Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share A Decade of Kubernetes Lessons with Chris Nesbitt-Smith
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
A Decade of Kubernetes Lessons with Chris Nesbitt-Smith
Chris Nesbitt-Smith has been running Kubernetes in production since version 0.4 — long before pods, before managed services, before most of today's tooling existed. In this episode of Smooth Scaling, he sits down with José Quaresma to share what a decade of running Kubernetes for UK government citizen-facing services has taught him about scaling critical infrastructure. The conversation covers why Kubernetes was the least bad option (and largely still is), why relying on autoscaling means you've already lost, and how Gregor Hohpe's "guardrails versus lane assist" metaphor changes the way you think about capacity. Chris makes the case for climbing the service stack — SaaS first, then Functions as a Service, then Platform as a Service, and only reluctantly managed Kubernetes — and explains why tech is one of the only industries that builds critical systems without ever pricing the risk of failure. A direct, opinionated look at what scaling really demands when the stakes are real and the budget isn't infinite.
Episode page
---
- (00:01) - Intro
Chris Nesbitt-Smith is an independent technology strategist, a Kubernetes instructor at LearnKube, and the architect of the UK Government's National Digital Exchange. Based in London, he works at the intersection of policy, security, and modern infrastructure — advising UK and international government departments, multinational enterprises, and large NGOs on cloud-native transformation and DevSecOps. A regular speaker at KubeCon, DevSecCon, and Open Source Summit, his talks span container security, policy-as-versioned-code, and platform engineering. He also blogs regularly on his blog Cloudy with Chance of Freefall.
🔗 Connect
Guest Chris Nesbitt-Smith: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/cnesbittsmith
Host José Quaresma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jose-quaresma/
This podcast is researched by Joseph Thwaites, produced by Perseu Mandillo, and brought to you by Queue-it, your virtual waiting room partner.
© Queue-it, 2026
View all episodes
By Queue-it
5
22 ratings
Chris Nesbitt-Smith has been running Kubernetes in production since version 0.4 — long before pods, before managed services, before most of today's tooling existed. In this episode of Smooth Scaling, he sits down with José Quaresma to share what a decade of running Kubernetes for UK government citizen-facing services has taught him about scaling critical infrastructure. The conversation covers why Kubernetes was the least bad option (and largely still is), why relying on autoscaling means you've already lost, and how Gregor Hohpe's "guardrails versus lane assist" metaphor changes the way you think about capacity. Chris makes the case for climbing the service stack — SaaS first, then Functions as a Service, then Platform as a Service, and only reluctantly managed Kubernetes — and explains why tech is one of the only industries that builds critical systems without ever pricing the risk of failure. A direct, opinionated look at what scaling really demands when the stakes are real and the budget isn't infinite.
Episode page
---
- (00:01) - Intro
Chris Nesbitt-Smith is an independent technology strategist, a Kubernetes instructor at LearnKube, and the architect of the UK Government's National Digital Exchange. Based in London, he works at the intersection of policy, security, and modern infrastructure — advising UK and international government departments, multinational enterprises, and large NGOs on cloud-native transformation and DevSecOps. A regular speaker at KubeCon, DevSecCon, and Open Source Summit, his talks span container security, policy-as-versioned-code, and platform engineering. He also blogs regularly on his blog Cloudy with Chance of Freefall.
🔗 Connect
Guest Chris Nesbitt-Smith: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/cnesbittsmith
Host José Quaresma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jose-quaresma/
This podcast is researched by Joseph Thwaites, produced by Perseu Mandillo, and brought to you by Queue-it, your virtual waiting room partner.
© Queue-it, 2026