Screaming in the Cloud
Screaming in the Cloud with Corey Quinn features conversations with domain experts in the world of Cloud Computing. Topics discussed include AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud, and the "why" behind how businesses are coming to think about the Cloud.
The Invisible Network Powering AWS with Matt Rehder
AWS VP of Global Networking Matt Rehder joins Corey Quinn to pull back the curtain on the massive network infrastructure behind AWS. They explore resiliency at scale, AWS’s move toward flatter networks, the advantages of building custom hardware, and why AI is making networking exciting again.
Show Highlights:
(01:08) Meet AWS Networking Lead
(02:01) Why AWS Avoids Global Outages
(05:23) RNG Flat Network Explained
(10:08) Overbuild Capacity And Custom Hardware
(17:37) VPC Virtual Network Origins
(19:50) Why TCP Still Wins
(20:38) SRD Inside AWS
(21:54) Opt In SRD Tra...
AI Can Do the Work, But Should It? with Adam Larsen
On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn sits down with Adam Larsen, Principal Developer at Aurora Educational Technologies, to explore what technology and AI should actually look like in K-12 education. They discuss using tech to empower teachers rather than replace them, the risks of outsourcing critical thinking to AI, student data privacy, and what happens when schools become dependent on tools that may not be affordable forever. Adam also shares how AWS became his go-to platform for solving complex education data problems, and why sometimes the best technology is simply the one that reliably gets...
When AI Starts Writing the Pull Requests with Madelyn Olson
AI-generated code is no longer just producing low-quality pull requests. According to AWS Principal Engineer and Valkey core maintainer Madelyn Olson, the quality of AI-assisted contributions has improved dramatically in just the last few months.
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn and Madelyn discuss how AI is changing open source development, the growing burden on maintainers, and how projects like Valkey are using AI to find bugs, improve security, and harden production systems. They also explore Valkey's continued growth, the future of software development, and why experience, operational knowledge, and community still matter...
The Appalachian Cloud Trail: Hiking, Cloud Economics, and Finding Perspective
What happens when two cloud economists leave AWS behind and spend six days hiking 60 miles on the Appalachian Trail? Corey Quinn sits down with Caleb Hurd to share stories from the trail, including exploding sleeping pads, heroic shuttle drivers, lost phones, and the unique community that makes long-distance hiking special. Along the way, they draw surprising parallels between backpacking and cloud economics, discussing everything from serverless architecture and cloud cost optimization to the hidden challenges of on-prem infrastructure. It's a conversation about technology, adventure, perspective, and why sometimes the best way to solve complex problems is to step away f...
Coding Agents, Chaos, and the Future of Dev Work with Dexter Horthy
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Dexter Horthy, CEO and Co-founder of Human Layer, to unpack what engineers are getting wrong about AI, especially when it comes to coding agents.
From the obsession with “just throwing more tokens at the problem” to the reality of building scalable AI workflows, Dexter shares hard-earned insights on how to actually push models to their limits. They dive into the evolution of developer workflows, the rise of AI-powered software factories, and why understanding context and verification matters more than raw model power.
If you’re building with AI or...
The Rise of Autonomous Ops: Inside AWS’s DevOps Agent with David Yanacek
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with AWS Senior Principal Engineer David Yanacek to explore the next evolution of DevOps.
After two decades of building systems to reduce operational pain, David shares how AWS’s new DevOps Agent is pushing automation to a whole new level, autonomously diagnosing incidents, suggesting fixes, and proactively improving systems before engineers even log in.
From pager overload to autonomous remediation, this conversation is a glimpse into a world where software isn’t the bottleneck anymore, operations are evolving into something entirely new.
If you care about DevO...
