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From McDonald's to Google

603 points by kelseyhightower 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
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ryanja24 6y ago
Put this one at the top and keep it there!
HUSSTECH 6y ago
Was about to suggest adding Kelsey Hightower to the title, as he's someone in the community many may already know of...then I look at the username! :D Always enjoy his videos whenever I come across them, even if I'm not working on anything remotely related to the content. Waiting for whatever random tech surprise he throws in sometimes.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Posting a puff piece about yourself on a tech news site feels... something though.
  - glitchcrab 6y ago
    I got a bit fed up with the amount of 'I love Kelsey' tweets he shared today too. Felt a bit much.
    - pen2l 6y ago
      I'm very glad he's getting the attention and hope he keeps getting it. He's an inspiring fellow, and I'm happy that he will be the one who will inspire some folks out there to enter tech.
      - glitchcrab 6y ago
        Oh I'm not arguing that he's had an outsized impact on a lot of people, it just felt like he was clapping himself on the back for the entire day.
        sinsterizme 6y ago
        Humans are weird. We like seeing people succeed against hardship and enjoy reading success stories. But the enjoyment of their success can’t be to excess, otherwise people will see them as unscrupulous or arrogant. Not a slight against you or OP just interesting that we have our own individual thresholds of what kind of self congratulating is acceptable until it turns sour
    - kelseyhightower 6y ago
      Many of those Tweets reminded me how much I've grown as a person. Those Tweets reminded me that I made the right choice treating everyone with respect and in some cases helped them in their own careers. It was my way of saying thank you and hoping those stories would inspire others and bring a little joy to their day.
      - osipov 6y ago
        You resemble superheroes on the "The Boys".
  - ponker 6y ago
    Almost everyone you see who has a personal brand that is popular on the conference circuit is willing and able to do this kind of self promotion. It’s not for me, but I don’t see it as objectionable because I see it as part and parcel of the role, and I think the role is a valuable one that should continue to exist. Technologies benefit from having some well known and well liked “names” behind them, and it gives them the confidence to try something new instead of the old thing which moves the industry forward.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Perhaps, but I suppose I'd personally nudge a friend to post it for me? Maybe humility isn't valued much in the Valley, but coming from elsewhere it feels off.
      - ponker 6y ago
        Personally I find the idea of asking a friend to post a self-promotional link without disclosing the affiliation, because I'm too "humble" to post it... quite the opposite of humble.
      - kelseyhightower 6y ago
        This is a side of me I would like more people to see. The whole person. So I submitted the article. I grew up in the South and don't live in the Valley. It required a bit of humility to even share this side of me, it's very personal, and in someways, not very flattering, but I wish I knew that successful people also come from very average backgrounds.
        osipov 6y ago
        It is so woke of you to bring your whole self to the industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg
        magicalist 6y ago
        I'm going to flag this as lazy flamebait, but I hope you think hard about why you felt compelled to post this in this comment thread and then not do so in the future.
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    Oh come on, he's just proud. It's a nice emotion!
- monksy 6y ago
  Probably an imitator or clone. (:laughing:)
  - kelseyhightower 6y ago
    It's me, Kelsey Hightower.
    - data_ders 6y ago
      exactly what a clone would say!
      - monksy 6y ago
        My thoughts exactly.
    - monksy 6y ago
      Hi Kelsey! I love your origin story. You've come a long way. Do you mind if I introduce you to a friend of mine? He's not publicly famous but he hustles pretty hard and he's a great friend... I think you two would get along really well. (I'll get in contact with you on twitter)
      - kelseyhightower 6y ago
        Make it happen.
        monksy 6y ago
        Apparently you've already had coffee with Mark T. Small world innit?
    - moondev 6y ago
      Your Udacity course https://youtu.be/zZ2NgJ2-A4c https://youtu.be/zZ2NgJ2-A4c was my first taste of k8s and really got me excited about it. I eventually decided to focus and specialize around it and couldn't be happier. Thank you!
49yearsold 6y ago
Awesome!
bradlys 6y ago
There seems to be a rather large 10 year gap in this story that kinda glosses over the part where you went from installing internet to being a software engineer. It makes it sound like you just magically became a software engineer while road tripping around the country managing a friend's comedy tour. I mean, it goes from managing that tour to suddenly: > Meanwhile, Hightower was starting to get noticed in the Atlanta open-source community thanks to a series of talks at Python meetups when he caught the attention of James It's a bit much of a gap - as that seems to be around 2013 and you seem to have still been installing internet in 2003. I get there was a time of being an IT consultant, and then a store opening with a few people you hired. But - where's the software engineering happening that lead to giving talks and what not?
- kelseyhightower 6y ago
  Maybe I can help fill the gaps. I ran my own computer store with a small IT consultancy attached to it for a few years. Then I chose to pivot and get a "real job". Things change once you're married with a child on the way. Like many, I started out doing 3 months to perm contract jobs. The first contract was a Linux system administrator at Google in Atlanta automating the huge fleet of servers there. I learned enough shell scripting to be dangerous, but it was mostly racking and stacking servers, and provisioning top of rack switches -- hello minicom. 