From Physics to Platform Engineering: Revolutionizing DevOps and Tackling Cloud Security

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Speaker 1: I was going.

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Corey, it's great to get you back on the podcast.

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You know we we originally planned this thing for several

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months ago but, you know, with the craziness of all the

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conferences at the end of the year and whatnot, it didn't work

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out.

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But I'm glad that I could finally get you on.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

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Yeah, sorry about that.

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Yeah, I think I think things got a little away from us at

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reinvented it.

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It ended up.

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I mean it's a crazy conference all in, but like we, we just we

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were overwhelmed the entire time there by attention.

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So, yeah, kind of, oh, we got away from us.

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Speaker 1: It's definitely a good thing, right?

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I mean, especially you know when you're when you're coming

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out with a new product.

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You know, I feel like the security field sees like 50 new

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products every year.

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You know, and it's like for a security professional that's in

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the field looking for you know up to your products in each

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category for their company.

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You know it's it's sometimes hard to weed through all those

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weeds and find the hidden gem.

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I guess.

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Speaker 2: Definitely.

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I mean it definitely is.

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I mean I feel like walking around reinvent, like the number

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of tools that like overlapped and overlap partially and

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overlap with like other tools.

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It's like how many?

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Like how many do I need?

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I feel like.

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I feel like it's sort of the painful things and like the

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security and ops space and dev ops space in general, like

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there's so many tools for things now, like how do I, how do I

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glue them all together and, like I don't know, get peace of mind

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.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's.

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You know it's kind of frustrating, to be honest,

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because it's like you know, these tools are kind of coming

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out of nowhere and they're you know they're they're focusing on

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niches, niches that you know might already be handled right

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by another solution.

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And, yeah, they may do it a little bit better.

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But it's like, well, why do I have to?

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Why do I have to add something to my security stack, right,

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like that's one more headache, that's one more tool that I have

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to manage, that's one more, you know, set of findings that I'm

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going to be reporting to my developers and engineers that

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you know, like you, with how the cloud is going right now, you

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know it's almost like you need a development team that is only

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focused on findings right in your cloud, because you know I'm

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dealing with it right now, right at my day job.

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I have probably a hundred developers that I work with

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spread out across, you know, maybe 10 or 15 teams, and to get

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them to spend the time on, you know, actively or proactively

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right, resolving these findings and whatnot is insane, like it's

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.

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It's so difficult to do that, you know, like we've we have

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threatened people, we have provided, you know, food to

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people and beer to people.

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It's like what do we need to do at this point, because I'm used

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to my bribes working, but it seems like they're not.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just honestly.

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I think developers have, I think all of us developers in

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particular have just too much stuff to pay attention to, right

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?

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I mean, I think it's funny when you look at the cloud and like

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where it was in like 2005.

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So I've been in AWS since they first launched EC2, but like

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when we first moved to the cloud , like there was, like there was

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two services in AWS.

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There was like SQS and EC2, I think, right, I think they had

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their classic VPC, but like the cloud was simple, like there was

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like, oh, I can run a workload and I can queue things.

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Like this is great.

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Maybe I had to put Postgres in an EC2 instance myself, but like

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right, there wasn't much there.

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But like where we've ended up is 200 AWS services and then

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there's all the services in between that you don't care

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about, that are important KMS, iam, like all this stuff, right.

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Speaker 1: And so as a developer .

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Speaker 2: You know you might be writing a service and go, well,

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you might be consuming like five AWS services Like SNS.

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You got SQS, I got SES, I got RDS, you got S3, like I've got

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all these like cloud things that I'm starting to use.

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And like now you got bloat Terraform.

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I got to figure out OPA.

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Like there's just so much tooling, I think, in the way of

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trying to build a feature to make company money right.

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And I think that we never, as an industry, like slowed down

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and dealt with that Like we just did little tiny patches here

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and there we're like oh, the problem is like infrastructure

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is not declarative.

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Everybody will just write Terraform.

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It's like okay, like it's still developers spending a lot of

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time focusing on things besides building your products right.

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And we never made the cloud easy again.

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Like it was easy and then it became capable and now it's very

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capable but very hard.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah that's a good point.

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Oh sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

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Speaker 2: Oh no.

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So I was thinking like I think like what the cloud needs to do

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or teams internally need to be doing is like figuring out how

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to like lower that service area.

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Right, like we say cognitive load all the time, but like what

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does that mean?

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It's like less tools, but also like takes over the

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configuration options away.

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Like why do databases have the option to turn off encryption?

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Now it is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah right, why is that a thing Like no one?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, why is it a field for a developer to hover

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their mouse over and go?

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Should I turn it on?

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Yes, you should turn it on.

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Should you turn it off?

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Should be the question.

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Why is it?

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Why is it even there?

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know the surface area of the cloud,

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though it's gotten.

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It's gotten too big and I think it's it's hard.

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It's hard to keep in people's heads.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, you know, several years ago I, I took and

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passed the AWS security specialist certification, right

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it's.

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You know AWS is hardest security cert.

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You know you really have to know your stuff inside and out

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and this past year, you know, I had to retake it or re re-upper,

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you know, re-certify it.

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And you know I, I did some very light study, very light, I

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figured.

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You know I've been in AWS, you know, for 10 years, right, like

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it shouldn't be that crazy, right, and I get into this exam

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and they're asking me about all of these.

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You know, kind of my new one-off services, that you know

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it's like cloud formation, you know whatever it is right, cloud

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formation, like build or whatever the new tool is, and I

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know what cloud formation is.

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But then these other like subcategories of it, well, I

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don't know.

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You know I guess I should have studied more, you know.

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But that just goes to show you how much is changing.

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You know, and I think last year what was it like, 25 new

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services were introduced into AWS and that's just AWS.

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You know, I used to work for a company that was in AWS, azure

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and GCP, right, and I had to tell them like, hey, you know,

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typically like this is managed by three different teams, right,

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and the reason is that it's three different languages, right

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, azure doesn't have the vocabulary of EC2 in Azure, you

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know, you need to know that that's, you know, a VM or

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whatever, it is right.

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Same thing in GCP, and I'm on a team of two, including myself,

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right, and it's a mess.

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You know, like, how do you, how do you even, like, get started

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with that?

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How do you even, you know, wrap your hands around?

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You know what's going on in the environment where it's going on

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, what's talking to what?

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You know?

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All that sort of stuff, right?

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And you know, at the end of the day, now I'm interviewing, you

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know, 100 devs trying to find out how their app works, to be

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to be like, oh okay, this is the place I need to look, or, oh,

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this repository is actually important.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, the repository, I feel like it's so

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funny, like I feel like a lot of a lot of companies, the

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repository sprawl.

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The repository sprawl when you start doing things well is funny

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as well.

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Like this whole, like ah, should things be monolithic?

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Repos or like repos for everything is like, once you're

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at scale like outside of Google, like Google does a lot to build

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the tooling to make like the Google monolith, feel like a

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monolith or feel not like a monolith, sorry, but like for

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the rest of us.

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It's like, dude, there's so much stuff.

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It's like where do you put your OPA rules?

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Is it with the application?

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Is it with the security teams repo.

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Is it with the fines teams repo .

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Like what about Terraform?

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Like who like, Terraform gets complicated, Like there's some

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Terraform for the network which we all share and that's maybe

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owned by the networking team.

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There's some Terraform for Kubernetes cluster, or maybe

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your team owns their Kubernetes clusters.

