0:00

If I was going to start

0:02

from zero where I have zero

0:04

context, so I was going to

0:06

learn some of the IT fundamentals

0:09

on how networking works, so

0:11

like how internet works first

0:13

of all, DNS, how packets

0:16

transfer, how computers communicate to

0:18

each other, because at the

0:20

end of the day all

0:22

these servers within the cloud,

0:25

you know they use networking to talk

0:27

to each other. The second

0:29

skill I would really spend

0:31

my time is on how

0:34

Linux works. Welcome back to

0:36

the Free Code Camp Podcast,

0:38

your source for raw, unedited

0:41

interviews with developers. This week's

0:43

musical intro with yours truly

0:45

on the drums, bass, guitar,

0:47

and keys, we're going back

0:50

to 1989. Nintendo

0:52

Entertainment System Classic

0:54

Duck Tales theme from the

0:56

Moon. to

1:59

the Code Camp podcast. I'm Quincy

2:01

Larson, teacher and founder of FreeCodeCamp .org.

2:04

Each week, we're bringing you insight

2:06

from developers, founders, and ambitious people

2:08

in tech. This week, we're talking

2:10

with Rishabh Kumar. He's a cloud

2:12

engineer and a developer advocate at

2:14

Twilio. Rishabh grew up in India

2:16

and moved to Canada for school,

2:18

but he couldn't afford to finish.

2:20

He resorted to delivering pizzas and

2:22

working at a gas station, but

2:24

he worked hard to teach himself

2:26

how to code using websites like

2:29

FreeCodeCamp .org and how to build

2:31

cloud infrastructure. And eventually he got

2:33

a job at Google. Before

2:36

we talk to Rishabh, support

2:38

for this podcast comes from a

2:40

grant from Wix Studio. Wix

2:42

Studio provides developers tools to rapidly

2:44

build websites with everything out

2:46

of the box, then extend, replace,

2:48

and break boundaries with code.

2:50

Learn more at WixStudio.com. Support also

2:52

comes from the 11 ,043 kind

2:54

folks who support FreeCodeCamp through

2:56

a monthly donation. Join these kind

2:58

folks and help our mission

3:00

by going to freecodecamp .org/donate. Rishabh,

3:02

welcome to the podcast. Hi, Quincy.

3:04

Thank you. Thank you for

3:06

having me. Thank you for your

3:08

many contributions to the FreeCodeCamp

3:11

community, which we'll talk about later.

3:13

But first, I want to

3:15

talk a little bit about what

3:17

cloud engineering is for people

3:19

who are uninitiated. Before we get

3:21

into your backstory, which is

3:23

fantastic, like Hero's Journey, what exactly

3:25

is cloud engineering? Okay,

3:28

so my understanding of it

3:30

is that cloud engineers are

3:32

IT professionals, like it's a

3:34

segment with an IT where

3:37

people design, build, and architect

3:39

on cloud. So cloud, if

3:41

you don't know what it

3:43

is, it's basically someone else's

3:46

computer. There are a lot

3:48

of public clouds available right

3:50

now. So think of Amazon,

3:52

AWS, Google's TCP, and Microsoft's

3:54

Azure. So basically you're renting

3:57

out a computer. compute from

3:59

these vendors instead of buying

4:01

compute, like having your own

4:03

servers. So anything in regards

4:06

to cloud, whether it's designing,

4:08

building or architecting on top

4:10

of it is called cloud

4:12

engineering. Yeah.

4:15

And so that's the specialization you've gone down

4:17

as a more generalist dev. You've

4:19

gone into like cloud engineering and like often

4:21

you'll hear the term DevOps. Would you consider

4:23

it like basically a seven then DevOps kind

4:25

of like maybe predates the full move to

4:27

the cloud. But nowadays, almost

4:29

everybody's using the cloud, right? Yeah. Like

4:31

free cooking. We have more than

4:33

100 cloud servers around the world. So

4:35

we can have like really good

4:37

uptime and we can have various services

4:39

available in various places and all

4:42

that. And low, not just uptime,

4:44

we're very proud of our

4:46

99 .99 % uptime. But four

4:49

nines, it's not six nines like

4:51

Amazon would have necessarily. But

4:53

also, of course, just latency

4:55

and stuff like that. Like making

4:58

sure that like people who

5:00

are in Punjab where you

5:02

grew up have fast access to

5:04

free code camp and making sure

5:06

people in Nairobi have fast access.

5:08

People who are in Buenos Aires,

5:10

you know, various parts of the

5:12

world that they have a good

5:15

connection in that they can quickly

5:17

access learning resources. So you built

5:19

a career around this and I'm

5:21

very excited to get into your

5:23

backstory. What pushed you in

5:25

the direction specifically of cloud

5:27

engineering versus more general software

5:29

engineering? That is a really

5:31

good question. I'm trying

5:33

to go back to like the 18,

5:36

19 year old me of what was

5:38

going on in my head. I

5:41

think so I got into

5:43

tech by doing tech support.

5:45

So tech support or IT

5:47

help desk was my first

5:49

role. So I was doing

5:51

tech support for a SaaS

5:53

company and was helping customers

5:56

with the issues varied from

5:58

being product issues to. sometimes

6:00

networking issue or OS specific

6:02

issues. So the amount of things

6:04

you learn, like you need

6:06

to have like a, you

6:08

wear multiple hats because sometimes you're

6:11

running command line tools to

6:13

figure out why this particular port

6:15

is not working or is

6:17

not open. And the other times

6:19

it's basically permission issues on

6:21

the OS level. And during

6:24

that time, I found out how

6:26

the R SAS, which I

6:28

was supporting was using AWS because

6:30

of one of the tickets

6:32

needed escalation, I needed access

6:34

to like our database. And that's

6:37

when like the flow was

6:39

that I escalated to a cloud

6:41

engineer who will grant me

6:43

access to run a specific SQL

6:45

statement. I mean, interesting, like

6:48

I don't know what AWS,

6:50

like I've heard the term, but

6:52

I don't know what it

6:54

really is. And that's when this

6:56

specific engineer started explaining me,

6:58

it's like, oh, we have our

7:01

servers. That's basically we are

7:03

renting servers from them. And

7:05

I'm like, oh, very interesting. So

7:07

I definitely was always fascinated

7:09

with like server administration, server management

7:11

and Linux had a really,

7:14

you know, soft spot in my

7:16

heart. And I loved networking

7:18

aspects of it too, talking

7:20

about like general IT back in

7:22

2015, 16. And

7:25

I'm like, this is really cool

7:27

that you don't have to have

7:29

servers on -prem. You can just

7:31

rent them out. So that got

7:34

me interested in like, there was

7:36

a spark. I'm like, I need

7:38

to learn about this more. And

7:40

that's when I started like asking

7:42

this cloud engineering team more questions.

7:44

Like, oh, okay. They were very

7:47

kind to take me to a

7:49

regional conference in Toronto. That's

7:52

when I took you

7:54

to a conference. Yeah, these

7:56

people are super chill.

7:58

Like I talked to a

8:00

lot of devs and

8:02

they're kind of almost afraid

8:04

of IT people. They're

8:06

like, oh, don't screw me.

8:08

computer somehow with some weird you know software that

8:10

the company needs to install in there right like

8:12

like I have just one anecdote of a person

8:14

who's like who like literally like whenever IT's coming

8:16

by they'll like figure out an excuse to be

8:18

out of the office and they don't have to

8:20

interact with them. Oh my god I'm sad that's

8:22

the like the notion but no I would I

8:24

consider myself very fortunate that I had people who

8:26

I could really rely on when it came

8:28

to like you know, mentorship stuff.

8:30

So even before they took

8:33

me to the conference, at this

8:35

point I was six, seven months

8:37

in tech support and I was

8:39

like, I don't want to do tech

8:41

support for like my entire career.

8:43

There's nothing wrong with that, but

8:46

it was just not me and

8:48

like I want to do something

8:50

more. So I asked for advice

8:52

and they're like, if you don't

8:54

know what you want to do

8:56

yet. maybe shadow different roles that

8:58

we have at the company. And

9:00

that's what I did. I shadowed

9:02

software engineers for a week. They

9:04

had like a front end and

9:06

a back end team. I'm like,

9:08

no, after a week I was like,

9:10

no, this is not for me. Then

9:13

I shadowed QA engineers for a week.

9:15

I realized you need a lot

9:17

of experience to be a QA

9:19

engineer with a, specifically when the

9:21

QA team is very small. And

9:23

then the last team that I

9:26

had to shadow was the cloud

9:28

engineering team. These were the all

9:30

three engineering teams they had

9:32

or sub teams within

9:34

the engineering department. And

9:36

the cloud, again, I was kind

9:38

of biased previously too.

9:40

A shadow that I'm like a

9:43

lot of this makes sense. I

9:45

have a lot of transferable skills.

9:47

Instead of managing servers on-prem, I'll

9:49

be doing it on the cloud.

9:52

The only gap is like learning

9:54

terminology that AWS or Azure or

9:56

GCP uses. Apart from that, everything

9:58

else makes sense. And that's when,

10:01

after that week, they're like, oh,

10:03

we have a spare ticket to

10:05

this conference about cloud. Would you

10:07

like to go? And I'm like,

10:09

sure, if like the expenses are

10:12

covered, why not? I went to the

10:14

conference and saw all

10:16

these, all these, you know, passionate

10:18

people talking about cloud. I'm like,

10:20

this is like, I can't pursue

10:22

this as a career. And I

10:24

think going to that conference talking

10:26

to... a lot of people outside

10:29

of my company, like made me

10:31

realize, okay, you know, I need to,

10:33

now is the time to like make

10:35

this change. And this was 20, late

10:38

2018. Okay, so you'd been, oh,

10:40

so we're going to rewind and talk

10:42

a little bit more about your

10:44

career in a second, but

10:46

do you think that the

10:48

cloud, cloud engineering roles like

10:50

Devops, like that that field is...

10:52

Do you think it has a bright

10:54

feature or do you think like

10:57

a lot of it's going to

10:59

be automated or consolidated? Like what

11:01

is your take on whether people

11:03

should be getting into cloud in

11:05

2025? Great question. I think

11:07

cloud is, you know, there is a term

11:09

I heard about like how every company

11:11

is a data company now because the

11:14

amount of data we have. I think

11:16

that is also true for cloud

11:18

so like every company right now

11:20

is a cloud company because in

11:22

some way or form you're using

11:25

cloud computing whether it's to sass

11:27

like using Gmail software as a

11:29

service whether it's to platform as

11:32

a service or infrastructure as a

11:34

service and with the rise in

11:36

like all the AI stuff that

11:39

we are seeing I think the

11:41

need for having compute

11:43

that can handle workloads for

11:45

AI and LLLMs. I think

11:47

it's only going to increase.

