Ardan Labs Podcast

Anna-Katharina Wickert is currently pursuing her PhD in computer science with a focus on security and organizer for the Golang User meetup in Frankfurt, Germany. From programming at the age of 13 to deciding to pursue a PhD, she provides valuable insight into her journey through years of education.    00:00 Introduction 04:53 First Memory Using a Computer 09:53 Interests and College Decisions 25:0...

Episode Description: Brian Terry is a senior solutions architect on the ISV Integrations team at AWS (formerly with the Cloud Formation team). We hear about his unique journey from being a star athlete, to racing motorcycles, and eventually completing 2 master’s degrees and landing his dream job.    Connect with Brian: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ineedhelpbrian LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/...

Sonja Price is a career strategist, salary advisor, leadership coach, and the founder of Dynamo Careers. We learn all about Sonja’s journey from being employee #2 at a startup in the early 2000’s to finding her passion for helping others to advance their career. You’ll hear tips on negotiating, how to ask for a raise, and how to get to where you want to go in your career. Connect with Sonja: Linke...

Ron Minnich is the President of the Plan 9 Foundation and a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google. Ron has been on the forefront of many technologies, starting his journey with computers as a kid in the 1960’s. We hear stories of building relay computers, cluster infrastructure research, supercomputing, LinuxBIOS (coreboot), Plan 9, & his present day work at Google.  Connect with Ron: Email...

Florent Biville maintains the official Go driver at graph database company, neo4j. We talk about the challenges and benefits of constantly learning new languages, interviewing at large companies, consulting life, and the importance of building trust through consistency. Connect with Florent: Twitter: https://twitter.com/fbiville Website: https://florent.biville.net GitHub: https://github.com/fbivi...

Steve Wade is a founding engineer at KSOC Labs, a cloud-native SaaS platform built to remediate Kubernetes security risks in real time. We talk about the struggles around playing professional soccer, the importance of saying yes to opportunities, finding fulfillment in your career, and LOTS of Kubernetes chat. Connect with Steve: Twitter: https://twitter.com/swade1987 Website: https://www.stevenwa...

Daniel Whitenack is a co-host of the Practical AI podcast and a data scientist with SIL International. In one of our more technical episodes, we hear about Daniel’s journey from computational physics in college to using artificial intelligence for language processing. Tune in for a conversation on ethical AI, endangered languages, real-time translation, and more! Connect with Daniel: Twitter: http...

Adelina Simion is a technology evangelist at Form3 and teaches courses on Go with LinkedIn Learning. We learn about Adelina’s passion for learning new things and now sharing that knowledge with others. Tune in to learn how someone becomes a LinkedIn Learning instructor, tips on interviewing, thoughts on changing jobs to add skills, and more. Connect with Adelina: Twitter: https://twitter.com/class...

Ian Lewis is a developer advocate at Google Cloud. In this podcast episode, Ian shares some of his insights on how to be a productive engineer when the codebase is in another language, how to build a successful conference, navigating the job market, containers, security and more.  Connect with Ian: Twitter: https://twitter.com/IanMLewis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmlewis/ Website: htt...

Mark Thompson is a senior developer relations engineer at Google. Mark has a passion for teaching and sharing knowledge with younger engineers. We hear about his experience growing up in Chicago, overcoming adversity & peer pressure, navigating the job market, interviewing at Google, and much more! Connect with Mark: Twitter: https://twitter.com/marktechson Website: https://marktechson.com Ema...

Ken Wimberly is the founder of the Legacy of Love app, a parent-to-child journaling app designed to capture the moments that matter. Ken speaks about the challenges of building and growing an app as a non-technical founder, his entrepreneurial endeavors as the owner of a pizza place, in commercial real estate, and opening a chain of laundromats. Connect with Ken: Email: ken@legacyoflove.app Facebo...

Cathleen Turner is a senior software engineer at Perch and founder of Czero Grocery & CZero Foods (formerly listful.ai). We hear about how she first was introduced to programming through her studies of environmental science & oceanography. After realizing environmental consulting was not for her, Cathleen dove in head first to programming. We talk about coding bootcamps, working with start...

