Insightful conversations. Less snark.

For a while Corey has resisted the “siren’s song” to do an episode on web3. Well, the time has finally come to change that. Today’s guest, software engineer Molly White, runs a collection of interesting stories at web3isgoinggreat.com, where she demonstrates a flair for making web 3 somewhat approachable, and levels her own just critiques. Molly discusses the “handwaviness” of web3 as “the future of the web” and how the hype might be overselling. She and Corey talk about the sometimes warranted hesitancies about certain technologies, and how web3 falls into some of those. She shoots down some of the misinformation about crypto and the odd ball stuff popping up around it, and lets us in on some of her own criticisms. Which are finely hewn and actually make sense! Unlike the dark morass of crypto itself.

Today’s guest is the source of what Corey considers some of the most “horrifying feedback” he has ever gotten from his audience. Namely, that one of his Twitter threads was the catalyst for the change in the course of a career. But, thankfully it was for the better, and Johnny Podhradsky, Technical Program Manager for Offboard Infrastructure at Waymo, is here to tell us why. Johnny talks about being a TPM, what exactly it is, and all that at a self-driving car company. Johnny takes a crack at working in a space where the outcome isn’t always tangible and at hand, and how he interprets that as an “anti-entropy agent”. Johnny reflects on Corey’s well timed Twitter thread that caused a major career shift. Johnny’s refreshing perspectives on program management, combating entropy, structuring your life and work, and more are wise beyond his years!

Corey’s good friend Matt “Matty” Stratton, now a Staff Developer Advocate at Pulumi, is back for another round of “Screaming!” Now, with a job title that sits at the top of a “very strange career trajectory.” With beginnings at Chef, to IMB, and now Pulumi Matty catches up on the latest in his adventures! Corey and Matty talk about how he characterizes his previous experiences in his multifaceted career. Matty made a shift from sales, and he and Corey talk about navigating that potentially precarious space. From professional development, to dealing with variable income, to doing DevRel on “easy mode,” Matty brings an extensive know how to the table!

Corey has admired today’s guest, a “study in contrast,” for a quite a while. Now, Joe Onisick, a Principal at Transformation CONTINUUM, joins the “Screaming” line up. Joe’s consultancy focus is on helping companies achieve digital transformation, which is a progressively forward looking space. The contrast in said study is that Joe chose to leave Silicon Valley and “go live in the woods,” which is certainly an uncommon combination. Corey and Joe discuss their connection over Joe’s pinned Tweet, in which he states a transformational shift in his own life towards living better. For starters Joe decided to climb Kilimanjaro, leave Silicon Valley, and start his consultancy. He rakes over the nuances of establishing a consultancy in digital transformation, and what exactly that means. Joe’s emphasis on being straight forward and honest with his customers lends a credibility to his work that, sadly, seems rare these days. But with that honesty at hand he dives into multi-cloud, migration, and more!

Today’s guest works in a world that Corey “got the hell out of” after a brief tenure when he realized he just wasn’t very good at it. That’s why The Duckbill Group hired on Ashleigh Early as their Head of Sales. Ashleigh joined the team about six months ago and since then has only assuaged Corey’s and Co.’s sales needs. Ashleigh breaks down the nuance in enterprise sale, and shares some secret on how does one actually make money in the space. She shares some pet peeves with some of the sales culture, and she addresses some much needed changes within sales culture at large. This includes the need to connect with people, do your research going in, the role of databases, and more! If you want some insight check in on Ashleigh’s take!

Today’s guest, rumor has it, might has something to do with the creation of “God’s true language, XML.” Tim Bray, a principal at Textuality Services, and Corey reconnect after Tim’s recent blog post where he discusses lock-in and multi-cloud. Two subjects that are close to Corey’s heart, and on which Tim’s opinion are fairly countercultural. Tim expands on his blog post, which in short states that multi-cloud is not as complicated anymore. His take, it is now a “reasonable” thing for companies to ponder. For Tim it isn’t realistic for larger companies, especially, to not be multi-cloud. Tim and Corey go into the ins and outs of multi-cloud, tackling the people side of multi-cloud, and more!

