Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and for today's guest I have Misha Fondenberg on with a passion for technology and education. He's a full time content creator and teacher in the DevOps space and he switched his career to this space and cloud native engineering about 3 years ago in record time. Actually, I get to pick his brain on how he did that exactly and we zoom in on this superpower called note taking. Enjoy.
I still remember a few days, not even a few days like years ago, I came upon this term which was called DevOps. And back then I was in operations and I could not touch anything with regards to development. And I thought, oh, this is what I was missing because I had some software engineering background with regards to university and education. And I found myself in operations and I was like irritated by being responsible but by not
being able to change things. So then this term, DevOps, really, I don't know, just pulled me in with regards to their responsibilities and that's what I wanted to go towards. When did DevOps kind of come across your path? So I was at a point in life where I had a few different career changes and I was 303031 years old at that time. So it was really like, I felt that this is the time where I actually need to make a choice and stick to it for, for a while.
I've I've experimented enough now I kind of know what I'm about and what I want to do. And at that point, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a data scientist, data engineer, and he had been working in IT for four years at that point. And I had been doing like hacking together with him in my free time.
And we were good friends and he advised me that you should look into DevOps because the projects we were doing, I was always doing the infrastructure, but also writing the code right. So I, I, I enjoyed both things and that's he, he pointed me in that direction of, I think that would be a good balance for you. So that was the way I came across it. And it even took me quite a while to actually understand
what DevOps is about. And I'm, I'm still trying to understand what DevOps is all about, but that's, that's how someone actually just suggested that to me. Nice. And that has been a very good fit for me. How did you start your educational journey then towards this, let's say craft? Yeah. With regards to DevOps? Well, it actually started well. I've been coding since I was like 10 years old. We had this like class at school with a couple of kids who were programming Visual Basic.
We had like the computer man of the school. You still had that back in those days. And he was teaching us that. And that's where my fascination with it began. And when I was 13, I was playing all these role-playing games, online role-playing games. And then I figured out that you could script those characters, you could script the mining and, and all of those things. So that's when my, yeah, that's already where the education
started, you could say. So I very early on, I started getting this automate everything mindset. So always looking for ways to improve things and to automate things. So the mindset was already there. And then later when I got a bit older and I started discovering Linux and, and this was all just, I was working my day job and then in my free time I would be messing around with these games and automating them.
This escalated and at some point I had like 10 servers in Germany running a few hundred of these accounts were no way 24/7. Yeah, yeah. And it was all scaling and downscaling. And I did that together with a friend. But your job, like your regular day job, was it in the tech field or nothing related at all? Not at all. OK, so this was completely on the side. Yeah, yeah, this was completely
on the side. It was just out of sheer interest and, and, and I always had this sense of if I could do this for work, right? If this could be my job to mess around with Linux servers and and configure them and and spin up this infrastructure, that would be amazing. But back then, I was living in Norway at the time, and especially in Norway, it was very like, oh, you need to have ACS degree and you need to have a masters and then maybe you can start applying for IT jobs. Right.
Yeah, high bar. Yeah, very high bar. So I never even really considered that I could do that. And yeah, so that's where the the training started basically in terms of mindset. So I already had quite a few, quite a lot of experience with Linux and coding just from my, my, my free time hobby projects. And then when I made a decision of, OK, I'm, I'm going to go for it. I, I want to become a dev OPS engineer.
And, but at that time I had moved back to the Netherlands from Norway. So I was living in the Netherlands and I just went all in on it and started studying very hard on Azure certifications and improving my Linux skills and at the same time applying for junior positions, internships. Like I was basically willing to work for free just to get my first entry into the field. And then by by posting a lot and, and just applying for many
things. Actually fairly quickly I was picked up for a traineeship by leveraging that story of automating games for what, 10 years? I love that or more. 15 years, so I didn't come completely green, but I still had a lot to learn. And yeah, that's when we started getting some Linux certifications and Azure certifications, and then I got my first placement, so. That's awesome man.
