kelsey-hightower-wisdom

tweets & quotes from Kelsey Hightower

• life
• tech
• crypto
• videos

Life...

2016

The best you can do is solve the problems of today based on what you learned yesterday. Keep learning and stay humble.
12:34 PM - 27 Nov 2016 tweet

2018

Slow down so you can speed up.
3:15 AM · Mar 26, 2018 tweet

What skills should I invest in?
People skills.
No. I mean what tools and best practices should I learn?
Learn what respect is. Then use it on everyone around you.
8:08 PM - 26 Jun 2018 tweet

Once you've found success, your next goal should be helping others do the same.
11:58 PM - 19 Oct 2018 tweet

2020

We spend too much time trying to make money.
10:38 PM · Mar 15, 2020 tweet

Don't take all the credit. Leave some for those doing the work.
7:09 PM · Apr 9, 2020 tweet

When people disagree with you, don't miss the opportunity to listen, and possibly learn from them.
7:26 PM · May 8, 2020 tweet

Pay attention because ignorance is expensive.
5:43 PM · May 29, 2020 tweet

Never forget where you come from so you'll remember to help those who come after you.
8:40 PM · Aug 26, 2020 tweet

2021

Making money is not your purpose in life.
6:26 PM · Feb 8, 2021 tweet

Pursuing a CS degree isn't a waste of time. Assuming those who chose not to are inferior is.
8:29 PM · Aug 31, 2021 tweet

The magician's power comes from being the only one that understands how something works. Learn how it works and they won't be able to trick you.
5:44 PM · Dec 20, 2021 tweet

2022

I have a lot to be thankful for. It all started when I woke up this morning. I'm one of those lucky people who gets to mark another day on the calendar.
10:06 PM · Feb 14, 2022 tweet

This idea that you have to be an expert before you can share your thoughts or opinions is a tool gatekeepers use to discourage people from looking behind the curtains.
6:29 PM · Jun 1, 2022 tweet

Even if you can only help one person, it's still worth doing.
11:58 PM · Jun 24, 2022 tweet

2023

There is a fine line between humility and arrogance. Confidence is in the middle.
8:40 PM · Aug 30, 2023 tweet

Tech...

2015

People try to copy Netflix, but they can only copy what they see. You are copying the results, not the process. @adrianco #softwarecircus
11:08 AM · Sep 10, 2015 tweet

2016

Distributed systems are hard. You can bootstrap one in 10 minutes, but it's going to take a real time investment to understand how it works.
6:35 AM - 4 Aug 2016 tweet

Autoscaling. It's much harder than people think. Imaging trying to autoscale containers and the underlying VMs? Ever played musical chairs?
9:51 PM - 15 Dec 2016 tweet

Container networking is fundamentally incompatible with current IaaS offerings, and introduces a ton of complexity.
9:42 PM - 15 Dec 2016 tweet

It was much easier to deal with storage on VMs because things were fairly static; container management platforms changes everything.
9:48 PM - 15 Dec 2016 tweet

2017

At some point I made the decision to focus on foundational concepts; not features of a particular implementation; my tech career took off.
10:33 PM · Jan 31, 2017 tweet

Upper management making all the technology decisions is like your parents buying your school clothes... without you.
9:23 PM · Sep 5, 2017 tweet

There is no single continuous integration and delivery setup that will work for everyone. You are essentially trying to automate your company's culture using bash scripts.
5:59 PM · 20 Nov. 2017 tweet

2020 prediction: Monolithic applications will be back in style after people discover the drawbacks of distributed monolithic applications.
6:40 PM · Dec 11, 2017 tweet

Screwdrivers are going to make hammers obsolete. Silly right? That's what most tech discussions turn into.
5:34 PM · Dec 20, 2017 tweet

2018

Maintaining an open-source project is like being a Flight Attendant for an airline where all tickets are free and the majority of customer surveys offer suggestions on how to fly the airplane.
4:41 PM · Jan 30, 2018 tweet

Landing is only available in the Enterprise version.

