From Open Source to $200M Startup: Temporal's Journey with CTO & Co-Founder Samar Abbas

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Convergence Podcast. I'm your host, Ashok Sivanand.

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Uber was an amazing experience for us because this is a company which is moving really really fast.

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_00]: By the time we joined Uber had a really different problem, somehow they ended up in a place where they had more microservices than engineers in the countries.

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_01]: On this show, we'll deconstruct the best practices, principles and the underlying philosophies behind the most engaged product teams who ship the most successful products.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_01]: This is what teams are made of. On this episode, I'm joined by the CEO of Temporal Summer Abbas.

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Many of your favorite applications like Snapchat, Netflix and Uber run on Temporal or the underlying open source technology behind Temporal called Cadenz.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the servers that our applications run on are inevitably susceptible to infrastructure failures.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Things like network outages, power issues, hardware failures, software bugs and other risks where we sometimes see that message from Netflix saying,

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Oops, something went wrong, please try again.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And when we do try again or hit refresh, amazingly we can pick back up where things left off and it's a really seamless experience

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_01]: where the system remembers where we were at. Now in order to create the seamless experience, developers has now in order to create the seamless experience,

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_01]: developers have to put a ton of logic and I mean it's on into their applications and we barely see it unless there's some kind of an issue like this.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Cadenz and Temporal enable a messaging as a primitive based solution that allowed developers to focus a lot more on differentiating their business,

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: delighting their customers and not as much on writing the spoiler plate code for creating durable applications.

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Before co-founding the company with Max Feteve, some are used to work at Microsoft.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_01]: He actually worked there at two different tours. The first time around he worked on visual studio, the dot net framework and sequel server,

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_01]: and when he went back he worked on the Azure Service Bus solutions. In between that time he went to Amazon and worked at AWS where he worked on the simple workflow service and variable task framework,

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_01]: and then most recently before Temporal Max and him worked together at Uber where they led the development of the Cadenz open source library.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_01]: This was at that very interesting time at Uber where they went from the monolith to stripping them out to microservices,

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_01]: and actually at some point some are says, had more microservices to manage than they had developers,

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: and then we've heard in articles and blogs that they put out, that there was a recomposition that happened at Uber.

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And Cadenz was one of the things that really helped with orchestrating and choreographing across those different systems that they had

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_01]: and maintaining states so that the drivers and their customers had very seamless experiences.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_01]: On the episode, we get to hear from some about the nuances of building developer specific experiences and solutions.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: How to simplify the choreography on your applications?

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_01]: choreography is a design pattern or approach for coordinating the interactions between multiple services, systems and components,

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01]: and it's really important especially when you're running distributed systems.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_01]: We get to hear also about OSS or open source software and how some are believed that the longevity of your project is disproportionately higher if its open source versus proprietary,

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_01]: how it helps temporal and helped other companies in the past with recruitment, cost effective marketing,

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_01]: and also the investment discipline they put into making it easy for their customers to switch between the proprietary

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_01]: and also the investment and discipline that they put into making it really easy for their customers to switch between the open source version of Cadenz

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_01]: and the commercialized managed version of temporal.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_01]: We also get to hear about the founding journey and the relationship between the co-founders at temporal.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I found it particularly interesting that Max and Summer swapped roles between CEO and CTO

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_01]: at a very important inflection point of the company, and Summer tells us a little bit more about how they objectively arrived at that decision.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I learned a lot from Summer about distributed systems, durable applications, and finding a co-founder,

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_01]: and I trust that you will enjoy it as well.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And for those of you who are particularly curious about developer tools, creating platforms or delightful developer experiences,

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_01]: make sure to go check out our episodes with Kenneth Altzernberg that were launched in the end of June,

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: 2024 and early July, 2024, where Kenneth gives us a lot of advice on things like primitives and other ways to delight your customers when they are developers.

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Here is Summer.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Summer, welcome to the show.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for making the time here.

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_01]: The first thing I want to get into, we've had a few guests on here that talked about developer experience and developer tools,

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_01]: is not necessarily something that I've knew about in the early days of my career, and took for granted,

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and then realized that when you're using IDE or some API that's meant for developers to consume,

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: there's some really creative and smart folks designing things in a very proper-striven way,

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: and not something that you consider in the early days.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So tell me how you arrived at specializing in this space of developer tools.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so thanks a lot for having me on the show, really glad to be here.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, as you can imagine after graduating from college, when you are really getting into software development,

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have a set plan in place.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: The only thing I knew back then was to try out different things.

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_00]: So I've been super lucky during the early stages of my career, where I started my career way back in 2000 at Microsoft.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So first decade, actually, I get to experiment a lot.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I've been part of teams working on .NET, I've been building developer platforms like .NET member,

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and then I've been part of different server technologies like SQL Server, Bistock.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, I've been part of building developer tooling like Visual Studio.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And that actually gave me a lot of exposures, specifically on working with other developers and building tooling and products for other developers as a platform.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So that is something that kind of I got really excited from for the later half of my career.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_00]: That's how this is the space I really want to go deep in.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, especially when I was kind of transitioning around 2010 from like the traditional way of building software to cloud native part of applications,

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I saw this space specifically around messaging in general how people use messaging as a primitive to build resiliency into their apps.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And then I got really, really excited to meet friends like that something is broken here.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And then I can maybe help redefine how the next generation of applications are written for cloud native environment.

