How I got started leading database teams with Shireesh Thota
Download MP3From dreaming of driving a bus to leading database engineering at Microsoft. In Episode 29 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, Shireesh Thota traces his path to becoming CVP of Azure databases—rooted in a love of math, early BASIC programming, and a certainty that he’d become an engineer. We dig into the shift from engineer to manager (if only people came with documentation); why it’s so important for Microsoft to contribute to the PostgreSQL open source project—not just consume it; and whether Shireesh has a favorite database (hint: it better be Postgres.)
Links mentioned in this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Blog post excerpt: Why we have a Postgres open source contributor team at Microsoft
- Podcast episode: Leading engineering for Postgres on Azure with Affan Dar
- VS Code Marketplace: New VS Code extension for PostgreSQL
- POSETTE 2025 talk: Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code extension for Postgres by Matt McFarland
- LinkedIn post: PGConf.dev 2025 talk on “The trouble with extensions” by Marco Slot
- Podcast episode: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
- Book: Who Moved My Cheese
Creators and Guests
Host
Claire Giordano
Head of open source community efforts for Postgres at Microsoft. Ex-Citus Data, Amazon, Sun Microsystems, and Brown University CS. Serves on PGCA board. Prolific Postgres conference speaker. Co-creator of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres. Loves sailing in Greece.
Producer
Aaron Wislang
Principal Software Engineer (Open Source Engineering + Azure Core Upstream) at Microsoft + Azure ☁️ | Go (golang), Cloud Native, Linux 🐧 🐍 🦀 ☕ 🍷📷 🎹 | Toronto 🇨🇦🌎 | 💨😷💉 | https://aaronw.dev/hello/
