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    1. Topics
    2. RamblingBiped
    3. Posts
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    • Following 34
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    Posts made by RamblingBiped

    • RE: Salary, Responsibilities, or Title?

      @IRJ It mattered in my most recent offer because I'm relocating from the Bay Area to the Midwest. I offered my salary up in the conversation because it was useful when discussing total compensation as it relates to what I'm currently making, and where I want to be with the position I was interviewing for. The cost of living in the area of the Midwest I'm moving to is drastically different than most larger Metropolitan areas, let alone the Bay Area / Silicon Valley. I think it helped them put together an acceptable offer quicker than if I had not volunteered the information.

      I do agree with you though, your current salary shouldn't be a point of discussion or contention. If a recruiter or hiring manager were to make it a point to probe me on the topic it would be an immediate red flag.

      posted in IT Careers
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Salary, Responsibilities, or Title?

      For me, when I'm looking for a new role I tend to gravitate toward the type and quality of work and the quality of the company. Salary has been an important secondary concern in my last few positions, though I've been lucky enough that I haven't needed to worry much about that much due to demand for Cloud Architects and Engineers, and my flexibility as it relates to relocation. And most of the roles I have taken in the last five years have been somewhat innovative due to the nature of the work and the technologies being used (cloud-native services, serverless event-driven architectures, ML, etc...).

      I haven't really cared about my title for quite some time now. I've had one role where my title changed seven times in less than 2 years. In the last five years alone I've been an Operations Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Cloud Engineer, and Cloud Architect. Across all of those titles, I've done the same type of work with varying degrees of seniority, responsibilities, and focus.

      When it comes to disclosing previous salaries I've been pretty open when I am actively pursuing opportunities. I'm not going to devote hours of conversation and meetings with an organization just to find out the pay and benefits are not where they need to be. That's disrespectful of their time, and a waste of mine. I'll usually discuss that within the first couple of meetings with a recruiter or HR representative, and if appropriate I disclose it without prompting. I've not had a circumstance where it has had a negative result, and in the most recent offer I accepted (last week) I think it helped. In the right situation, I think it is an easy and low-risk means of establishing an open dialogue of trust. Now if a recruiter is contacting me about a role out of the blue, I rarely give out my current salary or even an indication of it until I've had time to research the opportunity. And I can't recollect having anyone outright ask me for my current salary.

      posted in IT Careers
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Favorite (preferably free) terminal.

      @scottalanmiller Yep, I just wanted to share the configuration I use as my daily driver because it makes working in the terminal that much more efficient. The OP mentioned wanting something that was a bit slicker and more powerful, and I think in addition to your choice of terminal, your choice of shell and other tools contributes to having a better experience. I prefer FISH for my shell, and tmux is my terminal multiplexor of choice. ZSH is another great alternative shell as well.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @Obsolesce

      The idea of managing that many "Snowflakes" inspires both rage and uncontrollable anxiety.

      I'll take 10,000 cattle any day.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Favorite (preferably free) terminal.

      I primarily work from a MacBook Pro and use a combination of the following:

      • iterm2
      • tmux
      • FISH shell

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @IRJ All that said, I hate touching/managing servers.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @IRJ Absolutely. I mean, blending the skillsets is hard approaching the role from either perspective, but understanding how software runs on infrastructure is super important; especially as more and more automation and code replaces the traditional admin duties going forward.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @IRJ I'm just saying don't sell yourselves short. A lot of "DevOps" engineers that consider themselves as having only an Infrastructure skillset are practiced Software Engineers. Its something that almost happens organically as a result of being put into the role.

      posted in IT Discussion
      R
      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @IRJ The newest approach that AWS is starting to push is a declaritive language that generates CloudFormation from code.

