Welcome to Fork Around and Find Out, the podcast about building, running, and maintaining
software and systems.
Hello and welcome to Fork Around and Find Out, the podcast that puts the EB in your
host, Justin Garrison, and with me, as always, it's Autumn Nash.
How's it going, Autumn?
Oh, you did this point with the dad joke.
Well, you know, today on the show, I'm looking at Duffy right now.
We got Duffy Cooley on the show, the field CTO of ISOvalent at Cisco, and he has a big
EB-PF shirt on.
So, you know, it just, it was there.
Okay, y'all, but like, Duffy is, okay, like I met Duffy before I knew how cool he was
and like how much of a legend he was in like, Kubernetes world.
And Duffy is like the kindest, nicest, most Buddha and everything is okay person, which
is not very, like, I don't know how you do that, like this much in infrastructure.
Like everything's always on fire and you're just like, and we're both from Hawaii, I'm
a Duffy fan, y'all.
Like.
What's funny is that a lot of people actually attribute that to being from Hawaii.
They attribute that.
It is!
But then we have an auto.
Yeah.
She's like, yeah, skip that, skip that.
It might be the large amounts of coffee that I drink, but like most people are like, it's
going to be okay.
And I'm like, no, it's not.
And then Duffy's like, it's going to be okay.
And I'm like, Duffy said it's going to be okay, so it's going to be okay.
What's funny is I think really what this comes down to, so I grew up in theater, which is
another one of those industries in which everything is always on fire.
Yep.
Right.
And then, and I realized in that experience that adding my own anxiety to the situation
was not going to help me solve literally anything.
Yeah.
Right.
So like the only way that I could really move forward in that environment with all these
egos and everything else that was happening was to actually be the calm one.
But it's wild because some people feel like they're gaslighting you when you tell it's
going to be okay, but Duffy never gives you that vibe.
You know what I mean?
Like some people, they make it worse when they say it's going to be okay.
And I'm like, this is not helping, but there's something about you that's genuine.
You know what I mean?
Like, like you are so kind.
Like you would think that like somebody with as much experience and all the cool things
you've done and the talks you've given and just the cool things you've done, like you're
just such a humble, kind human and you just have like this, just this thing about you.
And then when you hear you talking about your wife and your kids, oh my God, like, like
I was a fan before I knew how cool you were.
And then I found out you did all this stuff and it was just like, so cool.
I'm a fan.
Well, thank you, Adam.
I appreciate it.
So for people that haven't had the privilege of meeting you or talking to you, Duffy,
give us a background.
Where what started you in tech?
What have you kind of been doing and and then where you ended up now?
So I started in tech.
I was kind of I guess the first thing is, you know, from from the whole tech industry,
from working in the theater tech industry, I was always interested in technology.
Right. And so I was very fascinated.
And I joined, like the theater situation, like right around the time
that moving lights started happening, right, which means that there's a light
instrument that instead of actually having to focus on one place on the stage,
you can actually remotely program that light instrument to point at different parts
of the stage, use different colors and all this other stuff.
And that to me was like, I was like, technology is really where it's at.
That's what I want to focus on.
When I left Hawaii to come back to California, it was actually much more
difficult to get into sound lighting and staging as that it was in Hawaii,
where where I was at the time when I first started.
And so I started getting into computers.
Like in high school, I took I was like the TA for the computer class,
all that stuff, because all of that stuff always made sense to me.
And then I moved into in my in my professional time.
I went back and forth between California and Hawaii.
In Hawaii, I was always doing lighting, sound, staging and rigging.
And in in California, I was always doing tech.
Tech stuff, either doing systems administration or network administration,
that kind of stuff.
At some point, I got really into tech and I started doing I worked
for a company called North Point Communications,
where I kind of quickly moved up the.
Support letter from a place where I was just doing support for people
who were installing DSL into homes.
I was actually the person they would call to help them
subscribe, align and do all that stuff.
I moved up basically up into the the network architecture team
very quickly, because I was able to like understand this stuff
and grow and learn things quickly.
And and that was like, you know, operating ATM networks
that cross the across the U.S. and across the globe.
And then the dot com thing fell apart and I left
and went on the road doing Renaissance fairs for a long time.
And then up for years, I guess.
This is why Duffy is the coolest.
And then I came back and did more network administration,
more systems administration.
And then, yeah, I worked for Juniper Networks for about five and a half years.
And then I had an opportunity to really kind of change
the trajectory of my career.
And I joined a startup, which was called NYSERA,
which was a network virtualization startup.
And it was really a super interesting job because
the opportunity was I was coming to NYSERA
after spending six years working on hardware and software labs at Juniper Networks.
So at that point, I had a really clear picture
of a lot of the ways that one can break a network
like pretty much had discovered, you know, because in a lab,
you're trying to do that, right?
So like I was able to really understand the troubleshoot
and deeply understand what's happening with a network,
regardless of the, you know, the situation we're in.
And so when I went to NYSERA,
can we point out that Justin and Duffy both started as like TAing
and support and like figuring things out?
Oh, man, help desk is so is such a wonderful start.
And the people that hire people, please hear this.
You don't always have to have a fancy degree.
It is worth so much salt to be able to figure out problems and come from help desk.
Like that sometimes you may not have the avenue to go to a fancy degree,
but kids do have the avenue to get a help desk job.
Please let that be like a way to get in because look at these wonderful
technologists here that like you guys are now giants in the field.
And where did you start?
Help desk, which is something that's accessible.
One thousand percent.
Good, I don't agree more.
And I didn't I never went to college.
I dropped out of high school.
And you still are bad ass and awesome.
And I have a fancy degree and learn so much more in the help desk
than I did in my degrees.
It's a while though, because Justin has so much personality
and it's so hard to find like an engineer with personality
and he's got a math degree and you would assume that he's boring,
but he's so much fun. Who would have thought?
Yeah, but trust me, I think also sees the value in like the people puzzle.
Right. You also see the value in the fact that like no matter
how much you know about a technology, if you're not able to communicate,
but you know, you're not able to engage with real people about the technology.
You're never going to really reach that led to your to both of your success
because you guys do a lot more.
I feel like you both are very good with people
compared to your technical to your typical
technical technological people.
I think the humility of help desk for me help me know like I never
I never tried to be like above the help desk, right?
Like I'm still even today.
Other engineers that right, like, oh, my God,
some people are so fucking insufferable.
