KU057: Packing Up Kubernetes Unpacked

Speaker A: Maximize cloud efficiency with do it. The trusted partner in multi cloud management for thousands of companies worldwide. Visit doit.com that's D O I T.com doit your cloud simplified a little bit

Speaker B: of a different episode. Uh, because it's the last episode. Spoiler alert.

Speaker C: Yeah, that will be a one of a kind last episode for the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast.

Speaker B: So for one last time we'll do the My name is Michael Levan.

Speaker C: And my name is Christina Dko.

Speaker B: And today we are going to be talking about wrapping up the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast. Yes. Coming to an end. We're uh, over two years in, which is crazy. We've had. This is the 54th episode, so we've had over 50 episodes, which is wild and a little bit of reflection in terms of what we've talked about. We've kind of talked about everything, right? More or less.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean you started it first by yourself and have been talking about a bunch of things for some time before I joined you, Michael. It feels a little bit surreal to like finish it up and reflect on the podcast, but I think that we have covered many relevant topics around Kubernetes and Cloud Native and the broad Kubernetes ecosystem, and we have definitely not covered it all and it's continuously evolving. But I feel like the topics that have been discussed here, both between me and you and our guests, also touching upon different areas as well, from security to resource efficiency and sustainability to the trends to conferences like Kubecon and Cloud Native Console. It's been quite a lot of content and many of it is still relevant. Even looking at the content from two years ago, don't you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think all of the content aged quite well. I'm trying to kind of go back and think everything that we talked about, I don't think any of it is not usable. I think it's still all very relevant. I think it's all still very usable.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean I have a few folks from the community who told me recently, like just a few weeks ago that they've started listening to the podcast from the first episode up and there was a lot of useful and relevant content still. So that is still, to me sounds like a very good feedback on that. That content is still very valid despite the active development and evolvement in the Kubernetes space. So it's not always like that that you create a piece of content and it's outdated like a few months later. So I think that's a Great thing.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest reasons is like we stuck to the underlying piece of it. You know, we didn't really do episodes on like, here's what's new with the latest Kubernetes release. We didn't really do that. We did all of the will always be relevant, you know, in the Kubernetes realm when we've talked about all the projects from Cilium to all the open source projects to security to networking to certifications and everything in between.

Speaker C: Yeah. And uh, I think like when it comes to the release notes and highlighting every release, for example, or going through all the sessions from a Kubecon and cloud native Con event in detail, I think that there is a lot of content about that and you can easily read about it yourself. But I think it's much more interesting to like discuss the engineer focused reflections, often from our own experience and from the guests experience as well. So I, um, do believe that this is the real life experience is what brings a lot of value for others who may need to implement something similar or need to adopt this specific tool. And like, kind of learning from another engineer's experience is super valuable.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're absolutely correct, 100%. I think there's a lot of content out there. It's all really great stuff. You know, with this podcast, we never wanted it to be, uh, markety or salesy. We never wanted it to be like, here's the latest news in this. We didn't go in that direction. We really went in the direction of putting the engineers first, putting their education first, and ultimately giving them the ability to learn in their career. It was never about anything else.

Speaker C: I feel like we've managed that. I feel like we've managed to have it pretty technical and experience based. And we had really, uh, a lot of great guests here on this podcast sharing their diverse experience. And I think that it has been a big pleasure. I think maybe it makes sense in this episode to share some of our recommendations or maybe leave our listeners with something that maybe can help them or motivate them in terms of working with Kubernetes and um, cloud native space. Like what kind of message would you want to share with our listeners today?

Speaker B: One of the biggest things that I will say is a lot of people come to me for my content. A lot of people follow on LinkedIn. A lot of people see the content that I'm pushing out as very engineering focused, very educational versus buzzy. That's why I've been able to build myself around this whole Kubernetes thing, uh, and platform engineering as a. And the reason why is because I look at things a lot different than the majority of people. When I am working on something Kubernetes related or something platform engineering related, I'm not looking for the easy way out. I'm not looking to just do it a couple hours and say, oh, I know it, you know, everything that I touch in this realm, I'm hitting it seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And that might not be computer time. That might be me sitting on the couch reading a book. That may be me sitting and reflecting on a conversation that I had around Kubernetes. That may be uh, me researching new conferences to go to and speak at, whatever the case may be. I am constantly on and constantly going from a mindset perspective. And that's the reason why like when everybody reaches out to me and says, oh, your content's different, all the stuff that you put out is different. Yeah, because I'm thinking about it way differently than the majority of people are. So my advice, my recommendation, think about it differently. Don't look for the easy way out. Don't expect to read something for an hour and say o, I know all the answers now. No, no, no. This is real engineering. And real engineering requires a lifetime to get 60% of the way through.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, you're never going to master everything. You're never going to become an expert and know everything and never have to learn again. If you want to do real engineering and you want to put real work in, it's is a constant effort almost daily from you. Do you have to do it? No. Do you want to be different than everybody else? If the answer is yes, then go ahead and do it. That's uh, I, I don't know. My, my, my opinions are always very unpopular.

