It looks like we're spending a lot more time around the house, cooking for ourselves.
Kim and I truly love eating out -- in fact we have reservations at The French Laundry in May, though we're fairly certain that's not going to work out :-(
But, as much as I love eating out, I love cooking, too. Here's a few of my favorite books, on my shelf right now:
It's a science textbook, but for cooking. And cooking gadgets and gizmos. Absolutely phenomenal. Gorgeous pictures. Thorough explanations of every corner of cooking science. Every time I open it, I'm sucked into hours of reading.
I've smoked meat for a long time, longer, in fact, than Aaron Franklin himself, as detailed in his origin story at the beginning of his book. But my approaches changed, for the better, after reading his manifesto. So, so, so good.
A few years ago, as I started approaching 40, carbs somehow became my nemesis. They just don't come off like they used to. Fortunately, there's a cure... And it involves replacing those carbs with protein, delicious meats, and vegetables. This is a awesome set of delicious recipes, each one better than the last. Highly recommend!
Kim and I had the privilege of eating at Noma last year. It was almost a religious experience. Now, on a separate note, I love beer. Especially that weird corner of beer, called sour, funky beer. This book is actually the remarkable cross section of those two passions of mine. In this book, Rene Redzepi meticulously documents hundreds of different foods, vegetables, meats, herbs, practically anything you can imagine -- fermented and pickled. What. A. Book.
Believe it or not, I've read this encyclopedia cover to cover! As a narrative, it's pretty dry -- I don't recommend reading it cover to cover. But as an encyclopedia, it's second to none. Everything you could ever possibly want to know about every corner of the beer world, from styles, to countries, to techniques, to history, and everything in between.
We really enjoy our wine, in the Kirkland household. This book is a decent "coffee table" book, with beautiful pictures and good information about wine styles, grapes, and regions. If you want a more authoritative text book, I recommend The Oxford Companion to Wine, by Jancis Robinson.
Before Aaron Franklin's book, this was my only barbeque cookbook. It's pretty good, especially if your equipment matches the super simple, Charbroil grill with charcoal briquets, in which case, this book will teach you everything you need to know to produce the best barbeque you're going to get out of that equipment. Seeing as I'm cooking on different hardware these days, though, this book doesn't hold much information that applies to my grills anymore.
I've been a full-time, work-from-home employee for the vast majority of the last 20 years, and 100% since 2008.
In this post, I'm going to share a few of the benefits and best practices that I've discovered over the years, and I'll share with you a shopping list of hardware and products that I have come to love or depend on, over the years.
I worked in a variety of different roles -- software engineer, engineering manager, product manager, and executive (CTO, VP Product, Chief Product Officer) -- and with a couple of differet companies, big and small (IBM, Google, Canonical, Gazzang, and Apex). In fact, I was one of IBM's early work-from-home interns, as a college student in 2000, when my summer internship manager allowed me to continue working when I went back to campus, and I used the ATT Global Network dial-up VPN client to "upload" my code to IBM's servers.
If there's anything positive to be gained out of our recent life changes, I hope that working from home will become much more widely accepted and broadly practiced around the world, in jobs and industries where it's possible. Moreover, I hope that other jobs and industries will get even more creative and flexible with remote work arrangements, while maintaining work-life-balance, corporate security, and employee productivity.
In many cases, we would all have a healthier workplace, if anyone generally stayed home when they were feeling even just a bit unwell. Over these next few weeks, I hope that many other people discover the joy, freedom, and productivity working from home provides. Here are a few things that I've learned over the years, and some of the tools that I've acquired...
Benefits, Costs, and Mitigations
Benefits
Commute -- If you're like me, you hate sitting in traffic. Or waiting on a train. Erase your commute entirely when you work from home. I love having an extra hour in the morning, to set out my day, and extra time in the evenings with my family.
Family -- Speaking of family, I'm adding this as a benefit all on its own. I love being able to put my kids on the bus in the morning, and be home when they get home, and have quality time in the evenings with my spouse and daughters and dogs. When I have worked in an office, I've often found that I've left for work before anyone else was awake, and I often got home after everyone was in bed.
Location -- Work-from-home, in most cases, usually means, work-from-anywhere. While I spend the vast majority of my time actually working from my home office, I've found that I can be nearly as effective working from a hotel, coffee shop, airplane, my in-laws' house, etc. It takes some of the same skills and disciplines, but once you break free of the corporate desk, you'll find you can get great work done anywhere.
