Nate Avery, Outbound Product Manager at Google, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss what it’s like working in the world of tech, including the implications of AI technology on the workforce and the importance of doing what you love. Nate explains why he feels human ingenuity is so important in the age of AI, as well as why he feels AI will make humans better at the things they do. Nate and Corey also discuss the changing landscape of tech and development jobs, and why it’s important to help others throughout your career while doing something you love. About NateNate is an Outbound Product Manager at Google Cloud focused on our DevOps tools. Prior to this, Nate has 20 years of experience designing, planning, and implementing complex systems integrating custom-built and COTS applications. Throughout his career, he has managed diverse teams dedicated to meeting customer goals. With a background as a manager, engineer, Sys Admin, and DBA, Nate is currently working on ways to better build and use virtualized computer resources in both internal and external cloud environments. Nate was also named a Cisco Champion for Datacenter in 2015.Links Referenced:
Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/devops

Not Your Dad’s IT: http://www.notyourdadsit.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nathaniel_avery

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathaniel-avery-2a43574/

TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: It’s easy to **BEEP** up on AWS. Especially when you’re managing your cloud environment on your own!Mission Cloud un **BEEP**s your apps and servers. Whatever you need in AWS, we can do it. Head to missioncloud.com for the AWS expertise you need. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn, and my guest today is Nate Avery, who’s an outbound product manager over at Google Cloud. Nate, thank you for joining me.Nate: Thank you for having me. This is really a pretty high honor. I’m super thrilled to be here.Corey: One of my questions that I have about any large company when I start talking to them and getting to know people who work over there, pretty quickly emerges, which is, “What’s the deal with your job title?” And it really doesn’t matter what the person does, what the company is, there’s always this strange nuance that tends to wind up creeping into the company. What is an outbound product manager and what is it you say it is you do here?Nate: Okay. That’s an interesting question because I’ve been here for about a year now and I think I’m finally starting to figure it out. Sure, I should have known more when I applied for the job, [laugh] but there’s what’s on the paper and then there’s what you do in reality. And so, what it appears to be, where I’m taking this thing now, is I talk to folks about our products and I try to figure out what it is they like, what it is they don’t like, and then how do we make it better? I take that information back to our engineers, we huddle up, and we figure out what we can do, how to do it better, how to set the appropriate targets when it comes to our roadmaps. We look at others in the industry, where we are, where they are, where we think we can maybe have an advantage, and then we try to make it happen. That’s really what it is.Corey: One of the strange things that happens at big companies, at least from my perspective, given that I’ve spent most of my career in small ones, is that everyone has a niche. There are very few people at large companies whose job description is yeah, I basically do everything. Where do you start? And where do you stop because Google Cloud, even bounding it to that business unit, is kind of enormous?