11:49

Of course, the use case

11:52

is different now, but if

11:54

you find a balance between

11:56

how you can, you know, be

11:58

proficient and how... like AI and

12:00

machine learning and LLLMs use compute and

12:03

then kind of like have that in

12:05

skills set along with cloud skills I

12:07

think that would be my like advice but

12:09

yeah cloud is cloud is definitely here to

12:11

stay and it'll be what you just said

12:13

makes a lot of sense to me because

12:16

like quantum computing for example

12:18

let's say hypothetically that does

12:20

get traction right now it's

12:22

more speculative but You're not going

12:24

to actually want to have a quantum

12:27

computer. You're going to want to rent

12:29

access to it because it's going to

12:31

have some fortune to maintain those things.

12:33

Similarly, if you're doing machine learning,

12:35

you're training your own model. You're not

12:38

going to want to buy a whole

12:40

bunch of super expensive graphic cards and

12:42

build your own. That would be a tremendous

12:44

expense. Like these things cost a fortune.

12:47

And if you can just use. you

12:49

know, like a cloud service to access

12:51

them to train or even just have

12:53

an ongoing like GPU cluster that your

12:55

inference on, that's so much more economically

12:57

viable for like a typical business. Only

13:00

the largest businesses would want to maintain

13:02

their own data center of really anything

13:04

in my opinion and I definitely a lot

13:06

of critics of cloud engineering and stuff that

13:08

was like just buy your own server and

13:11

put it on a rack and like use

13:13

you know put it in like rack space

13:15

or something like that there are lots of

13:17

companies where you basically just bring your own

13:20

hardware and you put it in their data

13:22

centers yeah and I definitely hear you like

13:24

using the cloud is expensive and but If

13:26

you want to have really good up

13:29

time and you don't want to have

13:31

to worry about like some power outage

13:33

or some flood or any number of

13:35

things, you want it to be somebody

13:37

else's problem. And also if you have

13:39

unpredictable demand scanning and things like that,

13:42

like there's so many reasons to

13:44

embrace the more expensive but more

13:46

convenient and more robust option of

13:48

just, you know, using cloud servers.

13:50

And of course, like you've got

13:53

Google, you've got, of course, Amazon,

13:55

AWS. You've got like even companies like

13:57

Digital Ocean and places like that that

13:59

have options and then like there's so

14:01

many different vendors you can choose

14:03

from and you can even go

14:06

multi-cloud and like distribute your servers

14:08

across a whole bunch of different

14:10

clouds to further mitigate risk and

14:12

things like that and it is

14:14

a truly deep skill going inside

14:16

engineering so so my impression we're talking

14:18

to a lot of cloud engineers and

14:20

dev ops over the years is that

14:23

like it's going to get more and

14:25

more complicated and the tooling

14:27

won't necessarily keep up with the

14:29

changes in the rigors of what you actually

14:31

have to know how to do and

14:34

what you're doing day to day. And

14:36

there's only so much that can be

14:38

automated when things are changing rapidly and

14:40

you have completely different types of compute

14:43

coming online. Like for example, you taught

14:45

a Langein LLLM development course. For

14:47

example, and you're a cloud

14:49

engineer who's dipping their toes into

14:51

machine learning and teaching those concepts.

14:54

And you've also taught a very

14:56

popular course on terraform. and deploying

14:58

websites to Google Cloud using Terraform.

15:00

And so I'm going to be

15:02

linking to both of these courses

15:04

in the description if you want

15:06

to benefit from some of Reeshob's

15:09

expertise. Where I want to go now is

15:11

for those people that are sitting in

15:13

a gas station listening to this, you

15:15

know, handing people like... checking people out

15:18

and stuff. Going and, you know, making

15:20

sure the bathroom's clean. It hasn't flooded

15:22

or something like that. Like, I've worked

15:24

a lot of retail jobs. I worked

15:27

at like a grocery store for a

15:29

couple years. I worked at Taco Bell,

15:31

like a year or two. You know,

15:33

I know that it kind of sucks.

15:36

Yeah. That the movie Clerks is very

15:38

accurate in terms of just sitting around

15:40

waiting for people dealing with customers and

15:43

stuff like that. And that was

15:45

a big part of your life. I'm

15:47

not going to go all the way

15:49

back because I grew up in Punjab.

15:51

You studied at pretty good public schools.

15:53

Your dad is an engineer. He's somebody

15:55

who values education. So you went to

15:57

good schools in Punjab and then you

15:59

immigrated. to Canada. Right? And

16:01

that is like an excellent place.

16:04

Like that country is like very

16:06

receptive to smart people coming

16:08

over and living there. And

16:10

yeah, so I want you

16:12

to take me back to that

16:15

moment. Right? We can skip a

16:17

lot of the childhood and

16:19

jump forward to you

16:21

arriving as an Indian Canadian

16:23

or soon to be Indian

16:26

Canadian. What was that like?

16:28

those first few years

16:30

in Canada? For

16:32

sure. I think did

16:35

the personality that

16:37

I have developed,

16:40

mind you I was 17

16:42

when I migrated

16:45

here, almost 18,

16:47

and I think the values and

16:49

personality that I've developed and what

16:51

I am today is it is

16:53

a lot of what I've gone

16:56

through in those two and a

16:58

half years as soon as I

17:00

moved here. I don't regret

17:02

any of it. I just want

17:04

to freeface that like even though

17:07

there were challenges struggles and I'm

17:09

so glad I had to go

17:12

through them because that's what made

17:14

the reshape that I am today.

17:18

The taught process, I think, like, when

17:20

I am trying to go back

17:22

to that time and see how

17:24

what Reishab at that time

17:26

was thinking and what was going

17:29

on on his mind. Studies, at

17:31

least for the first

17:33

semester, first semester, was

17:35

not, like, because I went

17:37

to college, so I did

17:39

a two-year diploma in Canada

17:42

instead of a four-year

17:44

degree. Studies were not my

17:46

priority at least for the first

17:48

semester. The reason being like I

17:51

realized that, oh, I got a job at

17:53

a gas station, I was doing night shifts,

17:55

and in the day I was going to

17:58

the college, but for a 17 year. year

18:00

old kid when you realize that

18:02

you're making $10, $11 an hour,

18:04

you know, it's very simple math.

18:06

Like, oh, the more amount of

18:09

hours I put in, the more

18:11

amount of money I'm going to

18:13

make. So I think that kind

18:15

of got to my head and

18:17

I'd like prioritized work over studies

18:20

until like the first semester

18:22

ended. I got my like, you know,

18:24

results and the GPA didn't

18:26

look good and I'm like, oh.

18:28

and also like as you said

18:30

like my dad really you know

18:32

values good education and you're like

18:34

I know you're not doing a degree

18:37

but I want you to take

18:39

this seriously because I don't want

18:41

you to be stuck at a

18:43

gas station not like there's nothing

18:45

bad but I like think of it

18:47

from a perspective of a father

18:49

who wants his son to succeed

18:52

in life yeah And that really hit

18:54

me and I'm like, yeah, like all

18:56

this hard work that he did so

18:58

that we could have like a, you

19:00

know, comfortable life will

19:02

be down the drain if I don't

19:04

take full advantage of it. So

19:07

try to like prioritize studies and

19:09

like I was still working, I

19:11

worked at a gas station for

19:14

two and a half years, but

19:16

I took like, I did lesser shifts

19:18

and started prioritizing studies

19:20

over it. like I

19:22

saw the results and I

19:24

also like it became really

19:27

interesting I think second semester

19:29

we had intro to

19:32

networking we had intro

19:34

to operating system and

19:36

intro to Linux so it

19:38

was very like interesting

19:40

for me I'm like oh this is how

19:43

the tech works underneath because

19:45

a good thing about college

19:48

or universities they go really

19:50

deep. in understanding

19:52

how the technology

19:54

works, whether it's

19:57

the day-to-day computer

19:59

user. to like how TCP

20:01

three-way hand check works like it

20:03

just fascinated me so much and

20:06

I was very curious I've been

20:08

very curious throughout my life I

20:11

think like curiosity is one of

20:13

the really good traits that I like

20:15

about myself is like I get

20:17

curious and then go down a

20:19

rabbit hole of researching through

20:21

that and yeah that's how

20:23

the next three semesters went

20:25

I was able to land

20:28

a co-op opportunity so co-op

20:30

is basically like internships but

20:32

for college like community college

20:34

and stuff they're unpaid they're

20:36

part of your diploma

20:38

basically so that you're industry ready

20:41

so in order to get

20:43

your diploma from the college

20:45

you have to do a two-month

20:47

co-op or internship and I did

20:50

that as an IT admin like

20:52

a junior IT admin at a

20:54

company called Print Fleet and I'm

20:56

so glad I did that because

20:59

I even loved it more than

21:01

my education I'm like oh this

21:03

is how you apply all the

21:05

knowledge you have gained and I

21:07

like killed it in my internship

21:10

they were really happy that I

21:12

took any shit like few of

21:14

the projects they were not even

21:16

projects until I initiated them

21:19

at this company. So they

21:21

were really happy with my

21:24

willingness to work and how

21:26

passionate I was about IT. Yeah.

21:28

So they were like, oh, we

21:30

don't have an IT admin role

21:32

open, but would you be willing

21:34

to do tech support for the

21:37

SAS? And I'm like, at this

21:39

point, anything is better than

21:41

gas station and delivering pizzas. So

21:43

sure. And then That's when I

21:45

realized the salary they were offering

21:47

was, you know, definitely more than

21:50

what I was making at a

21:52

gas station. So that was the added

21:54

bonus to it. And that's how I

21:56

started my tech support role, basically.

21:58

So to recap, you... you kind of like

22:01

hit a plateau where you felt comfortable

22:03

you're making good money working at the

22:05

gas station it's not like working in those

22:07

types of jobs it's not like completely taking

22:09

all your brain power you can still think

22:11

about things you can read you can listen

22:13

to music potentially you can do lots of

22:16

things just kind of like a fun job

22:18

but the compensation is much lower

22:20

but back then you know of course before

22:22

the inflation we've experienced yes you know $10

22:24

$11 an hour wasn't that bad I mean

22:26

that was enough to to have money to go out

22:28

and like you know Oh definitely. Definitely.

22:31

Yeah like I was able to like also

22:33

help with like some of the tuition

22:35

that was left even at 10 and

22:37

11 dollars and I was living comfortably

22:39

like you know rent living expenses and

22:41

stuff so yeah definitely I was like

22:43

getting in that comfort zone of like

22:45

oh this is gonna work out yeah.

