The One Where We Geek Out on Kubernetes Contribution with Kat Cosgrove

Key takeaways:

• Coping with ADHD and leveraging it as a superpower
• The importance of effective communication (and how that got her working on Kubernetes)
• New contributors can and should call out more senior contributors when they are wrong
• Increase in the student contributions in open source, specifically Kubernetes
• The importance of making tech connections with more senior folks, and how that helped Kat transition into cybersecurity
• Path to tech included being paid to watch horror movies

About our guest:

Kat Cosgrove (she/they) is the Head of Developer Advocacy at Minimus, focused on the growth and nurturing of open source through authentic contribution. In particular, her specialties are approachable 101-level content and deep dives on the history of technology, with a focus on DevOps and cloud native.

She was the Kubernetes Release Lead for 1.30 Uwubernetes, and currently serves as both the Release Team subproject owner and SIG Docs tech lead.

Find our guest on:

• Bluesky
• LinkedIn

Find us on:

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

Show notes:

• Google Fi Wireless
• Microsoft Zune
• Wine (Windows emulator on Linux)
• Kubernetes release team
• Kubernetes Community Groups
• k3s
• dockershim
• containerd
• Dockershim Announcement (Kat's article on the Kubernetes blog)
• Uwubernetes
• OpenTelemetry End User SIG
• Minimus
• UK House of Lords
• OpenUK Annual Awards 2025
• Blockbuster video
• Black Lodge Video
• Code Fellows Bootcamp

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

KAT:
Howdy.

ADRIANA:
And where are you calling from?

KAT:
Edinburgh, Scotland.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, exciting. Okay. Are you ready to dive into our icebreaker questions?

KAT:
Yeah, let's hit it.

ADRIANA:
All right, so first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

KAT:
I am a righty.

ADRIANA:
Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

KAT:
Android. I, had an I. The last iPhone I had was a 3GS. It died when I dropped it in the bathtub, and, I just, I don't know, I have a, Pixel 9 Pro.

ADRIANA:
How do you like that?

KAT:
I love it, but I I'm kind of chained to it. Or, like, I committed hard to the Pixel because I use Google Fi. Because I travel so much, that I don't want to deal with cell phone carriers that, like, charge you different rates for different countries for data and minutes, and Google Fi does not. So I'm, I'm locked into the Android Google ecosystem.

ADRIANA:
It's all about the lock in, right? With... cell phones. So. Yes.

KAT:
Yeah. Once they get you, you got.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's it. That's right. Yeah. Apple got me at the iPhone 3G. Yes. And I, I've not let go since. I had a BlackBerry before that. Which I loved until it started to like shut down in the middle of phone calls. And then I just got, like, pissed. I'm like, I'm switching. I don't care.

KAT:
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's how I rage quit. The iPod. I don't know what. Like, I'm cursed or like, my iPods were haunted, but, like, I had three iPods in a row that I had to take back to the Genius Bar to get replaced because, albums were skipping, like, albums that had been purchased from iTunes were skipping as if, like, I had ripped a bad CD or something. Kept doing it, and I gave up and bought a Zune. And I...

ADRIANA:
How was that? Because I almost bought one.

KAT:
I loved it, I missed them. The software sucked shit. Like the actual, like Zune desktop application was laggy and slow, but the actual experience using the literal device was incredible. I really miss it. I don't use my ph-- I hike a lot and I don't like to have. I don't use my phone when when I hike, but I still like to have music. If Microsoft would rerelease the goddamn Zune, I would buy one in a heartbeat, like so fast.

ADRIANA:
That is so cool because I, I totally considered one at the time and I remember too... like the Zune, had some advanced features even over the iPod. I think you could even do like, Bluetooth, like music transfer between Zune users, right? Is that...?

KAT:
Yeah. You could and, I think, I think I remember them, being able to handle, audio output at a higher bit rate. But it's it's been so long since I had a Zune. Like, I have no idea if that that's a correct memory or not, but also they just, like, looked cooler. I was very goth back then, and like, I still am, obviously. But I mean, look at me, but, the Zune came in black and white. I'm not. I'm come in black. So.

ADRIANA:
Well there you go. So endorsement for the Zune. That's so cool.

KAT:
It's a good technology. Let's go.

ADRIANA:
Right on. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

KAT:
It depends on what I'm doing. This call is coming to you from my Windows desktop, okay. Which is a machine that I built for gaming, and also handles all of my big video calls. It's got a big camera mounted behind my desk and a ring light for, like, daily, everyday use. Browsing the internet, playing video games, Windows, Windows, Windows all the way. I actually think that it would be a pretty hard sell to convince me to use Linux as a daily driver in any situation. The user experience is still just like, not very good. And my primary reason for having a home desktop is playing video games, which Linux is just simply not good at. For any time that I have to write code, I use my MacBook. That... that I do prefer, like, I can do it on Windows, right?

