What do you think really made Kubernetes

breakthrough?

>> The number one success criteria was

Docker. Now instead of talking about

Java versus Python versus Ruby, you only

have to talk about scheduling Docker

containers. We were already off to a

running start because you could just

reuse the same Docker containers. And I

remember I get this email from Satia,

the CEO of Microsoft, and I'm like, man,

he wrote this nice email and I open a

PDF and there's a zero get added to the

equation. And so you're looking at this

like, I didn't even know that they do

that. We know that it happens, but the

person that graduated from high school

in 1999 that chose the A+ certification

didn't know that was available. So, I

was serious about going to Microsoft.

I'm not just like a Genai hater. I just

don't like the naive promotion and

adoption of it. I think it should be way

strategic. And since I think about Genai

as a tool versus the great human

replacement, then I can use it in way

more primatic ways. And when AI is

involved, the one thing I just do before

the thing kicks off in this meeting, do

not say AI because

Kelsey High Tower is known as one of the

most influential voices in the

Kubernetes community, but you wouldn't

guess from how his career started. At

19, he dropped out of college to be a

DSL model installer, became a

self-taught developer, and still went on

to become a distinguished engineer at

Google. At age 43, he then retired at

the very top of the industry. Today we

cover Kelsey's unconventional path into

tech and how he kept creating new

opportunities for himself often

unknowingly. The inside story of the

container wars, puppet, Docker,

Terraform, Coros and how Kubernetes

eventually won. Going from a Google IC

to executive level and how he rejected a

Microsoft offer from Sachio Nadella

himself and still doubled his

compensation. His grounded on pragmatic

advice for software engineers worried

about being commoditized by AI and so

much more. If you're an engineer

thinking about your long-term career

trajectory, whether that's getting into

a staff plus level, going independent,

or even quietly planning to leave the

industry, this episode is for you. This

episode is longer than a normal episode,

frankly, because I was so glued to my

chair, mostly listening to Kelsey's

stories and thinking. This episode is

presented by Anticys. Verify your

systems correctness without human review

or traditional integration tests and

avoid bugs or outages. Before we start,

I'd like to mention our presenting

sponsor, Antithesis, and maybe offer a

little history lesson. Over the last two

decades, software development has gone

through a mindset shift from an

imperative approach to declarative one.

Infrastructure is a perfect example.

Think about how tools like Puppet and

Ansible allow declaring how individual

servers should be configured. Then came

Terraform, the ability to declare the

desired end state of your whole

infrastructure, servers, networks,

databases, and their relationships. And

then with Kubernetes, we stop scripting

container life cycles. Instead, we write

manifests that say things like, I want

the replicas of this application exposed

behind a surface with this much CPU and

memory. Once we didn't have to specify

every little detail of our

infrastructure anymore, deploying

software became much faster. But then

the bottleneck became how quickly we

could test and verify the code to be

deployed. Testing remained imperative.

We had to write tests for every little

detail. And now with LLMs, we're on the

verge of a declarative shift in the way

code is written as well. Just tell the

model what you want and let it figure

out the details, and it's going to make

the verification bottleneck a million

times worse. Anthesis is a declarative

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insys.com/pragmatic.

Kelsey, welcome to the podcast. It's so

nice to see you in person.

>> Yeah, I'm actually happy to be here

mainly because I kind of look at your

stuff over the years. So, it's honor to

be here in Amsterdam as well.

>> How did you make your first dollar at a

job?

>> Oh, my first dollar at a job McDonald's,

right? That counts. So, in high school,

you get the job that's closest to you.

So, it was in walking distance of my

house. As soon as I turned legal age, uh

14, get a work permit. And I went there

and it was one of those jobs where, you

know, you go, you fill out the

application the same day. You typically

get your information or you're going to

get hired the same day. When can you

start? I'm like, right now. They go get

a shirt for you in the back. You What

size do you wear? Uh, men's large. And

the one thing I liked about that job is

you're dealing with real people that are

in a hurry. I guess one bad part about

the job, you know, a lot of people don't

respect people who have that job. So,

they kind of look at you as just like

this intermediary thing between them and

what they want. But there's so many

things that go into a restaurant like

that. It's very efficient. Um, you know,

people have expectations. And I learned

how to run the whole store. So, by the

time I turned 15, I was a assistant

manager. So, nights and weekends, you

know, other managers would leave. They

would give this 15-year-old the keys.

And I knew how to do everything there,

including close out the store, right?

So, you have to count all the money. You

have to fax this huge spreadsheet to

corporate every night. And then my mom

would pick me up. And so it was really

good learning how to really be

responsible even for adults at that age.

So that's how I got my first dollar.

>> How did you get into tech? How did you

get into programming

>> in high school since I moved from

California to Atlanta? So right, you're

going from one side of the country to

another side of the country. And uh I

missed maybe 3 to 6 months of school and

in order to graduate on time, I had to

take some extra classes. And so as

someone who played sports, ran track, uh

played football, played basketball, and

it's like, you know, there's this

computer programming not, you know,

computer club, technology student

association. There was a class component

and then there was after school

component. And I was like, I don't know,

man. This computer stuff that's for the,

you know, you know, I'm trying to be a

cool kid. But the one thing I did, I

really enjoyed it, right? So I I had a

liking to AutoCAD. I even competed at

the state level in AutoCAD. So we we

drove down and you compete. They give

you a task and you sit in front of the

computer. It was my first year doing it,

but I really like the idea of like

taking a specification, designing it,

and I probably would have gotten first

place if I would have got the product to

work because you also have to print it

out so that the judges can review your

work. So I got second place even though

I didn't.

>> This is the 3D modeling.

>> Yeah. AutoCAD, you know, just AutoCAD.

Yeah. So part of the curriculum was, you

know, you build bridges. We did this

thing with um chapter team where you

know you have a code of arms and you're

kind of doing like a debate. Do you kind

of learn all of these things uh related

to business but CAD was one of the

things I like most? Also in that class

one of the classmates taught me TI

basic.

>> Is that a version of of basic?

>> Well so TI basic so you know the

graphing calculator it's like a TI86. Oh

yeah.

>> You can program it.

>> Oh

>> right. So in class they're like hey you

know it's not just a graphing calculator

you can actually program it. And I was

like what's that? And it's like look we

can you know every at that one at that

time you would create the snake game

right so it's basically get a magazine

copy and paste the code and then you run

it and now you're playing snake uh based

on the code you wrote and so you would

toy around with this concept so that was

probably the first introduction to

programming was literally programming my

my TI86 calculator

>> and after high school did you go to

college or you considered college right

>> I considered college because in Georgia

at the time and still today there's a

thing we're called the hope program. So

if you have a B average or above, you

can go to any public school for free.

And public schools in Georgia include

Georgia Tech, Georgia State. These are

pretty good universities. They're really

good.

>> And so I decided to go to one that was

near me. The first two weeks I was like,

um, this is too slow. This is not

>> this is not the pace that I want to move

at. And also remember it's 1999 when I'm

graduating. And so when you turn on the

TV, people are standing in line for the

next version of Windows. There's a lot

of euphoria. AOL is starting to phase

out and we're starting to touch on

highspeed internet and and I was like,

yo, look at look at the pace this is

moving, but also you're hearing the

narratives. Bill Gates drops out of

college. These people are not

necessarily glorifying the degree

anymore. It's all about the skill. Now,

unfortunately for me, I didn't know

anyone that was a programmer. I didn't

know anyone that was like a system

administrator because at that time all

the systems with like Sun Micros

systemystems or IBM mainframe those are

still the things that are in the

enterprise. So when I looked at the job

openings I'm seeing a bunch of skills

that I don't even know how to acquire.