3 months later I was working in tech support, for more money, at a company called Vocalocity, who was early in the VoIP game. That's where I learned how to PXE boot and flash Cisco IP phones to work with our custom Asterisk based backends. I was there almost a year and then it was time to move on. This would continue every three months or so. I held jobs at places like Cox Communications working in the NOC during the night shift so I could be home with my daughter. Three to six months later I quit. I know what you're thinking, this guy jumped around a lot. I had to, money was tight, and it was the fastest way to get a raise, and it also accelerated my learning. Coming from being your own boss it's really hard to get excited about an entry level job and look forward to working your way up the corporate ladder. My skills really leveled up when I landed a full time job at Peer 1 Web Hosting, where I started in Tech Support working tickets and taking calls helping people with Linux servers, Plesk, and MySQL. It's true, it's always a DNS problem. Peer 1 is where I really learned how to write code, it started with bash, and eventually Python. I automated the SSL certificate provisioning system, and wrote some scripts that allowed me to close tickets faster than anyone else. About 6 months later I was promoted to the engineering team and worked on our automated provisioning system for Server Beach, acquired from Rackspace, which was the part of Peer 1 that hosted YouTube before YouTube was bought by Google. Server Beach ran those "Latency Kills" ads to help sale dedicated gaming servers. That provisioning system was responsible for allowing people to order a server back in the early 2000s from a web form and have it provisioned in less than an hour. We PXE booted servers, configured RAID controllers, and bootstrapped the OS, including Windows, and handed back an IP address and login creds to the larger system. I was there for over a year before landing a job that would double my salary around 2008, 2009. I joined the company mentioned in the article, TSYS, where I brought in a lot of automation, thanks Puppet, and learned enough Java to earn the respect of the broader organization and really help transform the place. I was a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) from my days at Peer 1 and I leveraged that set of skills to package all the production applications into fat RPMs (Java, JBoss, and all the war files required to make it work) in the same way we use containers today. I also revamped the CI/CD system leveraging Bamboo with tight Jira integration. I also helped the company move on from CVS to SVN. Don't ask. We had automated deployments and tight integration with our apps over the course of the 3 years I was leading the team. We automated everything from Oracle running on AIX, to provisioning SSH keys and access to production servers based on Jira tickets and Puppet. On the software development side I learned enough COBOL to port some of our mainframe jobs to Python. I wrote packed-decimal libraries and EBCDIC encoders so we could use Python going forward to process batch jobs. A big deal in the payments industry. During my time at TSYS I really got exposed to open source and made some major contributions to Puppet and Cobbler -- I added a feature to Cobbler that enabled us to configure servers while leveraging Cobbler metadata and tools like Puppet. I also started contributing to distutils and pip back in the day. I did some of the work that made pip and virtulenv play nice together. I also started public speaking at local meetup, PyATL, in Atlanta, and found my voice in the Python community. It's my PuppetConf 2012 talk that landed me a job at Puppet Labs, the rest is history.
ebenezerisaac 6y ago
re-upped
x87678r 6y ago
I follow him on twitter, that guy is always so positive its great. Even when I'm drowning in YAML he stops me from giving up! :)
mraza007 6y ago
Definitely a motivating and inspirational story
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Thanks for posting that. I'm impressed by the lack of an Ivy-League sheepskin. My own education is basically self-taught. It served me well (I'm smarter than the average bear), but boy, oh boy, have I looked up a lot of noses. It's given me a fairly irreverent attitude that does not always win me friends. It has also given me a drive to help out others that have challenges breaking through obstinance and prejudice (see "not winning friends," above).
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I'm lucky enough to go to a decent university, but having looked up a few noses I find it each one makes me want to work harder. I've met people who I honestly believe have been born well (expensive schools etc.) to not have any zest for learning
wrnu 6y ago
Super dope!
jquery 6y ago
Nice to see another former fast-food worker working in tech. There’s dozens of us! Dozens! My first job was at Wendy’s earning minimum wage, and during my tech career I’ve helped take 3 tech companies through IPO, with all 3 tickers still ticking away on the NYSE. I like Kelsey’s spirit of “hustle” and pursuing what he’s passionate about. Totally agree. Find what connects with you; don’t simply try to fill other people’s shoes! I now work outside of tech entirely, because life is is full of endlessly fascinating things to pursue, and unfortunately life is far too short to try them all.
linguae 6y ago
This is a fascinating and inspiring story! I'm also an African-American in tech working in Silicon Valley. I have a strong interest in systems, and I had the pleasure of interning for Google's cloud division twice: once to work on the Google Cloud SQL team, and another time to work on the Spanner team. It's great to hear of other African-Americans in Silicon Valley.
- tanotcare 6y ago
  You should definitely encourage them to apply to FANGs and not be intimidated by the interview process. There is a big push and accompanying quota to get more black/latin/native american people into tech companies at all levels. While I don't agree with this quota system for the inherent racism/unfairness and second order effects[0], possible beneficiaries should take notice and act on it and be a role model. [0] resentment & hmm, is this person here on merit or on quota?
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Would the problem with that side effect lay on the shoulders of the person making the assumption that it's not possible for there to be multiple candidates of roughly equal merit (at which point a quota would then be applied) ? Seems like it comes more from people making that assumption than the quota system itself, assuming that everyone's held to the same standard of competence (which I would imagine is the case for FAANG companies).
    - tanotcare 6y ago
      I would describe it as more of a chilling effect on voting "not inclined" or raising concerns on performance. In my experience, 1) being not inclined on such a hire leads to more scrutiny 2) managing performance is prone to more scrutiny So: while the standard is expected, it's enforced to a lesser degree in practice. Which means a few bad apples abusing this unfortunately make everyone else (in the group who meet/beat the standard) look bad.
      - 6y ago
longtom 6y ago
US blacks have one standard deviation lower IQ than US whites and IQ correlates with skin color. This means blacks are expected to be very rare among leading engineers which are typically selected for very high IQ. There are rare outliers though and it would be a shame if they couldn't contribute their brain power. People with lower IQ can still contribute to society, just not at the forefront of engineering.
ensiferum 6y ago
Wasn't there however exactly a google controversy where an engineer was claiming that people who represent some minority groups get accepted easier and have a lower bar of entry because of diversity recruitment requirement?
