Avoid these 3 mistakes at the start of your cloud career journey

In the last couple of months, I have spoken to dozens of people looking to start a career in the cloud. From these conversations, I’ve identified three common mistakes beginners make that seriously hold them back in their cloud journey. These mistakes are so common that I felt compelled to write this article in the hopes of helping others avoid them in their journey.

Before we dive into the article, I’d like to clarify that these mistakes are not their fault. When one is starting out on their cloud journey, there is a severe lack of credible information simply because the cloud industry is opaque and complicated. This opaqueness is what inspired this newsletter, to hopefully shed some light into the dark corners.

Beginners often kick off their job search by applying for Solutions Architect (SA) roles.

This is a mistake because SA roles are inherently senior positions that require years of experience. To be a good SA, you need to understand how multiple applications and services interact with each other. You need to know how to gather business requirements to be able to recommend the right solution and work through the trade-offs of choosing one service over another.

By applying to these roles, they are setting themselves up for failure, as either there won’t be any responses from recruiters, or if the recruiter does give them a call to gauge their skill level, there certainly will not be a call back for an interview.

This lack of response can be demotivating and lead to reduced morale, which is not productive for anyone.

Do not make this mistake!

Here are some roles you should apply for instead:

• (Junior) Devops engineer
• (Junior) Cloud engineer
• (Junior) Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
• (Junior) Linux administrator

Drop a comment if you would like me to write an article breaking down the roles I mentioned, and I'll get to it if there is enough demand.

At the start of your cloud journey, it is difficult to know what to learn as there are so many tools, programs, and buzzwords that it can feel overwhelming. This causes newbies to frantically tilt from learning one technology to another with no real plan or structure

There is a quote attributed to Confucius that goes:

“The person who chases two rabbits catches neither”.

In the cloud world, there are beginners chasing 10 rabbits. Jumping from Linux one day to Kubernetes the next, dabbling with CICD one day and trying out AI and Machine learning the next.

This is a very good way to get nowhere fast, as they are spending time learning things that will not lead to their first job.

Once again, I’m not blaming them for learning like this because I did the same thing at the start of my career. However, learning like this meant that it took me a lot longer to achieve my goals than was strictly necessary.

In order to save you from a similar fate, I have created a simple learning path that increases your chances of landing that first job:

• Linux
• Bash and/or Python Scripting
• Installing Webservers and Databases
• Basic AWS services: EC2, S3, and RDS
• Maybe infrastructure as code (Cloud formation or Terraform) if you are feeling particularly ambitious

Once you learn the basics of these, I would recommend creating projects that build upon the new skills you have learnt. By creating projects, you will now have real examples you can use to update your CV as well as talk about in interviews.

Once you have completed the above steps, I recommend moving on to more advanced topics, like CICD.

Technology that you categorically, most definitely should not be learning as a beginner includes:

• Kubernetes
• AI
• Machine Learning

The final mistake I notice people make is focusing too much on certifications and not enough on hands on experience.

Look, I get it; the Cloud Practitioner certification is a good one to get because it introduces you to the concept of cloud computing. I even appreciate getting the Solutions Architect Associate Certification because it introduces you to different AWS services and concepts, but anything after that is overkill, at least until you get your first job

This is because, and I know this probably goes against everything you’ve been told, employers don’t actually care about your certifications. They just don’t. What they care about is whether you can do the tasks they assign to you. Simple as. They are not paying you to have a Solutions Architect Associate certification. They are paying you to be able to work with EC2, and they are paying you to be able to write a script to help automate a problem.

So my advice on this issue is that while certifications are nice to have, if you really want to land a job sooner rather than later, then I would definitely prioritize real, hands-on projects.

Now that you’ve read my thoughts, I’d like to read yours. Drop a comment and let me know if you agree / disagree, or if I've missed any mistakes that you’d like to add

P.S Explore mentorship program which has been designed to give you the skills and experiences to help you land your first cloud job in the next three months