22:47

Well and it was your kind of

22:49

your ancestral duty. Your father worked very

22:51

hard to provide this opportunity for you

22:54

and you would need to do something

22:56

similar to your family down the road.

22:58

And also your natural curiosity, so once

23:00

you've got that curiosity going, and once

23:02

you actually genuinely got interested in computers,

23:04

it sounds like your curiosity just carries

23:07

you the rest of the way. Even

23:09

on the job, going out and finding

23:11

exciting projects that hadn't been started and

23:13

starting them, just to continue to expand

23:15

your learning and your experience. And it

23:17

sounds like you made excellent use of

23:20

the opportunity you were given through that

23:22

internship. And also the humility to not

23:24

necessarily take like a higher level position,

23:26

but just take whatever work was available

23:28

work was available. it was still a

23:30

step up from working a gas station

23:32

and it sounds like you recognize those

23:34

opportunities and you didn't like shop around

23:36

you just took the one right in

23:39

front of you and started getting to

23:41

work which I think there's some match

23:43

that in this situation. So let's

23:45

fast forward a little bit to you're

23:47

getting into your career you talked about

23:49

getting into cloud engineering from IT and

23:51

just having some champions within your own

23:53

company. who like first of all your

23:56

company sounds super chill the fact that

23:58

they let you shop around and figure

24:00

out what specialization you wanted to

24:02

go into. They clearly saw promise in

24:04

you and they wanted to nurture that.

24:06

And I think so many companies just

24:08

will, when they need somebody new, they'll

24:10

go and hire somebody completely new. They

24:12

don't necessarily invest in the people they

24:14

already have. And I think that's a

24:16

big mistake managers make. And I'm a

24:19

manager and like, I always want to build

24:21

up and train and cross train and have

24:23

people pivot between roles and things like that.

24:25

And I think that's great. And you've been

24:28

able to pivot. between roles and

24:30

this is a testament not only

24:32

to your own ability but

24:34

to the flexibility in the

24:36

yes the wisdom of your

24:38

employers so shout out to

24:40

them so you were able

24:42

to transition into cloud engineering

24:45

as a result of doing

24:47

this conference and then just

24:49

learning like how how did

24:51

the transition happen how did

24:53

that pivot happen yeah so got

24:55

back from the conference and I

24:58

remember sitting in the cloud operations

25:00

manager office. She had an office

25:02

and I was talking to her.

25:04

I'm like, I'm serious about this.

25:07

I want a translation to cloud. And

25:09

as you said, like, shout out

25:11

to them. They were very supportive.

25:13

And she's like, okay, I have this.

25:15

We primarily use AWS. So

25:17

I'm going to like you don't have

25:20

to like that decision. It's kind

25:22

of made for you. If you want to

25:24

transition here, you'll have to

25:26

be skilled in AWS as a cloud

25:28

provider. I'm like, cool. She gave me

25:31

a roadmap, so like she's like

25:33

study for a cloud practitioner

25:35

that's going to get you

25:37

up to speed with all

25:39

the cloud terminology, you know,

25:41

like infrastructure service, software service.

25:43

I didn't know what all

25:45

these terms meant, costs, like

25:47

how billing books and stuff like

25:50

that. Capx, which is capital expenditure

25:52

to op-ex, which is operational expenditure,

25:54

a lot of terms. And I'm

25:56

like, okay, this is going to

25:58

take time. And she's like, yeah. take your

26:00

time go through the cloud practitioner

26:02

material if you want to

26:04

set the exam set the

26:07

exam but also like build

26:09

projects like get hands-on it's

26:11

not just heretical I'm like

26:13

okay so after I got

26:15

the roadmap she also gave

26:17

me some books that they

26:19

already had that I could

26:21

study from she invited me

26:23

to the team meeting so this

26:25

is pre-covet you know we were in

26:28

office five days a week They had

26:30

a team meeting every week and I

26:32

was invited to those even though I'm

26:34

just a tech support person. That's pretty

26:36

cool. So they were like grooming you

26:39

to ascend essentially and making sure

26:41

that you had sufficient contacts and

26:43

everything like that even though you

26:45

were still studying to earn these

26:47

certifications. Yeah, yeah. And I think

26:50

that was very valuable because that

26:52

just kind of showed me how

26:54

this team worked. What are the

26:56

problems that they are facing? not

26:58

at the beginning but later like down

27:01

for five months I was able to

27:03

kind of map it in my head

27:05

that how I can come on this

27:07

team and help them. I think if

27:10

you have that kind of

27:12

mindset it's very easy to

27:14

market yourself to be part of like

27:16

to be part of a new job

27:18

that you're applying for or to

27:21

be part of a existing team

27:23

that is in your company. So

27:25

it took me five months, five

27:27

to six months to like clear,

27:29

not just clear the examination,

27:32

so the cloud practitioner

27:34

certification from AWS, but

27:36

also to have like,

27:38

I had two projects

27:41

that I built and also how

27:43

AWS was being utilized at

27:45

this company. I knew it

27:47

to like very deep extent

27:50

on how. every service is

27:52

being used by the SAS. And

27:54

that's when, and at this point

27:56

it was a year into the

27:58

Text Support Roll. there

28:00

was an opening for a cloud

28:03

engineer role for everything the same

28:05

team and before applying to it

28:07

like of course I asked my

28:10

manager who like the textbook manager

28:12

is like yep you have been

28:14

like putting in the extra time

28:17

for like last six months you

28:19

have been shadowing them like I know

28:21

about your intention so you're good to

28:24

like lead onto this path then even

28:26

before applying I asked all the cloud

28:28

engineers when that team hey do you

28:30

think I should apply for this role

28:32

like I don't know if you're looking

28:35

for someone senior and I like

28:37

no we are ready to like put in

28:39

the word for you if it comes down

28:41

to that you did the groundwork man you

28:44

totally laid out the groundwork the fact that

28:46

you got the blessing of your current boss

28:48

and you talked to everybody like this is

28:51

textbook how to do a pivot job I

28:53

mean like I really can't think of a

28:55

better scenario. You're working alongside both of

28:57

these teams and you're gaining the respect of

28:59

everybody involved. And of course, your IT manager

29:02

probably wants to keep you ideally, but they

29:04

can't hold you back from your destiny, which

29:06

is to become a specialist in cloud development.

29:09

And they see the riding on the wall

29:11

that you're ready and that you are going

29:13

to eventually move on. And they don't try

29:15

to like clip your wings or hold you

29:17

back or anything. Yeah, definitely. Shout out to

29:20

them. Yeah, shout out to them. And

29:22

that's when I applied after I

29:24

got the blessing and I'm like,

29:26

okay, I'm gonna shoot my shot.

29:29

At this point, so previously we

29:31

were a small company, we were

29:33

38 people, entire company,

29:36

three people on the cloud team.

29:38

During somewhere this time,

29:40

like we got acquired by an

29:42

enterprise from the US and we

29:44

went from 38 people company to

29:47

being 2,500. What? Yeah. And that

29:49

is why... Oh, oh, because you

29:51

were a subsidiary. Not like the

29:53

team didn't grow that much. Okay,

29:55

but yeah, yeah. You now are

29:57

part of a much larger hierarchy.

30:00

Yes. And they had their own like, they

30:02

brought in their own management. So

30:04

one of the challenges I had is

30:06

the interview was going to be with

30:09

this new, you know, management team and

30:11

leadership team, which they didn't know anything

30:13

about. They had like zero context

30:15

on what I have been doing.

30:17

My resume had only experienced from

30:19

like tech support. But a shout

30:21

out to the cloud engineering team

30:23

that I did shadow. They were

30:25

like able to watch and they're

30:28

like, no, you should definitely, you

30:30

know, I know we have like

30:32

three, they had three external candidates

30:34

who were like a solid candidates

30:36

with experience and stuff. But they

30:39

really vouched for me to be

30:41

like, let's just have him for

30:43

the interview. I knew my selling point

30:45

was telling them that I know the

30:47

SAS inside out and how we

30:49

use AWS. External candidates, at this

30:52

point they don't know how AWS

30:54

is being utilized here. So I

30:56

just tried to stick to that

30:58

and I'm glad I did. We

31:00

had like a 45 minute discussion

31:02

on the architecture pattern that we

31:04

use and he was the

31:06

director of engineering and he

31:09

was really impressed and was

31:11

like, you'll probably hear back by

31:13

end of this week. I was

31:15

very nervous until like I saw

31:17

the email that you're in.

31:19

Because it's to me, like, you know,

31:22

you feel like an imposter because you

31:24

have these people that you're competing

31:26

against who are, I know,

31:28

specifically there was one individual that

31:30

had eight years of cloud

31:33

experience. Wow. That's some stiff

31:35

competition. And several of them

31:37

probably had university degrees too.

31:39

Which you did not have. So, I

31:41

mean, like, regardless of what people say,

31:43

like managers will say, oh, we don't

31:46

really care about degrees, but like, that

31:48

is definitely like, like, waited in

31:50

favor of the candidates who

31:52

have university degrees, they're just

31:55

seen as less risky. Yeah,

31:57

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good filter,

31:59

I guess. for when it

32:01

comes to hiring. But

32:03

the other upper hand I

32:05

had is they don't have

32:07

to pay me as much

32:10

as they would have to

32:12

pay someone with a university

32:14

degree and 80 years of experience.

32:17

For me, if you give me

32:19

a significant jump from what I was

32:21

making in textbook, I'm gonna be

32:23

happy. And that's what happened, is they

32:25

give me like a good jump from

32:27

what I was making in textbook.

32:30

To this day, I remember, even

32:32

though I have progressed through my

32:34

career pretty

32:37

decently, like

32:39

salary -wise and compensation -wise, I

32:42

haven't never felt that happy. Like

32:44

that was, I still remember

32:46

how I felt seeing that offer

32:49

letter and the jump from like

32:51

making textbook salary to cloud engineer

32:53

salary. Even now when I look

32:55

back, it was not, to

32:58

the market standards, it was not that much.

33:00

But I also know what value I

33:02

brought. Like, you know, I didn't

33:05

have a cloud experience as like

33:07

if you consider professional experience

33:09

and they were just taking a

33:11

chance on me to see

33:13

how he will do. But yeah,

33:15

that's how I transitioned. Yeah.

33:19

What certifications did you ultimately earn as

33:21

a cloud? Like, I'm just curious if you

33:23

can list some of the certifications you

33:25

have currently or like have had. You may

33:28

not necessarily keep them current. They generally

33:30

expire after three years. But like the vendor

33:32

certifications and any more general certifications, people

33:34

who are in IT may be thinking or

33:36

people who just wanna work in cloud

33:38

engineering who aren't even working in tech or

33:40

if you're a software engineer and you

33:42

wanna transition into cloud engineering, like what certifications

33:44

have you earned and what would you recommend?