Like, WSL2 is fine, but I already have all of my dev environments set up on my MacBook, so I use that. But, most of the time if I'm on the computer, I'm on this Windows machine.

ADRIANA:
Ah! Cool, cool.

KAT:
Sorry everybody.

ADRIANA:
Hahaha. It's interesting though, because, you know, so many of my friends who are gamers, it's like, yeah, Windows. It's Windows for gaming or bust. Because can't... you cannot convince anyone to a game on a Mac, or on a Linux machine.

KAT:
No. Like some stuff you can emulate. Like like a bunch of older games have native support for Linux, or you can, you can run Wine or something like it to emulate Windows to run it, but it's not going to be great, experience-wise and like brand new Triple-A games. No, it's not going to happen.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I feel ya. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

KAT:
Yeah. It's Python. I, I do also know like Go and JavaScript and PHP, but, if I need to prototype something very, very quickly, Python may not be the best choice for like what I'm actually trying to do, but I can make it, do it, and I can make it do it pretty quickly. Like it's a good multi-tool language for me.

It's it's not the first language I learned. So that's that's not why. It's just, it it feels very, very flexible. So I could prototype something in Python and then build it in a more ideal language later on. But if I'm just trying to bang something out real quick. Python.

ADRIANA:
I can so relate to that because, my I, I did Java for 16 years, so I learned Python later in life and... I find is... so nice to code in.

KAT:
It is! It's pleasant. It's like, it's like, it's pseudo code with valid and executable, right? Yeah. You can kind of just, giving it a lot of the time and you're going to be pretty close to writing valid Python. So yeah. Why not.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Yeah. It's it's it's just it's absolutely lovely. And. Yeah, it's also like my nowadays like my go to whenever I want to fuck around with stuff. It's like, yeah.

KAT:
Somebody's got a library for that, you know.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. And it's one of those like it's, it's, I guess an old timey language by now. I mean, it's been around for a while.

KAT:
Yes. Since like 1996, I think. So it's like it's it's not quite a legacy language, but like it's definitely it's mature for sure. It's not geriatric, but it's mature. You can make it do damn near anything, really.

ADRIANA:
You really can! Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

KAT:
That's like that's a difficult question. So I used to be a dev. I was a web developer, and then I was an embedded Linux developer, which does cause, like a very, very specific type of brain damage from which I have recovered, entirely. But when I started doing developer advocacy, I was working for, like, DevOps tooling companies. I was working for JFrog. So. Ops has made me a lot of money and given me like the financial freedom to, take care of myself and people I care about. So. So I like ops quite a lot for that. Like, now, obviously I work in cybersecurity, but, I don't know. I think I'm still going to have to go dev because ops doesn't allow me as easily to build stupid shit when I'm bored.

ADRIANA:
Yes, that is.

KAT:
And so like, on the one hand, financial freedom on the other, stupid shit.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
And the stupid shit does make me happy, so... I’m going to have to go dev.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. And on the stupid shit, when I'm bored, it's like, you know, you can, sure you can spin up like a Kubernetes cluster in your Google Cloud, but it's going to cost you.

KAT:
It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you. That shit is not free. No. Whereas making a, I don't know, dumb fake conference and chucking it on Netlify is free as long as you don't get too much traffic. So it's, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna have to say dev for the fun factor.

ADRIANA:
Love it, love it. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

KAT:
JSON? And I know that I shouldn't say that because I work in Kubernetes and we kind of like assume that everything is going to be YAML, but you can feed Kubernetes JSON as well. It doesn't doesn't have to be YAML. YAML bothers me because there isn't a consistent spec. It is like too easy to end up with something that's improperly formatted because there's like, invisible whitespace hanging out.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
That drives me absolutely bonkers. I just find JSON easier to read, too. So, Related. I once heard a woman straight face at a conference for, like, the entire duration of her talk. Say, Johnson, instead of JSON. And, like, I think she was fucking with everybody, because she was like, she was very capable. She she was not. She wasn't like junior. She wasn't new. She was very capable. So I think she was fucking with everybody. God. And I have thought about that since. And that conference was like, I don't know, fucking 7 or 8 years ago or something. And I still think about it. So, like, whoever you are, I can't remember your name. If you listen to this, please reach out because I just I gotta know if that was like, if you genuinely call it that, if you were fucking with people, if you don't know how it's pronounced, I gotta know. I really hope that you were fucking with everybody because it was so funny.

ADRIANA:
But she was like, that is next level. Like for.

KAT:
Incredibly good. It was at a Python conference. I just Johnson instead of JSON the whole time. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
You mentioned one thing which, you know, I, I knew about, but it is a little known fact about being able to feed JSON instead of YAML, manifest to your Kubernetes. So do you. So do you opt for using JSON instead? When when you're, when you're when you're applying like Kubernetes manifests?