- alexilliamson 6y ago
  What is the relevance here?
  - ensiferum 6y ago
    The article claims that for reasons that should be "clear" (assuming they mean him being black) he has had to go through much tougher route.
    - alexilliamson 6y ago
      Well I think that whatever advantage Google supposedly gave him was probably offset by spending the rest of his life as a black man. For example, just 10 minutes ago there was a comment (quickly flagged and removed, thankfully) in this very thread talking about black people having lower IQs.
      - Arnavion 6y ago
        ("Flagged" does not mean "removed", FYI. People like me with showdead enabled can still see it.)
- WWLink 6y ago
  Emphasizing diversity in your hiring doesn't necessarily mean lowering the bar. It may mean trying harder to find candidates. Of all the companies out there, Google can afford to be that picky. More importantly, they can look into why some people aren't choosing to study CS or apply to google, and adjust things to get a more diverse group of CS grads or fresh applicants. Adjusting things so that CS is a more attractive career field, that would be great for everyone!
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
My job at 16 was also McDonald’s. I loved it. The floor managers would make sure we all got free food basically any time at our store, so I could go with my friends and we’d all get dinner. Nobody took it too seriously and most people tried but we definitely worked hard. It was fun. I don't think it really should mean one thing or another for one's professional destiny. I definitely don't miss smelling like hamburgers!
- khazhoux 6y ago
  > I definitely don't miss smelling like hamburgers! People who never flipped burgers don't know what it's like to have to basically peel off your candlewaxed shirt and trousers when you get home, and that grease smell embedded deep in your nasal cavity. My parents still remind me how terrible I smelled!
daniellarusso 6y ago
Kelsey, How do you feel your early experiences at McDonald’s, in terms of operations, influenced your decision-making or thought processes as part of devops strategies or perspective? Thanks!
- kelseyhightower 6y ago
  McDonald's helped me establish a work ethic and learn what it means to be a professional and earn a paycheck. I was a shift manager in the 11th grade so I had to learn how to manage people and make sure the numbers added up at the end of the night, while doing homework in the back office, with one eye on the drive through times. Running a shift at McDonald's required some leadership, you have to be able to work the drive through and clean the bathrooms when the time came. You have to be able to handle any tasks in a fast paced environment. I learned how to be a team player and keep the customers happy. Kinda of the same things I'm doing now.
  - markkennedy 6y ago
    Too few people recognize how many valuable skills a job like this can teach you, and it feels like too few people I meet professionally have these entry level jobs anymore. I always feel like the interns or new hires that I see that have never had a hard, exhausting non-office environment job are just missing a pretty fundamental experience. Whether it's fast food, waiting tables, washing dishes or other manual labor, it can be formative and instill a great work ethic.
AcerbicZero 6y ago
Thats cool, but I've never heard of him and this story is a bit "predictable"? Maybe uninteresting, but with less negative connotations? I'm not sure what word would work best. It sounds like he got to where he was the same way most of us probably got to where we are....by working at it and getting better over time. A good public speaker with a passable technical background being successful at a job where they need to speak publicly about technical topics just isn't very surprising to me - regardless of skin tone.
deleted 6y ago
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R0b0t1 6y ago
Not meaning to attack your comment, but want to point out that race quota systems are racist per a supreme court ruling. That's why colleges use a point system (which is still arguably racist by basically being the same thing, but a different topic).
- tanotcare 6y ago
  Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Regardless, IMO points or quotas or "target": same difference :) Someone call the justice department. Update: Interesting that this is getting downvotes. I must have a blindspot. Would be great if you could provide context with the downvote. Thanks!
- throwaway007071 6y ago
  I work at a FANG company and I can guarantee you that there are quotas and no one is willing to speak out about it. I was literally CC'ed on an email that said "[...] I want to remind everyone that the hiring season for 2021 is not complete and we are still missing our target for diversity [...]. For those who already reached their headcount for 2021 there will always be more budget for a candidate that brings more diversity to our workplace". So forget it, it's just a new name for discrimination.
  - tanotcare 6y ago
    The rhymes with a few emails I've received. maybe we work for the same fang.
  - tylersmith 6y ago
    Not get into the politics, but this seems like an interesting potential incentive misalignment where a team is incentivized to fill up their budget with non-diverse employees so they can try to hire even more (diverse) help with "overflow" budget.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    First time I heard about "minority quotas" I just didn't believe it. But then YouTube got sued for doing exactly that [0] Do quotas actually help minorities? To me it sends the signal that everyone from a top N school at my FAANG who is a white or asian male is here because he's qualified. The others who knows? Maybe the recruiter was so close to hitting his incentive that he lowered the bar. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positions-excluded-white-and-asian-males-lawsuit-says-1519948013 https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positio...
mxyzplk 6y ago
Kelsey's a great part of the DevOps community - always helping and promoting others and their work in addition to leveling up his own game. I've benefited from every interaction with him for sure, at conferences and stuff - he's super knowledgeable and tireless about spreading knowledge and raising others up. A class act through and through, and I was excited to see the article.
fspear 6y ago
I wonder if they made him grind leetcode whiteboarding at google.
osipov 6y ago
So how does it feel to realize that the article and all the fawning responses are due to your race and not your accomplishments?
- dang 6y ago
  We've banned this account.
renewiltord 6y ago
This guy is one of the most charismatic dudes I have ever met. I remember also being struck by the fact that he is very intelligent.
llsf 6y ago
Met Mr Hightower for the first time, at a CoreOS meetup, and it was memorable. I wish I was this cool and good at presentations and demos :) It has been awesome to see over the years, the deserved recognition, and reaching more people !
