Career Change Into DevOps with Michael Hedgpeth, Annie Hedgpeth, and Megan Bohl

Matty: [00:00:00] English accent.

Megan: No, it’s horrible. It’s really bad. It doesn’t sound English. It just sounds trashy.

Matty: It’s time for Arrested DevOps, the podcast where we help you achieve understanding, develop good practices, and operate your team and organization for maximum DevOps awesomeness. I’m Matt Stratton, and co-hosting with me are Trevor Hess and Sonia Gupta. We have a special new guest host tonight. This show did come at a suggestion of our longtime friend of the show, Michael Hedgpeth. We’ll be focusing on stories of entering the DevOps or tech world after starting with a different kind of career. And the show notes for this episode can be found at arresteddevops.com/career-change-into-devops. But first, a word from our sponsors.

Trevor: ChefConf will be held May 23rd through the 26th in Chicago. Chef has been a longtime supporter of the DevOps movement end of this podcast. ChefConf will have talks on infrastructure automation with Chef, compliance automation with Inspect, application automation with Habitat, and a ton of other relevant content. Register with the discount code ADO2018 to save 10%. Visit chefconf.com for all the details. And remember, code ADO2018 gets you 10% off the ticket price at chefconf.com.

Matty: [00:01:31] I am really pleased to introduce our special guest host, Sonia Gupta. But before we introduce our guest, Sonia, can you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell all of us a little bit about yourself and how your career’s been going?

Sonia: Sure, Matt. I’d be glad to. So I was actually a lawyer for 8 years. I was a public defender, then a prosecutor, then an assistant attorney general, all in the state of Louisiana. And decided to make a career shift. So I moved to Denver, packed up my car, gave away all my stuff in New Orleans, drove up to Denver and attended the Turing School of Software and Design here in Denver. I graduated from there in January of this year, actually, and have been working as a software developer ever since. I currently work at Ibotta here in Denver and I’m having a great time.

Trevor: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. You said this year, do you mean like You just graduated 2018, or do you mean 2017?

Sonia: It is 2017. Yeah, it’s like too early in January, uh, in, in 2018.

Trevor: [00:02:32] I totally understand.

Sonia: Yeah, 2017.

Trevor: Cool, that’s fantastic, and I’m so happy to hear you’re enjoying it so far. And we’ve got some great guests tonight as well. Joining us are Michael Hedgpeth and Annie Hedgpeth and Megan Bohl, both of whom started their careers as grown-ups far away from the DevOps and the tech world. Before we got into how they got there, can you tell us a bit about what you’re doing now?

Annie: Sure. I’m Annie Hedgpeth, and I am a cloud automation engineer at TenthMagnitude.

Megan: I am Megan Bohl, and I am brand new to the DevOps world, and I just finished school for DevOps and continuous integration. So, I am looking for a job currently.

Matty: Also joining us is Michael Hedgpeth, who was the inspiration for this episode in that he came up with it. So, Michael, I know you’ve, you’ve been on the show a bunch of times before, but Give a quick 30,000-foot overview. Tell us your origin story, as they like to say on Greater Than Code, for people who might not have heard from you before.

Michael: Thanks, Matt. I’m Michael Hedgpeth. I am, as of tomorrow, going to be leading application operations and DevOps for NCR’s hospitality division. And I am very interested in helping people along the journey to get into technology new. That started with my wife and has extended into Megan and hopefully others.

Matty: [00:03:54] Annie, do you want to— your story has kind of become the thing of legend in the DevOps world. Can you tell us a little bit about your origin story, as they would say on Greater Than Code? And we might, along the way, ask some questions and kind of understand a little better.