Congrats on that. Especially when you come from, let's say you have this aptitude for technology and because of gaming, like you've always been interested in automating stuff. But like you say, in Norway there is a high bar of entry. I do think this tech field is very unique in that there's so much content to educate yourself, yet the bar to entry, especially for people that are either early in career or switching careers is still fairly high.
Do you think you would change anything nowadays? Because I think a few years ago the market was different, especially compared to nowadays where I do recognize that people are having a hard time kind of landing either their first job or switching careers to tech. Yeah, it's a real problem. You know, it's a real problem because there's so many people like me out there who really want this. And they are doing every all the right things. They are doing all the correct steps.
And they, they, they, they would easily be able to work in a team, but they just don't get the chance. And I think there should be more. I it has been quite good so far, but there needs to be more opportunities for people to come in and learn at a lower salary, of course. Or yeah, probably, but just to get that first experience, that first way in. And yeah, I don't really have a solution for that at this point, but they're, they're there should be more openness towards
that. I think. I, I think you should not just look at how many years of experience someone has or how many lead codes solutions they did right there. But I like, I'm, I run a, a community of people who come together and a lot, many juniors come in because they are inspired by my story. And what I always tell them is to you have to show that you are
passionate about something. That is, I think why I landed my my first position so quickly because I, I really showed that I wanted this and that I had been doing it for so long already that yeah, like who doesn't want to work with someone who is passionate about what they do, right? It's the best thing. Yeah, it's the best thing. So maybe there is something about the the interview process or the way candidates reach the eyes of managers.
Like there's only so much you could convey in a one or two page CV, right? But what I did is I started writing A blog and then like getting a presence on social media. And if anyone would look me up, they would like be like, oh damn, yeah, this guy really wants this, right? He's really just documenting his journey. And that that's something I always advise to my community members to, to do, especially in the beginning. It's one more thing that you can
leverage. And I think that should should be paid more attention to by in hiring process I think. I think so too. I mean, I think it's slowly trending towards it. And I, I listen to an audio book, I think by Stephen Bartlett and he, he lays out that what makes someone a good professional, you can fit into a few buckets. 1 is skills and one is knowledge. And I attributed that. And also he explains that that's something you focus on more when you're early in career.
And then later on comes network, which you build up just by virtue of working and knowing people comes resources in the form of monetary or maybe a team that you work collaborate with. And then the last one is reputation. And I feel like we're pulling this reputation more towards anywhere within the process. You can always work on your reputation, right? Because it shows your passion for something. It shows your aptitude.
If people know you for a certain something, then they attribute that with you, which makes if it's DevOps or any type of technology, makes it an easier hire. Or at least it shows your passion online because that is part of your reputation. I think that's very powerful that people can leverage and it might be underutilized. Currently, definitely. And it's it's not easy, you know, it's not natural. It was definitely wasn't natural for me to just start writing about stuff and putting
imperfect stuff out there. Yeah, but as my intention was always to help other people and then it didn't really matter if it was perfect or not. It was not, it took me a while to realize this, but when you make that switch of, I'm not sharing this for my own gain. I'm not sharing this because I want to achieve this. No, I'm sharing this with the intention of helping others or making the world a little bit better. Then it doesn't have to be
perfect. And then it, I don't know, people call it manifesting or but it does. It does put something behind it that we can't really explain. And then it's also probably more likely to be picked up I think if it shines through when someone is doing it with bad, not bad, but unwholesome intentions. Like unauthentically. Yeah, unauthentically or AI generated, yeah, that that just speaks laziness to me. And and yeah, when I see that then I form judgements in my
mind. I'm I have pretty judge mental character. Then you're out. But then, yeah, when I see someone do that, then I'd like, OK, well, this guy's not putting in the effort, so I I probably wouldn't. Consider him. Yeah, it's a different, it's a different approach. I think it's a different path than probably you would take and maybe I would take as well. Yeah.
