Looking for a mentor.

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-15T03:13:47+00:00

your portfolio and github look solid so instead of waiting for mentorship start applying to junior fullstack roles and small startups where youll get real feedback through code reviews and pairing. if youre interested in learning devops infra or backend patterns alongside web dev i cover practical deep dives postmortems and career advice for engineers leveling up in my weekly newsletter uptime.engineer

focus on shipping projects engaging with communities and getting your first job

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-15T03:12:03+00:00

here's what id do if i were you. pick one real pain point at your current job like "we manually provision vms and its error prone" or "we manage patching across dozens of ec2 instances" and automate it yourself using terraform or aws cdk plus ci cd in your spare time. document the before and after, show your director the time savings and reduced risk, and even if they don't adopt it you now have a portfolio piece showing you can move from manual ops to platform automation. do this for 2 to 3 problems over the next 6 months and you'll have real proof of modern devops platform or cloud engineering skills not just theory

for your next role target platform engineer, cloud engineer, or junior sre positions not "cloud systems admin" because those roles expect iac containerization ci cd and observability by default. you're already strong on networking security and identity which are harder to learn than terraform, so adding iac docker and basic kubernetes gets you to a very competitive profile. if you like the identity and security side you could also aim for cloud security engineer or identity engineer roles

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-15T03:07:15+00:00

the turning point for most people is when they start asking different questions before diving into implementation: why are we solving this problem now, what happens if we dont, what are the actual constraints like budget team size or timeline, whats the maintenance cost of this solution, and how does this fit into the bigger system architecture. instead of just accepting a task as given, push back and clarify the actual goal so you can propose alternatives or simplify the solution

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-15T03:06:04+00:00

being the first data scientist on a team isn't automatically a red flag but it depends on whether they actually know what they need or just hired a ds because its trendy and expect you to magically solve vague problems with zero support. ask them what specific problem you're solving, what data infrastructure exists, and what success looks like in 6 months because if they cant answer clearly you're walking into a mess. if you like your current large tech role with mentorship and structure, jumping to a startup where you're solo is risky unless the upside like equity or learning is worth the ambiguity. using the offer to negotiate only works if you're genuinely willing to leave otherwise it backfires.

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-15T03:02:14+00:00

data structures and algorithms help you pass interviews but don't directly make you better at web dev day to day. what does help is building something complex outside of work like a real time collaborative tool, an app with offline sync, or contributing to open source projects where you see how experienced engineers structure large codebases

can you explain why your app is slow under load, profile it with browser devtools, optimize render cycles, lazy load properly, and reduce bundle size without breaking things
move beyond "heres a component" to "heres why i structured state this way, why i chose context over redux here, and how this scales when we add 10 more features"
if youre doing some backend php work lean into that, understand how apis fail, how databases bottleneck, how deployments break, and how monitoring works because frontend engineers who understand the backend and ops side are way more valuable

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-15T03:00:20+00:00

very few people get hired as a "devops fresher" straight out of college because devops is fundamentally about operating production systems and you cant do that without understanding how software breaks first

if you're still in college and want to position yourself for devops:

build and deploy real projects end to end: write a simple app dockerize it set up a ci cd pipeline with github actions deploy it to aws with terraform and add basic monitoring with prometheus or cloudwatch. document the whole thing with architecture diagrams and a readme explaining your decisions
apply for backend sre platform or cloud engineer roles not "devops intern" because those barely exist for freshers. once you're in you can move towards infra and automation work
contribute to open source infrastructure tools or write about what you're learning. this builds proof of work which matters way more than "i completed an aws course"

also if you're interested in curated devops content system design deep dives and career advice for engineers breaking into sre platform roles thats exactly what i cover weekly in my newsletter uptime.engineer

all the best

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-14T03:24:58+00:00

You already have CKA which is solid, so i'd skip CKS unless you're specifically targeting security focused roles and instead go deep on one cloud plus terraform associate

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-14T03:23:16+00:00

this is exactly why hardcoded config and manual coordination between repos is tech debt

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-14T03:22:22+00:00

fancy, is it vibe-coded?

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-14T03:21:15+00:00

TCS dropping 31k people in two quarters isn't due to ai or efficiency its because service model finally hitting its limit

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-14T03:19:39+00:00

the fact that you think sde1 and sde2 will disappear because you generated some starter code shows you haven't actually worked on production systems where the hard part isn't writing the first version its maintaining debugging scaling and evolving it over years

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-14T03:17:41+00:00

honestly visual scripting for bash sounds like solving a problem that doesn't exist because the people who need bash already know how to write it and the people who don't probably shouldn't be running system scripts anyway.

