Ep 6 - Real World Cloud Transition with @GiftedLane

00:00
Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast.

00:15
Cloud adoption is on the rise and many network infrastructure professionals are being asked to adopt a hybrid approach. As individuals who have already started this journey, we would like to empower those professionals with the tools and the knowledge to bridge the gap. And welcome back to the Cables to Clouds podcast. My name is Chris Miles. I am your host today. Joined with me next to me on this virtual lounge purchased straight out of the metaverse is my good friend, Tim McConaughey. How are you doing today?

00:45
Today Tim? Doing good, man. Doing good. It's Friday and ready for the weekend. Awesome. Aren't we all? Well, I can tell you, I'm in the weekend right now. That's great. Oh, nice. That's right. You're in the future. So should we expect sun or is it going to rain this weekend or how's it going to be? I expect that's all subjective, bro. You got to manifest it yourself. If my weather's coming your way, Tim, you better watch out because we have tornado watches going on over here. Oh, man.

01:13
Yeah, wind's been going crazy all day. That's one thing I don't miss about moving to Australia. And there's no tornadoes here. Not even, they don't even know what it is. I'm in the mountains, man. I wouldn't even think there'd be anything to do with tornadoes out here. But I had the warning, a watch a while ago. I mean, I used to live in Oklahoma in Tulsa and like, I swear, man, when like tornado come through, they were so desensitized to it. They did not give a shit. It was like, like.

01:40
The tornado warnings would be going off the sirens, they're going off the skies black. And I know people like walking outside, they're like gauging it. They're like, I can mow my grass before it gets here. I got time. Yeah, yeah. It was wild, man. But yeah, so, yeah, glad to hear everyone's doing okay. So today we have a very special guest joining us today. None other than Shala aka GiftedLane. How are you doing today, Shala? Hello, I'm good. Hi, everyone.

02:10
Welcome. So yeah, you may recognize Shala. She's been on a number of different podcasts and she has a very, very big social presence. So I'm sure you've seen her out and about. We will definitely give you all those wonderful links towards the end of the show to help you find her. But today we want to bring her on and kind of get a real work perspective of what it's like transitioning to the cloud, what the day to day looks like in the cloud now.

02:34
I know she was actually previously on an episode of the art of network engineering, which is the same umbrella that we're under. So we will put that in the show notes as well. We definitely encourage you to go back and listen to that. She tells some wonderful stories about working on giant ships and things as a network engineer. Stuff, the story, I won't spoil it, but there's a great story with bees. That one's really nice. But yeah, definitely go back and listen to that and you will quite enjoy it. But today we kind of want to...

02:59
take a, give more of a progress update, see how things are going now that she's doing active day-to-day stuff in the cloud, see what else she's working on, and, you know, kind of give her a two cents about, you know, feedback to people that want to transition. So that's going to be the focus today. So yeah, Shaw, anything else you want to add before we get started? Let's see, what I can think of. I guess I might throw in, you can see me on Saturdays doing AWS food camp stuff, so. That's right. Food camp?

03:29
Yeah. So what is it? The free AWS cloud project bootcamp hosted by Andrew Brown in exam pro. So I'm on there on Saturdays learning AWS stuff with the rest of the students and stuff like that. So that's really cool. How's that going? Is it going pretty good? It's going good. It captures what my first year in cloud has been. So if you want to see what that life is like when you're jumping in, because I'm someone who jumped into...

03:57
Just like I did with Network Engineering, I jumped into cloud with no cert for cloud, no cloud experience. So every day is on fire. Why? But the cloud is so easy. You can just jump in, right? Yeah, sure. You can. You can just jump in and everything's great. You know, you have to do stuff. You're still jumping into a shit fire, but it's just a different shit fire. It's just different. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

04:25
So yeah, maybe we'll start with just give that, I don't wanna kind of go over your background to death. I know that A1 episode is a really good episode of going over that. So maybe we'll do just give us a high level introduction to yourself, maybe talk about the kind of jobs you've worked, what got you into tech, what got you into network engineering and pivoting to cloud and give us that rundown. Sure, so the way I got into tech.

04:52
As mentioned, if you go back to the A1 episode that I did, that goes more into depth with that. But basically, one day someone came to me and was just like, hey, do you want this job role? Because this person's retiring and it ended up being a lead network engineer position. And so I took that on without even knowing what an IP address was. But I did that. That's how I got in. And then fast forward to, what is this, 2023. So...

05:21
Towards like the end of 2021, I was on call. I got a call at 2 a.m. in the morning about someone needing legal printing paper. And- What? I was like, even on the regular business hour day, this isn't my department's job. And what am I supposed to do at 2 a.m. in the morning anyway?

05:47
You don't have some right next to your bedside table you can pull out. Yo, and I want to- Hey, you got those tubes, the bank tubes that you can just stuff the paper into. And I'm pretty sure this was definitely during COVID lockdown, so Walmart wasn't even open. So I'm just like, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. So that's before you were a network engineer then, right? No, this was after.

06:16
So you were a network engineer putting paper... It's like a literal representation of that meme where the birds are all shitting on each other on the different rungs. It's just like the networking ones at the bottom. And I'm just like, yo. So that's what led me to cloud because I was just like, I don't want to do on-call rotation anymore. And then I was just like, I don't think I want to do networking anymore, which I never saw that coming. But I was just like, I'm bored. So...

06:45
I started reaching out to friends who were close to me, which was funny because I wasn't paying attention to the fact that they had been working in cloud for like years. And these are like five good friends that I have. And, you know, they were talking about AWS and Python and all these kinds of things. And it meant nothing to me. And then anyways, I was just like, hey, I think I want to get into cloud now. How do I do that? And they...

