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The Interface Crew continues their conversation with the King of Kubernetes, Kelsey Hightower. He discusses how Kubernetes was developed, the process of getting published by O'Reilly, and the importance of joining and creating communities around technology.
Interface is a podcast where we connect technology and culture through conversation. Interface is brought to you by EMPOWER at PROS. EMPOWER is dedicated to attracting, developing and retaining Black talent at PROS. PROS helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
The Power of Community and Advancing Technology feat. the pioneer of Kubernetes, Kelsey Hightower - Part. 2
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[00:00:00]
[00:01:00]
[00:01:01] Jenni: so I wanted to ask, um, about some more specifics about, you know, your, your, like you said, you don't have a, you don't have a LinkedIn or you may not have to give a resume, but people know who you are and some of the things that you've done to get there. So, I know, I know you're an author and you have a conference, so let, let's, let's talk about Kubernetes a little bit and explain what that is as well.
[00:01:31] Kelsey Hightower: I mean, look, Kubernetes, like a lot of technologies that came before. . When you think about what technology is in general, it's typically a tool that embodies something people learned a while ago. And we, we put it into either a physical form, if you want to consider software physical in a way that other people can do it to.
Like, you know, you see someone banging a rock against something else, it's like, what's that? I think I shall call it the hammer. [00:02:00] so now we got hammers, right? And so now there's a whole thing where people are trying to refine the hammer to make it what we see today. It's a tool. And so Kubernetes is a tool, but to understand the tool, you gotta know what it's used for.
And this is where I think a lot of us fall into traps in tech, especially in tech. This stuff is very complicated and it's complicated for a reason. Typically, the more complicated the tool is, it's probably trying to solve a very complicated problem. The other part of that equation is you may not have that complicated problem.
[00:02:34] Jenni: Right? Yeah.
[00:02:36] Kelsey Hightower: That's another trap we fall in. Just because some technology is hot and it's in demand, doesn't mean you immediately have that problem too. Or you may not even want to have that problem. Right? It's like medication. Some medication is complex. For complex diseases. You ain't lining up to get the medication you don't need.
[00:02:55] Jenni: yeah.
[00:02:56] Kelsey Hightower: Like, hey, that's great for the people who have that problem. You don't, so don't [00:03:00] volunteer for a problem. You don't have. That's, that's the way I wanna frame it. So when I think about Kubernetes, remember my career, and there's a long road in my career, but a lot of it was around managing systems
Mm-hmm.
the tools we used to build around server administration.
These are the shell scripts that people write.
[00:03:21] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:22] Kelsey Hightower: you know, I got five servers and they all need to look the same. So back then, before we had more advanced tools, a lot of people would just write shell scripts and run 'em from your laptop and you would say, four x in list of machines, do these commands. And you would just run the script and you would
[00:03:40] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:40] Kelsey Hightower: the script.
But then we go from just a handful of machines to thousands of machines. When you start to get thousands of machines, and there's a reason for this transition. You know, early days you got big mainframes, you know these things look like refrigerators and you only need one of 'em. The whole company shares it and [00:04:00] then the internet happens.
And so we can't have all of these machines in just one building. They need to spread out. so when they spread out, that means you're gonna have more of them, but not thousands, right? Maybe one company has five and another has five, and you come in and you manage those systems so you can get away with brute force.
Mm.
But then we get virtualization. So we turn those five machines into a hundred machines because we move to a pattern where we say there should be one app per machine, right? We're making that appliance. And so then we get a new industry configuration management. This history is so important cuz they understand Kubernetes.
You gotta understand the problem it tries to solve. And so config management shows up and says, we gotta abstract the way this, we can't just be logging into these servers even through automated processes like four loops and shell scripts. We gotta start treating these things as um, one big server farm.
Some people have this saying, the data center is the computer. Think about [00:05:00] that abstraction for a moment.
[00:05:01] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:02] Kelsey Hightower: It's not to say that you have a thousand machines, it's that you have one machine that lives in this data center. then the tools start to treat a lot of machines like one machine. And that's the fundamentals of distributed systems.
And so we get these configuration management tools that go from just writing shell scripts to the point where we're describing our roles. This is a web server, this is a database. It has this role, and once we describe the role, we will let the tool figure out how to get the machines to play that role.
That's that new abstraction. So config management, right around the time DevOps comes out as a phrase. This idea that if you're just doing ops, you probably should learn some development skills. Number one, better abstractions, better tools. And if you're a developer, you need to learn a little bit more about the infrastructure so you can collaborate a lot better together.
And config management is born out of that world.
[00:05:58] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:05:58] Kelsey Hightower: So [00:06:00] what's the problem? We got config management. Life should be solved. But the truth is config management is really a better way to write scripts. So we get containers. So we're 80% to Kubernetes now.
Mm-hmm.
instead of writing apps that need to be packaged and copied to a server, even through automation, we should probably abstract that away too.
And so what does that extraction look like? It looks like what the blueray disc is to the blueray player. matter the movie? Does it matter the genre of the movie? It's all gonna be on that Blu-ray disk and you can put it in any other Blu-ray player because you have a really clean abstraction.
You have a disk and a player, and they play movies.
[00:06:45] Jenni: Mm.
[00:06:46] Kelsey Hightower: And so containers become the Blu-ray of software, right? It gives us a way to package up our software in a consistent way and not have to go and try to invent our own Blu-ray player. So everything I described before was basically [00:07:00] every company, every system administrator, trying to build their own blueray player and creating their own standards versus us unifying the world.
Mm-hmm.
then we have one last problem. , how do we get to a point where it's not just about putting software on servers, you got low balancers and just in case one of the machines were to die, you have a situation where there's too many apps on one server causing it to fall over and downtime. There's so many details that go into really building a system, especially when you start to have a company that says, our app needs to go up even if the data center goes down.
