really question how good you are at it. [laugh]. If you're just in casual conversation, it's like, “Hey, I wrote a book.” People like, “Oh, wow. This person wrote the book on blah, blah, blah.”Corey: It's a self-published book that says the best way to run Kubernetes. It's a single page; it says, “Don't.” In 150-point type. “The end.” But I wrote a book.Wesley: Yeah.Corey: Yeah.Wesley: People won't probe too much and it'll help you with your development. So, go ahead and get started. Don't worry about doing that thing where, like, I have to be the best before I can present it. Call yourself a public speaker. Check, done.Corey: Always. We are the stories we tell, and nowhere is it more true than in the world of public speaking. I really want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to speak with me about this for a second time in a single year. Oh, my goodness. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, where can they find you?Wesley: I'm on Twitter, @wesley83 on Twitter. And you can find me also on PolyWork. So, polywork.com/wesley83. Or just go to wesleyfaulkner.com which redirects you there. I list pretty much everything that I am working on and any upcoming speaking opportunities, hopefully when they release that feature, will also be on that Polywork page.Corey: Excellent. And of course, I started Polywork recently, and I'm at thoughtleader.cloud because of course I am, which is neither here nor there. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak about this side of the industry that we never really get to talk about much, at least not publicly and not very often.Wesley: Well, thank you for having me on the show. And I wanted to take some time to say thank you for the work that you're doing. Not just elevating voices like myself, but talking truth to power, like we mentioned before, but being yourself and being a great representation of how people should be treating others: being honest without being mean, being snarky without being rude. And other companies and other people who've given me a chance, and given me a platform, I wanted to say thank you to you too, and I wouldn't be here unless it was people like you acknowledging the work that I've been doing.Corey: All it takes is just recognizing what you're doing and acknowledging it. People often want to thank me for this stuff, but it's just, what, for keeping my eyes open? I don't know, I feel like it's just the job; it's not something that is above and beyond any expected normal behavior. The only challenge is I look around the industry and I realize just how wrong that impression is, apparently. But here we are. It's about finding people doing interesting work and letting them tell their story. That's all this podcast has ever tried to be.Wesley: Yeah. And you do it. And doing the work is part of the reward, and I really appreciate you just going through the effort. Even having your ears open is something that I'm glad that you're able to at least know who the people are and who are making noises—or making noise to raise their profile up and then in turn, sharing that with the world. And so, that's a great service that you're providing, not just for me, but for everyone.Corey: Well, thank you. And as always, thank you for your time. Wesley Faulkner, Head of Community at SingleStore. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a rambling comment telling me exactly why DevRel does not need success metrics of any kind.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
A message from our sponsor Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. Go to Skiplevel.co and use code OKIP75 to get $75 off the program in the next 30 days. About this Episode An interview with Tessa Kriesel & Wesley Faulkner. Tessa & Wesley are passionate advocates for the craft of Developer Relations (DevRel), building communities and supporting users of products aimed at developers. We talk about a lot, including: What DevRel is, what they love about it and how there's not one boring DevRel person in the world Their journeys into DevRel and whether there's a standard career path for people trying to get into the trade The types of companies that need DevRel teams and how the concept of "developer-first" and "developer plus" products informs when you need to spin up a DevRel team Where DevRel sits within the organisation, the other functions it intersects with and whether it's really just a part of marketing Why it matters that business leaders understand the true value of DevRel rather than seeing them as one team to do just about anything that comes up Whether we need DevRel at all when the vast majority of PMs claim to be technical enough to talk to developers anyway The ways that DevRel and Product teams can work together, some of the things that DevRel teams need from PMs & what they can give back in return And much more! Contact Tessa or Wesley (or both!) If you want to catch up with Tessa, you can reach out to her on Twitter, on Polywork, at TessaKriesel.com or check out Devocate If you want to catch up with Wesley, you can reach out to him on Twitter, on Polywork or check out his podcast Community Pulse.
About TomaszTomasz is a Frontend Engineer at Stedi, Co-Founder/Head of React at Cloudash, egghead.io instructor with over 200 lessons published, a tech speaker, an AWS Community Hero and a lifelong learner.Links Referenced: Cloudash: https://cloudash.dev/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tlakomy TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ChaosSearch. You could run Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud—or OpenSearch as they're calling it now—or a self-hosted ELK stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you've come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for app performance monitoring, cybersecurity. If you're using Elasticsearch, consider not running Elasticsearch. They're also available now in the AWS marketplace if you'd prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count towards your EDB commitment. Discover what companies like Equifax, Armor Security, and Blackboard already have. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm, yet again.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. It's always a pleasure to talk to people who ask the bold questions. One of those great bold questions is, what if CloudWatch's web page didn't suck? It's a good question. It's one I ask myself all the time.And then I stumbled across a product that wound up solving this for me, and I'm a happy customer. To be clear, they're not sponsoring anything that I do, nor should they. It's one of those bootstrapped, exciting software projects called Cloudash. Today, I'm joined by the Head of React at Cloudash, Tomasz Łakomy. Tomasz, thank you for joining me.Tomasz: It's a pleasure to be here.Corey: So, where did this entire idea come from? Because I sit and I get upset every time I have to go into the CloudWatch dashboard because first, something's broken. In an ideal scenario, I don't have to care about monitoring or observability or anything like that. But then it's quickly overshadowed by the fact that this interface is terrible. And the reason I know it's terrible is that every time I'm in there, I feel dumb.My belief is—for the longest time, I thought that was a problem with me. But no, invariably, when you wind up working with something and consistently finding it a bad—you don't know enough to solve for it, it's not you. It is, in fact, the signs of a poorly designed experience, start to finish. “You should be smarter to use this tool,” is very rarely correct. And there are a bunch of observability tools and monitoring tools for serverless things that have made sense over the years and made this easier, but one of the most—and please don't take this the wrong way—stripped down, bare essentials of just the facts, style of presentation is Cloudash. It's why I continue to pay for it every month with a smile on my face. How did you get here from there?Tomasz: Yeah that's a good question. I would say that. Cloudash was born out of desire for simple things to be simple. So, as you mentioned, Cloudash is basically the monitoring and troubleshooting tool for serverless applications, made for serverless developers because I am very much into serverless space, as is Maciej Winnicki, who is the another half of Cloudash team. And, you know, the whole premise of serverless was things are going to be simpler, right?So, you know, you have a bunch of code, you're going to dump it into a Lambda function, and that's it. You don't have to care about servers, you don't have to care about, you know, provisioning stuff, you don't have to care about maintenance, and so on. And that is not exactly true because why PagerDuty still continues to be [unintelligible 00:02:56] business even in serverless spaces. So, you will get paged every now and then. The problem is—what we kind of found is once you have an incident—you know, PagerDuty always tends to call it in the middle of the night; it's never, like, 11 a.m. during the workday; it's always the middle of the night.Corey: And no one's ever happy when it calls them either. It's, “Ah, hell.” Whatever it rings, it's yeah, the original Call of Duty. PagerDuty hooked up to Nagios. I am old enough to remember those days.Tomasz: [unintelligible 00:03:24] then business, like, imagine paying for something that's going to wake you up in the middle of the night. It doesn't make sense. In any case—Corey: “So, why do you pay for that product? Because it's really going to piss me off.” “Okay, well… does that sound like a good business to you? Well, AWS seems to think so. No one's happy working with that stuff.” “Fair. Fair enough.”Tomasz: So, in any case, like we've established an [unintelligible 00:03:43]. So you wake up, you go to AWS console because you saw a notification that this-and-this API has, you know, this threshold was above it, something was above the threshold. And then you go to the CloudWatch console. And then you see, okay, those are the logs, those are the metrics. I'm going to copy this request ID. I'm going to go over here. I'm going to go to X-Ray.And again, it's 3 a.m. so you don't exactly remember what do you investigate; you have, like, ten minutes. And this is a problem. Like, we've kind of identified that it's not simple to do these kinds of things, too—it's not simple to open something and have an understanding, okay, what exactly is happening in my serverless app at this very moment? Like, what's going on?So, we've built that. So, Cloudash is a desktop app; it lives on your machine, which is a single pane of glass. It's a single pane of glass view into your serverless system. So, if you are using CloudFormation in order to provision something, when you open Cloudash, you're going to see, you know, all of the metrics, all the Lambda functions, all of the API Gateways that you have provisioned. As of yesterday, API Gateway is no longer cool because they did launch the direct integration, so you have—you can call Lambda functions with [crosstalk 00:04:57]—Corey: Yeah, it's the one they released, and then rolled back and somehow never said a word—because that's an AWS messaging story, and then some—right around re:Invent last year. And another quarter goes by and out it goes.Tomasz: It's out yesterday.Corey: Yeah, it's terrific. I love that thing. The only downside to it is, ah, you have to use one of their—you have to use their domain; no custom domain support. Really? Well, you can hook up CloudFront to it, but the pricing model that way makes it more expensive than API Gateway.Okay, so I could use Cloudflare in front of it, and then it becomes free, so I bought a domain just for that purpose. That's right, my serverl—my direct Lambda URLs now live behind the glorious domain of cheapass.cloud because of course. They are. It's a day-one product from AWS, so of course, it's not feature-complete.But one of the things I like about the serverless model, and it's also a challenge when it comes to troubleshooting stuff is that it's very much set it and forget it style because serverless in many cases, at least the way that I tend to use it, is back-office stuff, its back-end things, it's processing on things that are not necessarily always direct front and center. So, these things can run on their own for years until finally, you find a strange bug in a new use case, or you want to go and change something. And then it's how the hell did this ever work? And it's still working, kind of, but what fool built this? Of course, it was me; it's always me.But what happened here? You're basically excavating your own legacy code, trying to understand what's going on. And so, you're already upset then. Cloudash makes this easier to find the things, to navigate through a whole bunch of different accounts. And there are a bunch of decisions that you made while building the app that are so clearly correct, that I get actively annoyed when others don't because oh, it looks at your AWS configuration file in your user home directory. Great, awesome. It's a desktop app, but it still consults that file. Yay, integration between ClickOps and the terminal. Wonderful.But ah, use SSO for a lot of stuff, so that's going to fix your little red wagon. I click on that app, and suddenly, bam, a browser opens asking me to log in and authenticate, allow the request. It works, and then suddenly, it goes back to doing exactly what you'd expect it to. It's really nice. The affordances behind this are glorious.Tomasz: Like I said, one of our kind of design goals when building Cloudash was to make simple things simple again. The whole purpose is to make sure that you can get into the root cause of an issue within, like, five minutes, if not less. And this is kind of the app that you're going to tend to open whenever that—as I said, because some of the systems can be around for, like, ages, literally without any incident whatsoever, then the data is going to change because somebody [unintelligible 00:07:30] got that the year is 2020 and off you go, we have an incident.But what's important about Cloudash is that we don't send logs anywhere. And that's kind of important because you don't pay for [PUT 00:07:42] metric API because we are not sending those logs anywhere. If you install Cloudash on your machine, we are not going to get your logs from the last ten years, put them in into a system, charge you for that, just so you are able to, you know, find out what happened in this particular hour, like, two weeks ago. We genuinely don't care about your logs; we have enough of our own logs at work to, you know, to analyze, to investigate, and so on; we are not storing them anywhere.In fact, you know, whatever happens on your machine stays on the machine. And that is partially why this is a desktop app. Because we don't want to handle your credentials. We don't—absolutely, we don't want you to give us any of your credentials or access keys, you know, whatever. We don't want that.So, that is why you install Cloudash, it's going to run on your machine, it's going to use your local credentials. So, it's… effectively, you could say that this is a much more streamlined and much more laser-focused browser or like, an eye into AWS systems, which live on the serverless side of things.Corey: I got to deal with it in a bit of an interesting way, recently. I have a detector in my company's production AWS org, to detect when ClickOps is afoot. Now, I'm a big proponent of ClickOps, but I also want to know what's going on, so I have a whole thing that [runs detects 00:09:04] when people are doing things in the console versus via API. And it alerts on certain subsets of them. I had to build a special case for the user agent string coming out of Cloudash because no, no, this is an app, this is not technically ClickOps—it is also read-only, which is neither here nor there, to my understanding.But it was, “Oh yeah, this is effectively an Electron app.” It just wraps, effectively, a browser and presents that as an application. And cool. From my perspective, that's an implementation detail. It feels like a native app—because it is—and I can suddenly see the things I care about in a way that is much more straightforward without having to have four different browser tabs open where, okay, here's the CloudTrail log for this thing, here's the metrics next to it. Oh, those are two separate windows already, and so on and so forth. It just makes hunting down to the obnoxious problems so much nicer.It's also, you're one of those rare products where if I don't use it for a month, I don't get the bill at the end of the month and think, “Ooh, that's going to—did I waste the money?” It's no, nice. I had a whole month where I didn't have to mess with this. It's great.Tomasz: Exactly. I feel like, you know, it's one of those systems where, as you said, we send you an email at the end of every month that we're going to charge you X dollars for the month—by the way, we have fixed pricing and then you can cancel anytime—and it's like one of those things that, you know, I didn't have to open this up for a month. This is awesome because I didn't have any incidents. But I know whenever again, PagerDuty is going to decide, “Hey, dude, wake up. You know, if slept for three hours. That is definitely long enough,” then you know that; you know, this app is there and you can use that.We very much care about, you know, building this stuff, not only for our customers, but we also use that on a daily basis. In fact, I… every single time that I have to—I want to investigate something in, like, our serverless systems at Stedi because everything that we do at work, at Stedi, since this incident serverless paradigm. So, I tend to open Cloudash, like, 95% of the time whenever I want to investigate something. And whenever I am not able to do something in Cloudash, this goes, like, straight to the top of our, you know, issue lists or backlog or whatever you want to call it. Because we want to make this product, not only awesome, you know, for customers to buy a [unintelligible 00:11:22] or whatever, but we also want to be able to use that on a daily basis.And so far, I think we've kind of succeeded. But then again, we have quite a long way to go because we have more ideas, than we have the time, definitely, so we have to kind of prioritize what exactly we're going to build. So, [unintelligible 00:11:39] integrations with alarms. So, for instance, we want to be able to see the alarms directly in the Cloudash UI. Secondly, integration with logs insights, and many other ideas. I could probably talk for hours about what we want to build.Corey: I also want to point out that this is still your side gig. You are by day a front-end engineer over at Stedi, which has a borderline disturbing number of engineers with side gigs, generally in the serverless space, doing interesting things like this. Dynobase is another example, a DynamoDB desktop client; very similar in some respects. I pay for that too. Honestly, for a company in Stedi's space, which is designed as basically a giant API for deep, large enterprise business stuff, there's an awful lot of stuff for small-scale coming out of that.Like, I wind up throwing a disturbing amount of money in the general direction of Stedi for not being their customer. But there's something about the culture that you folks have built over there that's just phenomenal.Tomasz: Yeah. For the record, you know, having a side gig is another part of interview process at Stedi. You don't have to have [laugh] a side project, but yeah, you're absolutely right, you know, the amount of kind of side projects, and you know, some of those are monetized, as you mentioned, you know, Cloudash and Dynobase and others. Some of those—because for instance, you talked to Aidan, I think a couple of weeks ago about his shenanigans, whenever you know, AWS is going to announce something he gets in and try to [unintelligible 00:13:06] this in the most amusing ways possible. Yeah, I mean, I could probably talk for ages about why Stedi is by far the best company I've ever worked at, but I'm going to say this: that this is the most talented group of people I've ever met, and myself, honestly.And, you know, the fact that I think we are the second largest, kind of, group of AWS experts outside of AWS because the density of AWS Heroes, or ex-AWS employees, or people who have been doing cloud stuff for years, is frankly, massive, I tend to learn something new about cloud every single day. And not only because of the Last Week in AWS but also from our Slack.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of “Hello, World” demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking, databases, observability, management, and security. And—let me be clear here—it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself, all while gaining the networking, load balancing, and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free, you can do things like run small-scale applications or do proof-of-concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free? This is actually free, no asterisk. Start now. Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: There's something to be said for having colleagues that you learn from. I have never enjoyed environments where I did not actively feel like the dumbest person in the room. That's why I love what I do now. I inherently am. I have to talk about so many different things, that whenever I talk to a subject matter expert, it is a certainty that they know more about the thing than I do, with the admitted and depressing exception of course of the AWS bill because it turns out the reason I had to start becoming the expert in that was because there weren't any. And here we are now.I want to talk as well about some of—your interaction outside of work with AWS. For example, you've been an Egghead instructor for a while with over 200 lessons that you published. You're an AWS Community Hero, which means you have the notable distinction of volunteering for a for-profit company—good work—no, the community is very important. It's helping each other make sense of the nonsense coming out of there. You've been involved within the ecosystem for a very long time. What is it about, I guess—the thing I'm wondering about myself sometimes—what is it about the AWS universe that drew you in, and what keeps you here?Tomasz: So, give you some context, I've started, you know, learning about the cloud and AWS back in early-2019. So, fun fact: Maciej Winnicki—again, the co-founder of Cloudash—was my manager at the time. So, we were—I mean, the company I used to work for at the time, OLX Group, we are in the middle of cloud transformation, so to speak. So, going from, you know, on-premises to AWS. And I was, you know, hired as a senior front-end engineer doing, you know, all kinds of front-end stuff, but I wanted to grow, I wanted to learn more.So, the idea was, okay, maybe you can get AWS Certified because, you know, it's one of those corporate goals that you have to have something to put that checkbox next to it. So, you know, getting certified, there you go, you have a checkbox. And off you go. So, I started, you know, diving in, and I saw this whole ocean of things that, you know, I was not entirely aware of. To be fair, at the time I knew about this S3, I knew that you can put a file in an S3 bucket and then you can access it from the internet. This is, like, the [unintelligible 00:16:02] idea of my AWS experiences.Corey: Ideally, intentionally, but one wonders sometimes.Tomasz: Yeah, exactly. That is why you always put stuff as public, right? Because you didn't have to worry about who [unintelligible 00:16:12] [laugh] public [unintelligible 00:16:15]. No, I'm kidding, of course. But still, I think what's [unintelligible 00:16:20] to AWS is what—because it is this endless ocean of things to learn and things to play with, and, you know, things to teach.I do enjoy teaching. As you said, I have quite a lot of, you know, content, videos, blog posts, conference talks, and a bunch of other stuff, and I do that for two reasons. You know, first of all, I tend to learn the best by teaching, so it helps me very much, kind of like, solidify my own knowledge. Whenever I record—like, I have two courses about CDK, you know, when I was recording those, I definitely—that kind of solidify my, you know, ideas about CDK, I get to play with all those technologies.And secondly, you know, it's helpful for others. And, you know, people have opinions about certificates, and so on and so forth, but I think that for somebody who's trying to get into either the tech industry or, you know, cloud stuff in general, being certified helps massively. And I've heard stories about people who are basically managed to double or triple their salaries by going into tech, you know, with some of those certificates. That is why I strongly believe, by the way, that those certificates should be free. Like, if you can pass the exam, you shouldn't have to worry about this $150 of the fee.Corey: I wrote a blog post a while back, “The Dumbest Dollars a Cloud Provider Can Make,” and it's charging for training and certification because if someone's going to invest that kind of time in learning your platform, you're going to try and make $150 bucks off them? Which in some cases, is going to put people off from even beginning that process. “What cloud provider I'm not going to build a project on?” Obviously, the one I know how to work with and have a familiarity with, in almost every case. And the things you learn in your spare time as an independent learner when you get a job, you tend to think about your work the same way. It matters. It's an early on-ramp that pays off down the road and the term of years.I used to be very anti-cert personally because it felt like I was jumping through hoops, and paying, in some cases, for the privilege. I had a CCNA for a while from Cisco. There were a couple of smaller companies, SaltStack, for example, that I got various certifications from at different times. And that was sort of cheating because I helped write the software, but that's neither here nor there. It's the—and I do have a standing AWS cert that I get a different one every time—mine is about to expire—because it gets me access to lounges at physical events, which is the dumbest of all reasons to get certs, but here you go. I view it as the $150 lounge pass with a really weird entrance questionnaire.But in my case it certs don't add anything to what I do. I am not the common case. I am not early in my career. Because as you progress through your career, things—there needs to be a piece of paper that says you know things, and early on degree or certifications are great at that. In the time it becomes your own list of experience on your resume or CV or LinkedIn or God knows what. Polywork if you're doing it the right way these days.And it shows a history of projects that are similar in scope and scale and impact to the kinds of problems that your prospective employer is going to have to solve themselves. Because the best answer to hear—especially in the ops world—when there's a problem is, “Oh, I've seen this before. Here's how you fix it.” As opposed to, “Well, I don't know. Let me do some research.”There's value to that. And I don't begrudge anyone getting certs… to a point. At least that's where I sit on it. At some point when you have 25 certs, it's when you actually do any work? Because it's taking the tests and learning all of these things, which in many ways does boil down to trivia, it stands in counterbalance to a lot of these things.Tomasz: Yeah. I mean, I definitely, totally agree. I remember, you know, going from zero to—maybe not Hero; I'm not talking about AWS Hero—but going from zero to be certified, there was the Solutions Architect Associate. I think it took me, like, 200 hours. I am not the, you know, the brightest, you know, the sharpest tool in the shed, so it probably took me, kind of, somewhat more.I think it's doable in, like, 100 hours, but I tend to over-prepare for stuff, so I didn't actually take the actual exam until I was able to pass the sample exams with, like, 90% pass, just to be extra sure that I'm actually going to pass it. But still, I think that, you know, at some point, you probably should focus on, you know, getting into the actual stuff because I hold two certificates, you know, one of those is going to expire, and I'm not entirely sure if I want to go through the process again. But still, if AWS were to introduce, like, a serverless specialty exam, I would be more than happy to have that. I genuinely enjoy, kind of, serverless, and you know, the fact that I would be able to solidify my knowledge, I have this kind of established path of the things that I should learn about in order to get this particular certificate, I think this could be interesting. But I am not probably going to chase all the 12 certificates.Maybe if AWS IQ was available in Poland, maybe that would change because I do know that with IQ, those certs do matter. But as of [unintelligible 00:21:26] now, I'm quite happy with my certs that I have right now.Corey: Part of the problem, too, is the more you work with these things, the harder it becomes to pass the exams, which sounds weird and counterintuitive, but let me use myself as an example. When I got the cloud practitioner cert, which I believe has lapsed since then, and I got one of the new associate-level betas—I'll keep moving up the stack until I start failing exams. But I got a question wrong on the cloud practitioner because it was, “How long does it take to restore an RDS database from a snapshot backup?” And I gave the honest answer of what I've seen rather than what it says in the book, and that honest answer can be measured in days or hours. Yeah.And no, that's not the correct answer. Yeah, but it is the real one. Similarly, a lot of the questions get around trivia, syntax of which of these is the correct argument, and which ones did we make up? It's, I can explain in some level of detail, virtually every one of AWS has 300 some-odd services to you. Ask me about any of them, I could tell you what it is, how it works, how it's supposed to work and make a dumb joke about it. Fine, whatever.You'll forgive me if I went down that path, instead of memorizing what is the actual syntax of this YAML construct inside of a CloudFormation template? Yeah, I can get the answer to that question in the real world, with about ten seconds of Googling and we move on. That's the way most of us learn. It's not cramming trivia into our heads. There's something broken about the way that we do certifications, and tech interviews in many cases as well.I look back at some of the questions I used to ask people for Linux sysadmin-style jobs, and I don't remember the answer to a lot of these things. I could definitely get back into it, but if I went through one of these interviews now, I wouldn't get the job. One would argue I shouldn't because of my personality, but that's neither here nor there.Tomasz: [laugh]. I mean, that's why you use CDK, so you'd have to remember random YAML comments. And if you [unintelligible 00:23:26] you don't have YAML anymore. [unintelligible 00:23:27].Corey: Yes, you're quite the CDK fanboy, apparently.Tomasz: I do like CDK, yes. I don't like, you know, mental overhead, I don't like context switching, and the way we kind of work at Stedi is everything is written in TypeScript. So, I am a front-end engineer, so I do stuff in the front-end line in TypeScript, all of our Lambda functions are written in TypeScript, and our [unintelligible 00:23:48] is written in TypeScript. So, I can, you know, open up my Visual Studio Code and jump between all of those files, and the language stays the same, the syntax stays the same, the tools stay the same. And I think this is one of the benefits of CDK that is kind of hard to replicate otherwise.And, you know, people have many opinions about the best to deploy infrastructure in the cloud, you know? The best infrastructure-as-code tool is the one that you use at work or in your private projects, right? Because some people enjoy ClickOps like you do; people—Corey: Oh yeah.Tomasz: Enjoy CloudFormation by hand, which I don't; people are very much into Terraform or Serverless Framework. I'm very much into CDK.Corey: Or the SAM CLI, like, three or four more, and I use—Tomasz: Oh, yeah. [unintelligible 00:24:33]—Corey: —all of these things in various ways in some of my [monstrous 00:24:35] projects to keep up on all these things. I did an exploration with the CDK. Incidentally, I think you just answered why I don't like it.Tomasz: Because?Corey: Because it is very clear that TypeScript is a first-class citizen with the CDK. My language of choice is shitty bash because, grumpy old sysadmin; it happens. And increasingly, that is switching over to terrible Python because I'm very bad at that. And the problem that I run into as I was experimenting with this is, it feels like the Python support is not fully baked, most people who are using the CDK are using a flavor of JavaScript and, let's be very clear here, the every time I have tried to explore front-end, I have come away more confused than I was when I started, part of me really thinks I should be learning some JavaScript just because of its versatility and utility to a whole bunch of different problems. But it does not work the way I think, on some level, that it should because of my own biases and experiences. So, if you're not a JavaScript person, I think that you have a much rockier road with the CDK.Tomasz: I agree. Like I said, I tend to talk about my own experiences and my kind of thoughts about stuff. I'm not going to say that, you know, this tool or that tool is the best tool ever because nothing like that exists. Apart from jQuery, which is the best thing that ever happened to the web since, you know, baked bread, honestly. But you are right about CDK, to the best of my knowledge, kind of, all the other languages that are supported by CDK are effectively transpiled down from TypeScript. So it's, like, first of all, it is written in TypeScript, and then kind of the Python, all of the other languages… kind of come second.You know, and afterwards, I tend to enjoy CDK because as I said, I use TypeScript on a daily basis. And you know, with regards to front-end, you mentioned that you are, every single time you is that you end up being more confused. It never goes away. I've been doing front-end stuff for years, and it's, you know, kind of exactly the same. Fun story, I actually joined Cloudash because, well, Maciej started working on Cloudash alone, and after quite some time, he was so frustrated with the modern front-end landscape that he asked me, “Dude, you need to help me. Like, I genuinely need some help. I am tired of React. I am tired of React hooks. This is way too complex. I want to go back to doing back-end stuff. I want to go back, you know, thinking about how we're going to integrate with all those APIs. I don't want to do UI stuff anymore.”Which was kind of like an interesting shift because I remember at the very beginning of my career, where people were talking about front-end—you know, “Front-end is not real programming. Front-end is, you know, it's easy, it's simple. I can learn CSS in an hour.” And the amount of people who say that CSS is easy, and are good at CSS is exactly zero. Literally, nobody who's actually good at CSS says that, you know, CSS, or front-end, or anything like that is easy because it's not. It's incredibly complex. It's getting probably more and more complex because the expectations of our front-end UIs [unintelligible 00:27:44].Corey: It's challenging, it is difficult, and one of the things I find most admirable about you is not even your technical achievements, it's the fact that you're teaching other people to do this. In fact, this gets to the last point I want to cover on our conversation today. When I was bouncing topic ideas off of you, one of the points you brought up that I'm like, “Oh, we're keeping that and saving that for the end,” is why—to your words—why speaking at tech events gets easier, but never easy. Let's dive into that. Tell me more about it.Tomasz: Basically, I've accidentally kickstarted my career by speaking at meetups which later turned into conferences, which later turned into me publishing courses online, which later turned into me becoming an AWS Hero, and here we are, you know, talking to each other. I do enjoy, you know, going out in public and speaking and being on stage. I think, you know, if somebody has, kind of, the heart, the ability to do that, I do strongly recommend, you know, giving it a shot, not only to give, like, an honestly life-changing experience because the first time you go in front of hundreds of people, this is definitely, you know, something that's going to shake you, while at the same time acknowledging that this is absolutely, definitely not for everyone. But if you are able to do that, I think this is definitely worth your time. But as you said—by quoting me—that it gets easier, so every single time you go on stage, talk at a meetup or at a conference or online conferences—which I'm not exactly a fan of, for the record—it's—Corey: It's too much like work, too much like meetings. There's nothing different about it.Tomasz: Yeah, exactly. Like, there's no journey. There's no adventure in online conferences. I know that, of course, you know, given all of that, you know, we had to kind of switch to online conferences for quite some time where I think we are pretending that Covid is not a thing anymore, so we, you know, we're effectively going back, but kind of the point I wanted to make is that I am a somewhat experienced public speaker—I'd like to say that because I've been doing that for years—but I've been, you know, talking to people who actually get paid to speak at the conferences, to actually kind of do that for a living, and they all say the same thing. It gets simpler, it gets easier, but it's never freaking easy, you know, to go out there, and you know, to share whatever you've learned.Corey: I'm one of those people. I am a paid public speaker fairly often, even ignoring the podcast side, and I've spoken on conference stages a couple hundred times at least. And it does get easier but never easy. That's a great way of framing it. You… I get nervous before every talk I give.There are I think two talks I've given that I did not have an adrenaline hit and nervous energy before I went onstage, and both of those were duds. Because I think that it's part of the process, at least for me. And it's like, “Oh, how do you wind up not being scared for before you go on stage?” You don't. You really don't.But if that appeals to you and you enjoy the adrenaline rush of the rest, do it. If you're one of those people who've used public speaking as, “I would prefer death over that,” people are more scared of public speaking their death, in some cases, great. There are so many ways to build audiences and to reach people that fine, if you don't like doing it on stage, don't force yourself to. I'd say try it once; see how it feels meetups are great for this.Tomasz: Yeah. Meetups are basically the best way to get started. I'm yet to meet a meetup, either, you know, offline or online, who is not looking for speakers. It's always quite the opposite, you know? I was, you know, co-organizing a meetup in my city here in Poznań, Poland, and the story always goes like this: “Okay, we have a date. We have a venue. Where are the speakers?” And then you know, the tumbleweed is going to roll across the road and, “Oh, crap, we don't have any speakers.” So, we're going to try to find some, reach out to people. “Hey, I know that you did this fantastic project at your workplace. Come to us, talk about this.” “No, I don't want to. You know, I'm not an expert. I am, you know, I have on the 50 years of experience as an engineer. This is not enough.” Like I said, I do strongly recommend it, but as you said, if you're more scared of public speaking than, like, literally dying, maybe this is not for you.Corey: Yeah. It comes down to stretching your limits, finding yourself interesting. I find that there are lots of great engineers out there. The ones that I find myself drawn to are the ones who aren't just great at building something, but at storytelling around the thing that they are built of, yes, you build something awesome, but you have to convince me to care about it. You have to show me the thing that got you excited about this.And if you can't inspire that excitement in other people, okay. Are you really excited about it? Or what is the story here? And again, it's a different skill set. It is not for everyone, but it is absolutely a significant career accelerator if it's leveraged right.Tomasz: [crosstalk 00:32:45].Corey: [crosstalk 00:32:46] on it.Tomasz: Yeah, absolutely. I think that we don't talk enough about, kind of, the overlap between engineering and marketing. In the good sense of marketing, not the shady kind of marketing. The kind of marketing that you do for yourself in order to elevate yourself, your projects, your successes to others. Because, you know, try as you might, but if you are kind of like sitting in the corner of an office, you know, just jamming on your keyboard 40 hours per week, you're not exactly likely to be promoted because nobody's going to actively reach out to you to find out about your, you know, recent successes and so on.Which at the same time, I'm not saying that you should go @channel in Slack every single time you push a commit to the main branch, but there's definitely, you know, a way of being, kind of, kind to yourself by letting others know that, “Okay, I'm here. I do exist, I have, you know, those particular skills that you may be interested about. And I'm able to tell a story which is, you know, convincing.” So it's, you know, you can tell a story on stage, but you can also tell your story to your customers by building a future that they're going to use. [unintelligible 00:33:50].Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Tomasz: So, the best place to find me is on Twitter. So, my Twitter handle is @tlakomy. So, it's T-L-A-K-O-M-Y. I'm assuming this is going to be in the [show notes 00:34:06] as well.Corey: Oh, it absolutely is. You beat me to it.Tomasz: [laugh]. So, you can find Cloudash at cloudash.dev. You can probably also find my email, but don't email me because I'm terrible, absolutely terrible at email, so the best way to kind of reach out to me is via my Twitter DMs. I'm slightly less bad at those.Corey: Excellent. And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:34:29]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Tomasz: Thank you. Thank you for having me.Corey: Tomasz Łakomy, Head of React at Cloudash. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, and if you're on the YouTubes, smash the like and subscribe button, as the kids say. Whereas if you've hated this episode, please do the exact same thing—five-star reviews smash the buttons—but this time also leave an insulting and angry comment written in the form of a CloudWatch log entry that no one is ever able to find in the native interface.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
In this episode, host of Out of the Clouds Anne Muhlethaler interviews Wesley Faulkner. Wesley is a first-generation American, public speaker, and podcaster, and he currently works as a Head of Community at SingleStore, co-hosts the developer relations focused podcast Community Pulse and serves on the board for South by Southwest. He is a founding member of the government transparency group Open Austin and a staunch supporter of racial justice, workplace equity and neurodiversity. A tech enthusiast since his teens, Wesley first trained as an electrical and computer engineer (despite growing up without owning a personal computer himself). He shares the arc of his multipronged career from hardware to software, how being an early adopter of Twitter led him to social media management, and later to ‘dev rel' (or developer relations). The two discuss how Wesley navigated his life and career with a late diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia, and how he became a passionate advocate for neurodiverse populations in the work environment. His THAT conference keynote, ‘Be like me… different' was a great starting point to discuss how ‘community shapes us', in which Wesley offers his perspective on the evolution of the role of social media manager, what to consider to create a community and his vision for the metaverse. Finally, Wesley offers his thoughts on how organisations can work towards being more inclusive for neurodivergent team members, including by measuring effort, not just success, and encouraging experimentation. A very passionate, in-depth and honest conversation. Happy listening!***Selected links from episode You cand find Wesley on Polywork and on Twitter On LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesley83/AMD - https://www.amd.com/enDevRel - or developer relations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developer_relationsTHAT conference - https://that.us/that-conference/Wesley's keynote 'Be just like me... different' - https://that.us/activities/f0ByacQCrzrCC5kYNsMowhich you can watch on Youtube - https://youtu.be/YP7RfeX8xnYThe Workology Podcast with Wesley Faulkner - https://www.peatworks.org/podcast-neurodiversity-intersectionality-a-disclosure-challenge/SMART goals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteriaPriya Parker book - The Art of Gathering You Can Change Other People book - https://bregmanpartners.com/books/you-can-change-other-people/The End of Bias book by Jessica Nordell - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250186188/theendofbiasabeginningDon't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU *** If you enjoyed this episode, click subscribe for more, and consider writing a review of the show on Apple Podcasts, it helps people find us and also helps to secure future guests. Thank you so much for listening! For all notes and transcripts, please visit Out Of The Clouds on Simplecast - https://out-of-the-clouds.simplecast.com/ Sign up for Anne's email newsletter for more from Out of the Clouds at https://annevmuhlethaler.com. Follow Anne: Twitter: @annvi IG: @_outoftheclouds
https://youtu.be/CgLVGZTuFQ0 Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs, and the Productivity News This Week (If you're reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing any news from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Headlines & Show Notes | Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. This CEO Lets His Employees Work Whenever They Want—From Wherever They Want Why the Rise in 'Polywork' Is a Desperate Reflection of the Job Market Belonging Not Burnout New! Comments: Start Distraction-Free Conversations on Shared Documents Google just surrendered its update authority to Samsung Google auto-enabled 2SV for over 150M people leading to 50% decrease in compromised accounts Pixel tablet renders too ambitious or realistic? Google Calendar simplifies managing tasks you never got around to Microsoft OneDrive now available on the Remarkable Productivity Resource of the Week Daylite Mind42 Featured Story of the Week The Verge: Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs. Chrome OS Flex versus CloudReady: here are the main differences Announcements Task Management and Time Blocking (Announcement) Other News Samsung S22 Ultra doubles iPhone 13 Pro RAM, Galaxy tablets now up to 14.6-inches Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra features a familiar design and built-in S Pen Samsung reveals the Galaxy S22 and S22+: Improved cameras and more durable designs Apple Announces 'Tap to Pay' Feature That Will Allow iPhones To Accept Contactless Payments Apple: ‘An Update on AirTag and Unwanted Tracking' Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 140 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements The iPad can learn from Samsung Google to Curtail Cross-App Tracking on Android Phones Keeping you safe online with Google and beyond What fruit are you? By DebLee Apple Announces ‘Tap to Pay' on iPhone, With No Extra Hardware for Reading Cards Fantasticals new update focuses on making scheduling easier Samsungs Galaxy Watch 4 will track your sleep with cartoon animals Pocketbook Basic Lux 3 e-reader Review How does the new Kobo Sideload system work? How to Make Extremely Elaborate To-Do Lists in Google Sheets Google is closing one of its least-loved Workspace apps | TechRadar Update Zoom for macOS to fix the mic indicator bug Fast Company: Google Workspace adds pageless view, Maps, and Gmail drafts Chrome Unboxed: Google Docs adds Summaries and Pageless formatting features Google Drive's new filters that make search easier are rolling out to everyone - The Verge YouTube Music for Android gains convenient Downloads app shortcut Raw Text Transcript | Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast's audio). Read More Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00 Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle. The Productivity news podcast. Today's show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:13 I'm Augusto Pinaud. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:14 And we're your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 97. Can't believe it 97. This is February 21 2022.
