Former Google Distinguished Engineer, Kelsey Hightower, discusses financial planning for early retirement at 42, advising startups, turning down Microsoft, and meeting Satya Nadella. He reflects on valuing time, shifting priorities, overcoming ego, and career impact.

Former Distinguished Engineer at Google Cloud Platform, Kelsey Hightower, shares pivotal career moments from working at McDonald's to becoming a tech entrepreneur. He discusses skill acquisition, open source projects, navigating corporate dynamics, and team trust, showcasing his journey from self-study to Google System Administrator interview success.

Guest Kelsey Hightower shares insights on career success, entrepreneurial mindset, impact vs. activity, public speaking, building a personal brand, early retirement, staying engaged in your career, and the impact of AI on software developers' careers.

In this bonus episode, we hear from Kubernetes superstar Kelsey Hightower. Diving into crucial elements like empathy in maintainership, succession planning, and the identification of future leaders, hosts Martin Woodward and Neha Batra explore Kelsey’s philosophy on fostering thriving open source communities—and his hopes for the future state of Kubernetes. Dedicated to GitHub’s Maintainer Month, the conversation focuses on the people behind the projects, highlighting their extraordinary effort and celebrating their impact on the community. To close out this special episode, members of The ReadME Podcast community thank maintainers who have had a positive impact on them.Here’s what’s in store for this episode:00:00 - Introduction: The hosts discuss GitHub May-ntainer Month and introduce Kelsey Hightower!1:07 - The interview: Kelsey talks the hosts through how he got into tech, how maintainers can avoid burnout, the importance of identifying new leaders, what the future holds for Kubernetes and much much more!32:55 - Maintainer shout-out!  ​​Aaron Francis, Cassidy Williams, Frances Coronel, Anthony Sottile, Peter Strömberg, and Brandon Ringe call in to  share their appreciation for fellow maintainers in their lives.Special thanks to our guest, Kelsey Hightower, and to all of the maintainers who called in to share appreciation for their fellow maintainers. Check-out The ReadME Project, for more episodes as well as featured articles, developer stories, helpful guides, and much more! Send your feedback, questions, and ideas to thereadmeproject@github.com.

Kelsey Hightower, a former Google engineer and Kubernetes advocate, shares his journey through 25 years in tech. He discusses the importance of authenticity and trust in the industry, alongside the surprising reasons behind Google’s product cancellations. Kelsey emphasizes the need for curiosity and problem-solving skills in tech, critiques the churn-and-burn culture, and reveals his post-Twitter perspective. With insights into community dynamics and the evolving nature of tech roles, Kelsey inspires listeners to embrace genuine communication and continuous learning.

On Monday, Kelsey Hightower announced his retirement from Google. On Tuesday, he sat down with us to discuss why, how & what’s next. Along the way, Kelsey teaches us how not to suck at work, analyzes his magical demos, fights off the haters (again) & opines on System Initiative, Dagger & 37Signals moving off the cloud. Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 2 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. Typesense – Lightning fast, globally distributed Search-as-a-Service that runs in memory. You literally can’t get any faster! Changelog News – A podcast+newsletter combo that’s brief, entertaining & always on-point. Subscribe today. Featuring:Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: “Today I’m announcing my retirement from Google.” Not Everyone Can Be Kelsey Hightower - Greg Poirier - YouTube Rebuilding DevOps from the ground up with Adam Jacob Why we’re leaving the cloud We have left the cloud MRSK — Deploy web apps anywhere Two decades as a solo indie Mac dev with Jesse Grosjean btop on GitHub Dagger Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