Annie: Yeah, sure. I’ll try to give the quick version of it because it’s a long one. But my degree is actually in film. I have an art degree with an emphasis on film. And so, I started my career out as a casting director. And I did that for a while and then I stayed home with kids. So my oldest kid is 11, almost 12, and stayed home with them for— 3 boys— for a long time. And during that time, I did a lot of blogging and did some financial blogging and then some personal blogging and then home decorating. And then I had a home decorating business and did all— kept myself very busy while I was home. But then, like, I was ready to go back to work whenever my youngest was going into kindergarten. And truth be told, if I were to do it all over again, I might have worked sooner, but I didn’t have that. And so, I was 10 years without anything really of interest on my resume. And I was kind of screwed. Like, who was going to hire me? I mean, I was going to have to start out— here I was, this, you know, person in my late 30s. I knew that I had a ton of potential because, you know, I know the type of person I am. I’m a hard worker. I pick up things quickly. I’m a leader type, you know, all that stuff. But, um, I was not gonna make the money that I wanted to be making, you know, like I was going to have to start at the bottom again. And I didn’t want to do that. And I didn’t want to go back into casting either because I had been out for so long. I totally lost all my network. And also it’s just, it’s hard to have boundaries around your life when you’re in film. And so, um, So, Michael kept on telling me that I should get into technology, and I totally thought he was crazy. I was like, I have a freaking art degree, man. Like, what am I going to do in technology? And so, I really just thought he was crazy. And then, Inspect came along, and he was like, look, here’s this framework that is totally supposed to be easy for people to pick up because it’s written for people that are not coders, and it’s supposed to be totally human-readable, blah, blah, blah. Why don’t you learn that? You know, see how that goes. See if you like it. Long story short, he said, give it 3 weeks. Just do an experiment. If you like it, if you can pick up on it after 3 weeks, then we’ll reassess. And so, I did. I gave it 3 weeks and really the rest is history. From that, it was a launchpad. Like, it was— I say that it lowered the barrier to entry into technology for me because it was something that I could pick up on and something that taught me, like, in an inverted way about IT. So, like, So, what Inspect does is it validates your configuration, or it audits your compliance, or whatever, but you’re basically just seeing if things are the way that they’re supposed to be. And so, you learn about IT by writing all of these controls to see if things are the way they’re supposed to be. You kind of learn how things should be. And so, I learned about IT in this inverted way, and then learned how to remediate with Chef, and then, you know, one thing led to another, and now I know, like, so many different things that I just, didn’t think was possible, really. Like, I was thinking about this the other day, and it’s just crazy how much it snowballs. And now I’m at 10th Magnitude as a cloud automation engineer, and it’s totally crazy.

Sonia: [00:07:26] Annie, I have a couple of questions for you, and thank you for sharing that story. It’s actually really incredibly inspiring. I also made a shift in my 30s, and I kind of wanted to ask you a question about that. Did you find that there were any particular challenges that you encountered, either, like, personally or professionally, making a career transition in your late 30s?

Annie: Yeah, the whole thing was a challenge. It was so hard. I mean, just the biggest thing was my own belief in myself. And Michael kept on saying that, you know, I could learn this stuff. And, you know, he had so much more faith in me than I had in myself. And I had to get over that. I had to get over imposter syndrome. I had to get over the feeling that I was the dumbest person in the room. I had to get over that I just didn’t know everything about everything. I’m such a perfectionist. I wanted to know everything. It took me a long time to realize that not everybody knows everything about everything and that everybody kind of has their little specialties. And yeah, that’s really the biggest thing. The content was difficult to learn. It was challenging, but it happened. Like, that was the easy part. It was just my own psychology, I guess.

Sonia: [00:08:41] Yeah, thanks for that. I appreciate that. That makes a lot of sense.

Michael: So a lot of times people think that when they’re doing a career transition, they get themselves a job and then everything was— everything is rosy. But actually, the first few months of your job at Tenth Magnitude was quite difficult because you, you had to learn a whole lot And then maybe you could talk about that journey of the first few months and then the turning point that happened.

Sonia: Yeah.

Annie: So, I didn’t say how I got the job, actually, and Mr. Trevor G. Hess has a lot to do with that, and Mr. Matt Stratton. So, I went to ChefConf, and so, I had written these tutorials for Inspect, and they had gotten a lot of buzz on Twitter and stuff because people thought it was pretty cool that somebody that didn’t know technology could learn this thing. And so, it kind of got this little following, and so, then Matt asked me if I wanted to be be on the Arrested DevOps podcast at ChefConf in 2016 to talk about security and stuff because of, you know, because of NSPEC. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don’t know what I’m gonna talk about, but sure, I’m game. You know, I was just open to any opportunity. That was the thing that I had to really just, like, I guess, humble myself in a sense, like, be open to whatever it was, like, say yes to everything. So, I was like, sure, I’ll say yes to that.

Michael: [00:10:02] Yeah. And I highly recommend you go relisten to that. Episode and tell yourself this person has only been in technology for 2 to 3 months.

Annie: It was like 6 weeks at that time or something like that.

Michael: It was crazy, but you were totally immersed writing these tutorials. But, um, the, the level of bravery that Annie had on that, I was just, uh, really amazed.

