Andrew Clay Shafer

Big news: I'm elated to announce that DevOps industry leader Ernest Mueller has joined Autoptic to lead global services and partnerships! Ernest and Autoptic Co-Founder & CTO, Peco Karayanev, have been colleagues and friends for more than 20 years. Originally an investor in and advisor to Autoptic, Ernest brings a unique set of skills, experiences, and perspectives here in Austin, TX. After getting to know him over the last year, I cannot imagine a better person to lead the services function at Autoptic than Ernest Mueller. As mentioned in our press release today, Ernest Mueller is a widely recognized DevOps practitioner, educator, and engineering leader. He is the author or co-author of 10 LinkedIn Learning DevOps courses with more than one million learners, including DevOps Foundations, Site Reliability Engineering, Monitoring and Observability, Incident Management, and Effective Postmortems. He is the co-author of The Agile Admin, one of the field’s longest-running practitioner blogs, is a founding member of DevOpsDays Austin, and has helped organize CloudAustin, Agile Austin DevOps SIG, and the OWASP Austin Chapter. Ernest brings deep experience in cloud architecture, observability, SRE, AI infrastructure, incident management, consulting delivery, and engineering team leadership. At Nextira, he scaled an AWS-focused cloud consulting organization from 10 to approximately 100 engineers in 18 months, helping drive the company’s acquisition by Accenture. At Accenture, he provided delivery governance across large software teams while leading engagements with major enterprise clients. Earlier in his career, he led DevOps, SRE, cloud, compliance, and production operations initiatives at AT&T Cybersecurity, Bazaarvoice, and National Instruments. As Autoptic VP, Customer Engineering Services, Mueller will work with CTOs and their teams across media, fintech, software, healthcare, commerce, and other industries. His organization’s responsibilities will include guiding AI DevOps strategy and tactics, leading customer implementations, ensuring customer-specific ROI, providing systems change resilience industry thought leadership, and activating an ecosystem of Global Services Partners. Welcome Ernest! Thank you for taking the leap with Peco, our team, our investors, our partners, and most importantly, our customers. Here's to huge things ahead together! #ai #devops #austin

I wanted to thank everyone for the comments on my recent update. I’ll be moving to Palo Alto and taking on a new role at Broadcom. But no matter what.. #TexasForever More than anything, I want to thank the partners, mentors, and colleagues who have shared this journey with me. You’ve each left a lasting impact on my life, and I wouldn’t be who I am today without you. From Citi, Red Hat, and Wells Fargo, thank you to everyone. You guys were the best. I’ll miss you all. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do” #LFG #GSD #GoBuild

After more than 40 years in technology, the time has come to begin an exciting new chapter: Retirement! Looking back, I am filled with gratitude. I have been blessed beyond anything I imagined when I began this journey over four decades ago. Joining Red Hat nearly 14 years ago was the best career decision I ever made. For me, Red Hat is the greatest technology company in the world—not just because of technology, but because of its people and culture. It was an honor to work alongside such talented professionals. Together with Ford Motor Company and General Motors, we helped deliver two of the industry's most transformational OpenShift Virtualization migrations. Those accomplishments were only possible because of an extraordinary team. To the entire Ford and GM account teams—thank you. You are the finest team I have ever had the privilege to work with. Every success came from people who always put our customers first, accomplished what many believed couldn't be done, and built friendships that will last a lifetime. I couldn't be prouder of what we achieved together. I have also been incredibly fortunate to work alongside outstanding leaders, mentors, colleagues, and friends, including Mark Andres, Andrew Brown, Chris Wright, Ashesh Badani, Brad Head, Buddy Holtzendorf, Stacy Bogataj Lynett, Mike Amend, Sandeep Kulkarni, Satish Puranam, Kaustubh Mahajan, Megan Crespi, Matt Simontacchi, David Farrell, Rob Peterson, Tim Fortier, Stephen Fay and Bob Glowienke. Thank you for your leadership, friendship, encouragement and confidence in me. A very special thank you to John Edrington. Thank you for believing in me, and providing opportunities that shaped the most rewarding chapter of my career. Your leadership, mentorship, friendship and trust have meant more than words can express. Above all, I thank my wife, Kathy. For over 40 years, she has been my greatest supporter, best friend and constant source of encouragement. Every success I have enjoyed is as much hers as it is mine. Kathy, thank you for believing in me and making every step of this journey worthwhile. I cannot wait to begin this next chapter with you. As I enter retirement, I look forward to spending more time with Kathy and our family, traveling, woodworking, volunteering, mentoring, and hopefully serving on corporate or nonprofit boards where I can continue helping organizations navigate transformational change. If there is one legacy I hope to leave behind, it is that I made a positive difference in the lives of the people I had the privilege to work with, just as so many of you made a positive difference in mine. It is difficult to say goodbye to my Red Hat family, so instead, I'll simply say thank you. Technology will continue to evolve, but the relationships, friendships, and lives we touch along the way are what truly endure. Thank you for being such an important part of mine. Here's to the next chapter. #Retirement #Gratitude #RedHat #OpenShift #Technology #Teamwork

Scarcity Sells Better Than Persuasion 👇 In Stick, a salesman delivers a perfect lesson in sales psychology. He doesn’t push the product. He holds it back. Instead of chasing the customer, he creates resistance. Suddenly the dynamic flips. The customer isn’t being sold anymore. He’s trying to qualify himself. By suggesting the club might be too advanced or not for everyone, the closer plants a powerful idea: Maybe you’re not ready for this. That’s frame control. Because people naturally want what feels exclusive. The moment something becomes harder to access, its perceived value increases. So instead of forcing the sale… The customer convinces himself he deserves the product. That’s persuasion at its highest level. Great closers don’t chase buyers. They create desire strong enough that buyers chase them. . . . . #entreprenuer #business #scarcity #sales

