Episode 41: Working at Microsoft, Startups and Raising Millions at Okteto, with Ramiro Berrelleza
Working with Satya Nadella. Startup life vs. corporate behemoths. Sharing what he looks for when hiring.
What do startups like Okteto look for when hiring? Are they a good option for bootcamp grads? (spoiler: maybe not).
Ramiro Berrelleza shares his personal journey into tech, along with insight he’s gleaned over several decades in the industry.
In Episode 41 of the Exponential Growth show, Ramiro talks about:
Growing up in Mexico and learning to code.
Getting recruited by Microsoft.
Working with Satya Nadella (now the Microsoft CEO).
Moving on to startups, and starting his own with friends.
Actionable advice for people moving into tech.
Episode 41 Transcript
[00:00:57] James Hudnall: Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Ramiro Berrelleza. Now before founding Octeto, Ramiro worked as a software developer at companies big and small, from Microsoft to Elastic Box, a startup that was eventually acquired by CenturyLink. Ramiro, welcome to Exponential Growth.
[00:01:11] Ramiro Berrelleza: Hi, James. Thank you for having me. Excited to be, with you today.
[00:01:15] James Hudnall: Yeah. Excited to dive into your story, Ramiro. And we were talking a little bit before we hit the record button, where if I had a normal conversation on the show, it would be to explore a career transformation, most often from a non traditional background. And I think I understand with the little homework that I've done, you have more of a traditional background, but I also find that many traditional stories aren't actually traditional. You've got a lot of nuance along the way. And so I would love to really dive into yours before we get to Okteto and the company that you founded. So why don't you take us back to growing up in Mexico?
[00:01:46] Ramiro Berrelleza: Yeah, no, happy to. So I was born in Mexico in the city of Guadalajara. I actually lived there most of my life. I moved to the U. S. when I was like 23, 24. So in the very early days, like the 80s in Mexico, technology took a while to catch up. I was probably five or six when I started to realize, hey, video games exists, right?
[00:02:07] Whether it was because of an arcade or because of like Friends. And that was kind of like my first touch point with technology was like, go from traditional, sports, TV, movies, all those things to like this more interactive way of Oh, it's really cool. Is this entertainment?
[00:02:22] It's interactive. That happened. And roughly at the same time, maybe a couple of years later. my dad back then used to work at a bank and in Mexico, the banks were one of the first kind of adopters of like computers as part of business. So I remember like my dad used to take me every now and then his office and having access to computers back then was kind of like this mind blowing experience for me and my brother.
[00:02:44] And keep in mind that back then computers meant kind of spreadsheets, uh, black and white um, screens. So a lot of this. Playing around. We used to do was just clicking, printing things, but even back then, just this transformational ability of tech of taking input and then creating something new on the other side is something that I found a fascinating and it really caught me.
[00:03:10] And from then on, a lot of what I did around hobbies around studying all the way to kind of choosing, high school and then my degree, they just kind of took me on this path of tech. And that's, that's been my life pretty much ever since.
[00:03:26] James Hudnall: I think I heard another conversation you did that you started to tinker with embedded systems and that may have ultimately helped you land the role with Microsoft that I don't want to jump ahead, but I am curious, where did that passion maybe come from?
[00:03:37] Ramiro Berrelleza: that was actually very, it's a very interesting story I took like a gap year between high school and college. and in that gap year, when I was trying to figure out what to do I was staying with some family here in the US and one day I was at this Barnes and Nobles in Cleveland, Ohio, back when, physical books was still a thing.
[00:03:54] And I bought this book on web programming, web and was one of the Reilly books on like dynamic. Programming for the web, and it was like, HTML, CSS, early PHP. Uh, so that's how I got started into coding. So like websites, like geocities, all these things. Then when I came back to Mexico, I started studying, my CS degree. That school at first kind of taught you kind of more like the low level, C++ assembly languages. Uh, before we got into the cool web stuff. So when I was doing that one of my friends approached me about kind of like entering this competition on Microsoft, which was focused on embedded devices and it was something we'd never done before, but my friends have studied, electrical engineering.
[00:04:37] And they needed somebody to code. I was like, okay. I was like, how hard can it be? And I know how to code for the web, naively. How hard can it be to do like devices? It must be the same thing. It's the same language. You can run C++ early .NET. I figured it would be the same. It wasn't. But it was very interesting because this project, this competition was sponsored by Microsoft.
[00:04:57] Which back then, this is before Android, before iPhone, right? Microsoft was the premier provider of embedded systems. Windows C E was very proud to use on automotive airplanes, much places. So as we discovered, this was really interesting because we went from coding for the web to learning dot net for embedded devices. And that was really exciting to me because it was kind of one of this another kind of wow moment. We're like, Oh, wait, so you can code for more than just for computers. And this kind of opened this world of like, IOT and kind of on the field, which is something back then we're working on this project to create smart water sensors to detect flow and then be able to detect if there was a leak based on flow changes, very engineering wise not very business-oriented. but that's kind of what started to direct me into like, yeah, I want to build tech. Uh, I want to go away from just websites into this new world, 20 years ago of using tech across all these different business dimensions. And funny enough, like learning. .NET also set me on this path that eventually ended up with me joining Microsoft.
[00:06:10] Because through these competitions, we kind of, I don't know, that kind of got into the radar of recruiters. And then a few of my friends and I got recruited to join Microsoft. And because we kind of had invested this in NET, that kind of make it easier for us. And I went from embedded devices in Guadalajara to now a couple of years later.
[00:06:31] Working on Azure at Microsoft in Seattle, which, we went from embedded devices to automation for cloud services, which is wild. Uh, back then it didn't feel like that big of a jump. Now, when I think about it, I was like, Oh my God, that's like three different worlds. But back then it just kind of makes sense.
[00:06:50] And as you said, a lot of this journey is I've never linear and what you learn in one thing helps you for the next. And it's really hard to predict until you look at it. Kind of with the vantage point of time.
