What it Takes to be a $300K Cloud Engineer?

30 second Cloud developer road map go so rabbit fire rabbit fire okay Linda wake up yeah wake up it's that tell me three things that you think are similar between Cloud developer and

software engineer having some of the scripting knowledge I think does does matter you do more scripting though the difference is the scale yes I actually went to school I was a philosophy major think professionally as well so I was a wedding singer for 10 years thing about

me is I work in the cloud and people always ask me what in the world in the cloud hi everybody welcome back to another video in today's video we have a special guest

Linda yay I'm so happy to be here I'm so happy to be here I come to I come to Seattle and I never miss it I I will I don't care if I'm here for 24 hours we see each other

yeah so Linda is literally here for like 48 hours and we were like we have to sit down and we have to uh do this video for all of you yeah I'm so excited yeah I'm so excited we found the right spot I

feel like it's a good spot right here it's a good spot there's like Seattle in the background like the rain and everything we got the Seattle FS yeah all right so Linda uh for those of

you who don't know actually why don't you do your intro yeah and like the point that I want to get to like she is a cloud developer and I really want to learn more how in the world did you get

here yeah so I am a cloud developer right now at aw W um and I had a journey that was very untraditional and I went through different roles and we'll talk about that a bit like software engineering to devops uh to now working

like more as a cloud developer Advocate too so um really went through different shifts in Tech and I feel like we're all upskilling also and adapting and probably there's some transferable skills also no matter what what you're

transitioning to within Tech to takeaway so yeah um yeah we're always learning together I learn a lot from sunnd we always and I learned lot from you I think we how long have we known each other on Instagram we met on Instagram

like 5 years ago I can't tell I can't tell but it seems like forever it seems like forever forever forever quality always love you how did you become a cloud developer like yeah how in the world like you didn't go to school for

it yeah and I think there is a challenge also with cloud like the concept of cloud many people think like oh to get into Cloud I have to study Cloud yeah but there's so many Cloud adjacent skills people do not realize like

programming depending on what you will do in Cloud there's other skills and you don't have to learn all of them but the path isn't always clear because there's programming Linux networking and all

those adjacent skills are things that maybe sometimes people start with before they get into cloud or maybe learn in a different order so I think that's one thing that I want to kind of mythbust because I think when people say cloud

there's this concept that people go straight into Cloud but then are missing those fundamental skills that they need to know so um my personal route was programming first because I was a software developer so I started out uh

doing JavaScript I was a front-end developer then went full stack then um actually wanted to I was coding I was building more data visualizations a lot of that um and with JavaScript um the

transition was actually interesting because with JavaScript you could use it for a lot of different Frameworks front end and OJs more API so then I got into apis and slowly back in but I think the thing for me was that I wanted to do

more architecture uh you know when you're when you're a software engineer you're working in the environment you're in and I think certain parts seemed like a mystery to me so out of curiosity I was kind of looking to where the all the other parts are going um and how is

everything just you know they don't get the credit so much but like how is any everything still functioning when you milons get well I'm saying the backend people okay the backend people I don't know why people I'm clearly I need

coffee the people p.m. we're good 6 p.m. which is

people p.m. we're good 6 p.m. which is

but in New York time it's late yeah it's later and I I have I have now a 8mon old a 7-month old my third kids I'm numbered got I'm not trying to give excuses here but I'm Sleepless no okay let let's

let's go back and let's recap so you didn't go to school to become a cloud developer yes you were a software engineer before yes I actually went to school I was a philosophy major okay so nothing to do with tech un traditional

route I actually thought I would go to law school and post College worked in TV and during the TV time I thought I would study for my lsats and ended up randomly

building a website for an anchor started dabbling with some code and I was like I want to learn more about it so I went to coding meetups and then realized I want to do this full-time so I quit my TV job

went to a coding boot camp flatter in school at the time this was 10 years ago and um and then made a shift into soft development and at that time front end and I started as a JavaScript

development at the time like I was doing more front end and which was very cool except at that time you had to support multiple browsers like Internet Explorer and I can't tell you how many times I