khazhoux 6y ago
He seems like an awesome guy. Well-deserved success! I do wonder whether the title of the article accidentally (and ironically) reveals a subtle racial bias. McDonald's is a typical shorthand for a lowly job, staffed by the nation's underclass. But tons of successful people in tech flipped burgers in high school (I did!) and it's never worth highlighting in press articles. Their public story usually starts at college or their first job or their first big break. But this article specifically highlights a traditionally menial position as his starting point. Unconscious bias?
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  It's more clickbaity for sure.
- kelseyhightower 6y ago
  I could not fit the entire title "From McDonald's to Google: How Kelsey Hightower became one of the most respected people in cloud computing" when submitting the post.
  - khazhoux 6y ago
    Hi Kelsey! I hope my comment didn't offend or in any way take away from this excellent exposure.
    - kelseyhightower 6y ago
      Not at all! I read it as an honest question so I answered it.
- socratees 6y ago
  Well-deserved success, and very inspirational!
- nemo44x 6y ago
  And there’s no shame in “flipping burgers” to be sure. Anyone who takes the personal responsibility to earn a living has earned respect.
smartbit 6y ago
Always wondered were Kelsey got his comedian skills. Now I understand it was working with his buddy Ronnie Jordan, driving him around, coaching him, learning with & from Jordan. Reminds me of the Beatles and their time in Hamburg were they got their Performance skills. Even in his extensive answer her in HN describing his IT career made me laugh a couple of times. Thank you Kelsey, keep up the good work.
- kelseyhightower 6y ago
  Ronnie taught me that making people smile should be part of the job. We both learned that you really need to understand the world around you if you want get people to laugh at it.
kyawzazaw 6y ago
Applied to a G DevRel internship getting inspired by this
hnuser123456 6y ago
Good story. I'd be happy to work for you anyday. I wouldn't be too quick to judge the guy who asked for directions, unless he didn't believe you could be an attendee or speaker. I'd never heard of you before, and I'm not afraid to ask random possibly-prestigious people for directions at conferences. I occasionally attend NANOGs, hosted by Edward McNair.
RickJWagner 6y ago
Kelsey Hightower is unstoppable. It's the combination of humor, self-deprecation, knowledge and unflagging optimism. He's this generation's Martin Fowler or Uncle Bob.
- koluna 6y ago
  Yes! It’s about time we replace Uncle Bob and his whiny antics with someone more worthy of the spotlight and our attention. Kelsey gets my vote here.
  - RickJWagner 6y ago
    Easy there. Bob is one of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.
    - koluna 6y ago
      I am totally OK with not giving attention and a place in history to “giants” who consider basic human decency a stretch for their imagination.
demeyer1 6y ago
I've had the opportunity to know Kelsey for a number of years, and we've worked together closely on occasion. He is the genuinely good human the article portrays him as, and unlike some who evangelize - Kelsey understands his technical area (k8s) deeply and is on the CLI daily. Top notch human, and I thought I'd add a POV from a regular HN reader.
spicyramen 6y ago
Awesome article, I still remember Kelsey talks about CoreOS it was amazing, that got me introduced to containers and I have the privilege to be his colleague now. Overall great story except the title and the race thing, I find it irrelevant, he is just an awesome human being.
bsharitt 6y ago
It may be a minor quibble, but but the irrelevant "From McDonald's" is pretty tiring clickbait. Many of us that now work in the tech industry, whether black, white, etc, have worked these shitty food service and retail jobs, but unless you worked your way up through McD's tech statk from the grill, it just doesn't matter. Of course Mr. Hightower here is just reusing the title of the article, so this isn't a slight against him, but journalist should try harder, even in this clickbait world we live in. I'd hate to think my time working at Hardee's, McDonald's and Walmart has any bearing on my current career.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Also, he had the job when you’re supposed to have a McDonalds job (before or around college). Not taking away anything from him, just saying, there is a world of difference between being in your late 20s or 30s, at a dead end fast food joint and clawing your way up to Google vs once upon of time working part time in high school at typical blue collar job. Not quite the underdog story I was looking for. Nice try at an origin story though.
gregrata 6y ago
Great over all story. Not sure what the McDonalds part has to do with it - a huge number of kids start there. I did - and in the next 40 years I've been Chief Architect of a startup, found my own startup (with a install base over 12 million), and am currently a Principal Architect at Microsoft (and was a lead in Microsoft Research a few years ago) All good - and I look back at my McDonald days (somewhat) fondly, and it was good experience at doing fairly unpleasant work - but my nights hack and phone freaking and coding had 100x more to do with my success then that first job :)
deleted 6y ago
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eddstar05 6y ago
Kelsey! Missed you at CoreOS by a few months. Your shadow loomed large over us. Would’ve loved to have seen you stay and seen what we could’ve done as a team. CoreOS was the big fish that got away from us all. Either way as a brown person in tech I admire you greatly. Keep rocking.
asim 6y ago
I'm very glad the story started with Peter Idah and it's nice to see someone like Kelsey get this recognition for his hard work. The industry (and the world at large) is skewed in ways we can't really understand without being in other people's shoes and this is a small glimpse into that reality. You should be rewarded for the merits of your work and instead we're marginalised by the colour of our skin. I've never experienced what Kelsey has, or maybe I'm just ignorant to the signs, but it's important that more people like Kelsey come to be in positions of "power" and become role models for those who need to see someone like them can make it to where he has.
known 6y ago
Hope Kelsey will replace Pichai one day;
hubbabubbarex 6y ago
Both masonic and satanistic agenda. Simply as that. Now, can I get some shadowbann also? HN loves it.
shawnk 6y ago
Sorry but “Seen in his natural habitat” like this is animal planet or something!! DROPS MIC
arendtio 6y ago
> know that Geordi La Forge was the only Black member of the crew of the Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," What about Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and Worf (Michael Dorn)?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ryanja24 6y ago