Productivity -- Your mileage may vary, but I find I'm personally more productive in the comfort of my own home office, which has evolved to meet my needs. Yes, I love my colleagues and my teams, and yes, I spend plenty of time traveling, on the road meeting them.
Costs and Mitigations
Work-life-balance -- This one is important, but it's not hard to fix. Some people find it hard to separate work and home life, when working from home. Indeed, you could find yourself "always on", and burn out. Definitely don't do that. See the best practices below for some suggestions on mitigating this one.
Space and Equipment -- There's quite literally a dollar cost, in some cases, to having the necessary space and equipment necessary to work from home. To mitigate this, you should look into any benefits your employer offers on computer equipment, and potentially speak to an accountant about tax deductions for dedicated space and hardware. My office is a pretty modest 10'x12' (120 sqft), but it helps that I have big windows and a nice view.
Relationships -- It can seem a little lonely at home, sometimes, where you might miss out on some of the water cooler chatter and social lunches and happy hours. You do have to work a little harder to forge and maintain some of those remote relationships. I insist on seeing my team in person a couple of times a year (once a quarter at least, in most cases), and when I do, I try to ensure that we also hang out socially (breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner, etc.) beyond just work. It's amazing how far that will carry, into your next few dozen phone calls and teleconferences.
Kids -- (UPDATED: 2020-03-10) I'm adding this paragraph post publication, based on questions/comments I've received about how to make this work with kids. I have two daughters (6 and 7 years old now), that were 18 months apart, so there was a while in there where I had two-under-two. I'm not going to lie -- it was hard. I'm blessed with a few advantages -- my wife is a stay-at-home-mom, and I have a dedicated room in my house which is my office. It has a door that locks. I actually replaced the cheap, contractor-grade hollow door, with a solid wood door, which greatly reduces noise. When there is a lot of background noise, I switch from speakers-and-computer-mic, to my noise cancelling headset (more details below). Sometimes, I even move all the way to the master bedroom (behind yet another set of doors). I make ample use of the mute button (audio and/or video) while in conference meetings. I also switch from the computer to the phone, and go outside sometimes. In a couple of the extreme cases, where I really need silence and focus (e.g. job interviews), I'll sit in my car (in my own garage or at a nearby park), and tether my computer through my phone. I've worked with colleagues who lived in small spaces, turn a corner of their own master bedroom into a office, with a hideaway desk, with a folding bracket and a butcher block. My kids are now a little older, and sometimes they're just curious about what I'm doing. If I'm not in a meeting, I try to make 5 minutes for them, and show them what I'm working on. If I am in a meeting, and it's a 1:1 or time with a friendly colleague, I'll very briefly introduce them, let them say hi, and them move them along. Part of the changes happening around the work-from-home shift, is that we're all becoming more understanding of stuff like this.
Best Practices
Dedicated space -- I find it essential to have just a bit of dedicated space for an office, that you and the family respect as your working space. My office is about 8' x 12', with lots of natural light (two huge windows, but also shades that I can draw). It hangs off of the master bedroom, and it has a door that locks. Not that I have to lock it often, but sometimes, for important meetings, I do, and my family knows that I need a little extra quiet when my office door is locked.
Set your hours -- It's really easy to get swept away, into unreasonably long working days, when working from home, especially when you enjoy your job, or when things are extra busy, or when you have a boss or colleagues who are depending on you, or a 1000 other reasons. It's essential to set your working hours, and do you best to get into a consistent rhythm. I usually put the kids on the bus around 7am, and then either go for a run or play the piano for a bit, and then start my day pretty consistently at 7:30am, and generally try to wrap up by 5:30pm most days. Of course there are always exceptions, but that's the expectations I usually set for myself and the people around me.
Get up and move around -- I do try to get up and move around a few times per day. If I'm on a call that doesn't require a screen, I'll try to take at least one or two of those from my phone and go move around a bit. Take a walk down the street or in the garden or even just around the house. I also try to unplug my laptop and work for at least an hour a day somewhere else around the house (as long as no one else is around) -- perhaps the kitchen table or back porch or couch for a bit. In the time that I spent at Google, I really came to appreciate all of the lovely bonus spaces where anyone can curl up and work from a laptop for a few hours. I've tried to reproduce that around my house.
