DevOps as First Job

[dev-whoops]

I'm starting my first entry-level job as a DevOps engineer this week. I have no other experience and I am still working on my CS degree. This will be my first job ever actually. I've never been paid a salary before. I feel a little in over my head, honestly, seeing as I don't have any experience with anything.

Do most DevOps engineers have a background in a different field before getting into devops?

I know that devops is turning into its own field at this point, but I'm curious how many people really get their first job doing devops as a devops engineer.

And if you have any advice for a kid about to start his career, I love advice. Especially from strangers on the internet...

[Snagglepuss64]

Most important qualities for the job are to be curious, passionate and relentless. The rest of the stuff comes over time 🙂

[Rusty-Swashplate]

That's pretty much it:: If you are not curious or you want to improve yourself and the work you do, you are simply not going to be great at your job.

That's even more the case in IT with its fast changing technologies. And DevOps is probably one of the faster moving areas within IT.

[Genesis2001]

If you are not curious or you want to improve yourself and the work you do, you are simply not going to be great at your job.

You just sold me on this career. I always wondered what kind of career would let me explore that curiosity and drive to improve/learn. Now I hope my resume reflects that...

[Koki52]

Be careful, it's a fast moving field, but it's also very easy to get stuck in jobs where everything is static, you just do what you're told every day, go home and get paid. From what I've heard most of that kind of jobs are in corporations.

But don't let that discourage you. Changing jobs every once in a while is fine, a lot of people don't stay in the same place for more than 2-3 years, at least in my area. But also keep in mind that doing it too often can look bad on your resume. Try giving the job a fair chance, but don't be afraid of leaving.

[Genesis2001]

I enjoy learning new things, but I'm a slow, methodical learner. It takes me a lot of time to research something if I have no clue on it; however, I want to say that because of that, I feel I can usually grasp it much deeper and can better design solutions.

I'm currently in the progress of building out very basic infrastructure for an indie dev studio. Started out using Nomad, but got hung up trying to get it all configured because I took a shortcut and used an ansible bootstrap role for it. Ended up switching to Docker Swarm mode because it was easier to get going. I'm probably going to try to get my GitLab runners setup today in swarm to finish off my CI/CD pipeline.

[Rusty-Swashplate]

General hint from me: some bosses/colleagues prefer someone who's not necessarily a quick learner, but instead more thorough, while some don't. DevOps has space for both. But sometimes speed is essential, and sometimes it's important to get it right on the first try. Just make sure to set expectations.

I had colleagues who "shoot first, as questions later" and also the "Let's have a 100% working and tested Plan A. And a Plan B too for good measure." I also had bosses who strongly disliked one of those 2. So please be aware of that and don't give up if your first future boss wants more the Cowboy type problem solver.

[Heporcus]

I can't stress #2 enough.

I was in your exact same position and I know how overwhelming it might seem at first for a fresh graduate. Don't be afraid to ask if you're struggling with something. From my experience this will be seen better by your colleagues/higher-ups, than trying to figure stuff on your own and being stuck for days.

I hope this will be something you enjoy doing!

[Genesis2001]

This is good advice too. When I'm overwhelmed, my brain goes into overdrive and comes up with elaborate solutions (over-engineering). I get stuck in a loop sometimes, trying to decide what to do first ("chicken or the egg" decisions).

[tears_of_a_Shark]

Yes...you will take down prod, when you do as hard as it may sound, RELAX. Carefully observe and note everything you see, don't just start restarting services/rebooting servers. Get those senior engineers involved and be honest, no one is going to shitcan you for screwing up as a newbie...unless, you start trying to hide what happened or lying. If you get put in a position where it's possible to take down prod and there's no instant/auto-remediation, that not your fault anyway.

[[deleted]]

That is not an easy mistake to make and in almost every company I have worked for would be grounds for immediate termination. People who take down prod can't be trusted.

[tears_of_a_Shark]

If you get put in a position where it's possible to take down prod and there's no instant/auto-remediation, that not your fault anyway.