Some are in Fraternities, or Sororities, but the Alumni of the Joint IED Defeat Organization are in all corners of the Defense sector, including the #Top100DefenseInnovators list of 2026. #64 – Paul 🇺🇸 Puckett Difference Maker Archetype: The #SystemsHacker Organization: Clarity | Former Director, Army Enterprise Cloud Management Office Why He Matters Some innovators build technology. Others figure out how to make massive organizations actually use it. Paul Puckett has spent his career doing the latter. Long before cloud computing, #DevSecOps, and #Artificialintelligence became standard modernization buzzwords, Paul was helping government organizations rethink how they deliver capability at #speed. His work has shaped cloud adoption, enterprise modernization, continuous authorization approaches, and digital transformation efforts across the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense. But what makes Paul special is not simply his #technical expertise. It's his understanding of why speed matters. Both of us came up through the Joint IED Defeat Organization #JIEDDO, one of the most important innovation organizations of the post-9/11 era. In that environment, #innovation was not about quarterly metrics or technology demonstrations. It was about saving lives. Every delay mattered. Every improvement mattered. Every breakthrough mattered. That experience leaves a mark. You can still see it in the way Paul approaches #modernization today. He understands that bureaucracy is not the mission. The mission is the #mission. Throughout his career, he has consistently challenged systems, processes, and assumptions that slow progress while building the technical and organizational foundations that allow innovation to scale. He is a #DifferenceMaker because he helps large organizations move at the speed their missions demand. Selection Citation Selected for his transformational leadership in cloud modernization, DevSecOps, enterprise technology adoption, and digital transformation; and for his enduring commitment to helping government organizations deliver capability faster, smarter, and at greater scale. • Cloud #Modernization • DevSecOps • Artificial Intelligence • Enterprise #Transformation • Digital Modernization • #SystemsThinking • Army Innovation • Mission Delivery Elizabeth G. k. F.. Jennifer Shieh Nourhan Ibrahim Clementine Starling-Daniels MaryLou Moore Raj Sharma Dr. Christine de Souza Donald Bauer Lauren Hansen-Armendariz Reem Kodsi, MBA, MA Jennifer Snow Nina Archie Rob Zuppert Roger Misso Chang Suh Polly Hall Lauren Knausenberger Conrad Hollomon Josh Smith Cheyanne Dwyer, PMP Shubhi Mishra Wendy Walsh- EdD, MPA, MEP Trish Martinelli, PMP® Brandi Boers Erick Ocasio

San Francisco is back. Rent is soaring, event venues are packed, and everyone is trying to figure out the next frontier of AI. Haven't see this level of energy since 2005! This week felt like a snapshot in time of what is happening right now: - Partnered with Replit for a design mixer during #Config - Hosted a happy hour for the next YC batch - Held a virtual event with Anthropic on how they use Mintlify to maintain Claude Code - Fireside chat with Cognition and Reducto at #AIE on building for the agent era Tonight we're closing the week with a dinner at Cotogna with 15 product & engineering leaders from Linear, Llama AI, RingCentral, Anthropic, Copado, Rippling, LaunchDarkly, and more. The conversations all keep coming back to the same thing: the companies that win the agent era will be the ones whose knowledge is structured, accurate, and actually ready for AI agents to use. That's what we're building at Mintlify. And the timing has never felt more right. Han Wang Hahnbee Lee Daniel Wolkowitz Ruairi Wiepking Shawn J. A. Lestage Nicholas Khami

Big news for Qolab today! 🚀 I am incredibly proud to announce that we have secured $54.2 million in Series B financing and commitments, led by UC Investments. Solving the most difficult challenges in quantum computing requires deep collaboration with the semiconductor industry to effectively scale manufacturing. This milestone—which includes the support of UC Investments alongside our existing financial and strategic partners like WARF, Octave Ventures, WDC, and Phoenix Venture Partners—fundamentally strengthens our ability to deliver scalable, utility-scale quantum technologies. It is also an honor to share this milestone alongside our co-founder Dr. Robert McDermott and co-founder Dr. John Martinis, at the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. This investment will deeply integrate Qolab into the world-class University of California research ecosystem, accelerating our journey toward fault-tolerant quantum computing. A massive thank you to our incredible team, our investors, and our research partners at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Santa Barbara. We are just getting started. I’m most grateful for my spouse Dr. Miryung Kim for supporting me in this scientiric and engineer endeavor. Read the full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/g-CqMhsR #QuantumComputing #DeepTech #SeriesB #Innovation #Semiconductors #Qolab

Turns out I have the fifth biggest Substack. (And one of the few in the top 10 that's not a big team) Thank you for reading, and allowing me to do this work.

يسعدني مشاركة هذه الدراسة السعودية الحديثة حول القياس المبكر للوهن لدى كبار السن في المجتمع السعودي. أهمية هذه الأعمال أنها تدعم بناء أدوات قياس محلية، وتخدم جودة الحياة والرعاية الوقائية بما ينسجم مع مستهدفات رؤية المملكة ٢٠٣٠. كل التقدير للدكتور علي العطاس وفريق العمل Ali Alattas Hevolution Foundation رابط الدراسة: https://lnkd.in/d22iarD9 ⸻ Pleased to share this recent Saudi study on the early assessment of frailty among older adults in Saudi Arabia. Such work supports locally relevant measurement tools, quality of life, and preventive care in alignment with Saudi Vision 2030. Congratulations to Dr. Ali Alattas and the research team. Study link: https://lnkd.in/d22iarD9