Beyond GitOps: Rethinking Cloud Self-Service with Dave Williams

Platform Engineering Podcast

Is GitOps holding your team back? In this thought-provoking conversation with Massdriver co-founder Dave Williams, we challenge conventional wisdom around cloud infrastructure management and explore why traditional approaches to compliance and self-service may be creating more problems than they solve.

Discover how leading organizations are moving beyond ceremonial approval processes to create truly automated, self-service platforms that enhance developer productivity while maintaining security and control. Learn why treating infrastructure as code differently from application code could be the key to unlocking engineering velocity.

Key topics covered:

• Why compliance doesn't require manual GitOps workflows
• Creating meaningful abstractions that codify operations expertise
• The shift from reactive to proactive infrastructure governance
• How platform teams can become strategic enablers rather than bottlenecks

Whether you're a platform engineer, engineering leader, or developer frustrated with current infrastructure processes, this episode offers practical insights for evolving your approach to cloud operations.

Guest: Dave Williams, DevOps Propagandist

Massdriver

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• Open Tofu
• Heroku
• Terratest
• “Elephant in the cloud: Bridging the cloud infrastructure talent gap with software”