Software Defined Interviews

Whitney is back from KubeCon and shares what she saw. We talk about platform engineering, Salt Lake City's vibe, AI, and observability, among other things. We wrap the episode with tips for maximizing attending conferences. Also, memories of Arby's ads.

Whitney's KubeCon talks:

In this episode, Whitney Lee and Coté dive into the insights of Rachel Stephens from RedMonk about the world of being an industry analyst. They discuss experiences from working as an analyst, the balance between qualitative and quantitative analysis, the challenges and misconceptions surrounding open-source business models, and the impact of AI on the analyst profession and beyond. They also discuss the 2024 DORA report, and a few other topics.

Check out Rachel's blog at RedMonk.

Special Guest: Rachel Stephens.

Whitney and Coté talk with Phil Andrews, field CTO at Cast AI, about cost management and optimization, the nuances of Kubernetes, coin-operated laundromats, and farm life. The conversation touches on the differences between automation and FinOps, how sales and engineering intersect in cloud software, and Phil's unique experiences - from managing a laundromat and a hobby farm to evolving in the tech industry.

Check out Phil in LinkedIn, and his work Cast.ai.

Special Guest: Phil Andrews.

Whitney and Coté talk with Sidney Miller about tech recruitment. They talk a lot about the process from both sides: people hiring and people looking for jobs. Plus, some thoughts on working at Neiman Marcus. Find Sidney in LinkedIn.

You can the video of this interview as well if you're into that kind of thing.

More details:

They explore effective strategies for both the hirer and the job seeker. Key topics include the comprehensive role of tech recruiters, tactics for handling diverse skill sets, inclusion efforts, unbiased interview practices, and the significance of empathy and transparency. They also cover personal strategies for successful job applications, the emotional aspects of career transitions, and networking tips for long-term career growth. Additional insights highlight challenges faced by artists and musicians transitioning into tech roles and the importance of leadership in fostering a positive workplace culture.

Special Guest: Sidney Miller.

Whitney Lee's career path has been all over the place, from artist, wedding photographer, waiter, and now world-renowned devrel in the cloud native world.

This episode kicks off the reboot of this podcast, Software Defined Interviews. Whitney and I (Coté) have been planning to start a podcast for a year or so now, and it's great to start. We'll be putting out interviews every two weeks with people from our community. I hope you enjoy it, and tell us what you think! Guest suggestions are, of course, welcome.

Relevant Material:

You can check out the unedited, video version of this interview as well.

At the end, you hear an AI generated version of two hosts discussing Whitney Lee. It's from Google NotebookML.

Here's the AI generated summary:

In this inaugural episode of our new podcast, Coté sits down with Whitney Lee to discuss her diverse career path, including her experiences as a waiter, musician, wedding photographer, and now a tech professional in developer advocacy and Kubernetes. They delve into Whitney’s thoughts on the corporate world’s culture of busyness and the bizarre aspects she’s encountered transitioning from hospitality to tech. Whitney shares her approach to efficiently managing interruptions, setting boundaries, and the concept of context-switching in work environments.

They also talk about the importance of continually learning and adapting, Whitney’s strategy for tackling new technical concepts, and how she integrates her curiosity into creating educational content. The conversation includes anecdotes from Whitney’s time as a wedding photographer, her initial steps into the tech world, and the significant differences in social dynamics between these fields.

Finally, Whitney offers insights about DevRel (Developer Relations), explaining common misconceptions and the real motivations behind effective advocacy. She also touches on her learning habits, the balance of work and creativity, and the importance of rest and mental space for idea generation.

Key Topics:

We discuss compensation, particularly how people in the IT department ("developers," etc.) are so disconnected from the actual business that compensating them based on business performance is near impossible. Not good if you're an IT person and like money.

There's other types of comp. then money, obviously, and those are fine too. In particular, we discuss participation in open source and more recognition. But, still: money is the best.

People in large organizations avoid improving for improving's sake. They're very rarely proactive in transforming. Instead, it seems that management in most large organizations only act, and change, when they fear competition and failure. "Everyone" knows this is a bad strategy, and yet "everyone" does it. Perhaps we should embrace that behavior, or at least be empathetic, and figure out how to work with it.

We discuss this problem and things to do in this episode.

Also, we find out why Coté always has bad breath.

Mood board:

We discuss outsourcing IT.

Journey Through the Business Bottleneck, part 1.

Join Rick and I as we try to find this elusive thing called "The Business." We lay out a theory we've been talking about: while IT has been improving or, at least, can improve, the business side of the house isn't showing up to do anything with CLOUD and AGILE and THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION.

Why's this the case? Do toothpaste people have this problem? Outsourcing - that's a treat! And so forth.

Hopefully next episode we'll discuss tactics to get people outside of IT interested.

Subscribe at https://misaligned.business

And, check out Coté's work in progress book on this topic: https://cote.io/bottleneck/

Large organization are desperate to become “tech companies.” They drool at these tech companies ability to grow and change quickly. Despite mastering agile over the past 20 years, IT as a whole is too slow and unreliable. “It’s the culture,” everyone says. Changing culture for a team of 10 people is easy - changing a department of 20,000 developers is another challenge entirely.

Based on case studies and interviews over the past five years, this talk describes how large organizations are getting over that challenge. First, the talk covers moving from a project to a product mindset and the associated practices. Second, it covers how DevOps and cloud platforms enable that product mindset. Third, it goes over how leadership and management change to support this new approach. Finally, the talk catalogs tactics, patterns, and organizational structures that large organizations are using to improve how they do software which leads to improving their business.

This talk is based on my book Monolithic Transformation (O’Reilly, Feb 2019).

You can download the slides if you like, and they pop-up as chapter art if your podcast app supports that.