      The Cloud Development Kit (CDK)

      It is conceptually similar to stacker, but a bit more complex. It can reduce template size by up to 70%, and allows you to do conditional provisioning of resources without the added complexity of nested conditions and inflated parameter hell.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      And developing a Custom Resource for Cloudformation usually involves Software Engineering, as it is either backed by a Lambda function, Application, or considerably complex architectures triggered via SNS.

      posted in IT Discussion
      R
      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      And yes, CloudFormation is IAC via JSON or YAML templates. It does have more dynamic aspects that allow you to code logic into the provisioning of resources though.

      (Intrinsic Functions, Mappings, Conditions, Imports/Exports)

      posted in IT Discussion
      R
      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @Obsolesce

      One of the most recent examples was a python-based serverless application composed of multiple lambdas that interfaced with AWS Organizations to provide automation around creating, configuring, and deploying AWS accounts and automated governance. It is exposed to end users through a self-service portal as a Service Catalog Product.

      All written in python, deployed and managed via SAM templates, and maintained via a CI/CD pipeline.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @IRJ

      So using python to architect and write a serverless application doesn't count as software engineering? Developing, testing, and deploying custom resources for CloudFormation doesn't count as Software Engineering?

      ^That work literally follows the same steps and workflow as developing a microservice.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      I would suspect you're writing software @Obsolesce . I am constantly engineering automation and tooling for facilitating the build, test, deployment, and reliabilty of software. Whether that is writing a Lambda, creating a Step Function State Machine, or rearchitecting an existing workload for the Cloud.

      It's all code, and it is all stored in a source repository, and developed using the same principles and engineering practice that would go into developing any other application/piece of software.

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      @Obsolesce If you're doing DevOps and you're not engineering software, aren't you just doing Ops then?

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      Also, a modern "DevOps" Engineer is more of a Software Engineer role than a cross between SysAdmin and Systems Engineer.

      posted in IT Discussion
      R
      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Looking For Alternate IT roles

      DevOps is a culture, not really a role. If you're in a DevOps environment and you're sporting the DevOps Engineer title you're more than likely wearing a lot of hats and interfacing with multiple product teams.

      DevOps Engineer
      Site Reliability Engineer
      Cloud Engineer
      System Engineer

      A lot of the above titles have a lot of similar duties.

      If you are looking at moving into a more modern role working for a shop that has a DevOps culture I'd focus on the following:

      • Cloud Native solutions for AWS / Azure / GCP
      • Linux (RHCE curriculum)
      • Containerization (12 factor, Docker, K8s, maybe ECS if you're doing a lot of work with AWS )
      • Understand the difference between containerization and serverless, what tools/platforms are associated with each.
      • Site Reliability Engineering
      • Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform)
      • Configuration Management Systems (Ansible, Chef, maybe Puppet) -- A lot of my more recent work has been gravitating away from configuration management, but I would still recommend understanding the basics of each and how they are used.
      • Understand Microservices
      • Learn Python
      • SDLC, Software Testing, and CI/CD tools
      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Check battery status in Linux

      I recommend this: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-battery

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Client Wants To Transition From Windows To Linux

      MS Office = VIM
      Desktop email = mutt
      Notepad = VIM
      Softphone = Slack
      Notepad++ = VIM
      MS Publisher = VIM (or LibreOffice if your employees are all underachievers)
      ScreenCapture = Stop using GUIs
      Visio = LucidChart
      OneNote = VIM (or Evernote for the underachievers)

      posted in IT Discussion
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      RamblingBiped
    • RE: Seeking how to improve

      Before you take on any new work I would recommend reading "Time Management for System Administrators" by Tom Limoncelli.

      https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376236.Time_Management_for_System_Administrators

      Put into practice the principles discussed in the book and start organizing your time.

      A favorite quote of mine as of late is: "How you do anything is how you do everything". Don't take on a project or task if you can not afford to give it the time, attention, and resources that it deserves. Failing is okay, but setting yourself up for failure is a waste of time and potential. Always keep a focus on attention to detail and maximize your time and efforts.

      posted in IT Discussion
      R
      RamblingBiped
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