Optimize All The Things

Bartłomiej Płotka & Ivan Valkov
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Optimize All The Things

Welcome to OAT! Join us to discuss ideas and tools that make our software and development processes faster, more efficient, and healthy! We talk about performance improvements and valuable optimizations to software development processes like testing, debugging, running in production, open-sourcing or collaborating. Learn from experts how they improved their products, engineering processes or life habits and apply those in your work! Hosted in the UK by two software engineers: Ivan Valkov, the aspiring fantasy writer/chef/entrepreneur and Bartek Płotka, the OSS maintainer (you might know him from the CNCF Prometheus project) and “Efficient Go” book author. Want to ask a question or give feedback? Use this form: https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

  1. SEP 27

    Tom Wilkie’s Path to CTO at Grafana Labs: Startups, Pivots, and Perseverance

    Tom Wilkie, the CTO of Grafana Labs, talks to us about his professional journey. We cover how he got into software engineering, his first startup, working as an EM at Google, and what motivated him to go back to an IC role. We talk about his time at Grafana from when they were only 25 people to now when Grafana Labs has more than a thousand employees. Tom’s journey cannot be told without diving deeper into the technical side of things - we discuss observability, distributed systems, and hard technical problems. Where to find more about Tom and Grafana Labs: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwilkie - X - https://x.com/tom_wilkie - Grafana Labs - https://grafana.com/ - Grafana Labs events - https://grafana.com/events/ Where to find Bartek: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ - X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ - X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form -https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9 0:00 - Tom’s intro 7:09 - How Tom got into software engineering 15:05 - Tom’s first startup 21:25 - Tom’s experience as EM at Google 28:04 - Joining Weaveworks as employee number 7 38:51 - Tom joining Grafana 45:32 - Grafana’s Third Act 53:12 - Startup advice 59:41 - Perseverance and motivation 1:04:35 - How Grafana acquires startups 1:10:25 - Where to find out more

    1h 12m

  2. JUL 23

    Databases, Drive, and Diversity - Lessons from Xata's CEO Monica Sarbu

    Monica Sarbu, the CEO and founder of Xata.io, talks to us about her inspiring journey from getting into tech to building Xata - the serverless database platform for modern apps. We chat about the founding of her first company, Packetbeat, its acquisition by Elastic, and her time as a director there. We talk about mentoring, diversity, and hiring engineers that have high agency. We also cover some of the technical decisions at Xata - we even chat a bit about the Zig programming language :) Where to find more about Monica and Xata: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicasarbu - X - https://x.com/monicasarbu - Xata - https://xata.io/ - pgroll - https://github.com/xataio/pgroll - Tupu - https://www.tupu.io/ Where to find Bartek: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ - X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ - X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9 Episode breakdown: 0:00 - Episode intro 2:25 - Monica's introduction 4:00 - Monica's software engineering background 5:52 - Founding her first company Packetbeat 15:30 - Elastic acquisition and being a director there 25:34 - The role of managers 28:38 - Founding Tupu and diversity in tech 38:44 - The founding story of Xata 44:35 - Open source, serverless, and Zig vs Go 51:17 - Hiring high-agency engineers 1:00:37 - Where to find out more

    1h 2m

  3. JUL 10

    Building a Global Scale Authorization Startup: The Story of AuthZed's Co-Founder Jimmy Zelinskie

    In this episode, we talk with Jimmy Zelinskie, co-founder and CPO of AuthZed, about his journey in building a global scale OSS authorization startup. Jimmy shares insights into the creation and evolution of SpiceDB, an open-source database optimized for authorization decisions. We chat about Jimmy’s story of transitioning from an engineer to a product manager, the importance of open-source in building the business, and the strategies that helped AuthZed find its first customers. Jimmy also discusses the inspiration behind AuthZed, Google’s Zanzibar paper, and the unique challenges of building a startup grounded in cutting-edge research. Where to find more about Jimmy and AuthZed: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzelinskie/ - X - https://x.com/jimmyzelinskie - Jimmy’s Github - https://github.com/jzelinskie - AuthZed - https://authzed.com/ - SpiceDB on Github - https://github.com/authzed/spicedb - The Zanzibar Paper annotated by AuthZed - https://authzed.com/zanzibar - Discord - https://authzed.com/discord Where to find Bartek: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/ - X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/ - X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9 Episode breakdown: 0:00 Episode intro 2:05 Jimmy’s introduction 3:53 Jimmy’s software engineering background 9:06 On becoming a founder 14:47 Experimenting with different startup ideas 20:41 The Zanzibar paper and using research in startups 26:44 Finding your first customers 31:56 Building SpiceDB 38:11 Monetization in an OSS startup 42:34 Authorization deep-dive 52:19 Product management in a startup 1:01:47 Where to find out more

    1h 4m

  4. JUN 25

    The Open Source Data Movement Unicorn: Michel Tricot's Airbyte Story

    In this episode, we talk with Michel Tricot, co-founder and CEO of Airbyte, about his journey in building a successful open-source data movement platform, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and insights into startup culture and balancing work with family life. Michel shares his experiences from being a software engineer to leading a unicorn company, emphasizing the importance of community, open-source, and the strategic pivots that led to Airbyte's success. Where to find more about Michel and Airbyte: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot/X - https://x.com/micheltricotAirbyte - https://airbyte.com/Github - https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyteAirbyte's blog - https://airbyte.com/blog Where to find Bartek: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