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Like where do you start putting all this stuff?

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And like how do you organize and find it Right?

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So, like I feel like that's so hard and like coming on as a dev

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to a team that maybe is established and has like really

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good practices in place.

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I'm sure I'm curious who you are, because the status CD

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report, door report this year said that it's none of us Like

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you come in day one, you're like okay, I want to deploy some new

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cloud resource.

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How do I do it here?

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Right, I feel like we've gotten to the point at least with,

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like you know things like Kubernetes.

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Like you can have like a.

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If you go into a company that has Kubernetes like, it's like

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oh, I know, I can put my thing in a container and I can use the

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I did this at the last job.

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My knowledge is portable and how to operate that thing.

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But when it gets to managing resources in the cloud, I feel

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like we're very bespoke still.

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Like you get to one company, they have a giant Terraform repo

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.

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You get to another company, they have a hundred Terraform

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repos because they're another company.

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Everybody keeps their cloud resources alongside their

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applications.

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We do it so differently, and all of it seems a bit app-hazard

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.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.

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You know like now I feel like changing companies previously

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was a whole lot easier than it is today.

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You know because you can use, even if the company that you're

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jumping to is in the same cloud as your previous company.

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You know you can use these clouds in such you know,

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significantly different ways that it'll take you two or three

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years just to figure out.

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You know what everything is and where everything is, what it

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all does.

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It's not as cut and dry as it once was.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, in those in those lucid charts they're

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all lies.

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Like you come in, you're like oh, I found the directory of

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lucid charts Awesome.

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I understand stuff now.

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And then, like you get a troubleshoot something.

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So it's like oh, we haven't dated those in like nine months,

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yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I can't even count the amount of times

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that I've had to, you know, find what team owns what.

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And you know you go to one place and they direct you to one

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resource.

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And you go to another person and they're like, oh, that's,

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that's a terrible.

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You know, roster, that's a terrible directory.

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Like, use this thing over here.

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And you know you're getting directed all over the place just

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for simple information, because these, you know, these

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configurations, the ownerships are changing so often.

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But, corey, you know we kind of just jumped into things without

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hearing your background, you know.

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So why don't we, why don't we dive into your background a

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little bit?

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You know, talk to us about how, you know, you went down this

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path of getting into IT or getting into security.

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You know what made you want to go down it.

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Did you, you know, look at it and have an interest in it?

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Did you look at it from a?

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You know what's going to future , proof my career, so to speak,

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and dive into it from there?

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You know how did that look for you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, like a lot of things in my life I've

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stumbled backwards into, so just stumbled straight back into it.

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So my original major was physics and architecture, and so

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I happened to be working at a hospital at the time and I wrote

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software for fun who doesn't write software for fun?

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And I did data entry and so my job was very, very, very, very,

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very, very boring.

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And what I noticed was they're printing up these sheets every

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day.

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Everything was consistent.

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And then I would kind of type some data into this app.

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And so I wrote a tool that would take data.

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If somebody just brought it down to me on a disc get instead

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of printing it, and it would take it and it would put it into

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this like terminal system that we had.

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So I pretty much automated away my first job and I'd just been

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writing software, you know, for fun as a kid, and that's that's.

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That's the extent of my software knowledge at this point

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in time.

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And so the company had.

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I never signed a PIA form, nobody owned the rights to my

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software.

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I wrote it at home.

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It was mine, like I'd automated my job, and they wanted to buy

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it from me.

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So they offered me a thing was $1 for the rights to my

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software and a promotion to the help desk team and I was going

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to be making nine bucks an hour.

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I was in college.

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I was like, dude, a thousand bucks and $9 an hour, like yeah,

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you can have my software.

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So, like that's how I got into eventually, operations.

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So I was working at this, working at this hospital,

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working on the help desk team, ended up on the networking team,

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so working in the data center, and at that point in time there

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was still a major in physics and architecture and I switched my

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majors to healthcare information systems and start.

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It was right around the time like HIPAA was taking off, and

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so it's like you know what?

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Like I'm already in hospitals I've worked in two hospitals

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back and back really kind of enjoy working with computers, so

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I'm going to become a HIPAA security and compliance expert,

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and so that's kind of what I focused on.

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Now what I didn't realize was those sweet budgets that I had

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my first few years.

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You don't get those sweet budgets every year.

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You don't just get.

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You don't just get piles of cash to buy new servers and buy

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Wi-Fi.

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Like Wi-Fi was rolling out at the time.

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I was like, well, this is cool, I don't have to run cat five

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anymore or four or whatever you want at the time.

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And so after a few years of, like you know, building out a

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pretty awesome data center, a couple new hospitals and surgery

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centers, got to the point where I was just in like maintenance

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mode and risk slapping mode You've violated HIPAA, thing,

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you're in trouble.

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And so I just kind of stumbled backwards into a job offer in

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Los Angeles, california, working for a startup.

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And so I came out here in early 2004, 2005.

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I've been working in centers.

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I get a job as a software engineer at this like digital

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signage company.

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This is before iPhone.

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So like people are standing around in Starbucks with nothing

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to do besides wait.

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And so we put these big TVs in and we just blast you with ads

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and like sports course and stuff .

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And so about a month or two into my job there, my boss walks in

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and he goes used to work in a data center, right, and I'm like

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yeah, he's like cool.

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He's like AWS launched this cloud service thing.

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We're gonna our data center leases expire, we're gonna move

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all of our stuff to the AWS or to Amazon.

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He called it Amazon cloud and I was just like the bookstore.

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Like what are you talking about ?

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And the reason he picked me of all people is of the entire

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company and there's like 40, 50 engineers.

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I was the only person that had experienced writing software and

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working in a data center.

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Like we had ops people, we had developers and so like I was the

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like I was just I was our first DevOps engineer like 2004,.

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I just kind of got pigeonholed into this and I've just kind of

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done it since, so founded a couple of startups back to back

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from there, had worked kind of in e-commerce and affiliate

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world for quite a while the real , real, honest company, a couple

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of other products in there.

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And then about 2018 or so, I got into like large scale

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professional services, so like migrating multi-billion dollar

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companies to the cloud.

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And what was really interesting was I started to see this like

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continuing trend, and that was when I was at startups.

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It felt like it was really hard to get operations and security

00:16:02
full.

00:16:02
Find people that you had the experience and were developers

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were just finding people that I could attract to my startup.

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Right, like I have a startup, I can pay you 90 grand a year.

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It's amazing.

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I can go to Google and make quarter million a year.

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It's like okay, well, good luck , right.

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Like nobody wanted to work for like one of these small

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companies.

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And then when I got to these big companies or moving, moving

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to the cloud, they had the same problem.

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I just assume you know multi-billion dollar company

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people are just throwing the resumes at you but you're seeing

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these companies like post an ops role or a DevOps role and

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the seats sit open for two, three months before they place

00:16:35
the role, and turnovers on average every 18 months.

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So, like you know, it's just like a rotating door and you end

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up in this place where nobody really knows the state of the

00:16:44
system, and so that's kind of where you know.

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I kind of got an idea that there was, might be, a product in

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this space, and that's where I kind of originally got the idea

00:16:53
from Asdriver.

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And then went out and did a ton of research, ton of user

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interviews and just found that like companies are struggling

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with this, like we don't have enough operations and security

00:17:02
talent on the planet to support the workloads that we're slowly

00:17:06
moving to.

00:17:06
All right, we have 27 million software developers on this

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planet.