It's all just levels of help desk and if you are putting down people
at the front line or people that even even people that come and say,
I have a bug and you're like, oh, you're you're doing it wrong.
You're you're doing something that's like completely
not the way it's designed to work or whatever.
Like it's not their problem, right?
Like we wrote the docks wrong or whatever other engineers.
And I think not having that humility and not being able to look at that.
Like what is the word intro, intro, introspective?
No, and when you work in two different fields,
it's on my like, I'm thinking about inter or like inter
when you basically take a field like interdiscipline, maybe?
Yeah, something like that.
But it's it's like interdiscipline or something.
It's a word that I was putting somewhere in a doc somewhere.
OK, but like to take like how you said you did like lighting
and help desk and to take that and then how those skills affect you.
And like when you come in as a technologist,
like I think the like when your engineers on a team lack
being able to see other people's skills and how that could bring to a team
because engineering is so different.
Like you can be doing infrastructure, you can be doing data.
There's not always going to be like a one to one, you know what I mean?
And I think that we like, especially right now,
and we're trying to do so much more with less being able to figure out
how to be force multipliers in your team and to figure out like what skills match.
I think we are going to really mess up not hiring those people
that worked at that help desk that have that background because some of them
like Kelsey Hightower, Duffy, Justin, like how many people like don't.
And can you imagine if somebody missed out on the Duffy or Kelsey or Justin?
Like that, like.
But how'd you go to Hawaii?
What made you go to Hawaii?
Tell us about that. That's so interesting.
Oh, when I was when my mom and my stepfather when I was six
and my sister was no, I was eight.
My sister was two years younger than me.
So she was six. So we moved to Hawaii at that time.
And it's partially because my stepfather and my mother really loved it over there.
And we just they wanted to go live over there.
And so good reason.
So my grandma, that's how we all ended up in Hawaii.
Definitely a different time.
It was a beautiful time to grow up in Hawaii,
but it's definitely a very different time than like, you know,
even the time that my kids growing up in such a wild thing.
But but yeah, and then at some point,
like I came back to California to live with my father.
And that's where I got into like all the other fun stuff there.
It's crazy because my childhood was very much hopping back and forth
between California and Hawaii.
So it's really cool to see somebody at the similar.
Like I'm like, how many people in California do this?
Oh, man, my roommates in college, three, two of them were from Hawaii.
It's wild.
Like, like everyone in California, Nevada and in Oregon,
I feel like there's so many of those colleges that we just all like
gravitate to towards to.
So what do you do after you did that?
You said Juniper Labs, I think.
Oh, yeah.
Then I went to actually Juniper's a big networking company, kind of like Cisco.
That's funny.
Now I've worked for the two big networking companies.
Full cycle.
The so after so,
and I say it was a trippy thing because it was like bringing all of my experience
and understanding and troubleshooting networking and then trying to bring
reality to a bunch of really intelligent engineers who were trying
to reinvent networking in the software.
So how hard I know how to go wrong, what could go wrong?
But the whole idea of like, you know, so like what I brought to that situation
was like, they would write some, they wrote an entire like software
stack that was for networking and I would come into it and say, OK,
but how do I troubleshoot it?
Like, how do I understand that this is happening?
I'm looking for this behavior on a regular network.
How do I find that behavior on a virtual network?
Right.
Like, and just kind of helping like bring a real sense of like,
this is how the real thing works.
Help me find an analog for that in the virtual thing,
which was a wild experience.
And then, yeah, after that, I went off and to
after NYSERA, I left and went to Apple for the first time.
I worked at Apple for building the very first shared infrastructure at Apple,
which was also a real blast, had a lot of fun there.
That was actually all based on Mezos and Heroku.
And I also did a bunch of stuff with like NSX and stuff there
while I was while I was still at VMware as part of the NYSERA acquisition.
And then after Apple, I went to a small company called Illumeo,
which is a network security startup.
I was there for a year and then I left,
mainly because I didn't it was mostly it was mostly concerned
about the shape, the the forward direction of the product.
I was like, I wasn't super happy with it.
And so I left and went and did, you know, the next thing, which was.
I guess back where was that?
So I went then to CoroS.
And CoroS was an amazing experience.
So basically because of my experience at Apple, I was like,
I basically called CoroS up and was like, hey, you should hire me.
And they're like, why?
And then they allowed me to come in for an interview and I met Redbeard
and I met a bunch of other absolute amazing people in our industry.
And they were very happy to see me come in an interview.
And but they hadn't they didn't know me for a minute, Adam.
And I didn't really know Kubernetes.
I just saw that there was a lot of opportunity in Kubernetes,
because when I was looking at the Kubernetes ecosystem at that time,
I was like, oh, my gosh, this is like OpenStack was back when OpenStack was very little.
I saw this like API driven architecture.
I saw a lot of people really jumping on board and bringing their own ideas
and building a whole community around it.
And I was like, that's the next train.
Got to go, right?
Like I want to go work on Kubernetes and who better to work on Kubernetes?
With then CoroS.
So I think that's so legit, legit and a good,
a good thing to pass down to the next generation,
because a lot of working in tech really is like doing a thing, doing it well.
And then being like, what is the next train?
Because that's kind of the cycle and how to survive.
I think that's almost like it would be nice to hear you elaborate
on if you have any advice on that.
Yeah, I think I think I think you're spot on.
It's like, you know, like when, you know, I feel like everybody
on this podcast is a lifelong learner, right?
Somebody who is constantly evaluating what's happening in the space,
constantly evaluating what's happening, you know, like new technologies,
what's happening with AI, what's happening, you can hate on it.
It's all good, right?
But like it doesn't mean you get to like completely disconnect
from like what's actually happening in that space, right?
Like you still have to like be aware of what's happening
in the different technology realms in which we work,
because really good stuff comes out of it, regardless of like, you know,
whether we whether we believe it's the right direction.
There's some really interesting stuff as a technologist to follow along.
And then when you see one, yeah, it's really it works with my ADHD so well.
Right. And then when you see one that you're like, very excited about
that really connects with you as a technologist, then you're like,
well, how do I get involved in that?
And honestly, there's more ways to get involved in that stuff now
than there have ever been, right?
Thanks to open source, thanks to big communities like the CNCF.
Thanks to like thanks to just so many different.
There's so many there's so many doorways into these things
that they were when we were younger, right?