[00:07:02] James Hudnall: Yeah. And maybe specifically going from Mexico and then relocating to the States. I think I heard you say in earlier conversation, you know, you had this mentality of why not? Let's do it for a year. Worst case, you can always come back if things don't work out. And I think it's probably obvious, Ramiro, in hindsight, that things certainly did work out for you, but I'm curious, do you just naturally have this attitude and this outlook on life, which no doubt has served you well, or was that developed?
[00:07:25] Ramiro Berrelleza: Uh, no it's, it's something that I, it wasn't, it wasn't really planned, but it, it is, it is an outlook in life that I've used many times and it has served me well so far. Moving to the States was one of them. Moving eventually from, from big company and from working at Microsoft in Seattle to the Bay Area to work in a tiny startup like ElasticBox that you mentioned.
[00:07:46] I was employee number four or five. So was a big jump for me. I know when I think of this, I've always kind of used that outlook of like, Hey, what's the worst thing that could happen? Like, Hey if, if I don't like it, there's always, you know, I could always go back to Mexico and my family will take me back if the startup doesn't work as like, Hey, I can always go back to Microsoft.
[00:08:07] I left a good impression. I'm sure I can get my job back. And I've, I've been using that, when we decided to quit our jobs and start our current company, Octeto. The same kind of like outlook is something that's been particularly helpful as a founder because you're always taking these risks and they have to be calculated and you're not doing like crazy, like I'm going to start like I have no idea, but I want to build like a nuclear reactor.
[00:08:27] No, it's more calculated. Hey, I know X. I have an idea of how to get to like, you know, 5x. Okay, let's try it. And if it doesn't work, okay, then you iterate. That has helped me build a certain resiliency or like lack of fear of like, "Oh, what if it doesn't work?" And that is something that when I mentor, you know, younger engineers or founders, to me is one of the best skills you can have because that just opens the doors to anything, right?
[00:08:56] Especially now with the web. We live in a world that is like a lot less centralized. Like when I was younger, I had to move from Mexico to the U. S. to pursue a tech career because Mexico back then didn't have much of a tech scene. There was some, but not great. Now that's not the case. Like I have friends who have founded, YC backed companies from Mexico.
[00:09:14] They're not moving. They're building their teams there. So having this mentality of hey, what's the worst thing that could happen? Uh, you know, if it doesn't work out, okay, I'll go back to what was working before. It's super useful. And you know, it's something nobody ever asked me before. It's a really good question.
[00:09:30] And yeah, back then I remember very vividly, I was like, yeah, do I want to go to the U. S. Do I work for this big company? And I was like, I don't know, should I? And then I was like, okay, yeah, what's the worst that had happened? I'll quit in six months and go back. And you know, that was like 15 years ago.
[00:09:45] So as you said, it didn't work out for me in many different ways.
[00:09:48] James Hudnall: I just love that mindset and it, there, there are so many parallels with, your story and those trying to execute a career transition. Maybe they didn't find tech early on in their lives like you did, but to your point, no matter what they're doing. You can always go back and I can certainly say that, I used to work on boats and now I'm very fortunate to have landed a role at LinkedIn, which if you had asked me that five years ago, Ramiro and not in my wildest dreams, what I have been able to paint that picture.
[00:10:13] But when I finally did muster the courage to do that, I was like, I can always come back here if things go completely wrong. And it's funny once you're willing to burn those proverbial ships, how, I don't know if destiny grabs you and just shows you the way, but it seems you find your calling, more often than not,
[00:10:27] Ramiro Berrelleza: I agree 100 percent and something that I and congrats, by the way, on LinkedIn, that's an amazing place to work at. One thing that, and you're right, is this career changes is I think people think they're bigger than they really is, because I think we all tend to underestimate our experience. And that's something I tell people who are changing careers.
[00:10:48] It's yeah, you're changing industries. You might go from you're You know, manufacturing to software, you might go from like traditional. My partner, she went from traditional marketing on like physical goods, like shampoos and, and, you know, that kind of thing, like to product marketing at software. And anyway, it's a tough transition, but what I always tell people is like, Hey, but you have skills , this is not you starting from zero. You bring a lot a lot of what we do is not just tech specific. It's around project management, it's around communications, it's around prioritization, it's about understanding the customer, those things are not tech specific.
[00:11:27] So when I see people who change careers, and I get a chance to talk to them and say, Hey, remember that you are bringing a lot of value to this thing. You're bringing a perspective and a set of experiences that nobody else has. And those are like super valuable. Especially as tech becomes more prominent and we're building for everybody.
[00:11:46] Like going back to my story, 20 years ago, computers were niche. They were like for very specific people who like to tinker with these things. They were hard to use. They were not easy to find. This is not the world. Everybody has a smartphone. We all interact with tech multiple times per day.
[00:12:02] So having more people from diverse backgrounds is a net gain for every team. And that's something that I find very exciting and like seeing things to change, to enable this more and more, make it easier and create this alternative paths. It's amazing. It's a net gain for everybody.
[00:12:17] James Hudnall: Yeah, no, I could not agree more. And I love that, that take now take us back to your time at Microsoft. What was it like working under Satya
[00:12:24] Ramiro Berrelleza: when I joined, uh, Balmer was still the CEO. Satya was actually the, I think it was the GM of my team. So I was very lucky. That when I joined Microsoft, I joined at the, at this kind of like juncture point when Balmer, which, you know, gets a lot of bad crap, but one of the best things he did was he made this memo on Hey, we're betting all on the cloud.
[00:12:48] Microsoft is going to the cloud. We missed the web. We kind of missed the mobile revolution. We're betting on the cloud. And it benefited me personally because I was lucky enough to be in one of the teams that then became core to the company. And that was Azure. When I joined Azure, it was called NET Services or something like that.
[00:13:07] I forgot. It was kind of a Microsoft y name. And then when Satya kind of started to then he was the GM. And it was very interesting because, big companies are great at building things. They're good at process.