07:13
led me into the direction of how to start learning it. And then that's what I started doing. And I realized I was having fun and I was using a lot of CCNA and networking skills with it. And so it rekindled my love for networking. And I was just like, okay, I think this makes sense. It's going to be challenging, which it is. And that's what I was looking for because I tend to leave companies when I get bored. So I was looking for that next challenge.

07:41
Yeah, I don't know anything about that. No, so you haven't seen our other episodes yet, but it is funny to hear from someone who we have not like, I swear we didn't pay her under the table for this or anything, but we have ourselves expressed a similar feeling about like, hey man, network engineer was getting kind of, you know, we kind of explored as much as we could and how fun it was to try to kind of like bridge out into the cloud and have a different experience and how kind of rekindled the love. So it was really cool to hear you.

08:11
say that, you know. Yeah. Get that joy back and, you know, finding the joy and networking again. Yep. And it was really thanks to, really what really, really started me to make that pivot was actually, I saw a Hank Preston video and that sent me into Cisco DevNet. And then I started studying for that. And then I was just like, this is fun. And then I was like, wait, this is cloud stuff. And then that's where it all started.

08:39
I was like, let me figure this out. So, cause I was thinking I was gonna learn Azure because the company I was at, that's what they use. But Azure wasn't really pulling me in at the time. And the AWS courses that I started taking did pull me in. And so AWS became what I learned. So. Yeah, I feel like Azure has definitely come a long way, but they definitely weren't, yeah, they weren't, they didn't look that appetizing at the beginning of it, especially if you're going, coming from a network perspective. It was like, yeah, it was very plain Jane.

09:09
a lot of the features weren't there at the time. So yeah, I totally get where you're coming from. So I guess, so let's piggyback on that. And let's talk about that a bit. So obviously you were, you're getting a little bit bored with network engineering. You saw the DevNet video from Hank. And so what, what really pulled you in about cloud? What seems so intriguing about cloud to you? I did not know what I was doing straight up. I didn't know what I was doing. I was super confused, but

09:35
I've always enjoyed programming and coding and stuff like that. But I also knew from my college days and early career days, I did not want to be like a software engineer. Like I didn't want to sit in code app. Like I didn't like it. Yup. Right. Like I knew I didn't like that. College taught me that. College made me almost like, oh, if this is what IT is, I don't want to do it. You know, type thing.

10:04
normalizing databases. I hated it. But anyways, what was happening with Cisco DevNet, you know, you're, you're, you're talking to APIs and when I was working on the ships doing stuff for that, I had started bridging into API stuff because I also started making websites way back. This was 2000. I think I made my first website in 2003, 2004.

10:32
And I'm talking about like Adobe Dreamweaver dash. And so, um, I have, I have web development experience too. So anyways, when I was working with the ships, I created a website where we would pull it up in the main area of the company and you could see at any time where the ships were and the way to make that work. I had to use an API and track where they were at and then use that to display there. So going through the whole DevNet stuff.

11:02
I was messing around with APIs. I started messing around with Postman. What else? Docker. And I was just like, yo, this is cool. And so I was just like, I want to learn more. And like I said, shortly after that, that 2 a.m. phone call came and I was just like, it's time. Yep, I hear you. It's time to change. So I got my, I'm a big fan of DevNet. I still have my...

11:25
DevNet 2020. I didn't get, I wasn't one of the first 500. I didn't do the DevNet 500 or whatever. You remember when the DevNet Associate first came out? Did you get it? It was a race. Were you able to get a big race? So that is my first, it was. It was a big race, it was a huge race. So that is actually my first certification that I filled. And I have not attempted it yet, but I do have my sister. It was a tough exam. It was a good one though. It was a good one though, it was fair, but it was tough. You're right. It was, and it was during the time when,

11:54
Texas, unfortunately, we learned about our electrical grid being unregulated. Oh, yeah. And the power went out. So it just wasn't a good testing situation at all. And I haven't reattempted. But I do have my, I still have my Cisco DevNet Creator Award. So I did get that. Oh, nice. But I did not make the 500 or that year. I wanted to, but it didn't happen. I failed it three times. So I feel your pain. Yes. It was tough.

12:24
It was tough. I do think it was fair, but I agree that it was a tough exam. What I liked actually the most about that exam, that might be one of my favorite Cisco exams. I know I realized that you guys ended up failing it, but what I liked about it was- Humblebrite. This isn't giving anything away because this isn't giving it- Very funny. This isn't giving anything away. He likes to bust my balls. You'll see that later. What I liked about the exam was they actually have you write code.

12:53
in the exam, right? Like, and that's not like an NDA thing. Like they show you in the, you know, in the prep for it. Like I thought that was really cool. I thought that was like really, really relevant. It was great. I really liked it. I mean, I'm not bitter. I, two of my attempts were because I was trying to force it but to get that first year through class of 2020 or whatever it was. Same. So, you know, but it was a great test. You're right. I mean, it was, there are no other tests.

13:17
that Cisco has that are like that. I don't think. Yeah, agreed. Not even the IE has you do. Well, the new one actually might. I didn't take that one. I only took the old one. So the new one might have you write code and stuff. I heard it does. But yeah, anyway, not to get too far off the. Yeah, just another point. If that was your first website you ever made, that is, I will say that kicks my first website's ass. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Mine was, I made it in college in like 2006 and it was about the Civil War. And it was, so.