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I kind of got into this space.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I think there is a tendency for us to want to specialize early.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like you got to experiment a lot and move around across a few things before deciding what you want to.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And is that what you would advise people kind of getting into their careers or early phase in a new role to not be afraid to get a little bit more of a broad perspective before going deeper?

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so every people have different personalities.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Some people have already like very mission-oriented during very early stages of their career.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_00]: For me, at least this experimentation I highly, highly advice sometimes people are conservative in moving things around.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I actually even early part of my career.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I even took jobs at a, I took down greats also just for an ability to kind of work on different problems spaces and with different people that I respected a lot.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, there are always two things that I look for is this is in space that allows me to learn new skillset and who are the people who I will be learning from.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: If I am the smartest person on that team, probably it was clearly a time for me to move on from.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_01]: That's great advice.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So as you moved around, you probably noticed some differences between building maybe end-user applications or applications with the UI versus applications that are more developer facing in, enable those developers to build better end applications.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious if there's any things that really jumped out to you as to differences between building for developers versus building for end users.

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so there are lots of differences there.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, like for developers, you are going after a very technical persona.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: So you are building a application for a technical user as opposed to for like end user applications you are generally going after journal audience with varying technical abilities.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: So that kind of translates into a bunch of different differences.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_00]: For instance, developers cares a lot about flexibility and extensibility.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So when you are building a developer platform, it's all about how you can provide capabilities into it for people to extend and which allow them to solve complex problems.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to when you are building end-user applications, typically it's intentionally kept simple from a UI UX perspective.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And to keep it simple, to keep it more intuitive because you are solving a very targeted problem essentially.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Another key thing is the bar for documentation is very, very high when it comes to building platforms for developers.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it needs to be very extensively documented tutorials and code samples.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a lot of thought goes into how someone can get ramped up on learning that platform to be able to kind of utilize that for solving their own needs.

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to like end-user applications, typically you are looking targeting very simple user persona to keep it simple provide user guides to get people get going and maybe troubleshooting and that's it.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Another key area for is testing is for especially around developer platforms, they need a very different bar of quality around unit testing skill testing performance testing integration testing.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a lot of rigor that goes on because people will be using your platform as primitive which they can play like over it.

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So you need to test in each and every part of that as opposed to end-user applications typically are more targeted towards usability testing, functional testing and just making sure you can create a bug free experience for end users to be using that application.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So I love it. And one of the things that I think leads to developer satisfaction there is consistency around the use of those primitives and you mentioned the phrase messaging as a primitive so maybe you can help the audience by defining your version of that and also a little bit of how you got excited about it.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I've been for instance like I was part of a team in Azure which is Azure service bus which kind of owns a messaging stack for Azure what that means is.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_00]: For instance like I was a tech lead for a product called event hubs which is their large scale ingestion is it's kind of like people who are familiar with technologies like Kafka so that's kind of an Azure equivalent for a hosted version of Kafka.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So what we typically see is especially in microservices world as people are trying to scale their platforms.

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_00]: They kind of compose like decompose their applications in smaller microservices which means that eventually people in order to build like stateful and to end like an application requires composing these microservices through a messaging backbone.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Which means that like if you let's say have an application which needs to which are three steps step a step B step C. So typically people will build those applications using messaging as a primitive is send a message to a queue and then you have a consumer which is consuming that message and then executes the step a when it's done executing step a then now it produces a second message for another queue for a different consumer to.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Execute the rest of the application logic and so that kind of a pattern is typically called a securityography and so messaging typically becomes a backbone for favoring those those class of applications.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm guessing sort of that passion that you developed in some form has led to cadence and temporal so maybe tell me a little bit about how temporal came about and then I want to go deeper.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so first of all let me explain what temporal is right so temporal is an OS as application platform which ensures a durable execution of your code.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Which means that if you have a function and during the execution of that function it crashes so temporal ensures that it can automatically and seamlessly.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Resurrect that function on a different host and continue executing where it left off. Which means for you as a developer it feels like that failure never even happened.

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_00]: So just to make it more concrete.

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine you have an application of money transfer application where you are transferring money from one account to another account.

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So typically that application requires two steps which is debit from account A and then credit it into account B.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So during an execution of such an application let's say you.

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Already debited the money from one account but before it can process the credit that application crashes so what happened to your transaction suddenly you have lost your entire state.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_00]: You are in an inconsistent state right now. So temporal as a platform but it guarantees that we will re-select that money transfer execution on a different host along with all odds all of its state including call stack local variables everything and then continue executing.

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_00]: From the last failure. So which means that in this case it ensure that it completes executing the entire transaction and guarantees a debit a credit to account B will also happen if a credit happened.

[00:16:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So this primitive is super powerful because now as a software developer it completely frees you up from handling all sorts of infrastructure level failures that could happen during execution of your application logic.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what I have seen consistently again and again in my past lives in different companies 80% of the application logic is actually writing that boilerplate code to handle those applications those infrastructure failures.

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is exactly what temporal provides that it frees you up by the developer to focus on your application logic and take.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Let us solve the reliability challenges inherently as part of the platform.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Fosturing and engaged product organization and aligning them with the principles around lean human center design and agile.

[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Well more than likely lead to successful business outcomes for your organization but getting started or getting unblocked can be hard.

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is brought to you by the player coaches over at integral they help ambitious companies like you build amazing product teams and ship products in artificial intelligence cloud web and mobile.