[00:13:21] They're good at like, predictability. They're good at like, getting things done. Sometimes you feel like they're slow because they're serving gigantic markets, but they ship like, you know, Microsoft back then were shipping windows back then as a physical, DVD on a schedule. There was no choice that you have to print the DVDs by this date.
[00:13:38] And they were really good at like prioritization and cutting things down and making sure that, the essential was shipped and make sure you're working on the main thing. So that was really interesting. And I learned a lot. I think Satya was especially interesting to see. Because, he came from Microsoft, he was not an outsider, but he always kept that outsider view of understanding that there was more to the world than just Windows.
[00:14:03] I think that was like the previous leadership's biggest issue was they came from Windows, they built Windows, they built Microsoft, they built Office. So they always assumed that was the world because to a point it was, right? Like Everybody was using Windows. Everybody uses Excel. Those are like global standards, but the new world was not like that.
[00:14:23] And that's what Satya did really well. And this is something that all companies need to learn from small and large is when you have some success, you need people in your team to keep your eyes out and understand that success will never be forever, right? No matter how big your monopoly is, at some point, something else is going to disrupt you.
[00:14:45] It can be yourself, and I think what Satya did really well was understanding that, hey, Cloud's coming, cloud is not Windows, cloud is Mixed Workloads, it's Linux, it's Oracle, it's Windows, it's Edge. And then he kind of started pushing for that so that when he became CEO, which was actually very surprising internally, it was like, okay, who expected this person to be CEO? He was able to execute this decision and really like, besides the gains and like the stock price or whatever, just like the switch they did on such a massive scale. It's amazing. It took years, of course, but like Microsoft is a very different company from what it was 10 years ago. Now they're like, they kind of regained their developer cred.
[00:15:27] They regained this kind of hey this company that ships fast. A lot of things that they used to be in the past. So it was very exciting to be part of that. I was very lucky. Uh, and I'm glad I learned a lot. And I got to chat with Satya a couple of times, which is very exciting. Uh, before he was like this big thing.
[00:15:44] Going back to the career changes, I, if possible, I think spending a couple of years at a large company, kind of like what you're doing at LinkedIn, it's a great place to learn about the business. Like you might not learn too much about like the newest technologies, but you will learn a lot about process business and execution, which is super important.
[00:16:04] James Hudnall: Yeah, I want to ask you about the, I guess your take on working at a startup versus working at a more traditional larger company like Microsoft. But before we do that, when we're talking about successful companies, originally, I wanted to ask you, maybe other founders that you look up to.
[00:16:18] But I think I understand now you have more of this framework of respecting teams that are put together as opposed to individuals. And. I'm curious if you always felt that way or maybe if earlier in life, maybe you had, I don't want to call them idols, but for lack of a better word, idols, things that you aspire to become.
[00:16:34] Ramiro Berrelleza: It's funny, I think part of growing on what back then was kind of like the outside of tech, you know, growing up in America for the longest time, I never thought about who created tech. Like my assumption when playing a video game, when playing like computer software was, Hey, is this massive thing that this very special people make that, you know, Nobody else can be like them.
[00:16:59] Like when I was young, I was like, Oh, I could not think of like, Oh, I want to make a video game. I'd be like, no, it's super hard. It's impossible for someone like me. So I never thought in terms of the people who made it, it's always kind of this more like thing. Uh, I think that translated to like, as I grew up, kind of this, this position I have to think in terms of teams and not necessarily the people. Who pick things who like lead this effort because it's always felt like it's more of a team effort. That being said, there are always people that I admire and, I admire a lot of the early creators of tools, who designed, uh, what are the names? I always forget the names, but the creators of C language and of Unix, uh, Cunningham and, uh, what is the book?
[00:17:41] I forget, but, uh, those kind of foundational pioneers who were able to design these very simple things that we use today, like that to me, those are kind of like the people I aspire to, to be one day, like the person that created curl, it's one person who designed this thing that continues to be useful.
[00:18:00] The people that designed TCP IP, they build this protocol for a world where we have like a hundred computers in the world and that protocol still works now that we have billions of devices, those to me are like some of the most amazing people. I think the early people that made Apple and changed so much early Microsoft as well, they just changed the, the idea of computers as something that is accessible to everybody, I tend to look more up for the results and kind of like the vision and less about the individuals because I think it's a, it's a team effort and nowadays, especially we're no longer in those days where one person can ship an entire product, even in small companies, right?
[00:18:43] Like two, three people, uh, there's a lot of power in small teams. Don't get me wrong, but it's in a team and the team dynamics. Yes. It's not really an individual.
[00:18:50] James Hudnall: No, I love that framework. So back to the question of working at a startup versus working at a company like Microsoft, I think eventually you move on and I guess both I'm certainly interested in your own perspective and your own experience in that, but also keeping in mind the listener out there that maybe they're blessed with the choice between picking a startup and a big company like Microsoft.
[00:19:12] What would you say to that person would be based on your own experience?
[00:19:16] Ramiro Berrelleza: Yeah, that's a very interesting question. It's a hard one to answer. There's so many things to put in in the scale. I think what I always tell people is those are two very different like gigs. Like building, like being part of a team at a large company has a different set of goals and a different set of like rewards, than working for a smaller startup, like the financial rewards.
[00:19:44] The financial rewards of the startup can be astronomical, but you're also playing a game of chance. Like very few startups get to the point where anybody makes any money. That's the game. And some people want to play it.
[00:19:55] Others don't, but that's something that we all have to be very aware of. Larger companies, you're going to get a monthly salary. They tend to pay above market. They value talent. So that's the first thing you have to figure out is like. How much are you really motivated by money? How much do you need it?
[00:20:09] If your family situation requires you to have a stable salary, I was lucky enough that I, I was able to take this risk and, you know, have less of a salary for a few years because my family situation allow me to do it. Not everybody can. And that's something very important. And there's no shame on this.