Greenery -- I think I worked from home for probably 4 years before I added the first house plant in my office. It's so subtle, but wow, what a difference. In my older age, I'm now a bit of gardner (indoors and outside), and I try to keep at least a dozen or so bonsai trees, succulents, air plants, and other bits of greenery growing in my office. If you need a little more Feng Shui in your life, check out this book.
Shopping List
Technology / Equipment
Computers
Macbook Pro 13 -- I use a 13" Apple Macbook Pro, assigned by my employer for work. I never use it for personal purposes like Gmail, etc. at all, which I keep on a separate machine.
Thinkpad X250 -- I have an older a Thinkpad running Ubuntu on my desk, almost always streaming CNBC on YouTube TV in full screen (muted). Sometimes I'll flip it over to CNN or a similar news channel.
Dell T5600 -- I keep a pretty beefy desktop / server workstation running Ubuntu, with a separate keyboard and monitor, for personal mail and browsing.
Keyboard / Mouse
Thinkpad USB Keyboard -- I love the Thinkpad keyboard, and this the USB version is a must have, for me.
Apple Wireless Keyboard and Trackpad and Tray -- I use the wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse pad for my work computer. I find the tray essential, to keep the keyboard and mouse closely associated.
Monitors
Samsung 32" 4K UHD -- I use two monitors, one in portrait, one in landscape. I really like Samsung, and these are the exact models I use: Gaming Monitor (LU32J590UQNXZA) – 60Hz Refresh, Widescreen Computer Monitor, 3840 x 2160p Resolution, 4ms Response, FreeSync, HDMI, Wall Mount.
Monitor Desk Mount -- And for those monitors, I use this desk mount, which is full motion, rotates, and attaches to my standing desk.
USB Hub
I use this dongle to connect my Macbook to the external 4K monitor, wired gigabit ethernet, and power supply. This simple, single plug certainly helps me quickly and easily grab my laptop and move around the house easily during the day.
Laptop Stand
Nulaxy Ergonomic Riser -- I find this laptop stand helps get the camera angle on the top of my Macbook in a much place, and also frees up some space on my desk. I sometimes take both the laptop and the stand outside with me, if I need to relocate somewhere and take a couple of conference calls.
Flat Network Cables -- Perhaps only those of you with at least a slight case of OCD will appreciate these, but wow, they definitely help clean things up around here.
Storage
Synology -- I generally keep copies of our family photo archive in Google Photos, as well as a backup here at home, as well. I'm a fan of the Synology DS218, and the Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB hard drives. Really nice, simple interface, and yet feature-rich.
Printer / Scanner
HP Officejet -- While I avoid printing as much as possible, sometimes it's just inevitable. But, also, working-from-home, you'll find that you often need to scan documents. You'll definitely need something with an automatic document feeder and can scan directly to PDF. I like the HP Officejet Pro 9015, but you're looking for a less expensive option, the HP Officejet 5255 is a fine printer/scanner too.
Speakers
Google Home Max -- I can't stress this enough: I find it extremely important to have high quality, full range speaker, that faithfully reproduces highs and lows. I really need something much better than laptop speakers or cheap PC speakers. Personally, I use a Google Home Max, with the Google Assistant microphone muted, and connected over Bluetooth. I actually like it positioned behind me, believe it or not. You could just as easily use an Amazon Echo or any other high quality Bluetooth speaker.
Bang and Olufsen Beoplay A9 -- This speaker is an absolute dream! I used it in my office for a while, but eventually moved it to the family room where it's used much more for music and entertainment. Besides sounding absolutely incredible, it's basically a work of art, beautiful to look at, in any room.
Headphones
Apple AirPods -- I use AirPods as my traveling headphones, mostly on planes. I like that they're compact. The short battery life leaves a lot to be desired, so I actually travel with two sets, and switch back and forth, recharging them in the case when I switch.
Bang and Olufsen Beoplay H9 -- Overwhelmingly, I use the Bluetooth speaker for my daily slate of teleconferences, meetings, and phone calls. However, occasionally I need noise cancelling headphones. The Beoplay H9i are my favorite -- outstanding comfort, excellent noise cancelling, and unbeatable audio quality.
Bose QuietComfort 35 ii -- These Bose headphones were my standards for years, until I gave them to my wife, and she fell in love with them. They're hers now. Having used both, I prefer the B&O, while she prefers the Bose.