Okay, we need more advanced tooling. I'm gonna wrap this story up by saying for the last 10 years prior from around 2008, maybe a little earlier, the cloud is born and a lot of people found these cloud, what we call cloud native patterns for solving some of these problems. [00:08:00] Kubernetes takes those prior decade, like the stone turning into the hammer.
It takes all of those, puts it in one package so that then now people have a tool to manage servers with cleaner abstractions than before. That's what Kubernetes is. wanna understand how it works on the inside, it's complex. you look at the surface is incomplete because just like the Hammers only used to build a house, it isn't the house.
Right.
And that's the way to think about
[00:08:33] Jenni: Yeah. Yeah. Um, there's a lot that goes into it and, um, yeah, the, the team I joined maybe two years ago is using Kubernetes and I, I, it just kind of like, you kind of get bits. The part that I loved most of all first is cuz right, we had on-prem solutions where you have to detail and describe, you know, we only support, you know, this database and this operating system and this version of this database and this operating [00:09:00] system.
And, um, you know, the conversations we had when we needed to deprecate, you know, older versions and things like that. And just kind of, that kind of just goes away. , you're doing right. So it was just kind of like, oh, I don't have to worry about any of this anymore. This is great. This, that's kind of the biggest win that I, that I, um, that I'm loving at the moment.
Yeah.
[00:09:21] Kelsey Hightower: And, and, and, and for those listening, it's not like it goes away, the worry, it's just that when you solve it,
[00:09:28] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:28] Kelsey Hightower: there's a way to repeat it.
[00:09:30] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:09:31] Kelsey Hightower: you find out the right version of the app that goes to this version of the database, you now finally have a way to actually describe that. It's not like, oh, you need to go to SharePoint and look at the doc and follow every step the right way.
Like we've been there, like you, you, you on the SharePoint and you're like, copy paste, copy paste. And you hit enter it says error. You're like, yo,
[00:09:54] Jenni: Now what?
[00:09:55] Kelsey Hightower: say nothing about no error. Uh, I'm, did I [00:10:00] break something? Right? And then an alert goes off you like, that's me. I know it's me. They gonna come over here and be like, what'd you
[00:10:07] Siara: That was.
[00:10:08] Kelsey Hightower: That was me. And then you get in the meeting, it's like, why Y ain't update the SharePoint
[00:10:14] Jenni: Yeah. Yeah, just, yeah, definitely streamlines those sorts of, um, transitions or upgrades and
[00:10:22] Kelsey Hightower: yeah, the way I like to think about it is Kubernetes allows you to serialize your engineering.
[00:10:27] Jenni: Ah,
[00:10:28] Kelsey Hightower: so once you, once you get it working, once it, there's a living executable record of it. It's like, in order to deploy this app, here's this Yael manifest. You need this container with this health check, with this storage, with this database config.
then you give it to the system, it says, I got you. From here, I will find the right server that can fulfill this promise. That's very different than like, man, I gotta pick the right server. Hey, can I get access to the spreadsheet? [00:11:00] We still tracking servers and spreadsheets.
Yes.
[00:11:09] Jenni: So you, you, you've written a book that explains all these complexities.
[00:11:14] Kelsey Hightower: I've written
[00:11:15] Jenni: Kubernetes up and running.
[00:11:18] Kelsey Hightower: I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to have it somewhere.
[00:11:20] Jenni: I have it on my O'Reilly app.
[00:11:23] Kelsey Hightower: the third edition now there's a third edition now, and. Um, it's been updated. I did very little of the writing. We have some new authors, some of them from Microsoft, and it's really glad, I'm really glad I started the book by myself and two of the founders of Kubernetes helped me finish it when it first started.
The very first edition, Brenda Burns and Joe Beta, and the book is so much better, right? Things are just done better. What Rob Bass said, it takes TU to make things go right and definitely, definitely, definitely they helped. But you know what, I recently, I recently was asked by one of my Google [00:12:00] colleagues, her name is Jennifer Davidson.
I know people can't see this listening to this, but a book from Raleigh called Modern and System Administration, down here you can see the Forward is by Kelsey Hightower.
[00:12:11] Jenni: Ah.
[00:12:11] Kelsey Hightower: to write this forward and she wanted to talk about kind of the evolution from DevOps to SRE platform engineering and just embody all of that into modern system administration.
Yes. And she asked me to write the forward for that book. And I was able to tell this story in the forward about that time and at that financial services company, you know, the place that went from 45,000 to 90,000. And I talked about my own career progression there, going from system administrator to moving my desk to the third floor to set a must developers.
And it's slowly evolving to be one myself. And so I think modern system administration really is really about saying the only boundaries you have in your role is the skills that you bring to the table. And if you're willing to go get those DBA [00:13:00] skills, software development skills, then you get to contribute and more facets than you would if you just stuck to the original HR title you were given.
And so I think that is just so important that people really, really think through. So, books like Kubernetes, I tend to lace these stories about why these technologies exist or what we were doing before, so that people have the bookings
[00:13:22] Jenni: Mm-hmm. the context. Yeah. How did you, is that a position you apply for? Like, how do you become an author of an O'Reilly book? Right. I, I have so many, you can't see my shelf over there. My O'Reilly collections over there.
[00:13:37] Kelsey Hightower: I'll tell you how I did it. When Kubernetes came out, I was working at a startup called Corals. And this technology comes from Google, lots of contributors, including companies like Red Hat and many others. And when the day was announced, at least to the public, I wrote this, um, blog post at Coral West about how to actually run [00:14:00] Kubernetes.
So I'm starting to do open source contributions at this time, nights and weekends. I'm just writing code contributing to Kubernetes itself. But I knew that, look, this doesn't mean anything if no one knows how to use it. So I wrote this blog post about how to run Kubernetes on the Coral West Operating System.
At the time, coral West would later go on to be bought by.
[00:14:21] Jenni: okay?
[00:14:21] Kelsey Hightower: But at that time I was really showing people like, here's what this thing is, here's how you do it yourself.
[00:14:26] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:26] Kelsey Hightower: And at that point I'm starting to do a lot more public speaking. I started getting into Keynote. There was a me and two others. There were a competing startup called Ki Mad.