13:47
So you just, you just shit all over my in this, but that sounds amazing. Yeah, so there is that. And then my first, first website was actually, I was just talking to someone about this. I used to make custom design t-shirts for people. And so I remember going to my mom and asking for $20 so I could buy the domain and hosted on Yahoo Business. And I had to give my mom a business plan because she was like,

14:15
you're asking for $20 and I want my $20 back. And I'm like, it's just $20. Yeah, I was like, it's just $20. Right, it was because I was just like, it's just $20. And she's like, obviously $20 you don't have. So. I mean, that's good though, really. That is a really good thing. I know she was teaching a lesson and all that, but that's a really cool, that's really cool actually. Did that frame how you always ask for money after that? It does, it does. She's taught me two times. So there was that time.

14:44
And a time shortly after that, I had got my first job and I wanted to go to a concert and I spent all my money. I was like, mom, can I have some money to go to this concert? And she was like, well, I guess you'll learn how to use that same music account I set up for you. I've never asked anyone for money ever since I was 18.

15:11
I don't even remember. It was like, it could have been Jay-Z. It was, I know it was a rap. Respectable, respectable. Yeah, you might want to dip into your savings. Yeah. That's proper time frame to see Jay-Z too. That'd be nice. Yeah, I still hate, I miss the Watch the Throne tour, so. Yeah, and that's not coming back. When I'm dug themselves in a pretty good hole, so I don't think it's coming back. But nonetheless, we won't talk about Kanye on this podcast. We don't need to do that.

15:38
Yeah, so okay, so let's go back to the cloud journey, right? So let's maybe talk about what kind of challenges you had when you were transitioning to cloud, like learning new skills and let's say, what are those new skillsets that you had to learn? What was hard for you? What was really engaging for you? Let's kind of just talk about that for a bit. For me, when I try to think back to when I first started trying to even make that transition, just how to get started in the...

16:07
because you'll hear AWS thrown around all the time. But for me, the biggest thing was just like, okay, how do I start learning it? But I feel like this for me was back in September of 2021. And I feel like from the time of September, 2021 to now, like now I feel like there's tons of stuff out there and it's a bit easier. Now it's just more so being overwhelmed by all the choices I feel. So.

16:37
It's a good thing. It's blown up. Definitely. It has blown up. And even just the last year or two, it's really blown up. Agreed. Yeah. So that was my big thing was just how to get started learning. But once you figured that part out, then it was like, okay, cool. This is, you know, like, it's starting, it's making sense. I would say my web design knowledge and coding background made it a bit easier. My networking background definitely made it easy. I

17:05
Do you know there's like the argument online not to drag it up or anything, but I can't help but say like CCNA also did a network plus. I didn't test for it, but I did take network plus like learn for it. Just didn't test for it. CCNA I studied for it and tested for it. Thanks to that, I feel like I did have a large, you know, a shorter learning curve going into cloud because I didn't have to sit there.

17:34
and understand what's subnetting and how networking works. So when it came to the VPC section, it just made sense. It's just like, it's just, and honestly, for me, working on the ships when it came to VPC, the way I formulated it in my head, it's like, oh, it's like me messing with stuff on the ship because the ship's out in the ocean. I can't go walk over and touch it except for when they flew me over there to get on the ship and touch it. So that also helped out. So...

18:03
Most of my job was virtual in a sense. So that helped as well. Yeah, that's a really good point. I know the debate is basically like, what level of networking do you need to get to? Do I need my CCNA to get to the cloud? Yeah, exactly. And I don't know, that's a hard one. Cause it is like, like you said, all the stuff you just talked about that's covered in the CCNA, it's so helpful. The argument is, do you need to go much further than that? And that's a different discussion, but.

18:32
But at least just the CCNA stuff, absolutely. If you know all that, it makes it so much easier to get into cloud networking. I'd argue that BGP, you really just need to know the BGP and just the simple parts of BGP. And I think that's now on the EN core or whatever, like the NP level. I think that's where it lives now. Like the really advanced BGP stuff, I think is the ENRC or something. It's on the ENRC, yeah. Yeah, the advanced routing and...

18:59
Yeah, what's called advanced routing services implementation or something. I don't know what it is, but yeah. Yeah. And Sean, I like, I like what you said about not knowing where to start. Cause that was, that was kind of a thing for me too. As soon as I like decided I wanted to get into it, I was like, I was like, you know, let me have a look around, let me see what's out there. If you go to cloud Twitter, oh my gosh, there's like, I can scroll for like whenever I first got into it, I could scroll for like an hour and be like, I don't know what the hell any of these people are talking about. Like, I don't know any of these.

19:28
Right. Because they're all service names. They're all like foreign things to me. I'm like, is all this talk about big data and shit? So it's like as a networker, it was very intimidating at first. But once you once you kind of, you know, just start talking to people and know where to look, it really comes to fruition. But man, it was it was intimidating at first. And there's like over a thousand services now or something like AWS has such a ridiculous number of services. I've forgotten more AWS services than I remember. Right. Hands down. Absolutely. That's before you layer on the other clouds.

19:58
Exactly. So getting started was tough. And then like, let's say we fast forward, once I started working in cloud, the next thing I was just like, man, if I could do something different, I would learn Linux. I'm still struggling with that where I'm just like, I wish I knew Linux better, but I'm learning it, you know, while I'm on the job. But if you happen to be able to take some time off, learn Linux first, it's great. Do you have to know?

