4 ms·

As someone whose total compensation went up 600% over 5 years as a 'cloud engineer' from a sysadmin background, I think your comment is kinda silly. Those skil

by primax 3y ago

As someone whose total compensation went up 600% over 5 years as a 'cloud engineer' from a sysadmin background, I think your comment is kinda silly. Those skills are very transferable to new products and very little of the worth I bring is from my certs

dijit 3y ago
Sysadmin background is akin to first principles when it comes to Cloud. I also have a sysadmin background and my journey to the cloud has been "I can learn new things that make things easier or just use some pretty standard Linux VMs at any time". Most new entrants to cloud learn the following: * an object storage system (GCS, S3) * A functions as a Service system (Cloud functions, Lambda) -- if you are lucky, Cloud Run; since that also gives you Docker. * Message systems (Pub/Sub, SQS) * Maybe an orchestrator (GKE, ECS), but only surface level. * Some very minor information on how to create and access VMs; but it's clumsy, since you have to also learn Linux, this is unused. For me, I can always fall back to my foundational knowledge of DNS, Networking, Linux and the systems I used to run, like databases, app services, mail systems, queue systems etc; For people who are trained only on FaaS and SQS they do not have foundational knowledge to fall back on. That's not to say they can't get it, but it's not helping them make money and it's usually not taught, and worse: it's not something you ever reach for- and people typically learn through failure or by doing. For me: Cloud just makes my life easier. But I can also use an iPad as a consumption device; if I was only ever given iPads I would not be able to write C++ or Perl. That's just the nature of exclusively using simplified tools and abstractions.
- totallywrong 3y ago
  What you are describing is a "developer doing devops" arrangement, or maybe some junior guy with an associate-level certification. A well paid Cloud Engineer is 100% expected to know architecture, Linux, networking and all the things you mention.
  - dijit 3y ago
    there are engineers who specialise on systems that have been in industry long enough to be called senior that have never touched anything non-cloud. Most people who are “devops” with <8 YoE are unlikely to have touched non-cloud systems. Worse still, whether you want to admit it or not: some people are "DevOps" with no prior developer or sysadmin experience. (Since the term "Systems Administrator" is out of vogue but the need for systems administrators has never gone away.) There are so many bootcamps for this too, and they mainly focus on AWS skills. Here's a few bootcamps that people might decide to take to break into "DevOps" of which none are assuming prior knowledge, though techworld with Nana does teach a little Linux. https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/devops-bootcamp https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/devops-bootcamp https://clarusway.com/aws-devops/ https://clarusway.com/aws-devops/ https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-devops-bootcamp/ https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-devops-bootcamp/ https://techproeducation.com/courses/aws-devops-engineering/ https://techproeducation.com/courses/aws-devops-engineering/ https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/devops-engineering-on-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/devops-engineering...
    - totallywrong 3y ago
      I know where you're coming from but the reality is that a lot of those things are increasingly less relevant. I'm not sure what real advantage I get today from having done racking and cabling of physical servers back in the day. In a managed Kubernetes world, I haven't leveraged my ability to run a massive pool of Linux servers in a long time (I kind of miss that btw). For all intents and purposes you can be a great DevOps / Cloud Engineer / SRE or whatever you want to call it without ever seeing a non-cloud system.
      - dijit 3y ago
        I think we're in agreement which is the entire point of the thread we're in. You don't need certain skills today; instead you can use higher order systems instead. That doesn't mean there's no value in understanding (to use a programmer example) a linked list. Equally knowing how a queue system works from the OS to bytes on a wire can make a world of difference in some contexts. You can live in the higher order world and use the tools that make life simple (google analytics, in the case of this thread) but you are jailed to not understanding the systems that they are made from and while you are exposed to some concepts not everything transfers cleanly. "What is the PostgreSQL equivalent of a ML.PREDICT in Google Spanner!". To give another contrived example; a huge reason people learn Latin or complete computer science courses is not because they will be speaking Latin or using Comp Sci concepts; it is because it sets a foundation for learning other systems, a sort of proto-field that permits you to see the relationship building blocks on which other systems exist.
- pyrale 3y ago
  This is terrifying.