Uh, Patrick Riley and Joseph Jacks, three of us come together and we start the Kubernetes conference. So before there were CNCF three people in a room create Cub Con
[00:14:48] Jenni: Uhhuh.
[00:14:48] Kelsey Hightower: and we create this conference for the community, wanted to show them how the tech works, how it was involved, and also a place for us to gather.
And I remember I told you that a plus book changed my [00:15:00] whole career.
[00:15:00] Jenni: Mm.
[00:15:01] Kelsey Hightower: And all of the skills I was learning for decades prior was all about, you know, how we say we're self-taught. I kind of matured enough to learn that you're just taught by authors you've never met, right? You just haven't met the teacher.
Mm-hmm.
but they're still teaching you something. so I just wanted to be one of those people. I'm like, you, you got all the animal books. You're like, man, if I read this book, it feels like you level up. So I wanted to figure out like, how could I take all of my knowledge, all of my perspective and do the same for somebody else?
And so what I did was I don't, I ain't know the process. I say, you know what, all the O'Reilly books, they got an animal. I went to Wikipedia and found a dolphin because dolphins travel in pods, Kubernetes has pods. And I didn't know, you don't get to pick your animal. O'Reilly already has a collection of hand drawn animals, and when you do your book, [00:16:00] they, they tell you, this is your animal.
You don't, you don't be like, I want a spider. like, no, you getting a giraffe, And so I picked this whale. I'm like, all right, I got my cover. I'm ready now. I got my cover. So now I need a table of content. And I started just basically taking all of my demos that I was doing during keynotes. I had so much work that I was doing. I was like, yo, I know this thing inside and out. And so what I was trying to do is create a narrative from starting, from explaining basics of system administration to Docker and just to build up to a full-blown set of applications.
I wanted to be a very hands-on demo heavy book people had real skills. And so I put, I put together maybe the first two chapters, and I remember, so this is when I'm still by myself, and I pitched to the O'Reilly team. The O'Reilly team was like, Kelsey, you wanna write a book deal? I was like, that.
That's how we [00:17:00] doing it. It's like, yeah, that's how we, how you finna do it? And I was like, yo, that's my That's my O'Reilly family. I'm like, okay. and I did just one or two chapters and I'm thinking, damn, it's gonna be forever to finish this thing.
Mm-hmm.
And they was like, no, we finished sell these two chapters.
[00:17:15] Siara: I'm like, you making money now? I was like, yeah, when we do those previews, we go get sponsors and they were getting people like anyone want the sponsor the book and they can have the first rough cut to chapters and they sent me this check. Even how people say you don't make money off
[00:17:34] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:35] Siara: Oh no, that's,
You can,
Uhhuh.
heard different
yeah, you can
is the way to go.
Yeah. I mean if you self-publish you can probably do a bit better, but I just really wanted that O'Reilly cuz they're editorial process, just the hope thing.
[00:17:50] Jenni: That I
[00:17:51] Siara: love
[00:17:51] Jenni: O'Reilly. They're
[00:17:52] Siara: my first, if I'm looking for a book, I gotta look it for O'Reilly first.
and, and they do a good job as a team and so they, they, they sold the sponsorship [00:18:00] deal and uh, I forget what the splits were, but I got this.
Mm-hmm.
I'm like, I'm not even finished. This's the check. Like, yeah, that's the check. Keep it going. And so I, I kept going and in order to finish the book, I think maybe I got to 125 pages or so.
[00:18:15] Kelsey Hightower: Brendan Burns and Joe Beta, Brendan Burns, this dude spit pages. Like, I'm like, I done idea something. Brendan Burns was like, oh. I'm like, man, co-authors are dope, thank y'all. And they push it to the finish line. So Joe Beta, and then they came in and filled it in my own knowledge gaps about what they were thinking.
Cuz they were at Google at the time when they were getting this thing released. Right. They fought all the battles that no one saw to get this thing even available to the world. so, and Craig McLuckie was the product manager, senior product manager at Google at the time, and he did the Ford for the book.
[00:19:00] So the book was really nice because we had a lot of people who were early involved that had all the background knowledge, so all the nuance in that first edition. So when the book gets published, that's the only book. There's no other book wanna learn about Kubernetes, that is the book. And so people was like, yo.
And then I remember the first time someone came up to me to get the book signed. this me. You want me to sign it?
[00:19:25] Siara: Oh me.
[00:19:27] Kelsey Hightower: What old me?
[00:19:28] Jenni: That's awesome. So, um, maybe can you tell us more about, um, the conference? Like how big was it when you first started that year? I think it's in the tens of thousands now. Um, and how has it kind of evolved?
How many years has it been going? Um, you know, tell us about that.
[00:19:49] Kelsey Hightower: I will tell you one of the questions y'all sent over is like, what can we do
[00:19:54] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:19:55] Kelsey Hightower: people in technology?
[00:19:56] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:19:57] Kelsey Hightower: Look, I think as, as much [00:20:00] good intentions as organizations. it's very hard to align interest around what a specific community needs. It's just hard look, I mean, it's hard. It's, it's hard as a black person to align my interests with my own household.
[00:20:17] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:18] Kelsey Hightower: We debate about what to eat
[00:20:20] Jenni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:20:23] Kelsey Hightower: I don't have a big expectation for one organization to figure out what my community needs.
I just, I just don't, and I don't have the perfect answer cuz the answer is we need to do everything. If anybody trying to help, help your corner of the world and ideally it comes together over time. But the thing about community that is dope, there's not a lot of people who are very interested in this stuff.
The world is a big place. There's billions of people.
Mm-hmm.
early in these communities, sometimes there's only hundreds of people that have a common interest. And these hundreds of people are typically spread out across the world. And whenever they get together,[00:21:00]
Mm-hmm.
They go colorblind. I know this sounds weird, like there's no, it's pop.