Annie: I still can’t go back and listen to it. Like, it’s too cringy. But, um, anyway, uh, what was I talking about? Oh, so anyway, Trevor, uh, worked at Tenth Magnitude at the time, and so that’s how we met. And he saw this potential in this person who had all this excitement and drive. And we were talking about that the other day, Trevor and I, that drive and that excitement and everything is so important to show people whenever you’re looking. However, okay, so once I got the job though, that wasn’t like the endgame. Then I had to actually start delivering. And I was working at a consultancy where everything is about delivery hours, everything is about utilization, and delivering for the client. And so, it was pretty hard because I had this very specialized little field that I knew about. I mean, I knew how to do inspect, I knew how to remediate with Chef, and just at a very basic level at the beginning. And at the time, there just weren’t a lot of Chef and inspect jobs at 10th Magnitude, just in those few months, you know? And so, I was on the bench a lot. And I mean, a lot, a lot. And when I was on the bench, I was just doing as much learning as I could on my own and just diving into whatever I could. And so, then, a few months later, I got this one job where I was learning Terraform and where I was actually writing a bunch of Terraform scripts that were translated from ARM templates. That was really cool too because I got to learn about infrastructure in that inverted way because, I had this ARM template that was already— ARM template is an Azure Resource Manager template that you provision infrastructure with Azure with. And I was just translating that from the ARM templates to Terraform. And it was a great project. And the thing about it was this guy that I work with named Scott Nowicki, he just spent so much time helping me and training me for this because it was my first really, really big project sort of on my own where I was I had a lot of responsibility on my own. And he spent so many of his own hours training me or just helping me through my problems and stuff. And his utilization took a hit too, which as a consultant, that’s like a big deal, you know? And so, like, he didn’t make his mark, his percentage mark that he was supposed to make for that quarter because of me, because he spent it on me. He ended up being okay for that because they saw it as an investment. I was so grateful for that. It takes people like that along my journey to, you know, just give me a little hand every now and then because almost impossible without it. I mean, I just, I need that support and he gave it to me. And so, that was my company’s way of investing in my growth. And like, I just skyrocketed after that. Like, it was, he took a hit on one quarter, but then after that, I was like so much more independent and it was really fantastic. People like Michael, people like Trevor and Matt and Scott and all, I mean, like everybody sort of helps these people along the journey. And it’s just really, really cool that they see something and invest in it. So, I guess that was my point.

Trevor: [00:13:42] Well, yeah. And it’s funny a little too, because I remember when you joined 10th, it was so great to have somebody so passionate join the team who’d written all these interesting things. I remember you got brought into one of your first projects and you just crushed it with Ryan, I think it was. And not long after that, I accidentally pulled a Stratton on you, as he’s done to me many times, where I left shortly thereafter. And I felt super bad because I wanted to be that person to help too.

Annie: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and the other thing is that whenever you’re new to technology, you just have to be scrappy, you know, like you have to get the help where you can get it, you know, like wherever. I mean, I’m up on the Chef Community Slack all the time trying to get help and, you know, just wherever I can. So it definitely takes some grit and some scrappiness.

Michael: Yeah, and it was interesting when we were starting, when Annie was starting her job, I told her, you know, it usually takes people 3 to 6 months to really get into a position and be effective at it. Um, even if they, if they have experience, Annie had never had this type of job. All the jobs that she had had before were kind of freelance casting jobs for film.

Annie: [00:15:04] Yeah, like hit the ground running.

Michael: Yeah, they weren’t like 9, 8 to 5 IT jobs at all. And so I remember you had a hard time believing me. You thought most people— because if you’re doing a film, then you have to be on and at the top of your game on day one, or else they’re going to fire you.

Annie: Yeah.

Michael: And that doesn’t necessarily happen in the corporate world. If they see that you’re scrappy, they see that you’re learning, um, and you’re growing and you’re— the trajectory is right, they have patience to get— for you to get to the, uh, the place that you— they know that you can get to.

Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sonia: Hey Annie, you know, when you were talking about your intro, um, kind of brought up some other questions for me. I know I get asked often, you know, how has your prior career informed what you do now in technology? And I wanted to ask you that. Like, you came from a really creative background, right? Maybe you weren’t doing anything even close to technical. And how has what you did before informed what you’re doing now? What do you think some of the carryovers are?

Annie: [00:16:06] Oh, yeah, definitely. The whole thing about DevOps is that you’re supposed to be able to, like, work across party lines and everything, right? Well, it’s still really hard for everybody, but I was in casting. And so I feel like I can read people really well and kind of maneuver like, I don’t know, these tough, I guess, maybe as a mom also, you know, like kind of my casting and my mom background has really helped me just to kind of work with people better. You know, like I remember I was on one team at one company where one person was kind of really judgy about somebody on the other team. I just didn’t see it at all. I just thought like, well, we’re all on the same team. Like, we’re all working for the same company. Let’s just all get stuff done, you know? Like, let’s work together and blah, blah, blah. But I don’t know, it’s just like a sense— it’s given me a sense of how to work with everybody, you know? Like, just how to, I guess, I really hate overusing this word because it’s really super overused in DevOps, but how to empathize with every single team. Like, both being a parent and being a casting director, it really helps me just with empathy, basically. That’s the greatest asset that I have from both of those things. And then also, my design background. So, I was in home decorating also. It gave me a way of, a nice way of planning out projects and things like that. That really informed my, I guess, process, I would say. So yeah, that’s a good question though.

