My Cloud Journey

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My Cloud Journey

It was quite a journey to get my first cloud job.

Feeling Stuck

I had been a long-time software engineer. And I found myself in a role that didn’t involve cloud, with no opportunities to get cloud experience. I felt underemployed and like I was being left behind. And I knew I needed to stay relevant, so I started learning on my own, after work and on weekends.

Honestly, learning on my own did NOT go well. It felt really slow and overwhelming, and I didn’t know where to focus. Three big cloud providers and so many services in each. I learned about the concept of free-tiers so that I could try things for free but it still felt overwhelming.

The Kindness of Strangers

I decided that I wasn’t going to be able to do this alone. So the next part of my journey involves the kindness of strangers.

Apprenticeship

I found an apprenticeship program led by someone who is a cloud architect and wanted to give back. We had weekly sessions one or two hours a week and sometimes we would pair program on things or sometimes I would research something and report back my findings. Sometimes I would just listen about her work. Sometimes I would show what I was working on.

Online Book Club

I participated in an online book club, for the book Genomics in the Cloud: Using Docker, GATK, and WDL in Terra.

Virtual Hackathon

I also participated in an online Data Science Hackathon trying to predict wind speeds of hurricanes from satellite images and our team could barely run in a model in 8 hours on a local machine. So I saw the opportunity to speed things up by using the cloud. And I was able to figure out a cloud solution that allowed our team to iterate faster.

Networking

And then I got in touch with a former manager told her that I was trying to pivot and she put me in touch with a hiring manager of a data analytics startup. The manager spent several mentoring sessions with me, talking about life at the start up, what they were building, and giving me feedback on my portfolio. Eventually the startup had an opening and I was selected for an interview. The hiring team was really interested in my side projects and apprenticeship. And I was offered a job as a cloud data engineer.

Conclusion

So that is quite a journey. It took me about 18 months of learning and networking on the side (while working full-time) to get my first cloud job. But three years later, I’m so glad I pivoted.

Below is a video of me answering the questions:

• How did you get your first job in the cloud?
• What skills do you need to do your job?
• What are employers looking for?