#021 – Kubernetes for Humans Podcast with Ramiro Berrelleza (Okteto)

Itiel Shwartz: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Kubernetes for Humans podcast. Ramiro, how are you? Thank you for joining the show. I’m very excited to have you here to talk about Kubernetes.

Ramiro Berrelleza: Thank you, Itiel. I love the name of your podcast, Kubernetes for Humans, and I’m looking forward to chatting more about what that means and how we all contribute to it.

Itiel Shwartz: Let’s do it. But first, can you share a bit about yourself? Where did you come from, what do you do, and how did you first get into computers and eventually into Kubernetes?

Ramiro Berrelleza: I’m happy to. My name is Ramiro Berrelleza, and I am the founder and CEO of Okteto, a platform for managing remote development environments on Kubernetes. I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Oakland, but I’m originally from Mexico. I grew up there and first got into computers when I was little because my dad worked at a bank. In Mexico, banks were one of the first industries to have computers. My dad would bring me and my brother to the office sometimes, and for us, it was the most exciting thing to go there, see the computers, type things on the keyboard, and watch them come up on the screen. I’ve been hooked ever since.

In high school, I started playing video games and building my own computers. By the time I got to college, it was clear that I wanted to learn more about technology, so I studied computer science. I got my degree in Mexico at Tec de Monterrey. Then, I got lucky and was recruited by Microsoft, which brought me to the U.S. My first job out of school was on the team that eventually became Azure, and that put me on the path of cloud services, containers, and eventually Kubernetes.

Itiel Shwartz: That’s quite a journey! Maybe share a bit about your time at Microsoft and what you’re currently doing. It sounds like you have a very interesting story.

Ramiro Berrelleza: It’s been a fun journey, and it’s interesting how all these pieces fit together when I look back. When I joined Microsoft, my first team was working on the .NET Framework, specifically on a team called WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). We were building libraries for the .NET Framework, focusing on new concepts at the time like SOAP, JSON, and REST. I was a QA engineer back then, working on test automation.

Soon after, Microsoft realized the importance of cloud computing and formed a new team to build the first version of Azure. I landed on the Service Bus team, which was one of the first public services of Azure. It was similar to RabbitMQ, serving as a queue for events. Moving from building SDKs to shipping globally available services was a massive paradigm shift for me, especially as a test engineer. It was fascinating to think about availability, SLAs, and testing services that millions of people use simultaneously.

This experience put me on the path of DevOps, cloud infrastructure, and services. Fast forward 15 years, after working at Microsoft, ElasticBox, and Atlassian, I’m now focused on the same challenges I encountered at the beginning of my career. As we move to containers and Kubernetes, we’re shifting from applications running on single machines to highly distributed applications. The tooling we have today isn’t great, so at Okteto, we’re flipping the script by making clusters work for developers, instead of forcing developers to mimic clusters on their local machines. We’ve been building Okteto for almost five years, and it’s been exciting to see our community and customer base grow.

Itiel Shwartz: That’s a super interesting story. I have a couple of questions before we dive into more details. You’re clearly a very technical person, so how was the transition to a CEO role? And why not stay in a more technical position, like a CTO?

Ramiro Berrelleza: I didn’t really know what I was getting into, to be honest. It was an interesting transition, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. As a CEO of a technical company, I still get to be very involved in technology. I talk to our customers, who are developers and CTOs, and it’s great to still have that technical side while also building the skills needed to run a business.

In the early days, I have two co-founders, Pablo and Ramon, and we’re all engineers. We didn’t think much about roles initially—we just did everything together. But as we grew and started raising funding, we realized that roles mattered. Since I’m based in San Francisco, where the money is, it made sense for me to take on the CEO role. Pablo became the CTO, focusing on technical vision, and Ramon leads product, focusing on user experience and customer needs.

One of the most rewarding aspects of building a company is how we’ve all grown our skills in different areas while still keeping our technical roots. It’s something I didn’t think much about when we started, but it’s crucial for anyone starting a company to consider. Learning new things has been a big part of the fun, even though it can be challenging at times.

Itiel Shwartz: That’s great to hear. You mentioned that you help developers work more efficiently. From your experience, who in a company typically drives the adoption of tools like Okteto? Is it developers, platform teams, or someone else?

Ramiro Berrelleza: That’s an interesting evolution. When we started Okteto, we thought developers would drive adoption because they care a lot about productivity. Developers want to be productive and deliver value, but not every developer in an organization has the same influence. More senior developers or architects tend to have a broader vision, while newer developers focus more on their features.

What we’ve seen is that platform teams are often the ones adopting tools like Okteto. They’re responsible for making teams more effective and care about enabling developers to do more with fewer resources. They don’t want to be seen as the naysayers but rather as enablers who build golden paths for developers. 

We’ve found that the best partnerships happen when the CTO understands the value of investing in platform efforts, platform engineers care about developer experience, and developers are willing to learn new tools. When these three things align in a company, it’s a perfect fit for Okteto.

Itiel Shwartz: Everything you’re saying makes sense. So, let me ask a tougher question—why wouldn’t everyone want to use Okteto? What’s preventing companies from adopting it, given that everyone wants to move their business faster?