KAT:
Myself, no, unless it is something that nobody else is going to have to deal with. Like most of the time I am like writing a Kubernetes manifest myself. I'm doing it for, the purposes of writing a blog or writing technical documentation for the Kubernetes project, which means I need to present it in the way that most Kubernetes users expect to see it. So I've got to kind of sling YAML for that one.

ADRIANA:
That is super fair. But if left to your own devices, I guess you would use JSON.

KAT:
Yeah I would, yeah, because I’m the only one maintaining it, I would rather be writing, reading and maintaining JSON.

ADRIANA:
So that's that makes sense. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

KAT:
Tabs. But I use Sublime Text. Because I don't like full fledged IDEs They have too much shit going on. I find it annoying and distracting. And I just have Sublime Text, set up to interpret tab as spaces.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

KAT:
So, I'm hitting tab, but it is inputting spaces.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, but that's how it how I have my VSCode set up as well. So yeah. Cool. Okay. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

KAT:
Text? I cannot focus on a video. If I am forced to, consume content in the form of a video. I look to see if there's a transcript or I turn on closed captioning. I don't know what it is. And I've got to be running the video at like 2x, so I prefer to, if I'm learning something, I need to read it and then do it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
A video, I, kind of, slows me down so much that I get distracted and lose focus.

ADRIANA:
I... very relatable. I, you know, I produce videos as part of my job. Yeah. But I optimize on blog posts. I, I'm a serial blogger, and for consuming content, I'm the same as you, like text or bust. Videos are a last resort. Like desperation. I can't find the blog post on The Thing. I guess I'll watch this video.

KAT:
I guess. You do what you gotta. But I would very much prefer the-. Like so please, people producing video content, give me a transcript.

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes. Yeah. And that's so important. Like I've started... one of the things that takes the longest, when I do this podcast is the transcription. And even though I've got a tool that will transcribe it, I still have to go through and make sure that it's not spewing shit because, yeah, the things that come out of the, the transcription, program are just like, they're so hilarious. I should just like, screen capture every time it comes up with some weird words because.

KAT:
It probably doesn't know how to spell Kubernetes.

ADRIANA:
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I work in, OpenTelemetry a fair bit, and we shorten it to “OTel”. And the number of times it comes out as “hotel”.

KAT:
Oh that's funny. Okay. Hotel.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

KAT:
Okay.

ADRIANA:
But yeah, I, I agree with you on the transcription. The captions like, I mean, I watch TV with captions on. I'm too ADHD to like... I can't just sit and watch. And that's the problem. I can't just sit and watch a video and I'm like, I got to be doing something. I feel like a lot more active when I'm reading versus watching a video. I get restless.

KAT:
Yeah, the jokes about, like, kids today needing to have like, somebody's jangling keys up here and subway surfers up on their phone just so that they can have a conversation that is, in fact, me. I am 35 years old, and I do need like six things going on at once in order to focus on one thing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. So I've got a million things on my desk that I fidget with. Even on it on any given day between playing with a hair elastic, I've got a collection of pins that I play with.

KAT:
I'm peeling gel polish off my fingernails.

ADRIANA:
Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. Anything. Anything to, like, focus the brain. Right? Yeah. Cool. All right. Final question of our icebreakers. What is your superpower?

KAT:
So I have ADHD, and I don't take medication for it anymore. Because I don't like the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel like slow and sluggish and empty. The downside to that is that, I procrastinate a lot pretty badly. The upside is that if you give me a deadline, that thing will be done on the deadline. I'm going to stress myself out, and I'm going to bang that shit out, like in a couple hours.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
But it will always be done on the deadline. I do not turn in work late. I don't. The only exception to that is conference talks. Because I define like an extra deadline for myself, like two weeks before the conference. Because I think it's disrespectful of your audience to, like, be writing a conference talk on the plane. A lot of developer advocates, like, brag about doing that, and I think it's so fucking shitty, and you should never admit to doing that in public. But, conference talks I do get done in advance. But everything else, I am just like, I, I'm not going to turn in work late. Never.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. That is a great superpower. So relatable, so relatable. I'm with you on the conference talks like I, I've had so many developer advocate friends say same thing like, I'll write a conference. Sorry, I'll write a talk on the plane. I'm like, I can't. I’m too... my anxiety kicks in. Like, there's no way that that's going to happen. I need time to prepare. Time to practice. Like.

KAT:
Yeah, like, I might still be tweaking slides on the plane, but, like, the talk is done. The talk has been practiced. Like I'm ready to go. You know, so I just, I don't know, be more respectful of your audience. They're they're paying a lot of money to see you.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And on on the the other point that you mentioned on the deadline because I it it must be a tech thing. So... so many of us have ADHD and I've noticed with my, my ADHD friends like it's the... procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate. And if you give them no deadline, nothing will happen. As soon as you give the deadline... It's like, it's on.

KAT:
It's done. It's done. I'm going to get ‘er done. Yeah. And it will stress me out and I will complain about it the whole day. Like, for sure. Like, I owe a blog tomorrow. I have not started it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

KAT:
I've known about this for a month and I haven't started it. But that shit'll be done tomorrow.

