# The Exit Interview: JP Phillips

DevFeed: [The Exit Interview: JP Phillips](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-exit-interview-jp-phillips-1719.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://fly.io/blog/the-exit-interview-jp/>)

Published: 2025-02-12T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [The Fly Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-fly-blog.md>)

Topics: [Orchestration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/orchestration.md>)

Tags: [api](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api.md>), [cdn](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cdn.md>), [close-to-users](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/close-to-users.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [deploy-app-servers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/deploy-app-servers.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [docker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/docker.md>), [elixir](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/elixir.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [fly](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/fly.md>), [fly-io](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/fly-io.md>), [heroku-alternative](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/heroku-alternative.md>), [heroku-competitor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/heroku-competitor.md>), [hosting](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hosting.md>), [i](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/i.md>), [networking](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/networking.md>), [orchestration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/orchestration.md>), [platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [postgresql-clusters](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgresql-clusters.md>), [servers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/servers.md>)

## AI overview

An exit interview with JP Phillips about his departure, Fly Machines, and the orchestration system he helped build.

## Source excerpt

JP Phillips is off to greener, or at least calmer, pastures. He joined us 4 years ago to build the next generation of our orchestration system, and has been one of the anchors of our engineering team. His last day is today. We wanted to know what he was thinking, and figured you might too. Question 1: Why, JP? Just why? LOL. When I looked at what I wanted to see from here in the next 3-4 years, it didn't really match up with where we're currently heading. Specifically, with our new focus on MPG [Managed Postgres] and [llm] [llm]. Editorial comment: Even I don't know what [llm] is. The Fly Machines platform is more or less finished, in the sense of being capable of supporting the next iteration of our products. My original desire to join Fly.io was to make Machines a product that would rid us of HashiCorp Nomad, and I feel like that's been accomplished. Where were you hoping to see us headed? More directly positioned as a cloud provider, rather than a platform-as-a-service; further along the customer journey from "developers" and "startups" to large established companies. And, it's not that I disagree with PAAS work or MPG! Rather, it's not something that excites me in a way that I'd feel challenged and could continue to grow technically. Follow up question: does your family know what you're doing here? Doing to us? Are they OK with it? Yes, my family was very involved in the decision, before I even talked to other companies. What's the thing you're happiest about having built here? It cannot be "all of flyd". We've enabled developers to run workloads from an OCI image and an API call all over the world. On any other cloud provider, the knowledge of how to pull that off comes with a professional certification. In what file in our nomad-firecracker repository would I find that code? https://docs.machines.dev/#tag/machines/post/apps/{app_name}/machines So you mean, literally, the whole Fly Machines API, and flaps, the API gateway for Fly Machines? Yes, all of it. The f