[00:20:26] I know there's a lot of like people on X now that come on the web talking about like, Oh like, you know, as if being a founder is this kind of like this virtuous path. No, it's a path you choose because there's like an economical benefit and other benefits, but it's something important to keep in mind. The other one is, starting things from zero, you're joining a small team. You have to live in a world of uncertainty. Which I like, I like a lot. Actually, I love like coming up with solutions, coming up with processes, coming up with like new things of solving an issue. Even when I was working at large companies, I was always one of those people who kind of got in trouble sometimes because I just wanted to unblock things that will do things, maybe not necessarily following processes, kind of hack things and get them done.
[00:21:11] Big companies are not like that. Big companies are good for. process. They're good for building at a very high scale. and one of the things that I like a lot about big companies is that they allow you to develop very deep expertise. Like working on startups, especially if you're like an early engineer, you're going to be touching 20, 30 different things.
[00:21:33] You know, I've learned everything from like, frontend backend, ops, DevOps. Now as a founder, finance, HR, some legal, fundraising, sales, right? You touch everything because that's the nature of a small company where you have to fill different roles. When you're in a company like Microsoft, like Facebook, Amazon, these kind of large companies, I mean, Atlassian when I was there, you're hired to perform a task.
[00:21:59] And that task tends to be singular, very well delineated. Most people, I think thrive in those scenarios where, a good company will give you some room to grow, to improve things, but not like the, Hey, here's a white paper. Tell me how to solve this massive problem.
[00:22:18] So when, when people think about startups versus big companies, I think this is probably the most important question you have to ask is that, Hey, what do I, what brings me joy at the end of the day?
[00:22:29] Is this kind of more certain we're working together towards this very clear, massive goal, or do you want to be more on like the, Hey, we're inventing the future. There'll be some wins. There'll be some loses. Uh, we'll have to make things up as we go. It'll be rough, but you know, eventually we succeed. It'll be, It'll be really cool. They're both very meaningful paths. Like I remember like one of the first kind of like realization of Microsoft was that at some point it fixed this bug for a security release. And the team was like, okay, well, congrats tomorrow. That's going to be installed on 500 million PCs.
[00:23:03] Cause it was one of back when like, you know, update Tuesdays. And I still remember like the feeling of like, okay, crap. Like I hope it's going to work because the, that impact is massive, right?
[00:23:13] When you are startups is more like, Hey, this bug is going to make one customer happy, or it's going to maybe land us three more customers. It's also amazing. It's more immediate. You know who you're talking about is this customer. I talked to them yesterday. I'm going to be able to talk to them today and tell them, Hey, we fixed this. So it's a different kind of like feedback cycle. It's a different kind of reaction. Uh, if you have a choice, it's really what you value.
[00:23:38] And in my case, I've actually done both because at some points in my life, I prefer one over the other. You know, The big company, the singular task, then you're like, okay, this is, I don't, I want something more like broad. Okay. Go to startups. Then you're like, okay, this is too much for me. Maybe, I'm no longer liking it because I want to do other things in my life.
[00:23:58] Then you go back to the big company. And I've done that a few times where I go from like small company to big company to small company. I like the change, but it's definitely like different skills is definitely different goals. And that is, I think what the people really need to consider, but I mean, I think we're also blessed in tech that, most jobs are pretty good.
[00:24:17] There's some bad companies out there, but overall, when we take risks, even the risk is moderate because nowadays the startups pay typically well, not like, you know, Facebook, Amazon like, but they pay well enough. When I was starting startups, again, 10, 15 years ago, there was a huge gap between like startup salaries and like big company salaries.
[00:24:39] It was much more of a gamble. Also, like I was on a work visa, which also was a different level of gamble, but even that there are ways to mitigate. But, other than that, you can't go wrong with one or the other and you try it out. And going back to what you were saying before, try it out and if it doesn't work out, quit or find another job while working on that one and go until you find the one that really like fulfills you and where you can thrive.
[00:25:04] James Hudnall: the decision to leave Microsoft, was that a desire to maybe take on more risk and to have more of a, quicker feedback cycle to your point?
[00:25:12] Ramiro Berrelleza: Not really. I mean, that came later. That is, it was, it was funny and, and this has happened to me several times as well, which is, I wasn't pursuing startups. It was a dream of mine. I've always heard of like, you know, this mythical Silicon Valley, San Francisco. And I knew that I wanted to work there.
[00:25:28] Once I'm in the USA, hey, at some point I want to work there. What happened was that one of my friends at Microsoft still a friend to this date. He moved to the Bay area to work for another company. And then he started a company with some of our common friends. Like we were from Microsoft who moved to the Bay Area.
[00:25:46] And then one day he reached out and said, Hey, I'm doing a company. I think you should come join us. We just raised some money. Why don't you fly down for the weekend, meet everybody and let me know what you think. And it was kind of like. Really funny. I had like this really fun life in Seattle. I had a good job, a good team.
[00:26:04] I was very happy at Microsoft. I have really good group of friends. Everything was going well. But then I was like, yeah, sure, let's go for the weekend. They'll pay for my flight. Why not? Uh, met the team in a house in, this proverbial house in, I think it was in Sunnyvale or in Mountain View. Met the team and I was like, yeah, this is really exciting.
[00:26:24] I was single at the time as well. I didn't have much commitments. It was easy for me. And I was like, yeah, you know what? It'd be fun to work with my friends on this new thing. Why not? And I really didn't think it through. Like, I didn't think in terms of like, okay, so it'd be less of a salary.
[00:26:39] What's going to happen to my equity awards at Microsoft? What's going to happen to my promotion? Whatever. For me, it was just kind of like, it felt right at the moment. And then that happened. And what's funny is that pretty much every other Job change and I've been very lucky on this has been kind of the same way where at some point, you're in a good situation and then something better just pops up some opportunity and you're like, okay, yeah, it looks interesting.
[00:27:06] Let's take this opportunity. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't work. But that has been for me. And then, you know, as I was saying earlier in retrospective, yes, like you have to measure and you see where you thrive and I've learned through the years. But in those early years was more like, Hey, this new opportunity came in low risk. Worst case, you know, again, you know, a year, you know, I'll commit to a year. If it doesn't work out, I'll do something else. And that's what took me to Elastic Box. Then Atlassian, the same thing happened. I got a good opportunity there. I met somebody that recruited me. And then from Atlassian to Okteto was the same thing.