Alex Radu is a VP Product Adoption and Marketing for Public Cloud at JP Morgan Chase in Glasgow, Scotland the land of the unicorns (it's a thing). Alex is also a speaker, tech community manager and recent graduate of an MSc Computer Science at University of Bath. She used to work as a conversational developer, software engineer and community manager among other things. Alex is a fervent advocate of diversity in tech and loves to support various communities, like codebar, Aspiring Women Speakers, #IamRemarkable, GitHub Campus Experts, Women Techmakers and more! In her role, Alex helps bring products and brands to life using community and marketing, as well as acting as a navigator between product, design, engineering and customer teams. This is all supported by data and feedback in all the work she does in the product space and can help reach the adoption and retention goals of the business whilst delighting current and potential customers! Connect With Alex Radu: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maradu/ Polywork https://polywork.com/alexandrammr Twitter https://twitter.com/alexandrammr
Alex Radu is a VP Product Adoption and Marketing for Public Cloud at JP Morgan Chase in Glasgow, Scotland the land of the unicorns (it's a thing). Alex is also a speaker, tech community manager and recent graduate of an MSc Computer Science at University of Bath. She used to work as a conversational developer, software engineer and community manager among other things. Alex is a fervent advocate of diversity in tech and loves to support various communities, like codebar, Aspiring Women Speakers, #IamRemarkable, GitHub Campus Experts, Women Techmakers and more! In her role, Alex helps bring products and brands to life using community and marketing, as well as acting as a navigator between product, design, engineering and customer teams. This is all supported by data and feedback in all the work she does in the product space and can help reach the adoption and retention goals of the business whilst delighting current and potential customers! Connect With Alex Radu: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maradu/ Polywork https://polywork.com/alexandrammr Twitter https://twitter.com/alexandrammr
The story of the lost warranty repair, and a very non-scientific discussion about the conspiracy behind planned obsolescences. Not to mention we tangent into how social networks are weird, but work related social networks are even weirder.Memoji on Apple support site: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208986Deep fakes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepfakeAtlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/companyZoom filters: https://blog.zoom.us/filters-reactions-lighting-features-zoom-meetings-2/Georgie's blog post, “Healing from toxic hackathon culture”: https://hey.georgie.nu/healing/Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/
About AndrewI create free cloud certification courses and somehow still make money.Links: ExamPro Training, Inc.: https://www.exampro.co/ PolyWork: https://www.polywork.com/andrewbrown LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-wc-brown Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewbrown TranscriptAndrew: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Redis, the company behind the incredibly popular open source database that is not the bind DNS server. If you're tired of managing open source Redis on your own, or you're using one of the vanilla cloud caching services, these folks have you covered with the go to manage Redis service for global caching and primary database capabilities; Redis Enterprise. To learn more and deploy not only a cache but a single operational data platform for one Redis experience, visit redis.com/hero. Thats r-e-d-i-s.com/hero. And my thanks to my friends at Redis for sponsoring my ridiculous non-sense. Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Rising Cloud, which I hadn't heard of before, but they're doing something vaguely interesting here. They are using AI, which is usually where my eyes glaze over and I lose attention, but they're using it to help developers be more efficient by reducing repetitive tasks. So, the idea being that you can run stateless things without having to worry about scaling, placement, et cetera, and the rest. They claim significant cost savings, and they're able to wind up taking what you're running as it is in AWS with no changes, and run it inside of their data centers that span multiple regions. I'm somewhat skeptical, but their customers seem to really like them, so that's one of those areas where I really have a hard time being too snarky about it because when you solve a customer's problem and they get out there in public and say, “We're solving a problem,” it's very hard to snark about that. Multus Medical, Construx.ai and Stax have seen significant results by using them. And it's worth exploring. So, if you're looking for a smarter, faster, cheaper alternative to EC2, Lambda, or batch, consider checking them out. Visit risingcloud.com/benefits. That's risingcloud.com/benefits, and be sure to tell them that I said you because watching people wince when you mention my name is one of the guilty pleasures of listening to this podcast.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is… well, he's challenging to describe. He's the co-founder and cloud instructor at ExamPro Training, Inc. but everyone knows him better as Andrew Brown because he does so many different things in the AWS ecosystem that it's sometimes challenging—at least for me—to wind up keeping track of them all. Andrew, thanks for joining.Andrew: Hey, thanks for having me on the show, Corey.Corey: How do I even begin describing you? You're an AWS Community Hero and have been for almost two years, I believe; you've done a whole bunch of work as far as training videos; you're, I think, responsible for #100daysofcloud; you recently started showing up on my TikTok feed because I'm pretending that I am 20 years younger than I am and hanging out on TikTok with the kids, and now I feel extremely old. And obviously, you're popping up an awful lot of places.Andrew: Oh, yeah. A few other places like PolyWork, which is an alternative to LinkedIn, so that's a space that I'm starting to build up on there as well. Active in Discord, Slack channels. I'm just kind of everywhere. There's some kind of internet obsession here. My wife gets really mad and says, “Hey, maybe tone down the social media.” But I really enjoy it. So.Corey: You're one of those folks where I have this challenge of I wind up having a bunch of different AWS community Slacks and cloud community, Slacks and Discords and the past, and we DM on Twitter sometimes. And I'm constantly trying to figure out where was that conversational thread that I had with you? And tracking it down is an increasingly large search problem. I really wish that—forget the unified messaging platform. I want a unified search platform for all the different messaging channels that I'm using to talk to people.Andrew: Yeah, it's very hard to keep up with all the channels for myself there. But somehow I do seem to manage it, but just with a bit less sleep than most others.Corey: Oh, yeah. It's like trying to figure out, like, “All right, he said something really useful. What was that? Was that a Twitter DM? Was it on that Slack channel? Was it that Discord? No, it was on that brick that he threw through my window with a note tied to it. There we go.”That's always the baseline stuff of figuring out where things are. So, as I mentioned in the beginning, you are the co-founder and cloud instructor at ExamPro, which is interesting because unlike most of the community stuff that you do and are known for, you don't generally talk about that an awful lot. What's the deal there?Andrew: Yeah, I think a lot of people give me a hard time because they say, Andrew, you should really be promoting yourself more and trying to make more sales, but that's not why I'm out here doing what I'm doing. Of course, I do have a for-profit business called ExamPro, where we create cloud certification study courses for things like AWS, Azure, GCP, Terraform, Kubernetes, but you know, that money just goes to fuel what I really want to do, is just to do community activities to help people change their lives. And I just decided to do that via cloud because that's my domain expertise. At least that's what I say because I've learned up on in the last four or five years. I'm hoping that there's some kind of impact I can make doing that.Corey: I take a somewhat similar approach. I mean, at The Duckbill Group, we fixed the horrifying AWS bill, but I've always found that's not generally a problem that people tend to advertise having. On Twitter, like, “Oh, man, my AWS bill is killing me this month. I've got to do something about it,” and you check where they work, and it's like a Fortune 50. It's, yeah, that moves markets and no one talks about that.So, my approach was always, be out there, be present in the community, talk about this stuff, and the people who genuinely have billing problems will eventually find their way to me. That was always my approach because turning everything I do into a sales pitch doesn't work. It just erodes confidence, it reminds people of the used mattress salesman, and I just don't want to be that person in that community. My approach has always been if I can help someone with a 15-minute call or whatnot, yeah, let's jump on a phone call. I'm not interested in nickel-and-diming folks.Andrew: Yeah. I think that if you're out there doing a lot of hard work, and a lot of it, it becomes undeniable the value you're putting out there, and then people just will want to give you money, right? And for me, I just feel really bad about taking anybody's money, and so even when there's some kind of benefit—like my courses, I could charge for access for them, but I always feel I have to give something in terms of taking somebody's money, but I would never ask anyone to give me their money. So, it's bizarre. [laugh] so.Corey: I had a whole bunch of people a year or so after I started asking, like, “I really find your content helpful. Can I buy you a cup of coffee or something?” And it's, I don't know how to charge people a dollar figure that doesn't have a comma in it because it's easy for me to ask a company for money; that is the currency of effort, work, et cetera, that companies are accustomed to. People view money very differently, and if I ask you personally for money versus your company for money, it's a very different flow. So, my solution to it was to build the annual charity t-shirt drive, where it's, great, spend 35 bucks or whatever on a snarky t-shirt once a year for ten days and all proceeds go to benefit a nonprofit that is, sort of, assuaged that.But one of my business philosophies has always been, “Work for free before you work for cheap.” And dealing with individuals and whatnot, I do not charge them for things. It's, “Oh, can you—I need some advice in my career. Can I pay you to give me some advice?” “No, but you can jump on a Zoom call with me.” Please, the reason I exist at all is because people who didn't have any reason to did me favors, once upon a time, and I feel obligated to pay that forward.Andrew: And I appreciate, you know, there are people out there that you know, do need to charge for their time. Like—Corey: Oh. Oh, yes.Andrew: —I won't judge anybody that wants to. But you know, for me, it's just I can't do it because of the way I was raised. Like, my grandfather was very involved in the community. Like, he was recognized by the city for all of his volunteer work, and doing volunteer work was, like, mandatory for me as a kid. Like, every weekend, and so for me, it's just like, I can't imagine trying to take people's money.Which is not a great thing, but it turns out that the community is very supportive, and they will come beat you down with a stick, to give you money to make sure you keep doing what you're doing. But you know, I could be making lots of money, but it's just not my priority, so I've avoided any kind of funding so like, you know, I don't become a money-driven company, and I will see how long that lasts, but hopefully, a lot longer.Corey: I wish you well. And again, you're right; no shade to anyone who winds up charging for their time to individuals. I get it. I just always had challenges with it, so I decided not to do it. The only time I find myself begrudging people who do that are someone who picked something up six months ago and decided, oh, I'm going to build some video course on how to do this thing. The end. And charge a bunch of money for it and put myself out as an expert in that space.And you look at what the content they're putting out is, and one, it's inaccurate, which just drives me up a wall, and two, there's a lack of awareness that teaching is its own skill. In some areas, I know how to teach certain things, and in other areas, I'm a complete disaster at it. Public speaking is a great example. A lot of what I do on the public speaking stage is something that comes to me somewhat naturally. So, can you teach me to be a good public speaker? Not really, it's like, well, you gave that talk and it was bad. Could you try giving it only make it good? Like, that is not a helpful coaching statement, so I stay out of that mess.Andrew: Yeah, I mean, it's really challenging to know, if you feel like you're authority enough to put something out there. And there's been a few courses where I didn't feel like I was the most knowledgeable, but I produced those courses, and they had done extremely well. But as I was going through the course, I was just like, “Yeah, I don't know how any this stuff works, but this is my best guess translating from here.” And so you know, at least for my content, people have seen me as, like, the lens of AWS on top of other platforms, right? So, I might not know—I'm not an expert in Azure, but I've made a lot of Azure content, and I just translate that over and I talk about the frustrations around, like, using scale sets compared to AWS auto-scaling groups, and that seems to really help people get through the motions of it.I know if I pass, at least they'll pass, but by no means do I ever feel like an expert. Like, right now I'm doing, like, Kubernetes. Like, I have no idea how I'm doing it, but I have, like, help with three other people. And so I'll just be honest about it and say, “Hey, yeah, I'm learning this as well, but at least I know I passed, so you know, you can pass, too.” Whatever that's worth.Corey: Oh, yeah. Back when I was starting out, I felt like a bit of a fraud because I didn't know everything about the AWS billing system and how it worked and all the different things people can do with it, and things they can ask. And now, five years later, when the industry basically acknowledges I'm an expert, I feel like a fraud because I couldn't possibly understand everything about the AWS billing system and how it works. It's one of those things where the more you learn, the more you realize that there is yet to learn. I'm better equipped these days to find the answers to the things I need to know, but I'm still learning things every day. If I ever get to a point of complete and total understanding of a given topic, I'm wrong. You can always go deeper.Andrew: Yeah, I mean, by no means am I even an expert in AWS, though people seem to think that I am just because I have a lot of confidence in there and I produce a lot of content. But that's a lot different from making a course than implementing stuff. And I do implement stuff, but you know, it's just at the scale that I'm doing that. So, just food for thought for people there.Corey: Oh, yeah. Whatever, I implement something. It's great. In my previous engineering life, I would work on large-scale systems, so I know how a thing that works in your test environment is going to blow up in a production scale environment. And I bring those lessons, written on my bones the painful way, through outages, to the way that I build things now.But the stuff that I'm building is mostly to keep my head in the game, as opposed to solving an explicit business need. Could I theoretically build a podcast transcription system on top of Transcribe or something like that for these episodes? Yeah. But I've been paying a person to do this for many years to do it themselves; they know the terms of art, they know how this stuff works, and they're building a glossary as they go, and understanding the nuances of what I say and how I say it. And that is the better business outcome; that's the answer. And if it's production facing, I probably shouldn't be tinkering with it too much, just based upon where the—I don't want to be the bottleneck for the business functioning.Andrew: I've been spending so much time doing the same thing over and over again, but for different cloud providers, and the more I do, the less I want to go deep on these things because I just feel like I'm dumping all this information I'm going to forget, and that I have those broad strokes, and when I need to go deep dive, I have that confidence. So, I'd really prefer people were to build up confidence in saying, “Yes, I think I can do this.” As opposed to being like, “Oh, I have proof that I know every single feature in AWS Systems Manager.” Just because, like, our platform, ExamPro, like, I built it with my co-founder, and it's a quite a system. And so I'm going well, that's all I need to know.And I talk to other CTOs, and there's only so much you need to know. And so I don't know if there's, like, a shift between—or difference between, like, application development where, let's say you're doing React and using Vercel and stuff like that, where you have to have super deep knowledge for that technical stack, whereas cloud is so broad or diverse that maybe just having confidence and hypothesizing the work that you can do and seeing what the outcome is a bit different, right? Not having to prove one hundred percent that you know it inside and out on day one, but have the confidence.Corey: And there's a lot of validity to that and a lot of value to it. It's the magic word I always found in interviewing, on both sides of the interview table, has always been someone who's unsure about something start with, “I'm not sure, but if I had to guess,” and then say whatever it is you were going to say. Because if you get it right, wow, you're really good at figuring this out, and your understanding is pretty decent. If you're wrong, well, you've shown them how you think but you've also called them out because you're allowed to be wrong; you're not allowed to be authoritatively wrong. Because once that happens, I can't trust anything you say.Andrew: Yeah. In terms of, like, how do cloud certifications help you for your career path? I mean, I find that they're really well structured, and they give you a goal to work towards. So, like, passing that exam is your motivation to make sure that you complete it. Do employers care? It depends. I would say mostly no. I mean, for me, like, when I'm hiring, I actually do care about certifications because we make certification courses but—Corey: In your case, you're a very specific expression of this that is not typical.Andrew: Yeah. And there are some, like, cases where, like, if you work for a larger cloud consultancy, you're expected to have a professional certification so that customers feel secure in your ability to execute. But it's not like they were trying to hire you with that requirement, right? And so I hope that people realize that and that they look at showing that practical skills, by building up cloud projects. And so that's usually a strong pairing I'll have, which is like, “Great. Get the certifications to help you just have a structured journey, and then do a Cloud project to prove that you can do what you say you can do.”Corey: One area where I've seen certifications act as an interesting proxy for knowledge is when you have a company that has 5000 folks who work in IT in varying ways, and, “All right. We're doing a big old cloud migration.” The certification program, in many respects, seems to act as a bit of a proxy for gauging where people are on upskilling, how much they have to learn, where they are in that journey. And at that scale, it begins to make some sense to me. Where do you stand on that?Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it's hard because it really depends on how those paths are built. So, when you look at the AWS certification roadmap, they have the Certified Cloud Practitioner, they have three associates, two professionals, and a bunch of specialties. And I think that you might think, “Well, oh, solutions architect must be very popular.” But I think that's because AWS decided to make the most popular, the most generic one called that, and so you might think that's what's most popular.But what they probably should have done is renamed that Solution Architect to be a Cloud Engineer because very few people become Solutions Architect. Like that's more… if there's Junior Solutions Architect, I don't know where they are, but Solutions Architect is more of, like, a senior role where you have strong communications, pre-sales, obviously, the role is going to vary based on what companies decide a Solution Architect is—Corey: Oh, absolutely take a solutions architect, give him a crash course in finance, and we call them a cloud economist.Andrew: Sure. You just add modifiers there, and they're something else. And so I really think that they should have named that one as the cloud engineer, and they should have extracted it out as its own tier. So, you'd have the Fundamental, the Certified Cloud Practitioner, then the Cloud Engineer, and then you could say, “Look, now you could do developer or the sysops.” And so you're creating this path where you have a better trajectory to see where people really want to go.But the problem is, a lot of people come in and they just do the solutions architect, and then they don't even touch the other two because they say, well, I got an associate, so I'll move on the next one. So, I think there's some structuring there that comes into play. You look at Azure, they've really, really caught up to AWS, and may I might even say surpass them in terms of the quality and the way they market them and how they construct their certifications. There's things I don't like about them, but they have, like, all these fundamental certifications. Like, you have Azure Fundamentals, Data Fundamentals, AI Fundamentals, there's a Security Fundamentals.And to me, that's a lot more valuable than going over to an associate. And so I did all those, and you know, I still think, like, should I go translate those over for AWS because you have to wait for a specialty before you pick up security. And they say, like, it's intertwined with all the certifications, but, really isn't. Like—and I feel like that would be a lot better for AWS. But that's just my personal opinion. So.Corey: My experience with AWS certifications has been somewhat minimal. I got the Cloud Practitioner a few years ago, under the working theory of I wanted to get into the certified lounge at some of the events because sometimes I needed to charge things and grab a cup of coffee. I viewed it as a lounge pass with a really strange entrance questionnaire. And in my case, yeah, I passed it relatively easily; if not, I would have some questions about how much I actually know about these things. As I recall, I got one question wrong because I was honest, instead of going by the book answer for, “How long does it take to restore an RDS database from a snapshot?”I've had some edge cases there that give the wrong answer, except that's what happened. And then I wound up having that expire and lapse. And okay, now I'll do it—it was in beta at the time, but I got the sysops associate cert to go with it. And that had a whole bunch of trivia thrown into it, like, “Which of these is the proper syntax for this thing?” And that's the kind of question that's always bothered me because when I'm trying to figure things like that out, I have entire internet at my fingertips. Understanding the exact syntax, or command-line option, or flag that needs to do a thing is a five-second Google search away in most cases. But measuring for people's ability to memorize and retain that has always struck me as a relatively poor proxy for knowledge.Andrew: It's hard across the board. Like Azure, AWS, GCP, they all have different approaches—like, Terraform, all of them, they're all different. And you know, when you go to interview process, you have to kind of extract where the value is. And I would think that the majority of the industry, you know, don't have best practices when hiring, there's, like, a superficial—AWS is like, “Oh, if you do well, in STAR program format, you must speak a communicator.” Like, well, I'm dyslexic, so that stuff is not easy for me, and I will never do well in that.So like, a lot of companies hinge on those kinds of components. And I mean, I'm sure it doesn't matter; if you have a certain scale, you're going to have attrition. There's no perfect system. But when you look at these certifications, and you say, “Well, how much do they match up with the job?” Well, they don't, right? It's just Jeopardy.But you know, I still think there's value for yourself in terms of being able to internalize it. I still think that does prove that you have done something. But taking the AWS certification is not the same as taking Andrew Brown's course. So, like, my certified cloud practitioner was built after I did GCP, Oracle Cloud, Azure Fundamentals, a bunch of other Azure fundamental certifications, cloud-native stuff, and then I brought it over because was missing, right? So like, if you went through my course, and that I had a qualifier, then I could attest to say, like, you are of this skill level, right?But it really depends on what that testament is and whether somebody even cares about what my opinion of, like, your skillset is. But I can't imagine like, when you have a security incident, there's going to be a pop-up that shows you multiple-choice answer to remediate the security incident. Now, we might get there at some point, right, with all the cloud automation, but we're not there yet.Corey: It's been sort of thing we've been chasing and never quite get there. I wish. I hope I live to see it truly I do. My belief is also that the value of a certification changes depending upon what career stage someone is at. Regardless of what level you are at, a hiring manager or a company is looking for more or less a piece of paper that attests that they're to solve the problem that they are hiring to solve.And entry-level, that is often a degree or a certification or something like that in the space that shows you have at least the baseline fundamentals slash know how to learn things. After a few years, I feel like that starts to shift into okay, you've worked in various places solving similar problems on your resume that the type that we have—because the most valuable thing you can hear when you ask someone, “How would we solve this problem?” Is, “Well, the last time I solved it, here's what we learned.” Great. That's experience. There's no compression algorithm for experience? Yes, there is: Hiring people with experience.Then, at some level, you wind up at the very far side of people who are late-career in many cases where the piece of paper that shows that they know what they're doing is have you tried googling their name and looking at the Wikipedia article that spits out, how they built fundamental parts of a system like that. I think that certifications are one of those things that bias for early-career folks. And of course, partners when there are other business reasons to get it. But as people grow in seniority, I feel like the need for those begins to fall off. Do you agree? Disagree? You're much closer to this industry in that aspect of it than I am.Andrew: The more senior you are, and if you have big names under your resume there, no one's going to care if you have certification, right? When I was looking to switch careers—I used to have a consultancy, and I was just tired of building another failed startup for somebody that was willing to pay me. And I'm like—I was not very nice about it. I was like, “Your startup's not going to work out. You really shouldn't be building this.” And they still give me the money and it would fail, and I'd move on to the next one. It was very frustrating.So, closed up shop on that. And I said, “Okay, I got to reenter the market.” I don't have a computer science degree, I don't have big names on my resume, and Toronto is a very competitive market. And so I was feeling friction because people were not valuing my projects. I had, like, full-stack projects, I would show them.And they said, “No, no. Just do these, like, CompSci algorithms and stuff like that.” And so I went, “Okay, well, I really don't want to be doing that. I don't want to spend all my time learning algorithms just so I can get a job to prove that I already have the knowledge I have.” And so I saw a big opportunity in cloud, and I thought certifications would be the proof to say, “I can do these things.”And when I actually ended up going for the interviews, I didn't even have certifications and I was getting those opportunities because the certifications helped me prove it, but nobody cared about the certifications, even then, and that was, like, 2017. But not to say, like, they didn't help me, but it wasn't the fact that people went, “Oh, you have a certification. We'll get you this job.”Corey: Yeah. When I'm talking to consulting clients, I've never once been asked, “Well, do you have the certifications?” Or, “Are you an AWS partner?” In my case, no, neither of those things. The reason that we know what we're doing is because we've done this before. It's the expertise approach.I question whether that would still be true if we were saying, “Oh, yeah, and we're going to drop a dozen engineers on who are going to build things out of your environment.” “Well, are they certified?” is a logical question to ask when you're bringing in an external service provider? Or is this just a bunch of people you found somewhere on Upwork or whatnot, and you're throwing them at it with no quality control? Like, what is the baseline level experience? That's a fair question. People are putting big levels of trust when they bring people in.Andrew: I mean, I could see that as a factor of some clients caring, just because like, when I used to work in startups, I knew customers where it's like their second startup, and they're flush with a lot of money, and they're deciding who they want to partner with, and they're literally looking at what level of SSL certificate they purchased, right? Like now, obviously, they're all free and they're very easy to get to get; there was one point where you had different tiers—as if you would know—and they would look and they would say—Corey: Extended validation certs attend your browser bar green. Remember those?Andrew: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just like that, and they're like, “We should partner with them because they were able to afford that and we know, like…” whatever, whatever, right? So, you know, there is that kind of thought process for people at an executive level. I'm not saying it's widespread, but I've seen it.When you talk to people that are in cloud consultancy, like solutions architects, they always tell me they're driven to go get those professional certifications [unintelligible 00:22:19] their customers matter. I don't know if the customers care or not, but they seem to think so. So, I don't know if it's just more driven by those people because it's an expectation because everyone else has it, or it's like a package of things, like, you know, like the green bar in the certifications, SOC 2 compliance, things like that, that kind of wrap it up and say, “Okay, as a package, this looks really good.” So, more of an expectation, but not necessarily matters, it's just superficial; I'm not sure.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: You've been building out certifications for multiple cloud providers, so I'm curious to get your take on something that Forrest Brazeal, who's now head of content over at Google Cloud, has been talking about lately, the idea that as an engineer is advised to learn more than one cloud provider; even if you have one as a primary, learning how another one works makes you a better engineer. Now, setting aside entirely the idea that well, yeah, if I worked at Google, I probably be saying something fairly similar.Andrew: Yeah.Corey: Do you think there's validity to the idea that most people should be broad across multiple providers, or do you think specialization on one is the right path?Andrew: Sure. Just to contextualize for our listeners, Google Cloud is highly, highly promoting multi-cloud workloads, and one of their flagship products is—well, they say it's a flagship product—is Anthos. And they put a lot of money—I don't know that was subsidized, but they put a lot of money in it because they really want to push multi-cloud, right? And so when we say Forrest works in Google Cloud, it should be no surprise that he's promoting it.But I don't work for Google, and I can tell you, like, learning multi-cloud is, like, way more valuable than just staying in one vertical. It just opened my eyes. When I went from AWS to Azure, it was just like, “Oh, I'm missing out on so much in the industry.” And it really just made me such a more well-rounded person. And I went over to Google Cloud, and it was just like… because you're learning the same thing in different variations, and then you're also poly-filling for things that you will never touch.Or like, I shouldn't say you never touch, but you would never touch if you just stayed in that vertical when you're learning. So, in the industry, Azure Active Directory is, like, widespread, but if you just stayed in your little AWS box, you're not going to notice it on that learning path, right? And so a lot of times, I tell people, “Go get your CLF-C01 and then go get your AZ-900 or AZ-104.” Again, I don't care if people go and sit the exams. I want them to go learn the content because it is a large eye-opener.A lot of people are against multi-cloud from a learning perspective because say, it's too much to learn all at the same time. But a lot of people I don't think have actually gone across the cloud, right? So, they're sitting from their chair, only staying in one vertical saying, “Well, you can't learn them all at the same time.” And I'm going, “I see a way that you could teach them all at the same time.” And I might be the first person that will do it.Corey: And the principles do convey as well. It's, “Oh, well I know how SNS works on AWS, so I would never be able to understand how Google Pub/Sub works.” Those are functionally identical; I don't know that is actually true. It's just different to interface points and different guarantees, but fine. You at least understand the part that it plays.I've built things out on Google Cloud somewhat recently, and for me, every time I do, it's a refreshing eye-opener to oh, this is what developer experience in the cloud could be. And for a lot of customers, it is. But staying too far within the bounds of one ecosystem does lend itself to a loss of perspective, if you're not careful. I agree with that.Andrew: Yeah. Well, I mean, just the paint more of a picture of differences, like, Google Cloud has a lot about digital transformation. They just updated their—I'm not happy that they changed it, but I'm fine that they did that, but they updated their Google Digital Cloud Leader Exam Guide this month, and it like is one hundred percent all about digital transformation. So, they love talking about digital transformation, and those kind of concepts there. They are really good at defining migration strategies, like, at a high level.Over to Azure, they have their own cloud adoption framework, and it's so detailed, in terms of, like, execution, where you go over to AWS and they have, like, the worst cloud adoption framework. It's just the laziest thing I've ever seen produced in my life compared to out of all the providers in that space. I didn't know about zero-trust model until I start using Azure because Azure has Active Directory, and you can do risk-based policy procedures over there. So, you know, like, if you don't go over to these places, you're not going to get covered other places, so you're just going to be missing information till you get the job and, you know, that job has that information requiring you to know it.Corey: I would say that for someone early career—and I don't know where this falls on the list of career advice ranging from, “That is genius,” to, “Okay, Boomer,” but I would argue that figuring out what companies in your geographic area, or the companies that you have connections with what they're using for a cloud provider, I would bias for learning one enough to get hired there and from there, letting what you learn next be dictated by the environment you find yourself in. Because especially larger companies, there's always something that lives in a different provider. My default worst practice is multi-cloud. And I don't say that because multi-cloud doesn't exist, and I'm not saying it because it's a bad idea, but this idea of one workload—to me—that runs across multiple providers is generally a challenge. What I see a lot more, done intelligently, is, “Okay, we're going to use this provider for some things, this other provider for other things, and this third provider for yet more things.” And every company does that.If not, there's something very strange going on. Even Amazon uses—if not Office 365, at least exchange to run their email systems instead of Amazon WorkMail because—Andrew: Yeah.Corey: Let's be serious. That tells me a lot. But I don't generally find myself in a scenario where I want to build this application that is anything more than Hello World, where I want it to run seamlessly and flawlessly across two different cloud providers. That's an awful lot of work that I struggle to identify significant value for most workloads.Andrew: I don't want to think about securing, like, multiple workloads, and that's I think a lot of friction for a lot of companies are ingress-egress costs, which I'm sure you might have some knowledge on there about the ingress-egress costs across providers.Corey: Oh, a little bit, yeah.Andrew: A little bit, probably.Corey: Oh, throwing data between clouds is always expensive.Andrew: Sure. So, I mean, like, I call multi-cloud using multiple providers, but not in tandem. Cross-cloud is when you want to use something like Anthos or Azure Arc or something like that where you extend your data plane or control pla—whatever the plane is, whatever plane across all the providers. But you know, in practice, I don't think many people are doing cross-cloud; they're doing multi-cloud, like, “I use AWS to run my primary workloads, and then I use Microsoft Office Suite, and so we happen to use Azure Active Directory, or, you know, run particular VM machines, like Windows machines for our accounting.” You know?So, it's a mixed bag, but I do think that using more than one thing is becoming more popular just because you want to use the best in breed no matter where you are. So like, I love BigQuery. BigQuery is amazing. So, like, I ingest a lot of our data from, you know, third-party services right into that. I could be doing that in Redshift, which is expensive; I could be doing that in Azure Synapse, which is also expensive. I mean, there's a serverless thing. I don't really get serverless. So, I think that, you know, people are doing multi-cloud.Corey: Yeah. I would agree. I tend to do things like that myself, and whenever I see it generally makes sense. This is my general guidance. When I talk to individuals who say, “Well, we're running multi-cloud like this.” And my response is, “Great. You're probably right.”Because I'm talking in the general sense, someone building something out on day one where they don't know, like, “Everyone's saying multi-cloud. Should I do that?” No, I don't believe you should. Now, if your company has done that intentionally, rather than by accident, there's almost certainly a reason and context that I do not have. “Well, we have to run our SaaS application in multiple cloud providers because that's where our customers are.” “Yeah, you should probably do that.” But your marketing, your billing systems, your back-end reconciliation stuff generally does not live across all of those providers. It lives in one. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I think we're in violent agreement here.Andrew: Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, Kubernetes obviously is becoming very popular because people believe that they'll have a lot more mobility, Whereas when you use all the different managed—and I'm still learning Kubernetes myself from the next certification I have coming out, like, study course—but, you know, like, those managed services have all different kind of kinks that are completely different. And so, you know, it's not going to be a smooth process. And you're still leveraging, like, for key things like your database, you're not going to be running that in Kubernetes Cluster. You're going to be using a managed service.And so, those have their own kind of expectations in terms of configuration. So, I don't know, it's tricky to say what to do, but I think that, you know, if you have a need for it, and you don't have a security concern—like, usually it's security or cost, right, for multi-cloud.Corey: For me, at least, the lock-in has always been twofold that people don't talk about. More—less lock-in than buy-in. One is the security model where IAM is super fraught and challenging and tricky, and trying to map a security model to multiple providers is super hard. Then on top of that, you also have the buy-in story of a bunch of engineers who are very good at one cloud provider, and that skill set is not in less demand now than it was a year ago. So okay, you're going to start over and learn a new cloud provider is often something that a lot of engineers won't want to countenance.If your team is dead set against it, there's going to be some friction there and there's going to be a challenge. I mean, for me at least, to say that someone knows a cloud provider is not the naive approach of, “Oh yeah, they know how it works across the board.” They know how it breaks. For me, one of the most valuable reasons to run something on AWS is I know what a failure mode looks like, I know how it degrades, I know how to find out what's going on when I see that degradation. That to me is a very hard barrier to overcome. Alternately, it's entirely possible that I'm just old.Andrew: Oh, I think we're starting to see some wins all over the place in terms of being able to learn one thing and bring it other places, like OpenTelemetry, which I believe is a cloud-native Kubernetes… CNCF. I can't remember what it stands for. It's like Linux Foundation, but for cloud-native. And so OpenTelemetry is just a standardized way of handling your logs, metrics, and traces, right? And so maybe CloudWatch will be the 1.0 of observability in AWS, and then maybe OpenTelemetry will become more of the standard, right, and so maybe we might see more managed services like Prometheus and Grafa—well, obviously, AWS has a managed Prometheus, but other things like that. So, maybe some of those things will melt away. But yeah, it's hard to say what approach to take.Corey: Yeah, I'm wondering, on some level, whether what the things we're talking about today, how well that's going to map forward. Because the industry is constantly changing. The guidance I would give about should you be in cloud five years ago would have been a nuanced, “Mmm, depends. Maybe for yes, maybe for no. Here's the story.” It's a lot less hedge-y and a lot less edge case-y these days when I answer that question. So, I wonder in five years from now when we look back at this podcast episode, how well this discussion about what the future looks like, and certifications, and multi-cloud, how well that's going to reflect?Andrew: Well, when we look at, like, Kubernetes or Web3, we're just seeing kind of like the standardized boilerplate way of doing a bunch of things, right, all over the place. This distributed way of, like, having this generic API across the board. And how well that will take, I have no idea, but we do see a large split between, like, serverless and cloud-natives. So, it's like, what direction? Or we'll just have both? Probably just have both, right?Corey: [Like that 00:33:08]. I hope so. It's been a wild industry ride, and I'm really curious to see what changes as we wind up continuing to grow. But we'll see. That's the nice thing about this is, worst case, if oh, turns out that we were wrong on this whole cloud thing, and everyone starts exodusing back to data centers, well, okay. That's the nice thing about being a small company. It doesn't take either of us that long to address the reality we see in the industry.Andrew: Well, that or these cloud service providers are just going to get better at offering those services within carrier hotels, or data centers, or on your on-premise under your desk, right? So… I don't know, we'll see. It's hard to say what the future will be, but I do believe that cloud is sticking around in one form or another. And it basically is, like, an essential skill or table stakes for anybody that's in the industry. I mean, of course, not everywhere, but like, mostly, I would say. So.Corey: Andrew, I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more about your opinions, how you view these things, et cetera. Where can they find you?Andrew: You know, I think the best place to find me right now is Twitter. So, if you go to twitter.com/andrewbrown—all lowercase, no spaces, no underscores, no hyphens—you'll find me there. I'm so surprised I was able to get that handle. It's like the only place where I have my handle.Corey: And we will of course put links to that in the [show notes 00:34:25]. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.Andrew: Well, thanks for having me on the show.Corey: Andrew Brown, co-founder and cloud instructor at ExamPro Training and so much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment telling me that I do not understand certifications at all because you're an accountant, and certifications matter more in that industry.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
Polywork will das neue Business-Social-Network werden Es gibt aber bedeutende Konkurrenz: LinkedIn mit seinen über 700 Mio. Nutzern und der deutsche Platzhirsch XING Es stellt sich die Frage: Was ist Polywork überhaupt? Jede Social-Media-Plattform hat bestimmte Eigenschaften, die sie attraktiv machen. Polywork will ein Linkedin-Killer werden. Zumindest wird der Plattform … Der Beitrag Polywork-Dossier: Der Killer von XING und LinkedIn? erschien zuerst auf DER Social-Media-Blog und Statistikpool.
Lisa Jara shares about the importance of self-sovereignty and how we live and navigate life on our terms. Join us today with our BFF from Western Germany. Lisa talks about having a to-be list. Often it is not just things we have or what we think we have to do but also a list of what we have to be and become to make ourselves better. She also shares that when we ask, "What would I like to have happened?", our answers change our perspective. We experience an inside shift. She reminds us that when we suppress all our negative emotions, we also suppress positive and uplifting emotions. She adds that holding space for people can change the trajectory of other people's lives. By listening actively with our complete presence and watching whatever is unfolding, we can help other people. When we understand how we perceive the world, change can happen. Lisa Jara is a Soul-Based Coach. She's a highly sensitive ambivert, spiritual feminist, nature lover, book nerd, vision-keeper, truth-seeker, passionate yogini and warrioress of light. What you will learn from this episode 01:37 - What Lisa Jara is Obsessed With 02:35 - How Lisa Discovered Self-Sovereignty 05:32 - Struggles to Self-Sovereignty 07:17 - Understanding Our Purpose 11:06 - Mental Health and Emotions 15:06 - Handling Emotions Difference Between Men and Women 17:43 - How to Become an Active Listener 19:07 - Trusting Your Inner Wisdom Learn More About Lisa Jara Website: https://lisa-jara.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisajaracom Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisajaracom Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/lisajara Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG3IUe0ROGTtuw8r3Pmwz9Q See What Your Obsessed Girls Are Doing and Send Us Feedback! CROWN AND COMPASS | Linktree - https://linktr.ee/crownandcompassgirls
Lisa Jara shares about the importance of self-sovereignty and how we live and navigate life on our terms. Join us today with our BFF from Western Germany. Lisa talks about having a to-be list. Often it is not just things we have or what we think we have to do but also a list of what we have to be and become to make ourselves better. She also shares that when we ask, "What would I like to have happened?", our answers change our perspective. We experience an inside shift. She reminds us that when we suppress all our negative emotions, we also suppress positive and uplifting emotions. She adds that holding space for people can change the trajectory of other people's lives. By listening actively with our complete presence and watching whatever is unfolding, we can help other people. When we understand how we perceive the world, change can happen. Lisa Jara is a Soul-Based Coach. She's a highly sensitive ambivert, spiritual feminist, nature lover, book nerd, vision-keeper, truth-seeker, passionate yogini and warrioress of light. What you will learn from this episode 01:37 - What Lisa Jara is Obsessed With 02:35 - How Lisa Discovered Self-Sovereignty 05:32 - Struggles to Self-Sovereignty 07:17 - Understanding Our Purpose 11:06 - Mental Health and Emotions 15:06 - Handling Emotions Difference Between Men and Women 17:43 - How to Become an Active Listener 19:07 - Trusting Your Inner Wisdom Learn More About Lisa Jara Website: https://lisa-jara.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisajaracom Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisajaracom Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/lisajara Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG3IUe0ROGTtuw8r3Pmwz9Q See What Your Obsessed Girls Are Doing and Send Us Feedback! CROWN AND COMPASS | Linktree - https://linktr.ee/crownandcompassgirls
Helden der Arbeit - wie werden wir 2030 arbeiten? Der Future-of-Work-Podcast von Daniel und René
Poly-What? Nach Metaverse schon wieder so ein Thema für die absoluten Geeks? Kommt drauf an... Polywork schickt sich an, XING und LinkedIn vom Thron der Businessnetzwerke zu schubsen und geht dafür einen sehr anderen, aber auch sehr spannenden Weg. Daniel und René haben sich diesen Weg einmal angeschaut und machen sich Gedanken dazu, wohin die Reise führen kann und ob Polywork das gleiche Schicksal beschieden ist wie Clubhouse (was war das noch mal?). Wenn du Polywork noch nicht kennst oder wenn du jetzt Endlich mal ein neues Businessnetzwerk denkst, dann darfst du dir die neue Folge der Helden der Arbeit nicht entgehen lassen. Alle anderen Folgen findest du beim Podcast-Dealer deines Vertrauens und unter www.helden-der-arbeit.me
[00:01:32] Joe, Chris, and Dylan tell us what they do at Polywork.[00:02:34] Joe shares things that make a good Rails Developer and what type of person would be best to join their team. [00:05:47] Find out all about Polywork. Andrew mentions checking out Brian Lovin's Polywork page. [00:07:16] Joe tells us how they rebuilt the application on Rails 6.1, Turbo, and Stimulus, and how it has paid off for them.[00:11:49] Andrew asks the guys what they're using Turbo for, what kind of wins is it giving, and if they've upstreamed anything that they found into Turbo. [00:15:49] Chris asks Dylan what their thoughts are on how handle or think about the navigations stuff on the mobile stuff. He also tells us something they are working on now at Polywork.[00:23:41] Dylan tells us if they are able to get away with writing very little Swift or if that's still kind of a core piece, and if they do OAuth, do they go Native in Native Swift OAuth or if that's web-based.[00:27:41] If the guys were not using Turbo for building the app, would they end up building a hybrid app, like a React Native type of thing if they didn't have Turbo for the web and mobile?[00:28:57] Andrew wonders if the guys are in a place where they'll be ready to upgrade when Rails 7 comes out or a shorter update process since they've done all this groundwork already. Also, we find out if the guys are happy they stuck with Rails.[00:35:35] We hear an interesting story behind celebrity emoji keyboards and Kanye.[00:38:57] Polywork is hiring so check the link below for openings! Panelists:Chris OliverAndrew MasonGuests:Joe FerrairoChris PolkDylan GinsburgSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Ruby Radar NewsletterRuby Radar TwitterJoseph Ferrairo LinkedinJoe Ferrairo GitHubChris Polk LinkedinChris Polk TwitterDylan Ginsburg LinkedinDylan Ginsburg TwitterPolyworkPolywork job openingsPolywork Twitter Brian Lovin
An interview with Peter Johnston & Matt Breuer. Peter is the founder & CEO of new professional social network Polywork. Matt joined as Product Director and employee #9. They talk about the vision for Polywork, the pain points it was designed to overcome, the way they're building it as a team, and how to avoid HIPPO syndrome. We speak about a lot, including: The motivations behind Polywork, how it differs from other professional networking sites, and how they aim to "go beyond the job title" The personal pain points and collaboration issues that started the idea of Polywork and how it's more than just a reaction to LinkedIn How the dynamics work between a senior product professional & a vision-driven founder in an early stage startup and the importance of disagreeing but committing as a team How to manage upwards as a product leader, and tackle HIPPO disagreements by doing the product management work to validate your arguments The discovery work they did up front to turn the initial vision into a tangible product and the importance of thinking about the fundamental job to be done Whether they are worried about being a lockdown flash in the pan and suffering a collapse in user numbers post-pandemic The importance of maintaining focus for startups, not trying to chase every opportunity that looks good and how Peter learned this the hard way at a previous startup And much more! Check out Polywork If you don't have a Polywork account already you can sign up using this VIP link and check it out. Contact Matt & Peter You can contact Matt at Polywork and Peter either on Polywork or Twitter.
Today we talk about marketing yourself, both as a personal brand and at work. Our guest is Shawn “Swyx” Wang, an engineering thought leader and author of “The Coding Career Handbook.” You'll learn several components of defining your brand, tips on expressing that brand in public, collateral and strategies that will help you at work, and more.Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.Show NotesSwyx.io — Shawn's websiteThe Coding Career Handbook — Shawn's bookTwo Sigma, Netlify, AWS — Shawn's previous places of workTemporal — Shawn's current place of workHow to Market Yourself without Being a CelebrityTwitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Polywork — popular social networks to start building your audienceThe Craft of Storytelling + Thinking Like Elon Musk — an interview with Tim UrbanBuilding a CFP Process — Shawn's blog post on public speakingNader Dabit — Shawn's previous coworker, someone who maintains an extensive travel scheduleThe Swyx Mixtape — Shawn's podcastEpisode 205: Building Your Platform with Corbett BarrDescript — an all-in-one audio and video editing tool with transcriptionFollow Shawn on TwitterGet 30% off Shawn's book at learninpublic.org/?c=UIBREAKFAST30Today's SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best tool for sending onboarding emails and segmenting your SaaS users. To follow the best practices, download our free printable email planning worksheets at userlist.com/worksheets.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.
Was bewegt das Netz? Warum sind Podcasts so populär? Welche neuen Features gibt es bei Social-Media-Plattformen? Worüber sprechen die User? Parallel zu jeder Folge Onlinegeister-Podcast stellen wir euch ganz individuell ein Info-Update der aktuellen Nachrichten und News als Briefing zusammen: … Der Beitrag Polywork, Podcast und „Facebook Files | Nr. 64 Hausmeistereien erschien zuerst auf #Onlinegeister.
A founder is often someone who recognizes a gap in the market and looks to address this gap. Our latest guest is one such founder who has spotted a gap in professional social media networks and is looking to provide a solution to it. As the founder of Polywork, Peter Johnston is looking to change the way professional social media networks operate. In this episode of The Orbit Shift Podcast, he talks to us about the problem with professional social media channels, how the idea of Polywork came about from his Google 20% project. His future plans for monetization of the platform, the importance of design for product and growth, his approach to hiring and dealing with hiring missteps, and his advice on fundraising. Skip the waitlist to create your Polywork profileNot Boring Newsletter by Packy McCormickGet $10,000 free credits to use Freshworks products (including the brand new Freshworks CRM packed with AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture) by joining the Freshworks for Startups program. Click here to check eligibility. About the GuestPeter Johnston is the Founder of Polywork, a professional social network that is backed by a16z, Anthony Pompliano, and Alexis Ohanian amongst others. A designer by trade Peter has previously founded Kalo a freelancer management platform, before which he worked as a designer for Google. Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.The Orbit Shift Podcast is powered by Freshworks Inc, a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. Host and Producer - Jayadevan PKAssistant Producer - Shashwath JAudio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian
For every sucky recruiter conflating Java and JavaScript (oh boy), there is a recruiter like Taylor Desseyn ready to listen to your goals, craft your resume, and help you land your first Junior Developer job. Yes, even new programers are eligible to work with a recruiter! In this episode, Taylor breaks it down step-by-step.Who is Taylor? Taylor is a Senior Recruiter who has been recruiting since 2011 and has helped place more than 450 people land their dream jobs. He joins us today to share his best advice on how to connect with and utilize recruiters in general.Timestamps Introduction (00:00) Recruiting is inherently broken (01:52) Differentiate between agency and internal recruiters (04:11) How to connect with agency recruiters even if you are a Junior (05:38) You wouldn't wait to go to the gym until you're in shape... (09:37) 3 rules to write an impressive cold message (10:10) LinkedIn is where it's at but do not discount Twitter and Polywork (14:57) How to stand out on LinkedIn (17:50) The tenants of a standout resume (21:37) Links Follow the guest Follow Taylor Desseyn on Twiitter TaylorDesseyn.com Follow the hostFollow Alex from Scrimba on Twitter Links mentioned in the episode Vaco Taylor's foolproof resume How social media can land you your dream job
talentbay bietet endlich das, was ich seit Jahren vorhersage: Die Fachbereiche werden in Zukunft stärker ins Recruiting eingebunden. Also u.a. selber mehr netzwerken, stärker den Kontakt zur Zielgruppe suchen, fachlich austauschen, latent in Kontakt bleiben. Was bisher vor allem über Linkedin oder XING (und vielleicht jetzt auch über Polywork) möglich ist, aber da immer seine Limitierungen hatte, könnte jetzt das HR Start-Up Talentbay lösen! Denn talentbay ermöglicht auf unkomplizierte Art, nachhaltige Beziehungen zwischen Fachbereichen und Studierenden / Wissenschaftler*Innen aller Disziplinen aufzubauen. Eine Idee, die ich extrem charmant und sinnvoll finde und über die ich mich daher sehr gerne mit talentbay CEO Marc Irmisch-Petit ausgetauscht habe. Gerade jetzt, wo Polywork in der innovativen HR Szene aufkommt (und mir vom Look & Feel noch nicht wirklich zusagt), ist talentbay mit einem ähnlichen Ansatz genau zur richtigen Zeit zur Stelle. Denn auch talentbay geht vor allem über Interessen, Projekte und Gemeinsamkeiten als über klassische Jobtitel. Ein spannender Ansatz, den ich auf jeden Fall weiter verfolgen werde. Sie vielleicht auch? Hören Sie einfach mal rein!