Michael: [00:17:45] I’d say the third thing that I’ve noticed is that when you were in college, you were basically told you’re probably going to fail at this career unless you work really, really, really hard.

Annie: Oh yeah, totally. Because like the film industry is full of people that are, that are just totally willing to work for free because it’s the movies, you know?

Michael: And then I’m over in the business school. We went to the same school. I’m in the business school and we’re all showing up late to class and we’re going to get good jobs because we’re in the business school.

Annie: But—

Michael: and the art degree people are working their asses off.

Annie: Yeah, because we’re afraid that somebody else is going to take our job. These people work for peanuts too. I mean, the people in Dallas— I mean, like, when I was in my 20s working in film, I worked for peanuts because, like, the job was so cool. Like, it really was a super cool job, but it didn’t pay what I was working. I mean, it didn’t pay in the ratio to what I was working, so.

Michael: Yeah, and so that was one of the things that influenced me to suggest technology to you is I saw your work ethic, how incredible it was, and I thought that, you know, I looked around the corporate world and that work ethic just didn’t exist to that level. There’s a lot of entitlement in IT, and when I see people with art degrees like yours who just from day one had to do that in order to succeed. I just feel like there’s way more people from those backgrounds that really belong in our midst in IT.

Annie: [00:19:12] Well, and that leads me to Megan. So, Trevor and I were saying this the other day that, you know, what he saw in me on that Arrested DevOps panel was that I was super passionate and, you know, hard worker and all that stuff. And, like, not just anybody can make this transition into technology. Like, it’s not just, you know, a super easy thing. But it takes people with a lot of grit that work harder than everybody else and that really want something super bad and that they know that they are worth, you know, this income level that they’re trying to get to, right? So, like, it’s not all about money, but it kind of is also, right? I’ve said I was out of work for 10 years and I wanted to get to the income level that I was at. Well, to do that, I knew that I was going to have to just work my butt off. And Megan’s one of those types of people also. Also, like, I wasn’t gonna just sort of— I wouldn’t do this with just any of my friends that were like, hey, I want to get into technology too. I’d be like, okay, sure, whatever, and then, like, show me. But Megan’s the type of person where you say, oh, okay, sure, here, go do this project, and she does it, and she, like, rocks it. I think that Megan’s awesome. There you go.

Megan: [00:20:27] Thank you.

Matty: So, Megan, How did you decide to get into technology and, you know, pursue the, you know, living the dream of the, you know, big gold chains and Learjets and, you know, throwing down on our dollar dollar bills on our yachts and all?

Megan: It’s all of that. I just wanted that. Well, basically, I used to be in supply chain operations in business. For 15+ years and was put in the position of supply or liaison between IT and operations and really loved working with the IT department and running or being their super user and getting the chance to work with them and see the development process. And I never really felt like I was smart enough to do that kind of job. I thought I had to have a computer science degree and that I could never be in that type of position. When I had my second child, I decided to take a break from working and went to visit Annie one day, and she was talking to me about Ruby and Chef and all of these exciting things that she was doing. And I kind of, uh, whatever, that sounds cool, but it’s just not something I could ever really do because I’ve got all this experience in business and I have this degree and I just don’t think that’s something that’s for me. And after talking to her and Michael, you know, 3 or 4 times, they kind of got into my head that, yeah, you are smart enough. That is in your wheelhouse. That’s something that you could totally do. And so then from there, I just decided that I was going to do it and I started teaching myself Ruby. Online through, you know, online sources, Udemy, Udacity, things like that. And getting stuck in tons of rabbit holes online. There’s so many things that you can find online to, to learn. And it’s so confusing. And it’s so hard to get into technology when you have no clue about it. But I am so grateful to Annie and Michael for being mentors. And leading me down the right path.

Annie: [00:22:51] The thing, like, you can learn all that you can learn, but like networking is a major part of it.

Megan: Oh yeah.

Michael: Yeah, I don’t think that anybody could make a career transition without a strong mentor.

Matty: Yeah, no way.

Annie: And just using their network and building your own from that, it was so important. So, so important.

Megan: No, I would be lost without you guys, especially with Michael’s project that he’s, he’s made for me.

Annie: Well, and then that led— we knew the importance of having a strong network also, and that’s what led us to ask Megan to be on the organizing board of the DevOpsDays DFW because we knew that there she would be able to be exposed to so many different companies and so many different people. And so, she was the sponsor liaison this year for DevOpsDays DFW. And, I mean, do you wanna tell us about some of the connections that you made through that, Megan? Because that was pretty beneficial for you, wasn’t it?

