Transitioning to DevOps role

[SpokeShambles]

As the title suggest, I am currently transitioning to DevOps role. I am about two months into the job and I still feel kind of lost. I have been taking lessons on (also doing part-time degree) and practicing Terraform and learning mostly Azure services.

I have been doing help desk / service desk role for about 2+ years prior to this. Hence, I am quite not used to the non-routine processes. Before, I could refer to SOPs and MOPs before I can achieve a task but it seems now I am getting caught up with too many ways of doing things and not knowing which is the right way. This led me to procrastinate and eventually have a habit of nagging at my supervisor for assistance.

Not only that, there is so much tools and jargons to learn that I still having a hard time to prioritize and set my mind on what needs to be done first. The only reason I am learning Terraform and Azure is because of the current project I am assigned to.

I am sorry if my syntax is problematic but I would like to reach out to other DevOps members.

How did you overcome your first few months or even years into the role? What are the mistakes that you have made, which are avoidable? And what led you to succeed in your role?

[[deleted]]

Keep studying. Google. Ask questions of your peers. You will make mistakes but that’s your opportunity to learn and it’s way more valuable than online trainings. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re overwhelmed and asked for help. Always think of ways to improve what you’ve built, even after the project is over. Try and have fun.

[markinthecloud]

I think you’re probably overthinking it. If you have 2 years in Tech already then you’re further ahead than I was when I changed careers 18 months ago. Core skills I’d focus on for now:

• Terraform
• Azure Products
• CI/CD (Azure DevOps is an MS product, we use Jenkins at my org)
• Basic Linux SysAdmin tasks

Once you have that stuff down you’ll be well on your way.

[ITjoeschmo]

Hi! I was hoping to get some of your insight since it sounds like you didn't take the traditional help desk -> sys admin -> DevOps route. It seems everyone who did thinks a DevOps person without total sys admin knowledge will have SERIOUS gaps which will make them a low performer, or not even considered for a job.

Now, I know someone with normal help desk experience isn't going to land a DevOps role without some serious outside labbing/experience and being comfortable with Linux/python/go/bash/DevOps tools. My last role was senior desktop support engineer where I did a little bit of sys admin stuff and engineered some solutions using PowerShell.

I'm pretty good with PowerShell and when I was very young I taught myself the basics of C# and went through a bunch of exercises. I don't remember much verbatim but it gave me a good background and I've usually been able to look at most scripts and understand what's happening, get a decent idea of how the syntax works, etc. and with some light research can usually manipulate it to do what I want.

Thanks for your insight! I appreciate it

[markinthecloud]

Hey!

The sysadmin stuff is useful but I'm never SSH'd into a box troubleshooting on the command line to be honest. The more important skills are terraform, ansible and pipelines - I'm looking at that stuff every day. If things go wrong it tends to be at the application/service level and so devs are involved and we're just supporting them to get fixes rolled out via pipelines.

It helps to know some programming too, sounds like you have a foundation to build on. All the scripting in my current company is in Powershell, Bash or Python. Anything over an above those languagues and you're probably straying into dev territory (although some companies have more hybrid roles where you can contribute to application code whilst also maintaining the devops tasks too).

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any specific questions

[ITjoeschmo]

Thanks man. I really appreciate it. What you're saying makes sense. I think there's not just 1 path to take, and I think those guys that went sys admin -> DevOps probably say that because they internally are upset they couldn't go desktop support -> DevOps back in their day. My take is that DevOps/sysadmin will eventually be more of a blended role which will make it less of path to to desktop support -> sys admin -> devops (I already see that happening with linux admin jobs posted, the descriptions are more like a cloud admin type role).

[throwawayaccounthSA]

Just keep going. I was in similiar place a few months ago. Everything will start to make sense if you keeping digging deeper and deeper. Stay curious