On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, Corey is joined by Emma Bostian, an Engineering Manager at Spotify in Stockholm. Emma is also an author, co-host of the Ladybug Podcast, and has a strong following on social media. She goes into the details on her podcast and the varied nature of her and her co-hosts, she also discusses her book Decoding the Technical Interview Process, in which she breaks down the seemingly esoteric nature of interviewing for these highly technical jobs—but her focus is on the frontend. She and Corey discuss the general banality of these interviews and the direction they can, and should, go in to improve. Emma also loves to teach, to add even more to her portfolio! She goes into the five w’s of her work with LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters. Emma also has some excellent insights into her sizable Twitter presence. Tune in for Emma’s variegated offerings!

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:58) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:31) Hosting the Ladybug Podcast and teaching online courses

(3:13) Why Emma wrote Decoding the Technical Interview Process

(7:01) Corey’s qualms with how people interview in tech

(12:03) Why Corey appreciates Emma's guidance on how to interview

(14:50) Bizarre hiring practices that some interviewers use

(18:20) Passion, work/life balance, and seeking out new employees

(19:41) Turning side projects into revenue streams

(22:23) Seeking out sponsors instead of monetizing your audience

(26:06) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(26:49) Balancing customer service with piracy

(29:35) Letting your online following become your resume

(36:01) Where you can find more from Emma

About Emma Bostian

Emma Bostian is an Engineering Manager at Spotify in Stockholm. She is also a co-host of the Ladybug Podcast, author of Decoding The Technical Interview Process, and an instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters.

Links

• Ladybug Podcast: https://www.ladybug.dev
• LinkedIn Learning: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/emma-bostian
• Frontend Masters: https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/emma-bostian/
• Decoding the Technical Interview Process: https://technicalinterviews.dev
• Emma's Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmabostian

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/changing-the-way-we-interview-with-emma-bostian/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

Corey Quinn welcomes Adam Zimman back to Screaming in the Cloud for a sponsored episode featuring Heroku by Salesforce. As Head of Product Marketing, Adam discusses after years of stagnation following its Salesforce acquisition. Recent investments and a dedicated team signal a renewed focus on developer experience. The duo explores Heroku's impact on modern app development, its role in popularizing the 12-Factor App model, and the decision to retire its free tier. Adam highlights key updates, including Kubernetes replatforming, .NET support, and AI tools for managed inference and agents. He also teases his upcoming book, Progressive Delivery, set for release next year.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(1:01) Heroku sponsor read

(1:39) How Heroku became resurgent

(5:46) Heroku’s legacy

(9:53) Adam’s thoughts on people’s response to the free tier going away

(10:55) Heroku’s target customer(s)

(13:51) Heroku sponsor read

(14:19) How Heroku saves organizations money and developed over time

(20:08) Heroku’s re:Invent announcements

(24:53) How modern-day developers have reacted to Heroku’s resurgence

(27:47) Where people can learn more about Heroku

About Adam Zimman

Adam Zimman is Technologist and Author currently serving as the Head of Product Marketing at Heroku by SalesForce. Previously, he was a Venture Capital Advisor providing guidance on leadership, platform architecture, product marketing, and GTM strategy. He has over 20 years of experience working in a variety of roles from software engineering to technical sales. He has worked in both enterprise and consumer companies such as VMware, EMC, GitHub, and LaunchDarkly.

Adam is driven by a passion for inclusive leadership and solving problems with technology. He is a co-author of Progressive Delivery: Build the right thing, for the right people, at the right time. His perspective has been shaped by a degree (AB) from Bowdoin College with a dual-focus in Physics and Visual Art, an ongoing adventure as a husband and father, and a childhood career as a fire juggler.

Links

• Heroku’s website: https://www.heroku.com/
• Adam’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/azimman.bsky.social
• Adam’s Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@az
• Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamzimman/
• Personal site: https://progressivedelivery.com/

Sponsor
Heroku: http://heroku.com/

On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, Corey is joined by accomplished tech journalist Daisuke Wakabayashi to explore the world of tech reporting. The pair discuss Dai’s 2019 article on AWS while touching on a number of topics, including how AWS evolved from a platform everyone built on top of to one that runs everything built on top of it. Both explore why it’s incredibly difficult to capture all the nuances of the world of open source in a single article, the collaborative nature of writing the news, and how a journalist can tell when they’ve written a story that doesn’t have mistakes. Dai and Corey also unpack why Amazon as a trillion-dollar company should expect more scrutiny, what it was like to try to get people to go on the record talking about AWS, and more.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:29) The Duckbill Group Sponsor read

(1:02) A brief look at Dai’s background as a journalist

(2:00) Dai’s article covering AWS’s business practices

(3:47) Unpacking the discussion around Dai’s article

(6:09) The careful thought and nuance that goes into writing an investigative news article