But then like the people that are jumping in this tech field, especially let's say years ago, it would all, it was always expectations of a really good job where you might not have to work really, really hard. I mean, I think you have to think a lot, but laboriously, you sit in your chair, basically you type away and then the salary is really good. It's still really good. You just have to find it.
If that is the main reason or if those are the main reasons, then yeah, we were talking about resilience and kind of the longevity of it. That's going to be hard. That's going to be even if you land the job, you might not even like it for the long term. You might just be in it for the money and you can do that. You have to be very disciplined though, yeah. I totally agree. I mean, I think many people want or they think they want to be a
developer or a DevOps engineer. But you have to be able to stare at black screens for 8 hours a day, right? With, with letters on it. I mean, it is, it is a, it takes a certain kind of person to to actually do that day in day out and enjoy it. I mean, yeah, I think this this applies to any career that you should never do it for the money because it's just not sustainable.
Like I, I came into it because I love the technology and just this feeling that you get when you deploy something and scale it up and it it actually works. There's to me, that is one of the most satisfying things in the world to see happen. But. It's satisfying and also the most frustrating when it doesn't work. Yeah, exactly. It's like this love hate relationship. But that's what makes it
satisfying. It's sometimes it's so hard to find the bug or to find what's going wrong, but when you finally get it then it's it's great. I'm curious to hear your take on this role that DevOps is playing nowadays, because I see a lot of let's say the big cloud providers trending towards pushing more for serverless technologies. And then me from the software engineering hat, I love serverless because I can just
provide my software. Sure, I have to set up a few things with regards to the infrastructure, but then it scales, scales automagically and I pay as I go or I pay as the network scales the traffic. And I think that's beautiful. Yes. And the DevOps role would be more prevalent if we had less serverless I would say where you have to, let's say maintaining your total cost of ownership is a bit bigger by virtue of you having to do so.
Yes, well, I mean the, the cloud providers are making things a lot easier than they were maybe 5-10 years ago. Of course, I mean just just deploying a Kubernetes cluster is relatively simple now, right? With services like Azure Kubernetes Service, you start it up or preferably from code, of course, by using Bicep, but you plug in your, your Azure key vaults, the, the, oh, I forget the name, what syncs the secrets from your Azure key vault CSI driver.
And you, you have your ingress controller. It's all, it's all configured right? It's super, super easy, relatively so. I mean, yeah, serverless is making things a lot easier, but is it also like I'm not very familiar or knowledgeable in serverless technology, but is that also like the first thing I think about is, OK, it might be very good if you're just a small team or a small, small project, but on an enterprise scale,
right? If you're doing things on an enterprise scale, are the costing going to be very high or likely? I think you you likely pay. For having that kind of be out of your hands, right? Yeah. When we're talking about total cost of ownership, you can go enterprise scale with a smaller team and you pay a price for that. And then the question is how much do you want to increase your total cost of ownership and then have more infrastructure and also more people. And that's then the trade off.
And I think people are even making that argument for going to the cloud in the 1st place, yes, which I think is interesting as well. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I mean, I think there's always going to be a need for people who know Linux and DevOps methodologies because not everybody is able, not every workload is able to work in the cloud, right? Yeah. Not everything can be using these basically SaaS services that the cloud provides. So there's always going to be a
need for that. And also very often, like maybe not so much with serverless, but it's easy to set up. But when things go wrong, that's when you need the people who actually fundamentally understand how things are put together right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still think I would pick serverless if I were to start up something very easily because just by virtue of having that small total cost of ownership, less things to worry about with you're going to production and then testing your assumptions
and scaling from that part. Yeah, yeah. I was wondering though, when we're talking about a cloud engineer or DevOps engineer with regards to career path nowadays, where would you advise someone to start? Because I know you do a lot with regards to education and you've also been on this path, let's say fairly recently. Yeah. How? How would someone start nowadays? Yeah, so on that, like I, my, my, I create courses, I have my school community, but I'm just trying to be useful to me two
years ago, right? That's basically the the idea. So I, it was very hard for me to figure out what to do because there's just so much information out there and DevOps scene so big. So what I try to do is to actually say, well, start here, do this and then build up from there or analyse someone's situation and see where they where they should improve. And recently I've been putting a lot of thought into this. But they're the cloud engineering and dev OPS engineering are quite.