Megan: Yeah, I mean, I got some, some interest on the, the job front from that. And so that was really, really amazing. And it was beneficial because I got a scholarship, thankfully, from the awesome organizers on the team to Tech Talent South for DevOps and Continuous Integration certificate. So, that was incredible. But I also met all of these amazing sponsors in the DevOps arena, which honestly, at the time, I didn’t really understand who they were and what they did. That really gave me a leg up on this. Seriously, like Red Hat, I had no idea, like, what a big deal Red Hat was. And when I went to school and figured out, you know, what a big deal Red Hat was, I was like, oh my gosh, wow. So, it was pretty cool to be able to say, oh, yeah, they were one of our sponsors. And I felt like I was pretty big time being able to say stuff like that.

Annie: [00:24:49] You were pretty big time, trust me. They all loved you.

Megan: For sure. But it was a great experience. And just, I mean, the whole DevOps crowd, I feel like the culture is so open and, I don’t know, inspiring. It’s totally different than the business that I’ve come from. People are kind of like, we don’t share our knowledge. You know, we keep it to ourselves because we don’t want you to understand this because, you know, it’s crazy.

Annie: I found the same thing when I got into DevOps. Like, everybody was willing to help and just really excited that somebody wanted to learn all of this stuff. And that also brings me back to your Tech Talent South scholarship. So, Tech Talent South here in Dallas was excited about Megan’s story as well, and so, they gave her this, what, 12-week course in DevOps for free? Man, that’s really awesome.

Megan: [00:25:53] Yeah, it was really great.

Trevor: I’ve got a couple of questions along the education tangent. So, we kind of talked about this a little bit in the green room, but If everybody’s comfortable saying so, what was everybody’s original degree? So my first degree was an Associate of Science in Graphic Design.

Megan: Mine was Marketing.

Sonia: Mine was English. This is Sonya. Yeah, English and American Literature.

Annie: Yeah, I can read and spell.

Michael: I have a degree in Management Information Systems.

Matty: I’ll let you know when I get mine.

Annie: Nice, nice. You’ve done well with that.

Matty: I’m always inspired when we kind of get on these because I have the imposter syndrome around not having the degree, mostly because I was the kid who loved school and never would have thought that I— One of these days, I will finish and it’ll be for me something— Scott Hanselman talked about this on Greater Than Code a while ago, and I’ll try to put the link in the show notes. A fantastic podcast episode, but he talked about why it took him 11 years to get his degree and it was because he just went to get it for himself. But one of the things that’s interesting is I can sit and— Hanselman said this similar thing and it’s easy for someone like me as someone who has had privilege to be able to say like, oh yeah, I’ve done this without a degree, but I’ve gotten opportunities that other people might not. Other people might have had to work harder to prove themselves, um, without that piece of paper. So it’s, it’s, uh, something I don’t give myself too much credit for. It’s— it comes more from, from luck and, and, you know, kind of the way I, uh, what I got born into. But I did work hard, so let’s not get wrong, right? You know, I, I did my shit in the data center. I pulled cable, you know.

Michael: [00:27:42] Well, and I think that—

Trevor: that I think is what I think is more interesting is one of us on this call started with their degree in information or in technology.

Matty: Well, I was going to say too, so I did start my— by the way, my degree, my college education that I did have was in theater. So even then, the degree I didn’t get wasn’t even in CS or IT. Yeah.

Trevor: Was it theater tech at least?

Matty: Directing. Yeah.

Megan: There you go.

Trevor: So I know both Sonya and Megan, you’ve both gone through, um, the kind of the, the, the code school programs. What was that like? So I, I went through and kind of when I went back to school, which was right after my graphic design degree because I decided I hated it, um, but I finished it. What, what my— what did was I had to find the right education program for me. I knew personally that I wasn’t going to be able to sit through a bunch of theory classes in a traditional, you know, IT systems course, you know, for a CS degree. So I actually got my degree— my degree’s technically in game design with a concentration on programming. And so that was kind of how I sculpted so that it was something that— it was something that’s going to have me coding hands-on. How did these— how do these coding programs help you make the transition into the world of technology?