Building the Backbone of AI Agents: Telemetry, Open Source, and the Future of Developer Infrastructure with Brian Douglas
AI agents are moving fast, but the infrastructure behind them is still catching up. In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn sits down with Paper Compute CEO Brian “B Dougie” Douglas to explore building telemetry for AI agents, open-source infrastructure, token economics, and what it takes to create developer tooling in the AI era. From local-first observability to agent runtimes and the future of AI workflows, this conversation dives into what’s next for AI-powered development.
Show highlights:
(00:00) Open Source Trust Signal
(00:16) Show Intro and Sponsor
(01:07) What Paper Co...
The Power of Saying No: Growing by Narrowing Your Focus with Corey Quinn
What happens when you stop trying to serve everyone, and start focusing on the right customers?
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Corey Quinn (yes, really) to talk about specialization, scaling service businesses, and the power of saying no. From growing a digital agency from $20M to $200M to escaping founder-led sales, this conversation dives into practical lessons for founders, marketers, and leaders looking to scale with intention.
Show highlights:
(00:00) Specialization Mindset
(00:21) Show Intro and Sponsor
(01:18) Two Corey Quinns
(02:39) Guest Background and Book
(04:41) S...
Build vs Buy: The Hidden Costs of “Just Building It” with Ahmed Bebars
Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should. In this episode, Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times, joins Corey Quinn to talk about real-world cloud decisions, Kubernetes complexity, and the constant trade-off between building your own solutions and buying existing ones. From home labs to enterprise architecture, they unpack what actually works, and what engineers often get wrong.
Show Highlights:
(00:19) Intro
(01:09) From Imposter Syndrome
(06:34) Honest Community Feedback
(09:29) EKS Versus ECS Debate
(21:32) Home Lab Reality Check
(22:40) Build vs Buy Long Game
(28:04) Focus on Core Bu...
FinOps, AI, and the Cost of Cloud Chaos with J.R. Storment
What happens when cloud economics meets the messy reality of business, AI, and human behavior?
Corey and J.R. Storment unpack why cloud cost management is less about math and more about psychology, the real difference between FinOps for AI vs. AI for FinOps, and why automation still struggles with edge cases (despite all the hype). Along the way, they explore multi-cloud complexity, the rise of consumption-based pricing, and how businesses are navigating massive, unpredictable spend across cloud, SaaS, and AI platforms.
If you’ve ever wondered why your cloud bill feels like chaos, or ho...
Everything Is a Graph (Even Your Dad Jokes) with Roi Lipman
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, host Corey Quinn sits down with Roi Lipman, CTO and co-founder of Falco DB, to unpack the evolving role of graph databases in a world overflowing with data stores. Roi shares his journey from building RedisGraph at Redis to spinning it out into Falco DB, along with his enduring love of the C programming language (dad jokes included). The conversation explores why graph databases remain niche, but powerful, especially for pathfinding problems like supply chains and access management, how vector search became a feature rather than a standalone database, and what...
AI, Authenticity, and the Future of Podcasting with Chris Hill
This week on Screaming in the Cloud, Corey sits down with Chris Hill, CEO of Humble Pod, to talk about the messy, nuanced reality of AI in media. From secretly cloning Corey’s voice for an ad using ElevenLabs (and almost getting away with it) to the growing tension between polished production and authentic content, they unpack what AI can actually do versus what it claims to do.
They explore the shifting economics of podcasting, the rise of video-first formats, Netflix’s entrance into the space, and why “good enough” production often beats expensive studio perfection. It’s a candid...
Coding Agents and the Inevitable AI Bubble with Eric Anderson
Eric Anderson, partner at VC firm Scale, talks about why coding agents changed software forever and why the AI bubble can't be avoided. Eric worked on Spot Instances at AWS and data products at Google before becoming a VC. He explains how companies can still compete against Anthropic and OpenAI by staying laser-focused instead of fighting on every front.
Corey and Eric discuss why AWS didn’t kill all startups even when they launched competing products, why the AI bubble can't be avoided when companies go from $1 billion to $7 billion in revenue in one year, and why th...