They're similar, but different. Yeah. And especially in the American market, dev OPS engineer, even though there isn't really such a thing as a dev OPS engineer, there's always that discussion. But in in the American market, then a DevOps engineers usually assist admin with like 10 plus years of experience who then knows how to code. And then it's not a junior role, right? It's not something that you would do as someone with one or two years of experience. Generally here in Europe, it
seems to be a bit different. But there is where the cloud engineer comes in, because cloud engineering works exactly with these. They, they know these kind of services that Azure provides. For example, they specialized on AKS or they specialized on proficient infrastructure with Terraform. I mean, someone needs to do it.
And even though software engineers can relatively easily learn it, they might not be interested in knowing all the details about virtual networks and how to secure it properly in private endpoints and things like that. So, and, and that is compared to the American definition of a DevOps engineer, cloud engineering is a bit lower bar of entry, I think. I think that's easier to learn. There's more quality education material available. For really good documentation, yeah.
I mean, you can I tell people like I'm not gonna make Azure courses because all you need for Azure is the Microsoft docs and John Savile. It's all out there. Yeah. So I'm not gonna even gonna try. Right. No, you don't have to compete. No, I just say just use that. It's all for free and you can learn everything you need to know to. It helps to have a foundation in Linux, I always advise that, but you can learn everything you need to learn from based on the
that information alone. Yeah. So then what you educate also with regards to others is just by filling in the gaps that that let's say those courses or documentation would not give you. Yes, yeah. And it's, it's very often about stitching it together. Like one thing is to get your AZ one O 4 certification, the Azure administrator. But OK, then you know how to provision VMS with Terraform. But the VM still needs to be configured, right.
If you're deploying a Linux VM, you still need to configure with Ansible or something like that. So it's that is not covered with these, with these, the cloud information. So it's always about looking at where someone is, where they want to go, and then trying to fill in those gaps or give advice on maybe you should start here or maybe try this project to see where your skills are at. I love that. Yeah. I mean with.
My, let's say professional experience on a day-to-day, if I'm in an assignment and I do hands on software engineering, I have ideas on what would be interesting based on what I face, right, based on business problems that I'm trying to solve. I would know interesting tidbits or just along the way from colleagues as well. But if you're taking this role of a full time educator, how do you then come up with the ideas and the insights that people are
looking for? Because then you're out of this, let's say, business context. How do you get inspired? Well, let's say like it's fairly recently that I went full time on on this and I'm I'm, I'm, I'm, I'll be honest, I'm missing the engineering already, so I'm not sure this is going to be it's very fresh. It's very fresh and it's I'm trying it out, right. I'm always about trying out things and then see seeing what happens.
So I think it's very likely that in the future I am going to be engineering for a few days a week or or just do six months stretches of, of projects maybe if possible. So that is my current plan of of keeping, keeping up to date with these kinds of things. But the great thing is in this community, everyday people are asking questions about, oh, we have this happening at work, how do we solve it?
So it's not just me answering everything, it's actually the community coming together and everybody is chipping in. And just by virtue of that, I am being kept up to date, right? I love that I see what people are struggling with and, and what they need help with. And then I, I help them with what I can. But very often other people come in and then they get the solution that way.
