Optimize All The Things

di Bartłomiej Płotka & Ivan Valkov

Stagione 2

Tom Wilkie’s Path to CTO at Grafana Labs: Startups, Pivots, and Perseverance

Tom Wilkie, the CTO of Grafana Labs, talks to us about his professional journey. We cover how he got into software engineering, his first startup, working as an EM at Google, and what motivated him to go back to an IC role. We talk about his time at Grafana from when they were only 25 people to now when Grafana Labs has more than a thousand employees. Tom’s journey cannot be told without diving deeper into the technical side of things - we discuss observability, distributed systems, and hard technical problems. Where to find more about Tom and Grafana Labs: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwilkie - X - https://x.com/tom_wilkie - Grafana Labs - https://grafana.com/ - Grafana Labs events - https://grafana.com/events/ Where to find Bartek: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ - X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ - X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form -https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9 0:00 - Tom’s intro 7:09 - How Tom got into software engineering 15:05 - Tom’s first startup 21:25 - Tom’s experience as EM at Google 28:04 - Joining Weaveworks as employee number 7 38:51 - Tom joining Grafana 45:32 - Grafana’s Third Act 53:12 - Startup advice 59:41 - Perseverance and motivation 1:04:35 - How Grafana acquires startups 1:10:25 - Where to find out more

S2 · E5

27 set 2024

1:11:49

Databases, Drive, and Diversity - Lessons from Xata's CEO Monica Sarbu

Monica Sarbu, the CEO and founder of Xata.io, talks to us about her inspiring journey from getting into tech to building Xata - the serverless database platform for modern apps. We chat about the founding of her first company, Packetbeat, its acquisition by Elastic, and her time as a director there. We talk about mentoring, diversity, and hiring engineers that have high agency. We also cover some of the technical decisions at Xata - we even chat a bit about the Zig programming language :) Where to find more about Monica and Xata: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicasarbu - X - https://x.com/monicasarbu - Xata - https://xata.io/ - pgroll - https://github.com/xataio/pgroll - Tupu - https://www.tupu.io/ Where to find Bartek: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ - X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ - X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9 Episode breakdown: 0:00 - Episode intro 2:25 - Monica's introduction 4:00 - Monica's software engineering background 5:52 - Founding her first company Packetbeat 15:30 - Elastic acquisition and being a director there 25:34 - The role of managers 28:38 - Founding Tupu and diversity in tech 38:44 - The founding story of Xata 44:35 - Open source, serverless, and Zig vs Go 51:17 - Hiring high-agency engineers 1:00:37 - Where to find out more

S2 · E4

23 lug 2024

1:02:20

Building a Global Scale Authorization Startup: The Story of AuthZed's Co-Founder Jimmy Zelinskie

In this episode, we talk with Jimmy Zelinskie, co-founder and CPO of AuthZed, about his journey in building a global scale OSS authorization startup. Jimmy shares insights into the creation and evolution of SpiceDB, an open-source database optimized for authorization decisions. We chat about Jimmy’s story of transitioning from an engineer to a product manager, the importance of open-source in building the business, and the strategies that helped AuthZed find its first customers. Jimmy also discusses the inspiration behind AuthZed, Google’s Zanzibar paper, and the unique challenges of building a startup grounded in cutting-edge research. Where to find more about Jimmy and AuthZed: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzelinskie/ - X - https://x.com/jimmyzelinskie - Jimmy’s Github - https://github.com/jzelinskie - AuthZed - https://authzed.com/ - SpiceDB on Github - https://github.com/authzed/spicedb - The Zanzibar Paper annotated by AuthZed - https://authzed.com/zanzibar - Discord - https://authzed.com/discord Where to find Bartek: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ - X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ - X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9 Episode breakdown: 0:00 Episode intro 2:05 Jimmy’s introduction 3:53 Jimmy’s software engineering background 9:06 On becoming a founder 14:47 Experimenting with different startup ideas 20:41 The Zanzibar paper and using research in startups 26:44 Finding your first customers 31:56 Building SpiceDB 38:11 Monetization in an OSS startup 42:34 Authorization deep-dive 52:19 Product management in a startup 1:01:47 Where to find out more

S2 · E3

10 lug 2024

1:04:20

The Open Source Data Movement Unicorn: Michel Tricot's Airbyte Story

In this episode, we talk with Michel Tricot, co-founder and CEO of Airbyte, about his journey in building a successful open-source data movement platform, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and insights into startup culture and balancing work with family life. Michel shares his experiences from being a software engineer to leading a unicorn company, emphasizing the importance of community, open-source, and the strategic pivots that led to Airbyte's success. Where to find more about Michel and Airbyte: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot/ X - https://x.com/micheltricot Airbyte - https://airbyte.com/ Github - https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte Airbyte's blog - https://airbyte.com/blog Where to find Bartek: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

S2 · E2

25 giu 2024

51:00

Profiling, AI, and Creating a Startup Culture: Insights from PolarSignals' Founder Frederic Branczyk

In this episode, we sit down with Frederic Branczyk, founder of PolarSignals, to explore the intersection of advanced profiling techniques, AI-driven optimizations, and the nuances of building a successful startup culture. Frederic shares his journey from a technical contributor to a startup leader, offering insights into both the technological and business aspects of running a tech company. Where to find more about Frederic and Polar Signals: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederic-branczyk/ X - https://x.com/fredbrancz Mastodon - https://hachyderm.io/@brancz Polar Signals - https://www.polarsignals.com/ Parca - https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/ FrostDB - https://github.com/polarsignals/frostdb Polar Signals Seed announcement - https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2024/03/12/ai-funding-and-exciting-customers Let's Profile YouTube series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tScFlySdSAc&list=PLhTDiyZ1B3JkDCzGKp_3K3J-au054MQ_z Where to find Bartek: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