(8:59) How AWS insiders are responding to Dai’s article

(11:50) The importance of disclosures in journalism

(14:32) AWS’s blog post responding to Dai

(18:41) The Duckbill Group Sponsor read

(19:24) How criticism affects relationships with AWS

(23:36) Corey’s reaction to getting mentioned in Dai’s article and the NYT style guide

(27:18) Why it’s still important for journalists to speak truth to power

(32:22) Where you can find more from Dai

About Dai Wakabayashi
Daisuke Wakabayashi was born in Singapore, lived in Tokyo, and spent the bulk of his childhood in New Jersey. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Daisuke’s journalism career started at Reuters in Tokyo. He also worked for Reuters in Boston and Seattle, covering everything from industrial conglomerates to natural disasters. He returned to Japan with The Wall Street Journal covering technology and then returned to the United States to cover Apple. Wakabayashi joined The New York Times in 2016 and covered Google from the paper’s San Francisco bureau. In 2022, he moved with my family to Seoul to take his current job as an Asia business correspondent for The Times.

Links

• Dai’s 2019 article “Prime Leverage: How Amazon Wields Power in the Technology World”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html
• Twitter: @daiwaka
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwakabayashi/
• Personal site: https://www.nytimes.com/by/daisuke-wakabayashi
• Company site: nytimes.com

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/speaking-truth-to-power-in-tech-with-dai-wakabayashi/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, Corey is joined by Rich Burroughs, a former Staff Developer Advocate at Loft Labs. Rich is a great resource for all things Kubernetes, and he even hosts his own podcast (link in the description below) where he interviews people in the community. Rich and Corey discuss learning to work well with ADHD, which he has launched into the Twitter-verse for the sake of advocacy. Rich offers his perspective on how to do so, and to do it well. Rich talks about working at large companies, versus small and the various responsibilities of working with the latter. Tune in for Rich’s take!

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:50) The Duckbill Group Sponsor read

(1:23) Loft Labs’s work with Kubernetes

(3:15) Doing developer advocacy with Kubernetes

(7:01) Is developer advocacy repetitive for Rich?

(12:06) Going in-depth about Loft Labs

(16:40) The Duckbill Group Sponsor read

(17:22) The blessing (and curse) of being great at your job

(24:38) Learning to live with ADHD

(32:15) Where you can find more from Rich

About Rich Burroughs
Rich Burroughs is a tech professional focused on improving workflows for developers and platform engineers using Kubernetes. He's the creator and host of the Kube Cuddle podcast where he interviews members of the Kubernetes community. He is one of the founding organizers of DevOpsDays Portland, and he's helped organize other community events. Rich has a strong interest in how working in tech impacts mental health. He has ADHD and has documented his journey on Twitter since being diagnosed.

Links

• Kube Cuddle Podcast: https://kubecuddle.transistor.fm
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richburroughs/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/richburroughs
• Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/richburroughs

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/helping-avoid-the-kubernetes-hiccups-with-rich-burroughs/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, we’re taking you back to our chat with Nick Frichette. He’s the maintainer of hackingthe.cloud, and holds security and solutions architect AWS certifications, and in his spare time, he conducts vulnerability research at Hacking the Cloud. Join Corey and Nick as they talk about the various kinds of cloud security researchers and touch upon offensive security, why Nick decided to create Hacking the Cloud, how AWS lets security researchers conduct penetration testing in good faith, some of the more interesting AWS exploits Nick has discovered, how it’s fun to play keep-away with incident response, why you need to get legal approval before conducting penetration testing, and more.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:42) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:15) What is a Cloud Security Researcher?

(3:49) Nick’s work with Hacking the Cloud

(5:24) Building relationships with cloud providers

(7:34) Nick’s security findings through cloud logs

(13:05) How Nick finds security flaws

(15:31) Reporting vulnerabilities to AWS and “bug bounty” programs

(18:41) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(19:24) How to report vulnerabilities ethically

(21:52) Good disclosure programs vs. bad ones

(28:23) What’s next for Nick

(31:27) Where you can find more from Nick

About Nick Frichette

Nick Frichette is a Staff Security Researcher at Datadog, specializing in offensive security within AWS environments. His focus is on discovering new attack vectors targeting AWS services, environments, and applications. From his research, Nick develops detection methods and preventive measures to secure these systems. Nick’s work often leads to the discovery of vulnerabilities within AWS itself, and he collaborates closely with Amazon to ensure they are remediated.

Nick has also presented his research at major industry conferences, including Black Hat USA, DEF CON, fwd:cloudsec, and others.

Links

• Hacking the Cloud: https://hackingthe.cloud/
• Determine the account ID that owned an S3 bucket vulnerability: https://hackingthe.cloud/aws/enumeration/account_id_from_s3_bucket/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/frichette_n
• Personal website:https://frichetten.com

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/hacking-aws-in-good-faith-with-nick-frichette/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, Corey is joined by Nipun Agarwal, Senior Vice President of MySQL HeatWave Development at Oracle, to discuss the release of MySQL HeatWave and how it will benefit users among the sea of database offerings on AWS. Nipun reveals why Oracle decided to develop HeatWave, how HeatWave is providing meaningful cost savings to users, and how HeatWave has been optimized for the cloud. Nipun explains how they’ve lowered the barriers to entry for new users of HeatWave, and Oracle’s focus on implementing customer feedback when developing new offerings.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:55) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:28) The significance of HeatWave coming to AWS

(2:20) What is MySQL HeatWave?