Like, I feel like it used to be advocated for yourself to get a job,
though, like, you know what I mean?
Like, because that takes a lot of guards.
Yeah, definitely.
Those communities used to be private meetups.
Like you had to be in a location, you had to know somebody
to be able to like get in the door.
And even when I think back of like the the older days of technology,
like,
Wozniak just called up a Packard, like Hewlett Packard, right?
He just called them and said, hey, can I have can I have a job?
And they're like, yeah, like that's like one of his stories.
Like, yeah, I just found them in the phone book and called them and said,
give me a job. I said, yeah, we'll go ahead.
You can come on over and interview.
And like those sorts of like stories are like have happened over time,
but it's always like someone you knew that got you in the door.
And now like those communities have expanded and are hopefully
a little more friendly to let people that don't have a background say,
hey, if you want to show up and do some work, here's a bunch of first
first issues that you can you can try.
I love you guys. Exactly.
No, it's a little different when you're a woman.
I think that we are like really in a not even just a woman.
Like I think that because of the layoffs and because of where we are,
maybe open source might sort of be that way still.
But I think that it's like people want you to.
I don't know.
Like I feel like we're really in that point where like I know that we need
to earn trust right when it comes to like being engineers.
But like I hope it doesn't push us back into more gatekeeping ways.
You know what I mean? For sure.
Like I think that like right now, so much of the hiring is like,
how fancy is your degree? How many like like some of like,
do you remember when they used to ask if you had an experience in a language
but they asked for experiences longer than the language existed?
It's that times like a hundred, you know?
And I think that like open source is like, yes, like I love I'm a proponent
of open source, but it's hard to figure out where you fit in.
Maybe do you guys have any advice on like maybe people that are
starting how to figure out where you fit into those communities?
Yeah, I think I mean, from my perspective, I think.
It comes down to those communities again, right?
If you can find an area of technology, whether that's infrastructure
or, you know, programming and go or solving an audio problem
in some program or video editing or like, you know, something like that.
Then the question is like, how do you actually connect with a community
that's based around that thing that you're interested in?
And even if you don't like show up at like, you know,
I mean, there's a couple of different ways into that.
Like some of those things, many of those things these days will actually have
like community hours and those sorts of things where you could actually show up
and just be part of it and ask questions and, you know, like kind of do the people
part of it and then there's other opportunities where like it's just
to point it out like the good first issue and that sort of stuff.
And what this does is it does a number of really, really good things for you as a person.
Like one of the things it does is it makes you actually start thinking
about the problems that that software system or infrastructure has, right?
In a way that is more real because you're actually in there trying
to actually solve real problems and encoding or if you're actually trying
to solve real problems and communication or like whatever it is that you're working on,
you're actually interfacing with that real, that real thing.
And that puts you in my mind, in my mind, it kind of puts you in a better mindset around
like, what is this really going to be like when I decide to do this?
Or if I get fortunate enough to actually have a job in it?
Like, what's that going to really be like?
Like having that exposure really changes it.
I wish that open source projects also saw the awesome opportunity in new people
because when you write docs, but you've used something for forever,
the docs are never good.
I don't care what you say, they're just not.
When you get new people to try your docs, they find bugs
that nobody will ever find if they know, right?
Like those new people are such an opportunity to make things better
that I wish that that's how we approach the situation.
Like, there's something I really liked about your website.
And you say, like, you talk about how you see, like, how you bring a different perspective.
What is it on your website?
It's something about, like, perspective and you make things, like, easier.
And I thought, like, that's so, like, legit, though.
As Duffy opens his website to check what it was.
It has been a minute since I was there.
Making things possible and sometimes easier.
Yeah, I think there's something else that you had in a talk somewhere
and it talked about, like, how you see perspective.
And that's so real, though, right?
Because there's always different ways to build things or go about things.
But I think the way that you switch your perspective is so real.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think it's also, but I do feel like it kind of comes a little bit later,
but that's definitely a big part of the people puzzle.
Another way to put that is if you can't teach a thing, then you don't understand it.
Oh, that's so real.
Right, because, like, if you, like, and that, that's where the source of that was for me.
And so the idea of the idea of that is that I can only ever understand
a problem with the tools at my disposal.
So my own eyes, my own brain, my own hands, I can understand that problem only so far.
But then as soon as I tried to describe the problem that I have to someone else
and they go, oh, well, what about this?
Or what about that? Or have you thought about this?
Boom, right? Like, I'm learning more in that moment
than I would ever have been able to learn without those questions, without that perspective.
But so that's why I love giving talks.
Yeah, exactly. Right.
People come up and they ask you questions.
And also, even if you're giving talks with, like, someone else,
just just the two of you, like, giving a talk, you have two perspectives.
That's already twice as much perspective as when you started, right?
Like, it's that.
But yeah, for me, it's like, I can only learn.
I can't learn more about a thing without somebody else asking me those questions
or trusting me to ask those questions.
That's why Paraportal Programming is also really good, too.
How did you get into Kubernetes?
Like, how did you go from, wow, this is cool.
And I think this is the new train to, like, being like, you are, like,
huge in the Kubernetes community.
Like, how do you get to the point of, like, learning and becoming
that subject matter expert in something new?
So, ironically, so, I mean, it was already very good
with infrastructure and distributed systems.
I spent years on Mezos, and I'd already, I've done a bunch with OpenStack.
I've been working on network virtualization.
I've done a bunch of things in distributed systems over time.
So, I had already built up a lot of intuition about how these systems should work.
And I, and also a lot of intuition around how to go and learn about a system, right?
So, learning about Kubernetes for me was, okay, let's understand the components.
Let's break them down.
Let's understand what each component does.
And then that was one thing.
But again, like, I can only ever understand it with my own experience, right?
So, the next thing I went to was, while I was at CoreOS, I joined the Kubernetes Slack.
And in the Kubernetes Slack, there's a room where everybody asks questions
that they have run into that they don't understand or some particular idea
that isn't working or whatever it is.
And it's still there, and it's still a very busy channel, probably one
of the busiest Slack channels I've ever seen.
And for a long time, like, for about six or eight months of the year
that I was at CoreOS before it was acquired, I was answering all of those questions.
So, every question that I saw in there that I thought was a question
that I didn't already know an answer to, I would go and figure it out and then come back
and give the answer and also describe how I figured it out, right?
