Clouds, Chaos and Change

The next 12-18 months are going to be all about changes, chaos and a three-ring circus between the major cloud providers. The status quo is likely going to change, as plenty of new names and faces, and big money, try to steer these giant ships.

SHOW: 546

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Register for Cisco Magnetic Cloud
• AWS Data Backup for Dummies (Veeam)
• Choose Your Own Cloud Adventure with Veeam and AWS
• CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering Teams

SHOW NOTES:

• Castles in the Cloud (Greylock VC)
• Rising Tension between AWS and Partners (Business Insider)
• Microsoft hired ex-AWS executive Charlie Bell

 

ARE THE BIG CLOUDS TOO BIG TO DISRUPT?

It’s very difficult to sustain success in business, especially in highly competitive markets. And the market dynamics of today are ripe for change. 

HOW DOES CHANGE HAPPEN FOR THE MARKET LEADERS

• Leadership changes at the top.
• Growth expectations exceed the company’s ability to scale growth.
• The people that lead the original growth leave the company.
• The people that backfill don’t have the same skills or mindset to succeed at the same level. 
• Competitors start to find new pressure points. 
• Companies move from products to solutions as the market evolves from early-adopters to mainstream and laggards.
• Big money makes people make big decisions (outside your company) - going to “change the world”

 

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter: @thecloudcastnet

We’ve All Become The Cloudcast

Aaron and Brian discuss how the on-going pandemic is creating a permanent habit of working remotely, and the challenges of trying to learn technology with less free time. 

SHOW: 545

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Register for Cisco Magnetic Cloud
• CBT Nuggets: Expert IT Training for individuals and teams
• Sign up for a CBT Nuggets Free Learner account 
• Spot by NetApp
• More Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)

SHOW NOTES:

• Tips for Working From Home (Cloudcast #442)
• How long does it take to create a habit? 
• Cloudcast Basics (Cloud-101 podcast series)

Topic 1 - Origin story of The Cloudcast (brief)

Topic 2 - It’s now been 529 days since the world shut down (in the US). How many Zoom calls have you attended in that time?  

Topic 3 - “It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic.” What new, work-related habits have you formed?

Topic 4 - How do you expect people to keep up with new technologies? 

Topic 5 - We’re at a weird stage, where lots of people say that they want to work-from-home (full or part-time), for various reasons (e.g. avoid commutes, cube-mates chews too loud, etc.), but also claim to be more burned out. Do you think people will take the time to learn new stuff?

Topic 6 - Has the pandemic changed anything about how you’re effective? Do you think it’ll be permanent, or do you still have the “we’ll get back to normal” mindset?

Topic 7 - Any tips or tricks to be an effective remote worker and tech leader?

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter: @thecloudcastnet

What does Security even mean anymore

Security has been in the news quite a bit lately, both for failures and funding. But does security even matter anymore?  Nobody knows. 

SHOW: 544

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Teleport Access Plane: Quickly access any computing resource anywhere
• Try Teleport for free
• CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering Teams

 SHOW NOTES:

• Coverage of recent Security commitments from Cloud Providers
• 2021 Top Security Breaches (Part I, Part II)
• The State of Cloud Security Report (2021)
• Microsoft warns thousands of cloud customers of exposed databases

 

DOES ANYONE ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT SECURITY?

“This is the worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine.”     

WHAT IS THE PENALTY FOR BEING BAD AT SECURITY?

The State of Cloud Security 2021 Report highlights several alarming facts, including:

• 36% of companies suffered a serious cloud data leak or breach in the past 12 months
• 8 out of 10 are worried that they’re vulnerable to a major misconfiguration breach 
• 64% say the problem will get worse or stay the same 

Every company makes security a massive part of every purchasing decision. And yet the market doesn’t seem to do anything when a massive breach happens. How is this still the state of security? 

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter: @thecloudcastnet

Hiring a VP of Engineering

Jason Warner (@jasoncwarner, MD @redpointvc), a veteran of GitHub, Heroku and Canonical, talks about the process and challenges of hiring a VP of Engineering. 

SHOW: 543

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Spot by NetApp
• More Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)
• CBT Nuggets: Expert IT Training for individuals and teams
• Sign up for a CBT Nuggets Free Learner account 

SHOW NOTES:

• Jason Warner joins RedPoint Ventures (Forbes)
• Jason Warner, CTO at GittHub (Forbes)

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your background prior to Redpoint VC and what you’re now focused on in the VC world. 

Topic 2 - Let’s start with “Why do you need to hire a VP of Engineering?” When does it matter as an early-stage startup, and why does it matter when a company is larger? {high leverage}

Topic 3 - What are you looking for in that hire? What is your process for creating a potential list of candidates? What criteria are most important for you to evaluate? {curve bender}

Topic 4 - We hear a lot about “engineering interviews” (technical). How much of that is involved in your hiring process, and how are you measuring the other disciplines that are needed for this role? 

Topic 5 - If you’re hiring from the outside, how much do you involve the engineering and product teams, and how do you think about the value of internal-knowledge vs. external-knowledge? 

Topic 6 - Once you identify the candidate, what steps do you take to encourage early success? How do you measure on-going activities?

