Optimize All The Things

Tom Wilkie, the CTO of Grafana Labs, talks to us about his professional journey. We cover how he got into software engineering, his first startup, working as an EM at Google, and what motivated him to go back to an IC role. We talk about his time at Grafana from when they were only 25 people to now when Grafana Labs has more than a thousand employees. Tom’s journey cannot be told without diving deeper into the technical side of things - we discuss observability, distributed systems, and hard technical problems.

Where to find more about Tom and Grafana Labs:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwilkie

- X - https://x.com/tom_wilkie

- Grafana Labs - https://grafana.com/

- Grafana Labs events - https://grafana.com/events/

Where to find Bartek:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/

- X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/

- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form -https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

0:00 - Tom’s intro

7:09 - How Tom got into software engineering

15:05 - Tom’s first startup 21:25 - Tom’s experience as EM at Google

28:04 - Joining Weaveworks as employee number 7

38:51 - Tom joining Grafana

45:32 - Grafana’s Third Act

53:12 - Startup advice

59:41 - Perseverance and motivation

1:04:35 - How Grafana acquires startups

1:10:25 - Where to find out more

Monica Sarbu, the CEO and founder of Xata.io, talks to us about her inspiring journey from getting into tech to building Xata - the serverless database platform for modern apps. We chat about the founding of her first company, Packetbeat, its acquisition by Elastic, and her time as a director there. We talk about mentoring, diversity, and hiring engineers that have high agency. We also cover some of the technical decisions at Xata - we even chat a bit about the Zig programming language :)

Where to find more about Monica and Xata:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicasarbu

- X - https://x.com/monicasarbu

- Xata - https://xata.io/

- pgroll - https://github.com/xataio/pgroll

- Tupu - https://www.tupu.io/

Where to find Bartek:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/

- X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/

- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Episode breakdown:

0:00 - Episode intro

2:25 - Monica's introduction

4:00 - Monica's software engineering background

5:52 - Founding her first company Packetbeat

15:30 - Elastic acquisition and being a director there

25:34 - The role of managers

28:38 - Founding Tupu and diversity in tech

38:44 - The founding story of Xata

44:35 - Open source, serverless, and Zig vs Go

51:17 - Hiring high-agency engineers

1:00:37 - Where to find out more

In this episode, we talk with Jimmy Zelinskie, co-founder and CPO of AuthZed, about his journey in building a global scale OSS authorization startup. Jimmy shares insights into the creation and evolution of SpiceDB, an open-source database optimized for authorization decisions. We chat about Jimmy’s story of transitioning from an engineer to a product manager, the importance of open-source in building the business, and the strategies that helped AuthZed find its first customers. Jimmy also discusses the inspiration behind AuthZed, Google’s Zanzibar paper, and the unique challenges of building a startup grounded in cutting-edge research.

Where to find more about Jimmy and AuthZed:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzelinskie/

- X - https://x.com/jimmyzelinskie

- Jimmy’s Github - https://github.com/jzelinskie

- AuthZed - https://authzed.com/

- SpiceDB on Github - https://github.com/authzed/spicedb

- The Zanzibar Paper annotated by AuthZed - https://authzed.com/zanzibar

- Discord - https://authzed.com/discord

Where to find Bartek:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/

- X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/

- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Episode breakdown:

0:00 Episode intro

2:05 Jimmy’s introduction

3:53 Jimmy’s software engineering background

9:06 On becoming a founder

14:47 Experimenting with different startup ideas

20:41 The Zanzibar paper and using research in startups

26:44 Finding your first customers

31:56 Building SpiceDB

38:11 Monetization in an OSS startup

42:34 Authorization deep-dive

52:19 Product management in a startup

1:01:47 Where to find out more

In this episode, we talk with Michel Tricot, co-founder and CEO of Airbyte, about his journey in building a successful open-source data movement platform, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and insights into startup culture and balancing work with family life. Michel shares his experiences from being a software engineer to leading a unicorn company, emphasizing the importance of community, open-source, and the strategic pivots that led to Airbyte's success.

Where to find more about Michel and Airbyte:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot/
• X - https://x.com/micheltricot
• Airbyte - https://airbyte.com/
• Github - https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte
• Airbyte's blog - https://airbyte.com/blog

Where to find Bartek:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/
• X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/
• X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

In this episode, we sit down with Frederic Branczyk, founder of PolarSignals, to explore the intersection of advanced profiling techniques, AI-driven optimizations, and the nuances of building a successful startup culture. Frederic shares his journey from a technical contributor to a startup leader, offering insights into both the technological and business aspects of running a tech company.

