Who wants to be a DevOps Engineer? with good job prospects, the opportunity to work on innovative projects and to develop a vast array of transferable skills, it’s an appealing career path. In this blog, we’ll be give you five ultimate tips for new DevOps engineers. But before we get into it, you need to know first what is meant by DevOps.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a culture and a way of working whereby developers and operations engineers work as a team to achieve a common goal. In traditional software development, there was a hard divide between operations and development. Developers were only loosely involved in the operation of the software they created and knew very little about where or how it was run. Meanwhile, operations (sysadmins) knew very little about what the software did or how it was created, and had to pray it would run as expected. This idea pits two teams against each other, one with an ultimate goal of stability, the other with an ultimate goal of change. The friction this generated meant that updates were done infrequently to avoid disruption.
5 Tips for New DevOps Engineers
1. Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to learn everything
The number of technologies and tools available is staggering and it is very easy to suffer analysis paralysis and not end up doing anything at all or learning too many things superficially. Narrow down the concepts and technologies that you are trying to grasp, learn them well, and then apply for a junior position that exposes you to the daily tasks and issues that these tools solve. It is impossible to be an expert on every technology and domain. Instead, learn just enough of the basics, get a job and specialize in the areas that relate to your work experience.
2. Focus on the quality of the job rather than just the money
When you first start out, don’t just look at money to assess the value of a role. Instead choose jobs based on how they will contribute to your overall experience.
If it’s a company that gives you a lot of freedom to experiment and take proactive decisions to solve problems and learn useful technologies, then that’s a winner.
3. Embrace change, but don’t keep changing tools
DevOps is all about embracing change and applying new tools to make everyone’s lives easier. However that doesn’t mean you should keep leaping to the next shiny tool every week doing so would create fragmentation as everyone would need to be retrained and reskilled continuously, and it wouldn’t leave enough time for people to excel in their work.
You should only change when the advantages are obvious.
4. Learn to be a good communicator
Communicating efficiently is a must, and while meetings and talking is important, what’s even more important is well written and structured communication and doing work that’s designed to serve others, even for those not on your team.
5. Have the courage to stand your ground
DevOps is all about velocity, sure, but don’t be afraid to push back on decisions that introduce too much technical debt or could be a security or performance issue down the line. This applies to management, colleagues and other teams.
At the very least, if you cannot stop a bad decision from going ahead. Make sure everyone is fully aware of the consequences and put it in writing so it isn’t forgotten and can be addressed as soon as possible.
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