ADRIANA:
Oh and plus your brain is probably working on it in the background anyway, unbeknownst.

KAT:
That's my excuse for it. Yeah. That like for the last month, I've been, like, idly thinking about how I'm going to structure this and what exactly I'm going to say. So like when I get up tomorrow at 6:30 in the morning and I have spent two hours hammering it out, it won't take really all that much effort, and it'll be in the hands of my colleagues before they wake up in the US.

ADRIANA:
There you go. Yeah. It's the superpower of ADHD.

KAT:
Yeah. I don't know if they know that I operate that way. It’ll be really interesting when they, listen to this.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
Whoops! Sorry, Josh.

ADRIANA:
The other thing that you mentioned, which I thought was interesting, so, like, my ADHD is undiagnosed, but I tick all the boxes, and so.... I don't, I don't take any medication. And I've always wondered, like about, you know, what it's like to take meds because my, my personal fear, and I'm not against, like, you know, meds for, for mental health issues, but specifically for ADHD. I'm like, I see it as a superpower. So I'm like, oh, if I were to take it, how how different would it be? So it's interesting that for you, like in your personal experience, it didn't work for you. And you're, you're like rolling with you're you're making it work for you.

KAT:
Yeah. I'm just raw dogging it. And like, I, I think I think also. Other people can chime in with whether or not they had this experience. But, some of my friends experienced this, I experienced this. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was 20. So I spent like, my entire school career learning to work with what is wrong with my brain. Right. And like, developing coping mechanisms to make myself, like, functional at school and then functional at work. And being on ADHD medication. At first I was on Adderall and then I was on Vyvanse, and Vyvanse was much easier for me to deal with then than Adderall. It's screwed with those coping mechanisms. Like those those same coping mechanisms didn't work anymore because I was on an amphetamine that made it possible for me to focus without any effort. So it just made me feel, like weird and sluggish and not myself. So, you know, it also made it harder for me to eat, which sucks. And I, I, I really, really love eating. And, it's hard for me to eat on ADHD medication, so I lost a lot of weight, which is not not ideal either.

ADRIANA:
So yeah, I've heard I've heard that about, folks on ADHD meds. And that's always been a fear of mine, too, because I too love to eat. I enjoy my food.

KAT:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA:
I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it's it's very much a personal choice. We're not endorsing one way or the other.

KAT:
Oh, totally.

ADRIANA:
It’s, very interesting to to hear like that, that perspective on things. So yeah.

KAT:
I think it's it's worth trying like because if you've got if you got ADHD, I think it's worth trying being medicated for it, you might love it. I hated it so.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Thank you for thank you for sharing. Really appreciate it. So I want to, get into some other, some of the nitty gritty, so, I mean, you do some, like, really cool work. You are heavily involved in, in the Kubernetes world. Why don't you, could you share with our audience, like, how you got involved, what you're currently doing? Yeah.

KAT:
Yeah. So I'm currently the Kubernetes release team sub project owner and a technical lead for SIG docs. SIG stands for Special Interest Group. Kubernetes is made up of something like 30 ish, 30. I think it's 37. SIGs. There are SIGs that own code, like SIG Node or SIG Storage or SIG Networking. We call those vertical SIGs. Then we also have horizontal SIGs that have responsibilities spanning the whole of the project. And that's things like SIG Docs and SIG Security and SIG Release is I think technically, a horizontal SIG, but it's like it's a weird it lives in a weird corner off on its own for its responsibilities. And I got in through internet drama, actually.

So I learned Kubernetes at work when I was still an engineer. I was, I was doing embedded Linux development, and I needed to run Kubernetes on a small embedded device. So I learned k3s, which is, kind of a very, very small version of Kubernetes that's, takes a lot of shortcuts for you. It's not a great way to learn Kubernetes, but it is cool and useful.

And I was just kind of a Kubernetes user for a long time. But, a few years ago, like, I was friends with a bunch of Kubernetes maintainers, but I was not a contributor myself. A few years ago, the Kubernetes project decided to deprecate something called the dockershim. If you've been around long enough, you may, may remember this kerfuffle, but if you don't, a long, long time ago, the dawn of Kubernetes, the only, container runtime you could use in Kubernetes was Docker. That was the original Kubernetes runtime, and it is the entire Docker Engine stack. Eventually other runtimes were introduced and the Kubernetes projects decided we need a standard for how these runtimes interface with the rest of Kubernetes and Docker didn't comply with that runtime or with those, those requirements.