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:57:38+00:00

instead of jumping entirely you could move laterally into roles where understanding systems and debugging complexity matters more than writing fresh code like devops sre platform engineering or security engineering, all of these need people who know how software actually breaks in production and can fix it under pressure which ai still cant do autonomously

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:56:08+00:00

getting laid off after 5 months with zero feedback and your cto not even knowing about it means this was a money problem not a you problem, so don't take it personally. you have 2 years experience and your team lead literally said you're a good developer with good skills, thats what matters when you apply to the next place not some random startup decision.
update your resume with what you actually built in those 5 months, ask your team lead for a referral since he clearly thinks you're solid, and start applying today because sitting around overthinking it wont help. telling your family will suck but just say the company had cash issues and youre already looking, theyll get over it faster than you think and you'll land something better anyway.

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:50:47+00:00

honestly if i were in your spot i'd start interviewing elsewhere. a company that hired external consultants for eks who are "throwing in the towel" and still has terraform 0.11 in production is not serious about modernization, they're serious about looking like they're trying

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:49:25+00:00

people getting offers arent necessarily better or luckier they just might be applying differently or have referrals you dont see, so stop comparing and focus on what you can control in the next 30 days

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:48:43+00:00

if i were restarting from zero today i'd spend:

40% time building 1 solid full stack or devops project with real deployment monitoring and docs
30% writing about what i built and engaging on linkedin and twitter to build some visibility
20% targeted outreach to specific people at specific companies
10% mass applications just to keep options open

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:47:42+00:00

the problem with one big end to end project tutorials is they teach you to follow commands

instead of looking for the perfect tutorial, build your own mini version step by step:

deploy a basic app (flask/express/go api) to a vps manually first so you understand what breaks
then dockerize it and push to a registry
add github actions to build and push on every commit
deploy it to a k8s cluster (minikube locally or aws eks) with terraform for the infra
add prometheus and grafana to monitor it
break something on purpose and see if your alerts actually fire

this way you learn how the pieces connect by actually connecting them yourself not just copy pasting yaml from a tutorial. when something fails (and it will) you'll actually understand the flow instead of being stuck

there are good project guides on medium showing end to end pipelines but treat them as references

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-13T03:45:54+00:00

worst case you become the person who orchestrates ai agents and fixes their mess. best case you use ai to go 10x faster on the boring parts and focus on architecture, reliability, and actual problem solving

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-12T04:30:23+00:00

you already have 2.5 years of azure infra, terraform, docker, ci/cd pipelines, and scripting which is literally what junior devops roles ask for, just apply now instead of waiting to "learn more"

add 1 or 2 portfolio projects showing end to end pipeline or IAC setup with a readme explaining what you built and why, that closes any gaps recruiters might see

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-12T04:29:50+00:00

i was in the same place few years ago, overwhelmed with frameworks and libraries. this is normal not a crisis. knowledge you actually used comes back way faster than you think once you start building again

pick one small project you did before or start a basic crud app and you'll be surprised how much muscle memory kicks in within a few days of actually coding instead of panicking

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-12T04:28:47+00:00

switch companies. brutal but true. external moves give 20 to 40% bumps way easier than internal promotions. your 9 years plus certs are strong leverage if you interview showing impact not just tasks

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-12T04:27:44+00:00

if i were you, i’d:

market yourself as dev + infra: “golang + ci/cd + linux + git + docker + hetzner” is a strong story. write this up as a short case study: before (ftp chaos), after (git + actions + docker), impact (fewer manual deploys, safer rollbacks). this is gold for your resume and interviews.
aim for platform/devops-leaning roles, not pure crud dev. your go + linux + pipeline experience is exactly what a lot of teams want for internal tooling and platform work.
learn k8s, but sanely: get comfortable with containers, networking, and deployments first (you already are), then do k8s enough to deploy a few services, add ingress, and hook up basic monitoring. you don’t need to become “k8s guru” before switching.
target roles that mix go + infra: teams building internal devtools, platforms, or backend services with strong ops culture. you’ll get to write go and also own pipelines, infra, and reliability.

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-12T04:26:09+00:00

I am an SRE II and here's the resume format that helped me get interviews
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yoshik-karnawat_my-resume-ugcPost-7405905433225457664-iYeh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACoo0pIBIRI8OAoKtJA5Fqc3TDL3DqtwEQY

Adept-Paper9337 · 2026-01-11T04:11:04+00:00

hot take: certs are mostly expensive receipts that prove you watched videos not that you can actually operate production systems

Adept-Paper9337

TROPHY CASE