And so instead of going to college you

know I'm still doing fast food

delivering pizzas at this time at Pizza

Hut. And I remember going to a bookstore

and they had the A+ certification guide

and I looked and some of the job

postings said, "Hey, you need to be A+

certified to take this support role or

whatever it was." And I was like, "You

know what? That doesn't require college.

The book is only $35." And I remember

buying the book and it is an official

certification process. It looks like it

was part of the job market. And so I

remember buying that book and reading it

cover to cover over and over again. and

you're learning all the fundamentals,

right? You're learning about, you know,

how motherboards and how memory and all

these things work and there's an OS

component and then there's a little

practice exam in the back. And so for

someone like me, having that fast

feedback loop of like you put the CD in,

you take the exam and even though it was

multiple choice, you kind of felt like

if I got anything wrong, I would just go

back to the book and make sure that I

understood what was written there and

then you go take the test again. and it

had a little randomization to it so you

couldn't just rely on absolute

remembering everything. And I remember

going to the facility to take the test

and you know you're in that little room

and they want to make sure you don't

cheat. So there's a camera pointed at

you and you're just going through it.

And so the nice thing about those tests,

there's no trick questions. Either you

know it or you don't. And I think they

maybe give you an hour, hour and a half.

And I remember finishing that thing in

like 10 minutes. And when I walk down,

you know, you wait, the dialup goes and

they calculate your score and say, "Hey,

you passed." And then you walk out and

you're like A+ certified. And that was

like the first time in my career that I

felt like, oh, so if you put the effort

in, you can gain the certificate. And

when I got that certificate, I remember

there was like a job fair where, hey,

anyone that has A+ and network plus

certification, you can be part of the

contractors that were replacing people's

dialup with DSL at the time.

>> Okay. And so that's how I I guess

officially got into tech.

>> Is it fair to say that you saw that this

could be the most efficient way to get

into tech at the time?

>> I think I said I saw it as the only way.

>> Why was college never like telling you

like, okay, that could be a way. Was it

just you didn't see examples or

>> I Yeah, I never saw the examples. I

never saw the endgame. A lot of the

stuff that they were teaching the

curriculum, it didn't make sense that

you would pay all that money. You know,

look, maybe it wasn't a good school.

Maybe it was the wrong class that I

took. There's so many factors that could

have went into this. But when I looked

at it, none of the people that at the

time that I was looking up to, this is

not the path that they seem to be

taking. And so I had enough of school,

right? If you're 18 at that time, you're

like, look, that that's enough of this.

Because at the time, I kind of felt

school was this because it was so easy

for me actually. You know, it's like it

was easy to get straight A's. I didn't

feel like there was a serious challenge.

So it's like, hey, I want to go and do

four more years of this. And I would

later learn that look bachelors is a lot

of the similar that you go through

through K through 12, you kind of

remember stuff, you listen to the

lessons, but then masters you challenge

the material and of course if you make

it to PhD ideally you're adding

something new to the field and I never

saw anyone that has made it that far. So

I never put that in part of my calculus.

So, but just having that immediate

feedback loop of like getting this A+

certification and feeling like, oh, I'm

ready to participate in the actual

economy, the ecosystem. So, to me, I was

like, this seems like a better path. And

it felt like a path that I would

control.

>> Yeah. And then what was your first job

that you could get with with the

certification? This was the comta,

right?

>> Yeah. So, at that time, Bell South was,

you know, the biggest telco uh probably

in America. you know they had been

broken up by that time from the AT&T

days at that time the people who did

phone lines right so those are the

official Bell South technicians they

drive the fancy trucks they have all the

equipment and when they made the shift

to highspeed internet that means you had

to actually touch the computer and I

think as a union they're like look we

don't touch the computer we don't even

go into the house we we get to you know

the demark and we stop and so they had

contractors come in and the contractor's

job were to come in, have to do a little

bit of wiring. So, if you had to run

some cable, you did that. Create Cat 5

cables, you did that.

>> Ooh, yeah. You you I one of my first

jobs was actually cabling. So, I still I

forgot the exact color code.

>> Orange, green, white, green, blue,

white, blue, something like that.

>> It's burning in your head now.

>> And you know, so you did whatever it

took. And the other thing you had to do

was you have to open the computer. You

have to make a decision, right? If they

had a new enough computer, they can use

a USB modem. Those were terrible. They

always broke and you would always come

out for a repair. Uh but for a new

install, if you really wanted to do a

good job, you install a a nick, right?

Uh Cat 5 port on the back of their

computer. And at that time, like we're

talking Windows 98. And so usually, I

don't know, 20% of the time as you're

installing the drivers, the computer

would crash. And now you have a whole

another situation. You have to now

troubleshoot getting this thing back

online or back operational. But if

everything went smoothly, they now had a

network card and then you had an

external modem that then you connected

to, you know, the phone line and they

had this high-speed internet connection

and then you connected the network

cable. And I did that for about let's

say a year and then I started doing the

businesses. So you go into people's

homes like you're going door todoor and

then when you go to a business you would

hook up one computer but there's

obviously eight computers there and only

one of them has internet access. And I

remember at the time, you know, the

business owner, it could be like a small

insurance company and they would say

like, "Hey, how do we get all the other

ones online?" And the first time someone

asked me that, I'm like, "I I don't

know, man. I don't." We put it on one

computer like pay grade, right?

>> Yeah. We make sure it works. But then I

decided like, "Well, let me go learn."

And that's when I remember like going to

like Office Depot, right? They sell

computer equipment and things like this.

And I went in the store and I asked him,

I was like, "Oh, you can get one of

these Lynxys routers, right? infamous

blue spaceship looking Lynxis router.

>> I still remember them.

>> And those things were probably like 50

bucks. And I remember just buying one

and figuring out how to get multiple

computers to to use one connection. And

so eventually I was like, look, I can't

do it as part of the job because we we

have to do this and we have to leave,

but here's my carp. And then they will

call you. And I remember one of the

first installations that I did on my

own. Uh they wrote me a check and I was

like, "Yep, you could just write it out

to Kelsey High Tower." He was like, "No,

we don't we don't write checks to

people. We write checks to companies."

And I remember right there on the spot,

I'm like, "Oh man, I need a company

name." And I just made one up digital

gateways. And they wrote that on the

check and I'm sitting there like, "So,

how do you cash this?" So, I went to the

bank and they're like, "Sir, you have to

get a business license. The business

license, you could just do business ads.

You have to do this." So, I'm figuring

out now I'm 19 years old. Like, okay, I

got to go get a business license. Have

to figure all this stuff out. So, I do

everything. I open a business account

just so I can cash the check. But at

that point, I'm like, "Oh, this pays

more than this does." And so, I got

really good at doing those network

installs. I really got good at

troubleshooting cuz sometimes someone

gave them a USB modem, lightning comes,

the USB modem is fried, and then you

would swap them out for a network card.

And eventually, I decided like, I can

probably do my own business. And I

decided to get some office space. So, I

opened a small computer store right

outside of Atlanta. I would buy parts

from the distributors. I was just like

19, 20 years old. And I wasn't buying

enough to really qualify for an account.