Megan: [00:29:08] I really enjoyed mine. I think the DevOps and continuous integration program was a little different than a traditional coding boot camp would be, um, you know, because we focused a lot on, you know, like online tutorials and things like that. Linux— we started with Linux and then went on to, you know, your configuration management and stuff like that. And, and it was really kind of fun because the, the instructor and I kind of work together to work through the tutorials in advance of the other students. I got to really geek out with him and figure things out first and tell him what kind of issues I ran into and what I thought other people would run into. And it was really fun because it was a very small class and, you know, it was really focused on just us And we could really cater things to ourselves. So that might be different than what Sonya experienced with her, her school, but for me it was, it was a really, it was a good experience. And I think it’s just hard to, to cater to all of the different levels of education in those types of situations because sometimes you have people come in with little even computer knowledge, and then you have to kind of educate them on how computers work even. And, and so it’s, it’s kind of hairy in those types of situations.

Michael: [00:30:44] Yeah, and what I’ve learned from Megan’s experience in that is that if you, if you find somebody from that went to a coding school That’s excellent evidence that they have what it takes to work hard and take things to the next level. But Megan’s experience in that coding school was very different than the other students. Megan worked with the teacher to create the— to be the first person to test through their curriculum and took a leadership role in that. Was really at the leading edge of that class’s execution of a DevOps curriculum. You want to find somebody like Megan, I think, that went to the class and really excelled within the class and was at the head of that class, because I think that there might be some people in the class that didn’t get as much out of it as probably Megan did.

Matty: Sonia, would you say, given that, having gone through the boot camp and things like that and the makeup of your class, and then as you went to get your position in the company you went to, how does that— is that similar? Does that jive differently being a little more software engineering focused than operations and process focused, if you will, or whatever we call DevOps these days?

Sonia: [00:32:04] Sure, yeah. The school I went to was a 7-month program, so it was a lot more intensive than I think a lot of boot camps. I think what I got the most out of it—

Matty: Oh, I wouldn’t even call that a boot camp.

Sonia: That’s why I call it—

Matty: That’s awesome.

Sonia: I call it a code school because it was like, it was, you know, 60, 70 hours a week, right, for 7 months with a week break in between modules. So, it was divided up into 4 modules of 6 weeks each. And we start with, you know, learning Ruby, then we move on to learning Sinatra, then Rails, and then APIs. So, we have a very good overview. I was in the backend program. There’s also a frontend program. So, I think probably the biggest takeaway from doing something like that, rather than being self-taught, is working in a team environment, right? So much of what I think we do, DevOps and software development, are we’re working with teams, we’re working with other people to build something together. And that’s not something I think I would have been able to accomplish had I tried to self-teach. So, that was a big focus for me. And yeah, we definitely, I think Megan’s experience is similar to mine in that there are people with varied levels of experience. So yeah, there were definitely some people who had a technical background and others like me who had none. And, you know, I was telling Trevor during the break that I struggled, you know, so they had to sort of accommodate those different levels of learning.

Matty: [00:33:27] And I’m going to ask this, I guess, from— this will be for Sonia and Annie because Megan, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you have not yet found your DevOps job, right? You’re waiting, you’re looking for it, but you don’t have one yet.

Megan: Yes, correct.

Matty: Okay. What did you find when you actually went out? And I, and you know, uh, Annie, you talked, you spoke about this a little bit, but maybe in a little bit smaller way or whatever. What was the thing that you said, wow, my quote unquote training, whatever that was, whether it was dev school or self-teaching or whatever, boy, was I not ready for this.

Annie: I think just the scope, like, how many other things I needed to know. Like, right now, so, like, at the time, all I knew really was how to write cookbooks and inspect profiles. I’m like, that was it. And I didn’t know the larger context of everything. So, like, the context of the things that we were actually configuring. So, like, now I’m on a project where we’re using, MS SQL, we’re using PowerShell, we’re using ARM templates, we’re using Jenkins, and Chef, and Anspec. I just had a very narrow scope of what to do. Like, tell me what to do, and I can do it, but don’t ask me, like, how it all works around. And so, as I’ve gone over the last 2 years, you know, I understand the larger scope of things. But at the time, I just had no clue. But it wasn’t really something that I could have prepared for either. It was just something that I had to kind of grow with and learn as I went along. And that was something that Michael told me that was going to happen too, was that as I went along, I would gather a context, you know.

Michael: [00:35:12] Well, and maybe, you know, Megan alluded to this as well, but, um, the hard thing for you to learn was being comfortable with being just okay at something.

Annie: Yeah, I don’t like just to be just okay at something.

Michael: You can’t learn everything. We in IT know that, you know, Terraform, oh, that’s something I’m just okay at as my goal hedge path. Um, I don’t like that. I have to be comfortable with that because the world of technology is so large.

Annie: I know it’s hard for me just to accept that I’m just okay at something.

Michael: Yeah, but you can, you can get up to speed and you can, yeah, exactly, um, do the tutorials or whatever. You can get yourself up to speed quickly and be just okay to do something great for a client or for your business or whatever. And that’s fine. That’s great. It doesn’t have, it’s not like you’re in film where you, you know, you’re either Brad Pitt or you’re waiting tables.