think I got I was very what did you do today I made this feature that it took me two days to build work on inter Explorer with 5 days of work you know like it was just one of those um it was

fun it was great it was a great learning experience but like for me like my first five years of my career was more like software development and then I went into more apis back end um and my next 5 years was more Cloud infrastructure

devops Sor that kind of stuff so I think I went to more the architecture infrastructure end and it was a natural Next Step I'll I'll talk more so that that's good because I was going to ask

you like would you ever go back to full step to I think there's so much that I still use within software development cuz I'm building a full-blown application I'm still doing some

software development except I think I in the past I wasn't able to do it A to Z in the way I can having the cloud skills as well because I'm able to make things

at skill and efficiently and like with devops I'm able to do cicd pipelines and I think like there's I I it's like the breath versus depth type thing where I say like you kind of need depth in

something and then you can have like some more breath and build it out right um although these days in 2024 with AI I I feel I feel like there's a lot there's so much changing with skill sets and

even how to use I think every everybody's up Skilling also in IML and I feel like that's what I'm doing right now too and suddenly I'm probably learning more about your Turf which is uh we in the data World which I didn't

know much about before so I feel like it's I don't know so crazy times no that's awesome thank you for sharing that so like as a cloud developer you work with AI which is

really cool yes Cloud Technologies yes and you merch the two and uh a lot of a lot big part of your role is also like creating content yes cuz I work as a

cloud developer Advocate yes tell tell us a little bit more about yeah so a cloud developer Advocate is an interesting role I like to compare it to a solution architect of it because it has very similar skill sets you're

you're kind of building but to teach and to guide it could be customers could you might be like finding solutions for customers in developer advocacy your customers the community at large and so sometimes you might be doing that through video and actually sometimes

you're sitting Within products before they're released and you're kind of also helping like pushing back and you're kind of being advocate for developer sounds bud I'm like actually the name actually matches um it used to be called

technical evangelist in the past oh I've seen those at Microsoft and they're still there they're still they're still called it used to be more speaking engagements and like closed rooms and I think over the years developer advocacy

now has changed to also be in this content creat yeah Technic here we are you know I used to think this this is something I had to like hide from doing work I was doing ation on the side now

it's like literally I got my job because of Tik Tok no seriously my job Tik Tok tell me more I think I think somebody saw me on Tik Tok from AWS and I always

wanted to work I was talking about you know you kind of had to put it out there that you that you want something and do the job before so I was always talking about AWS I was in AWS I was in the community I was involved in the community um I was in the Community

Builders program which is a program that you can join that um it's like you apply and it it's like you can be from 5 years experience less you know and if you are

passionate about sharing online doesn't need to be content it could be blogs it doesn't have to be video it could be blogs um you could it's something you could apply to and be a part of the community it's really helpful and so I felt like I was already ingrained in the

AWS Community yeah um and it kind of naturally kind worked out cuz I was also very visible on social media yeah um and I think you're really good at it too no I don't know what I'm doing she's awesome I don't know you seen her we

looking for short form it's interesting because developer advocacy is really like also taking down a lot more like short form content YouTube content of course and I think it's really scaling reach because we're all connecting on these platforms yeah I know that's crazy

real quickly like tell me three things that you think are similar between Cloud developer and software engineer yeah so I think uh having some of the scripting knowledge I think does does matter you do more scripting though in um the

fundamentals are the similar right you do the programming you have some of the fundamentals of like um uh the concept of modularity and like not one point of

failure all that the the difference is the scale so I guess like um when you're thinking about programming you're programming within your environment when you're thinking about Cloud you're

thinking how would it work multicloud skilled efficiently maybe hybrid Cloud so it's a different kind of like field of view um where where I think when I

was programming I was really focused on getting the features to work when I but when I was doing more cloud computing I'm dealing with how how much uh how

this architecture and the bigger picture will will work with on the topic of carving your career path if you're looking to start your career in Cloud then you should look into this AWS Cloud

practitioner career track on data Camp who is also sponsoring this portion of the video the career track not only prepares you for AWS Cloud practitioner

clf CO2 exam but also introduces you to the concepts and tools of cloud computing and teaches you essential AWS services including C2 for scalable