Like, you know, this is how I went about finding this out,
or this is where I found the answer, or this is what the answer is, et cetera.
Like, it just kind of was answering all of those questions.
And that really expanded my brain on what Kubernetes says.
It really got me to a place where I understood the project, the people,
like what was actually happening with the code base, everything about that,
because I was deeply immersed in answering interesting technical questions,
helping solve bugs and do all of that stuff with that.
And CoreOS was very willing to let me build that presence, because it really,
I mean, one of the weird little industry secret things, I guess,
it's not really a secret, but if I spend my time in a public space teaching
and welcoming and making people feel like they're,
that they should be a part of the community and being technical
and doing all of that stuff, when I show up in a pre-sales conversation,
my job as a pre-sales engineer is to bring credibility to that conversation.
Job done. I've walked into the room.
Right? Like, people already know who I am.
They already know that I believe strongly in the thing I'm doing.
These are the things that people really want to see when they go approach
some new product to determine whether that product will be right fit for them,
or whether they will get any value out of it, right?
So for me, that was like, that was one of the big moments where I realized,
you know what, if I can do the thing that I love to do,
which is this whole engagement part, and it really helps me do the thing
that I'm paid to do, which is the pre-sales part.
I was trying to, like, write a blog or a talk, and I was writing about, like,
the different ways that contributing to open sourcing community
is actually a great way for corporations to get a return on investment
and by allowing your corporate employees to have hours to work on those things.
And I feel like that really goes back to it.
I was focusing on more, like, maintaining,
and the fact that when you have, like, a group of multiple companies
maintaining software is easier, and you can do it with less people,
and kind of how much we get from the infrastructure that is 70% open source.
But that is also, like, very true.
Like, you've earned trust with an entire community, you know,
and they know that you're not just selling them something.
So, like, that's so amazing.
Have you ever struggled with imposter syndrome, Duffy?
Yes, I have struggled with imposter syndrome.
But I will say that, like, I think it's a little bit like dancing, you know?
It's, like, one of those things where, like, everybody,
like, nobody's good at it when you start out.
Like, it's one of, it's like, and so I think I did come to kind of a reasonable conclusion of
I don't really want to, like, let the concern that I'm not going to be good enough be a problem.
And so instead, I tell myself every room I walk into,
every problem I engage with, I can improve that problem.
Right? And that primes my brain to think that no matter the situation,
I'm going to leave it better than I found it.
Right? As opposed to allowing my brain to prime itself in which it'll say,
you're going to walk in here and fall on your ass, right?
Like, I mean, like, you know, instead I'm going to walk in here
and I'm going to make it a better situation than it was when I, when I walked, before I walked in.
I love that.
And I'm not saying that that works for everybody.
I'm certainly not, I like, I understand that anxiety is a very different thing.
And I'm not, I'm not trying to say that, like, all you have to do is this.
Oh, no, that's still how you do it.
No, it's just that being, like, that's not where I'm going at all.
Yeah.
You know, like, simply, one simply just decides.
So I'm going to tell, no, it's not really that, you know.
But I like that.
I love the quote of, like, leaving the world a better place than, like, how you found it, though.
So I like how that kind of ties into that.
Yeah.
So that was how I got into the expertise side of the Kubernetes side of things,
which was really a blast.
It was like such a big learning time.
And then I went from CoroS when it was acquired by Red Hat.
And it became basically the thing we were building at CoroS was called Tectonic.
And that became OpenShift 3.
Is that right?
3 was the first.
I think 4 was the first one that shipped with the operators that Tectonic had.
And then, but I never worked for Red Hat.
Like, I decided that I didn't want to continue with Red Hat.
And so on my way to New York to go and interview for a job at Red Hat,
I also stopped at Heptio and interviewed there.
And I met Chris Nova, rest in peace.
And I met Joe Vita and Craig McClecky and so many amazing folks.
And I, so I interviewed there and then I flew to New York for this other thing.
And I decided already that I was going to go to Heptio.
I wasn't going to go to work for, but I hadn't received an offer yet.
And so I'm in New York.
I've decided I don't want to do this.
My very good friend Stephen Augustus is like working with at CoroS with me.
And, and Stephen decides that the job that I don't want is the one that he wants.
And I'm like, oh, we're making this happen.
So I spent the whole week positioning Stephen, right?
Like basically showing that I trust Stephen implicitly, right?
Like everything I did that week was really kind of setting up that situation.
And then at the end of the week, I was like, you know,
I think this really isn't going to be for me.
I'm going to go and do something else.
But you should really consider Stephen for this role.
And, and they're like, well, we can't because you have it.
So the only way that we could do that is if you resign.
I love there's two things that we need to pull out of this.
One, Chris Nova's like her legacy is so amazing
that it's come up with so many people on this podcast
that I didn't know her personally.
But I feel like I almost did by the fact that she's touched so many other people.
Also, the fact that you played it for it and helped out your friend
and like took care of your friend is so legit.
Like that is like having good friends in this community
and like helping your friend out is just like,
obviously Stephen's amazing at things, you know what I mean?
But the fact that you knew like, hey, this isn't for me,
but I had known someone like that would be perfect for this.
Can we have more of that?
Because that is so top tier, right?
And I know without reservation that Stephen would absolutely do the same thing
in the opposite thing, right?
And it really even wasn't about that for me.
It was just about the fact that I was like,
I see this opportunity to help my friend.
I'm going to go do that.
And then so that left us with a situation where I'm now without a job,
without pros, I have a prospects, right?
Like I'm waiting for an offer or whatever,
but I'm without a job, I'm in New York, I have my flight back,
I have my flight back, but I'm no longer an employee of CoroS or Red Hat.
I've turned in my laptop, I'm like, well, that's the show, you know?
And then I fly back home and my wife,
who has got to be one of the most patient people on the earth, right?
Because she already knows that I'm in this tumultuous situation
where I'm like likely things are going to change pretty soon and pretty rapidly.
But she's like, you know, I'm good with it, whatever.
Like, you know, just let me know how it's going.
Give me some heads up, you know?
And I'm like, well, I didn't work out, you know?
Like, I'm in New York, and I'm quitting like right in five minutes.
I'm going to quit, like, now.
Duffy was like, so what happened was...
She's like, where are you going?
Like, what's your next job?
And I'm like, well, I'm working on it, you know?
That must have been just a tiny bit scary, Duffy.
