LAURENCE MORONEY: Today on Coffee with a Googler
we're having coffee, cloud, containers and a whole lot
more with stand up comic and developer advocate
extraordinaire Carter Morgan.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So, Carter, you've had so many roles like soldier, bartender,
I hear you worked in a software company
over in Redmond, blogger.
What brings you to Google, and what are you doing here now?
CARTER MORGAN: Well, I came because I wanted
to be a developer advocate.
I wanted to stop being a software engineer,
where I was at the other company in Redmond and what not.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I know the one.
CARTER MORGAN: You know one?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah, I think that's it.
CARTER MORGAN: Yeah.
And so I wrote this nine page cover letter to try and get in,
because I'm like, you have no experience in this field.
Somehow they let me in.
And now I get to run workshops and teach people
how to use our technology with videos,
or workshops, blog posts.
It's really cool.
LAURENCE MORONEY: A nine page letter?
CARTER MORGAN: I did.
It was literally nine pages.
It was all Google colored and themed.
It was horrible looking.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Do you still have it?
CARTER MORGAN: I do.
I still look at it time to time.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It's framed in your office?
CARTER MORGAN: So I wanted attention.
I didn't have any experience in this role,
so I did things like I wrote a haiku in the middle falsely
attributed to Rob Pike.
It said something like, you don't
have to write long cover letters if your name is
Rob Pike, signed Rob Pike, or something like that.
And someone that I interviewed with sent it to him,
and I get this response back, and it said something like,
ad hominem arguments for [? and or ?] [? khand ?] are
not convincing.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And that's a haiku.
CARTER MORGAN: Yeah, and I didn't realize it.
I just thought Rob Pike was really mean
and just dashed my dreams.
LAURENCE MORONEY: He's not mean.
He's way above average.
Sorry, that's my bad joke for the day.
So I'm the one making the joke, but you also
do stand up comedy right?
CARTER MORGAN: I dabble.
I try and do some stand up, mostly in Seattle and whatnot.
It's been a real big help for the job and speaking
in front of people.
Well, I don't have to be afraid anymore,
because I've been in front of drunk audiences.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, just given
that you've done the stand up comedy,
and you weren't a developer advocate before,
and you wrote this big letter, and that brought you
into Google, how was it to fit into the role of a developer
advocate?
CARTER MORGAN: Well, when I first joined,
I joined the DP team.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK, so DP are the people who build our sample
applications right?
CARTER MORGAN: Yes, so developer of programs engineers.
And they are more internal facing.
And developer advocates are more customer-developer facing.
And it wasn't a good fit.
It was a year that was really a tough fit, because I
wrote this nine page cover letter like, here's all
the external stuff that I do, and they're like,
don't do that.
But Google was really flexible, and they kind of worked with me
to transition to this team.
So it's still finding your place,
how can I be most effective.
You get a lot of freedom in this role, which is--
it can be terrifying when you join a new company
with all these smart people.
Rob Pike works here.
You work here.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I'd lower the average
to balance it out with Rob.
So that's the only reason they hired me.
So you're doing all this stuff like outreach,
that kind of thing.
Now, it's cloud that you work on and Kubernetes
in particular right?
CARTER MORGAN: Yes.
So the tool I've been focused on for the first year I
was at Google was Kubernetes, and that's, basically,
an orchestrator for containers or running applications,
so how do you do that at scale.
Now that we've done that for a year,
I'm moving over into continuous integration and delivery,
which is how do you actually deliver a software,
how do you send updates out in a controlled manner,
a deterministic way.
And so the tool we're focusing on right now is Spinnaker.
So that's been exciting, too, because, again, it's
like every year it's almost like you
have to start from scratch and relearn
a whole tool, or platform, or community.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
And that's also what it's like for developers, right?
With the pace of technology going so fast,
there's continuing pressure on them to keep their skills up
to date.
So people like you and me, our job is to get ahead of that,
and to be ready to teach them, and to be
ready to share our experiences.
One of the nice things is that you're not a salesperson.
CARTER MORGAN: I'm not a salesperson,
and so that's really important.