But luckily, one of the smaller computer

stores I used to buy parts from gave a

recommendation to the distributor. It's

like, hey, this is our guy. He's just

getting started. And they gave me an

account. And I was able to buy

motherboards and GPUs. And people would

come over and like they bring their kid

and they would have a parts list. I want

a computer with all these things and we

would assemble machines and you know

sell them but also it was the

headquarters for all the other service

calls. So I did that for like three,

four years, you know, that ended up

evolving into at the same time or now

we're talking like 2000, 2001, a lot of

the music studios were moving from

analog gear and the large mixing boards

to ProTools, right? The little rack

mount unit. And they all needed max.

They all need these conversions. So I

added that to my uh abilities. And then

I had a small setup in the store and

artists and musicians would come in and

say, "Hey, we want exactly that in our

studio and I would get the order and I

added it to the list of things I could

do."

>> I mean, at this point, you now have a

small business. Sounds like it's it's

going well. And suddenly you take a job

at an employee job at Google when I look

back, how did that come up up to now?

It's it's almost like this is like, you

know, the story often times will

continue. You become an entrepreneur,

you grow your business, you you know,

you just take it from there. Even during

that time as that store owner, I managed

a comedian and we went on the road. And

>> so you were you were helping out your

your managing

>> I had a buddy from high school. He was a

comedian. Turns out he was actually

really good at it. We even I went to go

see him at a club. He's like, "Hey, I

need a manager." I was like, "Are you

even funny? Like I know you from high

school, but I don't remember you being

like funny enough that I would pay to

see you tell jokes." And um he was like,

"I have a show tonight." And so I gave

him a ride on the north side of town.

And the interesting part, it was a

predominantly black audience in Atlanta.

Okay, makes sense. And he did these

jokes and they laughed and it was one of

these comedy clubs where if you're not

funny, you have like 3 seconds and they

would just boo you off the stage and

that's the end of it. And he held it. I

was like, "Wow, you survived that.

That's um that's incredible. And you

were pretty funny." And then we drove

about an hour north and the audience is

predominantly white. And so on the drive

there, I'm like, there is no way you can

do those jokes in this room. I got to

see how this is going to go. And at the

time, they're only paying the comedians

like $50. So, you don't make a lot in

the early days. And he totally pivoted

the set and he held that audience, too.

And I was like, "All right, I can be

your manager. I know business. I know

kind of logistics. I know how to, you

know, make a plan together." And I did

that for a number of years. and you know

he won some televised competitions. We

went on the road bands like Earthwind

and Fire and some large comedians from

Kings of Comedy and Queens of Comedy and

I actually picked up some IT work with

the company behind it called Letham

Entertainment. they had been doing

movies at this time. And so now I'm

like, you know, doing it for them and I

got the small business. I got the

comedian. And so, look, I was able to

save a lot of money, but man, luckily I

was 20 years old cuz I had all this

energy, but I was working quite a bit.

Eventually, you settle down, you get a

family, and you do the math, and it

turns out people kind of over glorify

entrepreneurship. I think a lot of

people believe there is tremendous

upside, right? the type of

entrepreneurship we talk about with

software companies, the the upside is

crazy. But when you're doing like

selling parts or service business,

unless you plan to open lots of stores

and you know grow a larger employee

base, it's not the same growth

trajectory as software companies. And so

I kind of did the math after four years

of doing that. I said look, I want to

settle down. And if you've been an

entrepreneur before, you know employees

get paid first, the owner gets paid

last. And there are months where you get

paid less or you don't get paid at all

and now you're kind of drawing from

savings because it's not their problem.

But I did well overall like I did very

successful. But I remember it's like you

know what I think I'm ready. And so I

looked around and Google had data

centers nearby and I felt like I had a

great combination of skills. I

understood you know the racking stack

part of the world. I understood the

physical part of the networking stack. I

understood everything from Linux to

Windows. I had an entrepreneur mindset.

I didn't think there was nothing I could

not do. And I remember going to that

interview and they were hiring like data

center technicians. What it paid? And in

my mind, I'm like that you only have to

work for 8 hours. You don't have to

issue any invoices and you get paid

every 2 weeks no matter what. No

inventory. This is crazy. No way they're

doing this. And so I go and I remember

doing that interview and I didn't know

Linux that well. And luckily for me, I

knew FreeBSD well. And as I'm answering

the questions, I'm like, look, I am not

an expert on Linux, not the way Google

was asking these questions. And it's

like three people on the other side of

this table just rapper firing. And I

remember I was like, I know FreeBSD. I

swear I got lucky. This one of the

interview, I think they had a FreeBSD

tattoo on their leg, the little beasty

logo. And I saw this logo. I'm like,

"Oh, I'm saved." And so we started going

down the FreeBSD questions and I pass

and I get this job in this data center.

And it was good because it's like, hey,

I'm I'm working with my colleagues, but

it felt a bit slow because you only get

one job. You come in, you do this thing.

And I got really good at it cuz to me, I

kind of saw it as like a bit of a

competition. Who is the best data center

tech here? What are their metrics look

like? How do I exceed their metrics? I

want to learn how to do every particular

thing in this data center because

previously as a business owner, the more

skills you have, more money you can

make. And then I just started switching

jobs every 3 to 6 months because I just

wanted to explore everything to just

amass my abilities. And doing the math,

I think every jump was like a 25% pay

raise. I mean, coming from a small base,

it wasn't it didn't feel big at the

time, but after a few jumps, my salary

doubled. puppet was uh was a a bit of an

inflection point in your career.

>> You know what and I would say the

biggest inflection point in my career

was there were two of them before I get

into Puppet Labs.

>> Okay.

>> So you come from Google, you see this

huge operations. There's hundreds of

thousands of servers. The cables are

perfect. They're immaculate.

>> Oh, by the way, can you help us imagine

like what a data center back then looked

like at Google and and what what did you

do as as part of the job?

>> Yeah. So in 200 maybe four maybe 2005

that data center is like a warehouse. I

mean it's huge. So think about a place

where and I'm pretty sure they always

exaggerated the numbers. So exaggerated

number to think about is like think

about 200,000 servers in one place.

Everything is immaculate. So a lot of

people have worked in data centers and

it's a mess. Wires are all over the

place. You know you're ad hoc adding and

removing servers. But Google was

systematic. Those machines came off a

truck. They were wrapped perfectly. When

you wheeled them into their spot, you

connected the network cables, they would

pixie boot. They would burn in. So part

of the job was, you know, you walked

around with a crash cart. So depending

on what your abilities were, some people

had pretty straightforward jobs. You had

a crash cart, had all your tools on it,

and you would walk around and you would

find machines that were needing of

repair. So if you have 200,000 machines,

it's okay if like 300 of them are

broken, right? the system can route

around that. And but if they were

broken, they needed to be repaired. So

you would go to rack a server 7, you

will pull it out and you will look at it

and oh yeah, the SATA card is on fire.

Like it's literally burned. It's

burning. It was burnt. And so he's like,

I can diagnose this one with my eyes. It

needs to replace the SATA card. But the

thing is, you would go into the system

and you would say, this SATA controller

needs to be replaced. So you would be

making your prediction and then you

would replace it and you would go

through its burn-in process. It would

join back to the fleet and then the way

you were measured was how good were your

predictions.