33:46

So that's two -part question, I guess. Which

33:48

ones have you earned over the course

33:50

of your career? So

33:53

the very first certification

33:55

that I did is

33:57

funnily, I don't know even funnily,

33:59

but it's the freak. code camp, responsive web

34:01

design. The reason why I did,

34:03

and this was during my tech

34:05

support time, is I did do intro

34:07

to HTML and JavaScript

34:09

in my two-year diploma, but

34:12

I wanted to build like a

34:14

website as a project for my

34:16

transition to cloud engineering, and I

34:18

wanted to host that in AWS.

34:20

But I didn't know how to

34:22

build a website apart from like

34:24

a simple HTML page. So I

34:26

did the responsive web design. from

34:28

free code camp. I loved it. Like

34:31

that blew my mind that resources like

34:33

this exist for free. And that is

34:35

for like a, you know, an 18 year

34:37

old kid who paid huge amounts

34:39

of tuition to a college. So

34:41

when I realized that, I'm like,

34:43

oh, this is so cool because

34:45

it was so practical, you know,

34:47

because you had assignments at the

34:49

end where you built projects apart

34:51

from the live coding challenge that

34:53

you do every day, like the at the

34:55

end you get. an assignment that

34:57

you build and it gets checked

35:00

and stuff. So very college-like experience.

35:02

So that was the first certification I

35:04

did. The second one was the cloud

35:06

practitioner from AWS, which is the foundational.

35:08

Yeah, I'm sorry. I was going to

35:11

jump in and say, like, that's more

35:13

of the found. It's less technical. It's

35:15

more like how the cloud works, like

35:17

understanding how different services work and different

35:20

options you have when you deploy to

35:22

AWS. And yeah. So that one, even

35:24

if you're not a software engineer, you

35:26

could potentially go and get that certification.

35:29

Definitely. And FreeCo Camp has several prep

35:31

courses, most of which are taught by

35:33

Andrew Brown, who is this legendary, like

35:36

he's a CTO who just is obsessed

35:38

with. taking certification exams and passing them.

35:40

I think I've got an interview on

35:42

him with him on the podcast, by

35:45

the way, if you're curious, I can't

35:47

remember what episode it is, but Andrew

35:49

Brown created this company called Exam Pro,

35:52

also Canadian, by the way. He's been

35:54

in Toronto, and so he publishes regularly.

35:56

He's covered all the AWS shirts, all

35:59

the Google asserts. he's covered like

36:01

some of the new get-hubs, he's

36:03

covered a lot of stuff. Kubernetes,

36:05

you know, I think he's covered

36:07

chair for him, yeah, lots of

36:09

stuff. So anyway, I didn't mean

36:11

to interrupt your flow. Oh, no,

36:13

no, no, no. I was going

36:15

to mention, because I used Andrew's

36:17

cloud practitioner course on Free Code

36:19

Camp, so all of this is

36:21

available on Free Code Camp YouTube.

36:24

If you just type AWS AWS,

36:26

all of his AWS courses are

36:28

going to show up. prepare for

36:30

that. And then also, once

36:32

I transitioned into

36:34

the cloud engineer role,

36:36

I got my solutions

36:38

architect, which is a bit more

36:41

associate level than the

36:43

cloud practitioner. I got

36:45

my developer associate and

36:47

my CIS admin, or

36:49

sorry, I think it's called

36:51

CIS admin. Yeah. So there

36:53

are three associate level. certifications

36:57

from AWS so I got all

36:59

three of them then because we

37:02

were required by this

37:04

big enterprise company they

37:06

used Azure and some

37:08

of GCP as well so

37:10

like hey Google cloud compute

37:13

so these are the big three they

37:15

so they're it's multi-cloud

37:17

yeah so basically they had

37:20

like they were like this

37:22

big corporation that acquired depending

37:24

on which company they acquire,

37:26

if they're using Azure, if

37:28

they're using GCP, you know,

37:30

you don't really know. You'll

37:32

know like once the acquisition

37:34

process has started and stuff

37:36

like that. But basically we had

37:38

like sister companies and they

37:41

wanted to consolidate the engineering

37:43

teams. So instead of just our

37:45

cloud engineering supporting. just our

37:47

SAS, they wanted to support at the

37:50

enterprise level, which meant if there are

37:52

people who are willing to upscale in

37:54

Azure, you know, you had incentive of

37:56

what you're going to stay with the

37:59

company for longer. and be part

38:01

of a bigger engineering team. And

38:03

did you opt to earn Azure

38:05

certifications as well then? Yeah.

38:07

So I started up

38:09

scaling in Azure. Did

38:11

the AZ900, which is the

38:13

fundamentals, the Azure fundamentals,

38:16

did the AZ104, which

38:18

is Azure administrator, AZ204, which

38:20

is developer associate, AZ400,

38:22

which is the DevOps engineer

38:24

expert. For

38:27

the 900s, there is like SC900, which

38:29

is security, AI900,

38:31

which is AI fundamentals. I did

38:33

all the 900s. So I

38:36

did all the fundamentals, which are

38:38

I think four or five

38:40

Azure certifications in themself. And

38:42

then I went on to the associate ones. The

38:46

toughest one is the

38:49

expert, so which is

38:51

the AZ400, which is a

38:53

DevOps engineer expert. Because

38:57

later on in my career, I transitioned

38:59

to a DevOps role. Wow.

39:01

So I've been keeping count and

39:03

it sounds like you've gotten at

39:05

least a dozen. Last

39:08

I checked, I think I have around

39:11

19. Wow. Yep. So it's

39:13

not quite the 50 that Andrew Brown

39:15

has, but his whole company is based around

39:17

him passing this certification exam, helping you

39:19

pass them. Yeah. You are just taking these

39:21

to be able to continue to progress

39:23

in your career. That's really impressive.

39:25

Man, you must be really good at taking

39:27

exams after all this time. I

39:30

think so. I think

39:33

so. Also it really helps

39:35

as you progress through

39:37

your career. Like I have

39:39

made like a few blog

39:41

posts and videos about

39:43

this. I recently took the

39:45

AWS DevOps engineering professional,

39:47

which is considered a very

39:49

tough exam. I didn't study

39:52

for it at all and

39:55

passed it. The reason is

39:57

because now I have like the

39:59

amount of expo. that

40:01

I have just speaks for itself and

40:03

I have the underlying knowledge for most

40:05

of these exams that I can just

40:07

sit down and if I have to

40:10

do like few prep, it usually takes

40:12

me a week to just look at

40:14

things that I'm not using day to

40:16

day and then I just sit my

40:18

exam compared to like me just starting

40:21

out learning about this new cloud, what

40:23

is the cloud, you know, it's very

40:25

different. Yeah, I mean that's a testament to

40:27

the accuracy of the certification if a

40:29

professional who can go go in without

40:32

any prep Completely cold and still pass

40:34

it just based off of things they

40:36

do day in day out Yes, so

40:38

it sounds like it's pretty well-designed And

40:40

you said that's the AWS dev ops

40:43

professional Congrats on passing that. Thank

40:45

you. Man, it sounds like you're

40:47

like filling up the entire infinity

40:49

gauntlet with like different certifications Did

40:51

you ever ever get the Google

40:53

cloud search? I did As part

40:55

of when I went to Google,

40:57

because I was going to

40:59

work on the GCP team,

41:01

you were required to get

41:03

the associate cloud engineer within

41:05

your probation period. So I

41:07

was able to get it

41:09

within the first 20 days

41:11

of joining Google. I'm like, OK,

41:14

I'm just going to sit this

41:16

exam in the past. So for

41:18

GCP, I only have the associate

41:20

cloud engineer. That too, because

41:22

it was kind of. Like a job

41:25

requirement. Yeah. Well, working, let's talk about Google.

41:27

So a lot of people are like, oh,

41:29

Google's just a big tech company. And like,

41:31

I talked to a lot of people that

41:33

work at Google. And they're like, ah, it's

41:35

just another big tech company. It's not that

41:37

big a deal. But like, for like, the

41:40

average kid in India or China or even

41:42

in the United States, like, where do you want

41:44

to apply? What would be your dream job? What

41:46

would be your dream job? What would be your

41:49

dream job? Seven out of ten

41:51

of them would say Google would be the company

41:53

they wouldn't work at like that you've made it

41:55

if you work at Google Right a lot of

41:57

people for them. It's like there's like kind

41:59

of your job application process before you've

42:01

gotten a job at Google, and

42:04

then your job application process when

42:06

you're an ex-gouler, right? Like it

42:08

represents kind of this Rubicon after

42:10

which you cross it, like you're

42:12

just completely different in the eyes

42:14

of recruiters and hiring managers and

42:16

people like that, because you've gone

42:19

through that gauntlet and you've worked

42:21

there. Maybe you can talk a

42:23

little bit about your experience at

42:25

Google and what it was like being

42:27

there and getting into that role. Yeah, I'd

42:29

be excited to hear it.

42:31

For sure, for sure. I

42:33

think the story is

42:36

kind of out there,

42:38

but for a bit

42:40

of context, COVID happened

42:42

and everyone was stuck

42:44

at home. Specifically, like

42:47

Canada, at least our

42:49

state or our province had

42:51

pretty good, you know, strict

42:54

regulations. So I was just

42:56

stuck at home. now having

42:59

more than ample of time

43:01

to be on my computer.

43:03

And I landed on these

43:05

day-in-life videos of people working

43:07

at Google and then you

43:09

go down this rabbit hole

43:11

off. There are people who

43:14

are kind enough to share

43:16

their compensation the amount of money

43:18

they make at Google or any

43:20

other fan company. And to me,

43:22

that was like a light bulb

43:24

moment. I'm like, oh. Like

43:27

I should apply for

43:29

big tech companies because

43:31

I think I'm skilled

43:33

enough now and Later on

43:35

so I didn't start

43:37

up right away applying

43:39

after watching a

43:41

day-in-a-life log, but I

43:44

started preparing for like

43:46

You know big tech interviews

43:49

and stuff like what is

43:51

all that they ask like

43:53

system design is one of

43:56

my I would say strength because

43:58

of the background. have. So

44:00

I started learning about like

44:03

how Google Maps work, like

44:05

to very small detail, how

44:07

Netflix does streaming. There are

44:09

a lot of good videos

44:12

available on YouTube and Free

44:14

Code Camp itself, on how

44:16

these, how basically architecture patterns

44:19

work and how they have

44:21

been able to architect these

44:23

big services that are

44:26

used by billions of people.