About RichRich Burroughs is a Senior Developer Advocate at Loft Labs where he's focused on improving workflows for developers and platform engineers using Kubernetes. He's the creator and host of the Kube Cuddle podcast where he interviews members of the Kubernetes community. He is one of the founding organizers of DevOpsDays Portland, and he's helped organize other community events. Rich has a strong interest in how working in tech impacts mental health. He has ADHD and has documented his journey on Twitter since being diagnosed.Links: Loft Labs: https://loft.sh Kube Cuddle Podcast: https://kubecuddle.transistor.fm LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richburroughs/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/richburroughs Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/richburroughs TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part my Cribl Logstream. Cirbl Logstream is an observability pipeline that lets you collect, reduce, transform, and route machine data from anywhere, to anywhere. Simple right? As a nice bonus it not only helps you improve visibility into what the hell is going on, but also helps you save money almost by accident. Kind of like not putting a whole bunch of vowels and other letters that would be easier to spell in a company name. To learn more visit: cribl.ioCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.scaCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Periodically, I like to have, well, let's call it fun, at the expense of developer advocates; the developer relations folks; DevRelopers as I insist on pronouncing it. But it's been a while since I've had one of those come on the show and talk about things that are happening in that universe. So, today we're going back to change that a bit. My guest today is Rich Burroughs, who's a Senior Developer Advocate—read as Senior DevReloper—at Loft Labs. Rich, thanks for joining me.Rich: Hey, Corey. Thanks for having me on.Corey: So, you've done a lot of interesting things in the space. I think we first met back when you were at Sensu, you did a stint over at Gremlin, and now you're over at Loft. Sensu was monitoring things, Gremlin was about chaos engineering and breaking things on purpose, and when you're monitoring things that are breaking that, of course, leads us to Kubernetes, which is what Loft does. I'm assuming. That's probably not your marketing copy, though, so what is it you folks do?Rich: I was waiting for your Kubernetes trash talk. I knew that was coming.Corey: Yeah. Oh, good. I was hoping I could sort of sneak it around in there.Rich: [laugh].Corey: But yeah, you know me too well.Rich: By the way, I'm not dogmatic about tools, right? I think Kubernetes is great for some things and for some use cases, but it's not the best tool for everything. But what we do is we really focus a lot on the experience of developers who are writing applications that run in Kubernetes cluster, and also on the platform teams that are having to maintain the clusters. So, we really are trying to address the speed bumps, the things that people bang their shins on when they're trying to get their app running in Kubernetes.Corey: Part of the problem I've always found is that the thing that people bang their shins on is Kubernetes. And it's one of those, “Well, it's sort of in the title, so you can't really avoid it. The only way out is through.” You could also say, “It's better never begin; once begun, better finish.” The same thing seems to apply to technology in a whole bunch of different ways.And that's always been a strange thing for me where I would have bet against Kubernetes. In fact, I did, and—because it was incredibly complicated, and it came out of Google, not that someone needed to tell me. It was very clearly a Google-esque product. And we saw it sort of take the world by storm, and we are all senior YAML engineers now. And here we are.And now you're doing developer advocacy, which means you're at least avoiding the problem of actually working with Kubernetes day-in-day out yourself, presumably. But instead, you're storytelling about it.Rich: You know, I spent a good part of my day a couple days ago fighting with my Kubernetes cluster at Docker Desktop. So, I still feel the pain some, but it's a different kind of pain. I've not maintaining it in production. I actually had the total opposite experience to you. So, my introduction to Kubernetes was seeing Kelsey Hightower talk about it in, like, 2015.And I was just hooked. And the reason that I was hooked is because of what Kubernetes did, and I think especially the service primitive, is that it encoded a lot of these operational patterns that had developed into the actual platform. So, things like how you check if an app is healthy, if it's ready to start accepting requests. These are things that I was doing in the shops that I was working at already, but we had to roll it ourselves; we had to invent a way to do that. But when Kelsey started talking about Kubernetes, it became apparent to me that the people who designed this thing had a lot of experience running applications in distributed systems, and they understood what you needed to be able to do that competently.Corey: There's something to be said for packaging and shipping expertise, and it does feel like we're on a bit of a cusp, where the complexity has risen and risen and risen, and it's always a sawtooth graph where things get so complicated that you then are paying people a quarter-million dollars a year to run the thing. And then it collapses in on itself. And the complexity is still there, but it's submerged to a point where you don't need to worry about it anymore. And it feels like we're a couple years away from Kubernetes hitting that, but I do view that as inevitable. Is that, basically, completely out to sea? Is that something that you think is directionally correct, or something else?Rich: I mean, I think that the thing that's been there for a long time is, how do we take this platform and make it actually usable for people? And that's a lot more about the whole CNCF ecosystem than Kubernetes itself. How do we make it so that we can easily monitor this thing, that we can have observability, that we can deploy applications to it? And I think what we've seen over the last few years is that, even more than Kubernetes itself, the tools that allow you to do those other things that you need to do to be able to run applications have exploded and gotten a lot better, I think.Corey: The problem, of course, is the explosion part of it because we look at the other side, at the CNCF landscape diagram, and it is a hilariously overwrought picture of all of the different offerings and products and tools in the space. There are something like 400 blocks on it, the last time I checked. It looks like someone's idea of a joke. I mean, I come up with various shitposts that I'm sort of embarrassed I didn't come up with one anywhere near that funny.Rich: I left SRE a few years ago, and this actually is one of the reasons. So, the explosion in tools gave me a huge amount of imposter syndrome. And I imagine I'm not the only one because you're on Twitter, you're hanging around, you're seeing people talk about all these cool tools that are out there, and you don't necessarily have a chance to play with them, let alone use them in production. And so what I would find myself doing is I would compare myself to these people who were experts on these tools. Somebody who actually invented the thing, like Joe Beda or something like that, and it's obviously unfair to do because I'm not that person. But my brain just wants to do that. You see people out there that know more than you and a lot of times I would feel bad about it. And it's an issue, I really think it is.Corey: So, one of the problems that I ran into when I left SRE was that I was solving the same problem again and again, in rapid succession. I was generally one of the first early SRE-type hires, and, “Oh, everything's on fire, and I know how to fix those things. We're going to migrate out of EC2 Classic into VPCs; we're going to set up infrastructure as code so we're not hand-building these things from scratch every time.” And in time, we wind up getting to a point where it's, okay, there are backups, and it's easy to provision stuff, and things mostly work. And then it becomes tedium, where the day starts to look too much alike.And I start looking for other problems elsewhere in the organization, and it turns out that when you don't have strategic visibility into what other orgs are doing but tell them what they're doing wrong, you're not a popular person; and you're often wrong. And that was a source of some angst in my case. The reason I started what I do now is because I was looking to do something different where no two days look alike, and I sort of found that. Do you find that with respect to developer advocacy, or does it fall into some repetitive pattern? Not there's anything wrong with that; I wish I had the capability to do that, personally.Rich: So, it's interesting that you mentioned this because I've talked pretty publicly about the fact that I've been diagnosed with ADHD a few months ago. You talked about the fact that you have it as well. I loved your Twitter thread about it, by the way; I still recommend it to people. But I think the real issue for me was that as I got more advanced in my career, people assumed that because you have ‘senior' in your title, that you're a good project manager. It's just assumed that as you grow technically and move into more senior roles, that you're going to own projects. And I was just never good at that. I was always very good at reactive things, I think I was good at being on call, I think I was good at responding to incidents.Corey: Firefighting is great for someone with our particular predilections. It's, “Oh, great. There's a puzzle to solve. It's extremely critical that we solve it.” And it gets the adrenaline moving. It's great, “Cool, now fill out a bunch of Jira tickets.” And those things will sit there unfulfilled until the day I die.Rich: Absolutely. And it's still not a problem that I've solved. I'll preface this with the kids don't try this at home advice because everybody's situation is different. I'm a white guy in the industry with a lot of privilege; I've developed a really good network over the years; I don't spend a lot of time worried about what happens if I lose my job, right, or how am I going to get another one. But when I got this latest job that I'm at now, I was pretty open with the CEO who interviewed me—it's a very small company, I'm like employee number four.And so when we talked to him ahead of time, I was very clear with him about the fact that bored Rich is bad. If Rich gets bored with what he's doing, if he's not engaged, it's not going to be good for anyone involved. And so—Corey: He's going to go find problems to solve, and they very well may not align with the problems that you need solved.Rich: Yeah, I think my problem is more that I disengage. Like, I lose my passion for what it is that I'm doing. And so I've been pretty intentional about trying to kind of change it up, make different kinds of content. I happen to be at this place that has four open-source projects, right, along with our commercial project. And so, so far at least, there's been plenty for me to talk about. I haven't had to worry about being bored so far.Corey: Small companies are great for that because you're everyone does everything to some extent; you start spreading out. And the larger a company gets, the smaller your remit is. The argument I always made against working at Google, for example was, let's say that I went in with evil in mind on day one. I would not be able—regardless of how long I was there, how high in the hierarchy I climbed—to take down google.com for one hour—the search engine piece.If I can't have that much impact intentionally, then the question really becomes how much impact can I have in a positive direction with everyone supposedly working in concert with me? And the answer I always came up with was not that much, not in the context of a company like that. It's hard for me to feel relevant to a large company. For better or worse, that is the thing that keeps me engaged is, “You know, if I get this wrong enough, we don't have a company anymore,” is sort of the right spot for me.Rich: [laugh]. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I had been at a number of startups last few years that were fairly early stage, and when I was looking for work this last time, my impulse was to go the opposite direction, was to go to a big company, you know, something that was going to be a little more stable, maybe. But I just was so interested in what these folks were building. And I really clicked with Lukas, the CEO, when we talked, and I ended up deciding to go this route. But there's a flip side to that.There's a lot of responsibility that comes with that, too. Part of me wanting to avoid being in that spotlight, in a way; part of me wanted to back off and be one of the million people building things. But I'm happy that I made this choice, and like I said, it's been working out really well, so far.Corey: It seems to be. You seem happy, which is always a nice thing to be able to pick up from someone in how they go about these things. Talk to me a little bit about what Loft does. You're working on some virtual cluster nonsense that mostly sails past me. Can you explain it using small words?Rich: [laugh]. Yeah, sure. So, if you talk to people who use Kubernetes, a lot, you are—Corey: They seem sad all the time. But please continue.Rich: One of the reasons that they're sad is because of multi-tenancy in Kubernetes; it just wasn't designed with that sort of model in mind. And so what you end up with is a couple of different things that happen. Either people build these shared clusters and feel a whole lot of pain trying to share them because people commonly use namespaces to isolate things, and that model doesn't completely work. Because there are objects like CRDs and things that are global, that don't live in the namespace, and so that can cause pain. Or the other option that people go with is that they just spin up a whole bunch of clusters.So, every team or every developer gets their own cluster, and then you've got all this cluster sprawl, and you've got costs, and it's not great for the environment. And so what we are really focused a lot on with the virtual cluster stuff is it provides people what looks like a full-blown Kubernetes cluster, but it just lives inside the namespace on your host cluster. So, it actually uses K3s, from the Rancher folks, the SUSE folks. And literally, this K3s API server sits in the namespace. And as a user, it looks to you like a full-blown Kubernetes cluster.Corey: Got it. So, basically a lightweight [unintelligible 00:13:31] that winds up stripping out some of the overwrought complexity. Do you find that it winds up then becoming a less high-fidelity copy of production?Rich: Sure. It's not one-to-one, but nothing ever is, right?Corey: Right. It's a question of whether people admit it or not, and where they're willing to make those trade-offs.Rich: Right. And it's a lot closer to production than using Docker Compose or something like that. So yeah, like you said, it's all about trade-offs, and I think that everything that we do as technical people is about trade-offs. You can give everybody their own Kubernetes cluster, you know, would run it in GK or AWS, and there's going to be a cost associated with that, not just financially, but in terms of the headaches for the people administering things.Corey: The hard part from where I've always been sitting has just been—because again, I deal with large-scale build-outs; I come in in the aftermath of these things—and people look at the large Kubernetes environments that they've built and it's expensive, and you look at it from the cloud provider perspective, and it's just a bunch of one big noisy application that doesn't make much sense from the outside because it's obviously not a single application. And it's chatty across availability zone boundaries, so it costs two cents per gigabyte. It has no [affinity 00:14:42] for what's nearby, so instead of talking to the service that is three racks away, it talks the thing over an expensive link. And that has historically been a problem. And there are some projects being made in that direction, but it's mostly been a collective hand-waving around it.And then you start digging into it in other directions from an economics perspective, and they're at large scale in the extreme corner cases, it always becomes this, “Oh, it's more trouble than it's worth.” But that is probably unfair for an awful lot of the real-world use cases that don't rise to my level of attention.Rich: Yeah. And I mean, like I said earlier, I think that it's not the best use case for everything. I'm a big fan of the HashiCorp tools. I think Nomad is awesome. A lot of people use it, they use it for other things.I think that one of the big use cases for Nomad is, like, running batch jobs that need to be scheduled. And there are people who use Nomad and Kubernetes both. Or you might use something like Cloud Run or AppRun, whatever works for you. But like I said, from someone who spent literally decades figuring out how to operate software and operating it, I feel like the great thing about this platform is the fact that it does sort of encode those practices.I actually have a podcast of my own. It's called Kube Cuddle. I talk to people in the Kubernetes community. I had Kelsey Hightower on recently, and the thing that Kelsey will tell you, and I agree with him completely, is that, you know, we talk about the complexity in Kubernetes, but all of that complexity, or a lot of it, was there already.We just dealt with it in other ways. So, in the old days, I was the Kubernetes scheduler. I was the guy who knew which app ran on which host, and deployed them and did all that stuff. And that's just not scalable. It just doesn't work.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking databases, observability, management, and security.And - let me be clear here - it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build. With Always Free you can do things like run small scale applications, or do proof of concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free. No asterisk. Start now. Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: The hardest part has always been the people aspect of things, and I think folks have tried to fix this through a lens of, “The technology will solve the problem, and that's what we're going to throw at it, and see what happens by just adding a little bit more code.” But increasingly, it doesn't work. It works for certain problems, but not for others. I mean, take a look at the Amazon approach, where every team communicates via APIs—there's no shared data stores or anything like that—and their entire problem is a lack of internal communication. That's why the launch services that do basically the same thing as each other because no one bothers to communicate with one another. And half my job now is introducing Amazonians to one another. It empowers some amazing things, but it has some serious trade-offs. And this goes back to our ADHD aspect of the conversation.Rich: Yeah.Corey: The thing that makes you amazing is also the thing that makes you suck. And I think that manifests in a bunch of different ways. I mean, the fact that I can switch between a whole bunch of different topics and keep them all in state in my head is helpful, but it also makes me terrible, as far as an awful lot of different jobs, where don't come back to finish things like completing the Jira ticket to hit on Jira a second time in the same recording.Rich: Yeah, I'm the same way, and I think that you're spot on. I think that we always have to keep the people in mind. You know, when I made this decision to come to Loft Labs, I was looking at the tools and the tools were cool, but it wasn't just that. It's that they were addressing problems that people I know have. You hear these stories all the time about people struggling with the multi-tenancy stuff and I could see very quickly that the people building the tools were thinking about the people using them, and I think that's super important.Corey: As I check your LinkedIn profile, turns out, no, we met back in your Puppet days, the same era that I was a traveling trainer, teaching people how to Puppet and hoping not to get myself ejected from the premises for using sarcastic jokes about the company that I was conducting the training for. And that was fun. And then I worked at a bunch of places, you worked in a bunch of places, and you mentioned a few minutes ago that we share this privilege where if one of us loses our job, the next one is going to be a difficult thing for us to find, given the skill set that we have, the immense privilege that we enjoy, and the way that this entire industry works. Now, I will say that has changed somewhat since starting my own company. It's no longer the fear of, “Well, I'm going to land on my feet.” Rich: Right.Corey: Yeah, but I've got a bunch of people who are counting on me not to completely pooch this up. So, that's the thing that keeps me awake at night, now. But I'm curious, do you feel like that's given you the flexibility to explore a bunch of different company types and a bunch of different roles and stretch yourself a little with the understanding that, yeah, okay. If you've never last five years at the same company, that's not an inherent problem.Rich: Yeah, it's interesting. I've had conversations with people about this. If you do look up my LinkedIn, you're going to see that a lot of the recent jobs have been less than two years: year, year and a half, things like that. And I think that I do have some of that freedom, now. Those exits haven't always been by choice, right?And that's part of what happens in the industry, too. I think I've been laid off, like, four or five times now in my career. The worst one by far was when the bubble burst back in 2000. I was working at WebMD, and they ended up closing our office here.Corey: You were Doctor Google.Rich: I kind of was. So, I was actually the guy who would deploy the webmd.com site back then. And it was three big Sun servers. And I would manually go in and run shell scripts and take one out of the load balancer and roll the new code on it, and then move on to the next one. And those are early days; I started in the industry in about '95. Those early days, I just felt bulletproof because everybody needed somebody with my skills. And after that layoff in 2000, it was a lot different. The market just dried up, I went 10 months unemployed. I ended up taking a job where I took a really big pay cut in a role that wasn't really good for me, career-wise. And I guess it's been a little bit of a comfort to me, looking back. If I get laid off now, I know it's not going to be as bad as that was. But I think that's important, and one of the things that's helped me a lot and I'm assuming it's helped you, too, is building up a network, meeting people, making friends. I sort of hate the word networking because it has really negative connotations to it to me. The salespeople slapping each other on the back at the bar and exchanging business cards is the image that comes to my mind when I think of networking. But I don't think it has to be like that. I think that you can make genuine friendships with people in the industry that share the interests and passions that you have.Corey: That's part of it. People, I think, also have the wrong idea about passion and how that interplays with career. “Do a thing that you love, and the money will follow,” is terrific advice in the United States to make about $30,000 a year. I assure you, when I started this place, I was not deeply passionate about AWS billing. I developed a passion for it as I rapidly had to become an expert in this thing.I knew there was an expensive business problem there that leveraged the skill set that I already had and I could apply it to something that was valuable to more than just engineers because let's face it, engineers are generally terrible customers for a variety of reasons. And by doing that and becoming the expert in that space, I developed a passion for it. I think it was Scott Galloway who in one of his talks said he had a friend who was a tax attorney. And do you think that he started off passionate about tax law? Of course not.He was interested in making a giant pile of money. Like, his preferred seat when he flies is ‘private.' So, he's obviously very passionate about it now, but he found something that he could enjoy that would pay a bunch of money because it was an in-demand, expensive skill. I often wonder if instead of messing around and computers, my passion had been oil painting, for example. Would I have had anything approaching to the standard of living I have now?The answer is, “Of course not.” It would have been a very different story. And that says many deeply troubling things about our society across the board. I don't know how to fix any of them. I'm one of those people that rather than sitting here talking how the world should be; I deal with the world as I encounter it.And at times, that doesn't feel great, but it is the way that I've learned to cope, I guess, with the existential angst. I'm envious in some ways of the folks who sit here saying, “No, we demand a better world.” I wish I shared their optimism or ability to envision it being different than it is, but I just don't have it.Rich: Yeah, I mean, there are oil painters who make a whole lot of money, but it's not many of them, right?Corey: Yeah, but you shouldn't have to be dead first.Rich: [laugh]. I used to… know a painter who Jim Carrey bought one of his big canvases for quite a lot of money. So, they're not all dead. But again, your point is very valid. We are in this bubble in the tech industry where people do make on average, I think, a lot more money than people do in many other kinds of jobs.And I recently started thinking about possibly going into ADHD coaching. So, I have an ADHD coach myself; she has made a very big difference in my life so far. And I actually have started taking classes to prepare for possibly getting certified in that. And I'm not sure that I'm going to do it. I may stay in tech.I may do some of both. It doesn't have to be either-or. But it's been really liberating to just have this vision of myself working outside of tech. That's something that I didn't consider was even possible for quite a long time.Corey: I have to confess I've never had an ADHD coach. I was diagnosed when I was five years old and back then—my mother had it as well, and the way that it was dealt with in the '50s and '60s when she was growing up was, she had a teacher once physically tie her to a chair. Which—Rich: Oh, my gosh.Corey: —is generally frowned upon these days. And coaching was never a thing. They decided, “Oh, we're going to medicate you to the gills,” in my case. And that was great. I was basically a zombie for a lot of my childhood.When I was 17, I took myself off of it and figured I'd white-knuckle it for the next 10 years or so. Again, everyone's experience is different, but for me, didn't work, and it led to some really interesting tumultuous times in my '20s. I've never explored coaching just because it feels like so much of what I do is the weirdest aspects of different areas of ADHD. I also have constraints upon me that most folks with ADHD wouldn't have. And conversely, I have a tremendous latitude in other areas.For example, I keep dropping things periodically from time to time; I have an assistant. Turns out that most people, they bring in an assistant to help them with stuff will find themselves fired because you're not supposed to share inside company data with someone who is not an employee of that company. But when you own the company, as I do, it's well, okay, I'm not supposed to share confidential client data or give access to it to someone who's not an employee here. “Da da da da da. Welcome aboard. Your first day is Monday.”And now I've solved that problem in a way that is not open to most people. That is a tremendous benefit and I'm constantly aware of how much privilege is just baked into that. It's a hard thing for me to reconcile, so I've never explored the coaching angle. I also, on some level—and this is an area that I understand is controversial and I in no way, shape or form, mean any—want anyone to take anything negative away from this. There are a number of people I know where ADHD is a cornerstone of their identity, where that is the thing that they are.That is the adjective that gets hung on them the most—by choice, in many cases—and I'm always leery about going down that path because I'm super strange ever on a whole bunch of different angles, and even, “Oh, well he has ADHD. Does that explain it?” No, not really. I'm still really, really strange. But I never wanted to go down that path of it being, “Oh, Corey. The guy with ADHD.”And again, part of this is growing up with that diagnosis. I was always the odd kid, but I didn't want to be quote-unquote, “The freak” that always had to go to the nurse's office to wind up getting the second pill later in the day. I swear people must have thought I had irritable bowel syndrome or something. It was never, “Time to go to the nurse, Corey.” It was one of those [unintelligible 00:27:12]. “Wow, 11:30. Wow, he is so regular. He must have all the fiber in his diet.” Yeah, pretty much.Rich: I think that from reading that Twitter thread of yours, it sounds like you've done a great job at mitigating some of the downsides of ADHD. And I think it's really important when we talk about this that we acknowledge that everybody's experience is different. So, your experience with ADHD is likely different than mine. But there are some things that a lot of us have in common, and you mentioned some of them, that the idea of creating that Jira ticket and never following through, you put yourself in a situation where you have people around you and structures, external structures, that compensate for the things that you might have trouble with. And that's kind of how I'm looking at it right now.My question is, what can I do to be the most successful Rich Burroughs that I can be? And for me right now, having that coach really helps a lot because being diagnosed as an adult, there's a lot of self-image problems that can come from ADHD. You know that you failed at a lot of things over time; people have often pointed that out to you. I was the kid in high school who the counselors or my teachers were always telling me I needed to apply myself.Corey: “If you just tried harder and suck a little less, then you'll be much better off.” Yeah, “Just to apply yourself. You have so much potential, Rich.” Does any of that ring a bell?Rich: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, something my coach said to me not too long ago, I was talking about something and I said to her, I can't do X. Like, I'm just not—it's not possible. And her response was, “Well, what if you could?” And I think that's been one of the big benefits to me is she helps me think outside of my preconceptions of what I can do.And then the other part of it, that I'm personally finding really valuable, is having the goal setting and some level of accountability. She helps with those things as well. So, I'm finding it really useful. I'm sure it's not for everybody. And like we said, everybody's experience with ADHD isn't the same, but one of the things that I've had happened since I started talking about getting diagnosed, and what I've learned since then, is I've had a bunch of people come to me.And it's usually on Twitter; it's usually in DMs; you know, they don't want to talk about it publicly themselves, but they'll tell me that they saw my tweets and they went out and got diagnosed or their kid got diagnosed. And when I think about the difference that could make in someone's life, if you're a kid and you actually get diagnosed and hopefully get better treatment than it sounds like you did, it could make a really big positive impact in someone's life and that's the reason that I'm considering putting doing it myself is because I found that so rewarding. Some of these messages I get I'm almost in tears when I read them.Corey: Yeah. The reason I started talking about it more is that I was hoping that I could serve as something of, if not a beacon of inspiration, at least a cautionary tale of what not to do. But you never know if you ever get there or not. People come up and say that things you've said or posted have changed the trajectory of how they view their careers and you've had a positive impact on their life. And, I mean, you want to talk about weird Gremlins in our own minds?I always view that as just the nice things people say because they feel like they should. And that is ridiculous, but that's the voice in my head that's like, “You aren't shit, Corey, you aren't shit,” that's constantly whispering in my ear. And it's, I don't know if you can ever outrun those demons.Rich: I don't think I can outrun them. I don't think that the self-image issues I have are ever going to just go away. But one thing I would say is that since I've been diagnosed, I feel like I'm able to be at least somewhat kinder to myself than I was before because I understand how my brain works a little bit better. I already knew about the things that I wasn't good at. Like, I knew I wasn't a good project manager; I knew that already.What I didn't understand is some of the reasons why. I'm not saying that it's all because of ADHD, but it's definitely a factor. And just knowing that there's some reason for why I suck, sometimes is helpful. It lets me let myself off the hook, I guess, a little bit.Corey: Yeah, I don't have any answers here. I really don't. I hope that it becomes more clear in the fullness of time. I want to thank you for taking so much time to speak with me about all these things. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?Rich: I'm @richburroughs on Twitter, and also on Polywork, which I've been playing around with and enjoying quite a bit.Corey: I need to look into that more. I have an account but I haven't done anything with it, yet.Rich: It's a lot of fun and I think that, speaking of ADHD, one of the things that occurred to me is that I'm very bad at remembering the things that I accomplish.Corey: Oh, my stars, yes. People ask me what I do for a living and I just stammer like a fool.Rich: Yeah. And it's literally this map of, like, all the content I've been making. And so I'm able to look at that and, I think, appreciate what I've done and maybe pat myself on the back a little bit.Corey: Which is important. Thank you so much again, for your time, Rich. I really appreciate it.Rich: Thanks for having me on, Corey. This was really fun.Corey: Rich Burroughs, Senior Developer Advocate at Loft Labs. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with a comment telling me what the demon on your shoulder whispers into your ear and that you can drive them off by using their true name, which is Kubernetes.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
Jeden Montagmorgen berichten wir über fünf Dinge, die zum Wochenstart wichtig sind. Diesmal geht es unter anderem um die neue VR-App von Facebook, die neuen Pixel Bude A von Samsung und der Linkedin-Herausforderer Polywork.
The increasing volume of the societal discussion on mental health is blooming into a variety of results. One of the interesting aspects of these developments are apps aimed at helping users with their self-care and mental health management and, today, we have a conversation about a new mobile app called Whimser, which is doing exactly that! We are joined by their founder and CTO, Rahat Chowdhury, who speaks to us about the startup, its roots in CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy, and how they approach using journaling to combat negative thought patterns and cognitive distortions. Rahat explains how the application is not designed as a replacement for therapy but rather as a tool to enhance practices that users already have in place, offering continuity and opportunities for further reflection. Rahat also explains a little bit about how the company is currently being run and the leadership philosophies that ground what they do. He strongly believes in bringing a human element into the work, and shares the interesting decision to bring in junior developers from the get-go and the motivations behind this. For this fascinating conversation with an inspiring young founder and developer doing important and conscientious work, make sure to tune in! Key Points From This Episode: A little bit about Rahat and the two companies he is involved with. Understanding cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive distortions. Experiences of imposter syndrome and the ubiquity of these feelings across the industry. Rahat's inspiration for creating Whimser and adding to the mental health conversation. Considerations around broadening the scope of Whimser beyond therapy. How Rahat approached things at the outset and how he chose his co-founders. The importance of taking action and balancing this with patience and delegation. Rahat's approach to code reviews and the consideration that goes into better communication practices. The impetus behind the decision to bring in early-stage developers at the beginning. Lessons that Rahat has learned from working with different team leads during his career. Decisions around salaries at Whimser; how Rahat and his co-founders are funding the company at this point. Translating skills as a web developer into the world of mobile applications. The funding component of running a startup; Rahat's thoughts on effective pitching. Data collection considerations and the idea of user-owned and licensed data. The inspiration for the name of the company: combining whimsy and whisper! This week's picks: Litter robots, Focusmate, headphones, new songs, and more. Tweetables: “We do stuff like having some natural language processing in the background that helps you categorize your thoughts into what could be potential cognitive distortions to help you set yourself up to figure out how to combat those thoughts.” — @Rahatcodes (https://twitter.com/Rahatcodes) [0:02:14] “Trying to create a better atmosphere or a better community around tech will definitely help out in fighting imposter syndrome.” — @Rahatcodes (https://twitter.com/Rahatcodes) [0:06:37] “Whimser started from when I started taking better care of my own mental health. I started going to therapy and treating my depression, and a few other things.” — @Rahatcodes (https://twitter.com/Rahatcodes) [0:09:46] Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Rahat on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Rahatcodes) Rahat on Github (https://github.com/Rahat-ch) Rahat on Polywork (https://www.polywork.com/rahat) Rahat's Blog/website (https://www.rahat.dev) Whimser (https://www.whimser.io) VirtualCoffee (https://virtualcoffee.io) meetup Focusmate (https://www.focusmate.com) Litter Robot (https://www.litter-robot.com/litter-robot-3.html) Night owl t-shirt (https://twitter.com/jlengstorf/status/1292829476179517441) A-O-K (https://youtu.be/vFimC3To0MU), Tai Verdes Deja Vu (https://youtu.be/cii6ruuycQA), Olivia Rodrigo Special Guest: Rahat Chowdhury.
Today we spotlight a fast-growing startup called Polywork, most intuitively characterized as a unique blend between LinkedIn and Twitter. Jessiah and I are extremely excited about this company.Our professional stories are currently told in one of three ways: (1) the resume, which is static, unintuitive, and largely unverifiable, (2) LinkedIn, which lacks important context and specific detail of projects and accomplishments, and (3) the personal website, which is unstandardized and poses frictions in accessibility.Polywork is a professional social network designed to reflect and celebrate the multifaceted nature of what we do as people. For the vast majority of us, a job title or college diploma is just a fraction of who we are, but are the only key pieces of information captured in a resume or LinkedIn profile. Professional and personal “highlights” are the building blocks of Polywork, where users can classify their highlights under specific categories (such as “investing” or “built something new”) and tag collaborators so everyone can be recognized for their achievements.It is truly a fresh take on the professional social network, a space where LinkedIn may have had too long of a stranglehold on. Feel free to check Polywork out, create an account, and let us know what you think!
