On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, we’re revisiting our conversation with Michael Garski, the director of software engineering at famed electrical guitar manufacturer, Fender. Prior to this position, he worked as a principal software architect at Viant, a principal software architect at MySpace, a manager of internet development at Countrywide Financial, and a manager of system architecture at Fandango, among other positions. He also had a four-year stint in the US Navy, working as an engineering laboratory technician. Join Corey and Michael as they talk about how artists are angels and Fender’s job is to give them wings, how Fender has diversified its offerings in recent years, how serverless is a mindset and how Fender approach serverless technology, how Fender’s traffic surged during the pandemic and how everything mostly scaled up without a hitch, the challenges of teaching students to play instruments over the internet, the vendor lock-in boogeyman, and more.

(0:00) Introduction

(0:42) Dragonfly sponsor read

(1:25) How does Michael describe Fender’s work

(2:08) Fender’s work to go serverless

(4:13) The impact of COVID on Fender

(6:19) Explaining Fender Play and how it works on the backend

(9:44) Working with MediaConvert

(11:30) Experiences with scaling and hitting AWS service limits

(12:52) Why Michael prefers working on the customer side

(15:33) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(16:15) Frustrations with gateways and third-party apps

(19:03) Managing a massive influx of users during COVID

(21:13) The vendor lock-in boogeyman

(23:19) Cloud costs vs. saving time

(24:49) Walking the fine line of criticism as a director

(28:09) Enforcing consistency across services

(31:52) Where you can find more from Michael

Michael Garski has worked in the Los Angeles tech industry for over 20 years, across companies including Fandango, Countrywide Home Loans, MySpace, Viant, and is currently at Fender Musical Instruments as the Director of Platform engineering were he leads the devops, data, and api engineering teams. His focus currently is on building the platform to support the consumer facing digital products for Fender. The most prominent application he supports is Fender Play, a web and mobile application that provides video-based instruction for guitar, bass, and ukulele for more than a quarter-million subscribers.

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