Peter Hamilton, VP of Technology at Remind, is here courtesy of Redis, who seem intent on letting us know through their customers the value they bring to the table. Remind is a messaging tool for education, with a focus on K-12, that is bringing equal opportunity for every student in their education. Peter defines what exactly messaging means to Remind, and the intricacies of navigating the balance and controls of education and messaging. Remind has an exalted reputation in the world of AWS due to their willingness to responsibly take new products for spin. As early adopters of cloud native, Remind and Redis are intricately interwoven, and their partnership has only proved mutually beneficial. Tune in to see how!

Networking in AWS has gotten more and more capable over the years, but with it comes considerable complexity. Phillip Griffiths, Head of Business Development at NetFoundry, where they are trying to take a differentiated approach to the complexity of networking and AWS, has a thing or two to say about it. Phillip and Corey tackle one of the most important things in the network stack: security. In that regard, as a network overlay NetFoundry has to start at the application level. Phillip dissects his “tiers” for zero trust and how he quantifies what zero trust actually is. With some help from a boy wizard and a conversation with his daughter, Phillip is able to reveal the magic behind the zero trust hat trick. Check out this in-depth conversation for more!

Nipun Agarwal has been a guest before on “Screaming,” but now he has graduated up to Senior VP at Oracle! Which means that Corey can throw harder questions Nipun's direction. Now that Nipun is a SVP, he is well suited to take them on, and we’re the better for it as he has much to say about what Oracle has been up to. Nipun describes in detail some of Oracle’s more recent innovations, including MySQL HeatWave. Which if you’ll allow a terrible descriptor is MySQL with some “magic layered on top of it.” Nipun, however, is able to tell us exactly what the magic is and how it works. Nipun dives into the details as he and Corey discuss MySQL and HeatWave when it comes to processing, analytics, machine learning, moving data around and costs, its competition with other databases, the value it brings to customers, and much more!

A year or so before the pandemic hit Corey traveled to Australia for a keynote speech. There he crossed paths with the closing keynote which was delivered by Rick Houlihan. Rick, Director Developer Relations for Strategic Accounts at MongoDB, put Corey’s brain through the squeeze over the course of his keynote—and now he is here to expand on how! Rick started at DynamoDB, but made the jump back to MongoDB, and he does so from a position of authenticity and interest. Rick and Corey take a deep and multifaceted dive into the world of all things DB. Rick eases into an honest conversation on where MongoDB is at, his reasons for joining their organization, and the exciting places they are headed.

This episode's repeat guest is back, but instead of talking about what she does, she is back to talk about how she got there. Corey is joined by Rachel Dines, Head of Product and Technical Marketing at Chronosphere, to get the birds eye view of her variegated career. Back in the early days Rachel was at CloudHealth, the “800lbs gorilla” in that space, who in turn was acquired by VMware, and now Rachel is at Chronosphere. Rachel studied art history and computer science in school, so she was already off to a diverse start. Her first job was at Forrester which blew open the cloud doors for Rachel. From the earliest whiffing of AWS, to NetApp by way of Riverbed, and so much more Rachel has a lot to offer!

Clint Sharp, CEO and co-founder at Cribl, is back for a repetition of “Screaming!” This time Clint is here with some news! But, it isn’t to buy a vowel. Instead it is a juicy new product announcement. And in the adroit words of Clint, product announcements “actually matter” to Corey’s audience. Clint starts off with a light refresher of what exactly Cribl, an observability company on the fundamental level, does. Recently Cribl has made dovetailing observability and security a priority. With their announcement of their product Cribl Edge, for which they did buy a couple of vowels-–they are “taking our existing best-in-class management technology, and we’re turning it into an agent.” Tune into Clint’s conversation for an extensive look at Cribl Edge, Clint’s perspectives, and more!