The influence of open source extends well beyond code. In this episode, we dive into the less-explored areas of the open source community, spotlighting their profound and wide-ranging impact. With host Neha Batra away for travel, Martin Woodward welcomes Kyler Middleton to discuss navigating the open source community in a highly regulated environment. She highlights the dual challenges of aligning cultural norms and overcoming technical barriers. Also, The ReadME Project’s Klint Finley is back to discuss the underappreciated importance of non-code contributions to open source projects. He emphasizes how roles such as marketers, graphic designers, technical writers, and community managers can be vital for the success of a project. Lastly, we feature a clip from our bonus episode with Kelsey Hightower highlighting the complexity of scaling a project like Kubernetes, which extends beyond technical challenges to include legal, financial, and community-related aspects.Here’s what’s in store for this episode:00:00 - The hosts discuss the far-reaching impacts of open source and outline the symbiotic relationship between non-code contributions and OSS in everyday life. 03:02 - First Commit: How FarmBot is bringing automation to home gardening. Martin highlights how the open source community is putting a high-tech spin on backyard cultivation.05:05 - The Interview: Kyler Middleton joins Martin to discuss everything from securing cloud applications to growing up on a farm.23:45 - #AskRMP: Kelsey Hightower on managing open source projects at scale and the learnings that can be applied to projects of any size.27:42 - Feature Release: The ReadME Project senior editor, Klint Finley, is back to discuss non-code contributions and why developers should prioritize supporting their creation and management.Looking for more stories and advice from the open source community? To learn more from the authors and experts featured on this episode, check out:Non-code contributions are the secret to open source success by Klint FinleyFinish your projects by Aaron FrancisDo your part to secure the open source supply chain by Feross AboukhadijehFrom chaos to clarity: Use code visibility to illuminate unfamiliar code by Shanea LevenSpecial thanks to Kyler Middleton for sharing her security and community insights, Kelsey Hightower for discussing open source at scale, and Sarah Rainsberger for highlighting the benefits of non-code contributions to open source success. Check-out The ReadME Project, for more episodes as well as featured articles, developer stories, helpful guides, and much more! Send your feedback, questions, and ideas to thereadmeproject@github.com. 

Today’s conversation with Kelsey Hightower showed Gerhard what he was missing in his quest for automation and Kubernetes. The fundamentals that Kelsey shares will most certainly help you level up your game. This is a follow-up to the last 45 seconds of the Kubernetes documentary. Oh, and we finally cleared where we should run our changelog.com PostgreSQL database 🙂 Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 5 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:MongoDB – An integrated suite of cloud database and services — They have a FREE forever tier, so you can prove to yourself and to your team that they have everything you need. Check it out today at mongodb.com/changelog OpenZiti by NetFoundry – Programmable network overlay and associated edge components for application-embedded, zero-trust networking. Check it out at netfoundry.io/changelog Raygun – Never miss another mission-critical issue again — Raygun Alerting is now available for Crash Reporting and Real User Monitoring, to make sure you are quickly notified of the errors, crashes, and front-end performance issues that matter most to you and your business. Set thresholds for your alert based on an increase in error count, a spike in load time, or new issues introduced in the latest deployment. Start your free 14-day trial at Raygun.com Rewatch – Rewatch gives product and engineering teams async superpowers and helps them move faster with greater clarity. Imagine all of your team’s videos, all in one place. Record, organize, and share the videos that your team needs to ship great work. Get started for free with 14-day trial at rewatch.com. Featuring:Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, XGerhard Lazu – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes:The 45 seconds that started this conversation 🎬 Kubernetes: The Documentary - Part 1 🎬 Kubernetes: The Documentary - Part 2 🎬 Kubernetes The Easy Way! - KubeCon NA 2017 🎬 Kelsey, Kubernetes, and GitOps - GitHub Universe 2020 🎬 Kelsey Hightower’s Best Live Demo Yet - Cloud Next ’18 🎬 The future of Kubernetes - The DEVOPS Conference 2022 Google Cloud Run kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way @lawik follow-up: Fundamentals & Deployment Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

ADO Episode - Platforms with Kelsey Hightower and Andrew Clay Shafer Daniel’s Kubecon talk Daniel’s blog/tweet thread the kicked off his interest in Platform Eng Spotify golden paths Crossing the Chasm - Technology Adoption Lifecycle Backstage project Backstage as a service

Tech advocate and Google engineer Kelsey Hightower discusses his career journey, from skipping college to mastering technology. Topics include overcoming stereotypes in the tech industry, navigating challenges, and reflecting on career growth and gratitude.