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By 20, it's like by 2036, one in 100 US citizens will be a

00:17:15
software developer.

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That's nuts.

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Like there's gonna be more software.

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Yeah, we'll be the eighth highest growing, but this is the

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Department of Bureau and Labor's dissent with the eighth

00:17:24
highest growing industry of everything, where we'll be

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outpacing waitresses, doctors, nurses, lawyers, but like

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there's got a ton of software developers but nobody's teaching

00:17:35
people, put stuff in the cloud, like we don't teach it in

00:17:37
universities, we don't teach it in boot camps, it's on the job

00:17:39
training or on the weekend training, right.

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And so like what do we do?

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Right, we've ended up in a place where it's like less than

00:17:46
five to 6% of developers have security and operations

00:17:50
experience.

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Guess what.

00:17:53
All of our stuff requires to be operated somewhere in a data

00:17:56
center on the cloud.

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God, I hope it's all secure, but it's probably not.

00:18:00
That's where we started working on Master.

00:18:03
The goal was really to make it where developers could really

00:18:07
feel like they have the ability to manage what they need in the

00:18:09
cloud.

00:18:10
Just get what they need.

00:18:11
At the end of the day, where this abstraction layer sits in

00:18:13
front of AWS, gcp, azure, etc.

00:18:15
What you're getting is you're getting this nice gooey

00:18:18
interface that feels like you're diagramming, but as you diagram

00:18:21
it's actually pulling your Terraform modules, opa.

00:18:24
It's pulling all of your operations and security team

00:18:26
stuff that they put in place.

00:18:27
You don't have to think about ops tools as a dev.

00:18:30
You think about what you want, you think about the layout of it

00:18:33
.

00:18:33
Save it.

00:18:34
Now your ops team they just write Terraform, they write

00:18:37
Ansible, they write the tools that they know and they've given

00:18:40
you self-service.

00:18:40
They've given you enough to move forward quickly.

00:18:43
But you've got audit trails, metrics, costs all in one place

00:18:47
where you, as an ops person, can understand what they're running

00:18:49
.

00:18:49
You can actually see their alerts and the change histories

00:18:52
and all this stuff.

00:18:53
It gives you one place to go to troubleshoot, one place to go

00:18:56
to manage your infrastructure and neither team has to learn

00:18:59
new tools.

00:18:59
We're trying to help bridge that gap, like get more out of

00:19:03
your operations team scale those folks up.

00:19:05
Yeah, that's where we are today .

00:19:07
I'm the CEO and co-founder of that about nine folks today.

00:19:10
Yeah, that's my history in a nutshell.

00:19:17
Speaker 1: You mentioned you were getting your degree in

00:19:20
physics and architecture.

00:19:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:19:23
Speaker 1: Right, that's no small feat right there.

00:19:27
When I was in college I had the great idea of trying to go

00:19:34
pre-med right from the beginning , right?

00:19:37
Some like astrophysics class and it was just talking about

00:19:41
planets and calculating different things with planets.

00:19:43
Why not?

00:19:44
I got that.

00:19:45
I understood that I ace that class.

00:19:47
That class was actually really easy for me.

00:19:49
I think it was like physics 112 or something like that.

00:19:54
I was required to go down to physics 105.

00:19:58
That was the lowest physics class that my university offered

00:20:02
.

00:20:02
I was like, well, surely if I did find in physics 112, how

00:20:06
hard can this class be?

00:20:07
Somehow I forgot that I'm not that great at word problems and

00:20:14
physics is nothing but word problems.

00:20:16
Well, after trying the class twice, I failed at both times.

00:20:22
I'm like, okay, maybe this whole pre-med thing isn't for me

00:20:25
.

00:20:28
At the same time, while I was failing that, I had a friend

00:20:31
that was also in architecture.

00:20:32
He also went down the same path of.

00:20:36
He would be good at times, but then the cost of materials to

00:20:41
actually stay in the program and actually do the work and

00:20:45
whatnot was like starting to outweigh the cost of the actual

00:20:49
program.

00:20:49
He switched and he went pre-med and it worked out for him, of

00:20:54
course.

00:20:55
But can you look back and identify different skills or

00:21:03
things that you learned during that period that maybe helps you

00:21:07
and benefits you now, because those are very analytical

00:21:11
degrees.

00:21:12
You have to be able to tear apart a problem piece by piece,

00:21:17
put it back together in reverse and figure out what's going on

00:21:21
there.

00:21:22
Do you think that those skills help you today?

00:21:26
Speaker 2: I think they do and I would say that probably have a

00:21:30
little bit of this yourself.

00:21:30
I think a lot of software.

00:21:34
This might be weird to hear, but we call it computer science.

00:21:40
It is for some people I'm sure your people writing some C and

00:21:44
building the database and thinking about algorithms.

00:21:46
It's very computer science to you, but for most of us it is a

00:21:50
word problem.

00:21:51
We're tools.

00:21:54
Software developers are tools.

00:21:56
There's business people who have an idea of how to make

00:21:58
money and they need to automate all this stuff, but they don't

00:22:01
know how to do it.

00:22:01
We're their interface to computers.

00:22:04
They talk to us about what they need and we have to take all

00:22:07
that and interpret it, figure out how to make that software.

00:22:11
That is the real job of a software engineer, in my opinion

00:22:13
.

00:22:13
I think physics helped a bit with that.

00:22:17
I think the skill that I think going to something like Jesus

00:22:27
I'm drawing a blank here on what it's called like philosophy and

00:22:31
study of logic Might even be really applicable there.

00:22:35
But I think the most I got from my physics program was good

00:22:42
advice from the dean, and that was to leave the physics program

00:22:46
.

00:22:46
I pretty much told him what I wanted to do with my life.

00:22:50
I was like, look, I want to build something great.

00:22:52
I want to build something that I'm proud of.

00:22:54
I definitely want to be rich from it at some point in time.

00:22:56
And he's like you're realistically going to be a

00:22:58
professor and make no money.

00:23:01
I was like, well, shit, I got to get out of here Because I had

00:23:04
these hopes and dreams.

00:23:05
I'm like I'm going to build space habitats.

00:23:07
That's what I really wanted to do.

00:23:08
Like wait, we didn't have SpaceX then, like we weren't

00:23:11
going anywhere near the moon, but that's what I wanted to do.

00:23:14
Then from my architecture, I think the thing that's really

00:23:16
beneficial from architecture is just that extremely important A

00:23:20
physics and understanding the load of buildings and how much

00:23:23
different resources can hold.

00:23:25
Being able to think through that.

00:23:28
Doing the math on it is one thing, but being able to think

00:23:30
through the nitty gritty details is another right.

00:23:35
So it's like you can put you know, you can put like a big I

00:23:41
bar up or maybe even some like LVL beams up to hold up a wall,

00:23:45
right, but there's multiple things you have to think about,

00:23:47
right, you have to think about holding up the wall, holding up

00:23:50
the floor, and then you also have to think about, like, what

00:23:52
is the person's experience in this building?

00:23:54
Right, because holding up the wall isn't just the only goal of

00:23:56
these wall, like of the wall, they're sorry, holding up the

00:23:59
roof isn't the only goal of these walls.

00:24:00
It's also to, like, provide shelter, hang entertainment,

00:24:03
give you a view outside the window.

00:24:05
So, like, you have to think through things in multiple

00:24:07
degrees pretty heavily, and every time you make a change to

00:24:11
one of those, it changes the rest of it, right?