[00:27:43] Actually, two people that I met at Elastic Box. Pablo and Ramon became really good friends. And then one day we were just like, Hey, we should work together again. It seems like a fun thing to do. Oh yeah, why not? And then a few months later we decided, yeah, let's do this, let's quit our jobs and start this company.
[00:27:59] And that was about, again, four or five years ago. So it's all been kind of this very opportunistic. It comes up, you have to take some risk. And I've taken risks. Like in terms of like finance, in terms of like workload, You know with Okteto we had no idea what we were gonna build. So we jumped into this huge blank page like hey, I have a great team The three of us we know we're good. We know we can ship stuff. Let's figure it out.
[00:28:23] What do we want to solve?
[00:28:25] James Hudnall: Yeah.
[00:28:26] Ramiro Berrelleza: it was kind of risky, but it worked out for me. And I think it's, it's important, for those in tech to, can I always keep your eyes open? And, when those opportunities present, especially when it comes to like, Hey, building a good network, making sure that, you stay in touch with your friends, you know, as, as other opportunities open
[00:28:45] I think that is the secret power of the Silicon Valley is this referral system where like people want to work with people they like and they kind of pull each other company through company, whether you're a founder or employee or you just work somewhere cool and you want your friends to join you, that is something that it's another thing I always advise young entrepreneurs or just young engineers Hey, build that network and make sure you stay in touch because that's always a great source of leads or even, jobs. Sometimes some of my friends became investors and then they can invest your company or you eventually, have a good exit and you can invest in your friends, companies, all those things help a lot.
[00:29:23] But it all comes from like building this, you know, real friendship. You have to be real. Real friendships. And then through that, a lot of opportunities can come up.
[00:29:32] James Hudnall: I just love the perspective that you shared in terms of not, I guess, letting the golden handcuffs prevent you from taking what many might otherwise perceive as a risk. Because when I reflect back on my own, pivot, I absolutely over considered, I guess, the opportunity costs of the 401k match foregone while I was doing the bootcamp and whatnot.
[00:29:51] And in hindsight, Ramiro, it was a no brainer for me to execute this career transition. Yeah. Many years before I actually did. So again, I guess I fall more on the other end of that spectrum. I am working through that and it is so refreshing to hear a perspective like yours. And again, we're returning to that theme of why not?
[00:30:08] Let's try it. We can always go back to something else if we fail.
[00:30:12] Ramiro Berrelleza: Yeah, that's interesting. I kind of went through the same at some point with the small companies, less benefits, less salaries. And going back to, we all have to be realistic of like where, what our boundaries are. I think that's the most important thing is really understanding, you know, honest and truthful to oneself on like, hey, why do I value?
[00:30:31] What motivates me? Because a lot of people will say money is not a motivator, but then if you look at their lives, it's no, it is. And it's not wrong. It's like, yeah, you want to be able to provide, you want a bigger house or you want to change your car or other things. So you wouldn't like to eat out in like good places like travel.
[00:30:47] It's fair. There's nothing wrong with that. Others are like, you know what? I really enjoy working on like new things and I'm okay with taking less of a salary as long as I'm working on like building edge tech. Uh, you know, just to put two examples, I think it's super important as we all. Go through life is this is very valuable to understand your own motivations, and I think that is what you should do, but you should like over index on what motivates you and you know, like if it's, if it's career progression, if it's a better salary, that's fine, then find those spots.
[00:31:16] For me, it's been kind of like this hey, I want to tinker with new things. I want to explore and I've been lucky when there is, there is luck, there's preparation, there's risk, but you don't get lucky if you don't take risks. And you have to kind of balance that. And it's, it's, it's interesting. And I think our industry rewards that a lot, this risk taking, I like the fact that at least in Silicon Valley, like if you will work for a company, it doesn't work out, there's really no downside.
[00:31:42] Nobody is going to be like, Oh, you left after six months. That's it. You'll never be able to get another job in town because everybody understands that when you take risks. Yeah, things happen. Maybe you're the wrong person fit for the company or the company is the right fit for you. So that for me is something that I value a lot of our industry.
[00:32:02] And I think it's something that is not super obvious, especially people coming from other industries. That, that this is kind of, kind of an unspoken fact, right? Like you see people who switch jobs a lot and nobody gives them like a black mark for that.
[00:32:17] James Hudnall: it's part of the culture, I guess. Now I really want to dive into the origin story of Okteto. So if you can maybe take us back to, I think it was a coffee shop you had mentioned previously with Paolo and Ramon where, you're working at these well known companies, but uh, it also sounded like, you know, each of you, separately, I think I'd come to this conclusion where you're building things to make others better at delivering their mission. And I feel like this segues perfectly into the, uh, what comes next. So I'm just, I'm lobbing you a softball there, but I want to maybe take a swing and let us know what was the origin story behind Okteto
[00:32:51] Ramiro Berrelleza: that's a very good setup. Uh, it's pretty much that. It's very funny. So I had these three good friends, Pablo and Ramon. We all met and ended up working together at ElasticBox for a while. And then we all, as you said, we all went our different paths.
[00:33:04] I went to Atlassian, Pablo went back to Spain to a startup that eventually got acquired by Docker. Uh, Ramon went to Google, he wanted to work at a big company and he went to Google, he was working at, I think, YouTube and then Mailbox or vice versa. But in, in this kind of like, it's funny how these things happen, we all kind of got to the same point where after a few years of working at these companies, we're all kind of like, okay, yeah, we did this.
[00:33:33] We work for this kind of well known companies. It's okay, it's great. We like it, but we're going to do something else. And the three of us kind of reached that point about the same time. Cause we started talking, we should do some things together. It'd be fun. You know, We liked working last time.
[00:33:47] Why don't we try it again? And then, yeah, one day I was like, okay, we've been talking about this for a while. Are we going to do it or not? Because we have to start making plans if we're going to do it. Otherwise I want to focus on like my own thing. Like, Okay. And then it was like, yes. Okay. Let's do it. You know, We're committed.