But because it was the first and so many people were using it, most users were using it, we compromised and we included something called the dockershim. And this was just like a tiny little software shim that allowed Kubernetes to get at the instance of containerd, the actual runtime that was running inside of the entire Docker tech stack. And this is just how things were for like six years, right? But the dockershim was a pain in the ass to maintain, and we didn't want to do it anymore like it was. It was janky and people didn't want to maintain it. So they announced they were going to deprecate it and they fumbled that announcement pretty catastrophically. They they grossly overestimated how much the average person understood about Kubernetes, about containers, about the, relationship between Kubernetes and Docker. So, like, there were people that thought, Google was killing Docker, the company, when like, like that's... enormous leap. Like, that's Google doesn't have anything to do with the day to day management of Kubernetes. They donated it to the CNCF and they lost control of it. And all container images are container images, whether they're produced by Docker or something else. So I, saw everybody freaking out online and like, thumbed out, I don't know, ten or so tweets explaining the relationship between Kubernetes and Docker, and the history there, like whether regular devs needed to care about this or not.

At what point you as a cluster admin need to care about this or not. And it went viral and I went from like 4000 Twitter followers, like 12,000 Twitter followers overnight, which was pretty scary, and immediately got called in by SIG Contributor experience for Kubernetes to write a bunch of blogs, explaining it. And then I kind of just never left.

Like, I stuck around. I got asked to serve on the Kubernetes release team as a shadow on the comms sub team, which is responsible for gathering feature blogs for a particular release and just kind of bounced around the release team for a while until I led the 130 release, which is now end of life, unfortunately. That was Uwubernetes. We get to, you get to give them code names when you're a release lead.

And I unfortunately did... I girlbossed too close to the sun. I had done a very good job running the release team, so the SIG Release leads, the actual leadership of that part of Kubernetes, made up a new job for me. And now the Kubernetes release team is my problem forever. Until I decide to step down. So, three times a year.

I have to make sure that Kubernetes gets out the door safely. Each cycle is four months long, and we're like, about smack dab in the middle of one right now. Yeah, it's it's a year round job now.

ADRIANA:
And on top of your day job.

KAT:
On top of my actual job, which, fortunately, because I'm a developer advocate, a lot of companies, like, want you to still be doing open source shit... as your day job. So it is, fortunately, part of my day job. It was at my last employer. It was not at my employer before that. And I was having to do it, like after hours.

And that sucked ass. So be nice to, open source contributors and maintainers. Most of this is done in people's spare time for no money at all.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. And that's such an important point. And I also like, you know, big kudos to the companies that do support their employees working in open source. I, I'm in a similar position as you like I it's baked into my job to work in open source. So I'm grateful for that because I honestly don't know where I'd find the time. It's... wild.

KAT:
It’s hugely time consuming and like my my best friend is also an engineer. He works at Disney. But he doesn't get to do any open source as part of his day job. It's it's not it's not his thing. So he rarely does it. But the other day he did make an open source contribution, to some like, Roku thing. And he complained endlessly about how much of a pain in the ass the entire process was to, like, be able to do that. And that that sucks. You should be making it easy for your engineers to help maintain the things that you rely upon to make money.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Now was it a pain in the ass because of the process around the project that he was contributing to, or was it his company was being a pain in the ass about it?

KAT:
Both. Like, we do. This is something that I think we need to work on as open source maintainers. We all have like very different requirements for contributing to a project and like hoops that have to be jumped through. And I know most of us document them really well, but it it is a barrier. And maybe maybe there should be some standardizing on on. Hoops. Which is why sometimes you see contributors only exist within a specific ecosystem. Right. It's it's why you see some people working in open source and like never leaving. I don't know, Fedora or never leaving the Node.js ecosystem or never leaving like a foundation. Right. So like only contributing to LF projects or Apache projects or whatever because the the hoops are familiar and they don't have to learn new rules and new social norms every time.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Very true, very true. And then also like, depending on what, what area you're contributing to, like the maintainers. It might it's, it's a different vibe. Right. It's a different set of maintainers. So hopefully the maintainers you're, you're working with are a chill group who provide, you know, thoughtful comments around pull requests so that you're not turned off from ever contributing again. Like for for me, I, I worked in, like I've been in tech for now. I guess it'll be 24 years and most of my career was in the enterprise corporate side, like closed source. And only in the last three years I've gotten into open source. And I was like, shitting my pants, contributing, like doing my first open source contribution, like, oh my God, they're going to judge me.

KAT:
Oh, it's fucking terrifying.

ADRIANA:
It is so terrifying. Like it's such a vulnerable experience. You're being vulnerable when you open a pull request. Straight up. You know.

KAT:
It’s fucking scary at like, since I run the release team. So the Kubernetes works in a weird way with respect to this, we're the second largest open source project in the world, behind Linux. And we have a constantly rotating cast of people who are brand spanking new to open source. Like some of them are still in college. In the release team, because it's an open application. Anybody can apply to shadow on the Kubernetes release team. And so like there's a lot of hand-holding. There's a lot of teaching people like, no, it's okay to comment on this PR, you should comment on this PR you have to comment on this PR like, you have to tell this person who has been in the industry for 30 years, who was one of the original Kubernetes committers, that he's wrong because he is.