There's got to be some times where I say,
I don't think this tool is the best.
I don't think this is the right way to do it.
And I think that's something a salesperson couldn't say.
They'd have to be like, use this product no matter what.
It's the best.
LAURENCE MORONEY: You don't have a quota to meet or anything.
You love this technology, and you
get to share it with people.
CARTER MORGAN: 100.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, I know you have a new video series,
the "Cloud Rolling Update."
Could you tell us about it?
CARTER MORGAN: Yeah.
So the "Cloud Rolling Update" is a series
where we show why Google Cloud Platform is the place
to deliver code to and from.
And so the first couple of videos
are brief overviews of this tool called Google Container
Builder.
It's like a Docker tool, but you don't use it locally.
You use it in the cloud.
It's really cool.
And then after that, we're going to talk
about Spinnaker and continuous integration delivery
using Kubernetes.
So the idea is you have an application, well,
how do you update it?
And we're going to show how to do that on Google Container
Engine.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, I know you've brought
a clip of the show with us.
What's this clip?
CARTER MORGAN: So this clip is the first video
in the series, where you probably get started,
and it's just covering Container Builder, so what
is it, how do I use it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Oh, let's check it out.
CARTER MORGAN: And on top of that, it's fast.
It has support for custom build steps,
which can be concurrently.
And there's support for using build triggers,
so that you can create images automatically.
And all of this comes with full integration
with Google Container Registry, the same service that's
being used by Google Cloud Functions, App Engine
Flex, and more.
So let's see this in action.
For example, if you already have a Docker file,
you can just use it like you normally would
to build a container image.
Here, you can see we have a standard Docker file.
LAURENCE MORONEY: In that video, you
were talking about Container Builder.
So if I'm a developer, and there's just
this array of options in front of me,
what's a good way for me to get started with this stuff
to take advantage of it?
CARTER MORGAN: Well, the first thing I would do
is check out the link in the description.
We've got tutorials and videos showing how to use the tool,
and why you want to.
That's first.
So Container Builder just replaces, on the cloud side,
tools that are common to most developers like Docker.
So now instead of having to run it locally,
you can just send that out to the cloud
and it'll run for you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
So in addition to all that, I know
you've done teaching through things like Udacity courses.
CARTER MORGAN: You have, too, yeah?
LAURENCE MORONEY: I have, and they're really fun, because--
has your experience been the same as mine?
That whenever you go to an event, and you're talking,
there's usually somebody that goes, I know that face.
CARTER MORGAN: Yeah.
Sometimes I've had the opposite, too.
So I did this course with Kelsey Hightower.
He's super popular.
LAURENCE MORONEY: We all know Kelsey.
We've had him on the show.
He's great.
So we want to have him on the show again.
So just tell him we said that.
CARTER MORGAN: I'll tell him.
But so, I was at a conference, and someone came up to me,
and they're like, hey, have you seen Kelsey?
And I'm like, no, not yet.
Is there anything I could pass along?
And this person goes, yeah, I just
wanted to tell him that the course was great.
And I'm like, I was in the course.
But no, normally, a lot of people
come and they say thank you for teaching.
They really like the guided progression
through a topic and the really short videos
instead of this long overview.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Because it's hard to sit and watch
45 minutes on cloud.
I love cloud, but it's hard to sit and watch
45 minutes on cloud.
But three or four minutes of you,
three or four minutes of Kelsey, and then and little a quiz
afterwards, that kind of thing, it also helps retain knowledge.
CARTER MORGAN: Yes.
So, again, you're changing up the nods
that's coming, the presenter, and so it's always engaging.
And so I think that's the most important thing
to think about, whether you're writing a sample or an article,
is how can I engage people, how can I
write this in a way that makes them want to reach the end
and don't feel overwhelmed to get started.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So we spoke a little about the Udacity
course, and I just realized for a lot of people
out there who don't understand what Kubernetes is, it's
really cool, but what is it?
CARTER MORGAN: I should have started there.
Kubernetes is a container orchestrator.
So a container is just a way to bundle an application.
So you can run it anywhere, and it's going to behave the same.