[00:34:03] We're going to do this in X months. We're going to quit our jobs and start Okteto. And it wasn't even called Okteto it was we're going to start something. And those months, which I think was almost like 10, 8 to 10 months. What we did was kind of like once a week, we had this kind of like long Zoom call scheduled to just brainstorm.
[00:34:26] And we had all these ideas we were evaluating, right? We were like, In search for problem and, and, you know, back then it was like, okay, it was very funny because we were like, okay, we've built a lot of developer tools in our careers. We don't want to do that. We want to do something new. So we started thinking of like, oh, you know what?
[00:34:42] IOT is new, it's hard. It's exciting. I had some background on that. Yeah, let's try that. And we ran with that for a few weeks, months. We're like, you know what? Not really. Oh, VR. VR is coming. We have this friend who's like really into VR. Let's talk to him and see what we can do there. And then we try different things.
[00:35:00] At some point, we're like looking into like smart retail, like augmented reality for stores and we even joined this incubator and we were there for a few hours and then we realized this is not for us. We have no idea of retail. We need some.
[00:35:13] And then eventually we kept circling and then we realized, Hey, actually what we know how to do well is developer tools. Why are we running away from that? We have this expertise we've built over many years, we have a lot of insight. We have no idea how to run a company. We have no idea how to build a startup. Let's take the risk on those areas and let's read the risk by focusing on problems that we understand very well. And as we were brainstorming, uh, we reached what you're saying, which is, Hey, we're really good at building these tools. We've built tools internally at all these companies. To enable other teams to be faster and to increase the velocity. Let's focus on that area.
[00:35:57] And Pablo and I especially were very plugged into the container Kubernetes microservices world at that time. And we kind of knew, hey, this big thing is coming called Kubernetes. It's going to be the next big thing on cloud computing. But if that happens, there's no tooling for it. It's kind of a, there isn't a huge opportunity to like build tools for developers to be able to harness the power of this new wave of cloud computing.
[00:36:24] Let's do that. And we both had done things like that before the previous wave. And it was like, okay, let's do it. And it was super helpful because, for the first few years we were building something for ourselves. Like it was Hey, what did I need? Two years ago to be effective and that's how Oktero came to be like, we realized that, hey, there's this huge problem around Developers having a lot of friction. Developers having to deal with a lot of stuff just to get their job done.
[00:36:57] So let's build tools To reduce the cognitive load to reduce the toil And to give them a fast inner loop, which is, Hey, as a developer, I want to change code and I want to see the results of that code change on a way that is realistic, as fast as possible. And, you know, with our solution, things that normally take 10, 15 minutes now take two, three seconds.
[00:37:23] Uh, so that is kind of a huge value for developers. It's something we knew we had a very strong conviction because we were developers. And that is what allowed us to just jump head first into this problem, start building technology in the first few years were early for the market, which is ideal because you want that time to find the early adopters to build kind of first version of your solution to experiment because in an ideal world, if you can have a mature solution when the market catches up to you,
[00:37:56] Then you're like just going super fast. And that's what, you know, if you look historically is what has happened. Like most companies became famous once this wave hits. But if you look at their history, you've seen the founders or maybe the company, they have been working on that for a long time before that.
[00:38:12] James Hudnall: Yeah. No, the timing works
[00:38:13] Ramiro Berrelleza: yeah. And that is it. And that is the toughest part of a startup is working.
[00:38:16] Those is the toughest and also the most fun because you're working on this. Ideally, this problem you're very passionate about. It almost feels like you have this secret, the secret that nobody else knows. Like, Oh, I know this is coming and you don't, but you will see in a year you'll see I'm right.
[00:38:32] So it's kind of exciting. You're working on this kind of like thing that might come, uh, but it also can be frustrating because people tell you like, you're crazy. That makes no sense why you're working on that. So as a founder, you have to balance that conviction, feedback, resilience, and we did it. And I'm very excited with it because I think we managed to grow the company.
[00:38:51] Kind of go through that phase. And now that there is a bigger market for what we do around, we call this developer experience automation. Uh, now we're seeing the results of like more and more companies coming to us to buy our products and to get the value that we provide to their engineering teams.
[00:39:07] James Hudnall: Yeah, I'd like to pull on that thread a little bit. And my understanding is Okteto kind of sits on top of the Kubernetes layer, and it's almost like an abstraction layer, such that the developer doesn't have to worry about that. Can you describe what Kubernetes is to a listener that may be unfamiliar?
[00:39:20] Ramiro Berrelleza: For those of you unfamiliar, Kubernetes is an open source project that is started at Google. And at its core, its mission is to help orchestrate cloud resources at high scale and at high density. The problem that solves is that before Kubernetes, cloud computing was all about VMs on the cloud.
[00:39:44] You want to get some workload, you have to provision a VM. You put your code there and then you run your workload. It works, but it's expensive and it's slow. Since VMs existed, then this company called Docker funded by Solomon Hikes created this technology called containers or made it more popular, which are like, I'm going to oversimplify this, but they're like VMs, but much smaller with a smaller security footprint.
[00:40:12] So Kubernetes is the next level. Kubernetes is the tool that allows you to run this containers at a very high scale. This is as more and more companies build software, as well as more companies use the cloud to run their software, the need for this kind of tooling grew because, if you have a company like Microsoft where you have thousands of developers and you're going to deploy, and I'm not kidding, millions of applications per year, you need something to automate that you don't want to do it by hand.
[00:40:45] So that's what Kubernetes does. At different scales, small companies use it for the same automation principles, different goals, but that's it. What we provide is a layer on top of that because Kubernetes is complicated. It's a complex tool. It does a lot of things for many different people. And part of our mission with Okteto is we want to make the lives of developers easier.