Ramiro Berrelleza: That’s a great question, and it’s something our investors ask me as well. It’s important for us to have a clear answer. You can’t build a product for everyone, and it’s crucial for platforms to be opinionated. Our thesis is that developers need realistic environments that closely resemble production, running on the same class of infrastructure. 

If a company’s applications aren’t complex, or they’re using platforms where there’s no difference between local and cloud environments, Okteto might not be the best fit for them. We’re targeting companies with complex environments, several microservices, and large teams. When you have hundreds or thousands of engineers, governance, shared configurations, and standardization become critical, and that’s where Okteto shines.

If a company isn’t building on Kubernetes, or if they’re using other tools like Nomad, VMs, or Heroku, then Okteto might not be the right fit. We’re specifically building for those who value Kubernetes as a container orchestrator and want to provide their developers with a top-tier development experience on top of that.

Itiel Shwartz: That’s a great explanation of who your target audience is and what people really care about. Let’s talk a bit about trends in the industry. What do you see as the most interesting trend when it comes to developer involvement inside organizations?

Ramiro Berrelleza: A lot has changed since I started in the industry. In the Kubernetes ecosystem, we’ve seen a shift from concerns about running and maintaining clusters to focusing on developer experience. Ten years ago, the big questions were about keeping clusters running. Now, it’s about how to make things easier for developers, the rise of platform engineering, and creating golden paths for developers. This shows a certain maturity in our ecosystem, where we’re thinking more about the end users.

AI is another exciting trend, especially with investments in AI for DevOps and tools like ChatGPT for development. I also love seeing the trend towards making tools and platforms easier to use, focusing on self-service, and elevating everyone’s productivity. The emphasis on developer experience is particularly exciting to me. It’s something I’ve been passionate about for a long time, and it’s great to see more companies and teams caring about it, creating roles like Head of DevX and building entire teams around it.

Itiel Shwartz: I completely agree. Developer experience wasn’t even a concept a few years ago, and now people are proud to say they work in DevX. It’s also a nice segue for you to talk about your involvement in DevX All Day.

Ramiro Berrelleza: Thanks for that. Yes, Okteto is all about developer experience, and we’re building a platform and a community around it. We recently launched a website called devxallday.com, where we’re starting to publish interviews and articles all about developer experience. It’s not about promoting Okteto but about fostering a community of people who care about DevX. 

If you sign up for our newsletter on devxallday.com, we’re offering some cool stickers to the first 100 sign-ups. If you find me at KubeCon and mention that you heard me on this podcast, we might have some extra swag for you as well. It’s really about building this community and learning from each other, especially from the DevX angle.

Itiel Shwartz: That sounds awesome. If anyone is at KubeCon, feel free to meet up with Ramiro and grab some stickers. Before we wrap up, you mentioned DevX and platform engineering. Are they the same thing? Is it the same role, or how do you see the difference?

Ramiro Berrelleza:That’s a great question and something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I don’t think they’re the same role. In some cases, because it’s still early, it might be the same person doing both, but they’re different efforts. Platform engineering is more about self-service and automating infrastructure, while DevX is about reducing cognitive load, minimizing toil, and making sure developers have everything they need to do their job effectively.

For example, with Okteto, we automate certain processes so developers don’t have to think about things like private registry credentials or cloud account access. That’s an example of DevX—making sure developers don’t have to worry about those details. 

Over time, I think we’ll see more specialization between platform engineering and DevX. Both are important, but they address different aspects of the developer experience. A good platform with a terrible developer experience won’t get adopted, but if you have a platform with a great developer experience, it drives adoption. It’s crucial to get both aspects right.

Itiel Shwartz: I hope so too. It would be great to see more DevX engineers and Heads of DevX out there. Any last words before we wrap up?

Ramiro Berrelleza: If any of these topics resonate with you, please reach out. I’m very active on Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn, and I love chatting with people about this space. If you’re having challenges with developer experience, we’d be happy to chat. You can also email us at [email protected] for some special offers and deals.

Itiel Shwartz: Thanks a lot, Ramiro. I really enjoyed this episode—such a unique story and company, and I love how you see the industry and the changes around empowering developers. Super cool.

Ramiro Berrelleza: Thank you, Itiel. It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing you at KubeCon!

[Music]

Ramiro Berrelleza is one of the founders of Okteto. He has spent most of his career (and his free time) building cloud services and developer tools. Before starting Okteto, Ramiro was an Architect at Atlassian and a Software Engineer at Microsoft Azure. Originally from Mexico, he currently lives in San Francisco. 

Itiel Shwartz is CTO and co-founder of Komodor, a company building the next-gen Kubernetes management platform for Engineers.

Worked at eBay, Forter, and Rookout as the first developer.

Backend & Infra developer turned ‘DevOps’, an avid public speaker who loves talking about infrastructure, Kubernetes, Python observability, and the evolution of R&D culture.  He is also the host of the Kubernetes for Humans Podcast. 

Please note: This transcript was generated using automatic transcription software. While we strive for accuracy, there may be slight discrepancies between the text and the audio. For the most precise understanding, we recommend listening to the podcast episode