How I Grew My Salary 2.5X After My Comfort Zone Almost Killed My Career

How I switched to DevOps from a Linux support role in just 4 months

In 2022, I was 31 years old and stuck in a USA-based MNC doing Linux support work. I had wasted years of my career working the night shift for a significantly lower salary than I deserved.

I had come from a reputed engineering college, yet I found myself trapped in this dead-end job while my college mates climbed the success ladder.

I was working on a Platform support role, which people looked at with pity.

Stuck in a Rut

I was stuck in my comfort zone, working at the same company for 5+ years. Things felt stale at work, and I was making way less money than industry standards and my experience. (13 LPA with 9 years of experience).

I was working the night shift and providing on-call support on weekends. My body clock was permanently damaged. And my manager was a shitty(I am being polite here), blood sucking person.

My health was deteriorating rapidly — chronic acidity, acid reflux, and the crushing loneliness of night shifts led to depression and panic attacks.

I had no work-life balance, and my social life was nonexistent.

Imposter syndrome and a severe lack of self-worth were my constant companions. I had zero confidence in myself and my abilities.

Then it got worse

To make matters worse, I got married and had a ton of financial responsibilities for the family and a few loans on top of that. I had no savings to fall back on.

My insecurities and fears heightened once I had a family depending on me. I started getting panic attacks due to the fear of getting laid off, as I lacked the skills to do anything other than basic support work.

I was not taking forward steps. Instead, I procrastinated. I kept myself distracted with Instagram and Quora.

After many sleepless nights, I realized something —

If you change nothing, nothing will change.

The Turning Point

I decided to make a career switch to DevOps as it was somewhat related to my current role and was in huge demand.

I started researching online about the DevOps roadmap, and it was overwhelming. All the posts talked about learning a plethora of tools, and learning all of them felt impossible.

I turned to YouTube to find better guidance for DevOps and stumbled upon a channel, Techworld with Nana. It was good and gave me some confidence.

My Learning Plan

I decided to focus on essential tools for DevOps and mastering them:

One cloud platform — I chose AWS
One infrastructure as code tool — Terraform
Linux and Docker
Version control tools — Git and GitHub
One CI/CD tool — Jenkins
Configuration management — Ansible
Scripting — Python and Bash

I started learning 4–5 hours after work, but I often felt distracted by social media.

I needed to cut out all distractions. I removed all social media apps and even my favorite app, Quora.

Everything has a cost. To gain something worth feeling happy about, you have to give up things that made you happy.

I studied for two months straight, until 6 a.m. every day. My newlywed wife felt alone because I could not give her any time. She supported me and didn’t complain.

I started diving deep into these topics by watching YouTube videos and reading Medium blogs. I followed the resources and did a lot of hands-on with these tools.

After one month of hard work, I started getting some confidence.

Getting Real Experience

I realized that I needed to get some real-world work experience. I spoke to a few of my friends who worked as DevOps engineers. I asked them about their day-to-day work and the kinds of work they do.

As per their suggestions, I created multiple projects to practice:

Deploy a 3-tier architecture on AWS with Terraform.
Deploy a sample Flask project into EC2 instances using Docker and GitHub Actions.
Deploy a Lambda function to send weekly reports.
Managing S3 buckets with CLI commands.
Deploying a Flask API in AWS ECS with Terraform.
Created complicated Ansible playbooks to bake custom images.

They also suggested that I learn Kubernetes.

I spent another month doing hands-on lab and learning Kubernetes along with that.

The Interview Journey

By the end of 3 months, I was confident enough to start giving interviews. I did some research and updated my resume.

I wanted to make my resume stand out, so I used Canva for predesigned resume templates and built a professional-looking resume.

I updated my LinkedIn and Naukri profiles. Since DevOps was in huge demand, I started getting many interview calls.

I crapped my pants in the first few interviews as they asked questions that only an experienced DevOps engineer would answer.

I did not let it discourage me, as I knew it would happen. I gave a ton of interviews and kept learning after each rejection.

After three/four interviews, I started getting better.

The Breakthrough

Within the next month, I cleared interviews for 5 companies with a few big names.

I negotiated and finally got an offer with a 2.5X salary increase plus a handsome joining bonus.

A New Life

It changed my life completely. I had everything:

A handsome salary with a bunch of great benefits.
Respected designation at a reputed company.
Day working hours, free weekends, and work-life balance.
Confidence, self-worth, and motivation to do more.

The chronic health issues that plagued me during my night shift days have significantly improved. The acid reflux, depression, and panic attacks have mostly subsided.

If you’re stuck in a career that drains your soul and affects your health, remember that the first step is the hardest but also the most important.

And remember my mantra:

If you change nothing, nothing will change.

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