And that's so scary for somebody who's brand new. Right. Like that's scary for some people who have been in the project for years. And I get to handhold a bunch of sometimes literal children through, through saying no to an original committer.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

KAT:
That's terrifying. But it's a really great way to, I don’t know... get ballsy early on in open source.

ADRIANA:
Oh, totally. And it's such an important thing to do, like, I was having a conversation with someone who, you know, she, she was interviewing with someone that she met at a conference, and I, I asked her, I'm like, oh, so did you, did you like, you know, say, “Hey, remember me from, like, when we met at Blah Blah Conference?” And she's like, no, because he's he's more senior than me. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We all breathe the same air. Like we're all human. His position makes you... makes him no more important than you. And you have to get past those hangups. And she said, you know, I think part of it is cultural. We are taught to like, you know, be respectful to our elders and therefore the the people older than us, more senior than us are the ones who know everything. And and so I reminded her, I'm like, no, no, you got to remember that. Like, you know, older folks like me, we still have tons to learn from you guys who are more junior like, this is super important.

KAT:
New people see things in a way that like, we can't like when you're an expert in something, you entirely forget what it's like to not be an expert. And like, you have an enormous blind spot because of that. Like, you should always be leveraging people who are brand new. They're super helpful.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. So I think it's great that that you're you're hand-holding folks in that way and encouraging them to, like, stand up for themselves and point out the wrongs. Because unfortunately, we have too much of that in industry. And I find, especially in large enterprise, with this obsession with seniority and rank and file and all that. So people won't point out you know, the gross wrongs and just let people continue doing stupid shit. Basically.

KAT:
Yeah, we end up with a lot of like, missing stairs, right? Like people who, like, this person sucks ass. Everybody knows they suck ass, that they're difficult to work with. They have to be handled in a specific way, but we just ignore that and like, work around them because they had like, one really important contribution. And 15 years ago, or because they're like forwarding a lot of like unwritten knowledge or something. But fuck that. Fuck that entirely. Like it's it creates like such a hostile environment for new people and anyone from an underrepresented group. Get the fuck rid of them. Like, don't let your missing stairs stick around just because they used to be important.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. Such an important thing to keep in mind. The other thing that I wanted to, dig into a little bit that you mentioned because, you said that you work with, a lot of, like, there's a lot of college students, contributing to open source, which is amazing. I, I love that that is a thing. Now, because, like, definitely when I was in college, I don't even I don't even know that, there was... I mean, open source was around for sure, but it was definitely, not something I was necessarily aware of or even, like, thought capable of contributing to. Like, it just never crossed my mind. And so the fact that we have these college students who are doing this sort of thing, like KubeCon, I think has like a cloud Native University track, or colo event, which like so cool, like it's really, focusing on, on bringing in this like young new talent, which I think is awesome.

KAT:
I think like universities must have changed their curriculum recently because we get like we get so many student applicants. And then the cloud native student, track at KubeCon is is pretty large. Like, it gets a lot of applicants too for for speakers. And the talks are usually pretty busy. So like, I think some universities must have adjusted their curriculum to put open source on there, or at least to put Kubernetes on the curriculum in some way, because it was a pretty like we've always had a few students. Right. Like really really particularly driven students who are like terminally online and aware of what's actually being used at companies today and not just staying glued to whatever their, school is teaching them. So there's always been a handful of them, but now it's like it's got to be. Sixty percent of applicants for the Kubernetes release team is students or like fresh grads. And so it's it is significant. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I love that. I love like all that fresh perspective. And you know, they're not jaded yet by being...

KAT:
Oh god, yeah. They're still bright eyed and bushy tailed and hopeful. Right. Their their souls haven't been crushed. They haven't worked in like, the enterprise for a decade and lost their sparkle yet. So it's it's also it's revitalizing to work with people who are still like genuinely so excited about technology.

ADRIANA:
Yeah I, I agree, I agree and I'm one of the maintainers of the OpenTelemetry End User SIG, and we've had a couple of really fresh faces, fresh faces, like young, young, folks join our SIG regularly as contributors. And I love the energy that they bring, the enthusiasm, the like, “I'll take this on!” I'm like, “What? Yay!”

KAT:
Hell, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Bring it on, bring it on.

KAT:
Love that shit.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I wanted to switch gears a bit, and talk about, like, your, your your day job, at Minimus, because you mentioned that you're, in cybersecurity. How did you get into that?

KAT:
This story is actually so stupid how I got this job. So the job market is terrible right now as we're recording this in 2025. Absolutely abysmal. I've been looking for a job for, like, six months. I live in the United Kingdom, and I needed visa sponsorship. And so that made things like, significantly harder and significantly slower. But this is a great example of why you should talk to people who are way more senior than you and try to be friends with people who are way more senior than you. Because I got this job out of a personal recommendation from somebody I met who was the CTO at a another friend's company, at an award ceremony at the House of Lords.