Wired headset with mic -- If you prefer a wired headset with a microphone, this gaming headset is a fantastic, inexpensive option. Note that there's no noise cancellation, but they're quite comfortable and the audio quality is fine.
Webcam
Truth be told, at this point, I just use the web cam built into my Macbook. The quality is much higher than that of my Thinkpad. I like where it's mounted (top of the laptop screen). While I connect the laptop to one of the external 4K monitors, I always use the 13" laptop screen as my dedicated screen for Zoom meetings. I like that the built-in one just works.
Logitech -- All that said, I have used Logitech C920 webcams for years, and they're great, if you really want or need an external camera connected over USB.
Microphone
Like the Webcam, these days I'm just using the built-in mic on the Macbook. I've tested a couple of different mics with recordings, and while the external ones do sound a little better, the difference is pretty subtle, and not worth the extra pain to connect
Blue Snowball -- Again, all that said, I do have, and occasionally use, a Blue Snowball condenser mic. While subtle, it is definitely an upgrade over the laptop built-in microphone.
Phone
For many years working from home, I did have a wired home phone system. I use Ooma and a Polycom Voicestation. But about two years ago, I got rid of it all and deliberately moved to using Google Hangouts and Zoom for pretty much everything, and just using my cell phone (Pixel 3) for the rest.
Furniture / Appliances
Standing desk
Uplift (72"x30") -- While I don't always stand, I have become a believer in the standing desk! I change my position a couple of times per day, going from standing to sitting, and vice versa. I'm extremely happy with my Uplift Desk, which is based here in Austin, Texas.
Apex -- I don't have direct experience with this desk, but this was the one I was looking at, and seems quite similar to the Uplift desk that I ended up getting.
Desk mat
Aothia Cork and Leather -- I really love desk mats. They're so nice to write on. These add a splash of color, and protect the desk from the inevitable coffee spill. I have a couple of these, and they're great!
Coffee machine
Nespresso -- Yes, I have a coffee machine in my office. It's essential on those days when you're back-to-back packed with meetings. While I love making a nice pot of coffee down in the kitchen, sometimes I just need to push a button and have a good-enough shot of espresso. And that's what I get with this machine and these pods (I recently switched from the more expensive authentic Nespresso pods, and can't really tell the difference).
Coffee Mug
Ember -- I received an Ember coffee mug as a gift, and I've really come to appreciate this thing. I don't think I would have bought it for myself on my own, but as a gift, it's great. Sleek looking and rechargeable, it'll keep your coffee hot down to your last sip.
Water cooler
Primo -- And yes, I have a water cooler in my office. This has really helped me drink more water during the day. It's nice to have both chilled water, as well as hot water for tea, on demand.
I have 15-year-old, high back, faux leather (vinyl) chair that's "good enough", but I certainly lust over the Herman Miller Aeron chair and the add-on headrest. Maybe one day.
Light / Fan
Haiku L -- My office is extremely well lit, with two huge windows. Overhead, I used to have a single, nasty canned light, which I replaced with this Haiku L ceiling fan and light, and it's just brilliant, with a dimmer, and voice controls.
Air purifier
HEPA Filter -- Some years ago, I added an air purifier to my office, mainly to handle the pet dander (two big dogs and a cat) that used to room my office. It's subtle, but generally something I'm glad to have pulling dust and germs out of the air.
Now I'm curious... What did I miss? What does your home office look like? What are you favorite gadgets and appliances?
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Along with most red blooded Texans, I love to barbeque on the back deck. From smoking a brisket to grilling chicken, and any other fish, fowl, pork, or beef in between, there are few ways I’d rather spend a Sunday afternoon.
But we Texans are not the only ones inextricably attracted to the peppery, sweet, smokey aromas emanating from our back deck. No, unfortunately, bbq always means flies. And lots of them. Zipping around the grill, and inevitably, into our house.
And if my love of barbeque has an equal and opposite reaction, it’s my hatred of flies buzzing around inside of my house.
With that in mind, I was grilling some chicken on the back deck a few weeks ago, picking off flies with a Bug-a-salt (way more fun than it even sounds), and pulled out my phone, searching Amazon for 21st century solutions to the flies-in-my-house problem. Surely we’ve IoT-automated away our fly problem by 2017?
