Key takeaways:

• Being able to see things from different perspectives allows you to open your mind to see and solve problems from different angles. It also allows us to reach others better.
• Life-long learning is a must in tech careers, otherwise we can't improve and evolve.
• How early recognition and support from Duffie's mom helped him learn to read with dyslexia.
• Spending time in Hawaii and California while growing up gave Duffie different perspectives that have served him well in his tech career.
• There are tools out there available for exploration, for those curious enough to learn about different technologies. You just need to bring your curiosity.
• Finding the right fit at a company is more than just overall company culture. It's also about team culture and having people believe in you and give you room to grow and succeed.
• Welcoming tech communities are those that have systems and supports in place to grow and nurture new contributors.
• How do you communicate effectively when the words you're using may be interpreted as a challenge? Let them know that you only seek to understand, and are relying on their expertise for that.
• Everything you've been through has set you up for success moving forward
• Don't fall in love with your code; when someone builds on your code or ideas, take it as form of praise, and not as a form of criticism.
• When a company is acquired by another company, how do you keep the acquired employees from jumping ship? Keep them motivated, and ensure that there is a clear vision tying their work to the overall vision.
• An expert as someone who can take other people and make them proficient at a thing; not somebody who knows all the answers.
• Understanding a problem from multiple perspectives is a is a multiplier for your understanding and for your career.
• Make room for things to be hard. Not everything has to be easy for everybody.

About our guest:

Duffie Cooley is the Field CTO for Isovalent @ Cisco. He has been involved in the Kubernetes Community since 2017. He is an emeritus member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee and has helped lots of folks learn more about The Kubernetes Ecosystem and eBPF through tgik and eCHO office hours. His handle is mauilion as he grew up in Maui, Hawaii and likes big cats. If you see his face come say hi! He's usually carrying around a few cool stickers as well.

Find our guest on:

• Bluesky
• LinkedIn

Find us on:

• All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
• All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

• Star Trek IV: "We are looking for Nuclear Wessels" clip
• Star Trek IV: Scotty's "Hello, Computer" clip
• Kaahumanu Theatre
• Arch Linux
• Motorcycle Engine Control Unit (ECU)
• IPython (interactive Python)
• "Billion Laughs" Kubernetes CVE (CVE-2019-11253)
• Jinja "unsafe"
• Zip drive
• NorthPoint Communications
• Covad Communications Company
• Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
• Graphical Network Simulator (GNS)
• Duffie's talk at KubeCon Amsterdam 2023
• Creative Whack Pack
• Dan Wendlandt, CEO and founder of Isovalent
• Open vSwitch
• Cillium
• Tetragon
• Kubeadm

Additional notes:

• Geeking Out: Liz Fong-Jones on being a Field CTO

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada.

And geeking out with me today. I have Duffie Cooley. Welcome, Duffie.

DUFFIE:
Thank you so much.

DUFFIE:
It's an honor to be here. You have such a tremendous, you know, history of podcasts so far. So I'm just really grateful to be a part of it.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you so much. And, Duffie, where are you calling from today?

DUFFIE:
I live in Alameda, which is not too far from San Francisco. It's right across the Bay Bridge.

ADRIANA:
I got to, like, nerd out with you when you said Alameda is. It makes me think of Star Trek IV. It is. It is the same place.

DUFFIE:
This is where the nuclear vessels were hosted.

ADRIANA:
So this is why I know of Alameda.

DUFFIE:
Another one that, people connect with is, what do you call it? MythBusters.MythBusters did a bunch of stuff, like, out on this, like. And you're like, where in the Bay Area did you find such a big, flat space to, like, crash semi-trucks? Here on Alameda out on the point. That’s where it was filmed.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that's so wild, I remember MythBusters. That was a great show.

DUFFIE:
It was. I love the whole premise. You know, it's like people having, like, the the, some challenging thing, and you're like, is it real? Did it really happen? All right.

ADRIANA:
Let's. Yeah. Yeah, and by the way, my my my final comment on Alameda and the Star Trek movies, I know everyone loves Wrath of Khan, but Star Trek IV still holds a place in my heart as the best one, because there is time travel and Scotty talking to an old Mac. So...

DUFFIE:
I remember seeing that movie for the first time I was, I, I grew up in Hawaii.

ADRIANA:
Oh cool.

DUFFIE:
That movie is one of the movies that I absolutely remember seeing in the Kaahumanu Theater, like in in Kahului in Maui. It's like, you know, there are a few movies where you like, really connect with a place in a time. And that's one of those movies for me.

ADRIANA:
That's so awesome. Cool. I have so many questions now about, like, growing up in Hawaii, but, I'm going to start first with our, lightning round questions. Are you ready? Tsk... icebreaker. Used to call them Lightning Round. But they're not lightning. Okay. First question. Are you lefty or a righty?

DUFFIE:
I'm a righty, but I am dyslexic, so jury's out.

ADRIANA:
Love it. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android? iPhone. All right. Next one. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

DUFFIE:
Linux. All day. I've been a Linux on the desktop user for 20 something years.

ADRIANA:
Oh, damn. What's your what's your favorite distro?

DUFFIE:
My favorite distro. That's a tough one. I've been through so many. I think Arch is probably my current favorite because of the the community builds and everything else like that at work, however, when I'm at Cisco, I have to. I have to use Ubuntu, which I don't mind. It's a great distro as well, but but yeah, like for the, for the obscure kind of stuff that you need to make your desktop your own, I think Arch is really the great one.

ADRIANA:
Nice, nice. And, that is one thing like Linux does let you, play around a lot.

DUFFIE:
Almost to its detriment. Yes.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's true. My, my only, my only beef with with Linux and maybe it's improved. It's been a while... was like I couldn't get it to play with all the peripherals all the time. And when I used to have, like, you know, an iPhone that I had to connect to, to my computer to sync, or actually, before that, I had BlackBerry. I couldn't use the BlackBerry software to sync my BlackBerry in my Linux box. Sadly.

DUFFIE:
It's a challenge for sure. I mean, it's I was just recently. Speaking of geeking out, I'm also a motorcycle rider, and I was recently changing the programing of the computer that operates the motorcycle's fueling and electrical systems. And for that, I neede