No, no, no. A lot of people put some differences aside when there's a huge dominating common interest and when that common interest takes place, that becomes a thing that becomes front and center. I'm not saying in those rooms that no one is racist anymore. I'm not saying that. I'm saying is people focus on a common interest that distracts them stuff.
Y'all have seen it. Y'all have been in a room where you've seen it.
[00:21:31] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:32] Kelsey Hightower: And so before Con, I had the privilege of being involved of a community that understood community. Early in my career, I went to Georgia Tech to my very first tech meetup. It was a Python meetup in
[00:21:50] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:21:51] Kelsey Hightower: and I go to this meetup, I'm just sitting there.
They just let you walk in. Don't ask you your title.
[00:21:57] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:59] Kelsey Hightower: they don't ask you if you [00:22:00] qualified to be there. It's like going to the Y M C A with free membership
[00:22:04] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Kelsey Hightower: and you get to sit and you watch these people present. And again, in most parts of the world or most situations in their life, ain't nobody trying to hear nothing they talking about. But in the meetup,
[00:22:20] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:21] Kelsey Hightower: they're front and center and they get to share their knowledge to a people who have a common interest. You go to a meetup on purpose, you're not forced to go, this ain't no team offsite. This ain't no all hands meeting. This is an elective thing that you do on your own time. And so I'm sitting in that room and I'm feeling the vibe.
I'm like, okay, these people have self-selected to be here. They're preparing these topics, they're sharing this information. I'm like, okay, this, this is, I can get down with this. So I ask, can I give a.
[00:22:51] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:52] Kelsey Hightower: and the guy running his name was Brandon Rhodes, and he was like, yo, you can, you can talk. Let me know when you're ready and then I'll give you a slot.
[00:23:00] And I gave this talk about Python versus has, I mean, I'm trying to show my nerd side too. I wanna make sure they understood had the skills. So I just picked the most nerdiest thing I could do. just watching people listen intently, taking notes afterwards, just chopping it up. I'm like, I don't even get this at work.
Mm-hmm.
And they pay me there.
[00:23:20] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:23:22] Kelsey Hightower: And so I'm like, okay, this is the community. Then I went to my first tech conference in the Python community. So after doing that, I was like, you know what? I wanna really get involved. So I started contributing to um, a Python tool called Virtual inf, and the packaging tool called dis.
[00:23:37] Jenni: okay.
[00:23:38] Kelsey Hightower: And so I'm deep in the game. I'm like, man, I'm just contributing. Writing code, fixing issues. We're on GitHub, uh, maybe before GitHub, and we're just contributing writing code, contributing, contributing. And I'm meeting these people that I've never met and we're solving problems for tools that are used by people all over the world.
So I go to the Python conference and people's like, oh, you work [00:24:00] on dish details, you work on virtual. If we use that at work, and I'm at the conference, I'm watching all the people on the big stage
[00:24:08] Jenni: ah,
[00:24:09] Kelsey Hightower: yeah, we ain't, we on the big stage. I'm sitting there like, man, look at these people on this stage.
I'm just speaking at the meetups. I don't know if y'all remember that scene from Juice where Queen Latifa was inter interviewing DJs for the big party or the DJ competition. And one of the DJs walked in and he had this attitude. She said, boy, you local. I felt like I was just a local, you know what I'm saying?
Like, you not really, you not really all of that. You, you, you local like
[00:24:36] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:24:37] Kelsey Hightower: okay. I was like, I'm looking at, this is the big stage, this is the pinnacle. And I saw Guido Van Rossam on stage being interviewed, and he created Python. I was like, yo, this is dope. This is the vibe. But then after the conference over the weekend, all of these people, including Guido Van Rossam, and everyone else [00:25:00] that's contributing to the core Python, and all of those people I've been working with that I had never met, we are in this room hacking on Python.
Whatever you wanna learn,
Mm-hmm.
someone's gonna be, I mean, when I'm talking patient,
Mm-hmm.
they gonna break it down to you. If that ain't working, let's go to the whiteboard. Two other people would jump in and try a different explanation. I'm like, yo, this is community. Python is run by a foundation. And so they're not really a corporate entity selling anything.
These folks are just trying to make sure that the language has foundation. There's enough money to run these events, scholarships to hold nine. So that was my first experience with the tech community, with the open source community. And so fast forward 10 years after that, uh, the Go programming language comes out.
So I'm already working at Puppet Labs and they have conferences too, and pretty strong open source community. I'm a open source veteran by this point. I've contributed to lots of things, but I go to the go programming language. This is the programming language put out by [00:26:00] Google, and it felt like that Python thing again,
Mm-hmm.
it was so early.
We were in Denver, Colorado, and I met the organizers. And the organizers were doing their very best. I had a keynote, my first keynote, and I'm sitting in the audience and I'm number three, maybe number four to speak. And Brian Kettles and Eric St. Martin, they started the conference because they wanted to see a conference that was independent of anything else but just for the community.
And so they came out. and they did this opening monologue. It wasn't hot,
[00:26:38] Jenni: Uhhuh.
[00:26:39] Kelsey Hightower: it was warm, like bath water. It wasn't hot.
[00:26:42] Jenni: Uhhuh.
[00:26:43] Kelsey Hightower: And I was sitting there like, yo, this, this, this, this, this, the conference now. It's not where it could be. And I just went to the back and I, and I knew them a little bit, but not a lot. And I said, Hey, can I try to be the mc? I've never done it before, but let me try to be mc because the vibe in this [00:27:00] room, we gotta keep it up.
They're like, sure, go ahead. So I walk out on stage and I say, Hey, I'm Kelsey Hightower. You may not know me, but I'm gonna be your mc. And I remember all these jokes started coming, the energy was crazy, and I introduced the next speaker and the vibe was where I thought it should be. And you could see Brian and Eric like you, the mc. And so I forgot I'm the third or fourth speaker. So I'm the mc and I'm like, oh, I gotta introduce myself. All right. The next speaker is all of the things. And I walk off walk back, but they wasn't clapping loud enough. I was like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You know how long I worked on these slides? We're gonna have [00:28:00] to try that again.