44:28

And luckily... I think it

44:30

was June, May or June, a

44:32

recruiter reached out to me

44:35

on LinkedIn from

44:37

Google that, hey, we have

44:39

this team called TSC in

44:41

Canada that is looking for

44:43

candidates and I think it

44:46

will be a good fit.

44:48

And I think that works

44:50

out really good when a

44:53

recruiter reaches out. Then you

44:55

applying to Google's career site.

44:57

So I'm like, yeah, I'll

45:00

definitely be interested. And

45:02

so they started the loop.

45:04

The loop was six interviews.

45:06

Six interviews, wow. And I

45:08

was working full time. So I

45:11

had to like be like, oh, we

45:13

can only do like one interview a

45:15

day kind of thing. And it took

45:17

me like two weeks, I think, to

45:19

go through all of them, two or

45:21

three weeks. I also asked them

45:24

for one week for prep before

45:26

starting the loop. So the entire

45:28

process took me four weeks until

45:30

I got like a rejection. So

45:33

the reason I got a rejection,

45:35

I knew this. I bombed my

45:37

coding challenge interview. And yeah, that

45:40

didn't go well. But every other

45:42

thing I think I was pretty

45:44

confident. And I was like, maybe

45:47

they'll ignore the coding challenge

45:49

because how the other interviews went.

45:51

But no. So I got a rejection.

45:53

And I was bumped out. And I

45:56

was bumped out. For me, I thought

45:58

this was my only chance. This was

46:00

my only shot to get into a

46:02

big tech company. Before

46:04

this, I was also

46:07

talking to an AWS recruiter

46:09

for a cloud developer

46:11

role. And that one was

46:13

also tragic because I

46:15

bombed my first interview, which

46:17

was like general tech screen.

46:19

So it was not like specific

46:21

to like coding challenge or

46:23

networking. They were just gonna ask

46:26

multiple questions that could be anything,

46:28

like how to optimize a

46:30

SQL server or like there

46:32

were some networking questions and

46:34

stuff. I bought like for

46:36

some reason they, there

46:38

were a few questions that I found challenging,

46:40

but basically they didn't put me through

46:42

an extra round. And a lot of these

46:44

interviews, my understanding not having gone through

46:46

a lot of them myself is it is

46:49

kind of a luck of the draw.

46:51

Like if you get lucky and they ask you

46:53

the questions that you have a good understanding

46:55

of the domain and you can answer

46:57

them well, then yay, you got

46:59

in. If you get unlucky and

47:01

they ask you, you

47:03

know that you don't have a lot of

47:05

expertise in, then you know, so to some extent it

47:07

is kind of a numbers game just by virtue of

47:10

the sheer arbitrariness of a lot of

47:12

these interviews and you know, which

47:15

way the dominoes can fall. Definitely,

47:17

yeah, now that

47:20

I look back, yeah, I definitely

47:22

think that. And so after like

47:24

having my rejection at Google

47:26

previously also being rejected at Amazon,

47:28

I'm like, yeah, I

47:30

was not in a good place.

47:32

I still remember like I

47:34

was just a sad person for

47:36

like at

47:39

least a week it was

47:41

affecting me in ways

47:43

that it shouldn't have now

47:45

that I think back.

47:47

And yeah, I just dusted myself

47:49

up and I'm like, okay, so

47:51

these big tech companies, they have a

47:53

cool down period, so you can't

47:56

really apply for new roles until six

47:58

months. And that was what I

48:00

was told. by both Amazon and Google,

48:02

and I'm like, okay, we'll revisit

48:04

this in 2021. Because

48:06

at this point, it was August. And

48:09

out of a sudden in December,

48:12

like early December, first week of December, a

48:15

recruiter reached out from Google again.

48:17

And they're like, we have

48:19

like an adjacent team to the

48:21

role that you interviewed for,

48:23

they call technical solution specialist. I'm

48:25

like, okay. And they briefly

48:27

explained me how this team is

48:30

adjacent and stuff. And

48:32

then they're like, are you willing to hop on a call?

48:34

I'm like, sure. So I hopped on

48:36

a call and then they're like, hey,

48:38

we know. So because they didn't provide me

48:40

any feedback back when they rejected me, companies

48:43

don't provide feedback on how you did in each

48:45

round. And generally that's just because they don't want

48:47

to get sued for discrimination. Yes. Something like that.

48:50

Yeah. But this time

48:52

they're like, you did really good

48:54

on your system design, your network

48:56

troubleshooting. And there was another one

48:58

that they're like, you did really

49:00

good. The ratings were really good

49:02

from Googlers. The coding challenge is

49:04

what you bombed. But

49:06

because this is an adjacent

49:08

team that don't really need

49:10

the coding, like the interview

49:13

process doesn't have a coding challenge. I'm

49:16

like, okay. They're like, if you want

49:18

to consider this team, we can move

49:20

on with the interview process. Okay. So

49:22

you don't have to repeat all those

49:25

other things that you've previously done. Exactly.

49:27

That's what was surprising to me. They're

49:29

like, since you did this three and

49:31

a half months ago, we have that

49:33

rating that we are going to use. And

49:35

you only have to sit down with

49:37

the hiring manager to see if you're a

49:39

team match or not. And they have this

49:42

interview called Googliness,

49:44

which is basically a

49:46

behavioral interview cultural thing.

49:48

Yeah. So I

49:50

did that. And that was like just

49:52

one 45 minute call. That went really

49:54

good. And instead

49:57

of taking it four weeks, like the last time,

49:59

this time, The first week

50:01

I talked to a recruiter,

50:03

had my googliness, second week

50:05

I got my offer. It

50:07

was so quick. And I'm like,

50:09

oh. And then, you know, it was

50:11

surreal for me. I'm like, I

50:13

have an offer from Google. Obviously,

50:16

it had, like, it was good

50:18

pay bump stocks and stuff. Like,

50:20

I was also not used to

50:23

that. Like, previously, for

50:25

four and a half years,

50:27

I only made. like base

50:29

salary. I didn't know like

50:31

total compensation is a thing

50:33

where at big tech companies

50:36

you get stocks, bonuses, and

50:38

then apart from your just

50:40

base salary. So that was

50:42

really good. I think not

50:44

just from monetary perspective,

50:46

but also career aspect of

50:48

it too. And yeah, and

50:50

I joined Google. Yeah. And what

50:52

happened during the time that you

50:55

were at Google? I think

50:57

the things that I loved was

50:59

the structure they had and

51:02

you know just too much

51:04

information. Yeah drinking from

51:06

a fire hose it was

51:09

just too much too much

51:11

information. It was just too

51:13

much too much information. I

51:16

think the things that I loved

51:18

was the structure they had

51:20

and you would like you know

51:22

assume that because of how big.

51:25

Google is, they already have

51:27

a really good structure on how

51:29

their own building is going to

51:31

happen. Whereas I come from

51:34

working at smaller companies,

51:36

it was not that structured.

51:38

So that was really good

51:40

experience. The team was great,

51:42

my manager was great. Were

51:44

you working fully remotely still?

51:46

For the first month, yeah,

51:49

but I was required to

51:51

relocate to one of the

51:53

office towns. So I chose

51:55

Waterloo. or a kitchener area

51:57

and then they basically cover

51:59

the relocation stuff. So

52:01

I relocated to a new

52:04

city. That's when I started

52:06

going into the office. And I

52:08

really enjoyed it because the

52:10

perks and the offices that

52:12

Google has built, they're just

52:14

mind blowing. And the food

52:17

was amazing. And like our setups

52:19

obviously were amazing and stuff.

52:21

Like they create a good

52:24

book place. environment for you

52:26

to be like feel comfortable

52:28

and have everything that you

52:31

need while you are working

52:33

or whatever hours they might be.

52:35

But that's also when

52:37

the unfortunate time of

52:39

layoffs started happening a

52:41

lot of companies. Obviously Google did

52:44

their own and a lot of

52:46

the teams that were adjacent to

52:48

us and direct the art

52:50

teams were also affected by

52:53

these layoffs. which caused like

52:55

a lot of uncertainty and

52:57

there were just decisions that

52:59

were being made at the

53:01

leadership level like outsourcing to

53:04

you know low cost of living countries

53:06

and cities specifically for this

53:08

role and like I had

53:11

my own reservations about

53:13

it. On top of that I

53:15

didn't enjoy the role as much

53:17

because a lot of it was

53:19

supporting DCP customers whereas I

53:22

had the idea. talking to

53:24

the recruiter that it's more

53:26

gonna it's gonna be more of a

53:28

consultant yeah role where you

53:30

will be like architecting

53:32

GCP infrastructure

53:34

for you know a GCP

53:37

client yeah but it was

53:39

more of supporting people or

53:41

supporting customers and someone who

53:43

has worked in tech support

53:45

previously to me it felt

53:47

like like I started feeling

53:49

like I'm back four years in

53:52

my own career. Nothing wrong with

53:54

the role, nothing wrong with the

53:56

people that I worked with, like

53:58

they were amazing people. My manager

54:00

was amazing. It was just me not

54:02

being happy about it sounds like you

54:04

weren't able to use a lot of

54:06

the knowledge That you've built up over

54:09

the past four years. You were just

54:11

going back to what stuff like yeah

54:13

I can I can imagine how that

54:15

would feel like a big step backward

54:17

Yeah, so I started looking at what

54:19

I could do still because Google is

54:21

like I didn't want to leave Google

54:23

That was not my first thought at

54:26

least and Right after my probation Ended

54:28

which was 90 days or three months

54:30

I told my dad like how and

54:32

it started affecting my day -to -day to

54:34

like my personal life as well Like

54:36

I was unhappy and not you know

54:38

if you don't have a fulfilling job

54:40

you it affects other aspects a huge

54:43

part of your working life Exactly And

54:45

I told my dad about this and

54:47

he he thought I was going mad

54:49

or something I mean you you've achieved

54:51

the dream like he's an engineer and

54:53

he probably wants you to have financial

54:55

stability And be able to provide for

54:57

your family and have prestige and all

55:00

these things Yes, and here you are

55:02

you've achieved the dream, but it's not

55:04

exactly what you were what you thought

55:06

it was gonna be Exactly exactly and

55:08

then but To his advice. Yeah, I

55:10

spent another month. I'm like, okay Maybe

55:12

this is just a change that I'm

55:14

not like comfortable with I'll take some

55:17

time get used to it But that

55:19

was not the case. I also tried

55:21

like transitioning Within Google,

55:23

but there are you know, obviously

55:25

there are policies that You

55:28

have to stay in the role

55:30

for a year before you can pivot

55:32

to something else. You need performance

55:34

ratings and stuff And I guess I

55:36

was just not ready to wait

55:38

like another 10 months For a move

55:40

and they couldn't bear in this

55:42

role Like I couldn't spend the 10

55:44

months in this role and that's

55:46

when Twilio happened So Twilio saw what

55:48

I was doing on the side,

55:51

you know, creating technical content on my

55:53

own YouTube or my blog And

55:55

Twilio is like, hey, we have this

55:57

role open and we take you'll

55:59

be a great fit. Yeah. And I'm

56:01

going to give people some context

56:03

into Twilio as a company. Like it

56:05

is a really

56:08

awesome company. Like I have a

56:10

profound amount of respect. I've

56:12

been to their headquarters a few

56:14

times. I've talked with tons

56:16

of Twilio engineers over the years

56:18

I've used Twilio for a

56:20

lot of hackathon projects. Pre -Cocaine

56:22

doesn't currently use Twilio for anything.

