Everyone should have some level of medium to long-term career goals, but experience has shown that people who work in IT struggle with goal setting. When I was younger, the HR department asked me, “Are you tech-oriented or leadership-oriented?” and then offered me training to develop your technical skills. After identifying me as a “high potential employee”, the HR department offered me a comprehensive leadership program that was not limited to responsibilities related to technology, data and transformation.
“It’s no surprise that career growth varies from company to company and person to person, but for developers and site reliability engineers (SREs), growth goals career paths are as clear as in any other industry,” said Marcus Merrell, vice president of technology strategy. at Sauce Labs, it’s not defined,” he explained.
My advice to developers is to take care of your career beforehand if you are interested in a leadership role. Check out our career checklists for product management, devsecops, and databooks. Several DevOps experts have shared their advice for developers and site reliability engineers looking to develop career goals.
Strive for lifelong learning
Engineers know they need to learn new skills and develop skills, but that’s just the start of a lifelong commitment to learning. Think about the following questions.
• What kinds of problems and technologies interest me?
• What industries pique my interest?
• Do you prefer working in small teams or do you enjoy the challenge of large-scale innovation?
• What leadership roles would you like to invest in to build your confidence?
Engineers also need to keep an eye on industry trends, especially the long-term impact of machine learning and automation. The AIOps platform helps accelerate thinking and enables SREs to perform more accurate root cause analysis, and DeepMind AlphaCode outperformed 47.5% of programmers in the coding competition. Does this mean that developers and SREs will no longer be needed in the next 10 years?
“AI is powerful, but it won’t replace humans,” said Marko Anastasov, co-founder of Semaphore CI/CD and RenderedText. On the contrary, it will help people by automating repetitive and monotonous tasks and analyzing huge amounts of data in real time. AIops will bring devops to maturity. Engineers and SREs must be prepared to embrace and exploit these new, boundary-pushing technologies. »
Lifelong learning requires spending time developing skills, studying trends, and building experiences outside of familiar territory. By doing so, you will know where the growth opportunities lie that align with your long-term interests.
How can I dedicate myself to lifelong learning without making it a side job? Merrell recommends finding synergies with the following company goals to advance the desired career path.
• Understand and address organizational needs and risks.
• Spend time reflecting on innovation and the company’s current journey.
• Participation in educational programs
• Identify mentoring experiences and opportunities
If you like technology, you will become a complete expert
I define the expert in two ways. There are engineers who develop a deep understanding of a chosen technology and aim to become masters, and there are engineers who develop skills to develop technical skills in many areas and platforms, tools and methodologies. Technical know-how means executing effective proofs of concept, gaining objectivity about how to apply different technologies, and letting go of biases against previously effective technologies.
Among the many skill areas, where should professional development focus? I suggest two things.
Dave Thompson, director of engineering at Blameless, said of the developers, “Continuing advancements in product engineering practices and tools provide companies with the opportunity to realize competitive advantages in productivity, time faster time to market and operational reliability.Developers who understand this approach and develop expertise in the tools that support it will be well rewarded when there is high demand.
David Ben Shabat, vice president of research and development at Quali, offers advice for infrastructure and cloud engineers: “Provisioning remains a challenge. Innovations in infrastructure procurement and management led by highly skilled practitioners create complexity with high barriers to entry. For DevOps engineers, this will be an opportunity to acquire a wide range of knowledge that can be applied to a variety of roles as technology, methodologies and practices evolve.
If you enjoy problem solving, move horizontally from your current role.
Meeting today’s business challenges requires multidisciplinary teams and integrated solutions. If you enjoy solving problems, move on to other organizational roles to develop a broader view of what is needed to deliver an end-to-end solution.
A potential opportunity for developers is to move into data science and machine learning roles. “The developer career is much more flexible and personalized than ever, and many new developer roles are emerging, such as data engineer, ML engineer, ML architect, and MLops engineer,” says Thiago Cardoso, product manager at Hyland.
“Typical careers for devops and SRE include positions such as system administrator, infrastructure engineer, and cloud architect,” Cardoso adds. I also recommend moving from traditional infrastructure and operations roles to information security, enterprise service management, and capacity planning roles.
Technical Experts Influencing Agile Teams Can Become Architects
The roles and responsibilities of architects vary widely from organization to organization. But successful architects are more than just technical experts. Architects extend their expertise by helping Agile teams learn, apply, and create their own standards for delivering business solutions using technology.
Anastasov says that scalable technology organizations have to deal with the proliferation of tools and stacks. At some point, complexity slows down development.
“As technology matures and implementations grow, senior leaders in devops and SRE roles move into architecture or internal consulting roles to build and deliver high-quality platforms,” said said Cody de Ackland, Director of Developer Relations at LaunchDarkly. do it,” he said.
Here is an opportunity for devops engineers and SREs to become architects and advance their platform engineering practices. “You can become a domain expert and take responsibility for leading organizations to successfully implement these technologies,” says de Ackland.
Work with HR and IT managers
You don’t have to worry only about your career or your career path. You should seek help from human resources and IT managers in the exploration process. Working with organizational leaders can provide opportunities such as mentorship, special projects, and external learning.
Dana Perry, Director of Human Resources at Conga, says when helping employees develop their careers, “In a time of turbulent labor markets and unprecedented economic change, the key for HR leaders is to uncover the talent and people.” “That means investing time and resources to build a strong foundation for company culture, clear learning opportunities and clear career paths for employees,” he said.
“This tactic allows digital pioneers, such as DevOps engineers and SREs, to continue to invest in the growth of the underlying technology and prepare for when the business or its customers are ready to adopt the technology. key that they are responsible for,” Perry said.
In other words, an architect focuses on implementing current technology in a standard way, while a digital pioneer is someone who thinks a few steps ahead in organizational innovation.
If you have invested money in education so far, now you need to invest energy in business. Take ownership of your own career.
editor@itworld.co.kr