by primax 3y ago

dijit 3y ago

Sysadmin background is akin to first principles when it comes to Cloud. I also have a sysadmin background and my journey to the cloud has been "I can learn new things that make things easier or just use some pretty standard Linux VMs at any time". Most new entrants to cloud learn the following: * an object storage system (GCS, S3) * A functions as a Service system (Cloud functions, Lambda) -- if you are lucky, Cloud Run; since that also gives you Docker. * Message systems (Pub/Sub, SQS) * Maybe an orchestrator (GKE, ECS), but only surface level. * Some very minor information on how to create and access VMs; but it's clumsy, since you have to also learn Linux, this is unused. For me, I can always fall back to my foundational knowledge of DNS, Networking, Linux and the systems I used to run, like databases, app services, mail systems, queue systems etc; For people who are trained only on FaaS and SQS they do not have foundational knowledge to fall back on. That's not to say they can't get it, but it's not helping them make money and it's usually not taught, and worse: it's not something you ever reach for- and people typically learn through failure or by doing. For me: Cloud just makes my life easier. But I can also use an iPad as a consumption device; if I was only ever given iPads I would not be able to write C++ or Perl. That's just the nature of exclusively using simplified tools and abstractions.

totallywrong 3y ago
What you are describing is a "developer doing devops" arrangement, or maybe some junior guy with an associate-level certification. A well paid Cloud Engineer is 100% expected to know architecture, Linux, networking and all the things you mention.
- dijit 3y ago
  there are engineers who specialise on systems that have been in industry long enough to be called senior that have never touched anything non-cloud. Most people who are “devops” with <8 YoE are unlikely to have touched non-cloud systems. Worse still, whether you want to admit it or not: some people are "DevOps" with no prior developer or sysadmin experience. (Since the term "Systems Administrator" is out of vogue but the need for systems administrators has never gone away.) There are so many bootcamps for this too, and they mainly focus on AWS skills. Here's a few bootcamps that people might decide to take to break into "DevOps" of which none are assuming prior knowledge, though techworld with Nana does teach a little Linux. https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/devops-bootcamp https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/devops-bootcamp https://clarusway.com/aws-devops/ https://clarusway.com/aws-devops/ https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-devops-bootcamp/ https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-devops-bootcamp/ https://techproeducation.com/courses/aws-devops-engineering/ https://techproeducation.com/courses/aws-devops-engineering/ https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/devops-engineering-on-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/training/classroom/devops-engineering...
  - totallywrong 3y ago
    I know where you're coming from but the reality is that a lot of those things are increasingly less relevant. I'm not sure what real advantage I get today from having done racking and cabling of physical servers back in the day. In a managed Kubernetes world, I haven't leveraged my ability to run a massive pool of Linux servers in a long time (I kind of miss that btw). For all intents and purposes you can be a great DevOps / Cloud Engineer / SRE or whatever you want to call it without ever seeing a non-cloud system.
    - dijit 3y ago
      I think we're in agreement which is the entire point of the thread we're in. You don't need certain skills today; instead you can use higher order systems instead. That doesn't mean there's no value in understanding (to use a programmer example) a linked list. Equally knowing how a queue system works from the OS to bytes on a wire can make a world of difference in some contexts. You can live in the higher order world and use the tools that make life simple (google analytics, in the case of this thread) but you are jailed to not understanding the systems that they are made from and while you are exposed to some concepts not everything transfers cleanly. "What is the PostgreSQL equivalent of a ML.PREDICT in Google Spanner!". To give another contrived example; a huge reason people learn Latin or complete computer science courses is not because they will be speaking Latin or using Comp Sci concepts; it is because it sets a foundation for learning other systems, a sort of proto-field that permits you to see the relationship building blocks on which other systems exist.
pyrale 3y ago
This is terrifying.