[00:41:07] And our thesis is that developers don't want to deal with this complexity 80 percent of the time. They just want to get their job done. And the job done for most developers is: I want to ship value to my customers. I don't care about infrastructure. I don't care about cloud and VMs. My customer has a problem and I want to solve that problem through technology. So we provide that layer to automate all this for teams, so that teams like yours can go faster. And in our case is by giving you this platform that automates Kubernetes. And for example, allows you to do things like give everybody in your team a copy of your entire application for them to develop, test, tinker.
[00:41:56] And then by the time they get to production, they have high conviction that the stuff that we're working on works for real.
[00:42:04] James Hudnall: Yeah, no very cool. And now maybe I'd ask you to put on your founder's hat, not that you haven't had it on already. I'm checking out your website now, and I'm particularly looking at the career section and I'm blown away, remote first, unlimited PTO, family leave. I'll work from home stipend, health benefits, everything you could ask for.
[00:42:22] And my favorite Romiro is the job title currently open is "your dream job", which I absolutely love the ambiguity in that. So all of that to say to the listeners out there. That are maybe they're executing a career transition now. Maybe they're self taught. Maybe they're in a bootcamp or just graduated.
[00:42:38] Let's say that the story behind Okteto resonates with them. They want to work at a company like yours. What do you look for in terms of a, maybe a non traditional applicant or maybe just an applicant writ large?
[00:42:49] Ramiro Berrelleza: That's a good question. So when it comes to us or other startups, right, what do we look for? Uh, the first thing and, and this comes especially for remote companies, and I think this is kind of underestimated is good communication skills. Working remotely is hard, because especially our company is both remote and we try to be async, which, for the longest time, I'm going to be frank, I thought it was the same. And then through experience, I realized it's not the same because you cannot be remote in the same time zone. And that's very different from being remote on a team that lives across, like our case, seven or eight different time zones.
[00:43:30] James Hudnall: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Ramiro Berrelleza: I always look for that for skills that people who are able to like clearly communicate in writing or, you know, face to face. Definitely there's a minimum bar of technical skills, depending on the role. If you're applying for like a backend engineering role, we have a certain, okay, we need to know these technologies.
[00:43:47] You need to like have this experience because the startups, especially the small startups like ours, there's not a lot of room for mentoring because you don't have that many people. So you're always looking to like kind of build a foundation of like people who have done it before.
[00:44:01] So for instance, and something that may be controversial, but I think for people coming out of like bootcamps: early stage startups might not be the best place. Because if you don't have a lot of expertise on, say, developing, you wouldn't be able to join a team that's going to have the time and the space to learn and to grow. A startup with five people or like 5 engineers might not be that place because startups are always running against time, right? You need to go fast. You need to ship value quickly to find that market fit.
[00:44:31] So that's something to consider. It depends on the stage and the programs. I've seen some startups were building now programs to kind of like mentor and they advertise them as such. Say, hey, we have the senior engineers, they want to mentor. Okay, join us like or join these roles. I've seen a lot of like companies open certain roles around like customer success around like the technical writing that could be good stepping stones.
[00:44:55] Working at startups is all about solving problems. So kind of having that knack of like not being blocked by "I don't know what to do." I think that's something that's very important to thrive in startups is having that, oh yeah, I'll figure it out.
[00:45:09] I've never looked for people who know everything, actually that tends to be a red flag. People who are not willing to admit they don't know something, they tend to take feedback bad...
[00:45:18] They tend to be not that good because if you already think you're good, you're not going to look for ways to improve yourself. I actually look for people to be like, "Hey, you know what I don't know, but you know, don't worry, I'll figure it out."
[00:45:29] In terms of what skills to develop, I think that's important to be aware of the trends and what the company is building.
[00:45:37] I always look for people who like really understand the mission. Because even if they're not on technical roles, and we have a very technical product, when we hire marketing, sales, even other roles, for me it's very important that people understand why this company needs to exist. And I highly recommend anybody who's interested in joining startups to, to do that test. Because if you don't believe this company should exist, and really like believe like, yes, I want to make sure this exists. Then that's not a good place for you because like the startups require this kind of like suspension of disbelief like, Oh, we're gonna make it happen because you're creating something from zero, right?
[00:46:20] You're going to create something that most people haven't thought about. That's the whole point that most people think, oh, that's not possible or that's not really a problem. So you really have to believe in the mission of the company. Like you're interviewing with a startup, ask the founders or the hiring person: what is the mission? Why do you think this company needs to exist? And if that doesn't really resonate with you, and this could be not necessarily because you benefit, right? It could be because, oh yeah, like I see that in the world needs, like with Instacart, I say, hey, yeah, I can see, I understand that we need an easier way to order groceries online.
[00:46:57] Yes. Even if I'm not the one ordering okay, I get why this must exist. It's super important because it makes it easier for like, You know, caregivers to order food or for the elderly or for when I'm going to school, I want like a quick lunch, it's important. I can do it in my app. If you believe in that, that is very important.
[00:47:14] That's something that I think a lot of people don't consider when they apply. And I see it a lot in our company when you see people apply and I ask and say, Hey, so what do you think about, developer velocity? Why do you think, it's important? And they were like, well, I don't know. I just want to work in tech.
[00:47:30] I'm like, okay, you know, there's a lot of tech companies. I'm sure you can find one where you like feel passionate. And that is very important because otherwise, even if you have the tech skills, even if you have, the skills for the job, if you don't believe in the mission of the company, you're not going to have a good time.
[00:47:49] James Hudnall: No, I absolutely love that. That was actionable advice to anyone out there listening, not just at a company like Okteto, but I think pretty much any that you're looking to join.
[00:47:57] And Ramiro, I know we're coming up on our time. I want to be respectful of yours before you get out of here. I would love to throw you on the hot seat. I got a few rapid fire questions to better understand your psychology. You up for it?
[00:48:07] Ramiro Berrelleza: Yeah, of course.
[00:48:08] James Hudnall: All right. First question. What does your typical morning routine look like?
