Platform Engineering Podcast

• Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower - Beyond Pipelines: Infrastructure As Data

  Is your Git repo really the source of truth for infrastructure - or just a suggestion?Guest host Kelsey Hightower sits down with Cory O’Daniel to unpack why many teams hit dead ends with CI/CD for provisioning, where GitOps struggles with drift, and when TicketOps helps or hurts. They explore a different model: infrastructure as data with typed contracts, shared artifacts, and workflows that embed policy, validation, and upgrades from the start. You’ll hear practical ways to reduce cognitive load for developers while giving operations reliable control and better day‑2 levers.You’ll learn:Why pipelines are a poor fit for infra provisioning and what to do insteadHow to reason about drift as a three‑way merge with realityWhen reconciliation helps, and when it breaks production firefightsHow typed contracts and artifacts connect modules and teams without glue scriptsWays to present safer self‑service without requiring everyone to learn TerraformA simple mental model for treating TicketOps as a surface, not the workflowGuest Host: Kelsey HightowerKelsey has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Prior to his retirement, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. He is a strong open source advocate with a focus on building great software as well as great communities around them. He is also an accomplished author and keynote speaker with a knack for demystifying complex topics, doing live demos and enabling others to succeed. When he is not writing code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming to system administration.Guest: Cory O'Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder of Massdriver and Co-Founder of OpenTofuCory has been a software architect and engineer for 20 years, leading up to the founding of MassDriver. He's also a husband and the father of two kids.Cory O'Daniel, XCory O'Daniel, MediumMassdriver, websiteMassdriver, GitHubMassdriver, YoutubeOpen TofuLinks to interesting things from this episode:"Gitopscracy" video

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• Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower - Are CI/CD and GitOps Just Making Things Harder?

  What if your production environment had a live, trustworthy blueprint you could zoom in and out of on demand?Kelsey Hightower guest-hosts a candid conversation with Cory about why CI/CD pipelines and GitOps often break down for cloud infrastructure. They explore a simpler operational model: treat infrastructure as data, lean on clear checkpoints instead of rigid “golden paths,” and make production legible for both developers and ops.You’ll learn:Where CI/CD adds friction for infra and what to do insteadWhy GitOps works for apps but hits limits for databases, networks, and multi-region realitiesHow “living diagrams” help new teammates understand prod on day onePractical guardrails that evolve with your org without locking teams inWays to reduce drift, surprise cloud costs, and Day Two chaosA mindset shift: databases for ops data, not shell-script archaeologyWalk away with concrete patterns to make production understandable, auditable, and easier to change—without more YAML or bigger pipelines.Guest Host: Kelsey HightowerKelsey has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Prior to his retirement, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. He is a strong open source advocate with a focus on building great software as well as great communities around them. He is also an accomplished author and keynote speaker with a knack for demystifying complex topics, doing live demos and enabling others to succeed. When he is not writing code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming to system administration.Guest: Cory O'Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder of Massdriver and Co-Founder of OpenTofuCory has been a software architect and engineer for 20 years, leading up to the founding of MassDriver. He's also a husband and the father of two kids.Cory O'Daniel, XCory O'Daniel, MediumMassdriver, websiteMassdriver, GitHubMassdriver, YoutubeOpen TofuLinks to interesting things from this episode:SigNoz“The $6,459 Terraform Lesson: Why Infrastructure Lifecycle Monitoring Matters” by Liz Fong-Jones "Gitopscracy" video

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• Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower — Why IaC Alone Isn’t Enough

  Ever wonder why strong Terraform modules still lead to long review queues and fragile pipelines? From hand-built scripts and early data center migrations to cloud sprawl and Kubernetes, configuration management has changed a lot - but the core struggle remains: too many decisions, not enough guardrails. Guest host Kelsey Hightower sits down with Cory O’Daniel to unpack where Infrastructure as Code succeeds and where teams get stuck.What you’ll learn:How to avoid “choice overload” in cloud configs by moving decisions upstreamPractical ways to pair IaC with UX, policies, and SLAs to reduce toilWhen click-ops is a symptom, not the problem - and how to replace it safelyPatterns for scaling platform practices beyond a handful of expertsA simple mental model for mapping workflows across serverless, containers, and VMsGuest Host: Kelsey HightowerKelsey has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Prior to his retirement, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. He is a strong open source advocate with a focus on building great software as well as great communities around them. He is also an accomplished author and keynote speaker with a knack for demystifying complex topics, doing live demos and enabling others to succeed. When he is not writing code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming to system administration.Guest: Cory O'Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder of Massdriver and Co-Founder of OpenTofuCory has been a software architect and engineer for 20 years, leading up to the founding of MassDriver. He's also a husband and the father of two kids.Cory O'Daniel, XCory O'Daniel, MediumMassdriver, websiteMassdriver, GitHubMassdriver, YoutubeOpen TofuLinks to interesting things from this episode:"The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win" by Gene Kim"15 Years of Duct Tape - Why IaC Adoption Stalled at 30"