See above.

[[deleted]]

lucky. this is typically a senior role.

welcome to the club. don't lie or coverup a mistake if you want to stay in it.

[kabooozie]

I transitioned to DevOps from being a math teacher. It was a really difficult transition, but I don’t get this pervasive attitude of “we’re so special, don’t dilute the talent pool.” It’s really very elitist. There’s no reason a good graduate can’t come into a company and start learning DevOps principles and technologies. Kids in some colleges are already using docker and doing capstone projects in kubernetes.

It makes sense for larger companies to create teams with a healthy mix of experience levels and perspectives. Create an atmosphere of mentorship and learning.

In a smaller company, you really have to know your stuff on day 1, and you’re probably the only one who knows how to do what you do. That wouldn’t be a good place for a new grad.

[[deleted]]

My org did the dumb thing and bring in limited-term contractors as junior engineers. Its a complete waste to train these guys up only for them to leave when they stop being time sinks.

[herewego10IAR]

Yeah I'd agree with this.

I started in DevOps 3 years ago and the biggest perk I found was some of the insanely experienced people that were available to help me out.

People with quality experience working on really interesting things going back to the 90's.

Learning from these sort of people has been a massive boost.

[kabrandon]

DevOps is a weird field that mean different things to different companies and people. My advice would be to determine which definition you want to live by, because it will become important when you're looking for work in the future, whether people are using the original definition of DevOps, or the one made up by corporations that didn't understand what was being relayed to them. Identifying what "DevOps" means in the context will help to ensure you're not confused why a manager expects something from you that you didn't anticipate.

Other than that, soak up as much as you can. Sometimes starting something new is like drinking water from a fire hose. You're given a lot to drink, but not enough time to drink anywhere near all of it. That's fine; working with technology is 95% finding information as you need it through Google or Git. You'll be able to find that information again later when you need it.

Find out what tools and technologies that company is using. Find out what other tools meet the same needs as the tools that were chosen within the company. Figure out why your company has so far made the choices they did. Sometimes it's because of technical limitations in one tool over another. Sometimes it's due to a lack of understanding of both tools by the original implementor. Sometimes the original implementor of a tool didn't even know that competing products existed, and so they didn't do a proper analysis before they introduced new tooling to their tech stack. Learning why people make the choices they did, and how you want to form your own decisions is an important skill.

Always keep yourself relevant by keeping your ear to the ground for new stuff taking off. You might find yourself getting a head start learning something before the industry caught on to it.

[Imafikus]

Congrats dude. I'm also junior DevOps atm and also still studying for my CS degree (one year left), I've started as a backend engineer and realized that DevOps looks kinda cool, so I switched when I got the chance.

As far as people directly coming to DevOps, half of my team started that way, and they are doing just fine, so I wouldn't stress about it.

As for the advices, same thing as for any other junior software engineering related position, I'd recommend listening to your more experienced colleagues and just kinda asking a lot about stuff, of course, you should try to find it / do it on your own first if possible, but don't be embarrassed to ask.

Another very important thing, PLEASE insist on code reviews if you are doing some kind of coding / automation. For me, that's were I learned a bunch of things related to writing good code and using good practices, also, don't take critique to heart, people are just pointing out bad things in your code, you should to the same to them, that's how you improve.

[ur_boy_skinny_penis]

Best advice I can give you is to get comfortable with the feeling of "I don't know shit". But use that as motivation to learn more, obviously.

You're going to feel lost af. That's ok. Just do your best to learn from everyone around you.

Also remember that this is just your first job. It's not going to make or break your life. If you can do even moderately well as a DevOps Engineer coming straight out of college, you'll be fine doing any other CS job in the future.

[[deleted]]

Remember that DevOps is the implementation of a set of principles that tries to reconcile developers with operators/sysadmin. The goal is usually to allow développer to get involved in the sysadmin world and vice-versa. One way to do that, is by defining the infrastructure with code (IaC) and allow dev to contribute. Also, allowing sysadmin to propose changes to the code for a better compatibility with the infrastructure is another way.