Fixing Shadow AI and Surviving re:Invent with Chase Douglas
Chase Douglas, CEO at Archodex, talks about AI security problems and why re:Invent has become a nightmare. Chase helps companies capture every AI interaction so they don't get in trouble with compliance. Corey and Chase discuss Shadow AI, why Corey runs Claude Code in an account called “Superfund,” and how re:Invent put metal spikes on benches so people couldn't sit down. They also talk about why AWS released fewer announcement than before, and why Chase is finally optimistic about AI coding tools after months of frustration.
Show Highlights:
(01:51) What Archodex Does
(07...
Building Software While Keeping Humans in Charge
Alyss Noland, who works on Cloud Dev Ecosystem at Nvidia, is back on the show to talk about building software with AI when you're not a real developer. Alyss runs a program that gives AI startups access to Nvidia GPUs and uses AI tools herself to build production software at Nvidia. Corey and Alyss discuss using AI to help curate newsletters without actually writing them, why humans still need to check everything, and the weird reality of people developing relationships with chatbots.
Show Highlights:
(01:34) What Alyss Does at Nvidia
(05:44) When AI First Wo...
How Homebrew Became Mac's Package Manager with Mike McQuaid
Mike McQuaid, Project Leader of Homebrew, joins Corey Quinn to share how a package manager conceived in a London pub became essential for 10 million Mac users. Homebrew lets you install software with one command instead of downloading files and clicking through installers, maintained by just 30 people who each get $300 a month.
Mike shares the origin story from a drunken conversation about package management, explains how Homebrew Bundle can set up a new Mac with one command, and why Homebrew refuses to package software with fake open source licenses like Terraform's new versions.
Show Highlights:
Is It Broken Everywhere or Just for Me with Omri Sass
When your website stops working at 3 AM, you need to answer one question fast: Is it my code or is a big cloud provider having problems? Omri Sass from Datadog explains updog.ai, a tool that monitors whether major services like AWS, CloudFlare, and others are actually working. Instead of asking people to report problems like Down Detector does, updog uses real data from thousands of computers to detect when services go down. Omri shares why this took 6 years to build, how they process massive amounts of data with machine learning, and why cloud providers have been strangely upset...
Solving the 20-Year S3 File System Problem with Hunter Leath
Hunter Leath, CEO of Archil, spent 8 years building Amazon's EFS file storage system, learning exactly why making cloud storage act like a hard drive always fails. Old programs need hard drives, but cloud storage doesn't work like hard drives—a problem that's existed for 20 years.
Now Hunter's building Archil, which puts super-fast storage between programs and S3 so they can finally work together. Your programs think they're talking to a regular disk while your data lives safely in the cloud.
Hunter explains how they're doing what others couldn't, why it costs less than Amazon's own so...
Building Systems That Work Even When Everything Breaks with Ben Hartshorne
When AWS has a major outage, what actually happens behind the scenes? Ben Hartshorne, a principal engineer at Honeycomb, joins Corey Quinn to discuss a recent AWS outage and how they kept customer data safe even when their systems couldn't fully work. Ben explains why building services that expect things to break is the only way to survive these outages. Ben also shares how Honeycomb used its own tools to cut their AWS Lambda costs in half by tracking five different things in a spreadsheet and making small changes to all of them.
About Ben Hartshorne:
Engineering Around Extreme S3 Scale with R. Tyler Croy
R. Tyler Croy, a principal engineer at Scribd, joins Corey Quinn to explain what happens when simple tasks cost $100,000. Checking if files are damaged? $100K. Using newer S3 tools? Way too expensive. Normal solutions don't work anymore. Tyler shares how with this much data, you can't just throw money at the problem, but rather you have to engineer your way out.
About R. Tyler:
R. Tyler Croy leads infrastructure architecture at Scribd and has been an open source developer for over 14 years. His work spans the FreeBSD, Python, Ruby, Puppet, Jenkins, and Delta Lake communities. U...