00:24:13
Like, oh, we make the wall taller or lower to be able to

00:24:17
accommodate this other thing on this other floor?

00:24:18
Well, that affects the people downstairs, right?

00:24:20
So I think, like, just that, like full circle of like, always

00:24:23
building, designing and then assessing how it impacts

00:24:26
everything else, I think is one of the things that made me

00:24:30
Probably a better engineer, but I can see where that surface is.

00:24:33
In me particular, I'm a full-on test-driven development

00:24:36
engineer.

00:24:37
I cannot, to this day, work on anything unless I have a set of

00:24:43
rigorous tests in front of me that I can actually get that

00:24:46
tight little feedback loop.

00:24:47
That's what I'm looking for always, and all my development

00:24:50
is I have this theory.

00:24:51
This is how the walls are going to stand up.

00:24:53
This is what the experience is going to be like inside of this

00:24:55
room Build it doesn't hold the load oh, can't look out the

00:25:00
window.

00:25:00
Iterate, iterate, iterate.

00:25:01
I think that's probably the most I got out of architecture.

00:25:04
Physics was really just I don't know.

00:25:06
It's a bunch of hard math and like one percent of the people

00:25:11
actually getting to a place where it's actually rewarding

00:25:13
and everybody else is just professors.

00:25:14
Sorry, there's new physics listeners, but you're probably a

00:25:17
professor and not listening to this.

00:25:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point.

00:25:24
It's just interesting where our paths take us.

00:25:30
Again, in high school, I took AP physics in high school, aced

00:25:40
it, and this other person sat right across the room for me.

00:25:45
He really struggled with it.

00:25:47
He got like a D on a good day.

00:25:49
We get to college and he's majoring in physics and he's

00:25:55
getting his PhD.

00:25:55
Like actually doing real things , going and doing research and

00:26:02
some pretty awesome labs across the country.

00:26:05
We met up years after high school and I'm like man, the

00:26:10
difference that occurred between us like now I can't do physics

00:26:15
to save my life, and now you're getting your PhD, you're doing

00:26:20
research, you're changing the whole field in this area.

00:26:23
It's just interesting to see how that played out.

00:26:28
Speaker 2: Was it the failure, though, that ignited?

00:26:30
Is he a person that just chases success, because I can see that

00:26:34
you get you do it.

00:26:35
You're like fuck, I suck at this.

00:26:36
How do I become better at it?

00:26:37
I just got to double down on it .

00:26:40
Speaker 1: I think so.

00:26:40
Yeah, I think that that was a part of it.

00:26:43
It's interesting because I'm like that too with some areas,

00:26:50
but when it came to like physics and chemistry, it was different

00:26:56
for me because it was just like man, I don't think that this is

00:26:58
for me, right?

00:26:59
Because even when I retook, like chemistry, you know and I

00:27:04
was actually doing really good in it the second time around I

00:27:08
was not excited to open the chemistry book and study.

00:27:12
I was not excited to go to class and take this test.

00:27:16
You know, I mean, I guess you're never going to be excited

00:27:18
to do that stuff, but it was like a real struggle for me,

00:27:22
right?

00:27:22
And so, like I knew, like okay, this probably isn't for me, I'm

00:27:27
going to stop, like you know, trying to go against the grain

00:27:30
here and figure something else out, you know.

00:27:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny, like architecture was like I saw

00:27:38
them.

00:27:38
You know how I got into it was I was just very good at math as

00:27:42
a kid.

00:27:42
It's funny because I think my last math class that I took may

00:27:46
have been in sophomore year, college.

00:27:48
So I finished most of my math and physics for a four year

00:27:53
degree while I was in high school, while I was doing Calc 3

00:27:55
and like in seventh grade or something like that.

00:27:57
So I was really good at math.

00:27:58
I'm still pretty good at it.

00:28:00
I don't like it.

00:28:01
I don't find it to be interesting and maybe it's

00:28:04
because I'm good at it Just like , oh, this is boring to me.

00:28:06
Like I would much rather like talk through problems and work

00:28:09
through like the wordiness of it .

00:28:10
But to me, like why I got into physics originally was this just

00:28:15
seemed, oh, this is I'm good at this thing.

00:28:17
Like I'll just go and do it.

00:28:18
It's the easy, it's the easy path.

00:28:20
And what I discovered, like when I was in school, is actually

00:28:23
like architecture.

00:28:23
I love architecture.

00:28:24
I'm actually covered in architecture tattoos to date,

00:28:27
like, but I never, never majored in it, and so I've actually

00:28:31
like seeked that in my life.

00:28:32
So I've spent a lot of time doing volunteer archaeological

00:28:37
digs.

00:28:37
So it's like I want to go spend time in this temple here, like

00:28:41
helping them work on it, just so I can be in like these old

00:28:43
buildings that are built.

00:28:44
And so I finally got to surface that like desire.

00:28:48
About three or four years ago my wife and I bought a dump and so

00:28:53
we were stripped it to the studs and did like a full, like

00:28:56
mid century, mid century modern, like rebuild of the house, and

00:29:01
that was super fun.

00:29:02
So it's like I think in retrospect, like leaving that

00:29:05
industry, like I don't know if I would have loved it day in, day

00:29:08
out, but I did really enjoy doing my house.

00:29:11
But I'm also kind of glad that it's done.

00:29:13
And my, my dean of the architecture program also said

00:29:17
that I would realistically be building strip malls and and not

00:29:20
space habitats, which he's probably correct.

00:29:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess you probably found you know like a

00:29:29
passion for you to do something with it on the side and not have

00:29:33
the pressure of a career you know, of having to do it every

00:29:37
single day.

00:29:38
You can kind of dabble and get your fix and then go from there.

00:29:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I can go and go inside whenever I

00:29:44
want to do a little.

00:29:45
Do a little architecture and interior design.

00:29:47
Yeah, the nice thing is I'm actually not a aesthetically

00:29:53
skilled person whatsoever, so like I was never good at that

00:29:55
part, like I can do the math on, like the load for this beam,

00:29:57
but like every time I designed something it kind of looked like

00:30:00
crap.

00:30:00
The house looks good, though that's because my wife did that

00:30:04
part.

00:30:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's what matters.

00:30:07
Yeah, my, we, we built our house and my wife chose, you

00:30:15
know, 99 percent of the house and everyone, like always, loves

00:30:19
our house and whatnot.

00:30:20
And they're like, oh, who chose this?

00:30:22
And like she chose everything.

00:30:23
Like I gave her the budget, I was like this is a hard budget,

00:30:27
you stay within it no matter what.

00:30:29
And she figured out the rest, you know, but you know it's it's

00:30:35
.

00:30:35
It's just interesting, you know to me where, where, like, our

00:30:40
paths take us.

00:30:41
You know.

00:30:42
So, when you're, when you were finishing up school, did you

00:30:46
ever have that inkling that you would start a company?

00:30:48
And you know, figure it out from there?

00:30:50
I asked that because you know starting a company is not a

00:30:57
small feat, you know, especially to be successful, right, like

00:31:02
you know, I feel like personally , right, I'm not successful in

00:31:06
starting a company.

00:31:07
Like I have a company, I've LSE , right, that I do all this side

00:31:10
work through and everything like that, but I'm not, I'm not

00:31:14
like insanely successful with it .

00:31:17
Right, I don't even know that side of it.

00:31:20
Like, I feel like I need someone to be like, no, this is

00:31:23
where you click, joe.

00:31:23
Like you know, this is what you do.