Put this one at the top and keep it there!

HUSSTECH 6y ago

Was about to suggest adding Kelsey Hightower to the title, as he's someone in the community many may already know of...then I look at the username! :D Always enjoy his videos whenever I come across them, even if I'm not working on anything remotely related to the content. Waiting for whatever random tech surprise he throws in sometimes.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Posting a puff piece about yourself on a tech news site feels... something though.
- glitchcrab 6y ago
  I got a bit fed up with the amount of 'I love Kelsey' tweets he shared today too. Felt a bit much.
  - pen2l 6y ago
    I'm very glad he's getting the attention and hope he keeps getting it. He's an inspiring fellow, and I'm happy that he will be the one who will inspire some folks out there to enter tech.
    - glitchcrab 6y ago
      Oh I'm not arguing that he's had an outsized impact on a lot of people, it just felt like he was clapping himself on the back for the entire day.
      - sinsterizme 6y ago
        Humans are weird. We like seeing people succeed against hardship and enjoy reading success stories. But the enjoyment of their success can’t be to excess, otherwise people will see them as unscrupulous or arrogant. Not a slight against you or OP just interesting that we have our own individual thresholds of what kind of self congratulating is acceptable until it turns sour
  - kelseyhightower 6y ago
    Many of those Tweets reminded me how much I've grown as a person. Those Tweets reminded me that I made the right choice treating everyone with respect and in some cases helped them in their own careers. It was my way of saying thank you and hoping those stories would inspire others and bring a little joy to their day.
    - osipov 6y ago
      You resemble superheroes on the "The Boys".
- ponker 6y ago
  Almost everyone you see who has a personal brand that is popular on the conference circuit is willing and able to do this kind of self promotion. It’s not for me, but I don’t see it as objectionable because I see it as part and parcel of the role, and I think the role is a valuable one that should continue to exist. Technologies benefit from having some well known and well liked “names” behind them, and it gives them the confidence to try something new instead of the old thing which moves the industry forward.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Perhaps, but I suppose I'd personally nudge a friend to post it for me? Maybe humility isn't valued much in the Valley, but coming from elsewhere it feels off.
    - ponker 6y ago
      Personally I find the idea of asking a friend to post a self-promotional link without disclosing the affiliation, because I'm too "humble" to post it... quite the opposite of humble.
    - kelseyhightower 6y ago
      This is a side of me I would like more people to see. The whole person. So I submitted the article. I grew up in the South and don't live in the Valley. It required a bit of humility to even share this side of me, it's very personal, and in someways, not very flattering, but I wish I knew that successful people also come from very average backgrounds.
      - osipov 6y ago
        It is so woke of you to bring your whole self to the industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg
        magicalist 6y ago
        I'm going to flag this as lazy flamebait, but I hope you think hard about why you felt compelled to post this in this comment thread and then not do so in the future.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  Oh come on, he's just proud. It's a nice emotion!
monksy 6y ago
Probably an imitator or clone. (:laughing:)
- kelseyhightower 6y ago
  It's me, Kelsey Hightower.
  - data_ders 6y ago
    exactly what a clone would say!
    - monksy 6y ago
      My thoughts exactly.
  - monksy 6y ago
    Hi Kelsey! I love your origin story. You've come a long way. Do you mind if I introduce you to a friend of mine? He's not publicly famous but he hustles pretty hard and he's a great friend... I think you two would get along really well. (I'll get in contact with you on twitter)
    - kelseyhightower 6y ago
      Make it happen.
      - monksy 6y ago
        Apparently you've already had coffee with Mark T. Small world innit?
  - moondev 6y ago
    Your Udacity course https://youtu.be/zZ2NgJ2-A4c https://youtu.be/zZ2NgJ2-A4c was my first taste of k8s and really got me excited about it. I eventually decided to focus and specialize around it and couldn't be happier. Thank you!

49yearsold 6y ago

Awesome!

bradlys 6y ago

There seems to be a rather large 10 year gap in this story that kinda glosses over the part where you went from installing internet to being a software engineer. It makes it sound like you just magically became a software engineer while road tripping around the country managing a friend's comedy tour. I mean, it goes from managing that tour to suddenly: > Meanwhile, Hightower was starting to get noticed in the Atlanta open-source community thanks to a series of talks at Python meetups when he caught the attention of James It's a bit much of a gap - as that seems to be around 2013 and you seem to have still been installing internet in 2003. I get there was a time of being an IT consultant, and then a store opening with a few people you hired. But - where's the software engineering happening that lead to giving talks and what not?