Avery Pennarun on Tailscale's Evolution: From Mesh VPN to AI Security Gateway
Corey Quinn sits down with Avery Pennarun, co-founder and CEO of Tailscale, for a deep dive into how the company is reinventing networking for the modern era. From finally making VPNs behave the way they should to tackling AI security with zero-click authentication, Avery shares candid insights on building infrastructure people actually love using, and love talking about.
They get into everything: surviving 100% year-over-year growth, why running on two tailnets at once is pure chaos, and how Tailscale makes “secure by default” feel effortless. Plus, they dig into why FreeBSD firewalls needed some tough love, the uncomfortable trut...
How Grokability Built a Profitable Open Source Business with Jeremy Price
Most open source companies do the same thing. They take investor money, lock their best features behind paywalls, sell the company, and disappoint everyone. Grokability did something different.
Jeremy Price, VP of Technology at Grokability talks with Corey Quinn about how they built a business that makes enough money without chasing endless growth. From why they use simple technology to how they run thousands of separate installations for customers, Jeremy explains what happens when you care more about making a good product than explosive growth.
Show Highlights:
(00:51) Welcoming Jeremy Price from Grokability
<...The AI Productivity Gap with Keith Townsend
Corey Quinn reconnects with Keith Townsend, founder of The CTO Advisor, for a candid conversation about the massive gap between AI hype and enterprise reality. Keith shares why a biopharma company gave Microsoft Copilot a hard no, and why AI has genuinely 10x’d his personal productivity while Fortune 500 companies treat it like radioactive material. From building apps with Cursor to watching enterprises freeze in fear of being the next AI disaster in the news, Keith and Corey dig into why the tools transforming solo founders and small teams are dead on arrival in the enterprise, and what it'll ac...
AI Agents, Enterprise Risk, and the Future of Recovery: Rubrik’s Vision with Dev Rishi
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn sits down with Rubrik’s GM of AI, Dev Rishi, to unpack the real story behind enterprise AI adoption, the rise of agentic systems, and why most organizations are still stuck in read-only mode. Dev breaks down how Rubrik’s Agent Rewind brings safety, observability, and resilience to AI-driven actions, solving the “Oh no, the agent deleted production data” problem before it happens. From deep learning’s evolution to the massive gap between consumer AI enthusiasm and enterprise risk posture, this conversation is a candid, insightful look at the AI future...
From Code to Cash: How André Arko Builds Better Tools and Gets Paid for Open Source
André Arko, CEO of Spinel Cooperative and longtime Bundler maintainer, joins Corey Quinn to introduce RV, a new Ruby tool that installs Ruby in one second instead of 10-40 minutes by using precompiled binaries. Inspired by Python's UV, RV aims to simplify Ruby dependency management without the complexity of older tools like RVM and rbenv. They talk about why Ruby isn't actually dead, Apple's problem with shipping a five-year-old end-of-life Ruby in macOS, and the challenges of writing dependency managers in the language they manage. André also shares how he transitioned from a struggling nonprofit model to a cooperative th...
Cyber Resilience Beyond Prevention with Anneka Gupta
When attackers are smart enough to hit your backups, recovery becomes your best defense. Rubrik’s Chief Product Officer, Anneka Gupta, joins host Corey Quinn to break down what true cyber resilience looks like in today’s multi-cloud world. From AI-driven recovery to surviving ransomware with your data (and reputation) intact, this episode covers what it really takes to bounce back when everything goes sideways.
Show Highlights
(00:00) Introduction to Ransomware and Backups
(00:25) Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud
(00:32) Introducing Rubrik and Annika Gupta
(01:26) What Does Rubrik Do?
(0...