Ville Aikas is the founder of the supply chain security startup, Chainguard. We learn about foreign exchange student programs, early internet operating systems, working at Google, and working on projects like Kubernetes / Knative.    Connect with Ville: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AikasVille LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villeaikas/ Email: vaikas@chainguard.dev Chainguard: https://chaingu...

Joonas Bergius is currently a co-founder at Statype and an early employee of Digital Ocean. We talk about the experience of attending multiple schools in different countries, military service, technology consulting, containers, Kubernetes, and advice for technical entrepreneurs.  Connect with Joonas: Twitter: https://twitter.com/joonas GitHub: https://github.com/joonas Mentioned in today’s episode...

Ishuah Kariuki is a software engineer at Microsoft. We talk about what it was like growing up in Kenya, the struggle of learning about computers with limited access to them, changing jobs as a means for career advancement, and more. Connect with Ishuah: Website: https://ishuah.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/ishuah_ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishuah/ Mentioned in today’s episode: Micro...

Tim Boring is a senior software engineer at Voltus and author of the book “Build an Orchestrator in Go.” Tim’s story shows us that many programming careers are far from linear. We learn about his struggles with Fortran in college, getting a masters in literature, a career pivot to programming, working at Google, and how things came full circle with his new book on orchestration in Go. Manning is o...

Blain Smith is a senior software engineer at Subspace. From a young age, Blain knew he wanted to pursue a career in tech. We hear about his tough decision to leave university, working for Harvard, using Go for IoT wearables, entrepreneurship, and much more. Connect with Blain: Twitter: https://twitter.com/blainsmith LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blainsmith/ Website: https://blainsmith.com...

Melissa Trebell is a full stack engineer for Punchcard Systems (Previously at TrustBix).  Although she had an affinity for computers in high school, Melissa wasn’t sure if this was something she wanted to pursue in university. By a stroke of luck, she was introduced to a woman that worked for HP and encouraged her to get into the field. We learn about Melissa’s journey from C++ to Go, the agrifood...

Ehioje Henry Erabor is a senior software engineer at BFREE. Growing up in Nigeria in the 1990’s, programming was not common in schools. Henry recalls a memory of his class being brought to the computer lab but they were instructed NOT to touch, only look. From that moment he wanted to know how these "TV’s with keyboards" operated. We learn about the school system in Nigeria, programming...

Jeff Levin is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and the former director of the Alaska Developer’s Alliance. Growing up in Alaska, Jeff was constantly drawn to computers. Going so far as to memorize the DOS commands to boot windows by the age of 4. We learn about life in Alaska, his unique high school experience, finding dev work from remote areas, and how the Alaska Developers Alliance is buildin...

Alex Ellis is the Founder of OpenFaaS, an open-source project focused on making it simple to deploy serverless functions with containers. Alex tells stories of breaking the family computer with Linux, hacking his school and the challenges he faced as a teenage programmer. We learn all about what led him to create OpenFaaS and the barriers you encounter when trying to grow an open-source project. C...

Martin Gallagher is a specialist Go recruiter, matching developers with interesting companies across Europe. Many people out there may have a negative impression of recruiters, but every so-often you find one like Martin. Someone who genuinely cares about you, your family, and your livelihood. We hear about Martin’s experience growing up in Northern Ireland during social unrest, moving to the big...

Matt Holt is the creator of popular open source projects like Caddy Web Server, CertMagic, PapaParse, & others. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to maintain open source projects full-time, Matt is the man to speak with. We learn how he came up with the idea for Caddy, how it works, and the pro’s and con’s of building a sustainable an open source project. Want to show your support...

Kelsey Hightower is a Principal Engineer at Google Cloud, open-source advocate, and one of our favorite speakers in tech. We hear about his early experiences with computers, thoughts on CS degree vs self-taught, running a tech support business, managing comedians, open-source, and his journey through tech. Regardless of where you are in your career, Kelsey drops knowledge on how to get yourself to...

Mark Bates is the co-founder at Gopher Guides, papercall.io, and gobuffalo.io. Many of us know Mark for his programming expertise but much of this episode is focused around his passion for music. Music has always been an integral part of his life and even was a catalyst for his journey into programming. Tune in for advice on following your passions, stories of early internet, and the value of shar...