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Listeners to the podcast can head on over to integral.io slash convergence and get a free product success lab during this session the integral team will facilitate a problem solving exercise that gives you clarity and confidence to solve a product design or engineering problem that's integral.io slash convergence now back to the show.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And how do the company and the product come to being how do you and your co-founder started.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah so let me probably probably a good time to actually give a more description of our story like founding story although the company on paper is like little less than five years old but our story is actually almost 15 plus years in the making.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So back in 2010 like when I was trying to shift from like traditional application like software development water flow of all models of shipping servers with two years of really cycles to cloud based development where you are you have a service which you are continuously building and improving.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Every week or like every day.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_00]: So I as part of that switch I ended up joining simple workflow team at AWS and this is where actually I met my other co-founder max for the first time who was a technique for simple workflow service.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And max was actually coming from a background of building messaging systems like as QS back at AWS and he saw this pattern where engineers are using messaging as a core primitive to build resiliency into their applications.

[00:19:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And it you can clearly see that it although the primitive works and it gets a job done but it's clearly much much lower level than.

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_00]: What we could potentially offer to those developers so simple workflow was actually our first attempt to kind of raise the level of abstraction higher where we allow developers to write code but we make that code durable for them underneath the cover and then solve the resiliency problem for them.

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So that around 2012 we shipped simple workflow and it was actually very popular within AWS and being used for all sorts of services within the company but I felt we never were able to hit the solve the.

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Programming model or the user experience for those developers as part of that first attempt so later like I ended up when I joined Microsoft Azure although I was working on a team called service bus.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Which owns their messaging stack but I helped build this open source library by the name of variable task framework.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Which is kind of like similar ideas but bringing it into the Azure ecosystem and specially targeting dot net developers.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_00]: So that actually organically grew big enough where now few years ago Azure functions team ended up taking a dependency on it to build what they are now calling a durable functions.

[00:20:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And then like around 2015 just out of coincidence both me and Max ended up joining Uber within a month of each other.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_00]: When we joined Uber like Uber was going through this interesting phase where they started with a monitor like any other startup they started teasing it apart into Microsoft services in order to able to scale the actual text stack or even the company.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And so during but by the time we joined Uber had a very different problem somehow they ended up in a place where they had more microservices than engineers in the company.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And you can imagine building any state full application requires orchestrating calls across dozens of those microservices with variable availability characteristics.

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So this is where we we saw like literally the Uber was an amazing experience for us because this is a company which is moving really really fast and we felt we can unlock a lot of developer productivity by having applied form like cadence.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So this is where we started this whole cadence effort and then open source project which kind of unlocked all of this developer productivity by allowing developers to focus on writing their business logic and handle solve all of the distributed systems or infrastructure level.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And that within the next three years it grew from zero use cases to almost over 100 use cases by the time we left the company and around 2019 we actually start seeing.

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_00]: The adoption for open source cadence also start picking up in different other similar companies like Uber where people were facing very similar challenges.

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_00]: So that kind of led both me and Max to start looking at the next steps for us and this is how we go found at tempo.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Cool. I want to know maybe the before and after picture if you can remember what it was like for the engineers at Uber.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Before they had access to cadence in all of the orchestration required across all these services and then what was the after picture with cadence. You remember any stories or any feedback there.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So there yeah turns and turns of stories. So I can give you actually one of the examples that I remember in a team Uber was basically kind of expanding globally.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the regions I think in South America they were kind of trying to expand and one of the regulatory requirement there is oh if you are making a payment API call.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And there is a failure the bank returns you back of failure. You are required to retry that call for at least three days and we ask okay why three days they said oh if it's weekend or especially along weekend then oh no one is going to look at it until someone comes back after the after the holiday.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And so that but for us to be able to operate we needed to kind of satisfy that compliance requirement. So that entire system was built using Kafka.

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So Kafka is an awesome technology for processing messages or large stream of messages and then taking actions on each one of those, but Kafka is not designed for you trying a single message for three days.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So I remember those was actually one of the very first use cases that team take is like oh they process a Kafka message make a banking API call and then when it gets stuck or it cannot process it then it will basically start a cadence workflow.

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Which then because the whole workflow design that we don't care you can you can detry individual workflow executions for however long you want there was no limit on number of retries or the time you want to detry it.

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's actually one of the first use cases in that team, but guess what what they typically what they found out over the next two years that they kept on putting cadence or more and more use cases and eliminate ripping out different parts of Kafka where they were using choreography.

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Two kind of orchestrate calls across multiple microservices and then start using the orchestration pattern through cadence will have a orchestrator to rebuild that entire payment platform using cadence.

[00:25:34] [SPEAKER_00]: So that was actually one of the stories I remember that started with a very small use case within that team but over a course of period of like two years they ended up kind of running that entire platform payment platform on top of the technology.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow and in terms of both the developer experience as well as the approach that you took to the architecture was there was it obvious kind of the approach that is now being taken.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Is where you started or was there some iteration required to get to where it is right now in terms of your core architecture.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_00]: One of the like the core cultural traits that we have here at temporal is this concept of iteration and I think this is something that even just not even at over like both me and Max the way we have been.

[00:26:32] [SPEAKER_00]: That the way we operate is get like continuous iteration on the product and working and solving real problems those developers have.

