Kubernetes and retiring at the top with Kelsey Hightower
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Kelsey Hightower went from a self-taught technician installing DSL modems to becoming one of Google’s elite Distinguished Engineers, whom the CEO of Microsoft personally tried to recruit. Hightower’s career achievements are rooted in hard work and self-directed learning, and today he’s one of the most influential voices in modern infrastructure, through his talks, open source work, and writing.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast, Kelsey and I cover his unconventional path into tech and the lessons he’s learned during three decades in the industry. We discuss his entrepreneurial years, building a reputation through open source, the rise of containers and Kubernetes, and his time at Google during one of the most consequential periods in cloud computing.
He recounts how a job offer from a big tech giant led to the biggest raise of his career, what prompted him to slow down after years of career acceleration, and we also discuss his perspective on AI. Throughout, Kelsey keeps a simple idea front of mind: that technology is ultimately about people. Whether it’s infrastructure, leadership, careers, or AI, he argues that the goal is not to build technology for its own sake; it’s to solve meaningful human problems.
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Timestamps
00:00 Intro
03:34 Kelsey’s first job at McDonald’s
05:04 His non-traditional path into tech
11:45 Landing his first tech job with an A+ certification
15:33 His entrepreneurial years
19:45 Joining Google as a data center technician
27:48 Learning automation at a Rackspace spinoff
33:26 Moving into financial services
50:00 Building a reputation through open source
53:55 From configuration management to containers
1:08:20 The rise of Kubernetes
1:25:05 Why he almost joined NASA instead of Google
1:29:20 Defining DevRel at Google
1:38:20 Demonstrating impact at Google
1:41:20 Microsoft's offer
1:55:20 Learning how to slow down
2:06:39 Advising and investing
2:15:03 A people-first view of GenAI
2:24:27 Using AI with guardrails
2:28:26 Matching AI to the task
2:36:06 Staying relevant in the AI era
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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• Career paths for software engineers at large tech companies
• The past and future of modern backend practices
• How Kubernetes is built
• How Linux is built
• The Staff Engineer’s Path: You’re a role model now (sorry!)
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com.
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Kelsey Hightower, AWS's Eswar Bala on Open Source's Evolution
In a candid episode of The New Stack Makers, Kubernetes pioneer Kelsey Hightower and AWS’s Eswar Bala explored the evolving relationship between enterprise cloud providers and open source software at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon London. Hightower highlighted open source's origins as a grassroots movement challenging big vendors, and shared how it gave people—especially those without traditional tech credentials—a way into the industry. Recalling his own journey, Hightower emphasized that open source empowered individuals through contribution over credentials.
Bala traced the early development of Kubernetes and his own transition from building container orchestration systems to launching AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), driven by growing customer demand. The discussion, recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, touched on how open source is now central to enterprise cloud strategies, with AWS not only contributing but creating projects like Karpenter, Cedar, and Kro.
Both speakers agreed that open source's collaborative model—where companies build in public and customers drive innovation—has reshaped the cloud ecosystem, turning former tensions into partnerships built on community-driven progress.
Learn more from The New Stack about the relationship between enterprise cloud providers and open source software:
The Metamorphosis of Open Source: An Industry in Transition
The Complex Relationship Between Cloud Providers and Open Source
How Open Source Has Turned the Tables on Enterprise Software
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Retired, not tired. (Interview)
Kelsey Hightower is back to share more of his wisdom. This time it’s one year after his retirement from Google. But guess what? He might be “retired,” but he’s not tired. In this episode Kelsey shares what drives him, what he fears, and how he thinks through his life choices and parenting. This is a good one.
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Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
“I’m retired, not tired.”
Changelog & Friends #6: Even the best rides come to an end
Run:ai
Brondell Bidet
From Sleeping in His Car to Distinguished Engineer at Google (Kelsey Hightower)
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
10th Anniversary Special with Tim Hockin and Kelsey Hightower
Welcome to the second episode of the 4 part special series for the Kubernetes 10 year anniversary. In this episode we spoke to two very influential people in Kubernetes' history. Tim Hockin and Kelsey Hightower Both have been involved with the project since its inception and both had, and continue to have, impact on the project and the community.
Do you have something cool to share? Some questions? Let us know:
- web: kubernetespodcast.com
- mail: kubernetespodcast@google.com
- twitter: @kubernetespod
Chatter of the week KuberTenes Regional Events
Kubernetes Twitter Account
News of the week Kubernetes introduces hydrophone
AKS Automatic
CKS Changes after Sept 12, 2024
KubeCon and CloudNativeCon CFP Closes June 9th
KubeCon Co-Located events CFP Closes June 14, 2024
Links from the interview Google Borg
Google Omega
Let Me Contain That For You
Kubernetes Sidecars
Why Service Is the Worst API in Kubernetes
Kubernetes Maintainers Read Mean Comments
Kubernetes The Hard Way
Kelsey retirement announcement
Redpanda
Crossplane
Llama 3
Open-core model
Lets Encrypt
Google's infrastructure for everyone else
Kubernetes: Up and Running
CNI
Kubernetes Networking
Kubernetes Resource Model (KRM)
Reflecting on a Legendary Tech Career with Kelsey Hightower
Kelsey Hightower joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his reflections on how the tech industry is progressing. Kelsey describes what he’s been getting out of retirement so far, and reflects on what he learned throughout his high-profile career - including why feature sprawl is such a driving force behind the complexity of the cloud environment and the tactics he used to create demos that are engaging for the audience. Corey and Kelsey also discuss the importance of remaining authentic throughout your career, and what it means to truly have an authentic voice in tech.
