Meet Shweta Saraf.

Shweta Saraf:

These days, developers have the flexibility of forgetting about the infrastructure pieces and getting started at a layer where they can just get it done. How does that remove the barrier of entry? What happens when you make tech so accessible, so easy that everybody can create something?

Grace Ewura-Esi:

You're listening to Traceroute, a podcast about the inner workings of our digital world. For Equinix, I'm Grace Ewura-Esi. In season one of Traceroute, we took an in-depth look at the history of the infrastructure of the internet, the people, the events, and the technological developments that shaped the internet as we know it today. What we really want to explore now with Traceroute is what we're calling the human layer of the stack. We're going to do that by finding the humanity within the hardware, and we're going to share those personal and moving stories of the people who continue to shape our current and future digital world. Before we get there, we're really excited to present a preview of what's to come in future episodes. And in each one of these minisodes, we'll get to meet one of my new co-hosts, each one an expert in their technical field and uniquely qualified to bring a really human perspective to the stories that we'll be sharing with you.

Shweta Saraf:

Hey, y'all. I'm Shweta Saraf and I'm director of Platform Networking at Netflix. In my role, I'm responsible for the teams that are involved in building key network components like Cloud Networking Edge Gateway that actually power the streaming service of Netflix and bring it to millions of users.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

I want to have a very serious conversation. I'm really curious, what food item would you be if you could be a food item?

Shweta Saraf:

It's a very easy answer for me because this is my favorite food. Okay? And many people may have not tried it or wouldn't know what it is. So this is called a golgappa, and it's really like a ball which is filled with spicy, sweet, sour water, and it has a little bit of chickpeas, a little bit of potato and some cilantro at times, right? The reason I love it is explosion in your mouth the moment you pop one in, and when you kind of take in all the juices. And I like to think I'm a bit like that. You can get a little bit of sweet, a little bit of spicy, a little bit of sour, and then it all really comes together beautifully when you eat it. So that is one food that I would like to be, and I would also like to eat any given time of the day because I can't say no to that.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Well, that sounds absolutely delicious, and I think that this idea of all of these dynamic flavors coming together is such an awesome description of you, and really why I'm so excited that you're one of our co-hosts for season two of Traceroute. So I'd love to hear about your background and who you are. What are the flavors and the spices of your life that have made you your own dish?

Shweta Saraf:

I am the first person in my generation to come to United States to pursue further education. I grew up back in Mumbai in India, and essentially my dream was to really do something where I am innovating, I'm using my skills in technology to change the world, right? When I came to this country, my first job was really to write an application optimizer which would make files go faster over the internet. But since then, it has been engineering leadership is really what I'm totally interested in, and I'm really good at it. So kind of pivoting from starting from a software engineer to building teams, marrying people and technology, and creating an environment where people can do the best work of their lives. At the end of the day, it's connections, right? Whether we are connecting hardware, machines, switches, router, or are we connecting humans, and how human connections are so important but also complicated and need to be nurtured. I feel like it's sort of a basic right now in the era that we live, to be connected, and that's where the hard work of people who are experts in this field, but also have had to adapt as software automation infrastructure has [inaudible 00:04:31] has come to bear and use that knowledge that they have built and continue to make it work and scale at a humongous size every single day. So that's what I feel is very exciting about it. And there's so much to learn and so much to change the world by what you're doing to make it better.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

It took a lot of people to build what we see as something so commonplace for so many of us, which is this digital world that we exist in, as well as people working towards what I call the unseen, right? And so essentially my favorite part of season one was hearing about the unseen and knitting it together with what I know of the history of the internet. And so I'm just really curious, what was your favorite part? Was it hearing about the connections in between, maybe what felt like disparate solutions or technology, or was it something else that some of the storytellers were telling us about their experiences?

Shweta Saraf:

No surprise here, the one on networks was my favorite, and it was great to kind of think about how sometimes you have these brilliant ideas, but the technology is not ready for those ideas. But how do you not give up on them? And how do you build towards that with the Netflix story that exposed what it took for the person to drive to a Equinix data center and set up their first server, and then get going to now a network of 200 million plus customers who are sort of going to go with this huge network of content delivery and depend on it?

Grace Ewura-Esi:

From episode three, here's Dave Temkin who helped build and scale Netflix's infrastructure. Dave Temkin: It's not a coincidence that the company was called Netflix. The intention was always to deliver it over the network. We just needed to feel that the network was ready. We always knew that streaming was going to be the future. 10, 12 years ago, we're like, "All right, the network is clearly advancing to a point where we think we could have a business by delivering over the internet. Now what?" And so as we looked at our infrastructure, we've got servers sitting in a data center in Sunnyvale, looked at this and said, "Hey, we need to figure out how to build an infrastructure that's scalable that we know can scale to the point of 200 million plus and eventually 500 million or however many customers without breaking the internet." No one thinks about how ubiquitous this network is. They just expect it to work.