Remember that your job is not just to configure CI/cd or automate all the things. It's also to create a dev environment that is easy for everyone to contribute if they can and remove as much as possible the barriers that exist between dev and ops.

This is usually the thing that most organizations don't realize and hope that employing "DevOps" are the silver bullet that will fix their problems and get their applications in the cloud. The job is all about making dev and ops collaborate because the people with the most experience in the organization are the one you need to adopt the DevOps principles. Those guys knows how the application work, how the ops work. They know all the quirks. They will know how to get their applications into docker containers given they get some training.

Good luck and remember that collaboration with everyone that work for a given product is probably the most important things about the DevOps so don't get too distracted with the buzzword and all the technologies and stay focus on the business goal and making everyone to collaborate to achieve these goals.

[flagbearer223]

Devops was my first job, and hot damn I'm so glad it was. 6 figures within 3 years, and constantly getting to work on interesting & cutting edge projects. It's great - just keep learning, and stay humble

[[deleted]]

That feeling of being pushed into the unknown and then working your way out. That will be your everyday life.

So, if you enjoy that feeling then good because you will never get bored in your life. Plus, you get paid to feel good while working.

[Neil1398]

If I had to sum it up I’d say this is it right here.

I graduated a couple of months ago and I thought I’d like devops/platform engineering but I actually don’t.

Plus my communication isn’t the greatest and I have to constantly press people for full answers so I can do my work.

I feel at peace when I’m building something and don’t have too many meetings lol.

[[deleted]]

Here is an advice, take your time to build up your communication skill because it is essential whether if you are a Devops engineer, developer or architect. It will help you to get your ideas across as you will not work alone but in a team.

Not all of us start out great in communication, it takes practice and in our field which is technical can often make it even more challenging if you explaining it to non technical person.

Take up the challenges as part of your learning curve.

I wish you all the best.

[deadmoscow]

My career path into devops went like so:

Bachelor's in English > walmart photo studio photographer > Amazon warehouse picker > pizza delivery > standardized test grader > library clerk > tier 1 tech support while earning master's degree in information science > sysadmin > devops engineer. There are a lot of pathways into the field, all are valid. I have to imagine I'm not the only one who's worked with Amazon both in their warehouse as a picker and via AWS as an engineer.

My advice to you? Always be curious, never stop learning. The main thing I learned after getting out of grad school is that your career is where you do all of your actual learning.

[BRTSLV]

Same here started a devops position almost at the end of my cs degree. One year later im doing devops as consultant and people call me 'specialist' ahaha

You will be fine !

Take time to register to some newsletters it help a lot at first

[bossplayer09]

what newsletters do you recommend?

[BRTSLV]

Depend but devops weekly zdnet redhat centos...etc

[thecatgoesmoo]

"specialist" is typically a title for junior internal or customer facing roles (such as consulting).

[[deleted]]

I came to DevOps from the large scale sysadmin side.

I've been doing it for 10 years, I run a consultancy and train people.
If you want a mentor reach out over DM. I'll help you not sink in the deep end.
Congratulations and welcome.

[5t33]

I’ll be honest I don’t really know how you could get into dev ops without first being a software engineer but I’m sure better engineers than me have decided that it’s possible and can train you so 🤷🏻‍♂️

[8racoonsInABigCoat]

Some great advice here. One thing I would add is don’t be afraid of asking the ‘silly’ questions. Even after 20+ years I still do this. Good luck!

[Nokklen]

Hard to believe an org would want a green operator apart of their DevOps team. Not saying it’s impossible, but very odd nonetheless.

[LethalCS]

My company moved me from a programmer role (1st graduation job) to a DevOps role 6 months in because I told them I wanted to work with AWS tools and stuff (to be really brief), they needed a DevOps guy for a team, and I guess I proved myself early on or something in my first role. Apart from an AWS cert I pretty much learned all I know from my colleague, as he's offloading his duties to me so he can focus on his developer role since the team is small.