[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_00]: So in I can take each and every part or each and every feature that we have as part of time portal and then tied back to a real outage that we have in the past.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_00]: In like a real scenario. So I think this concept of iteration is kind of baked in as how we operate as temporal so yes we have a platform and then we are continuously evolving that platform to make it wider and wider so it's applicable to not only.

[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Just like a specific class of developers it's accessible to a much more broader class of developers and at the same time we are adding more and more primitive where it is more accessible to build different class of applications also on top of the platform.

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome and then over time you've also got SDKs for a plethora of languages and frameworks right.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_00]: When we started the company we had SDKs only in Go and Java and then over time we have now SDKs in six different SDKs because the whole concept for temporal is we want to meet developers where they are.

[00:27:48] [SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to like if they if you are a type skip developer we want you to write more typeskip and still be able to leverage temporal as a platform for building reliable applications.

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_00]: So we have now SDKs in six languages one of the things that we did was.

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_00]: We build this core SDK because we have the entire core built out in Rust and then we build language bindings essentially in those language specific SDKs.

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So if accept our go and Java SDKs all of our other SDKs are actually powered by a common Rust core underneath the covers.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Very cool and it sounds like after the Uber engineers had access to it.

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_01]: The open source libraries of cadence started to gain a lot of popularity outside of Uber as well in a fair amount of traction so I'm sensing maybe that was one of the boxes or things to kind of fall into place that led to.

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_01]: The two of you leaving Uber and founding the company but I'd love to hear your version of what made it feel like the right time and anything else that went into taking that big leap of faith.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so timing is always a tricky aspect of especially when you are like building a company on an open source project.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_00]: So as you know like this is an area that we've been trying to innovate on for over 15 years now and initially what we saw is like and we kept on seeing like for example at AWS when we built simple workflow.

[00:29:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It became developers picked it up developer there was a little bit of because it's a new it's a paradigm shift it's a different way of building applications.

[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_00]: So it takes a little bit of learning curve but once a engineer goes beyond that learning curve then there is no going back.

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a typical that analogy that I gave there is.

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_00]: When I was growing up like we you I remember back in my college days any assignment and thing we will type in Microsoft Word and then you get in the habit of saving your document every sentence you type you just save to make sure you don't lose your edits.

[00:30:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Still I remember countless times when I lost my work because of something happening to my machine or something.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_00]: My care PTSD from back then I kind of forgot about those days when we didn't have our save exactly and then but my kids now like Google docs.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_00]: They don't even have a save but in anymore and they they like they don't even like see that save I can they wonder what what is it for why people use it and not only like it document is getting saved for you locally on your machine you can go to.

[00:30:50] [SPEAKER_00]: They can access it from their self sense or different devices from their.

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Like university or from home or anywhere it's everything is accessible all the time.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel software development was exactly in the same stage where just imagine that's exactly 80% of the software is today.

[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_00]: There is some state and even happens you load that state from a database you apply that event you take actions and then you store it back and 80% of that is just making doing that again and again for every other project or every other works seem that you are part of.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what we believe.

[00:31:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Temporal is kind of enabling is kind of bringing people from Microsoft Word era to like the Google Docs era that yeah you don't have it's durable execution you don't even have to think about storing that.

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think we saw that transition at AWS and Azure and at Uber it was so obvious to us that oh a primitive like this is just unlocked so much developer velocity in any modern organization.

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_00]: So this is where actually we both me and Max after seeing those three.

[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Experiments in localized environment we see how the adoption was picking up we became absolutely convinced that oh this is a problem which is prevalent in every modern organization and like it's not only restricted to places like AWS Azure or Uber.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome and so.

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_01]: What advice do you have based on looking back around finding that co-founder of course Max and you sounds like has you've worked together across multiple companies across multiple years and you know each other pretty well.

[00:32:42] [SPEAKER_01]: But looking back you probably have put yourself in very different roles as co-founders compared to colleagues and so.

[00:32:52] [SPEAKER_01]: If someone's looking to found a startup and identifying a co-founder that they may be haven't had the privilege to work with for as long.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any advice based on your experience.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so both me and Max have been really fortunate that we had almost a decade of experience working with each other before we took the leap of starting the company.

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And I know like there people people don't have that luxury when they are about to get on the journey of.

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Go founding a company.

[00:33:30] [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, I would highly recommend like you just.

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Having a co-founder is just.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Decreases the odd of failure so much essentially so highly recommend people who are about.

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Who about to get started on this journey.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Think really really hard before going solo and because it's up.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_00]: This it's it's just an insane right and making sure you have a partner that you can lean on.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_00]: On this roller coaster that you about to get into is like helps a lot.

[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_00]: For me, I think it comes down to few different things the key one is trust.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And respect for each other so.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So me and Max over the last like decade of working with each other have built a lot of trust.

[00:34:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Like we can have.

[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Debate on argument on pretty much any topic without and without getting like heated or without getting personal or stuff like that.

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think building that trust where you can have really open and transparent conversations is.

[00:34:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Something which is absolutely necessary for a healthy relationship between co-founders.

[00:34:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing is like know your.

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Both strengths and weaknesses of each other so and how they complement each other so for instance,

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Like the way both me and Max have been operating is max is amazing at taking any problem lifting at it high level of abstraction.

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And then solving it there essentially so he's been like.

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I always look up to him when it comes to what the company needs to be doing five years down the road.