I immediately stumbled upon an unusually highly rated product — 4.5 stars over 2,621 reviews for the “Pest Soldier Electronic Plug Ultrasonic Pest Control Repeller for Insects — White, Set of 4”.
So I snapped it up, and figured, what the heck, I’ll give this a shot.
The result was underwhelming. Undetectable, even. There’s no difference, with or without these gadgets plugged in around my kitchen. It was worth a shot. Burned thirty-something dollars. Live and learn. Flies don’t respect ultrasonic annoyances. Ah well.
About a month later, I receive this email, which made me wrinkle my nose a little, asking me to review this product on Amazon, and receive a $25 gift card.
I ignored it.
Three days later, a “reminder”, which I also ignored.
And then, three days later, a third nagging email:
At this point, things went from bad to worse. I was immediately offered a full refund, and an extra $40 to delete the review.
Wow. Simply, wow. Reading through the other negative reviews of this product, I see multiple reviewers saying they were offered money to delete their critical reviews.
Along with so many of you, we place our trust in the honest and integrity of Amazon’s customer review system. And yet it’s being systematically gamed by sellers such as this.
I’ve reported the product and the seller per Amazon’s instructions, but I for one am a bit more skeptical about Amazon reviews from now on.
Now, I just wonder…
How much will Pest Soldier offer me to delete this blog post?
If you read my last post, perhaps you followed the embedded instructions and ran hundreds of LXD system containers on your own Ubuntu machine.
Or perhaps you're already a Docker enthusiast and your super savvy microservice architecture orchestrates dozens of applications among a pile of process containers.
Either way, the massive multiplication of containers everywhere introduces an interesting networking problem:
"How do thousands of containers interact with thousands of other containers efficiently over a network? What if every one of those containers could just route to one another?"
Canonical is pleased to introduce today an innovative solution that addresses this problem in perhaps the most elegant and efficient manner to date! We call it "The Fan" -- an extension of the network tunnel driver in the Linux kernel. The fan was conceived by Mark Shuttleworth and John Meinel, and implemented by Jay Vosburgh and Andy Whitcroft.
A Basic Overview
Each container host has a "fan bridge" that enables all of its containers to deterministically map network traffic to any other container on the fan network. I say "deterministically", in that there are no distributed databases, no consensus protocols, and no more overhead than IP-IP tunneling. [A more detailed technical description can be found here.] Quite simply, a /16 network gets mapped on onto an unused /8 network, and container traffic is routed by the host via an IP tunnel.
A Demo
Interested yet? Let's take it for a test drive in AWS...
First, launch two instances in EC2 (or your favorite cloud) in the same VPC. Ben Howard has created special test images for AWS and GCE, which include a modified Linux kernel, a modified iproute2 package, a new fanctl package, and Docker installed by default. You can find the right AMIs here.
Now, let's create a fan bridge on each of those two instances. We can create it on the command line using the new fanctl command, or we can put it in /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0.cfg.
We'll do the latter, so that the configuration is persistent across boots.
$ cat /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0.cfg
# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
up fanctl up 250.0.0.0/8 eth0/16 dhcp
down fanctl down 250.0.0.0/8 eth0/16
$ sudo ifup --force eth0
Now, let's send some traffic back and forth! Again, we can use ping and nc.
root@261ae39d90db:/# ping -c 3 250.0.27.3
PING 250.0.27.3 (250.0.27.3) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 250.0.27.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=0.563 ms
64 bytes from 250.0.27.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=0.278 ms
64 bytes from 250.0.27.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=0.260 ms
--- 250.0.27.3 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.260/0.367/0.563/0.138 ms
root@261ae39d90db:/# echo "here come the bits" | nc 250.0.27.3 9876
root@261ae39d90db:/#
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
root@ddd943163843:/# ping -c 3 250.0.28.3
PING 250.0.28.3 (250.0.28.3) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 250.0.28.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=0.434 ms
64 bytes from 250.0.28.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=0.258 ms
64 bytes from 250.0.28.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=0.269 ms
--- 250.0.28.3 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.258/0.320/0.434/0.081 ms
root@ddd943163843:/# nc -l 9876
here come the bits
Alright, so now let's really bake your noodle...
That 250.0.0.0/8 network can actually be any /8 network. It could be a 10.* network or any other /8 that you choose. I've chosen to use something in the reserved Class E range, 240.* - 255.* so as not to conflict with any other routable network.