[00:28:00] Jenni: uh
[00:28:02] Kelsey Hightower: Your next speaker is. And I walked behind the thing again and it came out and it was loud,
[00:28:08] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:09] Kelsey Hightower: rockstar, loud. And I'm telling you that keynotes on YouTube right now is go for system administrators. And I'm doing, I'm in my bag. My live demo game is impeccable at this point. And so I'm doing my, my thing, I'm doing the live demo and the energy was. Astounding that people were tweeting. There was a Ruby conference in town too. A different programming
[00:28:38] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:39] Kelsey Hightower: Much bigger community than ours. As I'm MCing I'm seeing people from the Ruby Conference in the back wall. They had heard how off the chain
[00:28:52] Jenni: They're like, what's going on over here?
[00:28:53] Kelsey Hightower: and, and they came to the conference and I was like, you know, and backstage, I'm like, what's going on? He was like, dude, you got people [00:29:00] coming from other conferences and there's this guy, his, um, damn, I forget his name. He tweeted after my keynote, Kelsey has set the bar.
That's how your presentation's gonna have to be going forward. can't just come up here with slides. After that, the bars, now we are not going back down. And I, I felt so proud to see that and look to wrap up this story. That whole day made me feel like that, that original feeling, we could do it again.
And so when Kubernetes came out and Joseph Jacks those groups, those folks at Kizmat, just two people,
[00:29:41] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:42] Kelsey Hightower: they decided to put the money up to do the first con cuz they wanted to be community oriented. And they asked me to be involved. so we picked the logo and roughly the logo you see today was a logo that small group of people came up with.
And we just did the first one in San Francisco in a [00:30:00] hotel.
Mm-hmm.
And I remember none of the big players wanted to be involved. They was like, who are y'all?
[00:30:07] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:08] Kelsey Hightower: Why we sponsor a thing? Y'all don't, this ain't no real organization. It was like, fine, we'll do it. And luckily I had a few keynotes under my belt at that time talking about Kubernetes throughout the world.
And so I was like, Kelsey's gonna mc and he's also gonna give a talk. And then people started signing. People started sponsoring. So we had about 300 people, and I asked one of the questions I asked as the mc who's using Kubernetes in production, which would have been a very irresponsible thing to do at the time,
Mm-hmm.
and maybe three or four people raised their hand.
And I said, come on stage. It was a very small group of people behind me.
Yeah.
And of course we would go on to do more. We probably did it for about two years before the CNCF took it over, and then it becomes this kind of much, much, much bigger thing. The Lennox Foundation is just a conglomerate, but we set the tone, we set the tone for [00:31:00] what the community is supposed to be for like, and that community mirrors a lot of that python vibe that it had back in the day at my very first tech conference.
[00:31:08] Jenni: Yeah. Conferences are great for, getting that energy kind of validating the things that you're curious about, learning new things. Um, it's highly recommend if you anyone ever has an opportunity to go to a conference, to kind of inspiring, especially if you're one of those people I I, who's kind of like stuck in a rut and kind of like, I, I don't know what I wanna do.
Find a conference, talk to some people, get inspired, join a community. Um, it's really gonna help you kind of get some options so you can kind of figure out where, where, where, how you wanna navigate, where you're, where you're going.
[00:31:45] Kelsey Hightower: And if you go to a conference, be present, don't have a bunch of stuff booked, well you gotta go disappear to take a work meeting.
[00:31:53] Jenni: Oh yeah.
[00:31:54] Kelsey Hightower: you gotta be present. Sit at that lunch table with people you don't know. Ask questions, [00:32:00] share, learn, have a goal. Be focused. Because a lot of people are going to meet their next coworker at that conference,
[00:32:07] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Yeah.
[00:32:08] Kelsey Hightower: of people kind of go and, and they don't really emerge fully into what their experience could be.
It's only you to. Create the vibe that you want and you can. And so just don't forget to do that part. When you go to a conference, try to be as present as possible. Find your circle and then go find another circle and that's how you're gonna get your money's worth.
[00:32:27] Jenni: Yeah. Totally agree. So we kind of, you discussed this a little more, but I wanna open it up to see if you had any, if you want anything else you wanted to add as far as what should companies be doing to increase the number of blacks in technology?
[00:32:41] Kelsey Hightower: Oh, that's where we're going with the community
[00:32:43] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:45] Kelsey Hightower: That community is so inviting. All the stories are just told. As a black person, when I went to volunteer to Mc Gophercon that year, the first year, it wasn't [00:33:00] the fault of the organizers. It wasn't the fault of the go community, but there were very few black people there.
[00:33:06] Jenni: Maybe one other maybe,
Mm-hmm.
I don't know, cuz I didn't see that person. . And so two years later, maybe even the next year, maybe two years, I remember Black Panther was out, came out and there were so many black people there.
Oh really? the Hmm.
before there was a guy named Brian Lyles. Maybe Brian Lyles was at the first one, I'm not sure.
But I remember I walked into the after party and there was a circle of people around this other engineer named Brian Lyles, and he was just talking to him and I walked up and I was like, oh, what's up Brian? And he was like, what's up Kelsey?
Mm-hmm.
the people in the circle looked and was like, I thought you were Kelsey.
[00:33:55] Kelsey Hightower: And he just like, that's what y'all get for assuming. [00:34:00] And it was so funny because that's, that's how few black people there were and now we're both bald, but he's like six four or something. Six three. I'm five. And so they look like, damn, we're so embarrassed. It was just funny because I get it, but there was another year though, and no one organized anything.
[00:34:19] Jenni: mm-hmm.
[00:34:21] Kelsey Hightower: I think some people saw me there through the videos and they saw themselves on the screen. They're like, oh,
[00:34:29] Jenni: Mm-hmm
[00:34:29] Kelsey Hightower: this dude look like
[00:34:30] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:32] Kelsey Hightower: He talks like I do,
[00:34:33] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:35] Kelsey Hightower: and looking at his background, it's very similar to the one that I have. This guy is me. And so they independently go buy their own tickets.
