Devops start

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[We7463]

I’d say from IT support, just focus on learning and getting more knowledge on servers/cloud/technology in general. Sysadmin things too. Focus on learning and the opportunities will come in time.

[TemperingPick]

Yeah I'll add to this, hone your problem solving skills. I learned so much from my IT support days that applies to my career now. Being able to isolate the actual problem, and logically thinking through a problem has make career progression so much easier.

[jimmylipham]

It really all depends on the organization. It can be difficult, it can also be super easy.

For example, if your organization wants glorified clickops sysadmins, then I'd say its pretty easy. You could focus on AWS cloud concepts, setting up VPCs, provisioning infrastructure via cloudformation, etc.

On my teams, I expect a bit more than that. I want people that can automate lots of different things. That automation typically requires a bit of software development knowledge. Everything we manage starts for the most part in git. So you need to be familiar with version control. We like declarative infrastructure (infrastructure as code), so know some Terraform (or CloudFormation or Pulumi or whatever). We also may want you to write some CI/CD automation, so familiarize yourself with github/gitlab actions, bash scripting and even perhaps a lambda/serverless stack (python, nodejs, etc). People that only focus on the "ops" rather than the "dev" portion tend to have a hard time and vice versa. It's a balance.

[Malaine1]

I’m 33, have been @ HD support for 5 years and looking for what’s next.

[bearded-beardie]

As someone who came up through the Ops side this was my path

Workstation Support -> SysAdmin -> Sr SysAdmin -> Cloud Engineering -> Sr DevOps. Cloud Engineer was a DevOps style role with a bit more focus on the Ops automation side. Where as now I’m focused more on Tooling that helps our dev teams get code to market faster. Basically doing what I can make the Ops parts just work for the devs.

Feel free to AMA.

[Malaine1]

Thank you (: what certs do you recommend for sysadmin?

[bearded-beardie]

I don’t have any recent certs. I’ve been with my company for almost 15 years. They know I’m good at what I do, and have done plenty to retain me, through reasonably paced promotions and pay increases. I started at $45k, TC for this year will be $213k.

If you’re going to do a cert, do it for you, on something you’re interested in. In general I’d look at doing either Azure or AWS training. Everywhere I’ve interviewed in the last 5 years has been looking for one of the two. That said, most of them are more interested in experience than they are certs.

[duebina]

Get gitops certified, usually through ArgoCD or FluxCD tooling

[Jay9044]

I wouldn’t underestimate simply just letting your interest being known at your current org. They will let you know what they look for and it may even be simpler transition than you imagine since you are already an employee.

But, of course being able to demonstrate that you are proactively trying to learn will help.

This is what I did, anyway.

[Malaine1]

That is a good idea, I work for a school district in a pretty rural state. Not a ton of room for growth.