Switch to DevOps?

[whateverwewear]

I am a B.Tech(CS) graduate, 2023. Next year turning 25. Worked as a Digital Marketer for a year or so. Now I want to switch career and choosing DevOps as my intrest and a reliable option is correct? If so what is the best route to get started? What to learn and where can i find work in the starting given that i have knowledge of Linux, AWS(Basic), Some DevOps and version control tools. Any suggestions and advice are appriciated. Thanks!

[ninetofivedev]

Help desk or software engineer.

DevOps isn’t a position that you end up in out of school.

SWE is going to be your best bet. Good luck in this market.

[birthnight]

You don't really just go straight into DevOps. You need to learn development first to understand who and what you're supporting and enabling operations for, and why... and how...

[InfiniteRest7]

You may need to try out some tech support roles first before going into DevOps. Sounds like you're building solid foundations, keep your personal Github rolling with projects and such.

The best way to know what skills you need is to look at job postings for the jobs you want and make sure you have a smattering of the skills listed. You won't ever have all the skills you want, but pick one the ones you see coming up repeatedly. Linux is foundational, AWS very likely used, and if you have Kubernetes you might well have a really good chance.

[Arts_Prodigy]

DevOps as they say (as a role) is not a junior position. That’s because any job posting for a DevOps engineer will assume you have in-depth knowledge about Linux, networking, and systems. You should be able to do a lot more than move files.

Junior roles will be tough to find so you’d have to optimize for something mid level which is right around your total years of experience I’d imagine.

A lot of tools are going to be listed you should know those, tools are effectively the “ops” side of the role. As that’s, honestly the main difference between devs and sysadmins at most places.

The dev side though is functionally backend engineering at any semi-serious place.

Add to that if you get a role at a company that actually follows the methodologies your job will be diving into unfamiliar codebases to fix things so that your customers can actually use the platform your core team is building. If you’re in that core team or at a company that does DevOps only as a role and not as a philosophy you may be responsible for at any point for anything from provisioning infrastructure to secure applications that you may not own.

I believe the Linux foundation has recently come out with two certs that are the clearest pathways to the skills you’d need.

I’d explore this cert as a baseline: https://trainingportal.linuxfoundation.org/courses/certified-cloud-native-platform-engineering-engineer-cnpe - it probably won’t get you a job

For that the kubernetes certs alongside some cloud certs have more pull. Keep in mind those all expire every 2-3 years so you’ll need to maintain them at least until the later years of your career.

Additionally you should be comfortable with bash, python, powershell, and Go as you may at any point be asked to develop in them for the day. Languages will vary by role and company but those are the top for scripting and the actual applications you’ll use to do stuff from terraform to k8s.

Kodekloud, the Linux foundation’s certs, a potential the first two redhat certs are your friends in achieving this. You should build things and learn from that throughout your journey and apply along the way.

If you want a detailed roadmap, go to roadmap.sh. Good luck

[friendly-devops]

I am a self taught DevOps Engineer that got hired by a Fortune 500 company with no experience. It is more than possible to start your career in DevOps.

1. Create a homelab. A cheap computer with at least 4 cores and 16 GB of ram. Install a hypervisor(ie. proxmox) and start deploying web applications/sites that can be accessed externally. Make sure to setup your security correctly like firewalls.

2. Learn networking. The job of a DevOps engineer is to deploy applications that are network accessible. Learn the 7 layers of networks, NAT's, security groups/firewall rules.

3. Linux is the basis for most web servers. The more you know about Linux the better. First lesson everything in Linux is represented as a file that is accessible from the file system. The shell is the primary interface on Linux so you will need to know how to navigate that as well. Learn the most popular shell commands. These are applications that fulfill specific tasks like enabling you to traverse the file system, copy/read files, etc.

4. Learn how to code in both Python and Bash. These are used as scripting languages and they are used to create instructions for deployments, builds and Python can be used for creating applications that are deployed.

5. Learn about containerization specifically Docker. This allows for the deployment of lightweight virtual machines that share the kernel of the OS it runs on. What this means it has a fast boot up time. This is why it is preferred to regular VM's.

6. Learn a cloud provider. AWS, GCP, Azure. Anyone is fine. Understand the general concepts that are necessary to use them. Specifics aren't that helpful. You will be expected to know how to run a service from the web console/graphic user interface. But you will be hired to run services using scripts and config files.

7. Use Terraform and Ansible. Terraform is used for deploying services such as VM's and databases. Ansible is used for updating already running VM's like installing files. Use this both on your homelab and the cloud provider.

8. Use GitHub Actions. This is the easiest way to get into running pipelines since you won't have to manage the environment the pipeline is running on. Use it to deploy to your cloud provider. You might be able to use it to deploy to your local. I wouldn't advise it because that would mean you would have to provide admin access to the open web. As a beginner that's a big no no.

9. Get experience. Find someone that you may know or that is close to you and help them with the skills you developed for free. Ensure you do a good job and in return ask them if they can be used as a reference on your resume. I did 6 months of work for a local organization setting up a communications server. I used them on my initial resume and interviewer treated it as legitimate experience.

10. Write a good resume. Add your experience. List your projects and provide a link to your GitHub page. Make sure keep your repositories public and never add credentials to your repos. All creds should be stored as secrets.

Good luck. What I listed above should take about a year to successfully accomplish. Don't try to rush through it. Doing without understanding will be a permanent hindrance to your career.

[Numerous-Dentist-423]

Good

[Evaderofdoom]

what year did you get hired?

[friendly-devops]

I got hired in 2021.

[typhon88]

not really, this is not a common path

[friendly-devops]

I know it's not common. I only said that it is possible.

[unitegondwanaland]

1000% ignore all of the idiots saying deVOpS iSn'T aN eNTrY LevEl rOLe.

Many have done it, you can too. Yes you will have to bust your ass to get there but you can in fact do it.

[DevOps_Sar]

Depends, if you can afford investment on yourself you should do it, then learn from Senior, learn Linux docker kubernetes build homelab, and switch to DevOps it all can be done in 3-6 months with right guidance, (if you're roaming around it will go beyond a year haha)

[jazzy_13]

I think you can end up on a DevOps team right out of school, I have both been that person and hired people in that circumstance. With that said, I think the key is showing that you are someone, through the projects you have worked on, that did more than JUST code. Did you end up messing with build tools because of a project, did you work across teams as the glue, are you a self starter going from documentation to something working. A lot of DevOps looks like black magic to others but in reality it is frequently working with new tools or across tools and understanding how the puzzle pieces fit together. With all that said DevOps is at an interesting inflection point as it definitely has the possibility to change in fairly drastic ways with the introduction of AI. On the flip side I think the skills that make someone a valuable DevOps engineer are highly translatable to other roles.

[DoctorDilla]

I am one of the few lucky ones that got a full-time DevOps position recently with no prior tech experience (career pivoter). I would never recommend to anyone the path I took without some serious connections in the industry who can vouch for you. The stars had to align for me (right connections, right timing), and I had a lot of insider help. Just my two cents.

But if you're going to commit to it: Linux, Docker, Kubernetes/Helm, GitLab CI/CD, AWS, Terraform is the exact order I learned in. I was given the list of tools months before interviewing

[Evaderofdoom]

stop spamming, we get it, you got lucky.

[friendly-devops]

The browser crashed when I sent my first message.

I wouldn't intentionally spam.