In a Kongcast episode, Matt Stratton, a staff developer advocate at Pulumi, discusses the evolution of configuration automation and its relationship with cloud engineering and DevOps. With a background in traditional technology operations, Stratton shares his journey from being a sysadmin in Chicago to becoming involved in DevOps about eight or nine years ago, driven by an interest in automation and tools like Puppet and Chef. He describes his transition from using VB and bash scripts to adopting infrastructure as code tools, emphasizing his involvement with Chef and later Pulumi. Stratton highlights the transformative impact of infrastructure as code on work processes and expresses enthusiasm for its potential to change how people work, underscoring his commitment to the tools he believes in.