56:24

But if you're doing like

56:26

anything that interfaces with phones, like

56:28

sending text messages, making automated

56:31

calls, receiving calls from clients and

56:33

routing them, like there's an

56:35

incredible amount of telephony that is opened

56:37

up through their various APIs and things like

56:39

that. And you can kind of completely leapfrog having

56:41

your own like switchboard and like all the

56:43

other stuff that you used to have to have

56:45

and you can just interface with APIs as

56:47

a dev. So there you go. not sponsored by

56:49

Twilio, but I wanted to give people some

56:51

context. This is like a big tech company. Like

56:53

it's a big deal. They have very high

56:55

standards in who to bring on. So even if

56:57

you haven't heard of it because they're doing

56:59

like a pretty niche thing that a lot of

57:01

devs may not be familiar with, like

57:03

it is a big deal.

57:05

Like it's not as widely

57:07

known as Google, but I

57:09

would imagine they have similar

57:11

standards in terms of bringing

57:13

on engineers and developer advocates

57:15

in cloud engineers. Definitely. Definitely.

57:18

And yeah, that's how like

57:20

I'm like, Oh, I already

57:22

do this in my personal

57:24

time. Maybe it's time to

57:26

test it out if I like

57:28

it as a career. Because

57:30

I am someone who is passionate

57:32

about teaching. I am ready to

57:35

solve if I

57:37

can make any devs live or

57:39

any engineers life easier with my

57:41

content. Why not? So I

57:43

think the purpose was already there.

57:45

The passion was there. It

57:47

was just like the timing and

57:49

the opportunity kind of like

57:51

came at the right time and place. I

57:53

was not happy at Google. So I'm

57:55

like, okay, I'll try it out. And then

57:57

I went through the interviews and Yeah,

58:00

I got the role and I'm like, okay,

58:02

it's time to say bye to Google. So

58:04

after four and a half months, I accepted

58:06

an offer at video and joined them

58:08

as a developer advocate. You know, that's

58:11

great that you were able to kind

58:13

of smoothly transition without

58:15

like a long period of having

58:17

to go back on the job

58:19

market. So very smart of you.

58:21

Like I always tell people like

58:23

no matter how dissatisfied you are

58:25

at a job, unless you're literally...

58:28

you know, like abused by your

58:30

manager or like losing sleep or

58:32

overstressing or something like that, generally

58:34

you want to stay in that

58:36

role, it's much easier to find

58:38

a job if you have a

58:40

job. Because employers don't have to

58:42

be like, okay, so why don't

58:45

you have a job

58:47

currently? Like, it just

58:49

removes one like, kind

58:51

of like checkbox that

58:53

they're going to have

58:55

to like investigate. from

58:58

like the 50s or

59:00

60s like less less

59:02

less less contemporary time

59:04

obviously but there was

59:06

like always married men

59:09

who are always higher

59:11

men who were married

59:13

then you know that

59:15

there's at least one person

59:18

who could tolerate the bastards.

59:20

But yeah, you were able

59:22

to transition your Twillio. Let's

59:25

kind of, we don't have to

59:27

go too deep into what you do day

59:29

to day, but I am kind of

59:32

curious, like, developer advocacy is kind of

59:34

like a hybrid, hybrid, like, developer role

59:36

and kind of a marketing role in

59:38

the sense that you're getting out in

59:40

front of people and you're showing them

59:43

what the tools can do and you're

59:45

inspiring people to pick up those APIs

59:47

and start incorporating them into their own

59:49

projects. I hope that's a good. Yeah. No,

59:51

I think that's a really

59:53

good explanation. I think, yeah,

59:55

on a broader level, it

59:57

comes down to that day-to-day.

1:00:00

it gets trickier because it

1:00:02

is different depending on different

1:00:04

seasons. Why I say that

1:00:06

is fall is usually

1:00:09

like conference season, summer and

1:00:11

fall, so you'll see me

1:00:13

going to a lot of

1:00:15

conferences, giving talks about our

1:00:17

APIs and our products. As

1:00:19

you said, it's a mix

1:00:22

between marketing. So like I do

1:00:24

kind of showcase how. our APIs

1:00:26

can be utilized to make your

1:00:28

lives easier if you're as you

1:00:30

said if you're dealing with anything

1:00:33

that's related to telephones like SMS

1:00:35

voice or WhatsApp or even email.

1:00:37

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And so I want to get

1:00:40

some context into like where

1:00:42

you think things are going like

1:00:44

you are working at one of

1:00:46

the bigger tech companies and you've

1:00:48

worked at arguably like the biggest

1:00:50

or second biggest tech company and

1:00:52

then you've also worked at like

1:00:55

small like a small startup that

1:00:57

got acquired by a slightly larger

1:00:59

company like you you've had just

1:01:01

in your how many years has it

1:01:03

been since since you were working in

1:01:06

the gas station like since you finished

1:01:08

your college diploma seven almost

1:01:10

six like almost seven years

1:01:13

it's been six years yeah

1:01:15

you've jammed a ton of

1:01:17

experience into a pretty short

1:01:19

period of time What sort

1:01:21

of things do you see

1:01:23

changing and what are you

1:01:25

most excited about

1:01:27

in terms of cloud?

1:01:29

I think I want to take

1:01:32

the discussion back to

1:01:34

what you were mentioning.

1:01:36

There are people who

1:01:38

are trying to not advocate

1:01:41

but say that like,

1:01:43

oh, having your own server.

1:01:46

and like a facility

1:01:48

makes more sense than

1:01:50

just going the cloud

1:01:52

route. And I think

1:01:54

operational excellence

1:01:56

is something that we are

1:01:58

going to see. people, not

1:02:00

people like companies, have realized

1:02:03

that they have spent a

1:02:05

lot of dollars on cloud,

1:02:07

specifically when it comes to

1:02:10

compute and storage. So they want

1:02:12

to see how they can minimize

1:02:14

the cost, but also make sure

1:02:16

that they are using all the

1:02:19

resources that they have allocated

1:02:21

within the cloud. So like if there

1:02:23

is a V. There's a scale of,

1:02:26

or there's a group of like,

1:02:28

VM, so virtual machines within a

1:02:30

specific cloud that a company is

1:02:32

using. They're gonna make sure that

1:02:34

all of them are at like

1:02:36

at least 80 to 90 percent

1:02:38

capacity instead of just

1:02:40

being there at like, I don't know,

1:02:42

40 or 50 percent. So they're

1:02:44

gonna look for engineers,

1:02:47

specifically cloud engineers, who

1:02:49

can help them achieve that

1:02:51

kind of operational excellence. And

1:02:53

that will come only if you have the

1:02:56

skill set, if you know how budgeting and

1:02:58

cost within the cloud model works.

1:03:00

Because cloud has different models there

1:03:03

as pay as you go, but

1:03:05

if you look into like serverless

1:03:07

and other stuff, they're like different

1:03:10

architectures have different pricing models.

1:03:12

So I think that's where the big shift

1:03:14

is going to happen specifically

1:03:16

within these small and

1:03:18

medium businesses. is that

1:03:20

companies are going to

1:03:23

be spending their money

1:03:25

very carefully when

1:03:27

it comes to cloud. I

1:03:29

think 2015 to 2020

1:03:31

or 19-20 was a time

1:03:33

where every company was

1:03:36

just pouring money

1:03:38

into cloud. They're

1:03:40

like, no, get these

1:03:43

contracts. Let's move everything

1:03:46

to cloud. keeping the

1:03:48

bills somehow, but now they

1:03:50

are paying more attention and

1:03:52

being more strategic about how

1:03:55

they spend their resources. That

1:03:57

is the first shift I

1:03:59

think. going to happen. Yeah,

1:04:01

so essentially just

1:04:03

being more mindful of

1:04:05

how expensive it

1:04:07

is to use cloud services.

1:04:10

The second I already mentioned

1:04:13

is every company is trying

1:04:15

to get on the AI

1:04:18

bandwagon and running all these

1:04:20

AI, either large language models

1:04:22

or training your own

1:04:25

models. As you said, you know,

1:04:27

all of this, not everyone

1:04:29

has. The resources are

1:04:32

even the money to

1:04:34

have those resources in

1:04:36

their own data centers

1:04:38

or locations. So they're

1:04:40

going to rely on

1:04:42

a lot of these

1:04:45

public cloud vendors

1:04:47

to run those workloads.

1:04:49

So if you can gain

1:04:51

expertise in how these

1:04:54

AI workloads can be run

1:04:56

in the cloud on like,

1:04:58

you know. given infrastructure

1:05:00

like a specific kind

1:05:02

of infrastructure with keeping

1:05:05

the costs in mind

1:05:07

in like a you know optimal way i

1:05:09

think that that is the another

1:05:11

another area that is going to

1:05:13

grow and a lot of the

1:05:15

jobs are going to mention that

1:05:17

as a skill set. Interesting so at

1:05:19

the same time that people are

1:05:21

trying to go back to on-premise

1:05:24

or you know having owning their

1:05:26

own servers this is a big

1:05:28

movement in like A lot of smaller teams will

1:05:30

direct. We built our own servers. Like here it

1:05:32

is, this is the machine that you're actually interfacing

1:05:34

with, and they'll take a picture in, they'll tweet

1:05:37

it, and stuff like that. Certainly for like build

1:05:39

servers and things like that that don't need to

1:05:41

be in the cloud, that can absolutely make sense.