kelseyhightower 6y ago
Maybe I can help fill the gaps. I ran my own computer store with a small IT consultancy attached to it for a few years. Then I chose to pivot and get a "real job". Things change once you're married with a child on the way. Like many, I started out doing 3 months to perm contract jobs. The first contract was a Linux system administrator at Google in Atlanta automating the huge fleet of servers there. I learned enough shell scripting to be dangerous, but it was mostly racking and stacking servers, and provisioning top of rack switches -- hello minicom. 3 months later I was working in tech support, for more money, at a company called Vocalocity, who was early in the VoIP game. That's where I learned how to PXE boot and flash Cisco IP phones to work with our custom Asterisk based backends. I was there almost a year and then it was time to move on. This would continue every three months or so. I held jobs at places like Cox Communications working in the NOC during the night shift so I could be home with my daughter. Three to six months later I quit. I know what you're thinking, this guy jumped around a lot. I had to, money was tight, and it was the fastest way to get a raise, and it also accelerated my learning. Coming from being your own boss it's really hard to get excited about an entry level job and look forward to working your way up the corporate ladder. My skills really leveled up when I landed a full time job at Peer 1 Web Hosting, where I started in Tech Support working tickets and taking calls helping people with Linux servers, Plesk, and MySQL. It's true, it's always a DNS problem. Peer 1 is where I really learned how to write code, it started with bash, and eventually Python. I automated the SSL certificate provisioning system, and wrote some scripts that allowed me to close tickets faster than anyone else. About 6 months later I was promoted to the engineering team and worked on our automated provisioning system for Server Beach, acquired from Rackspace, which was the part of Peer 1 that hosted YouTube before YouTube was bought by Google. Server Beach ran those "Latency Kills" ads to help sale dedicated gaming servers. That provisioning system was responsible for allowing people to order a server back in the early 2000s from a web form and have it provisioned in less than an hour. We PXE booted servers, configured RAID controllers, and bootstrapped the OS, including Windows, and handed back an IP address and login creds to the larger system. I was there for over a year before landing a job that would double my salary around 2008, 2009. I joined the company mentioned in the article, TSYS, where I brought in a lot of automation, thanks Puppet, and learned enough Java to earn the respect of the broader organization and really help transform the place. I was a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) from my days at Peer 1 and I leveraged that set of skills to package all the production applications into fat RPMs (Java, JBoss, and all the war files required to make it work) in the same way we use containers today. I also revamped the CI/CD system leveraging Bamboo with tight Jira integration. I also helped the company move on from CVS to SVN. Don't ask. We had automated deployments and tight integration with our apps over the course of the 3 years I was leading the team. We automated everything from Oracle running on AIX, to provisioning SSH keys and access to production servers based on Jira tickets and Puppet. On the software development side I learned enough COBOL to port some of our mainframe jobs to Python. I wrote packed-decimal libraries and EBCDIC encoders so we could use Python going forward to process batch jobs. A big deal in the payments industry. During my time at TSYS I really got exposed to open source and made some major contributions to Puppet and Cobbler -- I added a feature to Cobbler that enabled us to configure servers while leveraging Cobbler metadata and tools like Puppet. I also started contributing to distutils and pip back in the day. I did some of the work that made pip and virtulenv play nice together. I also started public speaking at local meetup, PyATL, in Atlanta, and found my voice in the Python community. It's my PuppetConf 2012 talk that landed me a job at Puppet Labs, the rest is history.

ebenezerisaac 6y ago

re-upped

x87678r 6y ago

I follow him on twitter, that guy is always so positive its great. Even when I'm drowning in YAML he stops me from giving up! :)

mraza007 6y ago

Definitely a motivating and inspirational story

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Thanks for posting that. I'm impressed by the lack of an Ivy-League sheepskin. My own education is basically self-taught. It served me well (I'm smarter than the average bear), but boy, oh boy, have I looked up a lot of noses. It's given me a fairly irreverent attitude that does not always win me friends. It has also given me a drive to help out others that have challenges breaking through obstinance and prejudice (see "not winning friends," above).

mhh__ 6y ago
I'm lucky enough to go to a decent university, but having looked up a few noses I find it each one makes me want to work harder. I've met people who I honestly believe have been born well (expensive schools etc.) to not have any zest for learning

wrnu 6y ago

Super dope!

jquery 6y ago

Nice to see another former fast-food worker working in tech. There’s dozens of us! Dozens! My first job was at Wendy’s earning minimum wage, and during my tech career I’ve helped take 3 tech companies through IPO, with all 3 tickers still ticking away on the NYSE. I like Kelsey’s spirit of “hustle” and pursuing what he’s passionate about. Totally agree. Find what connects with you; don’t simply try to fill other people’s shoes! I now work outside of tech entirely, because life is is full of endlessly fascinating things to pursue, and unfortunately life is far too short to try them all.

linguae 6y ago

This is a fascinating and inspiring story! I'm also an African-American in tech working in Silicon Valley. I have a strong interest in systems, and I had the pleasure of interning for Google's cloud division twice: once to work on the Google Cloud SQL team, and another time to work on the Spanner team. It's great to hear of other African-Americans in Silicon Valley.

tanotcare 6y ago
You should definitely encourage them to apply to FANGs and not be intimidated by the interview process. There is a big push and accompanying quota to get more black/latin/native american people into tech companies at all levels. While I don't agree with this quota system for the inherent racism/unfairness and second order effects[0], possible beneficiaries should take notice and act on it and be a role model. [0] resentment & hmm, is this person here on merit or on quota?
- adamsea 6y ago
  Would the problem with that side effect lay on the shoulders of the person making the assumption that it's not possible for there to be multiple candidates of roughly equal merit (at which point a quota would then be applied) ? Seems like it comes more from people making that assumption than the quota system itself, assuming that everyone's held to the same standard of competence (which I would imagine is the case for FAANG companies).
  - tanotcare 6y ago
    I would describe it as more of a chilling effect on voting "not inclined" or raising concerns on performance. In my experience, 1) being not inclined on such a hire leads to more scrutiny 2) managing performance is prone to more scrutiny So: while the standard is expected, it's enforced to a lesser degree in practice. Which means a few bad apples abusing this unfortunately make everyone else (in the group who meet/beat the standard) look bad.
    - 6y ago

longtom 6y ago

US blacks have one standard deviation lower IQ than US whites and IQ correlates with skin color. This means blacks are expected to be very rare among leading engineers which are typically selected for very high IQ. There are rare outliers though and it would be a shame if they couldn't contribute their brain power. People with lower IQ can still contribute to society, just not at the forefront of engineering.

ensiferum 6y ago

Wasn't there however exactly a google controversy where an engineer was claiming that people who represent some minority groups get accepted easier and have a lower bar of entry because of diversity recruitment requirement?