Cloud Repatriation: Because Conspiracy Theories Are Cheaper with Deana Solis
Deana Solis, 2022 FinOps Foundation Evangelist of the Year, joins Corey Quinn to discuss her winding career path from electrical engineering to healthcare IT to FinOps. She shares why certifications are "largely performative," warns that AI can turn your AWS bill into "a telephone number," and explains why NAT Gateway costs hit everyone from hobbyists to enterprises. The episode covers cloud repatriation conspiracy theories, translating between engineering and finance teams, and why good FinOps work is really just getting humans in a room to talk.
Show Highlights:
(02:36) FinOps Foundation
(03:15) FinOps as Marriage Counseling Between En...
Five Slot Machines at Once: Chris Weichel on the Future of Software Development
On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey welcomes back Chris Weichel, CTO of Ona (formerly Gitpod). Chris explains the rebrand and why Ona is building for a future where coding agents, not just humans, write software.
They discuss what changes when agents spin up environments, why multi-agent workflows feel addictive, and how Ona is solving the scaling and safety challenges behind it.
If you’re curious about the next wave of software engineering and how AI will reshape developer tools, this episode is for you.
About Chris: Chris Weichel is the Chief Technology Of...
From Aurora to PlanetScale: Intercom’s Database Evolution with Brian Scanlan
Brian Scanlan, Senior Principal Engineer at Intercom, the company building Fin.ai, joins Corey Quinn on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Intercom’s move from AWS Aurora to PlanetScale’s managed Vitess after years of scaling challenges with their Ruby on Rails monolith. He explains how 13 Aurora clusters created operational pain and why PlanetScale’s white-glove, partnership-driven model won out over Amazon’s building-block approach.
The discussion also covers Intercom’s volunteer-based on-call system, their pivot to AI agents after ChatGPT’s launch, concerns about the shrinking pipeline of systems engineers, and how companies like PlanetScale...
Conversations at the Intersection of AI and Code with Harjot Gill
AI is rewriting the rules of code review and CodeRabbit is leading the charge. In this featured episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Harjot Gill shares with Corey Quinn how his team built the most-installed AI app on GitHub and GitLab, nailed positive unit economics, and turned code review into a powerful guardrail for the AI era.
Show Highlights
(0:00) Entrepreneurial Journey and Code Rabbit's Origin
(3:06) The Broken Nature of Code Reviews
(5:47) Developer Feedback and the Future of Code Review
(9:50) AI-Generated Code and the Code Review Burden
(11:46) Trad...
The Transformation Trap: Why Software Modernization Is Harder Than It Looks
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn talks with Jonathan Schneider, CEO of Moderne and author on Java microservices and automated code remediation. They explore why upgrading legacy systems is so hard, Schneider’s journey from Netflix to building large-scale code transformation tools like OpenRewrite, and how major companies like Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft use it.
They also discuss AI in software development, cutting through the hype to show where it genuinely helps, and the human and technical challenges of modernization. The conversation offers a practical look at how AI and automation can boost pr...
AI's Security Crisis: Why Your Assistant Might Betray You
On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn talks with Simon Willison, founder of Datasette and creator of LLM CLI about AI’s realities versus the hype. They dive into Simon’s “lethal trifecta” of AI security risks, his prediction of a major breach within six months, and real-world use cases of his open source tools, from investigative journalism to OSINT sleuthing. Simon shares grounded insights on coding with AI, the real environmental impact, AGI skepticism, and why human expertise still matters. A candid, hype-free take from someone who truly knows the space.
Highli...
Betting on AI: The Delusion Driving Big Tech
In this deep-dive episode, Corey Quinn and Ed Zitron break down the complex and often murky world of AI and the tech giants fueling today’s rapid innovation. From Nvidia’s soaring valuations to OpenAI’s shaky finances and Microsoft’s high-stakes gambles, they reveal the cracks hidden beneath all the hype.
They navigate the tangled web of corporate finance, big investments, and what could happen if the AI boom falters whether it reshapes the economy or crashes spectacularly.
With sharp takes on the crossroads of AI, crypto hype, SaaS economics, and enterprise software, Cory and Ed c...