[00:34:45] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:47] Kelsey Hightower: And so that one year it had to be 50 of us
[00:34:50] Jenni: Nice.
[00:34:51] Kelsey Hightower: and we're just walking around.
I'm seeing, um, and you, and you know what's serious when you seen black people at a tech conference that you don't know,
[00:34:59] Jenni: [00:35:00] yeah.
[00:35:01] Kelsey Hightower: and so one person made a good suggestion. I think he worked at. His name is Brian and he said, let's just go take a picture. So we go upstairs and we all doing these poses and he takes a photo and I think we tweeted about it and it looks like Black Panther at GoCon.
[00:35:19] Jenni: brings a tear to my eyes. So beautiful.
[00:35:21] Siara: Yes.
[00:35:22] Kelsey Hightower: but, but it was dope because when, so, so to your question is a lot of times all we wanna do is just come to work. We don't wanna volunteer for all the D E I panels.
[00:35:33] Jenni: Mm-hmm
[00:35:33] Kelsey Hightower: be the ones always donating all this emotional time because we know it's time. And then when it's performance review time, let's be honest, a lot of that work don't count.
[00:35:44] Siara: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:45] Kelsey Hightower: It may get acknowledged, but it may not count.
But a lot of times when if I go and I can see that I can just be who I am, I can just come and work and see other people. Ideally, it'll be cool if during the interview [00:36:00] process there was a hint that someone that looks like me works here somewhere. Maybe on the interview panel.
You don't have to do it intentionally, but it'd be cool if we're walking through the office. I can see one, maybe two, because I think a lot of people don't realize, and I know women have it harder, what it's like to be the only person in the room. Not just that, but when people make you feel like you're the only person in the room,
[00:36:24] Siara: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:25] Kelsey Hightower: that's the part I don't, I don't even know what to tell each company to do because they're all have this problem for different reasons.
But once you remove that element, then of course, I have no problem working there. Right. Because I promise you this, if one person from an underrepresented community have a bad time at one of these organizations, that private chat thread is crazy
[00:36:47] Siara: Yes.
[00:36:49] Kelsey Hightower: Mm-hmm. I, I, I know they pay a little bit more, but for how long though?
[00:36:59] Siara: Mm-hmm. . [00:37:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:37:00] Kelsey Hightower: mental health going be like?
[00:37:01] Siara: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:02] Kelsey Hightower: and that stuff is serious. Like I've, I've been in a scenario where you feel like you don't, you don't even belong there. And it's hard to try to do your best work
[00:37:11] Siara: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:12] Kelsey Hightower: when people are looking at you like, I don't even know why you here. It's like, but you don't know me though, so now you're forcing me to try to change your mind and perception about me versus staying focused on the work and the thing that we're supposed to have a shared interest in doing.
[00:37:25] Jenni: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:27] Kelsey Hightower: that's the number one thing that a company needs to realize that, and it's not just for black people. We get it,
[00:37:32] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:33] Kelsey Hightower: from my own perspective that if you see that if you're listening to this and you've done that, you may not even know you're doing that. That's the part that I think makes this so complex.
I know people that I believe to be good people that aren't aware, for example, and I'm getting very, I'm trying to give a very clear example.
[00:37:52] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:53] Kelsey Hightower: I'm one of those people in tech that like to debate.
[00:37:57] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:58] Kelsey Hightower: like get on the whiteboard. Like that's not [00:38:00] right. If you do that, we're going, oh hey, I need to go update my resume.
Cuz if we ship this, it's a wrap for everybody in here. you sure you want to do it this way
[00:38:09] Jenni: Uh huh.
[00:38:09] Kelsey Hightower: And so like you, we, we kind of used to that. But that only works when everybody is comfortable. There has to be some type of comradery that can deal with like, when we get heated, we gotta have something to revert back to.
Actually all human relationships are like that. If you don't have enough good foundation, you can't have too many of those cuz it will unravel everything. So think about an underrepresented person joining the team and you treat them that way, right? You, you start to say, oh, they can just handle like you don't.
Thing is that we don't know if we cool yet. We don't have that foundation in place to know that it's gonna be cool after we debate to this level.
[00:38:47] Siara: Right.
[00:38:48] Kelsey Hightower: So I think that's another thing that we gotta pay attention to in the game.
[00:38:51] Jenni: Okay. It's now time for the heat check. Heat check, heat check. Heat check. Okay. The heat check is where the interface crew, uh, [00:39:00] Sierra and myself today, shares an interesting or hot topic happening in technology or black culture.
And Kelsey, you could feel free to chime in or if there's something specific you might have. I don't know if you prepared anything, but, um, Sierra, do you have a
[00:39:15] Siara: I am going first today
[00:39:16] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:39:17] Siara: bet. So Kelsey kind of stole my thunder already, but my heat check today is because we celebrate black excellence here on the Interface podcast. And I wanna shout out a huge congratulations to the Angela Bassett for winning the Golden Globe. Last night for Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, she won.
Um, best actress, no supporting actress, I'm sorry, um, for Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. And she is the first actor or actress to win for a film in the Mar, in the Marvel, um, cinematic universe.
[00:39:53] Jenni: I didn't know that
[00:39:55] Siara: she won a major award, so huge congratulations to, uh, the [00:40:00] Angela Bassie, cuz we, she is the okay legend, all of that.
And I also wanna, um, congratulate Miss Quinta Brunson. She won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a musical or comedy series for Abbott Elementary, which is a phenomenal series and the actual show won, uh, for best show as well. Uh, best comedic show, so big ups to that. I remember watching Quinta when she was on buzzfeed doing those really quick, uh, comedy videos.
She was hilarious. And Abbott Elementary, they just wrapped their very first season. So to win that big award after your first season, showrunner is a black woman coming from the social media, you know, world. And coming into the big leagues is a huge accomplishment, so congratulations to them. That is my heat check for today.