It was probably safer for you to be in New York at the time.
A little bit.
But she's very, like, she strongly believes that I will work it out,
which is one of those things where I think...
You don't have that in a relationship, Duffy.
So cute.
It is so cute.
It's interesting, too, that you mentioned, because like,
I feel like in at least the cloud native space,
Heptio had the same CoreOS vibe, right?
Like a pre-acquisition.
It was kind of the spiritual successor of where would CoreOS go next?
The spiritual successor, I love that.
And that was very much a Heptio kind of...
Even at CoreOS, like, Joe came to CoreOS in the SF office,
and I met him there first.
And I met Chris there, and I met a bunch of other...
They knew that they were closely connected, even as companies.
When Heptio was starting up, right?
Like, Joe came and talked to Brandon and Alex Pulvi
about, like, what they were doing.
It was all the way open between the two companies.
Sure.
So that was definitely part of it for sure.
I agree with you on the...
However, I will say that at CoreOS,
there was so many things that CoreOS were working on,
that I felt like it was only...
Like, as a technologist, I was like,
it's only a matter of time until something that we're working on
becomes the thing that pays the bills, right?
Like, that is a huge move forward.
At Heptio, it didn't really have that same sense.
Because at the end of the day, at Heptio,
I felt like I, personally, was the product, right?
It was myself, Josh Rosso, there were several of us, right?
But, like, fundamentally, Carl Danly, like,
we were the product.
We were the field engineering team at Heptio,
and we were the thing that Heptio was putting in the market.
Right, because Heptio was a consulting company,
not a product company.
But they wanted to be a product company.
The thesis behind Heptio was,
they had so much expertise already around Kubernetes
that they could come to market as a consulting company,
use the learning from that to develop products
and become a product company.
The interesting challenge is that,
in the market that we all operate in,
if you present yourself as a consulting company,
you are henceforth seen as a consulting company.
You can't just one day change your mind,
wake up and be a product company.
Like, that's, it's a very different go-to-market,
it's a very different, like,
it's a lot of very key intrinsic differences
in the way that people even think of you
when they're out there, like, looking for who,
who's going to help them do whatever it is.
That's also really interesting,
because it's almost like the chicken before the egg,
or the egg before the chicken,
because you're just assuming that this knowledge
will then create a product.
But what if the product's already an open source product
and they're just then consulting on it?
I mean, to be fair, like, some of the products
that we developed at Papdeo are still going strong.
And their company's long, you know, like Valero,
a lot of the early stuff,
a lot of the stuff that Gateway API is based on
came from Contour.
Like, there's a bunch of stuff that we worked on there
that, like, really became the way forward
for a lot of interesting technology in our space.
And do you think just the way that it started
just didn't set that up for success,
even though the product was good?
I think that, I think that really,
I think the company itself was not a product company,
despite the desire to be a product company.
I think the company itself went to market
and did everything else as a consulting company.
And when they tried to make that,
and they, I think they were,
we were kind of like having conversations
and stuff around like what it would take
to kind of change that when we were acquired by VMware.
Oh, okay.
So, two very fast years.
I actually got acquired at CoreOS and at Heptio,
both in the same tax year, which was dumb.
Wow.
Yeah.
You're a poor accountant.
It was fast.
And the VMware side of it,
because like VMware had,
where they turned the Heptio stuff into Tanzu,
or they had Tanzu in it,
I don't remember exactly the,
the before, before the Heptio acquisition,
VMware and VMware and Pivotal worked together
to develop a technology that was called PKS,
or Pivotal Governing to Service.
And that was based on Bosch.
And it was like their own,
the thing that they had built
in conjunction with Pivotal.
Pivotal, if you weren't aware,
Pivotal was a spin out of VMware.
So the relationship between the two companies
has always been very strong.
So, so that's what they had developed before it.
And when we came in,
and we started a brand new effort,
which was Tanzu.
Tanzu was all of the work of Heptio
coming into VMware
and creating this new construct
of like, how are we going to build
a single control plane
for multiple Kubernetes clusters?
That was actually a product
that we were developing as a product at Heptio
when we were required.
It was a, you know,
working with the VMware team
that was actually trying to develop a
Kubernetes offering on top of vSphere.
And that was at the time
it was called Project Pacific.
So we were working with them
to kind of turn that into
more of a cluster API model.
Because at the time in the original design,
they were thinking of each vSphere machine,
each vSphere host,
as a single cubelet,
which was wild.
And then they were like,
yeah, but you could,
because you're, you know,
a VMware offering,
you could say, you know,
you could actually develop
a different mechanism
leveraging cluster API
that will allow you to create
task-based clusters
on top of that whole thing,
instead,
with a slightly different interface.
So we worked with them
to develop that.
We did a bunch of there.
And then Pivotal was
acquired back into VMware,
which was a Pivotal moment.
That's wild.
Yeah, if you will.
Oh my God, Duffy,
just dad joked you.
Like, he just,
he just dad joked you.
I mean,
the thing about dad jokes
is they have to be bad,
but also they have to be easy,
right?
It just has to be right there
and he just grabbed it.
So it's totally,
it was so good though.
Like, I just,
I'm so proud of you, Duffy.
It was definitely a Pivotal moment.
It was so,
it was wild.
Y'all met Justin's face.
He was like,
did you just dad joke me
on my own?
But like, yeah, it's great.
So they came in,
we were,
Heptio was,
I think,
like maybe 75,
80 people when we were acquired.
And Pivotal was
an entire organization.
With offices in multiple states,
like it was a lot of people.
And so what that,
and VMware,
for all of its strengths as a company,
honestly, I've never met a company
that takes better care of its employees
than VMware did.
And I could have stories about that.
But they didn't really have a clear,
concise vision
of how
bringing Pivotal in
and having Heptio there
and working on Tanzu
would all come together.
Now, part of that was
that VMware was fighting for its life.
It was all happening right before,
like the whole broad company.
And like,
it's hard to really have
a good picture
of what the road ahead looks like
when you're realizing
there isn't much of it left, right?
It's kind of terrifying.
So what happened here was,
like,
it really became a very big mess.
Like with people on both sides,
Heptio, Pivotal, VMware,
all trying to figure out
what was going to happen all at once,
but not doing it in a way that was cohesive.
And it left a very big mess
when the whole Broadcom thing happened.
Yeah.
I mean, they also just jackhammered the road.