Philipp macht den Pip-o-Mat und spricht über seine erste Woche auf Polywork. Pip führt uns durch die Earnings von Airbnb, Palantir, HelloFresh und Delivery Hero. Wie werden die Earnings von der SEA Group sein? Nach Biontech sprechen wir über Zooplus und der Private Equity Firma Hellman & Friedman. Philipp Glöckler (https://twitter.com/gloeckler) und Philipp Klöckner (https://twitter.com/pip_net) sprechen heute über: 00:04:00 Start-o-Mat Bitkomat Pip-o-Mat 00:20:00 Polywork 00:30:15 Airbnb Earnings 00:38:23 Palantir Earnings 00:44:30 Disney Earnings 00:47:31 HelloFresh, Delivery Hero und Doordash 00:57:58 Wie werden die SEA Group Earnings? 01:01:25 Biontech 01:01:25 Marketing und Produkt Fragen 01:11:14 Zooplus und Hellman & Friedman 01:19:00 Was passiert nächste Woche? Shownotes: Partnerschaft: Uberall Webinar “Offline, Online, Hybrid - So konsumieren wir nach Corona” am Mittwoch den 25. August um 11 Uhr https://uberall.com/doppelgaenger Handelsblatt: Niedrige Gründerquote in Deutschland - Politiker und Investoren fordern bessere Börsen-Bedingungen: https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/start-ups-niedrige-gruenderquote-in-deutschland-politiker-und-investoren-fordern-bessere-boersen-bedingungen/27503110.html **Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast** Disclaimer https://www.doppelgaenger.io/disclaimer/
Polywork, a new type of business social network has raised $13 million in new funding from Andreesen Hororwitz and other investors. Think of it as an alternative to LinkedIn. From the a16z blog… Polywork focuses on letting people tell their own stories and all they're capable of, so we can meet new people, supercharge our teams, and unlock creativity. From capturing details like who you collaborated with on various projects to career highlights, to a system of community-created badges reflecting both personal and professional traits, Polywork is building a new professional network, from the ground up, that reflects how we work in 2021. As a bonus, Polywork profiles can also be hosted on any custom domain instead of Polywork as a simple way to represent your online identity. https://hrtechfeed.com/linkedin-alternative-polywork-raises-13-million/ Graphite Solutions, Inc. today announced the completion of a new $15M equity raise to scale its sales, marketing, recruitment, customer success and product development efforts. Graphite is the leading technology platform that helps Enterprise companies find, hire and manage highly skilled remote consultants on-demand. The company has raised 20 million to date. https://hrtechfeed.com/graphite-raises-15m-to-help-enterprises-build-a-remote-workforce/ Tech job postings increased 16% in the second quarter of 2021, with locations, occupations, skills and employers across the country experiencing strong quarter-over-quarter growth, according to the Q2 2021 Tech Job Report from Dice.com Job posting activity remained high for the top 50 tech employers (by posting volume) in the second quarter, with 78% increasing tech job postings quarter-over-quarter. With emerging tech hubs like Las Vegas, Sacramento and Nashvillehaving seen the strongest growth, most mature tech hubs also fared well in second quarter. https://hrtechfeed.com/dice-tech-hiring-surges-in-second-quarter/ Tech interviewers for hire are now just a few clicks away from companies that need to scale up hiring, reclaim time wasted by unqualified candidates, and hire for new roles and technologies within the business. “eTeki's interviews marketplace is a natural evolution for how the world is hybrid eworking during and beyond the pandemic. We are seeing continued usage growth and the demand for an outsourced interviewing as-a-service marketplace – what's needed to match recruitment growth of critical tech talent. eTeki is starting a venture backed capital raise to fuel our expansion.” says eTeki CEO Hans Bukow. Businesses in need of scalable, on-demand interviewing need to look no further than eTeki's newest talent marketplace. Formerly only available in a managed service model, eTeki's pay-per-interview marketplace now brings a bench of expert freelancers available to lead IT interviews for hiring teams across the globe. Hiring professionals scope the interview, add a candidate, select one of eTeki's 6,000+ expert interviewers and confirm an interview time with a credit card. https://hrtechfeed.com/eteki-pioneers-marketplace-approach-to-remote-technical-interviews/
Heute sprechen wir über die wichtigsten Startup KPIs, Private Equity ETFs und eine Menge Quartalszahlen. Wie waren die Earnings von Agora, Zynga, Trade Desk, Beyond Meat und Biontech? Welche Zahlen erwarten wir von Airbnb, Coinbase und Palantir. Philipp Glöckler (https://www.polywork.com/gloeckler) und Philipp Klöckner (https://twitter.com/pip_net) sprechen heute über: 00:01:00 Polywork 00:08:00 KPIs für Startups 00:22:00 Coinbase Earnings Prediction 00:28:00 Metromile 00:35:30 Private Equity ETFs 00:44:45 ETFs, Rente und Politik 00:51:00 AirBnb 01:00:00 Zynga Ad Preise Gaming 01:06:00 The Trade Desk 01:08:00 Agora 01:14:30 Beyond Meat 01:16:30 Biotech und der Fehler Gewinne zu früh mitzunehmen 01:22:00 Palantir 01:23:00 Coinbase Earnings Shownotes: Philipp Glöckler auf Polywork folgen: https://www.polywork.com/gloeckler (Invites gibt's in unsere Discord Community in dem #polywork Channel) Moonfare Private Equity ab 50k: https://moonfa.re/2SJIbIk **Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast** Disclaimer https://www.doppelgaenger.io/disclaimer/ Post Production by Jan Wagener https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-wagener-49270018b
This week, Alexis gets non-technical with Nuseir Yassin, CEO of Nas Academy and host of the daily vlogging channel, Nas Daily. They talk about dating to serve the singularity, the no fiction diet, Feng Shui consultants, GO GO GO!, and the board game that could put your relationship on the rocks. You can find Nuseir on Twitter at twitter.com/nasdaily and Alexis at twitter.com/yayalexisgay or instagram.com/yayalexisgay and twitter.com/NonTechnicalPod.This episode is sponsored by Polywork, a new kind of professional social network. Whereas traditional professional networks focus on labelling you with just a job title, Polywork enables people to share what they actually do on a timeline. Polywork is currently invite-only, but you can go to http://polywork.com/ and use the code “hellohello” to sign up now!
Apple Privacy*** / Binance US CEO Steps Down / US vs Crypto / Epic vs Google / Polywork
Sahil (@sahil071) and Siddharth (@sidbetala) hang out to discuss some business ideas.Timeline:(00:40) - Latest regulations surrounding Bill Discounting(6:11) - Vitamin D & B12 Deficiency Epidemic(16:40) - Disrupting Water Purifier Market(27:30) - Prediction Gambling (34:00) - Unbundling of UpworkBusiness Ideas from the episodeRegulations in Bill Discounting Market: Recently, the Lok Sabha passed a Factoring Regulation Amendment Bill that allows NBFCs to participate in the bill discounting marketing without any minimum % of business committed to Bill discounting. The earlier bill required Bill Discounting NBFCs to have 75% of their business dedicated to Bill Discounting and therefore there were just 7 NBFCs that had this license. This should inject much needed liquidity in the market and we expect huge growth in this segment in the next few years. Vitamin D & B12: 90% of Indians suffer from Vit D Deficiency. And more than 40% suffer from Vit B12 deficiency. Both these result in various day to day energy and mental health challenges amongst other things. There is an opportunity to build an education/content led business around creating awareness of these deficiencies and then building a business around it. Disrupting Water Purifier Market: The water purifier market in India is ~$400 Million (Rs. 3000 Cr) and is expected to be ~$1 Billion (Rs. 7500 Cr) in the next 5 years. The current market is dominated by a few players (Eureka Forbes, Tata Chemical, Kent RO) and they tend to rely on information asymmetry to confuse the customers and make them buy products they might not need. Add to this, the after service market for this Industry is huge and currently filled of scams. There is a great opportunity to build a D2C Subscription service around Water Purifiers. Prediction Gambling - In the absurd idea for the week, we discussed how there could be gambling service built on top of Shaadi.Com to predict how the matches fair in the overall journey to get married. We also discuss the blockchain platforms that are coming up around prediction gambling (Polywork, Augur). Unbundling of Upwork: Upwork is a marketplace to connect freelancers to end customers. It's a horizontal marketplace, i.e it targets freelancers across different skill sets. Last few years has seen the unbundling of Upwork into individual niche marketplaces like TopTal ($200 mill in Revenue) and the homegrown, Flexiple. We talk about the various opportunities in unbundling Upwork.
Guest Ewa Jodlowska Jackie Augustine Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are super excited to have two guests with us, Ewa Jodlowska, who is the Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation and has been with the PSF since 2012. We also have Jackie Augustine, who is the Director of Events at the Python Software Foundation and she joined the PSF in 2018 to assist in the planning of PyCon US. Today, we're going to talk with Ewa and Jackie about how PyCon works, which is the largest annual gathering for the community using and developing open-source Python programming language. Since PyCon US 2021 had to go virtual this year, we learn what they've done different, using Hubilo as their event platform, sponsors feedback, how attendance was, the value of these conferences, and if they would ever go hybrid. Also, we learn about a successful virtual job fair that Jackie did this year for PSF and find out the one thing she's most excited for the next PyCon. Download this episode to find out much from Ewa and Jackie! [00:03:23] Ewa fills us in how PyCon US is different from PyCon. Jackie tells us what they've done since last year and how they've adapted since COVID came through. [00:06:08] Jackie tells us why they went with Hubilo as their event platform, and how the sponsors feedback was for the virtual experience overall. [00:08:14] Justin asks how the attendance was for the virtual event. Also, he wonders if going forward if they see themselves doing a hybrid. [00:12:34] Richard is curious to know from Jackie and Ewa if an ecosystem level of analysis of what PSF does and what their conferences are, influenced their decisions at all and is there anything they're doing to make it more sustainable ecologically. Also, Jackie tells us how international attendance was at their conference. [00:15:12] Ewa talks about the “value” of these conferences for the ecosystem as a whole and what would happen if we just never have them again. [00:17:03] Jackie tells us about the successful job fair she did this year which was a virtual set up. [00:18:52] Richard asks if they've looked into moving beyond the single annual convention format. [00:21:08] Eric could only imagine what Jackie must go through in the weeks prior to the conference and asks her to talk a bit about the experience on an emotional level that she goes through, and she tells us what she learned through this process that she didn't expect. [00:24:17] Richard asks if there's any way Jackie's made or plans on making it easier for people who come to the conference to join in the decision-making process for a PSF, to join into working groups and feel like they're a part of something bigger than just watching a talk, and how has that shaped how you're planning future models. [00:25:51] What is Jackie most excited about in the future for the next PyCon? [00:26:01] You can find out from Ewa where to follow PSF, where you can sign up to go the conferences, and where you can follow Jackie online to connect with her. Quotes [00:08:52] “In the end, you know, we had our goals, we had our tiers of goals, and we hit what we thought we would hit, and we were successful in that.” [00:10:21] “I think the question that we're asking ourselves is, do you actually take that component out in their ability for anybody to attend whether they feel comfortable traveling or not.” [00:11:29] “When you add something like a hybrid event, you're really planning two events at the same time, so that really changes up how we're able to do that with the resources that we have.” [00:13:02] “Some of the things that we're doing or planning on doing is like the swag papers and all that is going away moving forward, so we're taking the steps. We work with the convention centers as well and make sure that they are doing their part in the sustainability and things like that.” [00:13:51] “Yes, it's been wonderful for the environment that we've all kind of had to reset and stay home, but I also think that's going to have a little bit of an adverse effect because now everyone is going to be like, oh my gosh, I want to be together, you know, whenever that can happen.” [00:15:32] “And I feel like actually there are hundreds of people that attend PyCon that probably never go to a talk. All the value that's there for them is to network with people, to talk about their projects with people, to have, you know, their projects be seen and tested, whatever the case might be.” [00:19:30] But then PyCon went to Cleveland, but that I think also helped reinforce a lot of the attendance when you looked at the numbers and how many people attended from Ohio was really incredible, right, so it kind of brought the larger scale portion of it.” [00:24:40] “We rely a lot of volunteer committees.” [00:25:51] “What are you most excited about in the future for the next PyCon? Seeing faces! Makes sense, checks out, I get it!” Spotlight [00:27:55] Justin's spotlight is a Linkedin 2.0 site called Polywork.com. and if you use the VIP code: sustainopensource, so you can get in on it. [00:28:31] Eric's spotlight is an online game called Pardus. [00:29:19] Richard's spotlight is Bohemian Bakery in Montpelier, Vermont. [00:30:09] Ewa's spotlight is two software platforms, Registrasion and Symposion. [00:31:47] Jackie's spotlight is sustainability for everything that the PSF does and the ability to have this position. Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter (https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) Ewa Jodlowska Twitter (https://twitter.com/ewa_jodlowska) Jackie Augustine Twitter (https://twitter.com/jackiea_pycon?lang=en) Hubilo (https://hubilo.com/) PyCon (https://us.pycon.org/2021/) PyCon US Twitter (https://twitter.com/pycon) Python Software Foundation Twitter (https://twitter.com/thePSF) Python Software Foundation Newsletter (https://www.python.org/psf/newsletter/) Python (https://www.python.org/) PyCon US 2021-YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/PyConUS) PyOhio 2021 (https://www.pyohio.org/2021/) Polywork (https://www.polywork.com/) Pardus (https://www.pardus.at/) Bohemian Bakery (https://www.bohemianbakeryvt.com/) Symposion-GitHub (https://github.com/pinax/symposion) Registrasion-GitHub (https://github.com/chrisjrn/registrasion) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guests: Ewa Jodlowska and Jackie Augustine.
Episode 45 Show Notes: Omar Tosca was born an engineer but was raised between designers. He has over seven years of experience as an interaction designer in Mexico, working with almost fifty companies. In this episode, we discuss his journey and the impact a mentor can have at all stages in your design career. "I always thought that you always needed to manage people all the time to improve. Some designers just want to improve their skills. They want to be better at illustration or managing colors. And that's good too. If that's the way, you want to go at that time of your life." Omar Tosca Take a listen and tag @uinarrativeco on Twitter with your questions or comments. Mentions: Polywork https://www.polywork.com Omar's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/omartosca/detail/contact-info/ Omar's Twitter https://twitter.com/omartosca Omar's Dribbble https://dribbble.com/omartosca Omar's Website Omartosca.com Omar's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/omar.tosca/?hl=en Omar's podcast: Diseño con Ñ https://open.spotify.com/show/0OkPACgPsJlQT4fvDjIUAS ------ Today's sponsor, Google Design, produces original content like articles and videos to show how Google's products come to life—and to inspire designers everywhere. Head over to goo.gle/UINarrative to get inspired. Podcast Info: Transcripts available on episode web page. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and Spotify. RSS feed: https://uinarrative.libsyn.com/rss Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you like what you hear. Announcements: Join the UI Narrative Email Club to be the first to hear about weekly blog posts and exclusive podcast recaps. You can sign up at uinarrative.com/emailclub. Want to become a Product Designer? Or need a portfolio review? Learn more at uinarrative.com/workwithme. Let's Connect: Have a question for me? Email me at hello@uinarrative.com. Let's connect! #uinarrative Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn @uinarrative Twitter @uinarrativeco
This week, Alexis gets non-technical with Sam Reich, CEO of CollegeHumor and its subscription platform, Dropout. They talk about the lamest way to die, Order & Law, that time everything was a cake, Pogs (a lot), taking magic lessons over Zoom, Weird Al's cultural influence, and which THREE architects they can both name (you won't believe your ears!!!).You can find Sam on Twitter at twitter.com/samreich and Alexis at twitter.com/yayalexisgay or instagram.com/yayalexisgay and twitter.com/NonTechnicalPod.This episode is sponsored by Polywork, a new kind of professional social network. Whereas traditional professional networks focus on labelling you with just a job title, Polywork enables people to share what they actually do on a timeline. Polywork is currently invite-only, but you can go to http://polywork.com/ and use the code “hellohello” to sign up now!
In (ur-)alter Tradition sprechen wir wieder über die vergangen beiden Tech- und Recruitingwochen. Dabei lässt Robindro tief mit seiner Wunschliste an das Universum blicken - hängengeblieben ist "Nutella in Scheiben". Viel Spaß!
Ep: 61 This week we're discussing alternatives to Instagram. Such as Twitter, 1x, 500px, Flicker and Polywork! We've also a Kult Klassic, Kev's Korner to help you get out of a rut! Support us on Patreon and find your favourite podcast app: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and head to our website www.tripod.ie to find us everywhere else! This is an Irish photography podcast bringing you topical, fun and interactive conversation each week. Join Kevin, Ronan and Sean in a fun, informative and educational photography podcast talking all genres of photography. Want to get involved? You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram! Use the hashtag #thetripodcast Let's talk photography!
Nach langem Planen und Reden ist es nun endlich soweit, Sascha hat sein neues Arbeitszimmer. Und auch all die neue und alte Technik ist ins Homeoffice / Musikstudio / Podcaststudio eingebaut. Wie alles entstanden ist und wie man eine Beziehung zu einem Stück Holz aufbaut, das erzählt er hier. Darüber hinaus geht es um Werkzeug, das auch ganz ohne Display funktioniert.Ausflüge gibt es auch in die Welt des Internets. Es geht um eine Alternative für Xing und LinkedIn, Streaming-Möglichkeiten und ob man denn YouTube-Premium-Kunde ist, oder noch zu den Werbungsopfern gehört. In diesem Sinne: Viel Spaß beim Hören.
This week, Alexis gets non-technical with Li Jin, Founder and General Partner of Atelier Ventures. They talk about crying for Limited Too, Li's highly unusual high school experience, AaaS (Adulting as a Service), and extremely last mile bacon delivery.You can find Li on Twitter at twitter.com/ljin18 and Alexis at twitter.com/yayalexisgay or instagram.com/yayalexisgay and twitter.com/NonTechnicalPod.This episode is sponsored by Polywork, a new kind of professional social network. Whereas traditional professional networks focus on labelling you with just a job title, Polywork enables people to share what they actually do on a timeline. Polywork is currently invite-only, but you use the code hellohello at http://polywork.com/ to sign up now!
This week we chat about finishing things - and in some cases struggling to finish them! Tune in to hear us chat about shipping minimum viable products, using to-do lists to get that "finished a task" feeling and navigating side projects when there's so many interesting technologies to try. If you have any feedback, comments or questions you can tweet us @candidcontribs, email hello@candidcontributions.com or join the Umbraco Community slack channel #candid-contributions. Show Links: * "Now we can iterate, right?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/o9xgjj/well_if_it_works/ * Polywork - https://www.polywork.com/ * The Developing Dev - https://thedevelopingdev.co.uk/* "Sorry for rushing this a bit, but got home yet?" - https://github.com/gkoberger/stacksort/pull/4#issuecomment-747656340
Support the show - become a patron!Brittney has an unusual background and an interesting story! We ask her about mentoring, teaching and how she got WebDev. Enjoy! Brittney also has her own podcast called Purrfect.dev.Music:Intro - Braden Wiggins a.k.a. Fractal (braden@fractal-hq.com)Notes: codingcat.dev Purrfect.dev freeCodeCamp Zero to Mastery The Console Logs Discord Communities Coding Cat LevelUpTuts Learn Build Teach SpaceJelly PartyCorgi Zero to Mastery (you need to pay for a course) Unpopular Opinion: Brittney: I'm done with React Antony: Chai is not a good a good assertion library. Use @hapi/code instead! Picks: Shawn: Superhuman Kev: Chai tea (especially latte!) Brittney: Black Monday (and Kev's tip The Big Short) and Polywork
Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear. I'm Fred Fishkin. Polywork is the name of a different type of professional social network. The idea…says founder Peter Johnston..is to let users create personal webpages and send collaboration requests to other people on the network. And...
Techstination interview: Reinventing a professional social network: Polywork CEO Peter Johnston
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