S2 · E1

3 giu 2024

56:42

Optimizing SW Adoption & Maintenance: API Compatibility Guarantees with Björn Rabenstein

Today we have a very special guest, Björn Rabenstein, ultra experienced engineer, long time Prometheus maintainer. In this episode we touch on the topic of versioning and backward or forward compatibility of software APIs and interfaces. Learn how to make your code nice for others or use versioned components effectively for yourself. We discuss semver, and why you also seen many projects, escaping this model with lifetime version of v0. The main topic starts at 18m35s. References: No lens camera: https://futurism.com/the-byte/camera-no-lens-location-ai Crab: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36122270 Paying for GH stars: https://the-guild.dev/blog/judging-open-source-by-github-stars?utm_source=unknownews Stack Overflow seeing lower traffic: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/stack-overflow-chatgpt/?utm_source=unknownews Nvidia passes 1 trillion $ of evaluation: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/30/nvidia-chipmaker-value-ai-chip-shares-artificial-intelligence Beautifully edited by amazing Yanitsa Spassova! As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

27 giu 2023

1:22:20

Optimizing Productivity with Mindfulness, Self-Compassion & Motivation

In this episode we discuss an important topic of productivity in our live and work. We explore often forgotten topic of motivation for our work, self-compassion, energy balance to tackle tedious tasks and healthy habits for software development, meetings and more! We also touch on the topic of social media use. References: Amazon Prime moving out of AWS Lambda: https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling-up-the-prime-video-audio-video-monitoring-service-and-reducing-costs-by-90 Leaked memo, AI alone is not a moat: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither Epic, inspiring episode about embracing death (Limitless): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11714334/ Atomic Habits Book: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits Rollup Meeting Notes Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AHgEyaNdI0YQgPnxDqF1BD1K8b-VJzFOgBAoS4IhSJo/edit Beautifully edited by amazing Yanitsa Spassova! As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

8 giu 2023

1:20:01

Optimizing Freedom as a Digital Nomad with Becky Pauley

Working from a tent, prioritizing your electricity between your monitor or cooking dinner, canal boat life, and more. These are some of the things we talked about with Becky Pauley at KubeCon Europe 2023. This episode covers all the great things about the digital nomad lifestyle, but also dives into some of the challenges. Join us for the interesting story and stay for the helpful tips. As always, before the main part we cover some of the news that got our attention in the previous weeks.References: Our amazing guest, Becky Pauley: https://twitter.com/BeckyPauley Reddit's API going paid: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23688463/reddit-developer-api-terms-change-monetization-ai Reddit's Apollo reader thread on effects of pricing change: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12srosz/reddit_api_going_paid_what_are_the_changes_we/ A Completely Non-Technical Explanation of AI and Deep Learning: https://www.parand.com/a-completely-non-technical-explanation-of-ai.html YC Winter 2023 Batch summary: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-yc-winter-2023-batch Another columnar DB: XTDB 2.0: https://www.xtdb.com/v2 Apache Arrow: https://arrow.apache.org/ Talking to dead people with AI: https://futurism.com/ai-dead-woman-talk-people-funeral?utm_source=unknownews As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

9 mag 2023

56:44

Optimizing Cloud Native by Interviewing KubeCon EU Attendees: Efficiency, AI adoption, WASM, eBPF

In this episode we do a little retrospective on the last week KubeCon EU 2023 in Amsterdam. We also share and discuss amazing answers from a few quick interviews Bartek performed with epic KubeCon attendees. You won't believe what we learned! Big THANKS to all interviewees for amazing answers: Christina, Harsh, Michael, Jimmy and Raphaël! References: KubeCon EU: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/ Observability Day: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/co-located-events/observability-day/ You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6h78yzYM2ORxwcjTn4RLAOQOYjvQ2A3 Efficient Go book: https://bwplotka.dev/book/ Mentoring Opportunities (as mentee, but also to mentor): https://github.com/cncf/mentoring WASM: https://webassembly.org/ GitLab AI: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/03/16/what-the-ml-ai/ eBPF: https://ebpf.io/ authzed/spicedb: https://github.com/authzed/spicedb Running DB in browser: https://authzed.com/blog/some-assembly-required OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io/ As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

28 apr 2023

52:55

Optimizing SRE Productivity with AI feat. Alex Jones, founder of k8sgpt

AI is already changing how different industries operate with tools like ChatGPT and Github Copilot. Today we talk about a new tool, k8sgpt, that gives you SRE superpowers using AI. We are joined by its creator, Alex Jones - Director of Kubernetes Engineering at Canonical. We talk about how tools that utilize AI are built, how they change our day to day work, and what the future might hold for AI in the workplace. And as always we cover the news of the week before we dive into the interview. References: Alex Jones - https://twitter.com/AlexJonesax K8sGPT: https://k8sgpt.ai/ Amazon Bedrock: https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/ Amazon Code Whisperer: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-codewhisperer-free-for-individual-use-is-now-generally-available/ Hacking Cars with CAN injection: https://kentindell.github.io/2023/04/03/can-injection/?utm_source=unknownews Phind, ChatGPT for devs - https://www.phind.com/ OSS Funding via Thanks Dev - https://thanks.dev/home Github Accelerator’s first cohort - https://github.blog/2023-04-12-github-accelerator-our-first-cohort-and-whats-next/ As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

17 apr 2023

1:10:25

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