Evolving, Adapting, and Staying Prepared with Brian Weber

01/28/25 • 35 min

Ever wondered how Corey got to where he is today? You have Brian Weber to partially thank for that. On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey catches up with his old friend and mentor to talk about the ever-evolving world of tech. Brian’s been around the block a time or two having done significant stints at Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter (during the Elon acquisition no less)! As Corey and Brian catch up, you’ll hear them chat about the importance of empathy, coaching the next generation of tech workers, and their conspiracies surrounding Google and Kubernetes. So grab your tinfoil hats, it’s time to go Screaming!

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:53) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:27) When Brian took Corey under his win

(3:21) Brian's experience coming to the cloud as an engineer

(7:24) Why it's important to reinvent yourself in tech

(8:54) How Brian reacted to the industry adopting Kubernetes over Mesos Marathon

(10:31) Kubernetes conspiracy theories

(12:30) The importance of empathy in tech

(15:46) Trying to advise younger generations entering tech

(19:19) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(20:02) Working at Twitter when jobs started getting cut and the site frequently went down

(22:41) The best way to navigate certification expiration

(26:08) Talking about "The Golden Path”

(28:52) Why you should always plan ahead in tech (and life)

(34:21) Where you can find more from Brian

About Brian Weber

Brian is a former FedRAMP DevOps Engineer for Coralogix. He’s also been a Site Reliability Engineer at Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook, where he has maintained large installations on-premises, building reliability, security, and developer efficiency. In my spare time, Brian skis, knits, cycles, bakes, and tries to spend as much time outdoors as possible.

Links

Brian’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-weber-2423b55/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:53) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:27) When Brian took Corey under his win

(3:21) Brian's experience coming to the cloud as an engineer

(7:24) Why it's important to reinvent yourself in tech

(8:54) How Brian reacted to the industry adopting Kubernetes over Mesos Marathon

(10:31) Kubernetes conspiracy theories

(12:30) The importance of empathy in tech

(15:46) Trying to advise younger generations entering tech

(19:19) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(20:02) Working at Twitter when jobs started getting cut and the site frequently went down

(22:41) The best way to navigate certification expiration

(26:08) Talking about "The Golden Path”

(28:52) Why you should always plan ahead in tech (and life)

(34:21) Where you can find more from Brian

About Brian Weber

Links

Brian’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-weber-2423b55/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

Previous Episode

Replay- A Conversation between Cloud Economists with Amy Arambulo Negrette

On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, we look back at our conversation with Amy Negrette. Before she joined DigitalOcean Senior Development Advocate, she was a cloud economist at The Duckbill Group. Prior to that, Amy worked as a cloud architect at Trek10, Inc., a cloud software engineer lead at Cloudreach, a software developer at ASRC Research and Technology Solutions, and a software engineer at Yahoo, among other positions. She’s also an organizer of Write/Speak/Code, an organization committed to helping Under Represented Genders sharpen their technical speaking and writing capabilities. Join Corey and Amy as they discuss the pros and cons of remote work, what Duckbill’s organizational structure is like, remote work during the pandemic vs. remote work during the before times, why it’s nice to be able to work whenever you want to work instead of during fixed hours, why the future of travel in the tech industry should change, how Corey and Amy met, what makes cloud economics come natural to Amy, a tool that helps recreate physical events online more effectively than Zoom, and more.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(0:57) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:30) Amy’s experience working with The Duckbill Group during the pandemic

(7:20) When Amy was the only cloud economist with a background in software engineering

(12:36) Is it antiquated to go on-site to meet with clients?

(16:23) Amy’s time spent working at NASA

(17:55) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(18:38) What it’s like working IT for NASA

(20:28) Amy’s background prior to cloud consulting

(24:15) Amy’s view on public speaking events coming out of the pandemic

(29:21) Corey’s qualms with re:Invent

(31:51) Where you can find more from Amy

About Amy Arambulo Negrette

With over ten years industry experience, Amy Arambulo Negrette has built web applications for a variety of industries including Yahoo! Fantasy Sports and NASA Ames Research Center. One of her projects modernized two legacy systems impacting the entire research center and won her a Certificate of Excellence from the Ames Contractor Council. Amy believe that strong and consistent communication can produce the best product and overall customer experience, whether it's in gaming, educational outreach, or internal tools. Her long term goal is to lead people and have creative control over my projects.

Links

The Duckbill Group: http://duckbillgroup.com/
Amy’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/nerdypaws

Original Episode

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/a-conversation-between-cloud-economists-with-amy-arambulo-negrette/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com

Next Episode

S3 and the Evolution of Storage with Andy Warfield

Andy Warfield joins Corey in this episode to discuss the evolution of storage technology at Amazon. This includes the evolution of S3 from archival storage to supporting modern AI and analytics. As Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at AWS, Andy is able to explain performance-enhancing innovations like S3 Tables and Common Runtime (CRT). On the other hand, challenges like compaction and namespace structuring are discussed. Reflecting on his journey from working on the Xen hypervisor to AWS, Andy shares insights into scaling S3, including buckets spanning millions of hard disks.

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(1:09) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:43) Andy’s background

(3:38) How AWS envisioned services being used vs. what customers actually do with them

(6:54) The frustration of legacy applications not keeping up with the times

(10:14) Why S3 is so accurate

(15:29) S3 as a role model for how a service should be run

(18:04) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(18:46) Why AWS made Iceberg into a native offering

(23:50) Why S3 Tables is slightly more expensive

(28:23) How Andy handled the transition from Zen to Nitro

(32:22) What Andy is currently excited about

About Andy Warfield

Andrew Warfield is a VP / Distinguished Engineer at Amazon. As a senior technical leader at one of the world's largest technology companies, he plays a crucial role in shaping Amazon's engineering strategies and initiatives.

Links