How I Became a Cloud and DevOps Engineer - You Can Too!

What's up, everyone? Today's going to be a little bit different video. I'm not going to go over a technical demo or anything like that, but I'm going to talk about a recent appearance that I had on the PowerShell podcast with Andrew Plah, in which I talked about my technical career, working in PowerShell, all the blogging and courses I have created over the years. And one of the things we touched on is my transition to being a cloud engineer and a DevOps engineer. I wanted to spend this video going into that journey in a little bit more detail. And hopefully

hopefully give you some advice if you're on that path right now of trying to become a cloud

engineer or the DevOps engineer and getting to work in that space. Now, one thing when I started this YouTube channel is I was never going to ask you the audience

to do those silly things like like and subscribe or hit that bell notification or anything

like that. I'm making an exception for this video in that if you like this type of topic where I talk about

career things or working in cloud or consulting or anything like that, please like this

video and if you have any questions leave a comment down below I will answer it

there or if there's quite a few of those type of questions I will gather them

up and maybe answer them in another video so this will be one of those few

times that I ask you to do that just so I can get feedback from you on if you

like this type of video I'll always continue to do technical demos and

everything like that but just let me know down below if you have any questions or

like the video if you want to see more things like this but now we've got

that out of the way let's get started talking about my IT career a little bit

So back in 2018, I started working at Microsoft, which I thought was really cool

I was a premier field engineer working in Skype for business and Microsoft Teams

That was the early days of Microsoft Teams. And it was a really neat experience, a great company to work for lots of smart people

But in the process of doing that, I realized I did not want to spend the rest of my career

working in Microsoft Teams. It's a software as a service application or SaaS application

I didn't see any challenge there necessarily in just going into the Microsoft 365 portal

and toggling some things here and there. Working in the voice space of Microsoft Teams was interesting

It had some challenges. But overall, I just did not see a future for myself and working with that product

I started looking more at Azure and working in that cloud space

I was hearing a lot about being a DevOps. engineer. It involved coding and automation. And those are things that really interested me

and could see myself pursuing those type of jobs. And I thought it would just fit with my

personality really well and how I work. So because I was working at Microsoft, I picked the

Azure Cloud to start learning. One of the great benefits of Microsoft is you can take Microsoft

certification exams for free. You don't have to pay for the exam. So that's really great. I started

studying Azure. And in 2019, I started getting Azure certifications. they didn't have the Azure Fundamentals one at that time

so I started with the Azure Administrator, which was two exams at that time, and then I also got the Azure Architect

which was also two exams, and just continued on from there in that certification journey

Azure DevOps, Azure Security Engineer, anything Azure-related that I could study and get a certification for

I thought was going to be a good thing, and it was studying for those certifications really helped me out a lot

I also was studying other things like learning, Git, how to use that on the command line, using Azure DevOps repos and GitHub

learning about CICD pipelines and doing deployments like that. Now, all these things had nothing to do with my current job role in being a premier field

engineer and working Microsoft Teams. These were things that I was interested in and things I felt I needed to learn to progress

my career. I also want to give a big shout out to Mike Pfeiffer

He used to run a podcast called Cloud Skills and a training company. I listen to his podcast all the time

He's very motivating. Even reached out to him and talked with him a few times

He was a really cool guy. So I wanted to give a big shout out to him. He was a big inspiration for me at the time to transition my career into working in the cloud Now my hope is that I had about 12 years of cis admin experience at that time I was hoping that getting some Azure certifications would be enough to get me a job working

in Azure full-time as a cloud engineer. However, that wasn't my experience. Even with being an

IT veteran and what I thought would be demonstrating knowledge of Azure with certifications

just wasn't cutting it. It wasn't enough for me. me to break into the field

Because the hard truth of it is everybody wants you to have production experience

is what I call it. You know, being hands on, having done things before, especially doing things like

migrations, people moving from on-premises data centers into the cloud. And unfortunately, I feel like everyone saw me as a Sky for Business, Microsoft Teams person