alexilliamson 6y ago
What is the relevance here?
- ensiferum 6y ago
  The article claims that for reasons that should be "clear" (assuming they mean him being black) he has had to go through much tougher route.
  - alexilliamson 6y ago
    Well I think that whatever advantage Google supposedly gave him was probably offset by spending the rest of his life as a black man. For example, just 10 minutes ago there was a comment (quickly flagged and removed, thankfully) in this very thread talking about black people having lower IQs.
    - Arnavion 6y ago
      ("Flagged" does not mean "removed", FYI. People like me with showdead enabled can still see it.)
WWLink 6y ago
Emphasizing diversity in your hiring doesn't necessarily mean lowering the bar. It may mean trying harder to find candidates. Of all the companies out there, Google can afford to be that picky. More importantly, they can look into why some people aren't choosing to study CS or apply to google, and adjust things to get a more diverse group of CS grads or fresh applicants. Adjusting things so that CS is a more attractive career field, that would be great for everyone!

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

My job at 16 was also McDonald’s. I loved it. The floor managers would make sure we all got free food basically any time at our store, so I could go with my friends and we’d all get dinner. Nobody took it too seriously and most people tried but we definitely worked hard. It was fun. I don't think it really should mean one thing or another for one's professional destiny. I definitely don't miss smelling like hamburgers!

khazhoux 6y ago
> I definitely don't miss smelling like hamburgers! People who never flipped burgers don't know what it's like to have to basically peel off your candlewaxed shirt and trousers when you get home, and that grease smell embedded deep in your nasal cavity. My parents still remind me how terrible I smelled!

daniellarusso 6y ago

Kelsey, How do you feel your early experiences at McDonald’s, in terms of operations, influenced your decision-making or thought processes as part of devops strategies or perspective? Thanks!

kelseyhightower 6y ago
McDonald's helped me establish a work ethic and learn what it means to be a professional and earn a paycheck. I was a shift manager in the 11th grade so I had to learn how to manage people and make sure the numbers added up at the end of the night, while doing homework in the back office, with one eye on the drive through times. Running a shift at McDonald's required some leadership, you have to be able to work the drive through and clean the bathrooms when the time came. You have to be able to handle any tasks in a fast paced environment. I learned how to be a team player and keep the customers happy. Kinda of the same things I'm doing now.
- markkennedy 6y ago
  Too few people recognize how many valuable skills a job like this can teach you, and it feels like too few people I meet professionally have these entry level jobs anymore. I always feel like the interns or new hires that I see that have never had a hard, exhausting non-office environment job are just missing a pretty fundamental experience. Whether it's fast food, waiting tables, washing dishes or other manual labor, it can be formative and instill a great work ethic.

AcerbicZero 6y ago

Thats cool, but I've never heard of him and this story is a bit "predictable"? Maybe uninteresting, but with less negative connotations? I'm not sure what word would work best. It sounds like he got to where he was the same way most of us probably got to where we are....by working at it and getting better over time. A good public speaker with a passable technical background being successful at a job where they need to speak publicly about technical topics just isn't very surprising to me - regardless of skin tone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

R0b0t1 6y ago

Not meaning to attack your comment, but want to point out that race quota systems are racist per a supreme court ruling. That's why colleges use a point system (which is still arguably racist by basically being the same thing, but a different topic).

tanotcare 6y ago
Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Regardless, IMO points or quotas or "target": same difference :) Someone call the justice department. Update: Interesting that this is getting downvotes. I must have a blindspot. Would be great if you could provide context with the downvote. Thanks!
throwaway007071 6y ago
I work at a FANG company and I can guarantee you that there are quotas and no one is willing to speak out about it. I was literally CC'ed on an email that said "[...] I want to remind everyone that the hiring season for 2021 is not complete and we are still missing our target for diversity [...]. For those who already reached their headcount for 2021 there will always be more budget for a candidate that brings more diversity to our workplace". So forget it, it's just a new name for discrimination.
- tanotcare 6y ago
  The rhymes with a few emails I've received. maybe we work for the same fang.
- tylersmith 6y ago
  Not get into the politics, but this seems like an interesting potential incentive misalignment where a team is incentivized to fill up their budget with non-diverse employees so they can try to hire even more (diverse) help with "overflow" budget.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  First time I heard about "minority quotas" I just didn't believe it. But then YouTube got sued for doing exactly that [0] Do quotas actually help minorities? To me it sends the signal that everyone from a top N school at my FAANG who is a white or asian male is here because he's qualified. The others who knows? Maybe the recruiter was so close to hitting his incentive that he lowered the bar. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positions-excluded-white-and-asian-males-lawsuit-says-1519948013 https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positio...

mxyzplk 6y ago

Kelsey's a great part of the DevOps community - always helping and promoting others and their work in addition to leveling up his own game. I've benefited from every interaction with him for sure, at conferences and stuff - he's super knowledgeable and tireless about spreading knowledge and raising others up. A class act through and through, and I was excited to see the article.

fspear 6y ago

I wonder if they made him grind leetcode whiteboarding at google.

osipov 6y ago

So how does it feel to realize that the article and all the fawning responses are due to your race and not your accomplishments?

dang 6y ago
We've banned this account.

renewiltord 6y ago

This guy is one of the most charismatic dudes I have ever met. I remember also being struck by the fact that he is very intelligent.

llsf 6y ago

Met Mr Hightower for the first time, at a CoreOS meetup, and it was memorable. I wish I was this cool and good at presentations and demos :) It has been awesome to see over the years, the deserved recognition, and reaching more people !

khazhoux 6y ago

He seems like an awesome guy. Well-deserved success! I do wonder whether the title of the article accidentally (and ironically) reveals a subtle racial bias. McDonald's is a typical shorthand for a lowly job, staffed by the nation's underclass. But tons of successful people in tech flipped burgers in high school (I did!) and it's never worth highlighting in press articles. Their public story usually starts at college or their first job or their first big break. But this article specifically highlights a traditionally menial position as his starting point. Unconscious bias?