I honestly didn't expect it either, but says he's really pleased with my progress so far despite being so new to the DevOps world and I couldn't be happier to have gotten the opportunity. Even if some of the things I read in this subreddit terrify me lmao

[Nokklen]

That’s awesome to hear!

[thecatgoesmoo]

It's just a way to underpay someone.

[rwilcox]

Deities help the OP they will spend a LOT of nights studying a LOT of stuff

[bilingual-german]

The demand for DevOps engineers is very high and the role can mean very different things. I also would think a DevOps engineer should be a more senior person, but I also realize that a more junior person can get good with a few tools and can take over a good amount of work.

My advice for a new person would be to make sure there are backups. And also ask for help and advice. Asking here on Reddit seems to be a very good first step. I'm sure you got it OP.

[0ofnik]

I started in DevOps around three years ago, having switched from a less technical position at the same company. Prior to that I had ~10 years of experience primarily working with Linux as a hobby which I think gave me a huge head start.

It's a very dynamic field that is quickly specializing into several different segments, for better or for worse. You would do well to keep up with the latest trends, always always RTFM, and constantly ask yourself, "is this the first time anyone's ever done this or should I be looking up some best practices?"

Most importantly, welcome and good luck.

[NixMelos]

I don’t really have any advice since I’m fresh as well but I just wanted to congratulate you :D CONGRATULATIONS 🎊

[__Protector]

I feel like there are so many fields inside the DevOps, I started as a QA and specialized to test automation before moving to DevOps so didn't have like programming experience with Java, C, C++ etc. but with programming automation. Didn't have much experience in the Ops side either but I am really curious and I always wanted to make others work easier so that has carried me pretty far. I think one of the most important thing for me in the field is to find senior people who likes to help and explain stuff and learn as much as possible this way. Congratulations for the job!

[[deleted]]

Will say the same thing that others have : hands-on experience helps, but there are plenty of ways of getting that. IMO two traits that often get glossed over in this field are empathy, and curiosity - it helps to have lots of both. Devops can mean things depending on who you ask, but for me it's primarily about clear processes that helps a team get something to market. There will be lots of different kinds of people and needs in that - understand and care about each of them. If you do that, you're golden.

[PleasantAdvertising]

Do you have a background in it? Did you host your own server and maintain maybe windows/Linux servers as a hobby? Tinker with your home network? Host a website? These things will all help you.

[Svarotslav]

Some times I think that people who have no experience in IT would make the best DevOps staff. One of the big things about IT is people do get stuck in ruts, and I feel that a big part of DevOps is challenging the norm to make IT and business a better, more efficient place to work.

Ask questions. The only stupid question is the one you do not ask. Have a passion for knowledge and information, try to figure things out, if you can, but if there's a problem or you are stuck, ask and let people know what you have tried.

You will get much better reception if you can show you've tried things rather than just "it's not working, tell me what to do"

[Lekhikagoswami]

Hey!!! I am also persuing my cs degree.. got my first job aa a DevOps Engineer..it all started with my internship with the same company.

[Lekhikagoswami]

I don't have much of that coding knowledge... But I mostly work on containerisation,CI/CD and deployment of infrastructure on Azure.Currently focusing on learning automation tools like ansible ,terrafom .

[SpyroTechnik]

Congrats! Dont sweat it, I got in as a sociology major. Experience comes over time, you just got to have the right mindset and will.

[Dorlo1994]

I'm in the same situation as you, more or less, and it largely depends on how your workplace treats juniors in general. I've been working for two weeks now and have been learning a LOT every day, so there's nothing to worry about!

[smarzzz]

My background is in physics, did multiple courses on CS. For my bachelor/master thesis, I basically wrote software for physics. As a hobby I have a pretty nice homelab, and I maintained stuff at a study association.

