ShipTalk - SRE, DevOps, Platform Engineering, Software Delivery

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined with Ken Ahrens, CEO and Founder of Speedscale. Kubernetes is turning 10 this summer  and we dig into how the ecosystem has been evolving. Learn more from Ken as he walks through his journey on:* Don't forget the fundamentals * 10 Years into K8s, what is still challenging* Enthusiasm, a very important skill

Explore the ins and outs of software engineering and organizational culture in the ShipTalk Podcast. In this episode, Dewan Ahmed, a Principal Developer Advocate at Harness, engages in a compelling conversation with Matt Anger, a Senior Staff Engineer at DoorDash.In this insightful discussion, Matt reflects on his career, from a fresh graduate to his current role as an engineering leader at DoorDash. The conversation covers the evolution of software delivery methodologies, touching on Matt's experiences with Kotlin for performance and ecosystem, scaling platform engineering at his org, and the significance of good engineering culture for creating better software.Delve into DoorDash's engineering culture, where Matt shares the company's strategies, including embracing mono repos, automated workflows, and centralized developer infrastructure for a seamless onboarding experience.The dialogue extends to the broader tech landscape, addressing startup challenges. Matt shares practical advice for small engineering teams, emphasizing the importance of leveraging existing platforms like GitHub or Harness and avoiding unnecessary complexity in the early stages.The conversation takes a personal turn as Dewan and Matt delve into the human and cultural aspects of software delivery. Matt emphasizes the significance of finding good mentors early in one's career, highlighting the impact of mentorship in shaping professional growth. The dialogue also touches on the importance of understanding the underlying layers of technology and maintaining kindness and professionalism in interactions.As the podcast wraps up, Dewan and Matt extend an invitation to fellow engineering professionals, encouraging them to connect, seek mentorship, and engage in knowledge-sharing. Matt shares insights on how he welcomes individuals to reach out for guidance, underscoring the power of networking in the tech community.---Connect with our host Dewan Ahmed on LinkedIn: Dewan's LinkedInConnect with our guest Matt Anger on LinkedIn: Matt's LinkedIn

Welcome to the latest season of ShipTalk! In this episode, we get to talk to Dr. Vlad Ukis, Head of R&D for Siemens Healthineers and author of Establishing SRE Foundations. We cover several great topics from starting and scaling an SRE function in a healthcare/regulated industry to how to go about renegotiating your SLOs. * Road to SaaS* How to renegotiate SLOs* Changes in SRE practices through the years

In this episode of ShipTalk, Arch Mortgage Insurance Company's Head of Infrastructure and Operations, Scott Lee, discusses his home automation solution, deep dives into the massive gap between remote workers and their managers, and share a story about that one time he lived in an RV for 18 months with his wife and 2 dogs.IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Automate all the things at homeMain topic - A doctoral discussion on remote workingJust for fun #2 - Scott's life in an RV and how he incorporated home automation

In this episode of ShipTalk, Deutsche Bank's Head of Cloud Engineering , Bijit Ghosh, takes us on a culinary journey to Croatia, discusses cloud native adoption and cultural change in the high stakes world of financial services, and brings us all home for meal time with the Ghosh family.IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Bijit's favorite travel destinationMain topic - Cloud Native adoption and cultural change in Financial ServicesJust for fun #2 - Bijit's favorite hobby

In this episode of ShipTalk, our host Jim Hirschauer interviews many of the speakers from the WTF is SRE conference and discusses the many life lessons they express. This episode is packed with important lessons to help you interact with your co-workers and to succeed in life in general. The crew also has some fun discussing foods for a deserted island.IntroductionWhat's your favorite...?If you could give yourself one...what would it be?Just for fun ... Deserted island food

In this episode of ShipTalk (The SRE Edition), Red Hat's Chief Mermaid, Hilliary Lipsig, defines a new word that all techies should adopt into their vocabulary. For the main course, Hilliary describes how to use Observability data to do so much more than most companies are doing today. She also shares her favorite hobby which is something I have never heard of before.IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Hilliary's new word - oomingMain topic - Using Observability data proactivelyJust for fun #2 - Hilliary's favorite hobby

In this episode of ShipTalk (The SRE Edition), Kyle Shelton tells us about his experience using and building developer platforms to enhance the developer experience. He also shares his favorite hobby and cautionary tale about a preventable outage that cost ~$1M ... ouch! Be sure to check out Kyle blog site at https://chaoskyle.com/IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Kyle's favorite hobbyMain topic - The value of IDPs and some advice on getting startedJust for fun #2 - Kyle's worst IT mess-up

In this episode of ShipTalk (The SRE Edition), Steve McGhee shares tells us about a new open-source project that helps SREs understand which capabilities are required to achieve increasing levels of reliability (the nines). He also shares some interesting stories about misadventures with user files and how Google handled the news that Michael Jackson had passed away.IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Steve's activities outside of workMain topic - r9y.dev, what it is, how to use it, how to contributeJust for fun #2 - Steve's worst IT mess-ups and creating a new unit of measureClosing

