I'm scared

LeBroke

So after a couple of RGEs (Resume Generating Events), I've been heavily interviewing. I also had a long whiny post written up, but this isn't r/sysadmin, so I deleted it.

Ironically, for all the hate they get, a recruiter from Procom contacted me on LinkedIn literally after the event, scouting me out for 2 DevOps Engineer positions at 2 companies. I decided that might as well see what he has to offer instead of spamming resumes. Went in for an interview with the company's development manager and team lead two days later.

Apparently they actually liked me (even though I barely ticked off 1/2 the checkboxes on their wishlist), so I came in for an interview with their enterprise architect and Linux team lead last week for a tech interview. Surprisingly, I was able to answer about 80-90% of their questions, and they seemed super basic (like "when would you use a VLAN" or "describe MySQL replication"). I guess I expected most technical interviews to be like at Amazon where they expect you to know every little thing about OSPF?

After some more back and forth and an HR interview last Friday (I know, it's backwards, but I guess someone had to ask questions like "what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses."), I got an offer last night. 70k!!!! 5k more than I asked for, and 10k more than I hoped for.

But... now I'm extremely scared going into the job.

I only have good knowledge of Linux (on the level they're looking for). My EC2 and MySQL knowledge can best be summed up by "working knowledge of common actions" at best. While I have some automation experience (Cobbler), I don't have any with configuration management. And finally, they're probably going to want me to deploy Jenkins as soon as possible.

So now I'm scared of not living up to their expectations. Any ideas on what I should do beyond "find out what they're looking to do first and start cramming it ASAP"?

networker050184

As long as you didn't misrepresent yourself in the interview they know where you're at technically. Start learning and do your best! If you already knew how to do everything for the new job that'd be kind of boring anyway.

Mow

Focus on the 10-20% you couldn't answer in the interview. Honestly, most places will give you a fair amount of time to spin up to speed. Remember, you won't be the only person if you were interviewed by an architect and team lead, so there will be help on things from coworkers and also the time you need to find your place in the org. Be confident, you can do it.

Mike7

Since this is DevOps, I assume you will be using AWS EC2, Linux and probably the entire LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. People with DevOps skills are hard to find, so I guess they are willing to give you some slack and train you up.

When do you start work? You can start reading and preparing now. For a start, you can sign up for AWS Free Tier.

This quote from Richard Branson probably sums it up
"If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!"

LeBroke

Mike7 wrote: »

Since this is DevOps, I assume you will be using AWS EC2, Linux and probably the entire LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. People with DevOps skills are hard to find, so I guess they are willing to give you some slack and train you up.

When do you start work? You can start reading and preparing now. For a start, you can sign up for AWS Free Tier.

This quote from Richard Branson probably sums it up
"If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!"

Linux, MySQL, and Java, actually. More or less what I'm doing at my current job, but in a much more DevOpsy way. Questions I couldn't answer I'm not super worried about (they were fairly easy 5-minute to look up questions), it's whether I can actually do it the whole shebang (hashbang? #!? You know what I mean).

I have some experience with AWS at my current job, but all of it using EC2 as fancy, customizable virtual private cloud where you can make changes by yourself instead of making a ticket, and none of it in a DevOpsy way of using the API (I made this very clear to them in the interview lol).

Mike7

How is what you are currently doing different from DevOps?

LeBroke

Mike7 wrote: »

How is what you are currently doing different from DevOps?

Individual environments we treat like treasured family pets for whom we love and care. As opposed to "Ah've got me 5,000 heads of cattle in o'er dem Amazon Cloud, an Ah'm looking for me Server Herder."

UncleB

I'm with Mike7 on this - get studying before you start and continue for the first few months.

I doubt it they will expect you to hit the ground and be fixing things on day 1 - it will take time to go through the induction process and be shown the systems then read all the background docs, sign contracts etc.

This gives you time to learn loads, tailor your studies to what they use and by the time you are using it in earnest you have the knowledge fresh in your mind.

There are plenty of training materials out there if you need them, but I'm sure some here can help if you are stuck.

Since you admitted your knowledge level in the interview then I can't see it being an issue - the above will just make your life easier once you start.

good luck
Iain

scaredoftests

Don't be scared! Read up on it and learn!