You haven't mastered a tool until you understand when it should not be used.
5:02 PM · Feb 13, 2018 tweet

Treating containers like a black box will eventually leave you in the dark.
7:52 AM - 22 Jun 2018 tweet

My journey to FaaS has been less about learning something new and more about unlearning something old.
7:53 AM - 22 Aug 2018 tweet

2019

As an industry we tend to build overly complex solutions and dedicate our careers justifying their existence. This typically results in technical debt and ultimately bankruptcy.
8:47 AM - 14 Feb 2019 tweet

Selling complexity will eventually cost you.
5:06 PM - 14 Feb 2019 tweet

service mess /ˈsərvəs mes/
noun

1. the result of spending more compute resources than your actual business logic dynamically generating and distributing Envoy proxy configs and TLS certificates.
12:43 AM · Jul 14, 2019 tweet

2020

They’re just making CRDs for everything. There are CRDs to take a shower. I’m like “Dude, no. You just literally go take a shower. You don’t need to do kubectl apply. Take a shower! Like, come on, we’re going a little bit too far…”
Recorded Jan 7, 2020 podcast

Every product should start with the "cli deploy" happy path and then leverage configmaps to customize the install further. You'll have to build components that can watch config and automatically adjust. That's the holy grail, everything else feels like a workaround.
4:40 AM · May 28, 2020 tweet

If you're stuck on-prem, and starting to feel like you missed out on the cloud native movement, just start calling it "edge" and consider your digital transformation complete.
7:26 PM · Sep 22, 2020 tweet

Microservices are probably closer to like, trying to be a politician with no experience on how to govern 100 million people.
October 20th, 2020 Stackoverflow podcast

Move slow and fix things.
7:44 PM · Oct 26, 2020 tweet

2021

2022

As an industry we've been pushing: Automate. Automate. Automate.
We should have been saying: Understand. Understand. Understand. Because if you understand what you're doing, you can automate if you want to.
Automation is the serialization of understanding
9:07 PM · Apr 17, 2022 tweet

Usage matures products faster than hype does.
6:43 PM · Mar 13, 2022 tweet

2023

Hype cycles don't last long when people understand how things actually work.
5:28 PM · Jan 24, 2023 tweet

Done is the best metric.
6:56 PM · Sep 9, 2023 tweet

Crypto

A while back I met a self-proclaimed bro who spends all his time literally destroying the world looking for coins.
The funny thing about it all, he never bought anything with the coins, but kept collecting them as if his life depended on it.
9:58 AM · Oct 3, 2021 tweet

The world has a gambling problem and we keep trying to find ways to legitimize it.
4:48 PM · Jan 5, 2022 tweet

Cryptocurrency is gaslighting the entire tech industry.
6:45 PM · Jan 25, 2022 tweet

Videos

Pace setters (marathon example)

Keynote: Reflections - KubeCon Nov. 2019

all of us are just pace setters...
it's not about where you rank on the contribution list...
it's not about how big your sponsorship is...
you come in, you help set the pace and it's ok to step aside for a moment and make room for the next person to push the thing forward...
you can always remember that you did your part to move the whole project forward...
you will always be a part of history no matter how big or how small your contribution was...
it's not a race if we're all on the same team

On being debt-free | time/money | success | seniority

Hashiconf 2020 - Kelsey Hightower Fireside Chat

...that was a milestone when I said now I'm free I'm never going down this road again. I don't care about buying fancy clothes or shoes or watches or cars I am done with the trying to impress everybody else. I'm finished with that and that was the first milestone that lets me focus on everything else...

...once you start to understand that time is probably worth more than money, then you treat both differently...

...when I wake up I like to believe that I'm successful because of the work that I do. I like to believe that I'm successful for the value that I brought to me and others...

...it is important to share the success because I always tell people there's no way you succeed by yourself

...it's a weird definition to say I'm a senior engineer but the thing is you can be a mature engineer and be humble enough to know that it's gonna be a cycle. You're gonna be really good at stuff and they're going to be new to stuff and you should always try to go and figure out a world where you can be new to stuff. Okay that's how you're going to grow.

Be careful, not to go out and get 20 years of one-year experience. You only have a limited time to make an impact, think about using it wisely...