About Kelsey
Kelsey Hightower is a former Distinguished Engineer at Google Cloud, the co-chair of KubeCon, the world’s premier Kubernetes conference, and an open source enthusiast. He’s also the co-author of Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure. Recently, Kelsey announced his retirement after a 25-year career in tech.
Links Referenced:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower
From Docker to Dagger (Interview)
This week we’re joined by Solomon Hykes, the creator of Docker. Now he’s back with his next big thing called Dagger — CI/CD as code that runs anywhere. We’re users of Dagger so check out our codebase if you want to see how it works. On today’s show Solomon takes us back to the days of Docker, what it was like on that 10 year journey, his transition from Docker to Dagger, Dagger’s community-led growth model, their focus on open source and community, how it works, and even a cameo from Kelsey Hightower to explain how Dagger works.
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Featuring:
Solomon Hykes – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
dagger.io
docs.dagger.io
Changelog & Friends #6: Even the best rides come to an end
Ship It! #48: Launching Dagger
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Even the best rides come to an end (Friends)
On Monday, Kelsey Hightower announced his retirement from Google. On Tuesday, he sat down with us to discuss why, how & what’s next.
Along the way, Kelsey teaches us how not to suck at work, analyzes his magical demos, fights off the haters (again) & opines on System Initiative, Dagger & 37Signals moving off the cloud.
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Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
“Today I’m announcing my retirement from Google.”
Not Everyone Can Be Kelsey Hightower - Greg Poirier - YouTube
Rebuilding DevOps from the ground up with Adam Jacob
Why we’re leaving the cloud
We have left the cloud
MRSK — Deploy web apps anywhere
Two decades as a solo indie Mac dev with Jesse Grosjean
btop on GitHub
Dagger
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Holiday Replay Edition - The Staying Power of Kubernetes with Kelsey Hightower
About Kelsey
Kelsey Hightower is the Principal Developer Advocate at Google, the co-chair of KubeCon, the world’s premier Kubernetes conference, and an open source enthusiast. He’s also the co-author of Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure.
Links:
Twitter: @kelseyhightower
Company site: Google.com
Book: Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure
When distributed systems Go wrong
Monitoring and debugging distributed systems is hard. In this episode, we catch up with Kelsey Hightower, Stevenson Jean-Pierre, and Carlisia Thompson to get their insights on how to approach these challenges and talk about the tools and practices that make complex distributed systems more observable.
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Command Line Heroes - Season 6 – Command Line Heroes is a podcast that tells the epic true tales of developers, programmers, hackers, geeks, and open source rebels who are revolutionizing the technology landscape. Season 6 of Command Line Heroes is out right now and features stories of Black technologists who innovated and invented despite racism, unfair hiring practices, and unequal education opportunities. Listen, learn more, and subscribe.
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Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Carlisia Thompson – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Stevenson Jean-Pierre – GitHub, X
Johnny Boursiquot – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Projects mentioned in this episode include Pixie and Velero.
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Making Kubernetes work like it's 1999 with Kelsey Hightower
You can find Kelsey on Twitter here. His Github is here. His personal journey with Kubernetes is detailed in a nice piece here.
Kelsey has an interesting role at Google. He sits at the director level but is an independent contributor with no direct reports. Instead he works to help galvanize interest in particular tools and topics, driving adoption at a broad scale.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Staying Power of Kubernetes with Kelsey Hightower
About Kelsey Hightower
Kelsey Hightower is a principal developer advocate at Google, the co-chair of KubeCon, the world’s premier Kubernetes conference, and an open source enthusiast. He’s also the co-author of Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure.
Links Referenced
Twitter: @kelseyhightower
Company site: Google.com
Book: Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure
Cloudy with a chance of Kelsey Hightower
In this episode, we’re joined by Kelsey Hightower to discuss the evolution of cloud infrastructure management, the role Kubernetes and its API play in it, and how we, as developers and operators, should be adapting to these changes.
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Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Johnny Boursiquot – Website, GitHub, X
Carmen Andoh – GitHub, X
Mat Ryer – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Jaana Dogan – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
The Containers_Derby
The rise of Container technologies opens a new frontier for developers, simplifying the movement of work from machine to machine. As Containers become more popular, though, a new battle emerges. This race is for the control of orchestration and involves the industry’s fastest, strongest players.
Containers are one of the most important evolutions in the open-source movement and in this episode, featured guests Kelsey Hightower, Google developer advocate, and Laura Frank, Docker Captain and Director of Engineering at Code Ship, along with others, explain how this new technology is the building blocks of the future.
