Submission + - Why One of Kubernetes' Creators Moved From Google to Microsoft (listennotes.com)
destinyland writes: One of the three Google employees who created Kubernetes — the open source container-orchestration platform now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation — was software engineer Brendan Burns. But in 2016 Burns became an engineer at Microsoft (where since March he's been a corporate vice president at Microsoft).
This week in a new podcast interview [video here], Burns explained why he went from Google to Microsoft, which was "all-in on cloud":
Obviously growing up in Seattle, Microsoft is sort of like the home-town team — so that was a big plus also. And it's been great to be able to come in and really help them figure out — I think one of the really amazing things about being there is it's a company in transition. Certainly four years ago when I joined, it's a company in transition. And getting a chance to help continue that transition, and help continue and shift its focus from closed-source and Windows to a really renewed focus on open source and Linux and cloud native application development — that ability to influence and help shape direction has been really awesome also.
But it was more than just their commitment to the cloud...
"There's just such a great developer history there, of developer tooling and developer productivity. Just such a focus on empowering people to build stuff. That's really compelling to me too, because I think one of the things we really haven't done a good job of in Kubernetes is make it easier to build these programs. Right? We do a lot to make it easier to operate the stuff, but it's still really hard to build these systems, and Kubernetes isn't helping you at all. So I'm really excited and interested and thinking a lot about how can we make it easier for developers to build systems. And I think the DNA and history and experience of Microsoft to build things, the hugely successful platform that is Windows, means there's just a great — a really strong amount of DNA about what it takes to build a platform that doesn't just succeed for elite devs but can really succeed for people all the way from no-code solutions all the way through to advance systems solutions. And so that opportunity is really exciting.
This week in a new podcast interview [video here], Burns explained why he went from Google to Microsoft, which was "all-in on cloud":
Obviously growing up in Seattle, Microsoft is sort of like the home-town team — so that was a big plus also. And it's been great to be able to come in and really help them figure out — I think one of the really amazing things about being there is it's a company in transition. Certainly four years ago when I joined, it's a company in transition. And getting a chance to help continue that transition, and help continue and shift its focus from closed-source and Windows to a really renewed focus on open source and Linux and cloud native application development — that ability to influence and help shape direction has been really awesome also.
But it was more than just their commitment to the cloud...
"There's just such a great developer history there, of developer tooling and developer productivity. Just such a focus on empowering people to build stuff. That's really compelling to me too, because I think one of the things we really haven't done a good job of in Kubernetes is make it easier to build these programs. Right? We do a lot to make it easier to operate the stuff, but it's still really hard to build these systems, and Kubernetes isn't helping you at all. So I'm really excited and interested and thinking a lot about how can we make it easier for developers to build systems. And I think the DNA and history and experience of Microsoft to build things, the hugely successful platform that is Windows, means there's just a great — a really strong amount of DNA about what it takes to build a platform that doesn't just succeed for elite devs but can really succeed for people all the way from no-code solutions all the way through to advance systems solutions. And so that opportunity is really exciting.