Annie: Yeah.

Matty: Well, well, and even then you don’t have to be all the things like that’s the definition of T-shaped, right? Is you, you, cause we’ve said it before, you know, we’ve said before too, it’s like, stop trying to be the 12x engineer. Cause that’s not really a thing. Nobody knows everything deeply.

Sonia: [00:36:21] Yeah.

Matty: You know, and be really good at one thing and be aware and be able to speak intelligently about most of the other things and at least be able to like make jokes about those things. That’s my way of doing it. Sonia, what about you? What was, you know, you, it sounds like I really liked when you’re talking about how your school prepared you with how you were working as a team to build things. And I think that’s awesome because I think a lot of people don’t get that as much, especially coming out of traditional university, but what’s been kind of the, if you will, the eye-opener being out there in the field, so to speak?

Sonia: Sure, yeah. So, while I was at code school, we were mostly building new things, right? That’s the best way to learn is to build and do and kind of immerse yourself in it. But we also had a very small amount of exposure to brownfield projects. So, when you get into the workforce, everything is brownfield, right? You’re not building a brand-new codebase most of the time. You are actually inserting yourself into a codebase that may have been around for for years. So, that was probably, I think, the hardest part for me was learning to navigate code that was written by engineers that might not even be at my company anymore, and kind of learning to piece together various parts of the codebase. Also, trying to understand what you guys in DevOps do, right? How all of this entire workflow from, you know, the mobile app all the way through the backend, and all the way through AWS, through Lambda, how all of those those different pieces work. Like, that’s not something— I think Amy kind of hit the nail on the head. That’s not really something school prepares you for. I think you kind of have to be tossed into the deep end a little bit and just sort of struggle through it a bit before it starts to make a bit more sense.

Annie: [00:38:05] And also, like, knowing what’s good code and what’s bad code. Like, you’re looking, if it’s a brownfield project, and you’re looking at something that somebody else wrote, and you’re like, well, I’m new, maybe I just don’t know that this is the way you’re supposed to write it.

Sonia: You know what I mean? Yes.

Matty: Maybe this is very elegant and you’re like, nope, it’s just crap.

Annie: But you think that you can’t understand it because you just don’t understand it, but really, maybe it just wasn’t written well.

Michael: I will say, though, that Annie has coined a term, DevOps native, that I found quite fascinating.

Annie: Oh, yeah. I have coined a term. This is a thing now. And Meaghan now are DevOps native. That’s right.

Matty: So, what does that mean? I ask with trepidation.

Annie: Well, I don’t have all of the background. Like, I was not in IT before there was a DevOps thing. And so, I was never a sysadmin. I just started in 2016. And so, all I learned was DevOps. Like, all I learned was automation and configuration management, and, you know, working along with other teams, and all this stuff. And so, like, I was taught really good habits, you know, like, really good DevOps methodologies and stuff. And I was trained by some of the best people. I mean, Michael Hedgemuth, and Christoph Hartmann, and, you know, Nathan Harvey had a lot of a lot to do with my mentorship, Dominic Richter. I was taught by a lot of really good people, Trevor Hess, Ryan Lee, Scott Nowicki. They were all really good DevOps thinkers. So, yeah, I’m DevOps native.

Michael: [00:39:56] And that’s the frustration that you get as you’re looking for jobs is that people think that they want someone with 10 years of traditional IT experience. And the reality is that it is sometimes, or many times, really difficult to get those people to want to code anything. And for you and Megan, that’s all you know is how to code something within a DevOps space.

Matty: Those 10 years of experience come with 8 years of doing it wrong.

Michael: Yeah.

Matty: Or doing it not the way it’s— you weren’t doing it 10 years of the way that that you maybe want to be moving, right?

Michael: I would love to see a job that says you have 10 years of IT experience, you have all of this, all of this, all this, or you just know how to code. Because if you, if you have the desire to code within a DevOps space, you can be so powerful by, by letting people around you give you that context. And then you, you’re not going to be called into an incident, you’re not going to be distracted by a million things, you’re going to focus and you’re going to code the thing and automate the thing and change the game for our business. And I just wish that there were more jobs out there that kind of had that bent to it.

Matty: [00:41:05] Michael and Annie, I’d like you to kind of tell us a little bit about this DevOps Jumpstart thing.

