Fast Track - Learning Community

Feb 28, 2019 · 7 min read  ·
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I've had over 15 years in the industry and I'm keen to share all the things I learned the hard way, so you don't have to make the same mistakes I did. Here are my 3 keys to carrer advancement if you're just starting out or looking to break into DevOps, automation, cloud and software development.

At the bottom of this page I have reading suggestions, next steps and challenges you can follow to advance your own carrer.

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1. Get educated and/or get some certs

Until you have enough proven industry experience, a degree and cloud certificates are great starting points as they demonstrate your ability to master the basics. You can also do this with coding bootcamps. That's just the beginning though, the real work happens after you've got some of the basics under you belt.

If you're studying for a cert, think of ways you can make it interactive for yourself (ie open up an AWS and start building), and include outputs that you can with the world (code, blogs etc) - more on that later.

2. Get some experience, then hussle

Roles that build skills vs more money

In the early stages of your career it's less important how much you're getting paid, and more important to get lots of good experience. The experience I gained as a support agent, SEO Optimization expert, and developer, all helped in landing a job as a "DevOps Engineer". There were plenty of interviews where I didn't have all the industry experience, however I still had demonstrable knowledge and enthusiasm I was able to convenience companies it was worth taking a chance on me.

When I started my career I was Level 1 phone support for a windows/MSSSQL based application. I learned essential troubleshooting skills, progressed to Level 2 got my hands dirty with SQL replication. Web development was my true passion, so my free time was spent learning on various side projects.

There are many paths to your dream job, and many jobs that can help you build the experience you need to eventually that job of your dreams.

Be hungry - and hussle

Early on in your journey you're going to be missing 'years of experince'. For some senior roles there's nothing you can do to 'immediately gain experince', but you do have one ace up your sleve that's free and instant - hunger and hussle! These qualities should not be overlooked, especially for junior roles (where you don't need to compete on experince and you have the opportunity to learn).

Learn and do as much as you can, and don't limit yourself to your current 9-5 duties. When I was a web developer for a small consultancy I saw an opportunity to step into an SEO Optimization role, I pitched a business case to invest in me to be that expert, so the other devs could focus on their code, and I got first-hand industry experience in a field I'd never studied.

I remember one of my first real consulting gigs, I was responsible for automating an AWS Account with networking from the ground up. I had a huge learning curve ahead of me. I cut my teeth on CloudFormation, AWS VPCs, learned about ephemeral ports the hard way (those are seared into my memory) - but I came out the other end of that being able to master any AWS Networking issue that came my way.

Be prepared to do things you haven't mastered yet, take on responsibility outside of your role/contract, get out of your comfort zone, and demonstrate a willingness to work hard and learn fast.

3. Your brand - the interview advantage/booster

For my personal brand, I built a presence on GitHub, StackOverflow, Serverfault, and on meetup.com attending, presenting and eventually hosting my own meetup (which was a hit in interviews when they were looking for people active in the community). These were great talking points in interviews and impressed many people, showing my dedication to learning and continuous improvement.

I stumbled on Cloud and DevOps by accident, as a curious developer wondering where and how my code got deployed. By deploying my own websites and obsessing on the inner workings I was able to naturally build practical knowledge of DNS, web servers, load balancers, http vs https, redirects, json/yaml, css/js, IaC, backend and frontend development. You can get started with AWS Challenge or just just developing and deploying today.

Always be producing content

You don't need to write about something new or groundbreaking.

I found that writing about what I learned was helpful for myself, and my brand. If you take notes of interesting things/code/sites as you go, you can draw from a queue content that you can share with the world. The quicker you produce content, the more feedback you get.

Here are examples of all sorts of content I've created:

So what's holding you back from producing your next piece of content?

Things to read

These websites helped shape my understanding and thoughts of the industry:

Here's my personal collection of books. It's a mix of leadership, behavioural, DevOps and Agile so you'll want to pick the topics that are most aligned with what you're learning.

What next?

  • Checkout learn for self-paced learning
  • AWS Challenge to get your hands dirty with AWS, Infra and web dev (more challenges coming, see outline below)
  • Publish some content, I suggest medium to start with so you can focus on content and not get bogged down in the logistics of your blog setup
  • Join some meetups, meet some people, get those creative juices flowing

When you're ready, join our slack community to have 24/7 access to some great minds and a supportive group.

Challenge outline

You could do this in 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months.

One

  • Build and deploy a static site in AWS using serverless: AWS Challenge
  • Iterate on the first challenge (smoke tests, pipeline improvements) & launch your brand - your hello-world

Two

  • 3 Tier app & Networking in AWS
  • App Modernization, lambda and strangler

Three

  • Google App Engine app deployment

Four

  • Automated Testing: TDD/BDD

Five

  • Katacoda lesson

Six

  • Build a container, do a security scan/test on it, deploy it to a k8s stack

Outcomes

  • Your own brand/website .com
  • 6 blogs posts based on your experinces and what you learned from each challenge
  • 6 repos in your github showcasing your skills
  • Demonstration of a breadth of skills (AWS, GCP, Web Development, IaC, TDD/BDD, Containers, LB/App/DB, Security)

Compliments study for a certificate: You can study a cloud cert alongside this challenge and it will help you get hands-on with the material that you'll need to memorize for the cert.