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So Max is the one who can really help set the vision and strategic vision for the company and where it needs to be in the next five years.

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I've always been the one what steps we need to take to get us there.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And then as law and both of us have a lot of respect for each other's like strengths on that category.

[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Whenever it comes to decision which requires very strategic which is more long term,

[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I lean on Max on kind of helping me make those calls.

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time when it comes to like oh what are the what is the path?

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_00]: How do we get there what are the short term compromises we should be making along the way?

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I think Max complete 100% have trust on my judgment and my ability to be able to navigate us through those.

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a really great way of talking about number one, of course, understanding your own strengths and weaknesses,

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_01]: but then also I think very insightful about how you put it into play and action on a day to day week to week basis.

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe a good time to also talk about there was some roles switching that it looks like has happened between the CEO and CTO roles and Max and yourself.

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Since when you got started five years ago and that without that trust and respect, maybe you could have been really complicated to do.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm curious to know how that all kind of came about and what your thoughts are now.

[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So when we started the come by the way, both of us are first time founders, both of us has been engineers throughout our life.

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_00]: We have never been people's manager.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So when we were starting the company in all honesty, like both of us have didn't even have a good mental model, what's the role of a CEO back then?

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the way we kind of came up with this division of responsibility is like okay, like one of its roles for CEO is defining a strategy.

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And having a strategy in place.

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's I think back then based on my like earlier comment that I made about Max is Max is amazing at where the company needs to be like five years down the road.

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's how we kind of came up with this kind of a model that Max, bleeding the company as a CEO to help us kind of define the long term vision and the strategy for the company.

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And then for me, like having a operational CEO to kind of mostly mostly product and engineering to kind of help me let me build those organizations to help us being able to deliver on that vision.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So that actually worked out really really well for us.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that we've been really lucky is the strategy that we put in motion.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Literally the first quarter when we started the company almost like 18.90% of that strategy still is intact and is in play.

[00:38:25] [SPEAKER_00]: All of the choices that we made around open source and around our like the cloud product like monetization being through a multi-tank and cloud service being linked consumption based business.

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's certain like decisions that we made.

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So overall strategy still like is in intact today, but at the same time company has now grown from just that two of us to over 200 people now.

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So just like now just companies becoming much more operational it has a lot more operational needs than it used to when we were much much smaller.

[00:39:01] [SPEAKER_00]: So me and Max, so this is where the trust kind of comes in me and Max being able to very openly have discussion about what where are we as a company, what are the needs of the organization and how that translates into roles for each of us like we had very open conversation.

[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And actually Max is the one who kind of then asked me somewhere I think probably it's the right time for you to come take on the role of a CEO because the needs are much more operational at this point rather than like a lack of strategy in place.

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_01]: That makes it sense and then what is what can you share about your roadmap for the business and for the product the look forward to over the next few years.

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we we have come a long way we have at this point like our open source the first of all like our open source community is that's a key priority for like we have fully committed to our open source posture.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_00]: We are not like an open core model our entire core.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Product experience exist in open source as the weight exist in cloud so basically if you take our open source you build an application using temporal.

[00:40:17] [SPEAKER_00]: We are fully committed to make sure that application works both on temporal open source and seamlessly on cloud and if you're not happy with the cloud it works back on open source also.

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So, each kind of then translates into first of all the programming model so we are continuously evolving our programming model to be make sure it is.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_00]: It is approachable to first of all lot many developers out there so that's why we started with two SDKs now we have six essentially I think there's another one groupie which is in we are building at one out also.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time adding new primitives to where temporal as a primitive is now accessible for a wider and wider class of applications one area for example interactive apps.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_00]: We is an area where we are investing a lot by a feature by the name of workflow update which allows people like oh let's say.

[00:41:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Payments so if people want to make a payment like any interactive app and which needs to respond back to our user we want to be able to people.

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_00]: We want developers to be able to build that entire flow through temporal and I think workflow update is going to enable that.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_00]: To build those synchronous low latency applications.

[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Another big area for us is what we are seeing is workflows are very quickly becoming APIs.

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Between not only within organization but in some cases even outside of the organization so we have a project by the name of nexus which is being worked on which we will planning to.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_00]: We are not in our conference next month.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_00]: At replay and the whole idea is provide a very standard mechanism for people to build these asynchronous applications.

[00:42:19] [SPEAKER_01]: The first thing you mentioned was the open source community and the interplay between the hosted and open source versions and one thing that we kind of took for granted in this story was that.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Oba was comfortable with having this framework.

[00:42:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Initially they solve internal developer problems as being open sourced and certainly a very cultural thing depending on company to company,

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_01]: What is your advice to someone who feels like there's more applicability to something that's built as an internal tool as being in terms of being an open source tool instead and and how it.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_01]: should consider whether or not it should be open source and how maybe they should get

[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_01]: the approvals that I don't know if they were taken for granted at Uber or not in terms

[00:43:08] [SPEAKER_01]: of going through the additional work to open source something.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, this is the first thing is I think especially projects like the Amporal which is so heavily

[00:43:19] [SPEAKER_00]: infrastructure investments just having it open source and if we can make it popular like just

[00:43:30] [SPEAKER_00]: launch at the gravity of that platform just increase orders of magnitude and there are turns

[00:43:38] [SPEAKER_00]: and turns up examples of that.

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Or during the industry where like a popular open source project essentially is just from a

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_00]: launch every perspective is guarding your investment as an organization.