Where to find more about Frederic and Polar Signals:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederic-branczyk/
• X - https://x.com/fredbrancz
• Mastodon - https://hachyderm.io/@brancz
• Polar Signals - https://www.polarsignals.com/
• Parca - https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/
• FrostDB - https://github.com/polarsignals/frostdb
• Polar Signals Seed announcement - https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2024/03/12/ai-funding-and-exciting-customers
• Let's Profile YouTube series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tScFlySdSAc&list=PLhTDiyZ1B3JkDCzGKp_3K3J-au054MQ_z

Where to find Bartek:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/
• X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/
• X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Today we have a very special guest, Björn Rabenstein, ultra experienced engineer, long time Prometheus maintainer. In this episode we touch on the topic of versioning and backward or forward compatibility of software APIs and interfaces. Learn how to make your code nice for others or use versioned components effectively for yourself. We discuss semver, and why you also seen many projects, escaping this model with lifetime version of v0. The main topic starts at 18m35s. References:

• No lens camera: https://futurism.com/the-byte/camera-no-lens-location-ai

• Crab: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36122270

• Paying for GH stars: https://the-guild.dev/blog/judging-open-source-by-github-stars?utm_source=unknownews

• Stack Overflow seeing lower traffic: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/stack-overflow-chatgpt/?utm_source=unknownews

• Nvidia passes 1 trillion $ of evaluation: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/30/nvidia-chipmaker-value-ai-chip-shares-artificial-intelligence

Beautifully edited by amazing Yanitsa Spassova! As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

In this episode we discuss an important topic of productivity in our live and work. We explore often forgotten topic of motivation for our work, self-compassion, energy balance to tackle tedious tasks and healthy habits for software development, meetings and more! We also touch on the topic of social media use. References:

• Amazon Prime moving out of AWS Lambda: https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling-up-the-prime-video-audio-video-monitoring-service-and-reducing-costs-by-90

• Leaked memo, AI alone is not a moat: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither

• Epic, inspiring episode about embracing death (Limitless): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11714334/

• Atomic Habits Book: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

• Rollup Meeting Notes Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AHgEyaNdI0YQgPnxDqF1BD1K8b-VJzFOgBAoS4IhSJo/edit

Beautifully edited by amazing Yanitsa Spassova! As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Working from a tent, prioritizing your electricity between your monitor or cooking dinner, canal boat life, and more. These are some of the things we talked about with Becky Pauley at KubeCon Europe 2023. This episode covers all the great things about the digital nomad lifestyle, but also dives into some of the challenges. Join us for the interesting story and stay for the helpful tips. As always, before the main part we cover some of the news that got our attention in the previous weeks.References:

• Our amazing guest, Becky Pauley: https://twitter.com/BeckyPauley

• Reddit's API going paid: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23688463/reddit-developer-api-terms-change-monetization-ai

• Reddit's Apollo reader thread on effects of pricing change: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12srosz/reddit_api_going_paid_what_are_the_changes_we/

• A Completely Non-Technical Explanation of AI and Deep Learning: https://www.parand.com/a-completely-non-technical-explanation-of-ai.html

• YC Winter 2023 Batch summary: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-yc-winter-2023-batch

• Another columnar DB: XTDB 2.0: https://www.xtdb.com/v2

• Apache Arrow: https://arrow.apache.org/

• Talking to dead people with AI: https://futurism.com/ai-dead-woman-talk-people-funeral?utm_source=unknownews

As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

In this episode we do a little retrospective on the last week KubeCon EU 2023 in Amsterdam. We also share and discuss amazing answers from a few quick interviews Bartek performed with epic KubeCon attendees. You won't believe what we learned! Big THANKS to all interviewees for amazing answers: Christina, Harsh, Michael, Jimmy and Raphaël!

References:

• KubeCon EU: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/

• Observability Day: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/co-located-events/observability-day/ You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6h78yzYM2ORxwcjTn4RLAOQOYjvQ2A3

• Efficient Go book: https://bwplotka.dev/book/

• Mentoring Opportunities (as mentee, but also to mentor): https://github.com/cncf/mentoring

• WASM: https://webassembly.org/

• GitLab AI: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/03/16/what-the-ml-ai/

• eBPF: https://ebpf.io/

• authzed/spicedb: https://github.com/authzed/spicedb

• Running DB in browser: https://authzed.com/blog/some-assembly-required

• OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io/

As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

AI is already changing how different industries operate with tools like ChatGPT and Github Copilot. Today we talk about a new tool, k8sgpt, that gives you SRE superpowers using AI. We are joined by its creator, Alex Jones - Director of Kubernetes Engineering at Canonical. We talk about how tools that utilize AI are built, how they change our day to day work, and what the future might hold for AI in the workplace. And as always we cover the news of the week before we dive into the interview.

References:

• Alex Jones - https://twitter.com/AlexJonesax

• K8sGPT: https://k8sgpt.ai/

• Amazon Bedrock: https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/

• Amazon Code Whisperer: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-codewhisperer-free-for-individual-use-is-now-generally-available/

• Hacking Cars with CAN injection: https://kentindell.github.io/2023/04/03/can-injection/?utm_source=unknownews

• Phind, ChatGPT for devs - https://www.phind.com/

• OSS Funding via Thanks Dev - https://thanks.dev/home

• Github Accelerator’s first cohort - https://github.blog/2023-04-12-github-accelerator-our-first-cohort-and-whats-next/

As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9