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Even my local grocer's website somehow needs Kubernetes skills all of a sudden, not kidding at all. Maybe I’m hurting myself, maybe I’m helping, who knows, but

by dvtrn 6y ago

Even my local grocer's website somehow needs Kubernetes skills all of a sudden, not kidding at all. Maybe I’m hurting myself, maybe I’m helping, who knows, but it’s become a recent tactic of mine in job interviews when a company demands Kubernetes skills (which isn’t to say I don’t have them, I’m just not as effective as I’d like to be...YET) to look dead in the camera and ask: “How many nodes are in your production cluster right now, how many are control plane nodes and when was the last time two of them failed?” Just to see if they’re putting in Kubernetes because they actually need it, or if they’re just faffing about with new tools because new tools and are struggling to even keep the lights on for their 3 microservices. If there’s a better question to reveal this, I’ve got an open mind about deploying it to production.

tpxl 6y ago
> “How many nodes are in your production cluster right now, how many are control plane nodes and when was the last time two of them failed?” What is a good answer and a bad answer for this, and why do two control plane nodes have to fail?
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I don't know if the number needs to necessarily be two, my intention is to fish for an answer that isn't so much prescriptive but descriptive of their infrastructure needs and goals. But a good answer would probably involve articulating some kind of genuine need that can't be solved with something else, I'd hope the answer involves some candor that the company looked at their options, vetted out that K8s was what they needed, why K8s is going to/has already solve(d) them over something (anything) else (nomad, or others but not necessarily limited to nomad), and if the interviewer is so inclined, disclosures of what they've learned trying to bring k8s into the house. This last bit may be a follow up question from me "what have you learned so far implementing k8s? What would you have done differently if you knew better at the time?" etc. What I'm looking for is a determination if the team thinks through the problem deliberately or if they're simply throwing their stuff at kubernetes because someone who no longer works at the company sold the leaders on kubernetes and no one asked any questions as the org jumped into those waters. Mind you, this part is important: I am NOT anti-kubernetes, I am anti-foisting-kubernetes-on-platforms-just-because-its-hot-and-exciting. If a team wants to R&D it somewhere, prove out it's merit, create an MVP internally and can show the effort is worth undertaking to redeploy services on k8s, awesome. My lived experience has been more teams than not are doing it because a thought leader somewhere wanted to pad their resumes, and then left the company, now the rest of Ops is paying down technical debt they never took out loans for.

by dvtrn 6y ago

tpxl 6y ago

> “How many nodes are in your production cluster right now, how many are control plane nodes and when was the last time two of them failed?” What is a good answer and a bad answer for this, and why do two control plane nodes have to fail?

dvtrn 6y ago
I don't know if the number needs to necessarily be two, my intention is to fish for an answer that isn't so much prescriptive but descriptive of their infrastructure needs and goals. But a good answer would probably involve articulating some kind of genuine need that can't be solved with something else, I'd hope the answer involves some candor that the company looked at their options, vetted out that K8s was what they needed, why K8s is going to/has already solve(d) them over something (anything) else (nomad, or others but not necessarily limited to nomad), and if the interviewer is so inclined, disclosures of what they've learned trying to bring k8s into the house. This last bit may be a follow up question from me "what have you learned so far implementing k8s? What would you have done differently if you knew better at the time?" etc. What I'm looking for is a determination if the team thinks through the problem deliberately or if they're simply throwing their stuff at kubernetes because someone who no longer works at the company sold the leaders on kubernetes and no one asked any questions as the org jumped into those waters. Mind you, this part is important: I am NOT anti-kubernetes, I am anti-foisting-kubernetes-on-platforms-just-because-its-hot-and-exciting. If a team wants to R&D it somewhere, prove out it's merit, create an MVP internally and can show the effort is worth undertaking to redeploy services on k8s, awesome. My lived experience has been more teams than not are doing it because a thought leader somewhere wanted to pad their resumes, and then left the company, now the rest of Ops is paying down technical debt they never took out loans for.