I worked in the IT industry for 9+ years as a Production support engineer, working with Linux and Aix. I was desperately looking for an escape.
I decided to switch to devops as it felt promising. I reached out to a few of my friends working on Devops.
They told me- It’s not easy to switch to devops without some experience. They advised me to find some projects within my current organization and get hands-on experience before starting giving interviews.
In Big companies, switching to a different domain isn’t that easy practically. I didn’t want to wait any longer as I have already given this company 5+ years with little to no growth.
I read about people who had made a career switch to Devops without relevant experience. I decided to learn devops in and out. Get a good hold of the Devops tools so I can justify a few years of experience.
Learning Devops was hard. We are supposed to learn many tools, understand how they fit in the devops pipeline, and get good at them.
I watched youtube videos and read my Quora answers. I was overwhelmed, to be honest.
Best Free resources to start your Devops journey
I decided to focus on one tool at a time without overwhelming my head.
I started With Docker, went shadowed youtube videos, and got my hands dirty.
After a few days, I started feeling it and got some confidence. I felt a ray of hope. It pumped me enough to learn a few more tools and pursue my goal.
I started learning Git, AWS, and Terraform, which took me more than two weeks. I learned Ansible and its many use cases. I practiced writing playbooks and got familiar with YAML syntax and Ansible modules.
I started learning Kubernetes and Helm while still figuring out Jenkins. Kubernetes is complicated, I had to put way more effort into it. I went through some Udemy videos, a ton of youtube and Skillshare videos, and hundreds of documentation.
I also learned Jenkins. I learned to create simple CICd pipelines in GUI. My friends had told me that no one uses GUI pipelines in production environments, so I started learning to write declarative pipelines.
It took me some time to understand how source code is built and packaged. I learned a little bit about Maven.
I already had some prior knowledge of Python. I spent some more time learning about how to use Python in automating daily jobs. I created some use cases and practiced them.
I did a lot of hands-on while following different resources. After one and a half months, I felt ready to start giving interviews.
I did not want a boring resume, I wanted it to stand out in a pile.
I did some research and created a draft of the content. I kept it short and specific and showed 2.5 years of devops experience. I used a beautiful template from Canva.
I updated my Naukri and Linkedin profiles and uploaded my resume. I got calls and got interviews lined up.
I started preparing for interview questions from youtube, google searches. I scraped so much content before my interview.
I gave my first interview which went pretty well. But I crapped my pants in the next four.
I did not let those bad interviews discourage me, I was expecting that. I used all the questions they asked and studied. I was obsessed with learning everything I could get my hands on.
After that, I gave many interviews for the next 3-4 weeks and ended up with five offer letters. I negotiated a package with 2.5X my current salary. My Linux experience surely helped. I am currently serving a notice period.
The journey was not easy, I lost patience on multiple occasions. I studied for long hours, got frustrated at the time, and went to sleep. I woke up the next day and repeated the same. I am glad that I didn’t give up before the finish line.