Computing S3 for skure storage and RDS for efficient data management these skills prepare you for cloud Technical and non-technical roles including sales

product management and marketing I have used data Camp personally to develop my skills in data science I really recommend them for their learning experience with data Camp you learn through short videos followed by

Hands-On exercises which really allow you to learn by doing it there are tons of interactive exercises and real life scenarios that prepare you for the real work I'm linking the AWS Cloud

practitioner career track in the description below and now let's go back to the video for those who have no idea what cloud is I hope everybody in the in like who has who's watching this know

what cloud is somebody who has no CL what cloud is like what is the simplest definition or analogy you can give yeah so I made a really quirky song about this okay actually you know what yeah a

lot of people don't know that Linda actually can sing and she can sing really really good you sing professionally as well so I was a wedding singer for 10 years and I guess that's why I like people okay like I I mean not that why I like people but I

always likeed people when I was coding that was my outlet right now you're my outlet okay so are you going to sing a s are we going to sing a song yeah like tell us like what cloud is well in a

song If you want to know what cloud is then that it was more rap I feel like for this one so it's not very vocal but it's it uh I would say like the quick

version um before we sing is um it's it's pretty much instead of you having right you you're starting a company now instead of of you starting a company right now and having a server here like

right here and physically maintaining it and physically securing it and having one point of failure you're practically renting it from companies there are big three big probably companies that do the

public cloud and it's Amazon Microsoft and Google and you're renting what you need you're paying only for what you need but of course on top of that you now have all these other services built

on top of um all the fact that your data is all there um and they are dealing with security you're not dealing with all they're dealing with you're dealing with certain parts of security but they're really taking care of a lot of

things that up would make it not possible for you sometimes to specialize in the business you want to specialize in so for example Netflix you know they use AWS and they maybe have like a chaos

engineering all these other things and um we could remember that um no I'm saying because I I know Google I was just like I don't

care um so pretty much a lot of people like saying it's it's like you're renting somebody else's computer instead of using your own computer of course it's more complicated than that um you are paying for what you use you could go

to a console you could just pick up the servers you could scale you could have them in different locations and so on top of that you have hundreds of services now on top of that so for example if company a company B and

Company C all need the same feature guess what if you were the your one company you would have to put so much money to do this econom is a scale it would it would cost you too much to actually build but when you're improving things for so many companies you're

getting more efficient service that are actually keeping up with the pace of innovation so you have a leg up so if you're not in the cloud there's also where like other companies have or advantage of having all this access to

services on top of where their data is so right so pretty much like every company you can name it small startup too big they're used to Clum like it's allow everywhere yeah and of course like

I think with AI you're going to see kind of a lot of um mix of things because there's going to be more realtime applications and realtime applications tend to have this like shared thing that some things are on edge and so I think

we're just going to see more cloud and more Edge yeah I'm going to time you okay 30 seconds okay and 30 seconds in 30 seconds you're going to share Cloud

developer road map okay so I'm timing you so let me start the timer 30 second Cloud developer road map go okay Cloud developer road map the first thing is you have to learn the fundamentals to know what you want to specialize in so where I would start for example let's

start with AWS we're going to start with the cloud practitioner certification the certification is not going to get you the job it's going to introduce you to fundamentals and help help you as a starting point from there I would click a cloud adjacent skill either Linux

programming or networking pick one of them and start learning that next I would start right away with Hands-On projects because I think that's really where you're going to actually learn you could use more searchs to give you a guide but I would say pick a project

that you could either help a nonprofit help something local maybe um open source contribute to open source I actually listed a few on my page also recently that could be resume building I think that's really what's going to be what you use in an interview from there

you might add many things to it from Cloud to software engineering and I think learning through needing to build something is the way if you want to add specific guides you could use a course there are courses um you could use you

could do like a certification like solution architecture to give you more fundamentals if you still aren't sure again there's no one way but that's what I would do um and I I would say like you will also find the answer by just

continuing to be curious so just keep being curious Bingo oh my gosh it was a minute but it's okay and I'm still 30 seconds 30 good job okay this is the best I can