I was stuck in that world. I was stuck being a consultant basically

I didn't have internal IT experience working in Azure as very limited

and was just really difficult at that time to find a new role

and what I wanted to do was working in the Azure Cloud full time

Then in 2020, I decided to move on for Microsoft. I got a role I was still working in consulting

in professional services spaces and Microsoft Teams, but it was on a really interesting team

where you could do lots of different things. And actually, that role was the first time I really could dive in

and take some of the Microsoft Teams things I'd been learning around voice

and actually do voice implementations for small businesses. So that was actually satisfying

even though I was working in an area that I wasn't extremely excited about

or I didn't see a future in, that was really still cool projects to work on. But that team did professional services

but then they also had customers who were just getting started, in Azure or had small things in Azure and I could have the opportunity there to work on some things

So I did some Logic app work, Azure Storage, Azure Automation's things for customers on a

very small basis. And that was really just good experience. Started finding any opportunity

If something Azure came up, I tried to jump on it and say like, yeah, I can figure that out

even though maybe I didn't know quite how to do it at the time. And I think you'll find it, you know, that's, you know, that's, you

your career as an IT person, you know just enough to know that you don't know, but you need to be

able to go research it and find it. But this was also an interesting role in that this team had developed tools to help them

in their consulting work, and they used GitHub Enterprise to do that

And even though knowing Git and how to work with GitHub Enterprise's branching and pull request

those are things I'd already been studying and could immediately jump in and start working on

that. So that's just an example of something where I was learning things like Git and source

control management systems prior to ever getting a role where I could use it because I knew

that was a skill I was going to need in order to get where I wanted to go. This was a large

company that had multiple teams that did lots of different things. And there was an opening for

an Azure DevOps engineer on another team. And I was able to do an internal transfer over to that

team and get on that to start working on Azure projects. In making that transfer, that was my first successful, you know

getting into the Azure Cloud world full time. I'd finally transitioned away from Microsoft Teams and was able to start using my

skill set a little bit, even though I didn't have hands-on knowledge. I had practical knowledge that could be applied to this project I was going to be working on

And what I want to point out is when I interviewed for that role, even though I didn't have

experience using things in production, I had the knowledge and was able to answer the questions

and have a conversation with the interviewer about it. Again, because I had taken the time

prior to that, even though it wasn't required for my job, to learn about Azure, to learn some of

the basics get the certifications and you know just go through that process It was then during that time I started learning more about Terraform You know I done the Azure part It was starting to get some hands experience

And I felt the next thing I needed to do was learn Terraform. You know, it was reading a lot more about that

It was getting very popular as an infrastructure as code language. After about six months in that first Azure Cloud role

I had a friend reach out at another company. They were expanding their Azure consulting practice

and was wondering if I wanted to come on board. So I was able to move into that role

and was working as an Azure consultant and was able to start putting

some of that Terraform things I had learned into projects working with that company

I'd spent about a year in that Azure consulting role, getting to do different projects

and again, just expanding my skill set and getting some practical hands-on knowledge with Terraform

Now, at that time, I was, was still in consulting and moving into the consulting world was a conscious decision I had made

several years prior because I felt like I wanted to specialize in something, see more environments

and just really become an expert in a couple of specific areas. However, I did not like

working in the consulting world. That is probably a completely separate video that I could talk

about the pros and cons of that. And if you want to hear something about that, you know, obviously leave a comment below

And I'll be happy to answer it if you have any questions about working and consulting

So then I embarked on a new job search where I had a couple of criteria

I wanted to continue working as an Azure Cloud engineer. And I wanted to be in an internal IT team

And I was able to do that in 2022. And finally, you know, successfully complete this journey

that I had started for myself in transitioning away from teams, transitioning away from consulting

and finally become an Azure Cloud Engineer working in an internal IT team for a company

To recap just a little bit, that timeline, 2018, 2019, I decided, you know, Microsoft Teams wasn't

for me. Let's start learning Azure. And it wasn't until 2022 that I felt like I was able to

finally complete that journey into being the cloud engineer and the, doing the type of work that I wanted to

And part of that was also getting out of consulting. So a good three, four years maybe