00:31:25
Like, how did you build that desire to do that and how did

00:31:31
you reinforce it?

00:31:31
Was there something that you learned or a place that you went

00:31:35
to learn that skill set?

00:31:38
Speaker 2: I think that you know , the first time I, the first

00:31:41
time I did a startup, was again like I've stumbled backwards and

00:31:44
do a lot of stuff.

00:31:44
And so the first time I did a startup, I was not looking to

00:31:48
start a business, I was.

00:31:49
I was working at a company.

00:31:50
They had layoffs.

00:31:52
I wasn't laid off, but if you're looking for a company,

00:31:54
you know I wasn't laid off, but it pissed me off that they laid

00:31:56
off all my friends.

00:31:57
And so I was like I'm going to go to find a new job and I just

00:32:00
I stumbled across a guy that had an idea for a business and he's

00:32:07
like I'm looking for a co-founder.

00:32:08
I'm like I don't really know what that entails, but I can

00:32:10
write software, so let's do it.

00:32:11
And so that's how I got into my first startup and I was just

00:32:13
like, oh my, oh, this is crazy.

00:32:15
Speaker 1: Like there's literally nothing here.

00:32:16
Speaker 2: I have to do everything Like I always joined

00:32:18
a job where like stuff was already in play.

00:32:20
I was joining a team or project and so that was rough, like

00:32:24
went through fundraising, like went through all that stuff.

00:32:26
And I think that what's interesting about it is, you

00:32:29
know, I don't know, I guess you got to say, like I've had some

00:32:34
success, like we've raised money , we have customers, like we

00:32:37
built a product, we've done a lot of things, but like I'm

00:32:40
three years into this journey, it doesn't feel like success yet

00:32:43
, right, and that I think that's one of the things it's like.

00:32:45
When you look at like the startup hustle and like just the

00:32:50
LinkedIn shit and people post like it seems like everybody's

00:32:52
just like riding a rocket into success constantly.

00:32:55
I think a lot of it is like a it's just building your brand or

00:32:59
whatever Could be.

00:33:00
I think you have to like have that outward positivity.

00:33:03
Like a look at this thing I did because nobody else is there to

00:33:05
celebrate your successes.

00:33:06
It says literally you just sit in your 10 by 10 square like, oh

00:33:09
my God, we got a customer today , thank God, right.

00:33:11
So you have to like project it like onto LinkedIn, like look

00:33:14
how good we're doing.

00:33:15
So I think that everybody is like a lot more excited about

00:33:19
like their successes than like they might actually feel.

00:33:23
Like because day in, day out, as a founder, like it's a

00:33:26
fucking roller coaster man, like I had a real bummer call right

00:33:28
before this, like I'm pulling a style and like stoked because

00:33:32
like I know I've got something really exciting like going on

00:33:34
right now and I've got a really cool call coming up next.

00:33:36
But like every single day it's like you sit down, You're like

00:33:39
this is the day and like 20 minutes into you're like oh fuck

00:33:42
.

00:33:42
So I feel I feel like really what it is.

00:33:45
This is like just as far as like starting a company, it's

00:33:49
just like being able to like roll with the punches, like

00:33:51
being able to just like blaze through something.

00:33:54
Like just just blaze through things, like I'm going to do

00:34:00
this, like steadfast, like I'm gonna approach this so

00:34:02
bullheaded, but know when you have like gone too far right and

00:34:05
like setting your experiments, like testing things moving

00:34:07
quickly, like kind of coming back to that architecture and

00:34:10
that TDD loop, like that's the same way.

00:34:11
Like we run the business like let's try this idea, see if

00:34:14
people like it.

00:34:14
If so, like we'll invest more time into it, if not like shelve

00:34:18
it, and you have a lot more failures than you have successes

00:34:21
.

00:34:21
But when you have those successes, like how do you, how

00:34:23
do you, how do you latch on to me get as much out of it as

00:34:25
possible?

00:34:26
So I mean, you know it's it is.

00:34:30
It is very hard to start a company and I feel like we

00:34:33
lucked out, like we started ours , like right on this, like last

00:34:36
wave of crazy Silicon Valley money.

00:34:39
Like raising last year was hard , like we did raise a good round

00:34:44
, maybe for building an AI product.

00:34:46
Today maybe it's easy to raise, but everybody else is not

00:34:48
building an AI product.

00:34:49
It's hard to raise right now it's harder.

00:34:50
It's hard probably been since the bubble first burst in the

00:34:54
early 2000s.

00:34:55
So, yeah, it might appear like success, but like yeah, I'm

00:34:59
going through the ups and downs every day.

00:35:01
Like like everybody else is, whether whether it looks like

00:35:03
that or not from the outside, looking at the LinkedIn yeah,

00:35:08
it's, um, you know it's, it's, it's difficult for sure at times

00:35:14
.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: You know, like I fairly recently opened up my, my

00:35:18
podcast for sponsors right, because the goal is to build a

00:35:23
sponsor base, that you know it essentially cuts out, you know,

00:35:29
a security stack.

00:35:30
So if someone says, hey, you know I want to go, I need a sim

00:35:33
or I need X, right, well, what I listen to, security on filter

00:35:37
was security on filter recommend , right, and I mean, like you

00:35:41
said, I'll get on these calls and it'll just be, you know,

00:35:45
back to back to back of just badgering.

00:35:48
You know just me and everything else about it.

00:35:52
It's just like man, this is, this is not gonna work out, but

00:35:57
something in me, you know, just still believes it's gonna work

00:36:00
out, right, it's, and it does right.

00:36:03
Like I have good days, I have bad days, whatnot, and I've

00:36:07
encountered, you know, people that I consider to be friends.

00:36:11
You know, I actually doubted me when I was starting this thing.

00:36:14
They kind of laughed at me.

00:36:15
We're starting a podcast like who would listen to this?

00:36:18
You know who?

00:36:19
Who do you know that would actually listen to you?

00:36:21
Talk for an hour, joe?

00:36:22
Well, that's a good point, because I don't want to listen

00:36:26
to myself talk for an hour.

00:36:27
So why would they?

00:36:29
Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a.

00:36:33
It's a interesting predicament, you know, because you have to

00:36:38
be able to say you know, well, screw your opinion, like I'm

00:36:41
still gonna make this thing work , I'm still gonna do it.

00:36:43
I'm still gonna try.

00:36:45
And I think, you know, if I would have let them stop me

00:36:49
right early on and I never would have met all the people that

00:36:53
I've met, you know, I would have regretted it.

00:36:55
You know, looking back, you know, in my 60s or whatever,

00:36:59
like I totally would have regretted it.

00:37:01
But if I at least tried and failed, you know, at least I

00:37:04
could say like, hey, I gave it my all, you know, and it still

00:37:07
didn't work out.

00:37:08
Speaker 2: I went and did this other thing, but at least I

00:37:10
tried, you know yeah, it's funny , my one of my co-founders they

00:37:13
got two co-founders our, our COO , chief Operations Officer joke

00:37:19
is he's a operations engineer COO, thank you.

00:37:23
He thought the idea for Master Driver was so stupid when we

00:37:25
pitched him on it originally.

00:37:26
We're I've known him for years.

00:37:27
He was my boss like seven or eight years ago and then he I

00:37:32
poached him at a company we worked at and then like that's

00:37:36
really like the real, like idea of Master Driver, like kind of

00:37:38
solidified, like seeing like how much this big organization

00:37:42
struggled with operations is.