Yeah, I want to pick your brain on how you started this community aspect, but before we do, I know you're big on note taking. And honestly, my note taking hygiene, if I were to call it that, right now is a bit of a mess because I have my existing notes and I'm trying to migrate to this other system which has a lot of features and promises. And I'm kind of in between and haven't done it yet because it's
like an uphill battle. Yeah. What is like good advice for note taking or what really helps you with regards to taking notes, going back on education and reflecting and actually finding the gold? Well, I made a course about now. Yeah, no, I will definitely check that out. No. What system are you moving towards? Obsidian. Yeah, nice, nice. So I have bare bones Apple Notes. It syncs with all my I love the Apple ecosystem because it syncs
with everything. But then I'm like, yeah, sometimes I get a laptop where it's not there and I want to have things synchronized still. And sometimes I want to relate to other things. And notes is very bare bones. Basically, it helps me to get up and running. So now I'm moving towards Obsidian. Nice. That's the promise. Well, there's a few tips or few words of advice that I generally give and that is first is just start.
I spent a shameful amount of hours watching productivity YouTube porn and then just trying this system. That system, and I mean it. I did it as a hobby, but it's not necessary to do that, right? So that is also partially why I create these videos to cut through all of the the fluff, right? So one thing I recommend is the Para method by Thiago Forte. Very simple directory structure, basically how you can use your notes.
And the second thing is I advise to carve out time to spend quality time with your notes and your note taking system in in instead of seeing it as something separate or or a, an auxiliary tool, you have to start seeing it as the basis for everything. Because my, all my thinking, all my deep thinking, all my creation work happens in notes
and writing is thinking. If you sit down calmly and think about something deeply and you're able to write and put that into your own words, that's the the true verification that you actually understand something. So instead of like seeing it as a chore, you have to see it as the actual work. The, the note writing the notes is the actual work. That is the actual deep thinking that you're doing and you're capturing that in writing.
So whatever you do, whatever you take notes on, carve out time to actually spend time with that. And then lastly, have a system where you can capture things quickly so you have a some sort of inbox. I've gone with inbox without inbox in several iterations, but after years I've landed all OK. You need an inbox so you're able to jot something down quickly and then later in a regular process come back to it and then process these notes and put them where they need to go and link
them to the to the notes. Those are the three bits of information I would advise. Interesting. I, I tried to, let's say the inbox approach where I would, I would time stamp things with regards to the day and then I would have whatever would happen throughout my day. But then I would also have recurring sessions with stakeholders or with development teams.
And I was like, OK, maybe it's helpful if I have something that's like a recurring just set document and then I attempt stamp within that document for the last things and I make sure it's sorted so the latest information is on top. But then I have these two kind of workflows. And then right now since January, I also moved to the product side. So then I'm thinking in my epics, features, stories and there's part of that system in there, which is why I was saying this hygiene.
If I try out four or five systems at the same time, it's, it's becoming a bit of a mess. Yes. And I, I can manage it. But yeah, if I now have to go back and restructure it, it's daunting, right? Because I love taking notes. I think it's very good to just jot on my thoughts either as I'm having a conversation with one
person or multiple people. Sometimes I go back on it and I structure it and have it be nicely formatted, but most of the time only when I need to, when someone's asking me for my notes and I'm just embarrassed because it's just one liners and I can, I can still piece everything together. So then I do and then I share. Yeah, but I don't do that often enough. Like it's not a part of my habit. Yet yeah, that's the thing right The the the next step of the note taking journey is the title
cast method. You may have probably. Heard it. I've heard of the term, yeah. And that that's by the German sociologist Nicholas Lehmann. He had like 90,000 notes in his system. Insane when he when he died, but he would always write as if ready for publication. And that is something that I also aim to do always. Like I should be able to pick up every note from my from my system and then present that to someone intelligibly, right that it should be.
It should make sense on its own. And it takes so much effort and time to do it that way. But then you also start filtering out stuff that like. If it's not worth that process, then it's probably not worth having it in your note taking system anyway. Yeah, if it's not worth that kind of attention. That makes sense. Yeah. What is in the outcome that you've had? Because I, I know you asked a person that has done that and has tried kind of these note
taking systems. Yeah. But for me, it has to be worth it at the end of the day with regards to how I structure my notes, if that's a benefit to my education. Yeah. Or the way I can convey information or what has been the outcome for that for you? Well, that that I'm sitting here. That's a good one. Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's it. First of all, when I started my DevOps journey, I knew I had this insane amount of knowledge that I needed to study and and convey.