That works really well on one machine,
but when you scale up to 10 machines, 100 machines, 1,000,
it doesn't scale as well.
And so what you want is something
to manage all that complexity for you.
How does container A talk to container B?
What happens if container B gets shut down?
Do I want to manually go to a terminal and start it back up,
check if it's up?
No.
And so Kubernetes is a container framework
that sits on top of something like Google Container
Builder or Docker and runs these containers,
starts and stops them, makes sure they're communicating,
helps check so much more all for you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So if I want to get started
by putting together an infrastructure that uses that,
where would I go?
CARTER MORGAN: Well, we have the Udacity course,
which is free three hours of training from myself and Kelsey
Hightower.
There's kubernetes.io, which is a great start.
Probably more links in the description.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK, sounds good.
Now, you've mentioned Kelsey Hightower.
You get to work with some superstars
here on Google, right?
CARTER MORGAN: I do.
That's probably my favorite part about being at Google,
to be honest.
One, I get to work with people that are really intelligent.
Part of the "Cloud Rolling Update" series
is taking things I've learned from other people like Vic
Iglesias, Ahmet Balkan, Kelsey Hightower,
and putting that into video format
for a different audience.
I've also gotten a lot of mentorship
from people like Kelsey, Sarah Novotny, Colt McAnlis.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Wow, some good names there.
CARTER MORGAN: Yeah, and it's cool
because they've been so open.
These are people that are established
at a company like Google, and they're still
taking the time to say, hey, let me show you the ropes.
Let me help you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So when you wrote that nine page letter,
was that what you felt would end up happening?
CARTER MORGAN: You know, I had no idea.
I had no idea.
I'd never been to a company like Google,
like such a young and open company.
And so I'm still learning how to be a good Googler.
LAURENCE MORONEY: You got to blog that letter.
We all want to see it now.
CARTER MORGAN: I have it if you want to see it.
It's on Medium.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Oh, yeah, if it's on Medium,
I'll look out for it.
CARTER MORGAN: I'll send it your way.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Thanks, we'll put it in the links.
One of the things that we've seen,
even with people we've been talking to on this show,
is that just 18 months or two years ago,
cloud was always that thing that seemed to be in the future.
But now it's like it's almost the new normal, right?
That if I'm a developer starting out today,
it should be cloud first.
It should be let's get going, right now.
And is there any advice that you give
to developers starting out?
CARTER MORGAN: So the best thing that happened to me was,
again, someone told me to learn this Kubernetes framework.
And the reason why is it abstracted away all the
behind the scenes.
I didn't have to think about machines anymore.
So I learned one API that had years of Google's experience
behind it, and then I could manipulate objects at scale.
So that was really useful for me.
And so, now, some people look at me,
and they say, oh, I'm an expert.
And I'm like, no I got lucky.
I learned the right tool first.
So for me, I would start off with learning
how to manipulate or use Kubernetes
and then using that to think about how
I think about distributed applications or cloud based
applications.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So you're able to do programming at your desk,
but expand that to cloud scale and to Google scale
in the cloud, which is just phenomenal.
CARTER MORGAN: Yeah.
So it's crazy, because with Kubernetes you
can say something like, Kubernetes run,
and it creates some application instance for it.
Then you can say, Kubernetes scale that up.
Kubernetes expose that so I can talk to it.
And all the behind the scenes, the networking, the scheduling,
all that's taken care of.
If you were starting from scratch maybe two years ago,
you would have had to do that yourself, all the steps.
And so there's a lot of power in these platforms
or these frameworks that abstract away
all the underlying mechanics of working with cloud programming.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So you've gone from a guy writing a nine page
letter to try to get into Google into one
of the foremost recognized experts in cloud at Google.
Great cloud series, teaching stuff on Udacity,
and it's just been a privilege to be
able to chat with you today.
So thank you so much, Carter.
For everybody else who's watching,
we've put the links in the description below.
Carter's video course is a must watch.
And if you want to learn about cloud,
and you want to learn about Kubernetes,
check out his Udacity course as well.
So thanks so much, Carter.
CARTER MORGAN: Thanks, Laurence.