00:37:44
When I showed it to him originally he was like this is

00:37:45
stupid, like nobody's gonna buy this thing here.

00:37:48
I mean I we actually have an interview that's going up on our

00:37:51
podcast where I grill him on like like poopooing us, but like

00:37:56
it does suck.

00:37:57
It's like but now he owns a third of the business, like he

00:38:01
works on day in, day out and he's like, oh, I see the value

00:38:03
in it.

00:38:04
Now it's just like you know, people's especially to start

00:38:08
like people give you a lot of opinions.

00:38:10
I got I got a lot of investors that give me a lot of different

00:38:12
opinions.

00:38:12
I got advisors that give me all like conflicting opinions, like

00:38:15
people have opinions, like am I gonna be good at a podcast or

00:38:18
not, like you'll know till you try.

00:38:19
Right.

00:38:20
The real question like do you have, do you have like the

00:38:23
gumption to go try?

00:38:23
Like do you have the desire to go try?

00:38:25
And if you do, you should fucking go do it, and if you

00:38:27
don't like it, stop.

00:38:29
And if people don't like it then then probably also stop, but

00:38:33
maybe not yeah.

00:38:36
Speaker 1: I would.

00:38:37
I would much rather try and fail than than not try at all.

00:38:41
Yeah, you know, like that's, I don't know, when someone tells

00:38:44
me that they think you know, my idea is stupid, or that you know

00:38:48
I shouldn't go down that route, or I shouldn't, couldn't want

00:38:51
it.

00:38:51
You know, whatever it is, it's like I don't know what.

00:38:54
It is something in my head, just it's like a switch that

00:38:58
flips.

00:38:58
It's like, okay, now I'm gonna do this thing.

00:39:01
You know, like, you just told me I can't run a marathon.

00:39:04
Okay, I'm gonna go run a marathon.

00:39:06
Yeah, like you know, you told me I can't do you know this 50

00:39:10
mile race.

00:39:11
All right, I'm gonna go do it.

00:39:12
You know which?

00:39:15
I don't know what it is, it's just, it's just a.

00:39:19
I don't know.

00:39:20
It's interesting, but not everyone has that.

00:39:23
You know, like, even my brother , you know, grew up in the same

00:39:27
household, raised by the same two parents.

00:39:29
You know he is not the same, he is like the opposite, he's go

00:39:34
with the flow.

00:39:35
You know, type thing, not gonna go against the grain or

00:39:39
anything like that.

00:39:40
Speaker 2: So it's just, it's just interesting to me, you know

00:39:43
, to see how people build that up, you know, for themselves

00:39:48
yeah, I mean, I think it's you gotta just do it and like, if

00:39:52
you're enjoying it, keep doing it like you're seeing success,

00:39:54
like focusing on those successes and try to reproduce it.

00:39:57
Like not to be use VC speak, but like pattern match, like okay,

00:40:00
this works, like this type of guest works on the podcast, like

00:40:02
keep doing it.

00:40:03
Like I mean, if people like it, that's great, like that that's

00:40:06
building user base.

00:40:07
Funny, we, um, we've been trying to like build our social

00:40:11
presence and it's funny cuz.

00:40:14
Like trying to figure out like how to build social presence as

00:40:18
a tech company is I think it's also hard.

00:40:21
There's some people are very good at it and like the super

00:40:24
base teams great, right, right, but they post a lot of funny

00:40:28
shit, right, like it's not a lot like deep, like like technical

00:40:31
shit and I I try to be humorous but like I, rather I rather

00:40:35
tweet about technical stuff.

00:40:37
Right, it's like we've been struggling just got like a few

00:40:39
thousand followers on like a Twitter and LinkedIn and stuff.

00:40:41
And one of my VCs was like like, because I have a celebrity dog,

00:40:47
like how did you build the following for dog?

00:40:50
Like, how did you like build up that?

00:40:51
I said, oh, we just posted every day, post every day.

00:40:54
Eventually there was like 30 followers of the dog,

00:40:57
like people.

00:40:58
People asked to take pictures with her, like in public.

00:41:00
It's super weird.

00:41:00
People like Ziggy and I'm like how are you leave my dog alone

00:41:04
and like why don't you just post every day?

00:41:06
Like I just do it every day, just do it every day and like

00:41:08
build your following.

00:41:09
It's just like it's.

00:41:10
It's interesting.

00:41:11
It's like it does feel so much harder sometimes to like get

00:41:14
that like that habit, like that you really, because there's just

00:41:18
so much shit to do, right, like yeah, there's interviewing this

00:41:21
podcast and I'm sure you've got to edit, you've got to

00:41:24
advertise, you got a source leads to be on it.

00:41:27
Like there's a ton of stuff outside of, like the part that

00:41:30
people see, and I think like that's what really comes down to

00:41:33
is like when you're, when you're doing the part that

00:41:34
people see and there's like 90% of stuff people don't see, like

00:41:37
are you getting enough joy from that like moment where, like,

00:41:40
people are using a thing where it's like it's worth doing the

00:41:42
rest of that stuff?

00:41:42
and if so, then, like, keep investing in what you're doing

00:41:45
and keep going for whether it's a startup or a podcast or

00:41:47
whatever the case maybe, but I think that's that's the hard

00:41:50
part.

00:41:50
I think that's what a lot of people give up is, like I was

00:41:52
hard or it sucked, or somebody told me it was dumb, like

00:41:54
everybody has fucking opinions and most of them are bullshit.

00:41:57
You just got to go with, like, what works for you right, so

00:42:01
talk to me about what Mass Driver is.

00:42:04
Speaker 1: What's the?

00:42:04
We kind of touched on it before , but what's the problem in the

00:42:09
industry that you guys are solving, and how are you solving

00:42:11
it?

00:42:12
Speaker 2: yeah.

00:42:12
So in our industry, like I'll say, I'll come out first and say

00:42:16
like there's a lot of buzzwords right now in the platform

00:42:18
engineering space and there's a lot of bullshit and non-bullshit

00:42:23
materials out there and I think that right now what's happening

00:42:26
is like we've had this like decade or 15 years of like

00:42:29
DevOps right and people rode the , the marketing backs of DevOps

00:42:33
into billion-dollar businesses and I think people are starting

00:42:36
to do that platform engineering and we're one of those people.

00:42:40
But I think that what we're doing and like and the reason

00:42:45
that we're doing what we're doing is much different than a

00:42:47
lot of people in this space.

00:42:48
So if you take a step back and like look at where we are can

00:42:51
mention this earlier like listen , five to six percent of

00:42:54
engineers have operations and security DevOps experience.

00:42:57
It's like how are we doing DevOps?

00:43:00
As we see this all the time in our industry?

00:43:04
It's like people say, hey, oh, you know what it's a culture.

00:43:08
Like you just got the culture wrong.

00:43:09
It's like okay, maybe it's that I've got one ops person and 300

00:43:14
software developers, maybe that's the bucking problem,

00:43:16
maybe it's not culture, maybe it's staffing, maybe it's budget

00:43:19
.

00:43:19
That doesn't really fit in the culture.

00:43:20
The culture is great, but we don't have the resources.

00:43:22
Even if we did, if I don't work at Fang, what's the chance that

00:43:27
I get that ops engineer that I really want?

00:43:29
The person that came through the interview pipeline where I'm

00:43:30
like that's the one that one can also probably go get a job

00:43:34
at Google making three times what I can pay, right.