[00:48:12] Ramiro Berrelleza: So, uh, I have two cats. Uh, so my morning routine is, I am woken up around 6:30, 7:00. I'm working really hard not to look at my phone early on before I would like, wake up, check my phone. Nowadays I wake up, I make coffee. Uh, I talk to my partner, we're going to have breakfast together. And then typically around 8 AM is when I either check my phone or log in to Slack and start my day.
[00:48:40] James Hudnall: All right. If money didn't exist, what do you think you would do every day with your time?
[00:48:43] Ramiro Berrelleza: I would do the same thing I do. I really like coding. Uh, I do it in my spare time still now. Uh, it's, I'm very lucky that I found this passion that I'm lucky enough that it's actually pays well in this day and age. But if I were to retire, if I had, if I have this huge exit, hopefully knock on wood and money no longer matters.
[00:49:03] I would still be like building technology. It's what I've always done. And I really like it.
[00:49:08] James Hudnall: That is my favorite answer to that question. All right. Next question. LLMs, ChatGPT everything is on the forefront right now, generative AI, and irrespective of whether or not you are using them at Okteto I am curious. How do you stay abreast of the latest trends and changes to make sure that you're staying relevant?
[00:49:28] Ramiro Berrelleza: That is really, that's a really good one. It's really hard. I read a lot. So I tend to say I'm an active user of Twitter, which has its pros and cons. I attend meetups. I think that's one of the biggest advantages of living in a tech hub. Is there's a lot of people willing to just share their knowledge for free, just to get more people to know about the cool thing they're working on.
[00:49:49] So I do that a lot, but it does require time and attention. It's hard. Like now that I'm on a, Founder, now as the company grows, I'm in the CEO role. Uh, I have to spend a lot of time kind of more on the business, go to market. I find it harder to keep up with technology. Uh, and it's definitely something that everybody needs to make time for.
[00:50:08] Cause one, one thing in our industry that no other industry has is how fast things change. LLMs were not a thing 18 months ago. It was just a blip. Like people were working on it, but nobody had a clue and now they're like everywhere and you go to a conference on anything tech adjacent? Like I had a friend who just went to the Hotspot conference last week and Hotspot was all about AI and LLMs and I went to the Google Cloud Conference, which of course was all about AI and LLM But it's just happening everywhere.
[00:50:43] And the other thing is using it. It took me a while, but now I'm using more like Bard and ChatGPT and, you know, using it gives you a sense of oh, okay. I see what's possible. I see what's fluff. I see what's actually real. And that helps me a lot, but you know, you have to have, and I think it's important to keep that skill of adopting new tools as they come and kind of give, you know, people as we all get older or busier, we all tend to think, Oh, this doesn't work. It's all been invented. That's it. I think being open to like understanding the new trends, using the new tools, adapting your workflow for the new things is very important. It's a good way. It's a good way to stay current because even if you're no longer directly working on certain tech, we're influenced by it.
[00:51:32] Like our world tech is massive. Most of the biggest. If you look at the NASDAQ or the S&P500, the first 10, 15 companies are all tech companies, so our life is impacted. So the better grasp we have of what's coming, the more informed we are, the better position we are to make decisions on like, Hey, do I want that to exist? Do I want that to not exist? Do I want to use it or do I want to avoid it? They're all fair answers, but we have to be informed.
[00:52:01] James Hudnall: Yeah. I love that. And I also love, uh, pitting the different models against each other to try to triangulate the answer that I was looking for. I've had a lot of success with that.
[00:52:10] All right. what are your thoughts on Bitcoin?
[00:52:13] Ramiro Berrelleza: I used to be a big believer in the early days. I think that we all in that world. Miscalculated the importance of governance and kind of having the central government. So now I'm less bullish. I think there's a space. I think the concept we find behind, the whole crypto makes a lot of sense. I don't know if coins is what we want to do, but I do think that in the future there will be some solutions using some of the principles we find behind cryptocurrencies. I think the decentralized decision making and removing the need for an intermediary that everybody trusts or that are forced to trust is a net gain. I just think that everybody in the world of Bitcoin and crypto, We didn't put enough attention on like the human dynamics and how people were willing to scam as quickly as possible.
[00:53:07] And that gave crypto such a bad rep. They might not recover from that, but I think there's, I think the tech has legs, We just need to figure out how to use it for good.
[00:53:19] James Hudnall: Yeah. I love that. Last question. I think I had heard you mentioned earlier that you've never worked on anything that wasn't computer related in your life. And I'm curious if you have any regrets that you didn't explore more, or maybe you would push back against that statement.
[00:53:33] Ramiro Berrelleza: Uh, no, I have no regrets because I've always been very lucky about really liking what I do. I mean, not every day- there are bad days, but overall, I've never had a job that I'm like, Oh, and I get it.
[00:53:45] Like I have friends who worked in like really hard jobs, right? And then like physical work in factories or like in offices doing work that is not creative, that is not well paid. Like I, I have tremendous respect for all of those people because those jobs are very needed. I got lucky to find this.
[00:54:02] I like it a lot. I get all pleasure. I've been doing it for what now, 20, 25 years. Professionally, uh, which sounds like a lot, but I like it. And as I said earlier, your other question I still code in my spare time and that to me is the best thing. So no, no regrets.
[00:54:19] James Hudnall: you have an amazing story. Where can people go to find out more about you to connect or maybe to follow your work?
[00:54:24] Ramiro Berrelleza: Yeah. So if you want to connect, uh, Twitter or now X. com is the best place is rberrelleza, or, octeto. com. That's our company. If you want to learn more about developer productivity, developer velocity or, you know, how to make your teams go faster, check it out.
[00:54:39] But, if you want to talk about anything from tech, food, San Francisco, uh, anything else, Twitter I'm pretty active there.
[00:54:46] James Hudnall: All right, I'll make sure to add both in the show notes and again, Ramiro, I want to thank you for coming on and sharing what has been a phenomenal journey so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing that continue to play out for you. So thank you for sharing.
[00:54:57] Ramiro Berrelleza: No thank you for the invitation, James. I really enjoyed our conversation. And I hope your audience has as much fun as I had recording this.