SETH VARGO: All right.
Welcome back.
Today I have Sandeep with me.
Sandeep is a Developer Advocate.
What does a Developer Advocate do?
SANDEEP PARIKH: Yes, so Developer Advocates at Google,
and I think at a lot of other places,
are engineers who get to engage with the community.
So they get to participate by speaking at conferences,
writing cool documentation, code samples, basically giving back.
And also learning from the community,
like developers and operators, and using
that to improve products.
SETH VARGO: I see.
So they're not like marketing people?
SANDEEP PARIKH: No.
They're very much intended to be like engineers
who have come from that ecosystem or that environment.
So former developers, operators.
Specifically within Kubernetes, like definitely
cluster operators, sysadmins, DevOps,
those kinds of folks with that kind of background.
SETH VARGO: Awesome.
So what exactly does a Developer Advocate
do in the Kubernetes ecosystem?
What kind of things are you involved in?
SANDEEP PARIKH: Yeah, that's a great question.
So the name is sort of funny, because I
think Developer Advocate implies developer only,
when really, within the Kubernetes ecosystem,
it's developer, DevOps, pure ops, and kind of further
and further down the stack.
So within the Kubernetes ecosystem,
I think people are getting to participate by one,
helping build better code samples around just
using Kubernetes for operators.
But also going further and further
up the stack with new projects and tools
that are very developer-centric.
Which Kubernetes by itself is not a developer-facing tool
in a lot of ways.
SETH VARGO: Awesome.
So walk me through an average day for you.
SANDEEP PARIKH: Yeah, so a lot of it
really is, well, one, nonstop email checking and group chat
participation.
And then filing bug reports on products
that are part of Google Cloud, writing code samples,
writing documentation, updating code samples
and documentation, because those get out of date very quickly.
And answering PRs on GitHub and helping merge in new code.
SETH VARGO: So I'm sure everyone is dying to know,
how many Slack channels are you a part of?
SANDEEP PARIKH: That's a number I will never share publicly
because it would frighten and confuse most people.
SETH VARGO: So you said you work a lot with the ecosystem.
What are some really exciting ecosystem tools and kind
of patterns that are emerging that you're
excited about, personally?
SANDEEP PARIKH: Yeah, no.
I mean, I think what's really cool is,
I was at the first KubeCon back in 2015,
when it was 300 people in one room in the Palace Hotel.
And it's grown incredibly since that time,
in the last three and 1/2 years.
And what's really cool is, it's gone further and further up.
So we're getting closer and closer
to like end application developers.
So I'm really excited about the things
that make application developers' lives easier.
So some of the really cool tools-- and a little bit
self-serving, because they're Google tools
that we're working on-- but I think Scaffold and Jib
are really cool tools.
And then something like Knative, which
isn't exactly developer-facing, but it's
a project which is going to make it easier for application
developers to get a lot of these full benefits
without having to write YAML and remember
v1beta1 or v1alpha1 APIs.
SETH VARGO: Exactly.
So let's say I'm new to the Kubernetes community, right?
You said 300.
We're at like, what, 8,000 people at this conference?
The community is growing dramatically.
If I'm new to this thing, where do I start?
Where are some areas that I can make an impact, maybe even
if I don't have a background in software or computer science?
SANDEEP PARIKH: Yeah, you know, everybody
has a unique experience to bring, which is what I found.
And just hearing talks from across the community today,
and in the last couple of days at KubeCon,
everybody's got something compelling to share.
I think there's tons of getting started resources out there.
But there's never enough applied use case.
So taking the experience that you've had,
even if it was without Kubernetes, and saying, well,
how would I map that to a Kubernetes environment
or an environment with Istio or with any of the other thousands
of tools that are out there?
You know, rethinking through that
and then sharing that story is still pretty valuable,
because I think it helps everybody try to map something
new in their brain.
I just went to a session that was about PCI compliance,
right?
So processing credit card data--
something we've been doing for years
in traditional environments, but not as much in Kubernetes.
And that's really valuable for the community to learn.
SETH VARGO: Awesome.
So share stories.
SANDEEP PARIKH: Yeah, exactly.
Share stories.
And it doesn't have to be code.
It doesn't have to be an innovative thing.
It just has to be something that's, I think,
positive in helping move the community forward.
And that could just be a simple thing
that you've learned that you want to share.
SETH VARGO: Awesome.
Well, thank you, Sandeep.
SANDEEP PARIKH: All right.
Thank you.
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