Our interview for this week is up, it’s with Josh Berkus:
Whitney and Coté discuss with Josh Berkus (Red Hat, Kubernetes contributor) how liberal and fine arts degrees (philosophy, photography, sculpture, pottery) apply to tech careers. Berkus details how early hardware experience influenced his database performance work, noting hardware’s renewed relevance with AI and multi-arch computing. The conversation covers Sun Microsystems’ 1990s internet role, internal politics, and its MySQL/Postgres strategy. They examine open source’s shift from end-user to vendor-driven models, foundations' roles, and contributor incentives. Berkus describes Kubernetes release processes, contributor-experience programs, and its resilience to low-quality AI contributions.
Listen to the traditional podcast format, or watch the video if you prefer.