And even now I started a new role where I'm a DevOps engineer, which was maybe the ultimate goal

So you could even say from 2019 to 2024 almost was my cloud journey to get where I wanted to go, almost five years

That's a long time. And there were a lot of times in there where I got frustrated

that I wasn't able to make progress. I was applying for jobs and not getting interviews or not getting offers

because it always came down to experience. Just a super frustrating thing to have to go through

So that's my cautionary tale a little bit of if you see people telling you

oh, you can become a cloud engineer in six months. I'm going to call BS and say that's probably not true

In six months, you can learn a lot. but the thing employers want most is experience

and you have to bring experience in the field to do it

But again, how do you get experience if you don't get the job? All that being said, I have a couple of takeaways for you

if you're working towards your cloud journey and how to progress your career a little bit

First thing is, you know, understand the skills and technologies that you need to know

for the job that you want. Like I mentioned, I was working in the Microsoft Teams area, but I started learning Azure through certifications

Even if you can't pay for the certification to take them, use them as a framework of things to study that are important, learn the basics

And also started learning things like Git, source control management, CICD pipelines, those type of things

Don let your current job box you in and be the only things that you learn And you need to learn things outside of your job to keep yourself relevant inside the industry That something I didn do early in my career

but I'm continually trying to do that now. Now, part of my career journey that was really

difficult as I was working in consulting, and it was hard to make that transition into internal

IT back where I wanted to be. And that first Azure role came through an internal opportunity

I didn't have to look external. I looked internal at the company I was at the time

and was able to transfer into an Azure Cloud Engineer role. So if you're in a role right now at a company

and you're maybe just working help desk, you're a desktop technician, nothing wrong with those roles or anything like that

but you want to progress and do other things. Try to stick it out a little bit

and focus on those internal opportunities. I think back to about 2015, 2016

the company I was working at at the time was just, just getting started looking at Azure

And I almost wish I'd stayed working at that company because I would have been an

internal IT and been at the very beginning of their Azure journey

And I would have gotten the experience to maybe get to where I am now a lot quicker

Unfortunately, at that time, I had a different goal and a different focus. I was working on Skype for Business

I want to be a consultant and get out of internal IT. That ended up, I would almost say, being a mistake

So if you're at a company right now, you know, put yourself out there, let your manager know what you want to do

If there are opportunities to work on projects in Azure Cloud or whatever you want to do, maybe it's AWS, Google, anything like that, and put in the time and effort to learn those technologies so you can then go to the other people, the senior people maybe that you're working with and say, hey, I want to help you out with this

Partner up with them, just show interest, you know, and keep doing that. If you're not able to get that opportunity internally, then start looking externally

You may take an external role again as a help desk or assist admin or something at a different

company, but they might have internal opportunities later on that you can take advantage of

Now, the last takeaway I have, it sounds maybe kind of cheesy or cliche, but just don't give up, you know

like I mentioned, 2018, 2019 to 2020-4 to being a DevOps engineer

three to five-year journey to finally get where I really wanted to be and I'm doing work that I really enjoy and what I wanted to do

There are lots of times in there where I almost gave up, or I kind of did give up and didn't focus on things at the time

and then had to regroup and start doing it again. But I knew that if I just kept working and I, you know

that first Azure DevOps role, and then gaining more skills and then getting back to internal IT and then DevOps engineer and everything

It just, it took time and it's going to take time. And especially right now, you know, this last year I went through another job search for other reasons that we might talk about in another video

That still took me about another 10 months of job interviews, 2023 into 2024, because the IT job market right now is very, very difficult

Anyway, just wanted to give a little bit more details on the things I was doing during that time

I know in the interview that I mentioned at the top of this video, it's very like, yeah, you know, I did this and did that

It was very short. Just wanted to get into more detail about it and say, you can do it too

You just have to keep studying, keep looking for those opportunities, take advantage of whatever opportunities or situations come your way until you can finally get where you want to be

Again, if you like this video, you want to hear more about career things that I have thoughts on

Give this video a like. Leave me a comment or a question below. And we'll see if we can talk about it sometime in the future

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time. The