[00:40:53] Jenni: Yeah. Yeah. Those are, um, we were talking about having, you know, people that like this is person as me, [00:41:00] right? From your work, but like when you're growing up and, you know, if you don't have a lot of black role models, you know, I went to a predominantly white school. I went to TV a lot for people, you know, that I could relate to.
So having these, this type of content out there and showing, right. I think, I think what happens is you. People, you know, people who are not people of color have their stereotypes of what, what black people are. And so, you know, not having kind of representation across different, having nerds, having teachers, having this and that, and just kind of like, we have a spectrum too.
We're not all just kind of the same person, I think is very important. And Queen Ramon, that was excellent. She is my favorite part of that movie.
[00:41:43] Siara: I figured you would really appreciate that one. Jenny
[00:41:46] Jenni: Yeah. I, I, I didn't realize the Golden gloves were last night, so that's, yeah. Okay. So mine actually is not directly technology this week. Um, and it's kind of two things.
So I'm cheating a little [00:42:00] bit. So I was driving my son to practice and there was a, um, was, listen to nbr. I think it's a. uh, what is Yeah, this American life, um, about, um, this guy who, uh, grew up in a well to do white community and when he went to, and he, his parents are Ugandan and he has a, a very, uh, um, unique name, Zora bi Con Gaga.
And so his friends were kind of like, as a joke, when you go to college, you should pretend to be like an African prince, you know, as a joke. And he proceeded to do that, but just kept the guys up for, I guess, months for very long time. So, um, he met his roommate in like doing a character. And then as they, you know, the social activities you have, you know, the icebreakers and stuff, you just went around campus continuing to be this person and. [00:43:00] and he, he's the, you know, the piece talks about why, you know how he kind of, it almost sounds like a sitcom, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna pretend, but I guess this actually happened to this person. He talks about why he couldn't kind of get out of it and what, you know, the difference between being just, you know, a, a, you know, a, a black kid from a white community versus being like an African is kind of, people were like, oh, you're royalty, blah, blah, and you could tell all these stories.
And so he was kind of getting something out of that, but also kind of the downside of, you know, what people were connecting to. So I thought that was interesting. It kind of related to, I also listened to an audio book, um, lake Bell's Inside Voice, and she's a, she's an actress and she's a voice actor, and it's kind of, she went into lots of details about what goes into acting, but also. um, you know, what it takes to study an accent or, um, she talked about biases and [00:44:00] how you can have biases just on the way people hear you. They can kind of hear, they know your, they can kind of figure out your gender and your race and, um, things that kind of come in with that. And, um, I'm always interested in that because I, in the early eighties, right, I w I lived in England and I had like a English, I guess I had an English accent sort of, um, in like the 80, 85, 86.
Um, and so, and then I lost it, but then people were like, oh, you sounded like this and you sounded like that. So I'm always kind of like, I kind of pick up accents sometimes in weird ways. And then I also kind of am cognizant that I don't sound like I don't have a stereotypical black woman voice and things like that.
So she kind of goes into things about that. So I thought that was pretty interesting.
[00:44:48] Siara: very cool that I send me the episode for that my American Life, uh, episode. I'd be very interested in hearing that story.
[00:44:56] Jenni: It's wild. It was so interesting. My son stopped listening to [00:45:00] his headphones and was listening to this, this piece, and he's 16, so we know how hard that is for a teenager. Let's,
[00:45:05] Siara: only imagine having to maneuver in that environment and it's like, it's cool to play this character, but also having to, um, hi, hide who you really are at, at some point it gets exhausting trying to keep up that, that character. And it's just like, okay,
[00:45:22] Jenni: yeah. He talks about it
[00:45:24] Siara: you know, of revealing who you really are.
[00:45:27] Jenni: yeah. Yeah. Uh, Kelsey, do you happen to have anything.
[00:45:33] Kelsey Hightower: I do, and now I'm trying to, I'm trying to bring in some examples of people. I want to give a shout out too. So I'm gonna do two people. One person's name is Esco, and I gotta get his last name, but I remember he approached me after I got promoted at Google. I did this Twitter space. It was three hours long talking about my career trajectory into becoming a distinguished generic at Google.
[00:46:00] And Esco said, Hey Kelsey, I've run this Facebook community for black people trying to get into tech and advance their careers to senior levels. And he talked about the community he had built. He's teaching people algorithms how to deal with these very complex Google, Facebook level interviews. And these people are succeeding, like succeeding.
He's given them those skills. , he's closing those knowledge gaps and he's recruited thousands of other people to do it with him. And he was so, so happy to like just interview me. We did a Twitter space, open it up to that entire community to get, just ask questions. And I had to remind him that the work he's doing is so, so important.
Even though a lot of people may not know who he is, but this is that invisible layer that really makes things go. I mean? We will always remember the MLKs and the [00:47:00] Malcolm Xs of the world, but we won't remember that person that gave him a ride to give him that
[00:47:05] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:47:06] Kelsey Hightower: won't remember the, the security team that kept 'em alive all of those years.
And all of those people play a role in this game. And so people like that who dedicate so much time to the community, because what happens is then those people go on. And they start new communities and they continue to grow this thing so that everybody has an opportunity, not just the opportunity, but the help to, to actually succeed.
And the other heat check I want to do is I advise a handful of startups, I won't mention all of them. And there's this thing called equity and cap tables. And there's a way that we start to share in the success of these tools and platforms. We spend so much time building going forward and there's a lot of new people coming in the [00:48:00] game and they're starting these companies, they're starting these tech companies.
A lot of them have the same backgrounds as us on this call. And they are building these companies. They are hiring people from their communities and they're extremely talented and they're doing it on the shoestring budget.
[00:48:19] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:19] Kelsey Hightower: And I'm unfortunate they don't have. as easy of access to capital as others, because a lot of venture capitalists are unused to seeing people that look like that with the ideas that they're bringing to the table.