ADRIANA:
Wow. Damn.

KAT:
I was like, yeah, I was there to, win an award for, open source code contributor of the year for OpenUK, which is, a UK organization. I did not win. I got runner up. The person who won it absolutely did deserve it. But, I met this guy there. He already kind of knew who I was. Because I am friends with somebody who worked for him. And, when he went to this new company, Minimus, they they said they were looking for an experienced developer advocate. And he recommended me. I had never worked directly in cybersecurity before, but, I have a lot of friends who are in cybersecurity or are, relatively well known hackers. So, I already had the connections that they wanted, and I had a shitload of experience. And developer advocacy and very strongly held opinions about how it should be done.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
From a developer advocacy standpoint. So there was no like, there was no fucking around. There was no, like, beating around the bush with what I thought needed to be done in the interviews. And they, liked the assertiveness.

ADRIANA:
That is amazing. I love that.

KAT:
There I ended, but it's still like it's it's a container cybersecurity company. So I was like, I do have relevant experience because I'm a Kubernetes maintainer, and I used to be, a software engineer, right. Specifically working with containers. So I have the dev experience, the user experience that they're looking for.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. And I think this, this all brings I have this firm belief that, like, where we are now is a result of all the things, all the things that we've done before has have led us to now. And so, you know, you get to a certain point in your career and you're like, oh, this actually kind of makes sense.

KAT:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I haven't actually been in tech for that long. I didn't get into tech until I was like already like very much an adult. Before that, I was trying not to be my dad. My dad's a software engineer, and we're, like, damn near the same person. So I was like, I got to have not my dad's job. I can't have the same job as my dad. So I screwed around and tried to do other stuff for a long time and it just, like, didn't work.

ADRIANA:
What was the other stuff that you did before tech?

KAT:
I was a bartender for a while at a strip club. So that was fun. But, I also worked at, a video rental store. So, like an indie, an independently owned video rental store, called Black Lodge Video was in Memphis, Tennessee. Whereas, like, the average Blockbuster would have like 600,000 titles in the store. We had like 40 something thousand.

ADRIANA:
Damn.

KAT:
Yeah. So in order to, like, recommend movies to customers, everybody had to kind of like pick a genre and that's, that's their genre. So for a few years, I got paid to just like watch horror movies and talk to people about horror movies and, when I, when I make enough money to leave tech and never come back, I am probably just going to go back to doing that because it was great. It was rad. You know, all I did was watch movies and talk about movies. That's all day.

ADRIANA:
Now. Do you have a particular favorite genre of horror movie? Do you prefer like the supernatural stuff or like the slasher flicks?

KAT:
So I like, I like psychological horror a lot, like, unreliable narrator type horror. I like when horror crosses over with sci-fi quite a lot. That's probably my favorite. So stuff like Event Horizon or Alien, Fright, where, like, you can argue that this is horror and you can argue that this is sci-fi. I like the, I like ghost stories, but not so much Western ghost stories. As much as I like Japanese or Korean ghost stories. Japan and Korea both had periods where they just, like, absolutely crushed the ghost story movie genre. That did a very, very good job with that. The French also had a period of time where they were churning gore in a really interesting way. And that, that, that was, that was a good period of horror movies for me.

But generally it's like sci-fi horror crossover or, psychological horror. Like, you can't tell if this is an unreliable narrator situation. Like, is this person possessed? Is this person actually insane? I know it's it's it's very fun to shit on, M. Night Shyamalan. There was there was a period where he was very predictable with the what a twist thing.

KAT:
Yeah, but, The Visit is genuinely, like, I don't get scared watching horror movies anymore, but that's the last time I can remember watching a movie and my stomach dropping. Like the twist in that one. I was like, oh fuck. Like, if you watch these kids are, these kids are so cooked, dude, that that's you can make fun of them for the what a twist thing all you want.

ADRIANA:
You know, Enjoy those movies. I still.

KAT:
Like, fuck.

ADRIANA:
Like, they they fuck with you.

KAT:
They really, really, really do. They do. And the The Happening had some really inventive death scenes as well.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, that one.

KAT:
Like, the lawnmower thing.

ADRIANA:
Hurting my brain. Like, for real. I can... because I was the one with the. Wasn't that the one with the plants? Like... yeah... I can never I couldn't really look at plants the same way.

KAT:
Yeah. Because they want to murder you. You know, or they want to make you murder you. It's what's actually going on. God damn, that man can crank out a really unpleasant movie.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
We're all so mad at him for Avatar. But if he can go back to just making, like, really upsetting horror movies that’s... he. He kills it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I totally roll with genre. I...

KAT:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
It's so cool. I love the, the breadth in the in the career. You know, my, my dad also is in tech, and, he used, like, a software architect for many, many years. He's retired. And when I graduated university, I ended up working at the same company as him. We both worked at Accenture, for, for brief a period, and it was.