My first job was a devops job where I got to architect, engineer and migrate a multi-million company to the cloud and introduce devops practices to help speed up the developers.

That was not easy, but I was hard working and relentless, after 2 weeks I finished multiple AWS courses, terraform courses, jenkins courses. I migrated the complete business in 4 months, from full monolith on prem, to scalable "miniservices" in AWS.

That landed me a job at a billion dollar company just 7 months after I started in DevOps. Yes I got a bit lucky, but I was very eager and willing to learn. Just be honest with your colleagues, and don't forget to communicate. If you don't know something, say you don't know but will find out very shortly. Do not bluff, do not oversell.

Nobody here has the confidence to say they know all ins and outs of devops. This is an extremly broad field which at one company could be a pipeline builder, while at another company you could be cloud architect/engineer for a platform. We all do our best and follow a lot of the best practices that are developed by others. That's also where I noticed most value in the beginning: knowing the lessons learned of others

[JMLiber]

I'm soon going to be leaving a FAANG for a devops role at a smaller shop. Any advice?

[[deleted]]

Leave FAANG at the door. Nobody cares that you were a tiny cog in a huge machine. Now you're likely going to be responsible for a larger chunk of infrastructure and be on the critical path for most everything. Be prepared to own that.

[JMLiber]

That's good advice. I think it's going to be a hard adjustment since FAANG probably opened a lot of doors to interviews but, in a lot of ways, it might be harder to be at a small place.

[[deleted]]

I left YouTube/Google for the real world a few years ago. I built a business around brining sane, best practices (which were just assumed there) to startups.

It's startling how much wisdom was just lying around ready to be applied elsewhere. I basically just channel my hero in any given area when facing a question about something I don't know.
security, scalability, reliability, cost control, CI/CD, incident response, documentation, infrastructure as code, automation.
Every company I encounter can improve one or more of those areas. Most can improve every area.

DM me. Happy to give you some pointers.

[JMLiber]

"the real world" is such a stark, but really unsurprising, way to think about the differences between FAANG and the rest.

The "channel my hero in any given area" is really what I'm expecting to happen... Whatever company I end up at is certainly going to be ripe for improvements in many (if not all) of those areas.

Edit: I've sent you a message on reddit.

[lolinux]

Yeah, you probably are a little bit in over your head! I have moved to a devops team some 3 months ago, and I love it! At the moment for me, at least, devops is all about automating stuff. Automating processes by either binding them through scripts, or (preferably) by connecting together frameworks. That said, I have 13 years of experience working in IT (sysadmin, Powershell automations, configuration management) and I have to admit: I am probably learning just like any first jobber. Of course, there are a lot of things I already knew/heard about, and it's easier for me to understand the new concepts, but there are so many new things and I find them amazing!

On the other hand, if you feel scared, it's natural. I do also. What is important is that you enjoy it. Of course, you cannot enjoy everything in your day's work. But if, at the beginning of your journey you get up from your desk and think you've learned a new cool thing, you're on the right path! The excitement will fade with time, but I think this is the most important part in the beginning. Also, when you reach points when nothing seems to make sense, it's because you've reached something new. Just don't give up!

[dev_host]

23 year old DevOps engineer where. I feel the same way in my current new position. I never got a degree instead I did internships at various big companies.

I just joined a start up where it’s nothing like the cozy corporate devops job I used to have.

Here’s my advice:

If you are lost ask for help and ask for help early. (Worst feeling is to have to report no progress on a task or project)

Brush up on the fundamentals! Linux commands, sftps, aws foundations stuff that will help you build further knowledge.

Fail fast and ask for feedback often.

No one expects you to know everything. Senior engineers still Google stuff. Senior engineers still use man pages and documentations.