Finally, let's test the performance a bit using iperf and Amazon's 10gpbs instances!
So I fired up two c4.8xlarge instances, and configured the fan bridge there.
Multiple containers, on separate hosts, directly addressable to one another with nothing more than a single network device on each host. Deterministic routes. Blazing fast speeds. No distributed databases. No consensus protocols. Not an SDN. This is just amazing!
RFC
Give it a try and let us know what you think! We'd love to get your feedback and use cases as we work the kernel and userspace changes upstream.
Over the next few weeks, you'll see the fan patches landing in Wily, and backported to Trusty and Vivid. We are also drafting an RFC, as we think that other operating systems and the container world and the Internet at large would benefit from Fan Networking.
Gazzang is now an officially Amazon Web Services (AWS) Solution Provider! I'm quite excited about this, as our information security and data encryption products are such a great match for the cloud, where you don't actually have physical control over where and how your data gets written to disk. Encryption is absolutely essential here.
Seriously...if you or your organization is using AWS and storing sensitive data of any kind in a MySQL or PostgreSQL (especially on the rockin' Ubuntu Server), you should really take a close look at Gazzang's ezNcrypt for Databases. I've recently showed how its possible, though complex, to use eCryptfs and setup Encrypted Home Directories on EC2. But if you're looking for something completely seamless, and turn-key for transparently encrypting all or some of your databases, ezNcrypt is just that.
Dustin Kirkland (Twitter, LinkedIn) is an engineer at heart, with a penchant for reducing complexity and solving problems at the cross-sections of technology, business, and people.
With a degree in computer engineering from Texas A&M University (2001), his full-time career began as a software engineer at IBM in the Linux Technology Center working on the Linux kernel and security certifications, including a one-year stint as an dedicated engineer-in-residence at Red Hat in Boston (2005). Dustin was awarded the title Master Inventor at IBM, in recognition of his prolific patent work as an inventor and reviewer with IBM's intellectual property attorneys.
Dustin then first joined Canonical (2008) as an engineer (eventually, engineering manager), helping create the Ubuntu Server distribution and establishing Ubuntu as the overwhelming favorite Linux distribution in Amazon, Google, and Microsoft's cloud platforms, as well as authoring and maintaining dozens of new open source packages.
Dustin joined Gazzang (2011), a venture-backed start-up built around an open source project that he co-authored (eCryptFS), as Chief Technology Officer, and helped dozens of enterprise customers encrypt their data at rest and securely manage their keys. Gazzang was acquired by Cloudera (2014).
Having effectively monetized eCryptFS as an open source project at Gazzang, Dustin returned to Canonical (2013) as the VP of Product for Ubuntu and spent the next several years launching a portfolio of products and services (Ubuntu Advantage, Extended Security Maintenance, Canonical Livepatch, MAAS, OpenStack, Kubernetes) that continues to deliver considerable annual recurring revenue. With Canonical based in London, an 800+ work-from-home employee roster and customers spread across 40+ countries, Dustin traveled the world over, connecting with clients and colleagues steeped in rich cultural experiences.
Google Cloud (2018) recruited Dustin from Canonical to product manage Google's entrance into on-premises data centers with its GKE On-Prem (now, Anthos) offering, with a specific focus on the underlying operating system, hypervisor, and container security. This work afforded Dustin a view deep into the back end data center of many financial services companies, where he still sees tremendous opportunities for improvements in security, efficiencies, cost-reduction, and disruptive new technology adoption.
Seeking a growth-mode opportunity in the fintech sector, Dustin joined Apex Clearing (now, Apex Fintech Solutions) as the Chief Product Officer (2019), where he led several organizations including product management, field engineering, data science, and business partnerships. He drastically revamped Apex's product portfolio and product management processes, retooling away from a legacy "clearing house and custodian", and into a "software-as-a-service fintech" offering instant brokerage account opening, real-time fractional stock trading, a secure closed-network crypto solution, and led the acquisition and integration of Silver's tax and cost basis solution.
Drawn back into a large cap, Dustin joined Goldman Sachs (2021) as a Managing Director and Head of Platform Product Management, within the Consumer banking division, which included Marcus, and the Apple and GM credit cards. He built a cross-functional product management community and established numerous documented product management best practices, processes, and anti-patterns.
Dustin lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Kim and their wonderful two daughters.