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because the more useful it gets first of all the better it gets because more and more

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_00]: people are going to adopt it more and more people are going to contribute back to it.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_00]: If not too cold but through feedback through use cases and it just like hands down any

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_00]: popular open source project to anything which is proprietary I open source especially in

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_00]: infrastructure open source in my opinion will win hands down provided this run correctly.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think people started especially companies started realizing that um, that open source is the

[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_00]: way to go to build really, really powerful and awesome these infrastructure platforms.

[00:44:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And there are many examples of that in the past.

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_00]: At especially you mentioned at it's also a cultural thing so I was kind of lucky enough that in my

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_00]: second skin that might have soft men I joined the edge like it there was change in leadership

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_00]: happening there the company was kind of also transitioning from like those surps shipping servers

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_00]: which is more proprietary software to being more open towards open source.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Software also and I played a little bit role in that by example like the durable task frame

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_00]: but from get go I've made it as an open source SDK and just how the organic bottoms up

[00:45:18] [SPEAKER_00]: that it drove help the leadership at Microsoft to also kind of get more and more comfortable

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_00]: that oh these open source platform kind of this organic bottoms up adoption it provides

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_00]: that advantage to those companies also. There is another area is acquiring talent is for instance

[00:45:40] [SPEAKER_00]: back at Uber Uber was in general is a company which is like let builders build mentality.

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So I and I think that's was pretty ingrained into the DNA of Uber at the time and I was

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_00]: both me and Max were part of the Uber culture so especially open source was a big theme there

[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_00]: was so many open source efforts that came out of Uber during that era and it came because of

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_00]: mentality that culture that let builders build and and the key benefit that for example we

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_00]: started the cadence project at Seattle office which was relatively new in the evening office

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_00]: that they were trying to set up it became like for Uber to acquire new talent because this is

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_00]: how they were because it's now became easy oh you when you join the company you get to work on

[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_00]: projects like cadence essentially and so that actually from the recruiting perspective it

[00:46:39] [SPEAKER_00]: gives a lot of advantages to organizations that are having an open source project is beneficial

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_00]: for them to attract top to your talent in the industry also. And then in your case with respect

[00:46:54] [SPEAKER_01]: to commercialization when you flip the switch from the open source project to commercial version

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and a company on its own there were already hundreds of thousands of engineers I presume that

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_01]: over familiar with what you were doing and and bought in right because they'd consume they're used

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_00]: cadence by then. So yeah so that's the one you did with going the open source route because it's

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_00]: a very cost effective way for for marketing for people to try out the product to see if this

[00:47:26] [SPEAKER_00]: something even useful for them. So yes running cadence for like close to three years at Uber

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_00]: it's like we actually start seeing a lot of external adoption for instance like around 2019

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_00]: like Mitchell Hashimoto kind of discovered the technology and even had a new supposed which actually

[00:47:46] [SPEAKER_00]: got viral during early 2019 which actually brought a lot of eyes to the cadence project in general.

[00:47:52] [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah definitely like open source has this big advantage where like if you have something which

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_00]: is useful and which adds value to other developers then it gives a very low cost low friction

[00:48:07] [SPEAKER_00]: way for those developers who try it out and try to adopt the technology. Awesome and so how many

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_00]: developers are using the platform threat? So we roughly it's very hard to because of the open source

[00:48:26] [SPEAKER_00]: in nature it's very hard to know the exact count essentially but through different telemetry

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_00]: or our engagement with the broader community we believe we have somewhere around 200 to 250,000

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_00]: developers that actively work with temporal on date by day basis and for instance like in our

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Slack channel alone which is we have a very engaging community we have over 13,000 people sitting

[00:48:52] [SPEAKER_00]: in our Slack channel and so so we have and and we see close to six to eight percent

[00:49:02] [SPEAKER_00]: month over month growth of that developer community also. And speaking of you've got a user

[00:49:10] [SPEAKER_01]: conference it sounds like coming up this year. Tell me a little bit more about the details there

[00:49:15] [SPEAKER_01]: who might be folks that are most targeted towards. Yeah so we started our own conference

[00:49:23] [SPEAKER_00]: by the name of replay roughly two years ago. We have the third edition of the conference happening

[00:49:31] [SPEAKER_00]: in the East Side Area and Seattle next month the week of September 18. I highly recommend if you

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_00]: are like a back end developer who cares about back end development like it's it's kind of

[00:49:47] [SPEAKER_00]: positioned as an industry conference for back end developers. So we firmly believe what we are building

[00:49:53] [SPEAKER_00]: here is a new category of software which we are trying to position that as durable execution.

[00:50:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And so and then this as this durable execution as a category play is getting more and more popular

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_00]: we have starting to see a lot of people kind of joining this wave of durable execution

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_00]: for building mission critical apps. So if you are interested in learning if you care about back

[00:50:19] [SPEAKER_00]: end development and you want to know what's the latest and greatest happening in the industry

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_00]: on back end development side of things like replay which is happening September 18,

[00:50:33] [SPEAKER_00]: we have September 18 next month you should be there and we have amazing line of presenters there

[00:50:42] [SPEAKER_00]: and this is an area where just some stats from last year we had 45 talks last time

[00:50:49] [SPEAKER_00]: only seven talks were from temporal employees. We had 38 other talks which were done by essentially

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_00]: either our community or but open source users or temporal cloud customers. So it's an

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_00]: amazing place if you care about back end development you want to learn how people are using

[00:51:09] [SPEAKER_00]: durable execution for all sorts of problems out there it's going to be an amazing event for that.

