Screaming in the Cloud

Jake Gold, Infrastructure Engineer at Bluesky, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his experience helping to build Bluesky and why he’s so excited about it. Jake and Corey discuss the major differences when building a truly open-source social media platform, and Jake highlights his focus on reliability. Jake explains why he feels downtime can actually be a huge benefit to reliability engineers, and why how he views abstractions based on the size of the team he’s working on. Corey and Jake also discuss whether cloud is truly living up to its original promise of lowered costs. About JakeJake Gold leads infrastructure at Bluesky, where the team is developing and deploying the decentralized social media protocol, ATP. Jake has previously managed infrastructure at companies such as Docker and Flipboard, and most recently, he was the founding leader of the Robot Reliability Team at Nuro, an autonomous delivery vehicle company.Links Referenced:Bluesky: https://blueskyweb.xyz/Bluesky waitlist signup: https://bsky.app

Avi Freedman, CEO at Kentik, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the fun of solving for observability. Corey and Avi discuss how great simplicity can be deceiving, and Avi points out that with great simplicity comes great complexity. Avi discusses examples of this that he sees in Kentik customer environments, as well as the differences he sees in cloud environments from traditional data center environments. Avi also reveals his predictions for the future and how enterprise M&A will affect the way companies view data centers and VPCs. About AviAvi Freedman is the co-founder and CEO of network observability company Kentik. He has decades of experience as a networking technologist and executive. As a network pioneer in 1992, Freedman started Philadelphia’s first ISP, known as netaxs. He went on to run network operations at Akamai for over a decade as VP of network infrastructure and then as chief network scientist. He also ran the network at AboveNet and was the CTO of ServerCentral.Links Referenced:Kentik: https://kentik.comEmail: avi@kentik.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/avifreedmanLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avifreedman

Jeremy Snyder, Founder of FireTail, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his career journey and what led him to start FireTail. Jeremy reveals what’s changed in cloud since he was an AE and AWS, and walks through how the need for customization in cloud security has led to a boom in the number of security companies out there. Corey and Jeremy also discuss the costs of cloud security, and Jeremy points out some of his observations in the world of cloud security pricing and packaging. About JeremyJeremy is the founder and CEO of FireTail.io, an end-to-end API security startup. Prior to FireTail, Jeremy worked in M&A at Rapid7, a global cyber leader, where he worked on the acquisitions of 3 companies during the pandemic. Jeremy previously led sales at DivvyCloud, one of the earliest cloud security posture management companies, and also led AWS sales in southeast Asia. Jeremy started his career with 13 years in cyber and IT operations. Jeremy has an MBA from Mason, a BA in computational linguistics from UNC, and has completed additional studies in Finland at Aalto University. Jeremy speaks 5 languages and has lived in 5 countries. Once, Jeremy went 5 days without seeing another human, but saw plenty of reindeer.Links Referenced:Firetail: https://firetail.ioEmail: jeremy@firetail.io

Kenneth Rose, CTO at OpsLevel, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how OpsLevel is helping developer teams to scale effectively. Kenneth reveals what a developer portal is, how he thinks about the functionality of a developer portal, and the problems a developer portal solves for large developer teams. Corey and Kenneth discuss how to drive adoption of a developer portal, and Kenneth explains why it’s so necessary to have executive buy-in throughout that process. Kenneth also discusses how using their own portal internally along with seeking out customer feedback has allowed OpsLevel to make impactful innovations. About KenKenneth (Ken) Rose is the CTO and Co-Founder of OpsLevel. Ken has spent over 15 years scaling engineering teams as an early engineer at PagerDuty and Shopify. Having in-the-trenches experience has allowed Ken a unique perspective on how some of the best teams are built and scaled and lends this viewpoint to building products for OpsLevel, a service ownership platform built to turn chaos into consistency for engineering leaders.Links Referenced:OpsLevel: https://www.opslevel.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/opslevel/Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpsLevelHQ

Nickolas Means, VP Engineering at Sym, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how Sym is looking to solve the most common and most frustrating elements of compliance. Nick reveals why he finds it valuable to focus on making it easy for people to do the right thing over preventing them from doing the wrong thing, and why he feels the true spirit of compliance involves helping teams collaboratively come up with mutually beneficial solutions. Corey and Nick also dive into the common problems that engineers experience as a result of traditional compliance methods, and why historically the compliance industry has gotten a bad rap. About NickolasNickolas Means loves nothing more than a story of engineering triumph (except maybe a story of engineering disaster). When he’s not stuck in a Wikipedia loop reading about plane crashes, he leads the engineering team at Sym, helping create the building blocks engineering teams need to build delightful developer access and approval workflows.Nick has been leading software engineering teams for more than a decade in the healthtech and devtools spaces. His focus is on building distributed organizations defined by their cultures of high trust and autonomy. He’s also an international keynote speaker, having shared his unique brand of storytelling with audiences around the world. He works remotely from Austin, TX, and spends his spare time going on adventures with his wife and kids, running very slowly, and trying to brew the perfect cup of coffee.Links Referenced:symops.com: https://symops.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/nmeans

Chris Farris, Cloud Security Nerd at PrimeHarbor Technologies, LLC, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his new project, breaches.cloud, and why he feels having a centralized location for cloud security breach information is so important. Corey and Chris also discuss what it means to dive into entrepreneurship, including both the benefits of not having to work within a corporate structure and the challenges that come with running your own business. Chris also reveals what led him to start breaches.cloud, and what he’s learned about some of the biggest cloud security breaches so far. About ChrisChris Farris is a highly experienced IT professional with a career spanning over 25 years. During this time, he has focused on various areas, including Linux, networking, and security. For the past eight years, he has been deeply involved in public-cloud and public-cloud security in media and entertainment, leveraging his expertise to build and evolve multiple cloud security programs.Chris is passionate about enabling the broader security team’s objectives of secure design, incident response, and vulnerability management. He has developed cloud security standards and baselines to provide risk-based guidance to development and operations teams. As a practitioner, he has architected and implemented numerous serverless and traditional cloud applications, focusing on deployment, security, operations, and financial modeling.He is one of the organizers of the fwd:cloudsec conference and presented at various AWS conferences and BSides events. Chris shares his insights on security and technology on social media platforms like Twitter, Mastodon and his website https://www.chrisfarris.com.Links Referenced:fwd:cloudsec: https://fwdcloudsec.org/breaches.cloud: https://breaches.cloudTwitter: https://twitter.com/jcfarrisCompany Site: https://www.primeharbor.com

Josh Doody, Owner of Fearless Salary Negotiation, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how to successfully negotiate your salary, and why it’s important to do so even in times of economic uncertainty. Corey and Josh chat about some of the hidden reasons why salary negotiation is critical to job seekers, and what goes into determining salary bands behind the scenes. Josh also reveals why he feels there’s some stagnancy in the big tech job market, and why it’s critical for job seekers to have a balanced view of the value that they provide to employers when negotiating salary. Josh also describes some of the unexpected ways salary negotiations can come up throughout the interview process, and how to best handle the discomfort of negotiation. About JoshJosh is a salary negotiation coach who works with senior software engineers and engineering managers to negotiate job offers with big tech companies. He also wrote Fearless Salary Negotiation: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Paid What You're Worth, and recently launched Salary Negotiation Mastery to help folks who aren't able to work with him 1-on-1.Links Referenced:Company website: https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/joshdoodyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdoody/

