Insightful conversations. Less snark.

Eswar Bala, Director of Amazon EKS at AWS, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how and why AWS built a Kubernetes solution, and what customers are looking for out of Amazon EKS. Eswar reveals the concerns he sees from customers about the cost of Kubernetes, as well as the reasons customers adopt EKS over ECS. Eswar gives his reasoning on why he feels Kubernetes is here to stay and not just hype, as well as how AWS is working to reduce the complexity of Kubernetes. Corey and Eswar also explore the competitive landscape of Amazon EKS, and the new product offering from Amazon called Karpenter.

Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer at Isovalent, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the release of her newest book, Learning eBPF, and the exciting possibilities that come with eBPF technology. Liz explains what got her so excited about eBPF technology, and what it was like to write a book while also holding a full-time job. Corey and Liz also explore the learning curve that comes with kernel programming, and Liz illustrates why it’s so important to be able to explain complex technologies in simple terminology.

John Mille, Principal Cloud Engineer at Sainsbury's UK joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how retail companies are using cloud services. John describes the lessons he’s learned since joining the Sainsbury’s UK team, including why it’s important to share knowledge across your team if you don’t want to be on call 24/7,  as well as why he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that every developer needs access to production. Corey and John also discuss an open-source project John created called ECS Compose-X.

Michael Isbitski, Director of Cybersecurity Strategy at Sysdig, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the nuances of an effective cybersecurity strategy. Michael explains that many companies are caught between creating a strategy that’s truly secure and one that’s merely compliant and within the bounds of cost-effectiveness, and what can be done to help balance the two aims more effectively. Corey and Michael also explore what it means to hire for transferrable skills in the realm of cybersecurity and tech, and Michael reveals that while there’s no such thing as a silver-bullet solution for cybersecurity, Sysdig can help bridge many gaps in a company’s strategy. 

Jean Yang, CEO of Akita Software, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how she went from academia to tech founder, and what her company is doing to improve monitoring and observability. Jean explains why Akita is different from other observability & monitoring solutions, and how it bridges the gap from what people know they should be doing and what they actually do in practice. Corey and Jean explore why the monitoring and observability space has been so broken, and why it’s important for people to see monitoring as a chore and not a hobby. Jean also reveals how she took a leap from being an academic professor to founding a tech start-up. 

Darko Mesaroš, Senior Developer Advocate at AWS, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all the weird and wonderful things that can be done with old hardware, as well as the necessary skills for being a successful Developer Advocate. Darko walks through how he managed to deploy Kubernetes on a computer from 1986, as well as the trade-offs we’ve made in computer technology as hardware has progressed. Corey and Darko also explore the forgotten art of optimizing when you’re developing, and how it can help to cut costs. Darko also shares what he feels is the key skill every Developer Advocate needs to have, and walks through how he has structured his presentations to ensure he is captivating and delivering value to his audience.

Jess Dodson, Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all things security. Corey and Jess discuss the phenomenon of companies that only care about security when reacting to a breach, and Jess highlights how important it is to have both a reactive and a proactive approach to security. Jess also shares her thoughts on why it’s valuable to get security and operations working well together, and why getting the basics right in security is still a more pressing priority than solving for level 10 security threats. Jess and Corey also reveal best practices when it comes to monitoring and revoking admin rights and much more.

Jack Roehrig, Technology Evangelist at Uptycs, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud for a conversation about security awareness, ChatGPT, and more. Jack describes some of the recent developments at Uptycs, which leads to fascinating insights about the paradox of scaling engineering teams large and small. Jack also shares how his prior experience working with AskJeeves.com has informed his perspective on ChatGPT and its potential threat to Google. Jack and Corey also discuss the evolution of Reddit, and the nuances of developing security awareness trainings that are approachable and effective.

Aja Hammerly, Developer Relations Manager at Google Cloud, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss her unexpected career journey at Google and what she’s learned about improving the developer experience throughout her career. Aja and Corey discuss the importance of not only creating tools for developers that are intuitive and easy to adopt, but also cater to different learning styles. Aja describes why it’s so important to respond with curiosity when a user does something seemingly random within a piece of software, and also reveals why she feels so strongly about the principle of least surprise when it comes to the developer experience.

Raj Bala, Founder of Perspect, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all things generative AI. Perspect is a new generative AI company that is democratizing the e-commerce space, by making it possible to place images of products in places that would previously require expensive photoshoots and editing. Throughout the conversation, Raj shares insights into the legal questions surrounding the rise of generative AI and potential ramifications of its widespread adoption. Raj and Corey also dig into the question, “Why were the big cloud providers beaten to the market by OpenAI?” Raj also shares his thoughts on why company culture has to be organic, and how he’s hoping generative AI will move the needle for mom-and-pop businesses.

Waldemar Hummer, Co-Founder & CTO of LocalStack, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how LocalStack changed Corey’s mind on the futility of mocking clouds locally. Waldemar reveals why LocalStack appeals to both enterprise companies and digital nomads, and explains how both see improvements in their cost predictability as a result. Waldemar also discusses how LocalStack is an open-source company first and foremost, and how they’re working with their community to evolve their licensing model. Corey and Waldemar chat about the rising demand for esoteric services, and Waldemar explains how accommodating that has led to an increase of adoption from the big data space.

Lex Neva, Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Honeycomb and Curator of SRE Weekly, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss reliability and the life of a newsletter curator. Lex shares some interesting insights on how he keeps his hobbies and side projects separate, as well as the intrusion that open-source projects can have on your time. Lex and Corey also discuss the phenomenon of newsletter curators being much more demanding of themselves than their audience typically is. Lex also shares his views on how far reliability has come, as well as how far we have to go, and the critical implications reliability has on our day-to-day lives.