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome and I'm guessing folks can find a link to it on the temporal website at temporal.io

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah if you go to temporal.io slash replay you should be able to find the link to register for the

[00:51:31] [SPEAKER_01]: conference here. Awesome well I hope you have fun at that as we wrap up here one of the

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_01]: questions that I like to ask all my guests is a product or a service that you used either at home

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_01]: or at work that just kind of blew your socks off you were like hey these folks get it does anything

[00:51:50] [SPEAKER_00]: jump out at you at something that really delighted you recently? Yeah so since starting the company

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I've I've don't get a lot of time to try out different things at home now but one of the

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_00]: products that I've been really impressed recently is gone and so this is a tool which our go-to

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_00]: market team uses all the time and I think this I've been super impressed how they've been able to

[00:52:19] [SPEAKER_00]: take a space like this videos which get transcribed and how they were able to embed

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_00]: generative AI essentially and like AI in general you with in such an amazing manner to make it

[00:52:40] [SPEAKER_00]: just increase productivity for not only for our field teams but even for me when I want I have

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_00]: questions about the product how users are using it or what kind of questions that they have like I

[00:52:52] [SPEAKER_00]: spend a lot of time and gone just to get those insights from the field. That's awesome well

[00:52:59] [SPEAKER_01]: make sure to have a link to Ganga Raya in the show notes and and some of our if folks want

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_00]: to get in touch with you what is the best way that you like typically like just find me on LinkedIn

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_00]: and and just send me a request and then I love to get connected and if people have

[00:53:20] [SPEAKER_01]: questions feel free to reach out to me today. Awesome well put a link to your LinkedIn as well in there

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I know you're super busy want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights and

[00:53:34] [SPEAKER_01]: sharing your story by going from open source building a really wonderful company congratulations and

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_00]: thank you again. Thank you I show and really enjoyed my conversion video.

[00:53:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Hope you enjoyed that recording with summer it was certainly a wealth of information and a lot

[00:53:55] [SPEAKER_01]: of transparent vulnerable sharing in terms of that journey that summer and temporal have had

[00:54:02] [SPEAKER_01]: something that really stuck out to me that I wanted to share a little bit more about

[00:54:07] [SPEAKER_01]: was open source. I have gotten to work at companies that not only consume open source but actively

[00:54:14] [SPEAKER_01]: encourage the contribution of open source libraries and also worked as a digital transformation

[00:54:21] [SPEAKER_01]: consultant where I helped Fortune 500 CIOs and CTOs determine the level of investment as well

[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_01]: as their risk tolerance for encouraging open source development amongst their software engineers.

[00:54:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'll talk about some of the trade-offs of the pros and cons that tend to come up.

[00:54:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Of course the pros you tend to hear a little bit more about like summer talked about with

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_01]: respect to really cost effective marketing validation around their product and testing.

[00:54:56] [SPEAKER_01]: The benefits there I've noticed from a testing standpoint are when the entire community

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_01]: is using your libraries you're going to hear a lot more about where your technology tends to work

[00:55:07] [SPEAKER_01]: where there are some assumptions baked in that may not hold in other domains or use cases

[00:55:12] [SPEAKER_01]: and you can get real time feedback or validation from your community in terms of how to make

[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_01]: that product more extensible as well as maybe product feedback so that you can incorporate

[00:55:26] [SPEAKER_01]: that into your roadmap. It is a super effective tool from a marketing and sales standpoint.

[00:55:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Both bottom up and top down I think from a bottom up standpoint we would get calls from

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_01]: folks who had used the open source version of our libraries and something happened to that company

[00:55:42] [SPEAKER_01]: where it warranted additional investment maybe that component or library or product that was

[00:55:47] [SPEAKER_01]: using the open source got critical enough where they would rather have their in-house engineers

[00:55:53] [SPEAKER_01]: focus on building more features that were specific to their business and their customers

[00:55:58] [SPEAKER_01]: and would rather have us run the commercialized managed service of that open source library.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Another way is for top down and this tend to be more in the larger companies,

[00:56:10] [SPEAKER_01]: the Fortune 500s. They tend to have more RFPs and they're decided by committee.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_01]: There are a few technical folks on those committees that tend to have loud voices

[00:56:20] [SPEAKER_01]: that are hard to discern when you're on that sales team and giving them a window into how

[00:56:27] [SPEAKER_01]: your technology is architected, how your technology can really work, giving them the opportunity

[00:56:32] [SPEAKER_01]: to set it up and run it themselves to do their in-house proofs of concept.