20:28
but it'll make your life easier. I would agree with that. So like I took the LPI, just the essentials, like Linux Essentials. So it's not even like the hard one. It's not even the full LPIC for my degree at WGU. And I've been using Linux for a while before that, but I would agree that the level of Linux you should know going into the cloud, I would say like the LPI, like Linux Essentials is really, really like the right lane to swim in. If you're, so I would agree with you and I would recommend like that level of cert if you're gonna go into the cloud, that's good.

20:58
Good call out. Yeah, like just today, speaking of which, also get comfortable with terminal. So just today, before jumping on this call, I'm in Vim. I know there's strong opinions about Vim. But how did you get out? Yeah. How are you here today? Dude, exactly. So just exiting Vim was silly at one point. And I'm in Vim today. And what it is is I needed to.

21:28
I had a bunch of data that I needed to manipulate and remove like commas and all these things from. So it's like Vimit, it's Vim and their version of Redjects. You talk about like SED, we're using SED for that or what we're using? It's probably SED and I don't, I didn't even know that's what it was called. No, you're probably right. Yeah. So that's the fun part when it comes to cloud and stuff like that, because people will be like, well, da, da, da, da, da. And I'm just like, no, when I say I'm learning it, like.

21:57
I'm learning it. I'm still green. Gotcha. Yeah, absolutely. So, okay. So, one thing that you said you would have learned is Linux. Was there anything, any other kind of skill sets or proficiencies that you had to take on that maybe you didn't expect or you didn't want to that you had to take on or ones you were super excited about? Yeah, I wanna say DevOps, like just in general. The whole thing. Just all of it because...

22:25
Even though I'm a cloud associate architect, most of my jobs so far with these first 11 months has been working as a DevOps engineer. So if you can learn DevOps, that would also be really great, which I think is just a good foundation anyway, even if you're going to be a cloud architect, because working DevOps lets you work in the world.

22:48
of the developer and operations, so you get a really good foundation. That way you actually know what you're talking about when you're trying to architect the things in the first place. You need to straddle the line. Straddle the line really good, really well, rather. English is not my first language, apparently. Straddle that line really well. Also, just like you said, get a view of both of them so you can speak the language of both and see how they connect. So much of the whole architect thing.

23:18
Just speaking real quick about the idea of an architect, I think, and DevOps and all of that is about being able to straddle those lines and see that all those things work together and not necessarily be an amazing expert at all of them, but definitely being able to pull it together. That's a skill all on its own. Yep. Yeah, I think that was a really cool thing. Oh, sorry, just one more piece about that. So yeah, I think that was a really cool thing to kind of come in contact with as a networker previous to this was the whole DevOps mentality. It's like, you know, we're used to

23:48
We're used to things moving much slower and not having this continuous integration and deployment piece built in, right? So it was like, I think when I went to college, I did not like coding. It was not something I enjoyed. Still I'm not a proficient coder at all, but I think now that I became very familiar with the outcome and I knew exactly what the outcome was, coding now like with Terraform, like deploying infrastructure, it's not exactly coding. I'm using HCL, which is, you know.

24:17
a very dumbed down version at times. But once I knew the outcome, it made much more sense to me how to put the pieces together in a DevOps mentality, which I really enjoy now. Because yeah, like in college, I was coding. I was like, here, first of all, I was taking Java. So that was the pain Olympics basically. But yeah, it was like, I was sitting there just like with Java making a calculator and I was like, man, this is not interesting. I do not need a calculator.

24:45
This is boring. But yeah, so that was the DevOps thing was really eye opening for me as well. And for me in college, my first programming language was C++, which I actually liked. I enjoyed it. I know that's like the strangest answer. Most people, that's what they read from. But I, you know, I enjoyed it because it's the first time where I felt like, oh.

25:10
I'm learning how to make the computer like think. So that's why it was interesting. But yeah, so that's why. But outside of that, like I said, I knew once I started diving into like.NET and stuff like that, it's like, I'm not trying to do this every day. C-sharp and like all the, yeah, those frameworks, man. I had to do that. I actually just got out of a class in WGU about software development and I, no, it was Azure software developer.

25:37
and I just passed the course and they were like, hey, here's a voucher if you want to take the test. And I'm like, no, no, fuck you, I'm not taking that test. Nice. Yeah, okay, so that's cool. So I guess that actually brings me to another point is obviously you have with these skills that you've had to learn, you've also, how long have you been in cloud now to date? So literally next Monday would make it 11 months. So I'm just somewhat shy for my...

26:07
Nice. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, so that's like, this is the perfect time frame to do an interview with you, I feel like, because it's like, you still, you know, you're still, it's still fresh in your mind what you didn't know what your transitions like and what you're still learning on a day to day basis. So those, I guess those skills that you had to kind of fine tune and things like that. Let's relate those to some of the job titles because you've actually had quite a few job titles in cloud.

26:30
in just this 11 months, which is pretty cool. So maybe let's kind of talk about each of those roles and what was special about them to you, what you didn't like, what you did like, and take it from there. Sure. So when I got hired into the cloud job, since I had a networking background, and so this is a good tip. If you're trying to look for your way in, maybe you don't have a cert, maybe you don't have cloud experience. What I did was with my in...

26:59
My end ended up being, okay, she has networking skills and background that are strong and unique and all this kind of stuff. We'll just make her a cloud network engineer. Easy transition, right? So that's one way to get in. That's how I got in. Shortly after that, I forget what my, probably about like four to five months in my job role and title changed to something, I forget, because it lasted for like two months and then next week.

27:27
I know I was transitioned into a cloud associate architect, and that's what I am now. So cloud engineering, what's funny, it's the typical, what I feel is typical about tech roles. It depends on the company you're with. So even though I was a cloud network engineer, my first project out the gate, I was a dev ops engineer on that project. So I was doing dev ops. And that's when I started learning that I.