I was going to say,
like, do you think that contributed
to the, like,
final fallout of how things just,
I feel like a lot of acquisitions, like,
get spicy,
but people were so upset with VMware
when after the Broadcom thing.
You know what I mean?
Like,
I think the challenge is that,
and I mean, it's a fascinating thing.
Some of this is stuff
that we all know intrinsically, right?
Like, but what it comes down to is,
as an industry in general,
people who buy a hypervisor,
everybody across the entire world,
like automotive companies, banks,
financial companies,
everyone had built a high trust relationship
with VMware.
And VMware had gone to market
with its sales and everything else
to really support that function,
really support a high trust relationship
with its customers.
Broadcom,
they don't have that.
And they,
and it's not really,
like, in the company guide to do it.
So when this acquisition happened,
basically it became a situation where,
like, I, even though I had a really high trust
relationship with VMware,
I don't, like, the other side of the table
really doesn't understand,
A, that relationship at all,
or know how to provide me something
that allows me to understand the way forward.
And so it's one of those things where it's like,
if you put all of your,
if you put some key focus area of your technology
that keeps you going as a company
in just one place,
and you're not paying attention
to what's happening in the space,
you're not, like, we're learning,
hey, you know what,
I feel like this is actually a risk
because I'm only counting on VMware
to do this job.
If I just believe in my mind
that VMware will be there forever,
I might be making a mistake, right?
Like, and that was like-
Kind of gets back to how you're talking
about seeing that next train too, you know?
Yeah.
I also think it's interesting that
I think a lot of times we get two companies
that align on technology, right?
And they want to acquire, based off of technology,
and their leadership principles
and their kind of like who they are
is an essence of a company
can be very different, right?
So even though their technology
is married together well,
they're as a company,
and like the way that they interact
with customers,
the way that they kind of like,
how you kind of like talked about
how when you're a product company
versus consulting company,
like a lot of that,
I think people don't realize
how much that can affect
an acquisition or a project transition
or a pivot, right?
Yeah, I completely agree.
Yeah, I mean, like right around that same time
I had this idea in my head
that I was like, could you imagine
if instead of Broadcom acquiring VMware,
if it was Google?
I actually think that would have been
dangerous and fire,
but like in kind of a good way,
you know what I mean?
No, but like, it would have made them so powerful
and because people like you said
in their minds,
they were going to use VMware forever.
They were locked in like they,
and they knew to a certain extent
that they were locked in
and usually people get real nervous
and nervous about licenses
that they can't get out of
and people walked into it just like,
just, you know what I mean?
But also out of every company
that has the least amount of trust,
like Google is a meme
of how they deprecate things.
You know that Justin was going to,
this is this is when you don't intense Google
and Justin's going to be like,
and this is where I'm like,
this would have been so fascinating
if it had happened that way.
Like in the universe where
VMware was acquired by Google,
it would have been-
It's like Marvel,
the different universes and timelines,
like what was happening, yeah.
Because like,
because the part of the challenge
that Google has continually,
right, is that they have no-
Is renaming things?
No, they don't have that.
They also don't have like,
they don't have any way to
instantiate that trust relationship
that we were talking about.
Right?
They, like if that,
but if they had bought like,
literally an entire enterprise
sales force that knew how to do that,
it would be a really very,
it would be a very interesting thing
to see how that shaped-
I honestly think tech companies in general
are going to struggle with the trust
going forward.
Like there's been such a shake-up
and it's been such a turbulent time
that I think we forget
how much trust has to do with it.
You know?
And even, I mean,
the Broadcom thing is a great example.
Like it's really changed the world
for a lot of companies.
Not just in how they see the hypervisor,
but how they see networking,
how they see firewalling,
how they see file storage,
how they see like all of the things
that they have to concern themselves with
as a company have fundamentally changed
because they realize,
oh, I was making the bet
that this company was going to be around
and I can't really make that bet anymore.
I think if you also take that
and then the way that people
are going to want to be so cloud-agnostic
and then are like,
you know, like people are like
in this new era of
do I want to...
Also, I think that like
Justin's going to disagree with me,
but I think people romanticize on-prem.
And it's not that I don't think it's worthy,
but I just think that we're piping it up
a little bit more than
people want to take into account
how much that takes,
which I think when you know
what you're doing, it is good, right?
Like, and I think Kolo is a very good
proponent and option.
But I think that it's very much
spicy headlines right now, you know?
And like because we are in just
a spicy headline AI
and all of the things,
like it's really interesting.
Like I can't tell if like
I'm depressed and we're all doomed
or if this is going to be the most like
fire amazing innovation
that's going to come out
because as people get so high level
about things,
there's also these cool like
new cloud companies coming out
or you know what I mean?
Like, so I think it's like
we are almost giving people trust
issues with technology right now.
I do find it funny,
like the whole vendor lock in thing
wasn't an issue until the cloud
when they're like,
hey, if I'm going to AWS,
I want to make sure I can come out.
That's not true.
Oracle Database is where the Oracle
Database is where that was like
vendor lockout 101.
But like Oracle Database was like,
just like we have to have the biggest
best thing.
So we're paying the millions of dollars.
Oracle Database is Sun and Java
and all kinds of things.
And then wait,
there's another layer.
Talk about how open source was like,
we're going to be open source.
Now you have a license
and you can't use all this stuff
you contributed to.
We are in the like FAFO of like
how much you can get away with.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like just what we were talking
about on Blue Sky the other day,
talking about if we would like to,
like what is the basis of like,
do you run your own server?
Are we having it in the cloud?
Like we are at a point
where we are using things
that we've never used before.
So it's not as easy as,
okay, I'll just run my own servers anymore
because how are you making those servers redundant?
How are you doing all this?
But we also have realized how
giving one company too much trust
has screwed us over.
So it's like this new kind of
where do we go forward in open source?
Like what are we contributing to?
What are we putting our,
like what are we betting on?
Because it could be licensed
or what are we doing with the cloud?
Like I really think that we're...
I find that trust story interesting
on both the small and large level.
Yeah, because they're two different levels.
Lots of giant companies
deprecating things,
changing pricing models,
doing whatever.
It's like you're locked in,
we're going to then now just like screw you over.
And the small companies that say,
hey, you've been using this for free.
Now we're rug pulling you
and we're changing the license
and you have to pay us for it.