>> Oh,

>> right. So you said it's a SATA

controller and to me moving fast you

look as if I think that SATA controller

I'm not going to waste any more time on

this one because I'm trying to get my

numbers up. So I just swap the SATA

controller. You bring in all the cables,

you slide it back, it goes through his

process, and you move on to the next

machine

>> before you get the feedback.

>> Yeah. And fun fact, there's a guy named

Tim Hawk is very popular in the

Kubernetes community. He's like the

network lead. So back then, Tim Hawkins

is working at the other side of Google,

like the bigger side of Google. And one

of his first projects was built a little

tool that you would put on the

motherboard. It had about nine lights on

it, and the lights would flash back and

forth, and it would tell you what dim

slots were potentially bad. The

technicians that were fast, they didn't

waste time like running a program to do

a extensive test of the memory. You

learn how to use this little device and

you would walk up to the motherboard. So

the thing I would do is like before I do

anything, put this on the motherboard,

get the reading, and I learned to trust

it over time, dim one, dim two are bad.

And the goal would be all right, I have

all this memory on my cart. You swatch

those two dim slots. Make sure that

that's done first. Reboot the machine.

And you might be like, I think that's

the only thing wrong. And again, you

were put in the system. I believe I only

need to do DIM one and two. And then the

way you were measured is how long before

that machine gets kicked back to repair.

So if it doesn't get kicked back within,

I don't know, 30, 60 days, you did a

good job. If you didn't, your scores

would be low. So for the technicians

that were just reckless, right? They

wouldn't even try and you're just

swapping the wrong part. You're swapping

the wrong hard drive. And so your stuff

is always coming back for repair. You

were not efficient. So I got to the

point where I can maintain high 90s but

also repair let's call it three times

more machines than other people. So lots

of machines rate of return. And then I

learned how to do the network switches.

And then there's power audits where

you're lifting up tiles from the floor

and you're making sure that everything

looks good. You got to be careful not to

touch them because you could die. And so

you learn everything about a data center

like the service loop. You know you're

running all this cat 5 cable and it has

to have a perfect service loop. fiber

runs on a different part of the rack,

right? So you don't ever mix these

things. So as a person still like I'm in

my early 20s. I'm thinking this is how

all data centers look. It's not the

case. But it's it's crazy because just

as I think back, you know, I was a

manager before as well and of course a

software engineer for a long time, but

the way your performance was

continuously measured and fed back to

you and you were evaluated based on it.

It feels way more strict, should I say,

than you know like folks who work as

software engineers including at Google.

I mean the frequency, the expectations.

>> The reason why I didn't feel as bad as

some of the metrics people are using now

is because I felt like I can control the

outcome. It didn't feel like it was a

thing that was just a metric that didn't

do anything. If I felt like my score was

taking a hit and I was like, you know

what, I am being a bit sloppy and how

I'm diagnosing these machines. And I

remember one time where I almost had my

score dip below 90. I started writing

additional shell scripts to starting

combining different functions together.

It's like, you know what? Can't be

moving this fast. There's a way for me

to diagnose multiple things of the

machine at one time. And so, I would

diagnose the Saturn array, all the hard

drives while I'm doing the memory

component. And then when it rebooted, I

would just run the script one more time

as I'm putting my cart back together to

catch that one more thing. And once I

started doing that, I can move as fast

as I want it and the scores are right.

So to me, when the scores actually match

the things that you're doing, then it's

a healthy feedback. And again, no one

really talked about it unless you needed

to talk about it. And so I kind of

leveraged it for a personal thing. I

pulled it up in the morning. I kind of

looked at my performance metrics and in

many ways I calibrated my strategy based

on this detailed feedback that I was

getting. So, I think I appreciated that

level, that granularity back then

because it felt like it was uh something

that was helpful for me, not just my

manager.

>> And you said you had two two kind of big

big inflection points. One of them was

>> Google was a big one. Like that was

definitely one of course my

entrepreneurship. And when I got to web

hosting, I went to a company called Pier

1. They're a spin-off of Rackspace and

they were all about fully automated

self-hosting, right? So,

>> this was back in like what 2005 67?

>> Yeah, this is like Yeah. 2005, 2006. Oh,

they were already about that was their

thing. Their tagline was latency kills.

And so back then you would go online. A

lot of the customer base was like um

people hosting their own game servers,

right? So if you wanted to play a game,

one thing you could do back then is host

a game server, but you needed a game

server that multiple people could hit.

And so you would go along to server

beach. So this is a spin out of

Rackspace. So Rackspace is more like,

you know, we'll buy a server and once

you get it and it's a lot of manual

steps. Rackspace was more of a let's

automated everything. So the machine

would pixie some PHP scripts would run.

If you ordered a RAID setup, then we

would configure the RAID while the

machine was net booted and then we would

put you on the VLAN that you belonged

on. We would install the right operating

system based on what you've ordered and

we just took a form. We just went

through all of these steps and then when

we were done, and it took maybe about an

hour. When we were done, you had an IP

address, login credentials, and if you

wanted email and plus, you know, website

management, all these things, you got

it. And when you were done, you gave it

back and then we put it back into the

pool ready for the next customer. And so

when I saw how we were doing that, I was

like, yo, this is okay. You can automate

things end to end. And the other thing

that was important here, we were doing

things like updating the firmware for

RAID controllers because once you pixie

a server, now you're in memory and you

have access to all the hardware. You

haven't committed to an operating system

yet, but you have enough to do whatever

you want. So if you want to configure

the RAID controller and back then there

wasn't like clean APIs. We were

literally running curl scripts and

command line utilities trying to get

this machine into the right shape and

then when we were done we would put it

into the fleet. So at that early age I'm

like oh there is nothing you cannot do.

When we had to automate the Windows 2000

servers back then we would just build

tools that would literally screen scrape

log in to active directory and then we

would screen scrape mouse movements so

that way we can patch software on those

Windows servers. So the concept of like

I need a specific tool to do it's like

no. Back then it was like you do

whatever is necessary because these

people are only paying like $99 a month.

I don't have time for you to spend a

whole week when they call random

customer. You don't know their setup.

You don't know their infrastructure. You

have minutes to get them back online. So

everybody learned to move quickly. No

complaining. When you get that ticket

it's on you to figure it out. Maybe you

lean to your teammates for help. So I

kind of learned how to move fast. But

the the inflection point came from I

started that job in tech support. So

people would call my SQL isn't working,

DNS isn't working. They can't even

describe what isn't working sometimes.

And so I realized that we were all in

the phone queue. When the phone would

ring, it would just round robin between

everyone. Then if you couldn't solve it

fast enough or you couldn't solve it at

all, you created a ticket. And the

ticket sat there and then ideally you

get to it later, but the ticket queue

was just getting long. And when a shift

change happened, we just had all these

tickets piling up. And of course,

customers are now mad, 3 days, no

response. So one day I said, look, I'm

just not going to log in the queue.

>> I'm just going to resolve the tickets.

And I'm back in that entrepreneurial

mindset. I'm building little scripts to

take a ticket. I see the issue. This is

my SQL issue. We need to vacuum the

database. This is easy. Run that one.

Ticket close. Hey sir, everything is

good to go. Please try again. Close.

