Jay is a self-taught technologist who never wanted computers as a career — and ended up shaping infrastructure that runs the world as Ironic's project lead and a decade-long OpenStack contributor. In this conversation, he's honest about how that happened, what it actually looks like from the inside, and what he'd tell anyone trying to find their footing in open source.
In this episode:

• Why people skills matter more than code in open source communities
• How to give feedback people can actually trust — and why toxic positivity damages projects
• What maintainership really looks like versus open source leadership
• The moment he walked away from a job over an ethical line he wasn't willing to cross
• Why Gentoo might be the best learning environment for a young Linux developer right now
• The one piece of career advice almost nobody in tech actually follows

Links and references:

• Ironic Project: https://ironicbaremetal.org
• OpenStack: https://www.openstack.org
• Gentoo Linux: https://www.gentoo.org
• G-Research Open Source: https://www.gresearch.com/open-source

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/H6OXeKyHJ-g.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Jay Faulkner.