00:43:37
So the reality is is like, some of the things that we depend on

00:43:41
the most, not the shit that we want.

00:43:42
I want TikTok, I want Twitter.

00:43:44
Like, you don't need that.

00:43:46
Those are the people.

00:43:47
They have our attention, they have our money, they have the

00:43:51
ability to hire the teammates that most companies need.

00:43:54
But when you're at, like, the waste management company or at a

00:43:58
healthcare company, like, how do you attract great talent?

00:44:00
You actually need good operations and compliance and

00:44:03
security engineers, but they're all going to these cool DevTools

00:44:06
instead.

00:44:06
How do you get that talent?

00:44:07
Make bigger budgets or you accept the candidates maybe not

00:44:11
the best and that's fine.

00:44:12
Like, and now you gotta train that person.

00:44:14
Have you trained on the spare time?

00:44:16
Are you giving them 20% of the week to do it?

00:44:17
Like, where are we getting all this operations experience and

00:44:21
security experience that we need to run all the companies that

00:44:24
move to the cloud.

00:44:24
We're not like a lot of people just go with it.

00:44:27
Product manager doesn't give a shit if it's secure or not.

00:44:29
Product manager doesn't care if it costs a bunch or not.

00:44:32
Take care that you click the button.

00:44:33
That thing clicks fast and it sells more shirts, right, cfo?

00:44:38
Cfo cares about the costs and you're gonna hear about the

00:44:39
cloud cost in about three months when, like, the quarterly

00:44:43
reporting gets to them, right and so, like seeing, like this

00:44:46
is the state of the world and people on this call, or people

00:44:49
are listening to us, are saying, not at my company, you're lucky

00:44:53
.

00:44:53
I congratulate you.

00:44:56
If you have one ops to seven software developers, great, but

00:45:00
the reality is on the planet there's one ops to maybe 22

00:45:03
software developers.

00:45:04
So if you have that ratio, you've taken some of it away

00:45:07
from.

00:45:07
Another word who's suffering harder?

00:45:09
And there's proof of this.

00:45:10
You go look at the door report.

00:45:12
We all love to read that.

00:45:13
We're like huh, I saw the new door report.

00:45:15
Everybody's doing better.

00:45:16
Yeah, through page three, you get down to page 37,

00:45:20
everything's fucked.

00:45:21
50% of people that respond to the door report, the people that

00:45:25
are in tune with the DevOps report, say that an outage takes

00:45:29
them multiple days to resolve, and they deploy software once a

00:45:32
month.

00:45:33
It's 50% of the people that respond to the DevOps report.

00:45:40
So are we doing DevOps?

00:45:41
Well, like so, this is what we're trying to solve.

00:45:44
Like we've been saying, devops is a cultural problem for 15

00:45:48
years, and it is.

00:45:49
It is cultural at the end of the day, but there's so much

00:45:52
other shit that we're missing.

00:45:53
It doesn't even give you the chance to solve this as a

00:45:55
cultural problem within your org , and so what we wanna do is

00:45:58
help people move towards platform engineering, which is a

00:46:02
subset of DevOps.

00:46:04
Get developers to the point that they can self serve.

00:46:06
That's what developers need to do.

00:46:07
They need the cloud to be easy.

00:46:09
I need a Postgres database and I need a queue.

00:46:11
What I don't need is service now and waiting on the Ops guide

00:46:15
two weeks to build me a Terraform module.

00:46:17
I also don't have the time to learn Terraform.

00:46:19
I don't have the time to learn OPE and check off, and I don't

00:46:21
have the time to learn all the compliance docs that just came

00:46:24
from our auditor.

00:46:25
I don't have the time for this shit because I gotta build a

00:46:27
product that makes the company money.

00:46:28
Shift all that back to the Ops person.

00:46:31
We're not doing DevOps anymore.

00:46:32
It's the Ops person's problem, right?

00:46:34
So we're just shifting this stuff around, but we're not

00:46:38
building more operations engineers and so the way that

00:46:40
our product works is there's two sides to it.

00:46:43
If you're a developer, it's a no code tool.

00:46:45
Pretty cool.

00:46:47
Come in there, you draw some infrastructure, you draw your

00:46:50
applications, hit, deploy and it magically works.

00:46:54
Now that sounds terrifying to every operations person in here

00:46:59
that there's a no code tool.

00:47:00
What it actually is behind the scenes is it's your Terraform

00:47:03
Ansible Pulumi Helm.

00:47:04
Whatever IAC tool that you're using.

00:47:06
You just use that tool, you publish it into our registry and

00:47:10
your developers now have a central place where all of the

00:47:13
IAC is, all their Terraform Pulumi.

00:47:15
Whatever you're using is all in one place.

00:47:17
And as I'm dragging and drawing stuff, it's actually pulling

00:47:20
modules in, and as I'm connecting stuff together, it's

00:47:23
doing things like oh, I see the applications connected to this

00:47:25
Kubernetes cluster.

00:47:26
It builds your CI CD pipeline for deploying behind the scenes.

00:47:29
So your developers aren't over to get doing a bunch of stuff in

00:47:32
CI.

00:47:32
They just literally say this application runs on this

00:47:34
Kubernetes cluster.

00:47:35
I can have GitOps if I want.

00:47:37
It's just one single entry in my CI CD file MassDriverDeploy,

00:47:41
and MassDriver builds essentially a virtual CI CD

00:47:44
pipeline behind the scenes.

00:47:44
It goes okay.

00:47:45
I see you're deploying this app .

00:47:46
Let me look at the entire dependency graph that you've

00:47:49
drawn out here to figure out what to do with this.

00:47:51
Ah, you wanna go to this Kubernetes cluster?

00:47:52
That's great, but I can also see you have a dependency on

00:47:55
this Postgres.

00:47:56
Let me go ahead and pull the secrets for that.

00:47:58
Inject it into your environment variables, bind your IAM

00:48:01
policies in your role, schedule your workload.

00:48:04
Your developer literally diagrammed their infrastructure

00:48:07
not a lucid chart, not a whiteboard.

00:48:09
They got everything that your ops team wishes that they would

00:48:12
go do, and your ops team only had to continue building IAC

00:48:16
tools.

00:48:16
I'm gonna take OPA.

00:48:18
I like it.

00:48:18
I like Terraform.

00:48:19
I'm gonna build a really good Postgres that we're gonna offer

00:48:22
to our team and you essentially get this like almost like an

00:48:25
e-commerce platform for your developers.

00:48:27
It's this thing.

00:48:28
It's like I just grab stuff off the shelf.

00:48:29
It's like ooh, ooh, it sucked to compliant.

00:48:31
I'll take one of those Postgres' and then it gives them

00:48:33
just enough surface area to configure what they need.

00:48:36
To get you things like letting your operations team like give

00:48:41
them recommendations of how to run a Terraform app.

00:48:43
This, you don't have this in Terraform or rich validation,

00:48:46
right.

00:48:47
So I can say things like hey, we do support Postgres, and if

00:48:51
you're in AWS it'll be RDS, and if you're in Azure it'll be

00:48:54
flexible server, whatever.

00:48:56
But we also ship it with three configs.

00:48:58
There's a development config, like you got a preview

00:49:00
environment.

00:49:00
This is how we think you should run it.

00:49:01
We have a config for the US and we have a config for the EU,

00:49:07
right.

00:49:08
And so now your developers they drag the thing over and goes

00:49:10
hey, here's the three recommendations of how to run it

00:49:12
.