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• How to Ship Faster with Feature Flags: Insights from Unleash

  Still freezing code before Black Friday and hoping nothing breaks? Feature flags can help you ship smaller, safer changes continuously—without the “big bang” risk or painful rollbacks.Cory O’Daniel talks with Unleash VP of Marketing Michael Ferranti about how modern teams use flags as a core delivery primitive alongside CI/CD and trunk-based development. They dig into kill switches for instant mitigation, progressive rollouts tied to real metrics, and why homegrown “if-statement” systems turn into hidden platforms you didn’t mean to build. They also cover the rising volume of AI‑assisted code and how flags provide the control layer to move faster while protecting reliability.What you’ll learn:How feature flags reduce risk for high-stakes periods like Black Friday by avoiding code freezesWhen to replace staging queues with progressive delivery and experiment-driven rolloutsPractical uses: kill switches, trunk-based development, targeting, and cleanup strategies to manage flag debtBuild vs. buy: why DIY flag systems become costly and how Unleash’s open source and on-prem options fit regulated or air‑gapped needsUsing business, engineering, and customer signals to automate safe ramp-ups and ramp-backsWhy AI increases code throughput, how it affects reliability, and how flags create the safety rails for agentic workflowsGuest: Michael Ferranti, VP of Marketing at UnleashMichael Ferranti has held leadership roles at Teleport, Portworx, ClusterHQ, and Rackspace Technology, with a focus on go-to-market strategy in open-source and enterprise software. At Teleport he focused on shifting from legacy security models to developer-first, identity-driven access. At Portworx, he was building new GTM strategies for Kubernetes-native storage when everyone was still figuring out containers, and he helped scale the company from under $500K in revenue to a $370M acquisition by Pure Storage. His work has centered on supporting engineering leaders in delivering features, scaling infrastructure, and improving security without adding unnecessary blockers. Michael has spoken at industry events like KubeCon and theCUBE, sharing insights on platform org design, category creation, and growing open-source adoption. Unleash, websiteUnleash, GitHubUnleash, LinkedInUnleash, XUnleash, SlackUnleash, YouTubeUnleashCon 2025Links to interesting things from this episode:ReactBitbucketLaunchDarklyServiceNow

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• GraphQL, MCP, and the Future of APIs with Apollo CEO Matt DeBergalis

  **UPDATE** - Apollo GraphQL has kindly offered us a few free passes to join them at the GraphQL Summit in San Francisco, October 6-8, 2025. If you are interested in going, the code is: PodcastSummit25What if your API layer could help you ship faster today and make tomorrow’s AI workflows safer and easier to build?Apollo CEO Matt DeBergalis explains how GraphQL became a practical standard for unifying messy backends, why declarative schemas and strong types are the “bedrock” for agentic systems, and where MCP fits when you want agents to call business data safely. You’ll hear real examples of speeding up frontends, tightening observability, and running focused personalization without “fat” APIs.What you’ll learn: A plain-language model for GraphQL and why it decouples frontend needs from backend servicesHow typing, schema docs, and field-level telemetry reduce risk and enable LLM-driven toolingPractical ways to expose queries as MCP tools and start with internal “agentic DevOps”Tactics for experiments and personalization that stay fast and measurable at scaleWhy an end-to-end approach (client and server) matters for reliability and speedGuest: Matt DeBergalis, CEO and Co-Founder of Apollo GraphQLMatt DeBergalis is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Apollo GraphQL, focused on bringing the popular GraphQL technology to the enterprise. He previously served as Apollo's CTO, leading product and engineering. Matt's longtime focus has been in open source and platforms: he co-founded Meteor.js, which grew to become one of the most popular open-source projects in the world for developing full-stack web apps with JavaScript, as well as ActBlue, the American political fundraising platform that revolutionized grassroots political giving. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. In his spare time, Matt enjoys taking to the air and flying his 1966 Beechcraft Baron.Apollo GraphQL, websiteApollo GraphQL, GitHubApollo GraphQL, LinkedInApollo GraphQL, XApollo GraphQL, YouTubeLinks to interesting things from this episode:Free Software FoundationCursorMotley Fool podcastGraphQL Summit

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