This is not even an issue. Close. Plus,

oh, we got upgrade PHP. close and then

the ticket queue is zero. It's just

empty all day. And so someone's like,

"Hey, Kelsey's not logged into the phone

queue. He's not even on the phone. He's

not taking calls." My manager pulls me

in the office like, "Hey, Kelsey, why

are you not on the phone queue?" I said,

"Because we don't all need to be on the

phone queue. We can just have one person

making the ticket queue stay at zero."

And then I would tell my colleagues,

"Hey, look, if you can't figure it out

fast, just open a ticket super quickly.

I will take care of it." So some people

specialize in Windows. They got a Linus

call. They didn't know what to do. I

said, "Don't worry about it. Just put it

in the queue quickly. Move on to the

next call. I got you." And so I became

super efficient. So I explained this

process to the manager and he thought

about it. His name is Mike. And Mike was

like, "Yeah, I like that. We're going to

change it. We're going to have a couple

people stay out of the queue, but the

promise is that queue has to stay zero."

And it's the first time I learned the

difference between activities and

impact. activity is you being an

all-star answering a bunch of calls, but

the ticket queue for the team is still

high. You making this jump and saying,

"Look, maybe I stay out of the queue and

my promise to my colleagues is impact."

The ticket queue is zero. So on

Wednesday when we do the team turnover,

we're handing off a empty queue. Now, of

course, I didn't teach them that because

I didn't think about it. And when we

would come in, the queue would be high

again. And it's like, yo, whoa, this is

not you guys keep handing off a bunch of

burden to our team. And of course, we

would clean it up, but then the

management team was like, yo,

everybody's going to do it. And then I

was like, man, you can change the

process. So that was like the huge

inflection point. I think the next one

was more about being a mature person.

Stop job hopping so much because again,

after maybe a few promotions and some

impact, I'm now off to the next thing.

and I didn't have to necessarily live a

long time with some of those decisions

or you know stay long enough to really

impact more of the culture. So when I

got to financial services, it was the

first time I got restrictions put on me,

right? Because in these companies,

everything is about moving fast. Google,

we got to move fast. We have to compete

with the big guys. We're going to do

with cheap hardware, smart people, any

means necessary. Web hosting, we're not

charging a lot. Margins are thin. You

got to move quick. Financial service

like, no, we making money over here.

>> You joined the financial services

company.

>> Yeah. So that was the first time my my

salary doubled. So I went on my lunch

break for a job interview.

>> That must have felt awesome.

>> Oh my god. I don't remember. My manager

was so upset. I went on a lunch break.

>> The previous manager, the one you

>> I met Pier One. He was a good friend of

mine named Joe Rodriguez. He's the first

person that made me a software

developer. So, I showed him some ideas I

had on like modernizing our

virtualization, uh, optimizing our Pixie

Boot process. And he was like, "Man, you

have a lot of good ideas." So, in the

interview, he's like, "Show me what you

built." And I'm so excited. I'm still

that entrepreneur thinking, and I got

the job. So now I'm a software engineer

working on this automation stack. And uh

I remember seeing jobs that I used to be

afraid of 5 years ago. The same jobs

that made me want to just go get an A+

certification and open a computer store

instead of even trying. And so I looked

at those job descriptions again and it

was like you need Linux. So like I got

that even at that job I got Red Hat

certified, right? So I was like I got

all the qualifications now. And I

remember the job. I didn't know how much

it paid before I went, but you had to

wear a shirt and tie. It was the first

time in my whole life had to wear a

shirt and tie.

>> Oh, so you had to go and buy one.

>> Yeah. And I remember my home teacher,

she him my pants for me, right? I was

like, "Hey, I got a job interview. I

know. Does this look right?" I'm driving

up on my lunch break and I get there and

you know, this is enterprise. I'm like,

"Wow, this is this is the big league." I

didn't even think Google was big league.

I thought financial services big league.

Obviously, if you have to wear a tie to

do your job, you must be doing something

so serious that you need a shirt and tie

to do it. And so, I get to the interview

and I'm sweating like, "What? They're

going to ask me stuff that I've probably

never heard of or seen before." And they

started asking Linux questions. I'm

like, "No, you got to use this flag.

That's not the right flag." No, look it

up. That is not the right flag. You

can't do that with Grip. Nope. You got

to pipe it this way. That the PS table

doesn't show you that. Not on that

version of Linux. not with that curl.

And I'm like, it's too easy. And part of

me is like, either I'm really good or

something else. And so I'm thinking

like, yo, that was maybe there's another

round. And so I'm driving home and I'm

loosening up the tie and I'm calling my

wife like, "Hey, I I think I did a

really great job." Like, you know, I

think and and this has been a pattern,

you know, I get good at something and I

find a better job. I got good at

something, I find a better job. But now

it's like this is like a career. And so

I'm talking to my wife and I was like,

"Hey, I got to call you back." And it's

the recruiter calling. Hey, you have a

second? It's like 100%.

Uh they want to make you an offer. I'm

like, you know, make you an offer is

different. Like it's usually this is how

much the job pays.

>> That's how it was until then. How much

were you making?

>> 45K.

>> So you were making 45K at that point.

>> $90,000.

>> Yeah.

>> I almost drove off the rope. like n like

double. This is insane. I'm thinking 90

and you're doing the you know retirement

calculations. We can buy a house. You

you're thinking of all of these things

that you could do. And so I'm on the way

back to the job and I remember and they

were like then when can you start? It's

like Thursday. I'm telling them we can

start Monday. Like uh two week notice.

I'm like I don't know man. Like it's

devil

>> for this.

>> I have to. So, I remember I called Joe

and Joe's based in San Antonio where the

headquarters of Rackspace was. I was

like, "Hey, Joe, man. Hey, man. I got to

I got to I got to quit." He was like,

"What, man? You just, you know what I'm

saying? You're doing so well on the

team. How you going to quit on me? I

made a bet on you." You know? I said,

"Hey, Joe, calm down, bro.

They pay 90K." He's like, "What? Are

they hiring?"

And so, I got to I got to that company,

Total Systems, Tus. And um it did feel a

bit slow. They had run books, change

windows, everything was regulated. This

is a financial institution. We're

processing credit card payments. We're

doing work for the government. We're

doing all of these things. And I

remember the team was just everybody

just moving at this pace.

>> But isn't it crazy when you get in

there? I I had something similar when I

moved into London and my salary more

than doubled going for Edinburgh where

you have all these expectations because

you're being paid so much more. the tie.

Same thing for me for the tie and then

it's a bit disappointing and I think did

you not not feel a little bit like am I

missing something like this should be

you know higher this should be you know

the interview was okay maybe not as hard

but it it was something I mean I did

because I was naive because I didn't

understand the consequences of a mistake

and so yeah I was like oh these people

are just moving slow and I looked at

what they were doing and everything was

like a risk if you made a mistake you

remember you only get seven

milliseconds, 7 seconds to give Visa a

response. If you don't, then it's a

default decline. Now everybody's losing

money. And so the cost of getting a good

change, it was just worth waiting. So I

didn't know that in the beginning. So

I'm just like, oh, everybody's moving a

little too slow. I was seeing how they

were doing deployments. I'm watching how

they're provisioning servers. I'm like,

you know, you can automate this whole

thing cuz I've done it multiple times.

And then I learned to be a little bit

patient. All right, hold on. I learned

how to deal with the nose. I learned how

to deal with the executives. I learned

how to talk not just to engineers with

the senior leaders and get their trust.