(5:13) What jumped out to Corey during his conversations with Nipun on Oracle

(8:40) What’s “under the hood” of MySQL HeatWave

(14:12) How Oracle built out its pricing for MySQL HeatWave

(16:41) Why MySQL HeatWave doesn’t show up on AWS bills

(21:27) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(22:09) Oracle’s historical customer base and the company’s credit system

(24:30) The point behind MySQL HeatWave

(27:51) How MySQL HeatWave runs

(33:53) Where you can find more from Nipun and Oracle

About Nipun Agarwal

Nipun Agarwal is a Senior Vice President, MySQL HeatWave and Advanced Development, Oracle. His interests include distributed data processing, machine learning, cloud technologies and security. Nipun was part of the Oracle Database team where he introduced a number of new features. He has been awarded over 170 patents., Nipun Agarwal is Senior Vice President of MySQL Database & HeatWave Development. He leads a global engineering organization responsible for Oracle’s MySQL innovations that enable organizations to use a single database for both transactional and analytical workloads. His interests include data processing, distributed systems, machine learning, cloud computing and security. Prior to his current position, Nipun was with Oracle Labs and the Oracle Database team, where he introduced a number of new features. He has been awarded over 175 patents.

Links

• Oracle: https://oracle.com
• MySQL HeatWave info: https://www.oracle.com/mysql/
• MySQL Service on AWS and OCI login (Oracle account required): https://cloud.mysql.com

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/heatwave-and-the-latest-evolution-of-mysql-with-nipun-agarwal/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

The tech industry is getting long enough in the teeth that now there are some bonafide old fogeys. Nevertheless there, fortunately, are plenty of younger tech folks out there pushing the thought and mentality of the industry forward. Andrew Brown, Co-Founder and Cloud Instructor at ExamPro Training Inc certainly is, but his presence in the community is so much more! On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, Andrew talks about the various internet platforms that he stays active on, and his mission to provide education on the cloud. Importantly so, Andrew does so with an immense amount of generosity. As he puts it, he couldn’t imagine taking money for the courses that he has created. Andrew and Corey discuss at length their thoughts on cloud certifications, the worth of multicloud, and much more!

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:41) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:15) Why Corey struggles to keep up with Andrew’s impressive online presence

(2:47) Explaining ExamPro

(6:39) The troubles of online “experts”

(13:01) Andrew’s thoughts on using certifications as proxies

(18:14) The value of certification vs. your level of experience

(22:47) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(23:30) Should engineers learn more than one cloud provider?

(27:10) Is multi-cloud actually the way to go?

(34:31) Where you can find more from Andrew

About Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown has been working in tech 15 years. Today, he creates free cloud certification courses where he teaches people Cloud, DevOps, Data, ML, Security, K8s and Serverless.

Links

• ExamPro Training, Inc.: https://www.exampro.co/
• PolyWork: https://www.polywork.com/andrewbrown
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-wc-brown
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewbrown

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/learning-to-give-in-the-cloud-with-andrew-brown/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

Corey Quinn is joined by Paulus Schoutsen, creator of Home Assistant and president of the Open Home Foundation. What started as a Python script to control Hue lights is now a leading open-source smart home platform with 1.6M users. Unlike ad-driven devices, Home Assistant prioritizes privacy, user control, and customization. Backed by the Open Home Foundation, it stays independent from corporate influence. Paulus highlights their community-driven approach, with users sharing automations online. By focusing on open standards, privacy, and user-first development, Home Assistant empowers smarter, more sustainable home automation.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:33) Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:45) What inspired Paulus to create Home Assistant

(6:54) How Home Assistant developed from text files to its current incarnation

(12:02) Duckbill Group sponsor read

(13:42) How Home Assistant is able to detect different IoT devices

(16:06) Why not having investors is a strength for Home Assistant

(21:11) How Home Assistant acts as a unifier for communications protocols

(24:22) Why Big Tech doesn’t have a lot of interest in Home Assistant

(30:45) How to learn more about Home Assistant

About Paulus Schoutsen

Paulus Schoutsen is the creator of Home Assistant, the world’s most active open-source smart home platform, and president of the Open Home Foundation. What started as a Python script to control Philips Hue lights has grown into a global community of over 1.6 million users. Home Assistant stands out for its dedication to privacy, sustainability, and user control, offering a stable, customizable platform free from the ad-driven models of big tech. Paulus also leads Nabucasa, the commercial arm of Home Assistant, and champions the platform’s independence and community-driven ethos, ensuring long-term focus on open standards and user empowerment.

Links

• Home Assistant website https://www.home-assistant.io/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group https://www.duckbillgroup.com/