1:05:43

This said. uh... there's so there's attention between like

1:05:45

we don't want to be on the cloud we

1:05:47

want to save money we want to own our

1:05:50

own hardware and all the stuff and then there's

1:05:52

also the attention that we can't own our hardware

1:05:54

you can't own a quantum computer unless you're a

1:05:56

multi-billion dollar company basically because they cost a fortune

1:05:58

right uh... you you can't uh... own like a

1:06:01

cluster of gp u's because even

1:06:03

if you have the money like

1:06:05

it's like the production so backed

1:06:07

up right now that you would

1:06:09

be in on a waiting list

1:06:11

to be able to get uh...

1:06:13

you know your h hundreds and

1:06:15

stuff like that so uh... so

1:06:17

it's interesting right now that there

1:06:20

there's that tension in

1:06:22

this that push in that pull are

1:06:24

there any other big overarching

1:06:26

mega trends to use a

1:06:28

silly word in the in the

1:06:30

cloud space right now that you've

1:06:33

observed? Mega trends.

1:06:35

Hmm. Are there any tools?

1:06:37

Let's shift the tools. Are

1:06:40

there any tools that are

1:06:42

having a moment? I think

1:06:44

a lot of... It's not something

1:06:47

that is trending right

1:06:49

now. I think it's been

1:06:51

a few years, but the

1:06:53

automation and we saw that

1:06:55

with the Devops kind of

1:06:58

like... roles but also it

1:07:00

shifted to like platform

1:07:02

engineering you know tools

1:07:04

like backstage like having

1:07:06

internal developer like portals

1:07:09

and stuff for managing

1:07:11

infrastructure I think a

1:07:13

lot of more companies

1:07:15

are investing in that

1:07:17

again this comes from

1:07:19

that comment about operational

1:07:21

excellence like people companies

1:07:23

want to be mindful on how

1:07:26

they are using all of these

1:07:28

resources within the cloud. So I

1:07:30

think that it kind of like

1:07:32

ties in together where we are

1:07:34

headed with the trends. And we

1:07:36

also saw a lot of shift

1:07:39

into like traditional setup of

1:07:41

using VEMs to more

1:07:43

of like containerized environments

1:07:45

and like use of

1:07:47

Kubernetes. even if it

1:07:49

is Kubernadis, but also

1:07:52

like, you know, managed

1:07:54

container services like EWS as

1:07:56

ECS, last a container

1:07:58

service. So containers. are

1:08:00

also something that are

1:08:02

gonna be trending specifically

1:08:04

with the AI use

1:08:06

case. So not just,

1:08:08

you know, ordering your

1:08:10

compute power by getting

1:08:13

GPUs from NVIDIA and then some kind

1:08:15

of compute from Dell or other

1:08:17

vendors, but

1:08:19

how you can, even if

1:08:21

it's on -prem or cloud doesn't

1:08:23

matter, but how you can

1:08:25

leverage more of like a

1:08:27

containerized environment for different workloads,

1:08:29

for that optimal use of

1:08:31

the money that has been spent

1:08:34

on the infrastructure. Yeah,

1:08:36

and a lot of DevOps and cloud engineering really

1:08:38

does come down to figuring out a budget

1:08:40

and like figuring out how to make things work

1:08:42

within that budget or figuring out clever ways

1:08:44

to automate your way to a reduced budget or

1:08:47

making more crafty use of a

1:08:49

resource. Like serverless is a

1:08:51

pretty big innovation in that. It's

1:08:54

been around for like 10 years,

1:08:56

but basically Amazon Lambda, like where

1:08:58

you can just run like functions

1:09:00

in the cloud, instead of having

1:09:02

servers standing by, you can just,

1:09:05

yeah, and you can have things

1:09:07

done incredibly inexpensively, unless you're doing

1:09:09

those at a vast scale. So

1:09:11

it's like, I think you get

1:09:13

like thousands of free Lambda.

1:09:15

Oh yeah, I think the last

1:09:18

I remember, it was a million.

1:09:21

A million a month per month

1:09:23

in vocations. And that's like a

1:09:25

lot of my stuff, specifically for

1:09:27

APIs and like event -driven

1:09:29

stuff is running on

1:09:31

Lambda or functions as

1:09:33

service. Microsoft has Azure

1:09:35

functions, GCP has Google

1:09:37

Cloud functions. But

1:09:39

it boils down to the

1:09:42

use case. So if there is

1:09:44

a use case for you using

1:09:46

serverless, you should definitely leverage

1:09:48

it because it's such a cost

1:09:50

effective method. And a lot

1:09:53

of the management of infrastructure

1:09:55

is abstracted away. You

1:09:57

just give them your code and it runs

1:09:59

it. you want. Yeah, yeah,

1:10:01

absolutely. Awesome. So let's say, hypothetically,

1:10:03

you are starting out, you're looking

1:10:05

back everything you know about cloud

1:10:07

competing, and maybe you're just going

1:10:09

to completely skip the diploma you

1:10:11

got, the college, the technical college

1:10:13

where you went, community college, where

1:10:15

you studied like networking and databases,

1:10:17

and those kind of more nuts

1:10:20

and bolts type skills. Let's say,

1:10:22

hypothetically, you had zero formal school.

1:10:24

What would you do if you

1:10:26

wanted to get where you are

1:10:28

today? And you want to get

1:10:30

there as quickly as possible and

1:10:32

you ideally didn't want to spend

1:10:34

money. To actually earn these certifications,

1:10:36

like to take the certification exam,

1:10:38

it might be like 200 bucks

1:10:40

per certification exam. So we're going

1:10:42

to treat it like those certifications.

1:10:44

You have money to pay for

1:10:47

those, but you don't want to

1:10:49

spend a bunch of money on

1:10:51

anything else. Or maybe you have

1:10:53

a minimal budget like, you know,

1:10:55

$200 a month or something for

1:10:57

your training or less than that.

1:10:59

No for sure. I think that

1:11:01

$200 per month, I'm going to

1:11:03

use that for your cloud builds.

1:11:05

So what I mean by cloud

1:11:07

builds is I want, I would

1:11:09

create like AWS or Azure account

1:11:11

and then start building stuff. This

1:11:14

would be a later part of

1:11:16

the process, but since you have

1:11:18

given me that $200, I think

1:11:20

that's where it'll be most used

1:11:22

is just spinning stuff up in

1:11:24

the in given cloud provider and

1:11:26

then because it's going to cost

1:11:28

money once you run out of

1:11:30

free-tier services. That is where it's

1:11:32

going to go. And I think

1:11:34

you can literally do it by,

1:11:36

even within like, you can have

1:11:38

a good project running in cloud

1:11:40

for less than $20 a month,

1:11:43

even if it's like it involves

1:11:45

multiple services at a personal level,

1:11:47

because, you know, you're not going

1:11:49

to get as big of a

1:11:51

traffic as some of these enterprise

1:11:53

companies get. But I would start.

1:11:55

If I was going to start

1:11:57

from zero where I have zero

1:11:59

context. is I was going

1:12:01

to learn some of the

1:12:03

IT fundamentals on how networking

1:12:06

works, so like how internet works

1:12:08

first of all, DNS, how,

1:12:10

you know, packets transfer, how

1:12:12

computers communicate to each other,

1:12:15

because at the end of

1:12:17

the day all these servers

1:12:19

within the cloud, you know,

1:12:21

they use networking to talk to

1:12:23

each other. The second scale I

1:12:25

would really spend my time is

1:12:28

on how Linux works. Because

1:12:30

I think there was a I

1:12:32

saw this photograph somewhere. I

1:12:35

think it was Twitter like I

1:12:37

don't know 80% off servers

1:12:39

on the internet are Linux

1:12:41

or something like that at

1:12:43

least 80% Yeah, because people

1:12:46

don't want to have to

1:12:48

pay like a license yeah,

1:12:50

you know Microsoft I'm not sure

1:12:52

what like NT, I'm not even

1:12:54

sure what options there are in

1:12:56

our clinics. Yeah, every every server

1:12:58

free code camp is every year

1:13:00

used. We probably deployed thousands of

1:13:02

servers and spun them down over

1:13:04

the years. We have more than

1:13:07

100 servers in operation right now.

1:13:09

Every single server has been I

1:13:11

believe like Ubuntu. Yeah, because that's

1:13:13

just like a widely available image

1:13:15

and it's battle tested and yeah.

1:13:18

And so Ubuntu is a specific

1:13:20

variant of Linux that has

1:13:22

just become Particularly popular.

1:13:24

It's based on Debbie and which

1:13:27

is another distro But like they

1:13:29

added a bunch of additional stuff

1:13:31

and it doesn't really matter that

1:13:33

much But you can you can

1:13:35

definitely geek out and choose a

1:13:37

very specific? Flavor of Linux that

1:13:40

you like if it's more security

1:13:42

focused or more performance focused or

1:13:44

something like but but yes like I

1:13:46

will quickly second the notion that you

1:13:48

should learn Linux if you want to

1:13:50

work as a cloud engineer because every

1:13:52

cloud engineer I know basically is

1:13:54

doing stuff in Linux all day long.

1:13:57

Definitely, definitely. And I think, yeah, when

1:13:59

you look back... once you become a

1:14:01

cloud engineer you'll tank yourself if

1:14:03

you have those Linux skills. I

1:14:05

don't even know if it is

1:14:08

possible in today's time to land

1:14:10

a cloud engineer role without the

1:14:12

Linux skills. But yes that would

1:14:14

be my second scale. The third

1:14:16

I want to focus a bit

1:14:19

more on at least having one

1:14:21

programming language under your belt so

1:14:23

I highly recommend Python because because

1:14:25

if you're new it's very easy

1:14:28

to understand. there is a great

1:14:30

community behind Python like there are

1:14:32

ample of resources available online there

1:14:35

are communities that you can join

1:14:37

to get yourself you know skilled

1:14:39

in Python and get it to

1:14:42

a point where you can like

1:14:44

do scripting in Python because

1:14:46

a lot of cloud and Devops

1:14:48

engineers do scripting

1:14:50

for automation and stuff. That's

1:14:53

when I'll start pivoting towards

1:14:55

learning a cloud provider so

1:14:58

pick I think the

1:15:00

greatest advice I've given is

1:15:02

see the market that, see

1:15:04

the market in your city.

1:15:06

So if you're in Toronto,

1:15:08

look at the job listings

1:15:11

of the cloud engineers and

1:15:13

which cloud provider is being

1:15:15

mentioned the most. If AWS

1:15:17

is more popular, then Azure

1:15:19

in your area, go with

1:15:21

that provider. If you don't

1:15:24

already have made the decision.

1:15:26

So pick one provider. go

1:15:29

through the foundational certification. You don't

1:15:31

have to set the exam.