So that's why I why I started taking notes in this way. So it has been extremely helpful in facilitating understanding by writing like we just spoke about. But then I also at the same time started writing blog posts and creating YouTube videos. And all of that starts with writing. So it, it takes a while, but when you do it for a year, then the turtle cast and the note taking system starts to attain critical mass.
And then what what I mean by that is that instead of that, it starts pulling energy out of you. It actually starts to propel you forward because then now I can literally sit down here and in 5 minutes I will have a fully structured blog post in my own words, no AI, nothing. Just based on my note taking system that I carry with me everywhere. Because I put in the time already and I know where it is, I can reference it very quickly.
So to me, whenever I I'm creating a course or when I'm creating a video, usually there is not much research involved because I simply base it on what I have done already. That's great. Yeah. So that makes the content creation and publication a lot easier. If that makes sense. I had a thought, but I lost it and that usually never actually happens. That's probably the same with my note taking though. Fleeting notes.
Fleeting notes. Yeah. Honestly, back to then the community part, because I know you started your educational journey and at some point you decided, OK, I'm gonna just by virtue of you learning and also sharing, giving back to the world, manifesting as you called it as well. You were sharing content. And I think that's very unique within this tech field. Maybe it's because I haven't been in any other field, but I think content is always being shared, right?
People are not really, how do you say that? It's, it's an abundance of content. People don't have a scarcity mindset at all. If I've solved it and I've done something really cool, people don't keep that to themselves. And I think that's phenomenal. Yeah, because the next best thing is sharing it with others. And I think it has to do with this passion that people have for it. Because when someone says, man, that's awesome, I never thought about that.
Something in me just fulfills and I and I'm on cloud 9 for the whole day. Yes, yes. Yeah. How did this kind of led to you or lead to you starting a community? Because that I, I know you, that's probably not the goal that you had in mind in the first place. Well, first of all, there there are definitely people who do gatekeep knowledge and not everybody has this mindset unfortunately. So it, it should happen more.
But I I totally agree there is an abundance of content and so much good stuff being shared all the time. And for me, what happened was I, I, I, I was thinking on about it on the train, like why, why did I actually start YouTube years ago, right? What what actually caused me to do that? But it just seems something
interesting to do something new. And as I was creating videos, I got started to get very positive feedback from in comments like, Oh, I really like the way you explained this, or I really, I really enjoy the way you, you talk basically those kinds of comments. And then suddenly I was rewarded the Microsoft MVP award. And then I got a few more subscribers and people were actually asking me like, OK, so how did you go from nothing to MVP in two years?
And then I figured, well, maybe I should start sharing that knowledge in a more structured way because YouTube has always, I've been like a bit of a side hustle that I did on the weekends because I enjoyed it, but also like, it's not my main thing, right? And then I thought, well, maybe I should put a bit more thought into how I structure it and that
provided it as a course. And then I came across the school platform who combines courses with community, which I thought was very interesting because I don't know about you, but I've done countless Udemy courses. And then you have these Q&A sections and nothing happens, right? You never get an answer. And I thought it was a very interesting concept to actually create a community about that education so you can actually talk about it with fellow students.
And, and, and also for me as an educator, I love it when people point out when I say something that's not correct, right? Or that could be improved. And that happens regularly. And then I just pin that on the on the thing, like, look at this. I was wrong. Make sure you read this right. Yeah, yeah. How did you get over that initial hump then? Because with, with comments also comes criticism.
Yeah. And with, I mean, especially when you're fresh in there, it can actually, I mean sometimes hit a nerve, sometimes actually hit you and demotivate you as well. Now, I must say I've been very lucky in in that sense. I like sometimes you get something, but I, I can actually not remember having any like really hurting comments or, or, or very negative feedback at all, which is very surprising. Yeah, I've seen other Youtubers comment sections and it's just a cesspit, right?