that was going no I don't want to stop you we were like doing such an awesome job so so we're gonna have some fun we're going to do like some fastpaced rapid fire question I love rapid fire let's see how well like the mic the oh H

maybe I'll pin this yeah pin it so let's clip it back okay so rapid fire Rabbid fire okay Linda wake up yeah wake up it's sometimes

want do a jumping jack I'm like no not a good idea okay ready so it's going to be like fun we're going to have fun we're going to have fun we're we're going to try to have fun okay yeah so okay are

you ready yes born [Laughter] ready okay work from home or office work from home office sometimes it might team

is there makes sense yeah software engineer where says Cloud developer now Cloud developer but I have a soft spot for software engineering and

python versus JavaScript JavaScript although I'm now doing a lot more Python and actually I love it JavaScript is like my home oh okay which one if somebody wants to learn which one they

should learn python python okay V is code versus Sublime Sublime is by favorite yes code I'm sorry hands down of course okay dark versus light

mode dark dark the yeah my last favorite question I think we've talked about it briefly like AI yes what your biggest hack with working with AI that like

people who are watching they can also use so I think I think we each kind of find I think over time we're all going to build ourselves like this AI assistant thing and personalization I think we have to embrace

adaptation and I know this is said a lot but the job you have now I think it will it's not that the jobs will be replaced or some maybe will not that fast I think

most of them will be kind of um optimized I guess who not do certain tedious things and people who use AI will get the job over those who do not right um and I think learning how to use

the tool just like anything is just a quicker adaptation so for me I embrace using AI for many things so for example um when I'm using when I'm doing Bo boiler plate code when I'm like what is

boiler plate oh sorry when I'm using like like when I need to start from a starting point of building something okay there's a you know boiler plate is kind of like the template you would use so let's say if I'm doing infrastructures code or something like

that where giving myself instruction on architecture right so I could have like this simple one the template that I could start with that's like you know also there's a lot more um obviously

code helpers that are secure for private data of course that's totally different if you're doing it for work obviously don't just give your data to a public model um do it in a secure way but I

think learning how to use it both at work and personal I use it from everything with my kids storytelling to uh literally scripting videos of course to brain I think you use it a lot for

brainstorming um obviously there's a lot of hallucination sometimes you just you have to like always like check but I think it's a great starting point especially when you're stuck yeah um and I think one hack I love one of my

favorite prompts we ask over a hack is like especially when I'm doing content is like explain something to my friend over drinks like I I give it like what I want like a technical thing and I'm like hey can you help me like how would I

explain this to my friend over drinks why I like that is it's not elevator pitch that limits it to 30 seconds but it still has a casual tone and sometimes helping brainstorm sometimes it adds love that but it's one of my favorite it's one of my favorite um I'm going to

use it and then I always always always Pro tip always ask it like 10 times to go back and be like hey can you browse if if the model could browse and this is for Stuff obviously that's not um not

like that's public information not for things that are supposed to be private but for Content like most of the stuff I'm doing is not stuff that's like not allowed to be said so um I tell it to browse to see if there's like it like to

make sure it's very and give me links so I I like I almost like where where did you get it some perplexity perplexity I actually gives you links okay um but if it could browse verify sometimes it'll catch itself sometimes it'll hallucinate

so obviously always check but it does help and save a lot of time yeah it sure does thank you so much Linda this was so fun and I hope everybody who watched um

found it useful you can find Linda where uh Linda Viva on all social platforms it's l i n da vi v ah Instagram Tik Tok lingon I need to start doing YouTube I

do I put the shorts there but I got to do the wall let's get likes on this video and then we will conin to come to YouTube but um yeah and and feel feel free to reach out any questions and um I

also have a broadcast channel so that's sometimes helpful for people if they want to like if they really need to be motivated and cloud and yeah you can really push them yes yes I love it all right awesome thank you so much for

watching and I will see you in the next video have a good one bye why do some take jobs of multiple names coders programmers developers might seem all the same data analyst data scientists

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gotten more complex data analyst existed making data make sense but deeper dies were needed mils to predict future Trends enter data scientists exploring like the tech