27:57
love DevOps. The next project out the gate DevOps. So even though I'm working as an architect, I'm doing a lot of DevOps. So funny. I completely agree. Like every company and you have to find them where they're in their cycle too. Because a lot of times what happens is to like, depending on the maturity of the company and also like

28:20
how hip they are on changing and doing the HR cycle where they'll go through and cycle HR, go change the titles and everything. You have no freaking clue what your actual job might be. And how applicable it might be if you go to another company and they see cloud network engineer on your title or cloud architect or whatever it is, they might have a completely different set of ideas about what you're going to be doing and what you already have done. It's pretty crazy. Yep.

28:49
Yep. So I think it's easier for me versus talking about roles that I've done within these 11 months or like what my title has been named or labeled is easier for me to just really speak up, okay, what has my day to day actually been like and so far for 11 months has been them boxed. So which has been fun. I like it. Yeah. So how does that, how do you think that compares to what your life was like when you were working?

29:18
mainly on-prem, like are you finding it more fun? What are the things you like about the change in your day-to-day? So there's two sides to it. So one side, which is part of why I also pivoted to cloud, is one, I get to work remotely 100%, so that's nice. I don't have to drive into an office. The other thing that I was not prepared for, and it was a nice surprise for me, when I took the position, I don't have a set start or end time. Just get your work done. Here's your deadline.

29:48
Just get your work done. So there's no like, oh you need to be in, you know, at eight get off at five It varies, you know I really just kind of have to live by the deadline of the project I'm working on like my deliverables for the week and calendars on my not calendars, but Scheduled on my calendar and I like that so we're you know, treat it like adults and that's really nice. Um What else the other thing I like versus being on print?

30:17
Right now it would have to be the challenge because when I was doing the networking stuff, most of the time it would be like, oh, the network's running slow or it's completely down. That was kind of it a lot. Whereas with cloud, yeah, it's just fighting fires. Yeah, totally. Right. And with cloud, I'm fighting fires, but they're different because now with stuff like, you know.

30:46
Some days I'm wearing the hat of a mobile developer. And then the other times I'm wearing the hat of, you know, a network engineer. And then other times I'm, you know, doing coding stuff. So like, what was it? This project that I happened to be on my first few weeks, I was messing around with JavaScript. So Chris can talk about that. Chris loves JavaScript as we found out today. No, no, no.

31:15
Yeah, so like, so you've got mainly position in DevOps, or at least that's what you've been doing on the last couple of projects I guess you're associated with. So what kind of tools and technologies are you working with on a daily basis? Like what's your day to day look like? So there is a lot of, I'm definitely AWS focused. So there's a lot of things like RDS, there's EKS, there's ECS. I just started learning.

31:43
With this particular project, I just started learning, what is that, code pipeline and code build. Oh yeah, code deploy and all that. Yeah, I had not even heard of them yet because the only certification training I had did was Solutions Associate Architect or Architect Associate. And so you don't- Covered very much, yeah. You don't talk about it. And so I had to learn it for work. I did a lot of cloud formation, tons of cloud formation.

32:12
There's that, what else? Working with perimeter stores. So real quick, I wanna hit this, cause this is good. I know you work mostly with AWS and a lot of people who work only with AWS end up working with cloud formation a lot. Have you looked at or played with Terraform before and do you have an opinion? I love Terraform. So what happened, my first project out the gate was heavy Terraform and you also use TerraGrant. Oh yeah, okay. What else?

32:41
Kubernetes. And so imagine I had started working this position. It was like maybe like the third month working the position and just, you know, kind of getting acclimated to the company that I, you know, ultimately went to. And when I got thrown into the project, get thrown in, deep in, and she's like, oh, we do all this stuff on Kubernetes. I was just like, I don't even know what that is. So I had to go learn it. Terraform, don't know what that is, how to go learn it. But it's cool. I liked it.

33:10
Kubernetes too, huh? Yeah, that's a heavy lift. I don't even, there's a lot about Kubernetes that I haven't even played with. It's one of the things I think though that you have to have a reason to play with it to really learn it really well. You know what I mean? I think. And once I started working with it for that project, I love Kubernetes. Kubernetes is awesome. And then I also learned GitLab because before that I only knew GitHub, but now GitLab, I'll sit there and I can make GitLab runners.

33:38
I could do the whole GitLab CI and the CI CD pipeline to make it talk to AWS and all that stuff. So yeah. Is this the kind of stuff that you're doing with your, because I know you have like a Twitch stream and things like that and you're very focused on learning in public, which I totally respect because that's why I don't blog that much. Yeah, that's really good. The problem with me is I'm terrified of being wrong and I need to...

34:03
I need to be able to accept that. But is that the kind of stuff you're doing on your Twitch streams and other live streams? Yes. Right now it is heavy with the AWS bootcamp thing. But once I get past that, it will be a lot of me breaking stuff, trying to use K8s and Terraform. So it's definitely going to go that route. And also on YouTube. On YouTube...

34:33
That'll probably be videos, because I already have a video in mind where, what was I doing? It'll probably be stuff like CloudFormation and kind of like bumping that up against Terraform, because I kind of, to me, I kind of think of them, they're not the same. But what happens is, I'm like, okay, would this be better for me to use CloudFormation depending on what I'm doing, or would it be better for me to use Terraform? And depending on what I'm doing, I'll go one way.

