Go offline with the Player FM app!
Tom Wilkie’s Path to CTO at Grafana Labs: Startups, Pivots, and Perseverance
Manage episode 442234074 series 3532457
Tom Wilkie, the CTO of Grafana Labs, talks to us about his professional journey. We cover how he got into software engineering, his first startup, working as an EM at Google, and what motivated him to go back to an IC role. We talk about his time at Grafana from when they were only 25 people to now when Grafana Labs has more than a thousand employees. Tom’s journey cannot be told without diving deeper into the technical side of things - we discuss observability, distributed systems, and hard technical problems.
Where to find more about Tom and Grafana Labs:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwilkie
- X - https://x.com/tom_wilkie
- Grafana Labs - https://grafana.com/
- Grafana Labs events - https://grafana.com/events/
Where to find Bartek:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/
- X - https://x.com/bwplotka
Where to find Ivan:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/
- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov
As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form -https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9
0:00 - Tom’s intro
7:09 - How Tom got into software engineering
15:05 - Tom’s first startup 21:25 - Tom’s experience as EM at Google
28:04 - Joining Weaveworks as employee number 7
38:51 - Tom joining Grafana
45:32 - Grafana’s Third Act
53:12 - Startup advice
59:41 - Perseverance and motivation
1:04:35 - How Grafana acquires startups
1:10:25 - Where to find out more
13 episodes
Manage episode 442234074 series 3532457
Tom Wilkie, the CTO of Grafana Labs, talks to us about his professional journey. We cover how he got into software engineering, his first startup, working as an EM at Google, and what motivated him to go back to an IC role. We talk about his time at Grafana from when they were only 25 people to now when Grafana Labs has more than a thousand employees. Tom’s journey cannot be told without diving deeper into the technical side of things - we discuss observability, distributed systems, and hard technical problems.
Where to find more about Tom and Grafana Labs:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwilkie
- X - https://x.com/tom_wilkie
- Grafana Labs - https://grafana.com/
- Grafana Labs events - https://grafana.com/events/
Where to find Bartek:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/
- X - https://x.com/bwplotka
Where to find Ivan:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/
- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov
As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form -https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9
0:00 - Tom’s intro
7:09 - How Tom got into software engineering
15:05 - Tom’s first startup 21:25 - Tom’s experience as EM at Google
28:04 - Joining Weaveworks as employee number 7
38:51 - Tom joining Grafana
45:32 - Grafana’s Third Act
53:12 - Startup advice
59:41 - Perseverance and motivation
1:04:35 - How Grafana acquires startups
1:10:25 - Where to find out more
13 episodes
All episodes
×
1 Tom Wilkie’s Path to CTO at Grafana Labs: Startups, Pivots, and Perseverance 1:11:49

1 Databases, Drive, and Diversity - Lessons from Xata's CEO Monica Sarbu 1:02:20

1 Building a Global Scale Authorization Startup: The Story of AuthZed's Co-Founder Jimmy Zelinskie 1:04:20

1 The Open Source Data Movement Unicorn: Michel Tricot's Airbyte Story 51:00

1 Profiling, AI, and Creating a Startup Culture: Insights from PolarSignals' Founder Frederic Branczyk 56:42

1 Optimizing SW Adoption & Maintenance: API Compatibility Guarantees with Björn Rabenstein 1:22:20

1 Optimizing Productivity with Mindfulness, Self-Compassion & Motivation 1:20:01

1 Optimizing Freedom as a Digital Nomad with Becky Pauley 56:44

1 Optimizing Cloud Native by Interviewing KubeCon EU Attendees: Efficiency, AI adoption, WASM, eBPF 52:55

1 Optimizing SRE Productivity with AI feat. Alex Jones, founder of k8sgpt 1:10:25

1 Optimizing DevOps and Organizational Structure: Solving The Phoenix Project 1:06:38

1 Optimizing Prometheus Efficiency with Bryan Boreham 1:18:27

1 Optimizing Cognitive Load with Middlewares and Tripperwares 1:05:54
Welcome to Player FM!
Player FM is scanning the web for high-quality podcasts for you to enjoy right now. It's the best podcast app and works on Android, iPhone, and the web. Signup to sync subscriptions across devices.