Building confidence in your tech career
Building confidence in your tech career
Guest post by Kadir Islow, DevOps Engineer. Plus, our upcoming events!
šš¾ Salaam, we are Somalis in Tech and welcome to our monthly newsletter. Each month weāll bring you the latest from the community, tech news and a community guest feature.
š Upcoming events
š¤ Data & Machine Learning Panel
Sunday, March 27th
2 PM EST | 11 AM PT | 7 PM GMT | 11 PM EAT
Curious about a career in data science? Perhaps you want to learn more about machine learning systemsā¦
Well, you ask, we deliver. šš¾ We asked our community over on our slack what topics they wanted to hear more aboutā¦ data & machine learning seemed to be the winning option!
We have a great group of speakers joining us, so stay tuned to learn more about them and the upcoming event.
āļø Cloud/DevOps meetup
Sunday, March 6th
10 - 11am PST | 1 - 2pm EST | 6 - 7pm GMT | 9 - 10pm EAT | 10 - 11pm GST
@Abdirahman Mohamed, will be joining us to discuss the AWS Well-Architected Framework and how to increase cloud observability, lower the cost of ownership, and achieve cost savings. Abdirahman is a Sales Strategist at nOps and holds 5 AWS certifications.
ā”ļø Resources Hub
We believe that knowledge is power, and that power should be shared. As an organisation, weāve strived to create a space where knowledge and wisdom can be freely exchanged. Members of our Slack community have often commented on how much they value the resources shared. However the channel moves fast, and itās easy for information to get lost in the constant slew of messages.
Wellā¦ we want to make sure that doesnāt happen! So weāre getting ready to launch our ā”ļøResources Hubā”ļø. Information shared by the community, for the community.
So help us help each other! Maybe you film helpful content for the community! Or youāve stumbled upon an article that you think may be helpful? Whatever it is, share the knowledge.
Fill out our brand new ā”ļø Resources Hub Submission Form ā”ļø
āš¾ Newsletter guest features
We love hearing and sharing our communityās perspectives on topics. If you have experience, expertise or learning to share please fill out this short form and we'll be in touch. Our newsletter has a keen and growing readership.
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Building Confidence in your Tech Career
This month we have a guest feature from Kadir (Dadir) Islow, a DevOps Engineer based in Germany. He studied Computer Science/Ethical Hacking & Network Security in the UK.
Kadir shares the hurdles he faced navigating his career in tech, his experience working in different countries, and the impact a positive work environment can have on your growth.
After graduating and leaving education, I found I was struggling to land a job for 3 reasons:
Lack of experience
Lack of confidence due to lack of skills
Stuck in my comfort zone
It wasnāt until I moved to Germany, that I was finally able to gain experience in the field I studied. While I was being paid a decent amount of money, I ultimately knew that this was a temporary job. I chose to view it as an opportunity to gain experience in the industry. The company that I worked for was a fast-paced consulting company that developed web applications for large firms and football teams such as Bayer 04 Leverkusen or Hamburger SV.Ā It was a daunting experience for me, as this was my first role in the industry. I suffered from imposter syndrome as I would compare myself to my more experienced colleagues.Ā
What followed was a difficult eight months, and I eventually left the company for a new opportunity in Portugal. However, I did leave with a key takeaway from this experience: the importance of your work environment and company culture. At that early stage in my career, I found the fast-paced, client-facing consulting environment daunting and not conducive to my learning or development. I did not feel comfortable asking questions, which was a choice I now regret.Ā Ā
In Portugal, I was employed as an IT Support Analyst, which was the perfect stepping stone to get to where I wanted to be, which was a Cyber Security Expert. The country was beautiful, but the high cost of living didnāt make sense to me at all, however, I was lucky enough that the company I worked for paid my rent.Ā Ā
After 6 months in Portugal I was offered a SysAdmin/Network and Security Role in Germany which was the perfect next step in my career, it was a much-welcomed change in direction for my career, as things had seemed to be hopeless just under a year ago. I would eventually stay with this company for almost 4 years. The reason why I said this long was that they gave me plenty of freedom and time to learn all the tech stack I wanted to. The positive work environment and the companyās investment in my development was a welcome change to my first experience.Ā
After 4 years I felt the urge to challenge myself and try something new, and I kickstarted my journey as DevOps Engineer in January 2019. What I didnāt know was that DevOps dudes are actually highly skilled.Ā While I thought I had a decent knowledge of infrastructure, networking, a bit of bash and python, I felt like a complete beginner in my new surroundings.Ā
To remedy this, I set myself targets in areas I wanted to improve on and invest time outside of work in order to accomplish my targets. Working harder became something of an obsession to me - I had a clear picture in my mind and I was motivated by my colleagues' skills.
While I was still interested in Cyber Security, I began to really enjoy cloud topics. There are always new things to learn or things you can improve on. A career in DevOps Engineer/SRE is very versatile and I rarely find myself bored at work. There is a good mix of managing infrastructure, automation and developing stuff. However, the door is always open for Cyber Security, and in the future, I could see myself becoming a Cyber Security Expert.
To summarise, my career journey in tech has left me with these key takeaways:Ā
Get out of your comfort zone to reach your goal
Set your goals.
Donāt be afraid to take a step backwards to take two steps forward
You can find Kadir over on his LinkedIn
š„ Featured job opportunities
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š¤ Top finds
The DEFINITIVE way on how to LeetCode properly via Husein Sharif
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šŖ Mah-Mah
DHAR AANAD LAHAYNI DHAXAN KAAMA CESHO.
Somebody elseās clothes won't keep you warm.
Mahadsanid šš¾