Shweta Saraf:

What really struck a chord with me was the fact that we are leading such a fast life, and we forget what our roots are, right? Even if the stories unfolding right in front of our eyes, we don't really have a moment to pause and think about, hey, how did this come to be? How did it originate? And that's why I feel like with Traceroute, they really brought me back to roots of how some of these things started.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

We're a team now, and so I'm curious as to what kinds of conversations you want to have with me and whomever might show up in season two.

Shweta Saraf:

There's a lot of edge computing that you hear about, the technologies, the areas or domains in which it is used and the sprawl, right? But what is the human side of it? What does it mean in terms of the decisions we make today for the future of tomorrow? Even the basics, like the hardware choices or the sustainability choices, and how big do you build for a future of tomorrow, which is so huge and unknown? Right? And then how do you ground this all back to the layering of the human stack and how humans interact with this, right? And exploring that at different layers. That is something I'm really hoping to do with some of the guests we'll have this season. One more area where I feel really passionate about is even the life cycle of a developer has changed, right? If you were to get started with the startup 10 years back, you had to take care of every single thing. You had to start it in your garage, you need a place to host, you need a router, you need to know how to hook everything up, and then you need to write the application code. But these days, developers have the flexibility of forgetting about the infrastructure pieces and getting started at a layer where they can just get it done in 18 hours, or even less. How does that remove the barrier of entry? What happens when you make tech so accessible, so easy that everybody can create something.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

That's a personal interest area of mine as well, right? Spend a lot of time thinking about the democratization of technology and what it actually means to have all voices present at the table and what we could create, what technology and what advancements we could have as a society, not just in the name of technology, but in the name of people, right? Which I think that that's a place where you and I really connect, as we have a passion for the human element of the technical stack and the work we do. So I'm really excited about talking about those same things this season as well. I would personally love to hear what people want to talk about this season. I'm on Twitter @graceewuraesi, G-R-A-C-E-E-W-U-R-A-E-S-I.

Shweta Saraf:

Yeah, I'm on Twitter too. My handle is @shwetahari, S-H-W-E-T-A-H-A-R-I. And I think we are going to share all this wonderful content on origins.dev, which is also on Twitter.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Yeah, that's right. So hopefully people are participating in the community. So you can go ahead and hit us up @origins_dev, O-R-I-G-I-N-S, underscore D-E-V. And that's going to be a good catchall. We honestly do want to hear it and be in dialogue and community with all of our listeners and all of the community. So I think with that, I've been doing a sign off with the other co-hosts. Amy named me the philosopher, and I named her the tinkerer. So what would your sign off be?

Shweta Saraf:

I think pioneer, right? Doing things which are first for my community or my generation, and being okay to take risks and learning when it doesn't work out. And my sign off for you, every time I have spoken to you, I feel like I'm in this visual landscape where the story's coming alive. So I do feel like to me, it's a combination of a dreamer and a storyteller because it's almost like you take us to a world which may not be reality today, but might have been a reality sometime in past or in the future through your storytelling.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Well, I have one for you. I keep thinking of the connector, because I think everything you're doing is bringing this idea of knowledge, not just sitting on one side of the bridge or another, but always in communion, always in transit together and across. So let's go ahead and use our signoffs today. So I'm Grace Ewura-Esi, the storyteller, aka the philosopher.

Shweta Saraf:

And I'm Shweta Saraf, the pioneer, aka the connector.

Grace Ewura-Esi:

Traceroute is a podcast about the inner workings of our digital world from Equinix, the world's digital infrastructure company. If you'd like to take a deeper dive, check out origins.dev for an up close and personal look at our digital world through a creative lens. You can search Equinix Developers on YouTube for developer led livestreamed technical content. We also invite you to join our conversation on Twitter by following our account @origins_dev. Links are in the show notes. Traceroute is a production of Stories Bureau. This episode was produced by Mathr de Leon and John Taylor. It was edited by Joshua Ramsey with additional editing by Janelle Monique. It was mixed by Jeremy Tuttle and Tim Balint, with Music Supervision by Gabe Schatz. Our theme song was composed by Ty Gibbons. Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you've enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate your ratings and reviews. I'm Grace Ewura-Esi. Thanks for listening.