Like in both cases,
trust is eroding on the...
People are like, I can't trust the startup
because what if they disappear?
It's like, oh, but you can't trust the large company either
because they're going to deprecate it
or charge you more or whatever.
Because for a minute there,
large companies were the scary thing
and everybody was starting to like,
put trust into startups.
People that I know that not just people
that are using large companies
are going to startups,
but people that are fanged resumes
were like, nah, dude.
And all go like,
we are seeing this crazy migration and change.
It's wild.
I mean, there's a third part of this,
which is that like foundations
are a part of this puzzle too, right?
So foundations are a situation
where they might say like,
we the foundation in our bylaws,
we cannot change the license of software,
but you can donate it to us
like CNCF, the next foundation,
these sorts of things.
You can't move a project that's in the CNCF
from an open source license to another license.
I think that's going to be interesting too.
Yeah, but you can't change it.
But then I also think of like Rocket, right?
Like it's a core OS project
that was a CNCF project that was still there.
It just got, it just went away
because at some point you still need people to show up.
Nobody was working on it, right?
Yeah.
But I think that's what we're going to like really get into,
like because if you think about it,
like people don't know what open source to trust,
are you going to take it from underneath us
and like after we contribute to it?
And like it's,
I really think that open source is the way forward
because like the fact,
like when you have four of the biggest companies
that do whatever you're trying to do,
and you're all maintaining the same software
and catching the same CVEs, you know what I mean?
That's a force multiplier
that you cannot create.
Like it would cost so much money to do that, right?
But at the same time,
if we can't trust each other
and we can't meet in the middle somewhere,
and just if you look at it,
like the CNCF and like the Linux foundation
are kind of like these new,
like they're the basis
in which these new foundations are starting.
Rust very much took that game plan
and saw what was happening,
what was good, what was bad to build that.
So it's like, it's just interesting.
Like we are truly like,
if you look at how much infrastructure
and just tech has grown in the last 10 years,
but now it's like almost like,
I don't even know how you make it faster,
but we are in this crazy transition period.
It's true, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I think the, I mean, to your point,
like I guess to both of your points,
I am an engineer working on an open source project.
The project reaches some level of success.
I, as an engineer or the author of that project,
have a decision to make.
Do I change the license of that
to make more money off of that project?
Do I contribute that project
to an open source foundation
so that that eventuality is protected from,
but continue doing the work
against that project as I move forward?
Do I find some middle ground
where I could donate the project,
but still sell an enterprise offering of that project?
Like there's this,
it's a really interesting time to your point.
And it's really hard
because like all of these answers are correct.
Right, like I worked on this idea.
The idea was it was going to help me pay my bills.
I need to buy food.
I need to pay rent, right?
That is so true.
I love working on this thing, you know, but like.
I have the infrastructure, you know,
like if a small company is going to do something,
they've got to have the money to continue the product.
So it's a tough one because it's like, you know,
from the outside, it's all,
it's very easy for us to judge the actions of others
in relation to all of this.
When we think, you know,
I trusted you to do this and this is what happened.
But at the end of the day, it's like,
it's not even really about business.
It's about how do I put food on my table?
I think we've got to find that middle ground though.
Like the engineers and the companies,
they have to come or just open source and companies
have to come to that medical ground
because we have to make it sustainable.
Like the bottom line is 70% of infrastructure
comes from open source.
So companies need open source
and open source needs the money from companies
and the manpower and trying to find a way
to make that work is going to be so important.
I really admire your career,
like how you've navigated it
and you've just stayed in open source
but also got to like, I don't know,
I just feel like you get to work on so many amazing,
high level, cool ways to like move the industry forward.
What advice would you give to like me or other people
or just yourself like throughout your,
like what do you wish you knew throughout your career?
Like when you were picking jobs
or just pivoting and learning things,
like what do you feel like you learned
if you could give yourself advice?
When I was very young, my dad was a chef
and he was also a barber
and he was also a Vietnam vet.
He did a, and I remember us having a conversation
when I was kind of starting to get into
the working part of period of my life
where I was like working with him in the kitchen
and I was doing all those other stuff.
I remember him telling me, you should get paid
for what you know, not what you do.
And that really shaped things for me
because it really helped me understand that like,
when I look forward to like what I want to go do as a career,
when I look forward, and I've jumped around a lot.
I've been a bartender, I've been a radio station DJ,
I've been a bouncer, I've done personal security,
I've worked in tech across a variety of different areas
and in each of them, I was realizing that the thing
that differentiated me in that job
was that I want to know more.
I love that curiosity, which comes back to something
that Justin said about like, even in this new age of AI,
like curiosity is going to be what sets people apart.
Exactly, that's always going to be your differentiator, right?
Like, and it's hard, I mean, it's hard, it's a hard thing
because to be fair, like, I've been at it
for quite a long time at this point,
so it's just intrinsic in the way that I see the world
that I want to know more about a thing,
I'm going to go learn it.
That's just how it works for me, right?
But it wasn't always that way.
And I think if I were to give myself advice,
it's just to embrace that curiosity,
embrace that mindset because that's the thing
that moves you forward.
That's the thing that makes people see a bigger picture,
whether it's yourself that sees that bigger picture
or it's the people that you're working with
to see that bigger picture, that curiosity that you bring to it
and that drive to learn more about different things
that are happening in the space.
Can't say enough about it.
And a lot of times at the whole, like,
what's the next train, right?
Like, I tell people, like, what are we going at?
Like, don't worry about it.
What are you interested in now, right?
Like, whatever you are interested in now
is the thing you should go chase
because that's the thing you're going to be driven
to learn more about.
And if I've learned anything in my career,
it's that everything is cyclical, right?
Like, all the networking stuff you did 15 years ago
came right back at you in Kubernetes.
It's so wild.
It's like a, like, heck is like a bunch of,
like, it's a hype cycle.
But like, really, everything new is old and old is new
and it's just wild.
Yeah, that cycle is a wheel.
And as you're learning one thing,
it's going to come back around at some point.
And you're like, hey, I remember how to debug this
from 10 years ago.
Even if it's not the same tooling,
you still kind of remember the fundamentals.
Except for when you look at code that you wrote last week.
That person's an idiot.
And that person should have never written that code.
It's just never, never look at the commit,
get blamed and see yourself.
Yeah, it's the worst.
Also, I think it's so funny that Duffy mentioned
that you, like, did security or something.