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Drop us a line at redhat.com/commandlineheroes, we're listening...
S3:E2 - What's a container? (Kelsey Hightower)
If you've heard of containers and this thing called Kubernetes, but you're not sure exactly how they work and what they are, this episode is for you. Kelsey Hightower of Google gives us a newbie friendly tour of the world of containers. We talk about what problems they solve, and what new developers should know about them.
Show Links
Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor)
Kubernetes
Heroku
Digital Ocean
TensorFlow
Docker
Jenkins
Kubernetes Up and Running (book)
Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes (free course)
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019
Kelsey Hightower
Kelsey is an open source advocate and toolsmith and spends most of his time working with people and solving their problems.
S2:E4 - What makes a good speaker? (Lara Hogan, Kelsey Hightower)
This is the last week to submit a talk to Codeland, our annual tech conference, so we wanted to give you some insight on what makes a good talk, a good speaker, and a good proposal. You'll hear from Lara Hogan, who literally wrote the book on public speaking, and Kelsey Hightower, speaker and chair of many tech conferences. They share their personal speaking stories (and nightmares!), how they prepare their talks, and the common mistakes they see first-time speakers make.
Show Links
Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor)
Demystifying Public Speaking (code: NEWBIE for 10% off)
OSCON
Codeland CFP (submit by Nov 26)
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019
Lara Hogan
Lara is the former VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, co-founder of Wherewithall, a company that coaches and levels up managers, and author of the new bestselling book, Resilient Management.
Kelsey Hightower
Kelsey is an open source advocate and toolsmith and spends most of his time working with people and solving their problems.
ANTHOLOGY — The Future of Open Source at OSCON 2017 (Interview)
This is an anthology episode from OSCON 2017 featuring awesome conversations with Kelsey Hightower (OSCON Co-Chair and Developer Advocate at Google Cloud Platform), Safia Abdalla (Open Source Developer and Creator of Zarf), and Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal (GitHub Open Source Programs).
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Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Safia Abdalla – Website, GitHub, X
Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X
Mike McQuaid – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Kelsey Hightower
Kelsey Hightower is an OSCON Co-Chair and Developer Advocate (Google Cloud Platform) — We talked about being a co-chair, why he does live demos, and his motivations towards open source.
When you say you’re successful, I guarantee when you look around it’s because someone is celebrating your victories.
Check out DevOps Days Austin 2017 on YouTube
The tweets mentioned from Kelsey that were seen as “controversial by some in the community” started with this tweet, then this tweet, and finally this tweet.
“I don’t write code for free. I write code for freedom.”
“Best birthday gift ever!” thanks to Brian Ketelsen
Safia Abdalla
Safia Abdalla is an open source developer and creator of Zarf — We talked about being a command-line junkie and her talk on the intersection of business and open source.
Zarf - an online platform that allows writers to sell subscription content to their readers.
captainsafia/legit
captainsafia/goopshttps
captainsafia/commentator
captainsafia/checklist
Brief
captainsafia/giddy
captainsafia/fony
Open Source at Facebook with James Pearce (Facebook)
Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal
Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal work at GitHub in Open Source Programs — We talked about GitHub’s Open Source Alley at OSCON and how they are working to better support open source maintainers and their communities.
dear-github/dear-github
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Kubernetes, Containers, Go
Kelsey Hightower joined the show to talk about the work he’s doing at Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Bringing Pokémon GO to life on Google Cloud, Kubernetes cluster federation, Containers, and of course Go.
Join the discussion
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Code School – New course for those getting started with Go. On Track With Go — learn what makes Go a great fit for concurrent programs and how you can use it to leverage the power of modern computer architectures.
Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Erik St. Martin – GitHub, X
Carlisia Thompson – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Brian Ketelsen – GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Kubernetes 1.4 — Making it easy to run on Kubernetes anywhere
Kubernetes Certificate Manager — Manage Let’s Encrypt certificates for a Kubernetes cluster
Get started with Kubernetes? Check out Kelsey’s Kubernetes The Hard Way tutorial
From Luna Duclos — kube-cert-http - An adapter that lets Go’s net/http package fetch certificates from Kubernetes
You should read this -> Bringing Pokémon GO to life on Google Cloud
Hello Universe from Kelsey Hightower. What if applications could deploy themselves?
Another awesome tutorial on Kubernetes from Kelsey Hightower — Kubernetes cluster federation tutorial
Go Walkthrough from Ben Johnson - A series of walkthroughs to help you understand the Go standard library.
Here’s an example of good k8s documentation
This works pretty well for bootstrapping a cluster too with all the dashboards, metrics, etc
Special Interest Groups (SIG) and Working Groups
CoreOS rkt — a container engine for Linux designed to be composable, secure, and built on standards
The Twelve-Factor App — a methodology for building software-as-a-service apps
The Datacenter as a Computer by Urs Hölzle - An Introduction to the Design of Warehouse-Scale Machines, Second Edition
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
