In this episode, hosts Mat Ryer and Matt Toback sit down with Ted Young, co-founder of OpenTelemetry, to unpack the real story behind OTel — from its Google origins to today’s push toward zero-touch observability. They explore how OpenTelemetry emerged from the merger of OpenTracing and OpenCensus, why the “three pillars” model may be holding teams back, and what the infamous logs vs. events debate reveals about how the industry thinks about data. Ted breaks down the technical and philosophical shifts happening in observability, including context propagation, structured telemetry, semantic conventions, and why backwards compatibility matters more than most people realize.