So they have to work a little bit harder, let's be honest. A lot harder
[00:48:37] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:48:38] Kelsey Hightower: to fund their businesses, but they're succeeding anyway.
[00:48:42] Jenni: Mm.
[00:48:43] Kelsey Hightower: These these folks are like, look, I'm gonna just keep working my other job until I can make that bridge. And they're just making it happen. They're growing those businesses. So I just wanna give a shout out to all those founders out there, creating those pathways, [00:49:00] creating the companies that they want to see.
We spend a lot of time talking about how do we fix the existing companies in the world? And I think a part of that element is giving them some competi.
[00:49:12] Jenni: Very true. Very true. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So if people wanna get in touch with you, um, how would you like them to do that
[00:49:27] Kelsey Hightower: My Twitter dms are wide open. It's kind of the universal place where I go. Now, here's the thing. If you hit me on Twitter at Kelsey Hightower on Twitter, if you hit me on Twitter, be ready. Don't say hi. you say hi and wait for me to respond, it's gonna be 2025. It's gonna be a blank screen. I, I'm inviting you to have a discussion, and when I say be ready, some people will hit me on Twitter, say, yo [00:50:00] Kelsey, they tell me their backstory and I read it twice.
I say, you want to jump on a call right now? And they say, I'm not ready. if you hit me, all I'm saying is please be ready because I'm ready to help. And so as that, that, that's what I would say if you hit me on Twitter, be ready.
[00:50:23] Jenni: I'll attest to that. And when we started the podcast, we, we had like goals and, and Sierra was like, think of someone that, you know, you're top tier person that you wanna do. And I was like, well the, yeah, you know, this guy's written a book, blah, blah, blah. I was like, he's on Twitter. I was like, I guess I'll just send him a message and we'll see happens.
It is and, yeah, you've responded very quickly and I was like, you wanna be on my podcast? You were like, yeah. I was like, I was very impressed. So I, yeah, I'm really, really, you're just a down to earth person and just very easy to talk to, so, yeah. I really [00:51:00] appreciate that. Okay, so, so Twitter, basically it's, I you're very active on Twitter too.
You're, you're, you're, you're posting all the time, so definitely check that out.
[00:51:12] Siara: Kelsey, are you gonna make me get back on Twitter because I don't love
[00:51:17] Kelsey Hightower: Listen. Listen. I hate that transition.
[00:51:21] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:22] Kelsey Hightower: I hate that Elon is in this place that he's. . I don't know why he's in that place, because if I had 200 billion, y'all ain't gonna see me on Twitter. Seriously. I, I, I would literally be playing Monopoly throughout the world. I'm, I'm going into every community new Kroger, y'all getting the Whole Foods.
I, I got too much to do.
[00:51:46] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:47] Kelsey Hightower: And so I, I, one thing I learned from that whole thing, and we're not seeing the whole thing, we're just seeing the surface. But what I'm seeing is that if you didn't believe it before, [00:52:00] money does not by happiness if you didn't believe it before, the examples are too clear. So the one thing though, that I've done is that I ain't letting no one take away my voice.
[00:52:12] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:52:14] Kelsey Hightower: get to do that. His ownership is temporary. He could choose to sell it later.
[00:52:19] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:19] Kelsey Hightower: One thing I did realize though, is that I gotta make sure that my voice is on other platforms too. So that's one of my goals for this year to diversify when my voice is being held.
[00:52:28] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:28] Kelsey Hightower: until then, I mean, look at all the communities that have been built up around Twitter.
So I'm not yet ready to kind of throw that away yet, but I, I feel you. So if I bring you back on, I don't want you to get, don't fight nobody like you know them. Bots be crazy. Them bites. You say one thing. I like ice cream. Oh, ice cream is bad for you. But i's like, damn man, I can't like ice cream You know what I'm saying?
Wow. All right.
[00:52:59] Siara: Twitter [00:53:00] is crazy. It's, it's the wild, wild West on, on Twitter for sure.
[00:53:05] Kelsey Hightower: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:06] Siara: I have to come check you out,
[00:53:09] Kelsey Hightower: Yeah, we share a lot there. I mean, right now I'm exploring machine learning quite a. Um, I've had a, a basic background just working at Google. We can't help but learn, but a lot of times we're seeing stuff like chat, G P T, and a lot of people are afraid and it's like, okay, now when you do, when you're afraid we can start making up stuff, we can start just reading random things and letting that tell us what it really is.
But that's not the way we should do it. We're in a tech community. When I'm afraid, I try to go figure out how it works, go open the black box. So right now I'm in the middle of taking one of these free machine learning courses. Actually, Google has one. It's actually pretty good. It demystifies this stuff.
This stuff isn't, it's advanced, it's complex, but it isn't beyond your comprehension. I think that's important. So on Twitter right now, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to break down. [00:54:00] Recently I just saw one of the guys named Elect Friedman. He does a really great podcast, but he did. M I t course on machine learning, on deep learning in 2019.
And I gave people a quick summary on it because I think it's one of the best introductions to machine learning for most people that have a little bit of a tech background. And so on Twitter, I'm trying to show those different levels of the game so that we're all get educated. So I'm not gonna be talking about random stuff all the time, but I'm trying to like share as much of my curiosity to hopefully spark others.
[00:54:35] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:54:35] Siara: Yeah. Keep, keep the conversation going and let Yeah, don't back away from something you're not,
chat. G p t had my TikTok for you Paige, in a choke hold for a few days. And I was like, get outta, get outta here. Swipe, swipe, swipe.
Well thank you Kelsey for joining us today as well as all of you listening [00:55:00] in, if you enjoyed this conversation. Drop us a line at Interface podcast@prose.com or find us on LinkedIn. Please also rate and review us on whatever platform you're listening from. It helps the show tremendously. We wanna, we want your feedback to make our show better.
[00:55:15] Jenni: We encourage you to go out and continue this conversation and even start your own. And we'll meet you back here for the next episode from our crew to yours. Have a good one.