Emily: Many people know that you were co-founder and technical lead of Kubernetes which has had incredible adoption over the years, and just recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary. How does it feel to look back on Kubernetes, both in its inception and where it has gone over the last decade?
Joe: I don’t think any of us that were there at the start expected things to play out like they did. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we were all geniuses but, honestly, it is both standing on the shoulders of giants combined with a really amazing community. During those early days, in the back of my head, I thought “this could be big” but I’ve been wrong before! It really was the perfect storm (in a good way).
Emily: You’ve had such a broad reach in so many technical innovations over the years - from building Google Talk and Google Compute Engine, to co-founding Heptio which was acquired by VMWare, just to name a few. Are there any areas of interest / things you think are really interesting or need focus and attention right now, particularly as you look at the current cloud native landscape?
Joe: On a personal level, I’ve been stepping away from getting involved in new things. I had a bit of burn out that I’m only now starting to emerge from. I’m finding joy in playing with computers in a way that is hard to do when you are heads down working.
That being said, I think that security is and always will be a challenge where we can continually do better. This is across many parts of the landscape: supply chain security and reputation, multitenancy at the node and “workload identity”.
On that last one, I’m excited to see more and more folks take an interest in a project I started before Heptio – SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone). That was started something like 8 years ago and only now is it bubbling to the top where others find it interesting. Timing is everything!
Beyond security, I also think that one of the key aspects of “cloud” is that we’ve taken things that often took weeks (provisioning a new server machine) and have reduced it to seconds. Moving from human time to computer time can have profound implications on how folks use infrastructure. I think the implications of this are still playing out. Many startups fully embrace this acceleration but enterprises are still lagging. How do we use this new superpower to make development teams more productive? I think we are still figuring out how to do that in the enterprise space.
Emily: What’s an issue in computing or non-computing you think deserves more attention?
Joe: As I’ve seen success one of the benefits is that I no longer feel the need to organize my life around traditional markers of success – money, title, etc. That is a super weird thing to go through!
I’ve instead started thinking about the change that I want to see in the world both in the computing space and beyond. A lot of that, I think, involves creating opportunities for others. How can I use my experience, position and resources to help others succeed? There is so much potential in people that haven’t traditionally gotten a shot to capitalize on that. I really want to help there through mentoring, investing, and advocating.
Emily: We’re incredibly thrilled to have you as part of the Edera team as an angel investor. What was it about Edera that led you to decide to invest?
Joe: Seeing a super dynamic team working in a space that is critical for customers doing something novel that solves problems in a new way? Sign me up!
I want to focus on the “critical for customers” aspect of that for a second. I think a startup has to focus on something that is so important that the executive sponsor (CIO, CTO, CISO) thinks that it is important enough to brag about it to the board. Another way that I’ve heard this said: customers pay for things that either put them on the front page for good things or keep them off the front page for bad things. Security, and the approach that Edera is taking certainly fits the bill in my opinion.
Emily: Ok on to the really important matters. We’re big into music and playlists over here. What is your favorite artist and/or album?
Joe: Ha! Back in the day I was pretty goth and super into The Cure. I also loved, in college, Dinosaur Jr. So I guess that is where my heart is. I think the formative album for me would be “Green Mind” by Dinosaur Jr. But I try and keep up with the kids and enjoy everything from EDM to Taylor Swift to the occasional hip hop track.
Emily: We’re also all about getting some recharge time between work. What is your favorite vacation spot or relaxation/reset activity?
Joe: One thing I did over the pandemic is start getting into modular synthesizers. These things are so cool! And there is such a fascinating set of companies out there producing modules. I have absolutely zero musical talent but love the art and possibilities of these things. I also love that plugging together different components feels, in a strange way, like how distributed systems like Kubernetes works.
Beyond that, our family has a vacation place up on Orcas Island here in Washington. I love that place and the community that we lucked into. We get up there whenever we can and it is an instant change of pace and allows us all to relax.
Emily: And last question - for anyone out there looking to start a company or try something new and bold with their careers, what is one piece of advice you would give?
Joe: Amazing things can be done by those that don’t know what they are doing is impossible.