But I've been very lucky in that sense. Or maybe YouTube is just doing a good job of protecting me and filtering out the bad ones. But I have always had a rather thick skin. I, I, I basically have a pretty good idea of what I want to do. And it takes a lot to put me off that path, right? And it takes a lot to divert me from that course. So yeah, it takes a certain kind of personality to to put yourself out there like that. Yeah, that's for sure. I mean.
What's interesting to me is that when someone points out you're wrong, you don't like trying shamefully hide it, but you take it as feedback and you're actually like, look, I was wrong here. Yeah, make sure to check this out because this is the truth. I mean, there you have it. It's, it's to me, the most important thing is the truth. Nothing else really matters. I mean, I have a, I'm fairly detached from my personality, right? I, I don't take those things personal.
It's much more important to me that people who join my community actually get a quality educational experience where they learn the correct things. They're the right way to do things that learn the truth. And that is much more important than whether I whether I would hurt my feelings or if it would bring me down. Yeah, I love that. If the education is the essence, then it shouldn't bring you
down, right? Because someone actually, based on what you said, it's like a layup and they found the truth and then that's it. That was the essence. I mean, it's the same at work, right? When you make a mistake and when you bring down a server that shouldn't have gone down and then like there are people who would then try to cover it up, right? And to hide the fact that it happened. Yeah, I'm always very open about my mistakes. And I say I'm sorry guys, this happened.
This is how I've solved it. And then I'll pay the price for it, but that only contributes to maybe a new process being created, or maybe we can put in some sort of gate to make sure this doesn't happen again, right? So I'm all about openness and honesty and the the truth is the only thing that really matters. I love that principle that I always live by. Perfect. One of the last thoughts I still had was, let's say nowadays with regards to all the skills and tools you have in your tool
belt. Yeah. When you're picking up a new topic, how do you start? Are you a reader? Are you a listener? Do you start with your note taking next to you? Like how do you pick up a new topic and basically educate yourself to a point where you're comfortable also educating others because you have this kind of truth in what it means? So there's two kinds of people in the world. There's those who get a coffee machine and then with that comes
an instruction manual. And then there are people who sit down and read the instruction manual and then they plug it in and then they start working with it and there's people who take it out-of-the-box, plug it in, and then figure it out. I am very much the first kind. I'm always the guy who reads the entire instruction manual and wants to know everything beforehand before I get my hands
dirty. And that is basically what delayed my progress a lot in the beginning, even though I progressed fairly quickly anyhow. But I could have gone much faster if I had just actually started applying the concepts that I was learning. Yeah. So what I do these days, that's also because I know a thing or two now, but I always try to
define a certain outcome. Like say if I want to learn Kubernetes, I would say, OK, I want to have a simple web app running on Kubernetes that takes data from a database. Yeah, that's the end state. And then doesn't matter if it takes me two months to figure all of that out. But then at least I have a bit of a direction. Because if not, you just end up in tutorial hell.
You just watch one thing and then 20% is relevant to what you actually want to do. And of course, it's never wasted, but it's not actually contributing to moving towards that goal. Right. That's also why I like certification so much, because not necessarily because they like, there's a whole debate about whether you should or shouldn't get certifications. Yeah. But what I like about them is that they give you a clear goal to shoot for and to structure a life around, basically. Yeah.
And like a milestone. Yeah. A milestone and a a clear path to achieve that. So that's how I always try to approach these things, to get a practical project, some idea, and then learn what you need to learn in order to achieve that. Interesting. Yeah. I, I would have put myself in the complete opposite where I look at the manual and then I just start playing around with it. Yeah. And I did that especially at the
start. And I had people that educated me and like guided me with regards to software engineering and I got a lot of stuff done. Yeah. But then at some point I came into a different organization, different projects, and I was like, like, I should know how to do this, but I always have to go back and Google things, like more of the basic stuff. And then I realized I was lacking in part of a fundamental understanding on how things
actually worked. And I could get stuff done, but I felt like if I had that knowledge, I wouldn't have to go back and search and fill the holes in my knowledge here and there on the fly. So then I'm like more towards actually reading stuff and getting a better fundamental understanding and then starting. But then still I narrow towards starting immediately because that's like my comfort zone.