    51 min

  5. JUN 3

    Profiling, AI, and Creating a Startup Culture: Insights from PolarSignals' Founder Frederic Branczyk

    In this episode, we sit down with Frederic Branczyk, founder of PolarSignals, to explore the intersection of advanced profiling techniques, AI-driven optimizations, and the nuances of building a successful startup culture. Frederic shares his journey from a technical contributor to a startup leader, offering insights into both the technological and business aspects of running a tech company. Where to find more about Frederic and Polar Signals: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederic-branczyk/X - https://x.com/fredbranczMastodon - https://hachyderm.io/@branczPolar Signals - https://www.polarsignals.com/Parca - https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/FrostDB - https://github.com/polarsignals/frostdbPolar Signals Seed announcement - https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2024/03/12/ai-funding-and-exciting-customersLet's Profile YouTube series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tScFlySdSAc&list=PLhTDiyZ1B3JkDCzGKp_3K3J-au054MQ_z Where to find Bartek: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/X - https://x.com/bwplotka Where to find Ivan: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/X - https://x.com/ivvalkov As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

    57 min

  6. 06/27/2023

    Optimizing SW Adoption & Maintenance: API Compatibility Guarantees with Björn Rabenstein

    Today we have a very special guest, Björn Rabenstein, ultra experienced engineer, long time Prometheus maintainer. In this episode we touch on the topic of versioning and backward or forward compatibility of software APIs and interfaces. Learn how to make your code nice for others or use versioned components effectively for yourself. We discuss semver, and why you also seen many projects, escaping this model with lifetime version of v0. The main topic starts at 18m35s. References: No lens camera: https://futurism.com/the-byte/camera-no-lens-location-ai Crab: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36122270 Paying for GH stars: https://the-guild.dev/blog/judging-open-source-by-github-stars?utm_source=unknownews Stack Overflow seeing lower traffic: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/stack-overflow-chatgpt/?utm_source=unknownews Nvidia passes 1 trillion $ of evaluation: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/30/nvidia-chipmaker-value-ai-chip-shares-artificial-intelligence Beautifully edited by amazing Yanitsa Spassova! As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

    1h 22m

  7. 06/08/2023

    Optimizing Productivity with Mindfulness, Self-Compassion & Motivation

    In this episode we discuss an important topic of productivity in our live and work. We explore often forgotten topic of motivation for our work, self-compassion, energy balance to tackle tedious tasks and healthy habits for software development, meetings and more! We also touch on the topic of social media use. References: Amazon Prime moving out of AWS Lambda: https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling-up-the-prime-video-audio-video-monitoring-service-and-reducing-costs-by-90 Leaked memo, AI alone is not a moat: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither Epic, inspiring episode about embracing death (Limitless): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11714334/ Atomic Habits Book: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits Rollup Meeting Notes Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AHgEyaNdI0YQgPnxDqF1BD1K8b-VJzFOgBAoS4IhSJo/edit Beautifully edited by amazing Yanitsa Spassova! As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

    1h 20m

  8. 05/09/2023

    Optimizing Freedom as a Digital Nomad with Becky Pauley

    Working from a tent, prioritizing your electricity between your monitor or cooking dinner, canal boat life, and more. These are some of the things we talked about with Becky Pauley at KubeCon Europe 2023. This episode covers all the great things about the digital nomad lifestyle, but also dives into some of the challenges. Join us for the interesting story and stay for the helpful tips. As always, before the main part we cover some of the news that got our attention in the previous weeks.References: Our amazing guest, Becky Pauley: https://twitter.com/BeckyPauley Reddit's API going paid: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23688463/reddit-developer-api-terms-change-monetization-ai Reddit's Apollo reader thread on effects of pricing change: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12srosz/reddit_api_going_paid_what_are_the_changes_we/ A Completely Non-Technical Explanation of AI and Deep Learning: https://www.parand.com/a-completely-non-technical-explanation-of-ai.html YC Winter 2023 Batch summary: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-yc-winter-2023-batch Another columnar DB: XTDB 2.0: https://www.xtdb.com/v2 Apache Arrow: https://arrow.apache.org/ Talking to dead people with AI: https://futurism.com/ai-dead-woman-talk-people-funeral?utm_source=unknownews As always, feedback and questions are welcomed! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

    57 min
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About

Welcome to OAT! Join us to discuss ideas and tools that make our software and development processes faster, more efficient, and healthy! We talk about performance improvements and valuable optimizations to software development processes like testing, debugging, running in production, open-sourcing or collaborating. Learn from experts how they improved their products, engineering processes or life habits and apply those in your work! Hosted in the UK by two software engineers: Ivan Valkov, the aspiring fantasy writer/chef/entrepreneur and Bartek Płotka, the OSS maintainer (you might know him from the CNCF Prometheus project) and “Efficient Go” book author. Want to ask a question or give feedback? Use this form: https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Information

  • Creator
    Bartłomiej Płotka & Ivan Valkov
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2024
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright (c) Bartłomiej Płotka & Ivan Valkov
  • Show Website
    Optimize All The Things

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