Topic 7 - What advice do you have for people that are interviewing for these roles?


FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter: @thecloudcastnet

The End of the Cloud Honeymoon

Cloud Computing has been around for more than a decade. It has generated tremendous growth and reshaped the tech industry. But is the “Cloud Honeymoon“ about to be over? 

SHOW: 542

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering Teams
• Datadog Database Monitoring: Modern Monitoring and Analytics
• Get started monitoring performance analytics from any database with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt.
• Teleport Access Plane: Quickly access any computing resource anywhere
• Try Teleport for free

SHOW NOTES:

• The honeymoon is over for Cloud Computing (Business Insider, August 2021)
• Repatriation and Cloud Cost Management (Cloudcast, Eps. 520)
• Is the public cloud growing fast enough? (Cloudcast, Eps.511)

 

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE HONEYMOON IS ACTUALLY OVER?

A recent article claimed that (public) Cloud Computing is moving into the next phase of maturity, and it will cause challenges for “the big three” cloud computing companies (AWS, Azure, GCP).    

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, AS CLOUD COMPUTING MOVES INTO THE NEXT PHASE?

• The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox (a16z)
• Morgan Stanley CIO survey - Will keep more data in data centers (after pandemic)
• Gartner report - company are moving away from “cloud first”

MARKET DYNAMICS

• The market is much more competitive than 10years ago, but they don’t have to convince customers that public cloud is viable anymore. 
•  Legacy Applications move to SaaS; Cloud-native Apps move to Public Cloud
• Migrations? Lift & Shift? Something simpler?
• Competitive consolidation has already happened (AWS, Azure, GCP). 
• Cloud vendors have eaten parts of their ecosystem (see: Open Source)
• Price wars haven’t really happened yet. 
• Cloud providers are trying to train the next generation of customers. 
• We haven’t seen the cloud businesses leverage the other parts of the business (much) yet. 
• Hybrid Cloud | Multi-Cloud 2.0 is coming, on purpose or accidentally

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter: @thecloudcastnet

Making Front-End Development Simpler

Guillermo Rauch (@rauchg, CEO at @vercel) talks about simplifying life for front-end developers, the Next.js JavaScript framework, and the balance between great developers, great teams and great collaboration. 

SHOW: 541

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• CBT Nuggets: Expert IT Training for individuals and teams
• Sign up for a CBT Nuggets Free Learner account 
• Spot by NetApp
• More Cloud, Less Cost (Spot by NetApp)

SHOW NOTES:

• Vercel (Homepage)
• Next.js Framework (Homepage)

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your background as a developer and entrepreneur. How did you eventually get to be leading Vercel?

Topic 2 - Vercel is a platform that’s designed to make life better for front-end developers. As a developer, how do you get in the head of what other developers want and need? 

Topic 3 - With so many choices of languages, frameworks, clouds, etc., what do you find are the most important things about your platform to focus on? 

Topic 4 - Is the goal to create great developers, or great collaborative environments, or do you primarily focus on the end result (e.g. great websites) and work backwards? 

Topic 5 - Let’s talk about Next.js and why it’s grown in popularity with developers. 

Topic 6 - What are some of the areas that are evolving or exciting for front-end developers over the next couple years? 

Looking for a new Cloud job

This time of year, many people in the tech industry look to change jobs. What are some tips and tricks if you’re looking for roles in Cloud Computing?

 SHOW: 540

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Datadog Monitoring: Modern Monitoring and Analytics
  Start monitoring your infrastructure, applications, logs and security in one place with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt.
• Teleport Access Plane: Quickly access any computing resource anywhere
• Try Teleport for free
• CloudZero - Cloud Cost Intelligence for Engineering Teams

 LEARNING CLOUD COMPUTING:

Here are some great places to begin your cloud journey, if you're interested in getting hands-on experience with the technology, or you'd like to build your skills towards a certification. 

• CBT Nuggets - Training and Certifications
• A Cloud Guru - Training and Certifications
• Cloud Academy - Training and Certifications
• Katakoda - Self-Paced, Interactive Learning
• GitHub - Code Samples and Collaboration

SHOW NOTES:

• How long to stay in a tech job
• Tech Salary Report (Dice, 2021)
• Best Tech Cities (Learn to Code)

WHY DO PEOPLE CHANGE JOBS THIS TIME OF YEAR?

Many companies are in Q3/Q4. Oftentimes they are re-adjusting for the year, or planning for the next year. The fall trade shows (VMworld, re:Invent, etc.) are happening.  

TECHNICAL SKILLS, PEOPLE SKILLS, and PICKING PRIORITIES

• People are staying in their jobs shorter
• More companies are being flexible about where you work - but stay tuned! 
• Certifications are always valuable, and easier to get than ever
• Explore different roles, based on the skills you have and the skills you’d like to evolve
• Understand the tradeoffs between Salary, Location, Travel, Hours, Flexibility, etc.
• It’s useful to have a broad set of skills, but eventually it’s useful to narrow the list of expertises.
• Evaluate the individual team as much as the company. 

 
FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter: @thecloudcastnet