Yeah, I would say. Well, you, you need like I, I what I said like having an outcome in mind, like it does predicate that you have an understanding of the fundamentals. Yeah, I, I always say when, when programming do at least one of these like 10 hour fundamentals
courses. So you know, at least about variables, functions and and the basic stuff before you, before you go into it. I I agree with you that there is, there should be a fundamental understanding before you go out into these more specified or specific things. But yeah, the the primogen, you know I'm right, he tells his.
No, I don't actually. He's a YouTube very streamer, very famous coding YouTube. But he he tells his story when he they had like an interview question and he needed to filter out some text from the output of a command. And he described how he wrote this like 3 page JavaScript program with all these complex functions where he could have just used grab on the on the command line, right. So knowing the fundamentals can actually save you so much time
if you know these tricks, right? Or the Linux, the Unix basics. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially I think starting out having good fundamentals, it's hard because I didn't do it that way. I I really started and I got stuff done and it felt so good getting stuff done basically, especially when you're like, OK, I kind of know how to do it and it works and you see it work. It's really good. I think it feels fulfills this kind of stimuli of doing it again. Absolutely doing it over and
over. But then when I wanted to get even better, when I looked at my colleagues and saw what they were good at just by virtue of sitting next to them and doing pair programming, I would see that their approach would be different than mine. Instead of going in hands on starting immediately, they would step back. Sometimes not even code, but sometimes put some stuff down on a piece of paper that was like, OK, this is how we're kind of going to structure it. And then I would look at myself,
and this was years back. I still kind of find myself in this trap sometimes that I'm like, OK, I have a structure in my mind, I do it. Then I figure out along the way that this actually doesn't fit that one. I have to redo it. And then I'm like, I, I need somewhere in between. And I think that only comes with experience where you figure out kind of where you are, what is still missing if that's fundamental understanding or more of the practical hands on things and you go from there.
Well, it's like, that's why working in teams is so great, right? Because then you would have people like me who tend to read everything and then start and then you who are more like, let's just do it right? And and that's why having people of different proclivities works so well and having in in the team so you can balance each other out. I mean, there's always needs to be a balance. And I don't think you necessarily need to think negatively of the tendency that
you have, right? It can be a very good thing. Like I think you would be a great SAS entrepreneur build maybe building up small startups because you just go and and you know what to do. And when I have a SAS idea, then I spent weeks researching how to do it. And then eventually I never do it because I just get confused with all the research. Yeah, maybe I like being flexible in like my approach and that's why I really like learning from other people and see how they do it.
And then if I can be flexible enough to do it based on the task, like optimally based on that flexibility, I think that'd be really good. But maybe that's like a distant dream, because that also sounds really hard. That flexibility is so. Important. It's really. Important to get 2 rigid, yeah? Great man, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I must say this has been a blast.
Likewise, before we round off, is there still anything you want to share with regards to any of the topics we might might have opened up or any lingering thoughts? Well, we touched upon this problem of juniors entering the the market. I really want to impress to to stress that it is possible if you follow your dreams and if you're willing to put in the hard work. It's not going to happen by itself, but if you're willing to put in the hard work, it is possible.
I'm the living proof of it. Even though the market is a bit down, if you really do it, it can, it can work out. And I also want to encourage people who are in hiring positions to, to look a bit further than just the CV and see, look at the person behind and give, give people a chance because it's very important that we get passionate people into the industry who do it because they love the technology and not just in there for the money. Yeah. Absolutely great. My camera, I lost it.
Thank you so much for listening. Normally you're over there now you're over here. Put some comments in the comments section below. Let us know what you thought of this episode and we'll see you on the next.