35:02
the other or sometimes I might use both. So there'll be there'll definitely be some live streams about that and like me like breaking it because what I do is I break stuff on purpose which is why I have a sandbox because that's how I learn. Oh yeah I like it. It's a learn through failure for sure. Yeah once you get comfortable with it once I took down the the network for the networking job that I did which is a video I still need to put out because I killed the network for

35:31
our building that had 44 floors to people and the buildings that was around us, like it was about like 20 buildings in the downtown area. I killed like the whole thing. So was it with automation or did you actually like somehow push a button and make this happen? I pushed several buttons. Fun story. It's the silliest thing. But again, when I took that networking position, I didn't even know what IP addresses were. I was running Windows update and

35:59
I thought I was being smart where I was like, okay, I have like all these machines I need to do it for real quick so I can go send these machines out to the ship. So I was like, fine, I'll have half of them, you know, plugged in hard wire. And then, you know, the other ones, I'll run it on wifi and that should make it, nope. Oh, network just went down. Nice, yeah. I think we all remember our first big one, right?

36:27
Mine was the... Yeah, mine all got stories. Mine was the dreaded switch port trunk allowed without the add keyword. That was nice. You're the guy. I'm the guy. Yeah. I was cowboying, brother. I was... That's fun. You know, didn't work out. So I've hit many big ones in my time, but that, you know, to this day, I still managed to have avoided. I think it's because...

36:52
There's so many stories out there of people that do it. It's never too late, brother. Like, no, no, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it'll never happen, right? But that's one that's stuck in my head, like from the beginning that I've just, anytime I type that in there, and let's be honest, they should have fixed that a long time ago. It should always, you should always, like it shouldn't accept it without the, or it should assume ad. Just prompt you. It should assume ad. Like, yes.

37:17
It should just, you wouldn't even have, you shouldn't even have to say add. You should just literally be able to say allowed VLAN and then like, it just assumes add. Why would I want to take away all the other ones? Make me take away the other ones. Make me type that in to get rid, remove VLAN, like to get rid of them, you know what I mean? Are you listening, Cisco? Please, please do this. The other one, that would be a nightmare for me. Like I haven't done it, but I've known people who have done this. They took down like a whole AD.

37:47
And I was just like... That's widespread. That one's pretty bad. Yeah. It destroyed a forest or something. That's exactly what happened. I was just like, I'm glad it wasn't me. It's hard to recover from too. It's very hard to recover from. You lose all your credentials and everything. Anyway. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah. So obviously you've made the transition. You're working in cloud.

38:15
I think we'll probably know the answer to this, but would you say you're getting paid more in the cloud? Because I mean, this is always a big talking point I see on Twitter about people wanting to get into cloud. A lot of brand new people getting into tech want to go straight to cloud. And I see a lot of these like relatively clickbait videos that are just like, you know, like

38:35
Six figures in like six months. Yeah, it's like, bro, it's like, and then you watch some of these courses and you watch the, because we touched on this earlier, the like networking pieces that they need to teach people that are just brand new getting into cloud. Some of the networking things they come over, like the teachers, the way they explain how networking works, I'm like, oh my God, this is not exactly how it works, but I guess you're...

39:02
I guess you're kind of just pushing them past the gate. But yeah, so how would you feel that Azure Compensation got much better once you transitioned over? Yeah. And it's funny because I just did a post on Twitter where I was kind of making fun. Matter of fact, Andrew Proud was making fun of it a while ago when I first posted it where I was talking about why cloud and was, you know, a YouTube video I did.

39:29
And anyways, there's the part that I clipped by a lot of people was me saying, I'm just going to go on the record. I pivot because there's more money. Which is true. Hey, whatever, dude. People need to stop tiptoeing around that shit, man. It's like, yeah, like we all do this. We do this for money. Yes, we all want money that I'm sorry. Like, sure, I like learning the things and stuff. But if I'm being like 100 percent honest.

39:56
You know, someone just like offloaded like several billion dollars on me. Would I still be working? Probably not. You know, like there's still stuff. For fun. For fun. I might do it for fun, but yeah, I completely agree with you. So it's like at the end of the day, it's like, OK, yeah, money was definitely a factor. Again, my five close friends that I know, I started realizing and I was like, oh, you are making like these amounts of like money.

40:25
And I was just like, you know what, it's time for me to transition, but also keep in mind, one thing I do also like to talk about when it comes into like, oh, you know what, I'm just like, go straight into cloud and make all this tons of money. And then I'll have someone be like, well, oh man, you know, I, I'm, you know, be looked at for this cloud position, but they're only offering this amount. Isn't that low? And I'm like, no, cause what's your experience?

40:53
Like it matters. Yeah, it does. It does matter. It does matter. Absolutely. You know, because they're taking a bed on you, like a gamble, you know. So it's like, what's your experience? And then there's also the fact too, where it's just like, where do you live? You know, like are you living right? Are you like if you're in the US, are you like, say, like in somewhere like California or New York or are you down south somewhere? Like that makes the difference to Oklahoma or something. It makes a difference, you know, so it's things like that.

41:22
I also like to also put out there, when you go get in cloud, it doesn't mean you're just going to make oocoo money. Then let's say you do jump into cloud, and you're making tons of money, that's great. But once you get in, can you stay in? Yeah. Can you do the work? Yeah. I think you do. I know all of us agree that money obviously is a huge contributing factor. But I do feel like it's important to say that

41:49
If you don't know what you want to do and you want to try cloud and see if it's for you because there's money awesome If you get in you're getting paid tons of money and you freaking hate every day that you wake up Do you find something else man? There's other shit out there that pays Absolutely. Absolutely Yeah, I think like yeah, I think me personally money only sorry he's in austria. They don't have manners down there Yeah, go ahead shaw

42:15
I'm sorry, no, I was just gonna say it because for me personally, and this might not be everybody, but just for me, like money will only keep me so long if either I'm bored. If I'm bored or don't like what I'm doing, money is only going to get me by so long and I'm still gonna be like, you know, because there's been times where I've taken a lower paying job to get away from the higher paying job because I didn't like it.