And that's where I met my husband, too. So it was the three of us working there. And, you know, it wasn't until I left, like, the whole time I was there. Like, they're both really smart. My my husband is also in tech. And I spent the entire time trying to live up to them to be just like them.

And it wasn't until I left and realized, oh, I can forge my own path. And then that's when I started to actually find myself in tech. But like, I, I can totally understand the, you know, avoid, avoid following in the footsteps.

KAT:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Because it's so...

KAT:
I don’t even I don't write any of the same languages my dad does. Even. So, like, I don't I don't know what I was so worried about, but he he didn't believe I was a real programmer until I learned a compiled language, though, like, he thought that Python did not count. JavaScript did not count. I had to learn something compiled for it to count. You know, we got there eventually. We got there eventually. But he, he he took a while to call me an actual software engineer because of that one.

ADRIANA:
So what ended up getting you into tech after after, like, dabbling in various areas?

KAT:
I have been, like, doing it as a side hustle, in that I was like, I was building WordPress and Joomla templates for people. As a side hustle because, like, bartending in the state of Tennessee pays you $2.13 an hour plus tips.

ADRIANA:
Ouch. Were the tips good?

KAT:
No.

ADRIANA:
Oh, shit.

KAT:
No. This is like.

ADRIANA:
Technically.

KAT:
Legally if you don't make it up to federal minimum wage. Over the course of a pay period, 725 an hour, you report that and your employer is supposed to pay you the difference. But the reality is that if you do that, you're just going to get fired, right?

ADRIANA:
Right.

KAT:
Right. So like yeah. So it didn't it didn't pay great. And while I loved working at Black Lodge video, it also didn't pay great. So I was I was doing a side hustle and, I got one really, really beefy contract, for a sports association. It was the most expensive contract I had had at that point. It was, ten grand, which doesn't sound like a lot of money now, but at the time, it was like a life changing quantity of money for me. And I thought, man. Maybe I have to actually commit to this. So I, I went to a coding bootcamp. I had moved to Seattle at that point, because my, my husband at the time was a fencing coach, and he, he took a job with the fencing club there. But, I went to a coding academy. I went to Code Fellows and learned Python and, my first job was not, like, super well paying for Seattle for junior, it was $60,000. But that was so, like many, many times more money than I had ever seen in my bank account. Yeah. You know, so it was, it was kind of hard to leave after that, like suddenly being able to pay off like old medical debt and stuff was pretty. Well, it was it was hard to be mad at that. That one $10k contract made me go, okay, you know, like, maybe like, I'm good at this, obviously. I enjoy doing this and, it it pays, you know, it pays better than working in a video store. It pays better than bartending. And it will continue to pay, whereas, you know, service industry roles are notoriously, like, not very stable. I don't know what I would have done if I was still in the service industry during Covid.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that... that was brutal for folks in the service industry.

KAT:
Yeah, I would have been so fucked. Right? Like many, many people were fucked.

ADRIANA:
So absolutely.

KAT:
You know, it was a good choice. And, I have accepted that. I just am my dad, and that's okay. You know, my dad is cool as hell, so. He's retired. He lives, on the beach in Mississippi in, a in a house on stilts. And, all he does is hang out with his dog that he found out on the side. The the highway. He makes soap that he sells at a farmers market, and he watches like the Real Housewives.

ADRIANA:
Damn.

KAT:
He's he's very happy. He's, like, really living the dream. I'll call him. And it's the 2 p.m. there, and he's like, drinking a martini with his dog. I’m like, so.

ADRIANA:
That is a chill life.

KAT:
Yeah. So he's he's got it. He's got a pretty good, you know, and like I, I would like that to be me when I'm 70. Yeah. Yeah for sure for sure.

ADRIANA:
That's cool I like that. You know, I, I could just keep going and going. I've, I've had so much fun chatting with you today. We are coming up on time, but before we, we wrap things up, I was wondering if there is any words of wisdom or spicy takes, that you wanted to impart.

KAT:
Spicy take as a Kubernetes maintainer. Sometimes Kubernetes is, like, fully not correct for your use case. Don't over complicate it like, you don't... You don't need to throw Kubernetes at it straight out the the fucking gate. Also, you should probably not be rolling your own cluster. You should be using a managed service. You you absolutely should not roll your own cluster unless you are very, very sure that you know what you're doing personally. Or you have like $300,000 a year laying around to pay somebody who knows what they're doing to administrate your cluster. Otherwise, please use a managed service. Do not roll your own.

ADRIANA:
I am fully supportive of that. Absolutely. And on your your first statement of like it. Kubernetes might not suit your use case. There. There is definitely, there was definitely a huge influx of people who are like, we must use Kubernetes because it is The Thing. Yeah.

KAT:
It is a cool thing, but it is also so much more work than is necessary for some things.

ADRIANA:
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And, very, very great. Spicy take, very important to, to educate the folks out there. So, yeah, I really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Kat, for geeking out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time.

KAT:
Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.