And I won't talk about everything that I

did there, but I was there for about

three years. So the job hopping stops

and I remember there was a task where we

were using Apache and some Java plugin

to talk to our J Boss instances. And so

they were using a lot of memory per

connection on the load balancer. And so

we got a new we're moving off the main

frame. We're moving into this new, you

know, Java world and the servers just

kept falling over. We couldn't handle

all the transactions and I'm just

watching the team go into these change

windows and then we fail. We would fail.

We would fail. And the CTO at the time

was like, you know, this is costing us

money. These we're getting chargebacks.

We're having to pay out penalties. And I

was like, I had a dev environment when I

was using EngineX. I got rid of all this

Java stuff. Like it's it's just HTTP.

You don't need a Java connector thing.

I'm reading the spec. You don't need it.

And my memory usage is a fraction

>> by getting rid of it.

>> Yeah, you don't need it. And engineext

had a better threading model, all these

things. And I was like, I got a perfect

config. I've ported the Apache config to

this one. I even handle all of our

redirects, all of our routes, all the

legacy crust. This thing will work. It's

like, I don't know, Kel, this is not

certified stuff. It's like, no, no, no.

I got it from Red Hat. RPM install

engine X. It's in it's in Red Hat. And

they're like, okay, it's in Red Hat.

Okay, sure. gave me one chance.

>> Yeah.

>> And about after a week, they gave me a

shot and they let me be in the change

window. And

>> what what is the change window?

>> So change window typically in the

financial institution is like we can

start changes at midnight and we have to

be finished by 6:00 a.m. and you have to

notify every customer. We're going to

change something in the environment.

Things may get a little weird. We would

like your permission. And if if it's

something that can be detrimental to

your business, now's your time to speak

up. So once we got permission, we had a

window. That's the only window you got.

And if you can't finish it on time, you

got to shut it down and get us back to

where we were.

>> Yeah. Roll back.

>> Roll back. Roll forward or if you could

roll back. And I remember I put engine X

in place. So at this point, it's all

you. No one at this company has EngineX

experience. Also, most people don't want

to do this. They're like, "Hey, we think

this is a bad idea." And so now it's

your reputation on the line. There is no

hiding behind the team. It's almost like

everyone's sitting back like you got it.

Now luckily the leadership was like we

are supporting you and we're putting our

careers on the line as well. I mean they

probably would have been safe but after

about 2 hours I got everything working

and we just watched your memory pressure

just drop. So if we were at 90% on

utilize I don't let's call it 32 gigs

and we're just blowing stack every time

everything's crashing. this thing is

hovering at like two gigs of RAM. And

everyone's like, yo, like are we getting

peak load? Is this legit? And we're all

just sitting there like not sure. And

the way we used to test the platform is

we would someone would drive to the gas

station, get a credit card, buy some

gas, and we wanted to see the

transaction land in the Oracle database.

>> Yeah, you could track it.

>> So we can track the whole thing. We're

like, yo, it works. And so the thing is,

you can't really be comfortable until

about 10:00 the next day. So now it's

3:00 a.m. We all go home. I don't go to

sleep. I'm like, "Yo, we've changed a

big part of the infrastructure in

production.

Let's see." So 10:00 goes by and we

looking around and there's no naggios

alerts going off. I'm like, man, we

might be we might be good. You know me,

I got my I got top going. I'm looking

like memory usage is holding steady.

>> Yeah, top is uh for those who don't know

that that's when you uh it shows it show

the CPU PS tree in a loop, right? So

just like if you ran the PS aux command,

you see all the processes running

processes.

>> And so you just run top and then it's

basically that every second being

refreshed or whatever timer you give it.

But one of the bets I made was if I get

this to work, you have to buy pizza for

the whole floor for a week. Every day we

get a new order.

>> And cuz he promised like Kelsey, if you

get this to work, I'll buy you a steak

dinner. And at the time I still am. I

was vegetarian. I don't eat steak. But

here's here's what I would like instead.

you got to buy pizza for the whole

floor. Now, I don't know how strategic I

was thinking, but I figured that I could

score some points with the whole team

from turning it into a I succeeded to a

we succeeded

>> and then people eating together was one

good way of doing it. And I remember

after it worked, he was like, "What's

the order?"

>> And I just ordered, you know, pizza from

one place and we just put it in the

middle. Everyone was like, "What's the

pizza for?" Right? Cuz usually you only

get this for special events, like for

the thing we did. And the next day some

more pizza and some more pizza. And so

when I got that accomplishment, I was

like, "Okay, this is what maturity looks

like. It's not about just having the

right solution. You literally have to

get consensus, buy in,

make sure and then your reputation's on

the line." And I got that change in. It

just kind of changed the way I thought

about what success looked like. And so

that was the inflection point. And then

of course I brought puppet into that

organization repeated a similar process

of automating everything with this tool.

>> Kelsey just talked about what CI/CD

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regressions today. And with this, let's

get back to Kelsey and when he

introduced Puppet into his organization

and automated DevOps processes.

>> And I remember we had someone from

Puppet come by

>> and and just for again those who don't

know Puppet, Puppet is this

>> configuration management tool. So puppet

is we went from you know lots of shell

scripts you know doing random things and

pseudo automation but most of the time

you just did a manual thing you had a

ticket come in someone wanted a new SSH

key on a server someone want something

installed you did it manually copied and

paste the output in the ticket and you

closed it and you did that every day

over and over again and that's where the

saying that I I say sometimes some

people have 20 years of one year

experience some people in it have been

doing that 20 years on the row they

never the leap to automation or learning

new tools or skills. And so I saw like

man I can bring in a tool and I brought

the tool called puppet at the time 0248

and this is right before DevOps becomes

a word but it's like all right I'm

starting to learn how to write code like

the for the Java production stuff. I'm

writing puppet, you know, manifest using

the puppet DSL. Sometimes you have to

write a little bit of Ruby to build a

new resource type and I'm contributing

and also I get introduced to open source

like, hey, there's something there that

doesn't work. I'm going to contributed

upstream. So, I'm doing all this behind

the scenes getting ready for act two.

And I remember my manager went to a

conference and he came back and like,

"Hey, Kelsey, I finally know what you're

doing." I was like, "What's that?" He

was like, "Uh, you're doing DevOps." And

I part of me was like upset. how do you

get to name what I'm doing?

And so, you know, everyone's talking

about DevOps and he's like, I met a guy

named James Turnball. And James is an

Australian dude. He worked at Puppet

Labs and he wrote the first puppet book

that I bought and read. And so I'm like,

James Turnpaul? That name sounds

familiar. Oh, I'm looking at my desk,

James Turn. So, he's one of the

co-authors of this book. And it turns

out James wrote a lot of tech books back

then. And he's coming to the office. And

my manager wanted him to check out how

we were using puppet. I was like, "Okay,

so you know, this is world-class

expert." And by that time, I had puppet

hidden behind Jurro tickets. And so you

could just open a Jurro ticket. I had

RPMs for everything. You picked the RPM

you wanted from a drop down. You picked

your environment from a drop down. And

magic happened and you got results. Most

people didn't even know Puppet existed.

Most people never touched it. They just

knew they can get anything on demand.

>> You could go to Jira and it does it. So,

so for example, you could like provision

a new machine or

>> whole environment. I want database. I

want IBM MQ series message server. I

want these three apps and I need this

firewall setup. No problem. Open the

right jar tickets. Get them approved.