42:39
stress of being on call 24-7 or something like that, right? There's money that needs to be figured out too, which is like your mental health and your physical health and all that, right? Matter of fact, one thing before Chris, because you're making me think of a book that I'm reading right now is called Dying with Zero and the way- Oh, yeah.

43:01
Yeah, the way he explained in the beginning of the book of how like one friend was just like, you know, they took like this big pay cut by changing jobs. But the friend was like, yeah, but I'm not having to drive, you know, 45 minutes to get there. I don't have to buy like this high caliber grade of clothing. And so when you factor some of those things in, it's like, sure, it's paying less, but you know, I'm actually getting more.

43:29
And that's one thing I had to explain to people when I decided to leave California and go back south and they're just like, but you're taking a paint cut. I'm like, yeah, but when you, you know, way things like, nah, I'm getting more this way, but it's okay that you don't see it. Yeah, exactly. I think, I mean, that, that kind of piggybacks on the whole remote work movement now, right? It's like, like you said, you know, it depends on experience, depends on

43:56
location, but a lot of people are making the argument that location shouldn't matter, right? There, I think that it depends on the company whether or not they're going to do that. Now, a lot of people that have gone fully remote, moved to a, you know, three time zones away and still get the same amount of money to live, you know, where the cost of living is, you know, donuts compared to where they were, right? And that's, I think what you need to do is, you know, before you're getting into cloud, hell, before you're getting into anything.

44:21
is kind of do what I've seen you do, Shala, is you've really planned it out. You really like did that mind map. Like what are my absolute requirements for a job? And if that's just money, you're probably soon going to find out it's not just money for you. But if that is all you're going for, then I think you'd be a little short-sighted to not kind of weigh in where you want to live, how much you want to spend commuting, how much you want to... Because I'll be honest, whenever I've been remote for like nine years and...

44:48
I do miss that physical aspect of it a little bit going in and like, you know, going into the office and just chit chatting and it's, it does a lot for my mental health I realized after COVID especially. So I kind of miss like, so like we have a like a WeWork membership here and I'll go down there just to work, just to like be around people sometimes so I'm not stuck at home all the time but yeah. And also I think, you know, when it comes to money as well as like...

45:14
Just something I want to point out and I think we really need to remove this stigma about talking about salary. Like it's bullshit. Like that is like the reason people are severely underpaid is because they don't know how much their peers are getting paid. Like the rule is fully over their eyes, right? So yeah, like I know employers would be like, oh, don't talk about it. Like, fuck that, man. Talk about it. Be on the open about it. Well, that's all I mean.

45:41
That's how a lot of like underrepresented groups and people who already are starting from a lower salary Keep getting locked into these lower fucking salaries because there's not that pay transparency There's that there's that push to not talk about it with you You know, how many stories have we seen where you know a woman finds out that she's getting paid, you know 75% if they're lucky that that's the same dudes getting paid and then with no other like no other just same experience And it's just like holy crap. I can't believe this shit like it's a

46:10
When I left one of my positions, it took a recruiter where they're just like, okay, so what type of position are you looking for? I'm like, here's my background. And they're like, okay, what are you currently making? I'm like, oh, this is what I'm currently making. And then the recruiter, matter of fact, it wasn't even, it was a recruiter, but it was like the hiring manager for a job I was going after. And they're just like, you're making what? I was like, I'm making this. And they're just like...

46:40
Dude, you know, you're like about like, you know, X amount short, like you should be like in this range. And once that happened, that's what wouldn't it that's when it really opened up my eyes. And I was just like, dude, because yeah, people don't necessarily talk about salary. So you just don't know. And one of my biggest tips that I love to share with people now, especially when you're going out looking for a new job, and you're interviewing and stuff like that, the moment they go in there like

47:09
Hey, well, what salary range are you looking for? What I like to do is say, what is the salary range for this position? Yeah. And then if they're like, oh, you know, it's from law to like 250,000, well, shoot, I want the 250. Well, I mean, and even if you don't go straight to 250, no, I completely agree with what you said, by the way. Like you should not be, first of all, I never say, oh, well, how much are you making? I turn that background and I say, are you hiring for my current position?

47:39
But on top of that, no, I mean, to expound on what you said, definitely don't start with what do you want to make? Because that's a trap, right? Every time it's a trap. They're hiring for a position and therefore there is a budget for that position. So just like you said, they already know what the range is and they're just trying to bait you out and see if you'll fit with on the low end or at least in the ballpark there.

48:02
But yeah, no, so even if you don't go in there and be like, hey, I'm going to go straight to the max of your position, you could say, hey, I'd love to make that. But you know, you should, you can follow it up and soften the blow if you will, put the kid gloves on and say like, you know, based on my experience, based on, you know, if there's a good fit there, so on and so forth, right? But yeah, I couldn't say that hard enough or loudly enough what you said that don't tell them what you're making. Don't tell them what you want to make.

48:27
ask them what the position range is. And if they won't give it to you, that should be a little bit of red flag. That part, because what else, if I start working for you, what else is not going to be said? Exactly. Right, yep, absolutely. And even if you do, let's say you do get in that situation and you do say what you're currently making, and then they tell you that you're underpaid, let that...