908B64B197 6y ago
It's more clickbaity for sure.
kelseyhightower 6y ago
I could not fit the entire title "From McDonald's to Google: How Kelsey Hightower became one of the most respected people in cloud computing" when submitting the post.
- khazhoux 6y ago
  Hi Kelsey! I hope my comment didn't offend or in any way take away from this excellent exposure.
  - kelseyhightower 6y ago
    Not at all! I read it as an honest question so I answered it.
socratees 6y ago
Well-deserved success, and very inspirational!
nemo44x 6y ago
And there’s no shame in “flipping burgers” to be sure. Anyone who takes the personal responsibility to earn a living has earned respect.

smartbit 6y ago

Always wondered were Kelsey got his comedian skills. Now I understand it was working with his buddy Ronnie Jordan, driving him around, coaching him, learning with & from Jordan. Reminds me of the Beatles and their time in Hamburg were they got their Performance skills. Even in his extensive answer her in HN describing his IT career made me laugh a couple of times. Thank you Kelsey, keep up the good work.

kelseyhightower 6y ago
Ronnie taught me that making people smile should be part of the job. We both learned that you really need to understand the world around you if you want get people to laugh at it.

kyawzazaw 6y ago

Applied to a G DevRel internship getting inspired by this

hnuser123456 6y ago

Good story. I'd be happy to work for you anyday. I wouldn't be too quick to judge the guy who asked for directions, unless he didn't believe you could be an attendee or speaker. I'd never heard of you before, and I'm not afraid to ask random possibly-prestigious people for directions at conferences. I occasionally attend NANOGs, hosted by Edward McNair.

RickJWagner 6y ago

Kelsey Hightower is unstoppable. It's the combination of humor, self-deprecation, knowledge and unflagging optimism. He's this generation's Martin Fowler or Uncle Bob.

koluna 6y ago
Yes! It’s about time we replace Uncle Bob and his whiny antics with someone more worthy of the spotlight and our attention. Kelsey gets my vote here.
- RickJWagner 6y ago
  Easy there. Bob is one of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.
  - koluna 6y ago
    I am totally OK with not giving attention and a place in history to “giants” who consider basic human decency a stretch for their imagination.

demeyer1 6y ago

I've had the opportunity to know Kelsey for a number of years, and we've worked together closely on occasion. He is the genuinely good human the article portrays him as, and unlike some who evangelize - Kelsey understands his technical area (k8s) deeply and is on the CLI daily. Top notch human, and I thought I'd add a POV from a regular HN reader.

spicyramen 6y ago

Awesome article, I still remember Kelsey talks about CoreOS it was amazing, that got me introduced to containers and I have the privilege to be his colleague now. Overall great story except the title and the race thing, I find it irrelevant, he is just an awesome human being.

bsharitt 6y ago

It may be a minor quibble, but but the irrelevant "From McDonald's" is pretty tiring clickbait. Many of us that now work in the tech industry, whether black, white, etc, have worked these shitty food service and retail jobs, but unless you worked your way up through McD's tech statk from the grill, it just doesn't matter. Of course Mr. Hightower here is just reusing the title of the article, so this isn't a slight against him, but journalist should try harder, even in this clickbait world we live in. I'd hate to think my time working at Hardee's, McDonald's and Walmart has any bearing on my current career.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Also, he had the job when you’re supposed to have a McDonalds job (before or around college). Not taking away anything from him, just saying, there is a world of difference between being in your late 20s or 30s, at a dead end fast food joint and clawing your way up to Google vs once upon of time working part time in high school at typical blue collar job. Not quite the underdog story I was looking for. Nice try at an origin story though.

gregrata 6y ago

Great over all story. Not sure what the McDonalds part has to do with it - a huge number of kids start there. I did - and in the next 40 years I've been Chief Architect of a startup, found my own startup (with a install base over 12 million), and am currently a Principal Architect at Microsoft (and was a lead in Microsoft Research a few years ago) All good - and I look back at my McDonald days (somewhat) fondly, and it was good experience at doing fairly unpleasant work - but my nights hack and phone freaking and coding had 100x more to do with my success then that first job :)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eddstar05 6y ago

Kelsey! Missed you at CoreOS by a few months. Your shadow loomed large over us. Would’ve loved to have seen you stay and seen what we could’ve done as a team. CoreOS was the big fish that got away from us all. Either way as a brown person in tech I admire you greatly. Keep rocking.

asim 6y ago

I'm very glad the story started with Peter Idah and it's nice to see someone like Kelsey get this recognition for his hard work. The industry (and the world at large) is skewed in ways we can't really understand without being in other people's shoes and this is a small glimpse into that reality. You should be rewarded for the merits of your work and instead we're marginalised by the colour of our skin. I've never experienced what Kelsey has, or maybe I'm just ignorant to the signs, but it's important that more people like Kelsey come to be in positions of "power" and become role models for those who need to see someone like them can make it to where he has.

known 6y ago

Hope Kelsey will replace Pichai one day;

hubbabubbarex 6y ago

Both masonic and satanistic agenda. Simply as that. Now, can I get some shadowbann also? HN loves it.

shawnk 6y ago

Sorry but “Seen in his natural habitat” like this is animal planet or something!! DROPS MIC

arendtio 6y ago

> know that Geordi La Forge was the only Black member of the crew of the Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," What about Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and Worf (Michael Dorn)?