Mike7

LeBroke wrote: »

Individual environments we treat like treasured family pets for whom we love and care. As opposed to "Ah've got me 5,000 heads of cattle in o'er dem Amazon Cloud."

Good one. So instead of spinning up 1 VM instance, you will be responsible for 5K instances.
This is progress; it will look good on your resume.

LeBroke wrote: »

I have some experience with AWS at my current job, but all of it using EC2 as fancy, customizable virtual private cloud where you can make changes by yourself instead of making a ticket, and none of it in a DevOpsy way of using the API (I made this very clear to them in the interview lol).

I may be wrong on this. To bring up 5K instances, you will be doing it via command line script that call AWS API. I used to do this before. The company probably already have some production scripts. So get yourself familiar with AWS basics. I suspect you will be using Welcome - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Dropbox, NetFlix, AirBnb and many companies use AWS. And their DevOps folks should be managing their AWS resources using scripts that call AWS API.

LeBroke

Mike7 wrote: »

Good one. So instead of spinning up 1 VM instance, you will be responsible for 5K instances.
This is progress; it will look good on your resume.

I may be wrong on this. To bring up 5K instances, you will be doing it via command line script that call AWS API. I used to do this before. The company probably already have some production scripts. So get yourself familiar with AWS basics. I suspect you will be using Welcome - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Dropbox, NetFlix, AirBnb and many companies use AWS. And their DevOps folks should be managing their AWS resources using scripts that call AWS API.

Haha that was just an example. At the new place, the production infrastructure is fairly static, and handled separately by the Linux/VMware team. I'm going to be responsible for moving the dev environment to amazon and implementing automatic builds (at least for the first little while).

But in either case, the API is very high on my priority list, along with Jenkins and Ansible.

Mike7

Basically automate. You do have RHCSA and CCNA, so I guess you are not scared of command line scripting.

LeBroke

Mike7 wrote: »

Basically automate. You do have RHCSA and CCNA, so I guess you are not scared of command line scripting.

I code in nano

TacoRocket

I felt the same way I did at the job I just started.

I'm a heavy Windows SysAdmin and most of the interview was Pen Testing, Linux, and CCNA material. Which I don't have.

To be on the safe side, you can do what I did and have them clarify that you would still need training to catch up to speed. However you are more than willing to do a little time to get where you need to be.

As long as they acknowledge I think you will be safe. My company said they had no worries and looked forward to teaching me and seeing what I could excel at.

I think you will do fine!

powerfool

It's called growth. You can't do it by continuing to do what you have always done... you have to stretch and do new things. Step up to the plate and take a swing. You are already in a position where you are thinking the axe is coming, so just go for it.

AwptiK

powerfool wrote: »

It's called growth. You can't do it by continuing to do what you have always done... you have to stretch and do new things. Step up to the plate and take a swing. You are already in a position where you are thinking the axe is coming, so just go for it.

I'm not the OP, but in a similar situation and reading this post helped. Thanks powerfool!

Blackout

True Story I once took a role in Cisco TAC, I was utterly terrified. Turned out to be an amazing experience, it made me uncomfortable, I grew because I was uncomfortable. Now im no longer scared.

LeBroke

Update: apparently I hit the ground running, lol. Started redoing and standardizing our NGINX configs on day 2, started playing with Ansible on day 3, and since then already created a front-to-back Ansible stack (playbooks, roles, and configs) for deploying an AWS node for our webapp from scratch (well, you still have to feed it the war/ear file). Not counting smaller playbooks, standardizing some aspects of our production environment, and fixing a few prodsupport middleware issues, and implementing some Linux stuff that our overworked Linux guys never get a chance to do.

Oh, and I'll be implementing an AWS PCI environment for us as a case study with Amazon. They (Amazon) are literally paying for 2 years of our company's AWS fees and consultants to teach us this stuff

Onward to next week, where I'll be in meetings for a good 20 hours lol.

My resume will look awesome in a few years!

PS: thanks guys for the support and great information over the last year and a half.

TheFORCE

Sometimes fear is what keeps us going. Congratulations man! That's a great opportunity, these type of opportunities don't come knocking everyday.

powerfool

Awesome! Send us some more updates, I hope things go well for you!

volfkhat

Agreed!
This thread has been a Fun read :]