48:49
like empower you for what you would want to make, right? Like don't, if you say you're making salary X and they say like, oh, you should be making Y and then they'd be like, well, I have this position for you that you could make Y like, no, fuck that. You're gonna give me Z because you're telling me this job is better than the job I'm doing. And you know, I know I'm gonna excel at it, right? So it's like, yeah, don't let them do that to you.

49:12
I understand recruiting is a tactic and you know, you got to make your quota, you got to get your heads, things like that. So I totally get it. But yeah, you kind of got to wean out what the culture is going to be like based on how you were recruited, right? Because that can really kind of showcase what the rest of your experience is going to be like. Yeah. Like, oh, sorry, I was going to say I like to tell people all the time when you're going on an interview. So I kind of look at jobs like baby. And what like...

49:42
you know, if they job. So what happens when you're on an interview, they're interviewing you, but I'm also interviewing them because I might not wanna work for you. Yeah, absolutely. Depending on what kind of questions you're asking, what kind of vibe I'm picking up, stuff like that. Because yeah, it goes both ways. And the same thing also applies. Let's say you start working somewhere and they're just like, okay, well, the way we like to do things is, you know, we're gonna have you on like a six month probation.

50:11
And then depending on how that goes, you know, we'll go from there. And in my mind, I'm like, shoot, y'all are also in a six month probation. Like I might not want to be here, you know, and that's okay. There's been companies where after like about six or eight months, you know, I bounced, it happens. Not everything's going to be a good fit. That's just the way it is. Like, but, but yeah, this idea of like, of you giving, you know, extreme loyalty to the company and then the company can turn around and fire you tomorrow. Like that's.

50:39
That shit's, that shit's sailed. Yeah, that's the part they really struggle. Like I struggle with because I see, I see a lot of people who are really, really fucking good at their jobs. Like they're just like world-class networkers, you know, whatever, anywhere in tech and they are just so loyal to a fault, man. It's like, it's like, dude, you could, you could do something that would be 10 times more interesting and way more valuable, get way more credit for it. But you, you think that you like, oh, you need to hold out for the next three years, whenever you're, you know.

51:09
eligible for a promotion or something and it's like you are like you talk about how much you hate your work every day and like you sign out at 5 p.m. and you're ready to go and it's like man, there's more to this life than that. Don't like it because like Tim said, you can get fired tomorrow, hell you can get hit by a bus tomorrow and they'll have your replacement in the next week. So it's like you don't need to be like completely blindfolded and loyal to these companies a lot of the time. It's good to have the passion but you don't need to be loyal to a fault.

51:38
So this took an interesting turn, but I think a good one. No, no, it's a good. I actually think it took a good turn. I was looking for it on the side here. I was looking on the Art of Network Engineering website because we did an episode about salary negotiation as an example that's relevant. So it's on there. I can't seem to, I don't remember what number it is, but it's on there. Yeah, it's on the spreadsheet. We can put the spreadsheet in the show notes.

52:02
Yeah, we'll throw that in the show notes as well. But I remember recording that when that was a really good episode. It covers a lot of this stuff as well. Yeah, absolutely. All right. But yeah, OK. So yeah, I think we're about at time here, and then we're coming up on the hour. So Charlotte, this has been awesome. The conversation did take a turn, but I think it took a turn much for the better. I like these more roundtable, free ball discussion type things. So.

52:30
And we didn't have to hear Alex at all. We just kicked him out and he's just gone. Yeah, so if you listen, he's audio only. Unfortunately, Alex had a major power outage, so he dropped, but he wasn't just being silent the whole time. He dropped out in the middle. Yeah, but we will make sure to have him back for the next one. And we'll make sure he gets a generator or something. Yeah, we'll let him come on the next episode. We'll allow him to come back.

52:55
So yeah, Shaila, like I said, it's been a great conversation. Thanks so much for coming on. So Shaila, where can the listeners find you? Social media, you can find me across social media, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, all at gifted lane. And of course, I can stay on Saturdays. Like matter of fact, tomorrow morning, definitely come by. You can look for Andrew Brown on Twitter, but the free AWS Cloud Project Bootcamp.

53:23
will be on there. So this would also be a good place where you could come watch us live on Saturdays and try to follow along. And it'll also help you figure out if you want to do cloud and stuff like that. So yeah. Awesome. Amazing points. Tim, where can we find you at, brother? Yeah, the same places ever at one Goldes and my blog Carpe Diem VPN. Cool. Yeah. And my name is Chris.

53:52
You can find me in Sydney, Australia. Also at BGP main on Twitter. And obviously you can find all this good content as well over on cables to clouds.com. So if you enjoyed listening today, please share this with a friend. Please get in contact with us, email us, tweet at us, anything like that. And let us know what you want to hear because we really enjoy these kind of free form shows, but we're also open to talking about a very technical topic and maybe we can bring in guests for that.

54:21
and things like that. So yeah, if you enjoyed it, please subscribe, do all that fun stuff and we'll see you next time. Cheers guys. Smash that like button. Smash it. Later. Cheers. Hi everyone. It's Tim and this has been the Cables to Clouds podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed our show, please subscribe to us in your favorite podcast catcher, as well as subscribe and turn on notifications for our YouTube channel to be notified of all our new episodes. Follow us on socials.

54:50
at Cable's 2 Clouds. You can also visit our website for all the show notes at cables2clouds.com. Thanks again for listening, and see you next time.