Dude, Duffy is the kindest, sweetest person
and then you meet him in real life
and Duffy is so tall.
Like, hello.
But you're still like the sweetest person.
And I said, I think the other part of it is, like,
all these different technologies are one thing,
but you know the one through line for me,
as I'm sure it is both of you, is people.
I love the people.
I know it's weird because I don't really like people, people.
But the tech people, like, oh my God.
Like, being able to engage with people around those things
that you're interested in, like, that's the other,
like if there's one part of the puzzle
that is literally consistently through lines
all the way through everything I've done,
it's, I have to work with those people.
I have to figure out what makes them tick.
I have to figure out what, you know, what they find interesting.
And I have to, like, figure out how to communicate with them.
And that's a puzzle I've been playing with my whole life.
That's what I love about Linux.
Linux, I mean, it might be the, like,
every now and then we get some grouchy old dudes.
But, like, it is just, oh, I love the community.
Like, if you want to see people, like,
hardcore, nerd out about some stuff,
and just customize things to absolute, like, chaotic, like...
Just because they can.
Yes!
Like, oh my God, like, I'm either, like, oh,
people, like, I don't want to go to the grocery store,
but get me, like, a Linux conference,
and I'm just, like, I want to talk to all the people.
Like, I asked Carrie the other day.
I was like, who's the golden retriever,
and who's the black cat in our friendship?
And she looked at me, Justin.
It was offensive how she looked at me.
She was like, duh, you're the golden retriever.
And I'm like, but not with everybody.
And then I thought about it, like,
wait, do you find your people, though?
It's so different.
Like, dude, I swear, one day I'm going to find out
how to work in Kubernetes just staying out with you guys,
because, like, it's the people, like...
Duffy, when did you leave VMware and go to Isovalent?
When was that?
After I left VMware, I actually went back to Apple
for six months and realized that it was kind of a rerun
of the last time I was there, and then I left.
And I went to, but I had interviewed,
I mean, I've known Dan.
Dan Wentland is the CEO of Isovalent.
He's somebody I worked with very closely at NYSERA.
Again, right, the loop.
And so when I, so I had talked to Dan
about an opportunity to do what I'm doing at Isovalent,
and then I saw an opportunity to go back to Apple
to do Kubernetes there with a bunch of other friends
that I'd known there for years.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm going to do the Apple thing,
because I feel like it would be really great
to see that finish, right?
To see, close that loop.
Yeah.
It was not ready to be closed.
And so I left and went back to Isovalent,
and I've been at Isovalent since,
and had a wonderful time throughout this whole acquisition.
And I was just telling...
Duffy, when you handle things, it's so classy.
Like, I just, like...
Duffy can tell you the good and the bad,
and he makes it sound so good.
And it's like, oh, just like, I'm just like...
I just teach me that quality.
Like, the way you sum things up.
I was like, that was so classy.
Like...
Thank you.
Yeah.
And then, yeah.
And then the acquisition in Disysco,
it's like one of...
I've been through this a few times,
and this is the one that I am the most positive on.
Like, I actually do think I might be here the whole time.
Like that, like...
Because I'm actually working on super fascinating things.
Like, Disysco is in a place where it's...
Like, having its Microsoft moment,
whether it succeeds or fails, is all up in the air.
But like, it's really changing as a company.
Like, we have one product leader in front of all of Disysco.
That's never happened in the history of the company.
We have, like, you know,
reorganizations happening to basically restructure the company
to go to market as one product.
It's like, it's...
I never thought in my career that I would have an opportunity
to see a giant like Disysco go through that much change.
And I have a great seat.
I'm like, in the perfect spot to watch all of that happen.
It's amazing.
I love this for you because you're such a, like, nice person.
I feel like you deserve this win.
It's crazy because, like...
Isn't it wild?
What is your favorite job out of all the jobs that you've had?
Ooh, that's tough.
Because I feel like you've had, like, the most amazing...
Like, you've lived, like, six lives, Tuffy.
I think, actually, it's between...
I'll say that it was the two years of Heptio and Quarrow West.
I think we're the two...
Probably the best for me.
Because I have really had an incredible connection
with everybody who worked at both of those companies.
And it really made me feel...
It really enabled me to embrace the...
That learning culture.
And also, at Heptio, I had the opportunity
to help define that learning culture.
Right?
I mean, I did that a bit at Quarrow West as well,
but really just having that ability to just come in and say,
you know, this team is going to move things forward
for the entire company.
And the way we're going to do that is by being professionally...
Intellectually curious, being honest with ourselves
and with our customers.
And just, like, you know, driving that home with the team.
And it was an incredible, incredible opportunity.
I think those two are my favorite jobs.
I mean, this one's not bad either.
I really enjoy Isabel.
I'm not saying that, but, like...
I used to think that being...
That when managers or people, like, you know, in tech,
like how it set you up to work on what you were most interested on,
I used to think that that was just, like, a blessing,
which it is, obviously.
But it's wild how you will get just go down the rabbit holes
and work late and do all the things
when it's something you're truly interested in.
Like, you start to see the business value
and giving people that are curious those opportunities
because it's not just to be nice.
It's wild how somebody will expand and innovate
and become such a subject matter expert
when they are given that runway, you know?
Oh, you're on mute.
I don't know what happened.
We lost your audio.
When you're given the time to do it
and you're given the permission to do it
and you're welcoming in, like, very different scene.
I have to go, though.
So we should say our goodbyes, I think.
Yeah.
Okay.
Duffy, thank you so much for coming on.
Where should people find you?
They can find me, gosh, in the Kubernetes Slack,
the CNCF Slack.
They can find me on Blue Sky as Maui Lyon.
So MAUI, like the island, and LION, like the big cap.
You can find me on X that way.
You can find me on Blue Sky that way.
Yeah.
I'm on Signal as well.
You've been fencing so well.
Thank you.
But thank you both for the time.
All right.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much for coming
and telling us all your story and history
around how you've grown in Kubernetes
and Kubernetes has grown.
That's been great.
I missed you so much.
I'm so glad we got to interview you.
And you can always find me at KubeCon in places like that.
Anytime you see me, just come say hi.
It's so worth it.
He's amazing.
Thank you, everyone, for listening,
and we will talk to you again soon.
Thank you for coming on, Dougie.
Thank you for listening to this episode
of Fork Around and Find Out.
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