00:49:12
And you're like I'm in the US, it's like, great, we just picked

00:49:15
our production workload configuration for the US.

00:49:17
And you're like sweet, it's Postgres and yes, that's all I

00:49:22
give a shit about.

00:49:22
Like don't wake me up at 2 AM, we go back to writing.

00:49:25
So that's a very boiled down version of way the platform

00:49:28
works, ton of functionality in there.

00:49:29
But like, what we really wanna do is like most of the platform

00:49:32
engineering space right now is focusing on DevX and that's

00:49:35
important.

00:49:36
But like Devs have it pretty good.

00:49:39
Like, when you look around the teams the security team, the ops

00:49:42
team, the dev team you're like you guys got nap pods.

00:49:45
Like I'm waking up at 2 AM to fix your code, and so I think a

00:49:50
lot of our industry is focusing on how we make the developer

00:49:53
experience better.

00:49:53
It's like we should be focusing on how do we scale this

00:49:57
constrained ops team.

00:49:58
How do we lower the surface area of the cloud so that people

00:50:01
can reason about what it is Like.

00:50:03
We're not focusing on that enough in the platform

00:50:05
engineering or DevOps space, and that's what we're trying to do

00:50:08
is say platform engineering should not be about making the

00:50:11
things amazing for developers.

00:50:12
Platform engineering should be about scaling operational

00:50:16
efficiency and security inside your orgs without blowing your

00:50:19
cloud bill up to a million dollars a month.

00:50:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like it really simplifies everything.

00:50:29
It takes learning all these different architectures and

00:50:33
workflows and everything out of the mix.

00:50:36
I remember a year or two ago, right, I had to start learning

00:50:41
Cates because we were gonna deploy some app in the cloud on

00:50:46
a Cates cluster.

00:50:47
And here I am getting a book on Kubernetes, trying to figure

00:50:52
out what the hell is what, just trying to go through it as

00:50:58
quickly as I can and there has to be a better way to do this

00:51:03
Like, how difficult is this really to achieve?

00:51:05
But that's a fascinating way of going about it.

00:51:12
I never would have thought about developing a solution that

00:51:19
operates the way that you described, and I feel like your

00:51:24
architecture background kind of has a play into even how you

00:51:28
kind of design the solutioner.

00:51:31
At least from what you described, it sounds like it.

00:51:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think again, like it's that I'm

00:51:37
trying to think in three dimensions plus load at any

00:51:42
point in time, right, and I think that was one of the things

00:51:45
that was key is, you see, a lot of tools in this space and I

00:51:49
think and just to be clear, I don't wanna shit on anybody

00:51:51
else's tool Like I'm friends with most of the CEOs and CTOs

00:51:56
of my competitors.

00:51:56
I think that the reality is any of us that are out here saying

00:52:01
the tool that we're building works for everybody, everybody

00:52:03
should buy it's nuts.

00:52:04
It's fucking bonkers.

00:52:05
Like that was the case of everybody who'd be running on

00:52:07
her own right.

00:52:08
Like there's no one tool that's gonna work for every order.

00:52:10
The best you're gonna do is the best one that works for your

00:52:13
team, right, and but, like you know, kind of thinking about

00:52:17
like what we're trying to solve, like thinking about like all

00:52:20
three dimensions and load at the same time.

00:52:22
Like we have a problem and, company after company, you talk

00:52:27
to engineers like what is the problem?

00:52:29
People complain about DevOps, they complain about ops, they

00:52:31
complain about wait times, bottlenecks.

00:52:32
Even in the most perfect scenario, an operations team

00:52:36
that's doing amazing, there's still a bottleneck.

00:52:38
I can't predict the future.

00:52:41
I don't know what project you're working on and what

00:52:43
you're going to come to me with.

00:52:44
So when you come to me with it, you have to wait 10 minutes, 20

00:52:47
minutes, two days, three weeks, whatever.

00:52:49
I think one of the things that was really key was we're

00:52:53
approaching this not saying we're going to focus on DevX and

00:52:56
operations is going to go away.

00:52:57
We're coming to this saying how do we get you what you need

00:53:00
without making anybody have to deal with learning a new tool

00:53:05
set Because we don't have time?

00:53:06
We don't have time to learn another tool.

00:53:07
We've spent a lot of effort bending over backwards.

00:53:10
Originally, the platform was very much like hey, developers,

00:53:14
there's some dumb-down thing that you can do and you don't

00:53:16
have to write Terraform.

00:53:17
But it was still too much.

00:53:20
The original version of MassDriver did not have a UI.

00:53:22
It was just this concept that we call the bundle, that we're

00:53:27
actually open sourcing.

00:53:28
But it wasn't a UI yet and we kind of realized one day we're

00:53:33
drawing some stuff on the whiteboard, we've got these

00:53:35
bundles.

00:53:35
We're like, okay, so this is how they all connect together.

00:53:37
And we're just like these are all just types and structs of

00:53:41
data.

00:53:41
We can program this.

00:53:44
Why are we making people cobble together like a little pseudo

00:53:48
Terraform CI pipeline to get this power, instead of just

00:53:52
saying, just draw it If you want to draw it.

00:53:54
You drew it on a whiteboard, you typed it and then you went

00:53:56
to fucking Lucidcharts and you drew it again.

00:53:58
Then nobody updated it in six months, like let's just let

00:54:01
people beat the drawing and be the source of truth.

00:54:03
So that's kind of how we came to that.

00:54:06
Definitely wasn't.

00:54:07
It's iterations Like MassDriver's been through like a

00:54:09
ton of development over the years, like there's a lot of

00:54:12
stuff to the platform but like V1 didn't have a user interface

00:54:16
Like at all, it was just it was very much like a CI oriented

00:54:19
tool and just trying to get that like CI pain away from

00:54:23
developers was kind of it.

00:54:26
People are afraid of changing their CI pipelines.

00:54:28
Don't have great ways to test them right.

00:54:30
You merge it.

00:54:30
You know, if it worked right.

00:54:32
Like what's in that CI pipeline ?

00:54:34
Maybe it's tests, maybe it's provisioning, maybe it's secrets

00:54:36
management, like who knows what is in a Jenkins pipeline.

00:54:39
It is a wild, wild place, right , and so making sure that

00:54:42
developers didn't have to think about changing that, because

00:54:44
that was what they were afraid of, it was kind of what, like

00:54:46
gave us this idea of like, going towards this visual, like

00:54:50
generate a DAC under the hood.

00:54:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

00:54:55
Well, Corey, you know, unfortunately we're at the end

00:54:58
of our time here.

00:54:59
Yeah, Before I let you go, you know why don't you tell my

00:55:03
audience, you know where they could find you, where they could

00:55:05
find your company, if they wanted to learn more.

00:55:07
I definitely really enjoyed our conversation, so I definitely

00:55:11
want to have you back on.

00:55:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm Corey O'Daniel.

00:55:15
Everywhere I'm the CEO of O'Daniel.

00:55:16
There's two of me.

00:55:17
So if you find the one that's really jacked in place, football

00:55:21
, that's not me.

00:55:22
I'm the software developer one yeah, I'm Corey Daniel.

00:55:26
Linkedin on GitHub, twitter, massdriver's company and

00:55:30
massdrivercloud yeah, and check it out.

00:55:33
Give me your feedback.

00:55:34
We'd love to hear from your community.

00:55:39
Speaker 1: Awesome.

00:55:40
Well, thanks everyone.

00:55:41
I hope you enjoyed this episode .