[00:56:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Really can provide a very solid window to earn a lot of trust and influence amongst those key

[00:56:43] [SPEAKER_01]: folks on the RFP committees so that you can win those deals. It also helps from a recruiting standpoint

[00:56:48] [SPEAKER_01]: like some are mentioned where engineers wanting to get a little bit more of a window into what life

[00:56:55] [SPEAKER_01]: is really like at a company or how opinionated around architecture and discipline and documentation

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_01]: you tend to be can easily go to open source libraries that are published by the company and get

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_01]: whether you're using it for highly transparent marketing and sales. I believe that there's also a

[00:57:18] [SPEAKER_01]: forcing function that comes into play where your houses are a lot tidier when you have guests

[00:57:23] [SPEAKER_01]: coming over than when no one else is going to have a look at that code. So I think it can be a

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_01]: really good forcing function to form opinions and exercise those opinions with discipline if you know

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_01]: that other folks are going to be seeing it and making decisions around whether or not they choose

[00:57:40] [SPEAKER_01]: your business as a place of employment or as a service provider and so I like the discipline that

[00:57:47] [SPEAKER_01]: that brings. In summers and max cases, in summers and max case, the traction of the use of

[00:57:55] [SPEAKER_01]: cadence outside of Uber where it originated provided a lot of validation for them around the market

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_01]: size around the use cases around the intuitiveness around their solution and it's so much so

[00:58:09] [SPEAKER_01]: that it also got the attention of venture capitalists and investors who also found that this is an

[00:58:16] [SPEAKER_01]: encouraging opportunity to invest in. So they had a lot of validation points in addition to their

[00:58:22] [SPEAKER_01]: own passion to help them justify that big leap of faith of quitting their day jobs and co-founding

[00:58:29] [SPEAKER_01]: a business. Now let's talk about some of the trade-offs. I think I have gotten to work alongside

[00:58:37] [SPEAKER_01]: who have shared some of these pieces or gotten burned by some of these trade-offs. The first one,

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_01]: we talked about longevity and longevity is a double-edged sword where it means that your project

[00:58:49] [SPEAKER_01]: may live on for a long time but it also means that there's an investment associated with maintaining

[00:58:57] [SPEAKER_01]: that technology for in perpetuity or that it's going to last forever. And so one trade-off is that

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_01]: needs to be managed, maintained and invested like a real product. And part of that is having a

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_01]: really opinionated owner of the product whether it's a product owner, an open source manager or a

[00:59:21] [SPEAKER_01]: super small team. And again, that is very opinionated around how the technology is meant to be written,

[00:59:27] [SPEAKER_01]: around what the roadmap is about what is within the wheelhouse of that library, what's outside and

[00:59:32] [SPEAKER_01]: expected for other folks to build on top of the library. And without having that, I think one of the

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_01]: things is that you may lose out on having really clear goals stated in your roadmap stated

[00:59:44] [SPEAKER_01]: for your open source library and that makes it hard for both consumers who are determining whether

[00:59:49] [SPEAKER_01]: or not this is a long-term solution as well as for that community of contributors who

[00:59:56] [SPEAKER_01]: when you provide a better vision and goals know what the guard rails are in terms of what to make

[01:00:02] [SPEAKER_01]: contributions around and that back and forth that goes in terms of getting your open source

[01:00:07] [SPEAKER_01]: contributions approved is a lot more seamless. One of the risks that you run without being opinionated

[01:00:13] [SPEAKER_01]: and sharing this is that someone with that opinion could fork your library and create their own

[01:00:18] [SPEAKER_01]: project and that may end up getting the traction that you were hoping for and all the benefits

[01:00:22] [SPEAKER_01]: that you were hoping for. And one final point I'd say that this is less so around on the companies

[01:00:30] [SPEAKER_01]: with the organization standpoint and more so on advice for developers especially folks who are

[01:00:36] [SPEAKER_01]: looking to gain experience showcase experience or transition from one part of one realm of the

[01:00:44] [SPEAKER_01]: industry to another and maybe you're a back-end developer that wants to work on more front end.

[01:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And you end up in this cash-22 of needing experience to get a job but not having a job to get that

[01:00:56] [SPEAKER_01]: and making open source commits is, in my opinion, a very effective way where you end up getting

[01:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: a ton of feedback from the folks that you are committing the open source projects to the managers

[01:01:08] [SPEAKER_01]: of those projects. Now not all of it is necessarily kind and patient but nevertheless if you

[01:01:16] [SPEAKER_01]: can stomach the feedback, it is feedback nevertheless and can augment the feedback you're getting

[01:01:22] [SPEAKER_01]: from your managers or tech leads. The other thing that I really liked when we were hiring engineers

[01:01:27] [SPEAKER_01]: at integral was that it was an opportunity for folks that we were hiring that maybe had non-traditional

[01:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: paths to get there or career switchers to showcase their work without violating any confidentiality

[01:01:42] [SPEAKER_01]: of the code that they're writing at their current jobs. So we get to see what is like for them

[01:01:47] [SPEAKER_01]: to write code very early in the interviews. The folks who did well would be bumped at the top

[01:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: of our hiring lists. They weren't violating any confidentiality by sharing code that they wrote,

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: which of course is a big no-no. And then I think in our case we found that these folks were really

[01:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: value aligned and wanted to contribute to the community and were willing to overcome the vulnerability

[01:02:07] [SPEAKER_01]: that it took to being an open source contributor and that went a long way in our case and our

[01:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: core values and and and gave candidates a huge leg up. So whether you're considering investing in

[01:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: and encouraging open source contributions or looking to gain a little bit of extra experience,

[01:02:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a lot more that we can learn by digging deeper into open source and we'll look

[01:02:30] [SPEAKER_01]: forward to having some more guests who can talk about that here. In the meantime, I hope you all have

[01:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: great week and we will see you on an episode next Tuesday.

[01:02:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining me on the Convergence Podcast today. Subscribe to the Convergence Podcast

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