Rich Mogull, SVP of Cloud Security at FireMon, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his career in cybersecurity going back to the early days of cloud. Rich describes how he identified that cloud security would become a huge opportunity in the early days of cloud, as well as how cybersecurity parallels his other jobs in aviation and emergency medicine. Rich and Corey also delve into the history of Rich’s involvement in the TidBITS newsletter, and Rich unveils some of his insights into the world of cloud security as a Gartner analyst. About RichRich is the SVP of Cloud Security at FireMon where he focuses on leading-edge cloud security research and implementation. Rich joined FireMon through the acquisition of DisruptOps, a cloud security automation platform based on his research while as CEO of Securosis. He has over 25 years of security experience and currently specializes in cloud security and DevSecOps, having starting working hands-on in cloud over 12 years ago. He is also the principle course designer of the Cloud Security Alliance training class, primary author of the latest version of the CSA Security Guidance, and actively works on developing hands-on cloud security techniques. Prior to founding Securosis and DisruptOps, Rich was a Research Vice President at Gartner on the security team. Prior to his seven years at Gartner, Rich worked as an independent consultant, web application developer, software development manager at the University of Colorado, and systems and network administrator.Rich is the Security Editor of TidBITS and a frequent contributor to industry publications. He is a frequent industry speaker at events including the RSA Security Conference, Black Hat, and DefCon, and has spoken on every continent except Antarctica (where he's happy to speak for free -- assuming travel is covered).Links Referenced:FireMon: https://www.firemon.com/.Twitter: https://twitter.com/rmogullMastodon: [https://defcon.social/@rmogull](https://defcon.social/@rmogull)FireMon Blogs: https://www.firemon.com/blogs/Securosis Blogs: https://securosis.com/blog

Kelly Shortridge, Senior Principal Engineer at Fastly, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss their recently released book, Security Chaos Engineering: Sustaining Resilience in Software and Systems. Kelly explains why a resilient strategy is far preferable to a bubble-wrapped approach to cybersecurity, and how developer teams can use evidence to mitigate security threats. Corey and Kelly discuss how the risks of working with complex systems is perfectly illustrated by Jurassic Park, and Kelly also highlights why it’s critical to address both system vulnerabilities and human vulnerabilities in your development environment rather than pointing fingers when something goes wrong.About KellyKelly Shortridge is a senior principal engineer at Fastly in the office of the CTO and lead author of "Security Chaos Engineering: Sustaining Resilience in Software and Systems" (O'Reilly Media). Shortridge is best known for their work on resilience in complex software systems, the application of behavioral economics to cybersecurity, and bringing security out of the dark ages. Shortridge has been a successful enterprise product leader as well as a startup founder (with an exit to CrowdStrike) and investment banker. Shortridge frequently advises Fortune 500s, investors, startups, and federal agencies and has spoken at major technology conferences internationally, including Black Hat USA, O'Reilly Velocity Conference, and SREcon. Shortridge's research has been featured in ACM, IEEE, and USENIX, spanning behavioral science in cybersecurity, deception strategies, and the ROI of software resilience. They also serve on the editorial board of ACM Queue.Links Referenced:Fastly: https://www.fastly.com/Personal website: https://kellyshortridge.comBook website: https://securitychaoseng.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyshortridge/Twitter: https://twitter.com/swagitda_Bluesky: https://shortridge.bsky.social

Brooke Sargent, Software Engineer at Honeycomb, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how she fell into the world of observability by adopting Honeycomb. Brooke explains how observability was new to her in her former role, but she quickly found it to enable faster learning and even a form of self care for herself as a developer. Corey and Brooke discuss the differences of working at a large company where observability is a new idea, versus an observability company like Honeycomb. Brooke also reveals the importance of helping people reach a personal understanding of what observability can do for them when trying to introduce it to a company for the first time. About BrookeBrooke Sargent is a Software Engineer at Honeycomb, working on APIs and integrations in the developer ecosystem. She previously worked on IoT devices at Procter and Gamble in both engineering and engineering management roles, which is where she discovered an interest in observability and the impact it can have on engineering teams.Links Referenced:Honeycomb: https://www.honeycomb.io/Twitter: https://twitter.com/codegirlbrooke