1:15:33

The reason why I say

1:15:35

go through the certification is

1:15:37

because they have built a good roadmap

1:15:39

of what you should learn first,

1:15:41

what services you should learn, like

1:15:43

in a good roadmap. So they give

1:15:45

you a structure and I think you

1:15:48

should follow that. Then after you're

1:15:50

done the foundational level, go

1:15:52

for the associate level. certification just

1:15:55

prepare for it don't like sit

1:15:57

the exam if money is a

1:15:59

problem. but when you're when it

1:16:01

comes to actually applying for jobs it

1:16:03

is would you say it's good to

1:16:06

have the actual exam like do you

1:16:08

think the certification is worth actually earning

1:16:10

definitely I think I think having at

1:16:13

least I would skip like if money

1:16:15

is really a problem I would skip

1:16:17

the practitioner have at least one associate

1:16:20

level so that would be like solutions

1:16:22

architect for EWS is E 104 for

1:16:24

Azure and GCP is associate cloud engineer.

1:16:27

So depending on what cloud provider you

1:16:29

pick, like go with at least this

1:16:31

certification, if you want to increase your

1:16:34

chances, I think it helps to certain

1:16:36

extent. Again, like having it on the

1:16:38

resume will help, but what you say

1:16:41

actually in the interview again, you know,

1:16:43

it all comes down to that. So

1:16:45

just having the paper doesn't matter like...

1:16:48

like have the knowledge underneath that certification.

1:16:50

Awesome. So I want to I want

1:16:52

to break all that down because you've

1:16:55

covered three very important things. I've been

1:16:57

taking detailed notes. So first thing that

1:16:59

you recommend, anybody who wants to become

1:17:02

a cloud engineer, regardless of your background,

1:17:04

learn networking, learn fundamentally how computers communicate

1:17:06

with one another because that's what the

1:17:09

cloud is, a whole bunch of computers,

1:17:11

communicating with another. Second one, learn Linux

1:17:13

pretty well. The third one, learn at

1:17:16

least one. High-level scripting language, Python seems

1:17:18

to be an excellent one. I strongly

1:17:20

encourage everybody to learn Python. If it's,

1:17:23

you know, JavaScript is arguably like easier

1:17:25

to learn just because it's a little

1:17:27

bit more visual and you can do

1:17:30

as part of web dev, but there's

1:17:32

no harm in just diving into Python

1:17:34

and freaking camp has a ton of

1:17:37

resources on learning Python. And Python is,

1:17:39

in my humble opinion, one of the

1:17:41

easier languages to learn. It's arguably like

1:17:44

the easiest major programming language that's in

1:17:46

wide use to just pick up. because

1:17:48

it has like lots of different features

1:17:51

that kind of force you into coding

1:17:53

right. Whereas JavaScript you can just code

1:17:55

whatever you want and it can be

1:17:58

a completely volatile. of spaghetti and it

1:18:00

can still work. But, you know, Python

1:18:02

kind of, it has patterns that

1:18:04

push you toward actually, like learning how

1:18:06

to do things, right? So those would

1:18:08

be the big three things. Anything else

1:18:11

that you would strongly recommend people do?

1:18:13

Oh, and the three certifications that you

1:18:15

recommended based on your cloud of choice,

1:18:17

which they are very comparable functionally

1:18:19

in how they work. They have

1:18:21

different services names. They have probably

1:18:23

different little quirks between them, but

1:18:25

you can skip. the first certification that's

1:18:28

usually less technical when you go

1:18:30

for one of the associates yes

1:18:32

that way you know a single

1:18:34

associate certification like if you have

1:18:36

that they probably assume you know

1:18:38

everything from the more junior certification

1:18:40

right definitely yeah yeah I think the

1:18:42

the only thing I would add is some

1:18:45

kind of devops practices into it so like

1:18:47

think of terra form so terra form does

1:18:49

infrastructure as code you know any of the

1:18:52

companies you apply for they'll have

1:18:54

some kind of automation Nobody goes

1:18:56

through the portal and clicks through

1:18:58

deploying an easy-to instance when there

1:19:00

are hundreds, like in free code

1:19:02

camps. Like if you want to

1:19:04

deploy a hundred... VMs, you're not

1:19:06

going to do 100 times through

1:19:08

a console. So learn, all these

1:19:11

cloud providers have their own CLI

1:19:13

or a command line. So either

1:19:15

you can start diving into that.

1:19:17

And also on top of that,

1:19:19

I think terraform is a great

1:19:21

example for infrastructure as code because

1:19:23

it's cloud agnostic. So it doesn't

1:19:25

matter which cloud provider you work

1:19:27

with. You can write terraform code

1:19:29

to deploy your infrastructure in any

1:19:31

of these cloud providers. So any

1:19:34

kind of automation in. in respect

1:19:36

to the Devops practices, I would

1:19:38

say, so terra farm and command

1:19:40

line for that cloud provider and

1:19:42

get hub actions. So since you'll

1:19:44

be building a project, I highly

1:19:47

recommend it to have it in

1:19:49

a get hub repository or get

1:19:51

lab repository so that you can

1:19:53

share it with your employer, like

1:19:55

when you're applying for jobs,

1:19:57

make sure it's well documented.

1:20:01

Automation is only good when

1:20:03

you can deploy stuff

1:20:05

automatically when changes happen in your code

1:20:07

repository. That's where GitHub actions come

1:20:09

in. So like start diving into

1:20:11

how you can apply multiple, like

1:20:13

if you want to do, you can build a

1:20:15

end to end project, but how you

1:20:17

can apply these DevOps practices into your

1:20:19

cloud project, I think would be

1:20:21

like a cherry on top and would

1:20:23

really make you ready for like

1:20:25

an actual job at

1:20:27

a company. All of

1:20:29

this is kind of a

1:20:32

roadmap on our Learn

1:20:34

to Cloud. So Learn

1:20:36

to Cloud is an open

1:20:38

source guide or platform

1:20:40

where you can learn

1:20:42

cloud. It's free. It

1:20:45

was built by my

1:20:47

friend who works at Microsoft and

1:20:49

me because we have had this

1:20:51

like self taught kind of journey

1:20:53

into the cloud. So we kind

1:20:56

of saw like, oh, all

1:20:58

of this was kind of missing in

1:21:00

our journey. So let's create a

1:21:02

resource that helps people, you know, get

1:21:05

into cloud basically. So

1:21:07

all of the technologies

1:21:09

that I mentioned from

1:21:11

like networking, Linux,

1:21:13

scripting language,

1:21:15

Python and

1:21:17

even DevOps towards the end,

1:21:19

like all of this is kind

1:21:21

of covered there. So I highly recommend

1:21:23

it to check it out. It's

1:21:25

Learn to Cloud .Guide. It's a web

1:21:27

app that you can access. Awesome.

1:21:30

I'm linking to that in the

1:21:32

show notes. Well, Rishabh, I think

1:21:34

it's awesome. Everything you've shared with

1:21:36

everybody here. I love

1:21:38

that you have this amazing

1:21:40

origin story that you are proof that

1:21:42

you don't need to get a

1:21:44

four year degree to potentially work as

1:21:46

a DevOps, as a cloud engineer,

1:21:49

as a developer advocate and that you

1:21:51

can just go the certification route and

1:21:53

that you can not necessarily

1:21:55

have to constantly change

1:21:57

jobs or shop around for jobs, but actually

1:21:59

find opportunities within your own current

1:22:01

company. I love to see people

1:22:03

do that and take advantage

1:22:05

of any sort of lifeline from

1:22:07

above like mentorship, anything that they

1:22:10

can get. I think it's a

1:22:12

testament to how scrappy you are

1:22:14

and how resourceful you are. And

1:22:16

I also really appreciate you sharing

1:22:18

like all that really actionable advice

1:22:20

on how to get into tech.

1:22:22

I'm going to encourage everybody to

1:22:25

check out Ryshov's courses that we

1:22:27

published on FreeCo Camp. Check out

1:22:29

his Learn to Cloud. website, which

1:22:31

is awesome. It covers Linux, Bash,

1:22:34

programming, cloud platform fundamentals, devops

1:22:36

fundamentals, cloud security, very important

1:22:38

topic. So yeah, man, just

1:22:41

thank you so much for being such

1:22:43

a sharing person. Like a lot of

1:22:45

people are probably in a similar boat

1:22:47

and they've gotten to where you are

1:22:49

in their career and they don't necessarily

1:22:51

take the time to help other people

1:22:54

get to where they are. You know,

1:22:56

it's easy to just relax and enjoy

1:22:58

your... your knowledge worker lifestyle with your

1:23:00

interesting work and your high income and

1:23:02

all these things, but you take the time

1:23:04

to share that wisdom and to make

1:23:07

sure that other people have a

1:23:09

nice clear path forward and you

1:23:11

help reduce the ambiguity. Is there

1:23:13

any advice you would send back

1:23:15

in time to yourself if you

1:23:17

were sitting in that gas station

1:23:20

for a long day like looking

1:23:22

at that money that you've been

1:23:24

making which is enough to... provide

1:23:26

for yourself and it's easy to

1:23:28

just imagine like an alternate timeline

1:23:30

where reshob is you know seven

1:23:32

years later you're still

1:23:34

in that gas station like

1:23:37

what advice would you send

1:23:39

back to yourself? Hmm I

1:23:42

think I would probably

1:23:44

say that keep dreaming big

1:23:46

but also just like don't

1:23:48

forget your dreams so Like

1:23:51

I remember me being a

1:23:53

teenager and like oh what

1:23:55

all dreams I had like

1:23:58

just don't don't forget like

1:24:00

what you have pictured for

1:24:02

yourself for yourself when life gets

1:24:04

comfortable. gets comfortable. So that is the advice

1:24:06

I think I would give

1:24:08

myself. I would give also And also like,

1:24:10

things are gonna are gonna happen

1:24:12

at their own pace like

1:24:14

just be consistent with with like whatever

1:24:16

was trying to do at

1:24:18

that time. it's So new it's

1:24:20

learning a new skill just

1:24:22

like be showing up every up

1:24:24

every day or whatever you have built,

1:24:27

but yeah, have built. your dreams and then

1:24:29

being dreams and then being

1:24:31

consistent. you again so much for Well thank

1:24:33

you again so much for

1:24:35

making time to come on

1:24:37

the Free No, thank you. Thank you

1:24:39

you. Thank you for creating

1:24:41

you know this platform for like

1:24:43

only for like teaching and

1:24:45

stuff but also having so

1:24:47

many amazing people who can

1:24:49

share their story you know, know

1:24:51

of inspire and give road to

1:24:53

to other. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. your

1:24:55

show Everybody tuning in in. next

1:24:58

week. Happy coding. coding.