Michael: As I said at the beginning, we’re really, or I have been really passionate about people outside of traditional IT education getting into IT. And there’s a lot of ways to handle the situation that we have where only a certain group of people seem to be good at IT, even at the elementary school level. You know, getting, getting girls into math is a really important initiative I care a lot about. But there’s, there’s another way to enter that, in that people like Annie and Megan can get into IT and DevOps jobs from different education, and it just takes certain steps to do that. And so with DevOps Days DFW as a starting point, Annie was a part of that organizer group and entered into technology from that as an experience. Megan is very close to entering into technology job that way. We decided to take some of the support from DevOps Days DFW and try to sponsor other people like Annie or Megan who are from underrepresented groups in technology and help them in mentoring and help them financially, whether it be by childcare or with a scholarship or something like that, make that transition just like Annie and Megan are going to do. So our URL for that is devopsjumpstart.org. And we’re opening up an invitation for people to make a similar journey that Annie and Megan have done. And we’re working on creating a pattern within which people can more easily make that journey.

Annie: [00:43:05] Well, and the thing we were talking about also is that, so right now, it’s— me getting into technology was super hard. Like, It was, I mean, let’s be honest, like, I did get a job pretty quickly after. It was 4 months from the time that I started to the time that I got a job, but it was a lot, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that went into that. And we learned a ton from that. And then with Megan, we’ve learned a lot, a lot of new stuff. And so, we keep on iterating on this process of, you know, getting people into technology, and we learn something new each time. And so, through that mentorship process, and through getting them, you know, the training that they need, and the networking that they need, and all of that stuff, we keep learning. And so, we’re hoping that DevOps Jumpstart just becomes something that will be a much smoother process for people in, you know, however long it lasts. But we’re really excited about it. And the thing that motivates me the most to help people with this is that, like, it could really change somebody’s life. We joke about, you know, technology jobs paying well and stuff, but really, if you’re a single parent or if you grew up in poverty or whatever, but you’ve got this drive and you know that you can do something and you’re willing to give the blood, sweat, and tears that it takes to do it, then I mean, it could really be a game changer for somebody. It could really kind of like change their lives and change their family tree and really make the difference. And so That’s what really excites me about DevOps Jumpstart and just people starting that journey themselves.

Matty: [00:44:37] Anybody else have any kind of final thoughts about someone who’s thinking about making this transition? You know, Sonia, Megan, what advice might you give somebody in, you know, 30 words or less?

Sonia: Don’t be afraid. Actually, be very afraid, but still do it. And just know that you can push through the fear. So, if you’re even thinking about it, I think it’s worth it. Doing.

Annie: There was a good book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, I think.

Matty: So awesome. Uh, as is usually the case, we have lots more to talk about and not enough time, which means all these people get to be on the show again in the future. And I really look forward to having Megan on the show in the future to tell us about her awesome journey as it’s continued. Um, and she’s, uh, you know, how she’s gonna fly us all somewhere in her Learjet. Some community and event stuff. Uh, as, as promised, in my new job at PagerDuty, I actually get to go to events again. So I am going to be speaking at DevOps Days Charlotte at the end of February. That’s February 22nd and 23rd. Um, contrary to popular belief, they actually do have a discount code for Arrested DevOps listeners. It’s not the usual one, but if you use the code ADO25, they will give you 25% off your registration. Registration. So, you should go because it’s going to be super fun, and I’m going to be there. I am also going to be speaking at the inaugural Time Series Meetup in Denver on February 28th, and giving a talk at the Minneapolis DevOps Meetup towards the end of March. And you can find both of those if you look on meetup.com, and I may remember to put a link in the show notes. As always, a lot of DevOps— if you ever want to find out open proposals, open CFPs. If you go to devopsdays.org/speaking, that will tell you all the DevOps Days that have open CFPs. A lot of them do now. A lot of conferences just closed their— non-DevOps Days just closed theirs. So, but I’m sure there’ll be some new ones coming up. Don’t forget, ADO2018 will usually get you 20% off registration at DevOps Days. If it doesn’t, let us know and we’ll harass the organizers till it does. And ADO2018 will also get you 10% off your registration for ChefConf. So, if you go to arresteddevops.com/career-change-into-devops, you’ll check out this episode’s show notes. You can also sign up for our newsletter there, all sorts of stuff. Thank you very much to our great guests, Michael, Annie, and Megan, for joining us and taking the time. I really appreciate it. And also, big thank you to our guest host, Sonia, for joining us. I hope it’s been fun for you. It’s been fun for us. I know you may have heard on the show that you can order your own Arrested DevOps stickers. That is no longer the case, but if you really want some, DM us on Twitter and we’ll figure out a way to make it happen. So as always, I’m Matt, @MattStratton.

Sonia: [00:47:29] I’m Sonia, @SoniaGupta504.

Trevor: And I’m Trevor, @TrevorGHess.

Matty: We’re Arrested DevOps.

Trevor: And remember, There’s always DevOps in the banana stand.