The Co-Creator of Kubernetes: Engineering-Led Direction and Convincing Management | Brendan Burns

This is a conversation with Brendan Burns, co-creator of Kubernetes and current technical fellow / CVP at Microsoft working on Azure. We discussed what it was like building it at Google, how he got buy-in, and what he learned along the way. 🔸 My keyboard project: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboa... 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1uf1... • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... • Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/the-crea... 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:43 - How he convinced Google leaders 00:09:26 - Building the MVP 00:11:43 - How he made time for Kubernetes 00:25:28 - Technical details on building Kubernetes 00:38:46 - Rallying the open source community 00:50:01 - Scaling Kubernetes up for AI training workloads 00:55:31 - Reflections on getting a PhD 01:00:31 - The inevitable trajectory of software is death 01:04:19 - Top book recommendations 01:05:22 - Advice for his younger self 01:06:21 - Outro 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗻: • LinkedIn:   / brendan-burns-487aa590   • Twitter/X: https://x.com/brendandburns • Github: https://github.com/brendandburns 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻: • Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ • X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn:   / ryanlpeterman   • Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram:   / ryanlpeterman   • TikTok:   / ryanlpeterman  

Retired Amazon VP: How Corporate Politics Work And How To Win | Ethan Evans
▶︎

Retired Amazon VP: How Corporate Politics Work And How To Win | Ethan Evans

Creator of C++: Bell Labs, Negative Overhead Abstraction, Mistakes | Bjarne Stroustrup
▶︎

Creator of C++: Bell Labs, Negative Overhead Abstraction, Mistakes | Bjarne Stroustrup

Retired Netflix Eng Director: Leetcode, Regrets, Hiring Stories
▶︎

Retired Netflix Eng Director: Leetcode, Regrets, Hiring Stories

Google & AWS Veteran: What Top Tier Software Architects Do Differently
▶︎

Google & AWS Veteran: What Top Tier Software Architects Do Differently

NeXT Computer: The Billion-Dollar Mistake That Wasn't
▶︎

NeXT Computer: The Billion-Dollar Mistake That Wasn't

From Swift to Mojo and high-performance AI Engineering with Chris Lattner
▶︎

From Swift to Mojo and high-performance AI Engineering with Chris Lattner

Turing Award Winner: Disagreeing with Google, Postgres, Future Problems | Mike Stonebraker
▶︎

Turing Award Winner: Disagreeing with Google, Postgres, Future Problems | Mike Stonebraker

Dropbox’s Former Most Senior Eng: Building Great Systems and Advice for the AI Era | James Cowling
▶︎

Dropbox’s Former Most Senior Eng: Building Great Systems and Advice for the AI Era | James Cowling

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)
▶︎

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)

Distinguished Eng: Stack Ranking, Competing with Bezos, Regrets | Bryan Cantrill
▶︎

Distinguished Eng: Stack Ranking, Competing with Bezos, Regrets | Bryan Cantrill

Meta Hiring Lead: Avoid Downleveling, Liars, Passing OpenAI And Anthropic Interviews
▶︎

Meta Hiring Lead: Avoid Downleveling, Liars, Passing OpenAI And Anthropic Interviews

The Java Story  |  The Official Documentary
▶︎

The Java Story | The Official Documentary

AWS Distinguished Eng: Learning From 3000 Incidents And How Engineering Is Changing | Marc Brooker
▶︎

AWS Distinguished Eng: Learning From 3000 Incidents And How Engineering Is Changing | Marc Brooker

Creator of Spring: No desire to write Java | Talking Kotlin #138
▶︎

Creator of Spring: No desire to write Java | Talking Kotlin #138

Co-Creator of Haskell: Functional Programming, Thinking in Types, Useless Languages | Simon Jones
▶︎

Co-Creator of Haskell: Functional Programming, Thinking in Types, Useless Languages | Simon Jones

Turing Award Winner: TPU vs GPU vs CPU, Computer Architecture, RISC vs CISC | David Patterson
▶︎

Turing Award Winner: TPU vs GPU vs CPU, Computer Architecture, RISC vs CISC | David Patterson

Above the Cloud: Building Data Centers in Space - Richard Campbell - NDC Copenhagen 2026
▶︎

Above the Cloud: Building Data Centers in Space - Richard Campbell - NDC Copenhagen 2026

Zig 2026: No-AI Policy, $670K Foundation, Left GitHub & Why Zig Isn’t 1.0 - Andrew Kelley Explains
▶︎

Zig 2026: No-AI Policy, $670K Foundation, Left GitHub & Why Zig Isn’t 1.0 - Andrew Kelley Explains

Keynote: After the AI Hype – What’s Real, and What’s Next - Richard Campbell - 2026
▶︎

Keynote: After the AI Hype – What’s Real, and What’s Next - Richard Campbell - 2026

Andrej Karpathy: From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering w/ Stephanie Zhan
▶︎

Andrej Karpathy: From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering w/ Stephanie Zhan