Speaker C: I don't know why you think that. I think that was a great TED talk right now. So it was a very important message. I mean I don't know who it couldn't inspire right now. So uh, I liked it and I think like to maybe add upon what you said is also consistency is the key. I think like even if you read or like put half an hour, 20 minutes in your busier every day, if you put 20 minutes every day times 365 days, it can be a lot of minutes in the end that you can dedicate to the content. And I actually, I can tell from my experience that this works because I've been really struggling with getting to read through books. I've tried different strategies like I want to, but then I put very high goals for myself like dedicating one hour every day to read. Or I will read through this, uh, one to two chapters every day or I will try to read two, three books simultaneously. And nothing worked. So I would drop out. And then there is no progress. And I feel bad about it because I don't get to develop and learn as much as I wanted to because my mind doesn't feel like it can handle all this amount of work and pressure I need to do every day with this goal I set for myself. So this year I tried something different. I did, uh, okay, I will vary the time a little bit. I'll see approximately 15 to 20 minutes every day. If I'm up for it, I can read longer, but 15 minutes to 20 minutes I can try to read. It's not a lot. And that's, it's like enough for my mind to process. And that's quite insane. I mean like since the beginning of the year, I read 20 books already. And that is basically just before bed, just lying there. Okay. My uh, iPad normally tells me like 15 to 20 minutes for this chapter. I think, yeah, that fits into my time schedule. If it says like 40 to 50 minutes, I cut the chapter into like today I read half and tomorrow I read half. And I mean that's insane. You have like sometimes you use a week or up to two weeks for a book and you get at least two books a month read. And that really worked with a low effort for my mind to be able to process and actually be motivated. So this is like maybe a tip I could give in terms of like keeping it consistent because it can seem difficult at times to combine your full time work and your family with, you know, finding the time for something else like competence development or community involvement. This can be one way to try to dedicate even a little bit every day in a consistent manner would help.

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Speaker B: And I think, you know, it's ironic, right? We could do this live on the podcast. Let's see how much time we all got, right? So we got 24 hours in a day. The average adult needs to sleep Six to seven hours. But you know what, let's be generous and say eight. The average adult is maybe working eight hours a day. Nobody's actually working those eight hours a day because we're doing lunch and taking breaks and looking at our phones. Right? But again, let's be generous and say 8 right? Now let's say you have to drive home now. A lot of people are working from home, right? But let's say you have a commute, right? Well, even minus at an hour. And then let's say, you know, usually go to bed at 9. Maybe you're spending two hours with your family per night, hanging out, eating, doing whatever. Right. Usually I would say the typical is around two hours. But let's be even more generous and say three. That leaves you with four hours after everything. After your sleep, after your work, after your family, after your drive, everything. Four hours. If you can't take 20 minutes out of that to do what you need to do to progress yourself, then every podcast in the world isn't going to be able to help you. Right. And I'm just, again, I'm going through that exercise to say, like, we had a lot of time in the day and my timing that I was just doing was incredibly generous because I bet you you actually probably have eight hours in total, not even four per day that you can do stuff. Maybe six to seven on typical, right? So even if you dedicate an hour, you're still looking at four to five hours. You could do whatever you want. You want to doom scroll for five hours straight? I don't recommend it, but if that's what you want to do, you go for it. You could still do that and still have an hour a day for your studies and to progress yourself. So I think that your advice is spot on.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think even, like commute, you know, there are, uh, the small hacks that you could use as an opportunity to learn, like put a podcast in your ear while you are just sitting there on public transport or driving a car or whatever. Or read something on your phone, read a book or watch a video. Or, you know, there are opportunities to use some small hacks like that as well. Or maybe if you want to like combine pleasure and learning, you could also, for example, during summer, sit outside in your garden, garden and read. Or go do gardening stuff and have a podcast in your ear. That is also an opportunity. Or for those of us who struggle with concentration, like I do when watching videos, I can't just sit and watch a video because I get really restless. So I combine that with other things, like drawing for example, so I can draw and still listen and switch my eyesight to see the diagrams and stuff and the demos. And then I kind of get, you know, a little bit of both learning at the same time, holding the focus and also doing something that relaxes me, like drawing and uh, therefore handling the whole session. So there are ways that can help you dedicate time in your life for that. And maybe the important thing here is consistency and motivation and once you want to get out of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. Couldn't set it better myself.

Speaker C: So that ended up being an inspirational wrap up episode.

Speaker B: That's what we do.

Speaker C: Keep learning folks. That is our message. Keep pushing, keep learning.

Speaker B: Exactly. All right, so before we wrap up, a couple of things. Number one, this is not the last time you will hear from Christina and I. Aside from the million other things we do, we are also cooking up something. I've posted it on my LinkedIn the week of whenever this episode comes out. But the week of May 2nd I posted something out. We're going to be posting more about it, so more to come on this. Would like to thank Pack a Pushers for a couple years of awesome work together. Definitely fun, definitely memorable. Great time overall and uh, thank you everybody for listening to us ramble for two years.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great message I think. Yeah. Ah, thanks to packet pushers and thanks to Michael being a, uh, great co host with me and also letting me be your co host. And uh, we don't say goodbye to each other so you'll hear more from us as a single unit. How do you even formulate that? But you got us. You got us. And thanks to all our listeners, like being dedicated and listening consistently to every episode, spreading the words about it, sharing feedback and as Michael mentioned, we will keep doing the engineer focused content in different formats. So we are not saying goodbye. So stay tuned and we'll keep talking about all things Kubernetes engineering, cloud native, you name it. So um, thank you for being with us on this Kubernetes unpacked podcast journey.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you everybody. Appreciate it.