In this episode of ShipTalk (The SRE Edition), Adrian Cockcroft shares his thoughts on "the 5th accelerate metric" - reliability - and the State of DevOps, using error budgets, and how to achieve continuous reliability. He shares some interesting stories about the differences between Netflix and Google, as well as some personal stories to boot.IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Adrian's favorite hobbyMain topic - State of DevOps reliability metric, error budgets, continuous resiliencyJust for fun #2 - Adrian's best travel destinationClosing

In this episode of ShipTalk (The SRE Edition), Bryan Finster discusses how to ensure reliability and resiliency across the SDLC by making everything part of the pipeline.IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - Bryan's favorite hobbyMain topic - Leaning into delivery pipelines to ensure reliability and resiliency while creating efficiencies.Just for fun #2 - Bryan's worst IT mess upClosing

In this episode of ShipTalk (The SRE Edition), Matt Schillerstrom shares stories from his time working in reliability at a nuclear power plant and at Target. We've changed up the format of ShipTalk to include some sections that are just for fun...IntroductionsJust for fun #1 - 1 truth and 1 lieMain topic - The impact of efficiency initiatives and how to avoid/minimize the negative consequencesJust for fun #2 - Matt's worst IT mess upClosing

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by Joni Klippert who is the CEO of StackHawk. Joni has been in leadership roles in the DevOps space for over a decade helping run and launch exciting products in an ever-evolving space. Joni dove into cloud computing and DevOps and has not stopped growing. In this Master Class, we dive into what it takes to start in a new space from scratch. Navigating lots of grey in product management to scaling and growing firms and teams. Joni touches on being humble, hungry, and learn from her grit and perseverance. An episode not to be missed!      

In this episode of ShipTalk we are joined by Santiago Campuzano. Santiago is a Lead DevOps Engineer at GumGum and has seen his fair share of distributed systems.  Santiago used to build distributed Java/JEE applications for the financial sector and has gone through the early days of containerization leveraging technologies such as Apache Mesos and Apache Marathon before leveraging Kubernetes. We go through in the episode describing the time right before containerization became popular to the journey that Santiago and firms have been on ever since.  Santiago has also published an excellent blog describing concerns and different points of view when implementing K8s at scale.Blog:https://medium.com/gumgum-tech/implementing-kubernetes-the-hidden-part-of-the-iceberg-part-1-76c3e9684d49 

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by Chris Riley who is a Senior Developer Advocate at Splunk. Chris's background spans years of professional services and being an advocate. Chris is part of the Observability Panel at {unscripted} 2021 and gives us a background in O11Y, aka Observability. With any new technology, there is an internal need to advocate for change. Chris also talks about tips and tricks for those bringing in new technology how to advocate for change and to leave their mark on organizations.   

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by James Bohrman who is the founder of Cloudspeakers. James had an interesting path to technology. James started his careeras an emergency dispatch technician for a security monitoring firm. From receiving calls about literal house fires to putting out metaphoric fires in production as a Site Reliability Engineer.   Making the initial jump from a dispatcher to a DevOps Engineer then to an SRE, James created a blog detailing what he has learned along the way. The art of storytelling for James was a conduit for building his brand and getting into technology. James a neurodiverse individual chats about how perceived weakness can be used as a strength in the technology world.   

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by Donovon Carter who is a DevOps Engineer at Dexcom, a medical device company. Dexcom is one of the firms leading the charge against diabetes with CGM, constant glucose monitoring technology. Donovon graduated from university with a political science degree, which comes in handy with all of the negotiations that a DevOps organization and engineer have to go through. Supporting the pipeline of innovation and regulatory requirements can be tricky.  Donovon walks through how to balance innovation and regulation. With any forward-thinking organization, wanting new technology is a constant.  Donovon also helps balance how you should think about keeping your skills sharp with and without adopting new technology. 

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by Jim Shilts who is the founder and organizer of North American DevOps Group or NADOG and is a developer advocate at the cloud-native firm Shipa. Jim has been working on solving engineering efficiency problems for over 20 years working at firms such as Build Forge and Electric Cloud, pre-dating the inception of Hudson/Jenkins. As Jim walks through his experience and how complexity and bottlenecks have shifted around in the decades gone by and whats in store for the future. 

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by Bart Farrell who leads the Data on Kubernetes Community. Bart certainly has not had a traditional path to technology with stops in theology and talent management. Bart has made two leaps, one into tech and one into a more bleeding edge/crypto part of technology, running stateful workloads on Kubernetes. Not being afraid of change and finding confidence in courage in incremental success is key. As an engineer, you might be looking at working with any new technology or a new paradigm/process. You don't have to give a talk in front of 50,000 people to start learning or even be an expert. Part of the human element is that a community can help you complete your story. Imposter syndrome plagues many in the engineering community, learn that you are not an imposter and more in this episode. 

In this episode of ShipTalk, we are joined by Tracy Miranda who is the Executive Director of the Continuous Delivery Foundation which is part of the Linux Foundation. Tracy has been leading open source communities prior to her time at the CDF at Cloudbees and has spent time on the governing board of the Eclipse Foundation. Tracy chats through her experience creating thriving open source communities and practices from inception to maturity. Open source projects especially at their inception run like a start-up. Learn in this episode how to build a sustainable, robust, and inclusive community and more from Tracy.