Reliable Software by Default with Jeremy Edberg
Reliable software shouldn't be an accident, but for most developers it is. Jeremy Edberg, CEO of DBOS and the guy who scaled Reddit and Netflix, joins Corey Quinn to talk about his wild idea of saving your entire app into a database so it can never really break. They chat about Jeremy's "build for three" rule, a plan for scale without going crazy, why he set Reddit's servers to Arizona time to dodge daylight saving time, and how DBOS makes your app as tough as your data. Plus, Jeremy shares his brutally honest take on distributed systems cargo cult...
See Why GenAI Workloads Are Breaking Observability with Wayne Segar
What happens when you try to monitor something fundamentally unpredictable? In this featured guest episode, Wayne Segar from Dynatrace joins Corey Quinn to tackle the messy reality of observing AI workloads in enterprise environments. They explore why traditional monitoring breaks down with non-deterministic AI systems, how AI Centers of Excellence are helping overcome compliance roadblocks, and why “human in the loop” beats full automation in most real-world scenarios.
From Cursor’s AI-driven customer service fail to why enterprises are consolidating from 15+ observability vendors, this conversation dives into the gap between AI hype and operational reality, and why the co...
Presenting at re:Invent with Matt Berk and Bowen Wang
How do you wrangle the chaos of AWS cost tools and live presentations? In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn is joined by AWS’s Bowen Wang and Matt Berk to break down their re:Invent talk and everything that almost went off the rails. From surprise tsunami alerts to last-minute feature changes, they explore the anxiety and art behind presenting at scale. They also look at how power user feedback shapes tools like the AWS Pricing Calculator, why storytelling matters more than specs, and what it’s like co-presenting with notes that say “make the rabbit...
The Latest State of IaC with Ido Neeman
What’s going on with Infrastructure as Code? On this episode, Corey is joined by Firefly CEO and Co-Founder Ido Neeman to discuss the findings of the State of IaC 2025 report. Throughout their chat, Corey and Ido discuss the evolution of IaC adoption in enterprises, the challenges of managing multi-cloud and multi-IaC environments, and the importance of disaster recovery as code. The conversation also touches on the rise of open-source projects like Open Tofu and the significant role of automation in cloud cost optimization. This episode not only reflects on recent trends, but highlights the importance of robust cloud go...
Opening the Managed NAT Gateway with Malith Rajapakse
How does one manage to simplify the complexities of the NAT Gateway? In this episode of "Screaming in the Cloud," Corey Quinn interviews Malith Rajapakse, a DevOps engineer who has recently received acclaim for his blog post discussing the Managed NAT Gateway. Where AWS lacks in its documentation, Malith is a NATural at breaking things down. He’s so great at it that Corey had to invite him on the show! Malith shares the story behind his popular post, his creative process, and his use of interactive diagrams and engaging content. He and Corey also discuss the challenges of do...
The Latest on Microsoft Security with Ann Johnson
Microsoft has its fingers in a lot of pots, but just how secure are said pots? On this episode, Corey is joined by Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President and Deputy CISO of Microsoft's Customer Security Management Office. Ann talks about her 40-year professional journey and how it's culminated in her current role. Corey is known to “punch up” at the big guys in the tech industry, but he and Ann talk about the challenges of corporate leadership and being a public face in such a prominent company. Since it’s 2025, of course, they’re going to talk about AI’s pros and...
Finding Engineers with Empathy with Lili Rogowsky
If you believed, they put a data center on the moon. No, for real, they did, and it’s partially thanks to Lili Rogowsky, partner at Atypical Ventures. Lili joins Corey to discuss her unconventional leap from law to venture capital. Although she made a sharp turn career-wise, Lili remains grounded in the often heartless world of venture capital—highlighting the importance of empathy and technical prowess in founding successful enterprises. Out of all resources, time carries the heftiest price tag, and this half-hour episode is a low-risk, high-yield investment.
Show Highlights
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