When they're approved, we had this

little I I called it Mr. Receti. All

right. One of my buddies gave me a name

from some video game. Once it got

approved, Mr. city would own the ticket

and we would just extract the custom

fields and we would just call the right

puppet manifest and we would take the

output and update the ticket and so PMs

developers they just got what they want

damn near instantaneously so we built

all the systems they didn't know nights

and weekends I'm contributing to puppet

because you know wasn't allowed at work

at the time this is 2007 2008

>> they probably didn't even really

understand what open source was anyway

>> so they was like hey you got to do it on

your own time so I would just do it

nights and weekends so James shows up

and I remember we all get in the

elevator. We're going to the third

floor. My manager's introducing James to

me, to our team, like, "Hey, this is

this person. This is this person. This

is Kelsey." And James turns to me, he's

like, "Kelsey High Tower? Oh, we know

you. We love your contributions." And my

manager is just like, "What

contributions? We're We're not doing

contributions."

And James is like shaking my hand and

he's just talking to me like we're

friends because the thing is I have been

working with the puppet labs team

through like openource open source

contributing to puppet

>> and so we get up there and you know my

manager is like hey let's show him our

setup I was like all right James we have

a lot of puppet manifests over here I'm

using external node classifiers I'm

setting brightening config from data you

know I read my burst is promise theory

and we got it all dialed in but from an

interface perspective I just didn't want

everyone to have to modern puppet. So,

we hooked it up to Jer. I'm showing him

this entire workflow and he's just

sitting there like, "Yeah, I have no

recommendations at all. Like, this is

this is amazing." And here's the thing

that kind of the game changer. So, he

came all the way to Atlanta. We're 45

minutes from the airport. He spent time

with our team and uh it's the end of the

day. And then he's on the way out and

he's about to call a cab to go to the

airport. I'm like, "No, I you're in my

hometown. I cannot let you go to the

airport. I will give you a ride to the

airport." So, I get in my car and he's

in the front seat. My colleague's in the

back seat. He takes off his tie and

rolls up his sleeves. I can see all the

tattoos. I'm like, "Oh, so you're like a

legit text like, "Yeah, I don't do all

of this. I just did this for you all.

This is your dress code." I was like,

"Oh, James is cool." He was like, "Man,

yeah, you guys are doing great work."

And you know, now I'm talking to the

real James Turnball. And uh he invited

me to give a talk at Puppet Cough. and I

went to go give that talk. It was my

first like real conference talk and I

talked about some low-level kind of

puppet integration stuff and I had a

little comedy in there. It was like the

first time I felt like I could just be

myself on stage. Before I came home,

Luke Kenise, the founder of Puppet, we

sat down in a little coffee shop in

Portland, Oregon, and he was like, you

know, would you like to work here? I was

like, yes, like of course, 100%. And of

course there was a nice salary increase

and I could work remote. I didn't have

to leave Atlanta immediately. And I

remember coming back and uh my manager

really appreciated all the progress I

was making over the years. I kind of

made a name for myself. And I remember

he gave me a nice little raise just out

of the blue. And he slid this envelope

to me and I opened it. It was a nice

number in there. I was like, "Oh, that's

great." I was like, "But here's a thing.

I'm resigning. I'm going to go work for

Puffet." And then he said something that

was dope because we had a kind of, you

know, difficult relationship depending

on how it went. But overall, he helped

me mature. That's one thing I will

always say. He helped me really be

mature. And uh he was like, "I'm

surprised you stayed here this long,

right?" As like this ultimate compliment

that you stayed here beyond the just

getting better or making an impact. You

literally changed this culture. And the

full circle moment happened like 7 years

later when Kubernetes came out. I

remember coming back to that office and

they had already been running CD in

production, Kubernetes in production and

even some of the old tooling I had was

still running and to me that was like a

really important feedback that sometimes

if you make an impact lasting impact is

way different that even when I wasn't

there they still had the culture to say

there's new technology and we know how

to bring it into the stack. So at this

point

containers were starting to start right.

How did you first come across containers

and very early on you realize this is

going to be big and important?

>> I didn't.

>> Oh you didn't? No, because I'm at puppet

labs. You know, before that I was

contributing to core Python stuff like

virtual imp pi on the team that was

trying to integrate some of the Python.

Python had a package management problem

even back then. And so I'm all in on

Python and then when I'm learning

Puppet, I'm all in on Ruby at that time.

I'm thinking DevOps plus configuration

management is the end all beall for

everything. And really at that time

we're talking 2011 2012 in my mind the

competition was only between Puppet Chef

and Anible. That was it. And so I'm all

in and I'm working at Puppet Labs. And

so we're kind of in some ways I felt

like we were dictating the future. We

were going to companies and getting them

to understand configuration management.

We were talking about the benefits of

like speeding everything up and you know

doing all these compliance. We were

moving people from SharePoint to

executable code to implement these

things. So we thought we were just

getting started. There was no world

where we then think that we needed 10

more years of that, right? We even got

money from VMware to integrate Puppet

into that. Chef was being integrated

into AWS at that time. So this was like

the thing that finally were finally

getting there. We just got to teach

system administrators to become

engineers via DevOps and started

embracing these tools. And then the

first thing that I saw come out was

Golang.

>> Mhm. And I remember sitting at my desk

and I was like,

>> you know, at that time we were hitting

performance issues with Ruby,

>> right? The global lock interpreter. You

can't do more than one thing at a time,

not easily.

>> And so we moved to things like J Ruby.

We even did closure for some part of the

puppet stack. And I remember we were

thinking about should we start doing

stuff in C++?

>> Mhm.

>> Should we start doing stuff in C? But

the problem is contributors. What would

we do with all the Ruby contributors,

right? we were relying on things like

Ruby gems and it's going to be it was

going to be a hard sale and I remember

downloading go for the first time and

the thing that sold me on it I remember

um one of the prototypes that I built

was factor so factor is one of the

agents in puppet that gives you facts

about a machine so this is Red Hat this

kernel version this is what the users

look like and it would give that to

puppet so that your configuration code

had context on what to do and that was

written in Ruby and sometimes it will

run slow because you're reading all

these files serly. And so I remember I

was like, "All right, let's try this Go

Lang out." And I remember I wrote the

code on my Mac,

compiled it, SCPD it to a Linux box. I

was like, "Oh, this is crazy." And I

remember running all the facts in

parallel, and it came back in a fraction

of the time. I was like, "Yo, we got to

use Golang for stuff." And I remember

the team was like, "No, it doesn't work

for Solaris or AIX because Puppet was

now moving into the enterprise." I was

like, that's the criteria? No way. But I

got it, right? I've gone through this

maturity thing before. And then

Terraform comes out. But before Docker,

Terraform is trying is starting to

challenge things a little bit, right?

And it's starting to use things like Go,

at least that was on my radar. So

Terraform is like, who cares about the

node? It's all about the APIs. And all

of us come from the server world and

everything's about an agent on a node

versus the cloud starting to take over

at this point, right? So, so Terraform

was built with the cloud in mind, right?

You you could configure your cloud

environment infrastructure as a code.

