Why One of Kubernetes' Creators Moved From Google To Microsoft

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: One of the three Google employees who created Kubernetes — the open source container-orchestration platform now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation — was software engineer Brendan Burns. But in 2016 Burns became an engineer at Microsoft (where since March he's been a corporate vice president at Microsoft).

This week in a new podcast interview [video here], Burns explained why he went from Google to Microsoft, which was "all-in on cloud":

Obviously growing up in Seattle, Microsoft is sort of like the home-town team — so that was a big plus also. And it's been great to be able to come in and really help them figure out — I think one of the really amazing things about being there is it's a company in transition. Certainly four years ago when I joined, it's a company in transition. And getting a chance to help continue that transition, and help continue and shift its focus from closed-source and Windows to a really renewed focus on open source and Linux and cloud native application development — that ability to influence and help shape direction has been really awesome also.

But it was more than just their commitment to the cloud...

"There's just such a great developer history there, of developer tooling and developer productivity. Just such a focus on empowering people to build stuff. That's really compelling to me too, because I think one of the things we really haven't done a good job of in Kubernetes is make it easier to build these programs. Right? We do a lot to make it easier to operate the stuff, but it's still really hard to build these systems, and Kubernetes isn't helping you at all. So I'm really excited and interested and thinking a lot about how can we make it easier for developers to build systems. And I think the DNA and history and experience of Microsoft to build things, the hugely successful platform that is Windows, means there's just a great — a really strong amount of DNA about what it takes to build a platform that doesn't just succeed for elite devs but can really succeed for people all the way from no-code solutions all the way through to advance systems solutions. And so that opportunity is really exciting.

wild ass guess

[paiute]

It was money, wasn't it? He'll post a long heartfelt statement about corporate commitment and shit. It's the money.

Re:

[garyisabusyguy]

yep came here to post this also

Re:

[JaredOfEuropa]

Well... money, or more autonomy. Either way, good for him. But yes, please spare us the "explanation".

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Actually he has a fiendish desire to resurrect Microsoft Bob.

Re:

[quonset]

Actually he has a fiendish desire to resurrect Microsoft Bob.

Isn't that what Windows 10 is turning into? "Helpful assistance" which gets in the way of productivity?

Re:wild ass guess

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's a novel concept for you bottom rung peasants, but for those of us who have actually done something with our lives, there reaches a point where more money is a much lower incentive to change jobs than actually doing something interesting.

You couldn't pay me enough anymore to sit bored shitless building CRUD applications. No salary would ever get me back to that because it's simply soul destroyingly boring.

When I change jobs now the top two metrics are 1) work/life balance - if I can't work from home at least 2 days a week and get 30 days leave I have zero interest - there's no point earning more if you don't have time to use it, and 2) whether the work is interesting - I'm past being bored shitless day in day out, no salary is worth losing your soul to.

Re:

[S_Stout]

Sure, if he was working with some small non-profit trying to better the world then I'd buy that, but he moved to Microsoft and kept climbing the ladder. It was money and prestige in this case, like it usually is.

Re: wild ass guess

[KramberryKoncerto]

It's not black and white, maybe Microsoft just represents a better balance between money and freedom.

That said I'd be willing to write uninteresting CRUD stuff for a few million a year.

Re:

[rtb61]

For normies this is totally true for psychopathic absolutely not, more money and power is all they see, feeding and insatiable ego. Which is why so many corporations are run by psychopaths, plotting and scheming, back stabbing, taking credit for other people's work and brown nosing like the second home is in the bosses colon.

The is a chance he just realised Google had become more evil than M$ so took the money and promotion. The cloud is a evil as fuck, it allows corporations to control the lives of all cit

Re:

[war4peace]

The giveaway is the usage of the word "excited". It translated to "I'm so full of shit I can barely move".
I fucking hate that word in corporatespeak.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, but I don't think it was the only reason.

Google is a mess today.

It's a berserk social justice experiment that's gone hideously wrong and they have no idea how to fix it.

All the white guys who made Google (the magicians behind search and ads) have left or are leaving - and Google has no idea what to do.

Microsoft isn't that much better... but if you're going to watch these companies burn, you may as well do it from a more comfortable position.

Re:

[animanoir]

it's about power.

Re:

[BouffeMoiLaChatte]

It's obvious that either him or M$ are money focused . M$ is doing opensource & containers because not doing it will leave them out of the cloud "business" .

executive summary, unfiltered

[93 Escort Wagon]

Q: "Why did I move from Google to Microsoft?"
A: Money.

"We" vs "They"

[gavron]

When a new hire speaks of the new company as "they" and the old company as "we" they are not "all in."

I have only one opinion about Microsoft's Linux endeavors.* Perhaps "they" will prove me wrong. I hope so.

E
* embrace, extend, extinguish

Here's the difference between Microsoft and Google

[destinyland]

At Google Burns worked in the "public cloud" section of Google, which he says in the interview even then had heavily recruited "from both Amazon and Microsoft. So it was sort of an amalgamation of all these cultures [thenewstack.io]."

And that same podcaster also did another interview with the other two co-creators of Kubernete, with Joe Beda and Craig McLuckie [listennotes.com], where at one point Beda says corporate culture is really just a caricature of the character flaws of the founders. (And then he says "I don't want to name names..." -- though he left Google in 2016.) He even goes on to say "The lieutenants tend to exaggerate and out-founder the founder in terms of these character flaws" -- and then provides this example...

Google's passive-aggressive, right? And if you looked at the way that Larry and Sergey dealt with folks around them -- you'd be in a meeting, and if they got bored they'd start throwing bits of paper at each other and sort of ignore you and hope you'd go away. And so that type of thing permeated the culture.

Funny thing is

[melted]

Funny thing is, as well, nobody knew who Brendan Burns was while he was at Google. I know because I worked there at the time. And nobody knew he was "founder of Kubernetes" either. I thought those graybeards from the Borg team were "founders of Kubernetes", myself, and I'm actually pretty sure they were.

Good for you

[OneHundredAndTen]

Just don't gripe when MS stabs you in the back - that's what they invariably end up doing.

Giggles

[Billly Gates]

And goes back to managing his BSD jails. .... without systemD getting in the way either

For the money?

[labradore]

How about because, Fuck Google?

The understatement of the decade

[kriston]

but it's still really hard to build these systems, and Kubernetes isn't helping you at all.

That's the understatement of the new decade.