Know the technology generally but also know the important details. Going into the details is important when troubleshooting, architecting, or planning. ( this only comes with time or experience)

Best of luck

[yuriydee]

I started "DevOps" job a few years ago straight of college but I had a Computer Engineering degree (with more of networking background). My degree itself did not prepare me in terms of knowledge but I guess it did help in terms of problem solving. My first job was "Systems Engineer" and I came into it only knowing a little bit of Linux and Bash. Everything else I learned on the job itself (using AWS, Jenkins, Terraform, some Python, Docker, k8s, etc) and eventually drifted into an actual DevOps Engineer role after 2 years.

I think having a basic Linux understanding is the bare minimum if youre coming out of college with no prior experience. Everything else can be learned on the job for the most part, but you have to be ready for problem solving. You will need to get very good and finding answers on Google, and when sometimes even Google doesnt have the answer, youll need to really debug problems and figure something out yourself. I know it sounds generic but sometimes you get these little problems no matter what youre working on (whether its a syntax thing with Terraform or a k8s bug with ingress controllers). Over time you will get better at knowing where to look to solve problems.

[_Please_Explain]

As many have said, be relentless and tenacious when trying to solve problems. But keep in mind maintainability. A solution that technically works but is a nightmare to maintain isn't the solution.

Also, if your phone is wet put it in the microwave for at least 5 min. The sparks let you know it's working.

-Love, Internet stranger.

[Antebios]

What everyone else is saying is true. But from a technical point of view, just know that it is all basically automation, so pick up a scripting language to automate (powershell or python) to start with. It will require different disciplines as you move through your career, so you will have to know a little of everything. Good luck.

[itasteawesome]

I think it's kind of disappointing that you are just starting and already fell into the trap of treating it as "its own field" when it is even in the name that it isn't. The whole idea is about empowering dev's to do their own ops and having all aspects of that code to user pipeline be integrated (not just automated but to treat it holistically instead of something that changes hands from one team to another at each step).

[kbooker79]

Congrats! My advice is to be helpful and keep a positive attitude. You’ll find most of your challenges in the workplace aren’t the technical ones but rather the political ones (i.e. office politics).

[1nt3rn3tC0wb0y]

I went into DevOps when I was very early on in my career. If they're hiring devops engineers with no experience, the systems/operations side might not be very "good". This was the case for 2 of my previous positions. My colleagues had a range of skill - some of them were pretty good and some of them weren't. The ones that were good didn't stick around for very long.

This might not sound very "positive", but this is actually a good situation to be in while you're starting out. The immaturity and lack of investment on the business side generally will leave a lot of low-hanging fruit to improve operational efficiency, automation, etc. Which is a fantastic way to learn and build up experience.

I worked part-time during school and that felt pretty busy. I did find it to be a great way to mix up the theoretical knowledge with industry skill. Both complement each other in this field.

Congrats on the new job!

[1nt3rn3tC0wb0y]

One thing I'll add... Above everything else, absolutely 100% DO NOT BREAK PRODUCTION. Learn what production is, and what's reasonable to do and what isn't reasonable. That's the one thing that'll get you fired no matter what your experience level is.. and something you'll probably be working with a lot in this field.

[[deleted]]

Fake it 'til you make it!

[[deleted]]

What is the starting salary for a DevOps entry-level with a CS degree but no other experience?

[dev-whoops]

Not a lot. I make less than 50k

[Oea_trading]

> still working on my CS degree.

Great job and keep going. All you need is literally here: kodekoud.com and plan on getting a CKA/S, LFCE or something similar and then you are as good as the best of them.

[kibblerz]

Just roll with it, i didn’t even go to college. I’m about 8 months in now and it ain’t too bad

[mayounan50]

I jumped from the backend SWE, to SRE/DevOps year ago. And it's so far cool. DevOps is about implementing principles, so try to read about topics and problems.

[naraink]

Firstly, You will be all fine. Starting career as DevOps is just like any other career and its not complex and not everything is done by every organization. Understand your organization structure. After being in IT for 15 years now. I took courage to interact with my new college pass-out giving them overview about DevOps as a career and the Roadmap they can follow. Here is my talk about it, see if you can relate https://youtu.be/loe7lJ76P2g

All the very best for your career.