>> Yeah. And we were trying to do this from

a node. We were trying to teach puppet

how to talk through by having this

indirection where you have to go through

a node to configure a server in the

cloud. It was so weird. But then

Terraform Mitch Hashimoto, right? Like

he was a big part of the DevOps movement

early too. Then he was like frag Vagrant

was written in Ruby. So he was part of

that same ecosystem. And then he splits

off and there's this going. I'm like,

look at that. They're using Go for this.

And I remember when Docker came out,

Puppet at that time was the one pushing

innovation. We're asking people to think

a little different,

>> get out of their comfort zone. And then

Docker comes out and most of the office

was dismissing this as like, nope, this

is a fad. They don't even have config

management in this thing. They don't

really understand enterprise. This is

just kind of not like a toy. They were

not being disrespectful, but no one saw

this as a challenger. what we were doing

and I looked at it and I didn't get it

immediately

until I left. When I left Puppet, I

built this tool called CompD. I went to

go be a VP of engineering and I got to

write Go code. So, we started rightfully

so. We looked at all the Java heavy

usage and I earned the trust of the team

and we started rewriting some of the

microservices in Go, shrinking our cloud

footprint and we sunseted it and got it

all into production, the Go code. I was

like, we don't really need Puppet

anymore. And I open sourced this project

called CompD and it would pull variables

from CD and generate just enough config,

just the parts of Puppet that I thought

made sense. And then Docker was out. And

then I was like, wow, we can probably

stop moving Python files around. We can

probably package them up. Not in our

case.

>> And the idea with Docker was right, that

it it would define a virtual machine or

a container, right? So to me the big

value of docker at the time was

previously I had definitely did the work

to make RPMs for every app even the

custom apps RPMs are the red hat package

management y

>> so if you're on a red hat system you can

do yum install engineext yum install

postgress but most people

>> even today don't package their third

party apps like the apps that a

development team would write you're like

no we just put cicd we'll copy them over

there maybe put them in a tarball but we

usually never went to making official

Debian packages or RBM packages

But puppet meant you didn't have to go

through all of that work and you can

still end up with a package something

that was repeatable. So all the stuff we

used to do with Python and virtual in

all the things you used to do with Ruby

gems and you know the virtual

environments we have for that we got rid

of it just squish it all into a docker

container and you got rid of a lot of

dev tooling. So this is why I think it

resonated so much with developers

because we cleaned up the mess of

working on multiple projects and so I

was attracted to that comp was

compatible with that and then coro was

the thing that I was like you know what

I think I know what I want to do but I

didn't understand distributed systems

not to the degree what coro was doing.

So when I moved to the the what was the

idea behind coros was like Google's

infrastructure for everyone else and so

at that time we did there was a tool

called MSOS um the board paper had

already been published I tried to read

it when I was at puppet labs I don't

understand any of this stuff is hard to

install I couldn't justify it but we

would see kind of the rumblings of the

Twitter folks talking about the

distributed system and all this maybe

big data stuff is going around but I was

like I just don't understand it seems

incompatible with the stuff that I think

about even as someone who's worked at

Google that had a system like this,

right? They had Google cluster file

system at this time. It didn't seem as

complicated as this MS thing. So I was

like, I dismissed it. But what cores did

was build on top of Docker. Cor is like,

what if we had an operating system that

only had Docker on it? Everything is

written in Go. We can have a little key

value store where you can put your

config and we would just synchronize it

to all the machines. And that was so

compatible with the comp dway way. And

so I'm looking at this cores thing. And

I'm like, yo, this looks a little bit

more like the future because that's what

we used to do. You know, I had at this

time I was a software developer at

Puppet. I was a software developer, VP

of engineering at the other company. And

I was like, you know what, ops can learn

a lot from the uh Docker way of thinking

about the world because as a system

administrator, we always try to make the

OS small, remove things you don't need

so it can be secure and repeatable.

Docker was like for the things that need

to change, just put it here and isolate

it. And Cororos is like, "What if you

had an operating system designed only to

do that?" And I met the Cororo team at

Gopher Con, a Go language conference.

And they saw me present. And what I

learned from the puppet days, every

presentation is an interview. I don't

think a lot of people think about it

that way cuz people are looking at you

on stage and they get to see what you're

about. And so at Gopher Con, I remember

also Rob Pike and the original creators

of Goldinger. Oh, this is like the first

Gopher Con, right? And so the original

creators, Russ Cox, all these people I

look up to, Brad Fitzpatrick, and

they're all in the audience. And I

remember I had a talk, two things. I'm

sitting in the audience waiting for my

turn. I'm number four on the list or

something like this. And the two people

who started Gopher Con, they're just

from the community, Brian Kettleston and

Eric St. Martin. And they're new to this

conference scene. Like you could tell,

right? You know, they were the best MC's

in the world. But they were like, "Hey,

welcome to Gopher Con." And at the point

in time, Ruby is still dominating. And

down the street, there was the Ruby

conference going on. And we were just in

this other building. And I remember the

first talk they introduced Rob Pike and

he gave this amazing keynote around

Hello World. He went up all the way down

to the compiler. He went all the way up

and he described how the language took

shape. It felt simple on the surface,

but it went super deep. And it's like

Rob Pike had also come full circle from

his AT&T days through Unicode through

all the stuff that he's ever done. And

now we get to see one of his best works,

Golang. And my talk was titled Golang

for system administrators. I wanted them

to see that there's a better way. The

way they introduced Rob Pike, though, I

was like, "Oh man, this is Rob Pike. You

got to you got to have more energy than

that for Rob Pike." So, I'm sitting in

my chair and I don't know them, but I'm

sitting with a buddy of mine from that

company where we rewrote everything in

Golang, Billy Click. We're sitting next

to him. Say, "Hey, Bill, I'm going to go

ask them, can I be the MC?" He's like,

"What?" Okay. So, I'm whispering. And I

walk to the backstage. It's like, "Hey,

Eric, uh, Brian, uh, can I try my hand

at being the MC?" And they're like,

"Sure." Right? And they knew who at

least who I was because they accepted

the talk. And so I don't know if it was

after Rob, but I came out next. So like,

"Hey, I'm Kelsey High Tower. You may not

know me, but I'm going to be your MC for

the rest of the day." And I don't know

what happened because it was my first

time doing that. I'm cracking jokes. I'm

having fun. And I said, "Hey, from here

on out, when anyone comes to the stage,

it needs to be loud in here to the point

where we can get kicked out." And so I

was, "All right." Hey, so our next

speaker and I think it might have been

Derek Coloulston, you know, he's like a

Google. He was talking about some ghost

stuff and I remember it got really loud

and then they come on stage. So if you

were a speaker ever before and it's like

you walk up to basically a standing

ovation, you're energized, everybody is

excited. I don't care what you do, the

energy level is high. And so he comes

out, he's having a good time, the

audience is having a good time. And then

eventually it was my turn. And I

realized like who introduces me. So I go

onto stage and I was like I'm next. So

we're going to try it like this. I'm

going to go back and I'm going to come

out and you guys gonna make a lot of

noise for my talk. And then I remember

just like sliding slowly behind the

curtain. So everyone's now laughing. And

then the music comes on and I walk out

surprised like hey. And everyone's

clapping and I do this talk and at that

time it's live demo or nothing. And at

the time they had this thing called go

present. So Rob Pike team, they wanted

to make sure they could use Go for

everything, even generating a slide deck

presentation.

>> It was all in Go.

>> It was all in Go. So you had this nice

HTML representation of your slides. You

just open up your browser.