Wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation…
For some background, I installed my first Linux server as a teenager around 2000-2001. I started working in ops around 2007, transitioned into SRE around 2011, have been working in that space ever since, and I’m now comfortably sitting in Sr SRE rolls.
For that entire time, I never did any formal training of any kind. I’m entirely self taught. Because of this more unconventional approach to this industry, I am positive that I have knowledge gaps. The thing is, I don’t really feel affected by those knowledge gaps very often. I think I have written code in at least a half dozen languages… I can pick a new language up pretty quickly too. What I’m writing isn’t generally very large projects but I’m not typically writing large projects at work… Since containers took over I feel like +90% is simple automation or glue code… I’ve never really had a problem I couldn’t solve in code though.
The situations where I feel these gaps the most is in the interview process. Algorithm design might be important for some people but I really don’t come across situations very often where I need to be concerned about perfect O(1) performance.
System design questions during interviews aren’t great either… “How would you make this system better?” I can explain some things but the closer I get to the front end, the weaker I get… I personally just have zero interest in front end development so I’ve never cared enough to learn it.
Lately I feel like I’ve missed out on working in more interesting roles entirely because of these types of interviews. Sometimes not even because of failing a challenge… Late last year I was interviewing with Etsy and the feedback I got was, “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone on the team said yes but there was another candidate that everyone said yes to as well. They just had a little more experience than you did in a few areas. We only budgeted for one new engineer though so we took the other guy.”
Maybe I don’t know what I don’t know though…
I guess I’m wondering what a solution for this might be? Part time comp sci degree? Bootcamp? Library card and some willpower?
So what skills are you trying to grind? The company I work for now had a very similar nonsense hiring process. I think they call it FAANG hiring for the top 5 nerd companies.
I studied my ass off to learn everything I never used in my new role—been here a year. I feel more qualified than a few of the senior developers I work with. I have a similar history as you. I started development around 2001. I went to college for Accounting and dropped out of that after 2 years.
Sometimes you have to play the game to win. Some services help you learn all that stuff to get hired. I’m not sure which to recommend because I didn’t use one.
Good luck!
Personally, I would say if you have experience in the field (sounds like you do), then the best you can do is keep trying and try to fill in the gaps where you know you’re lacking (and discovering what you lack though the interview process).
Ultimately, it seems tech is going through a bit of a slowdown in the hiring of new employees right now, so its not as easy right now than it was for the last few years. As such, competition is much higher than it was, and even if you’re a strong candidate, you will likely need to apply to a lot of roles to get where you want to go.
Just don’t give up. :)
If you’ve been working as a SRE since 2011, I’d say now is a good time to refresh your knowledge on Ops. A lot has changed since then in terms of best practices.
I would recommend reading the DevOps Handbook. The audiobook version is quite easy to digest. There are many case studies about DevOps transformations in this book as well, including Etsy’s—the development techniques they used are quite interesting.
DevOps has introduced a swath of methodologies for increasing the stability and maneuverability of large technology companies. Ignoring or remaining ignorant of these standards puts companies at a steep disadvantage. CI/CD and IaC techniques allow technology companies to develop stable code efficiently without accruing technical debt.
I’ve worked in places where these principles were not followed and had to take on somewhat of a SRE role myself because of how many failures we were having. DevOps practices would have saved us, had we only had the knowledge and foresight to use them throughout the organization. I highly recommend increasing your awareness of these standards, regardless of what direction you want to take with your career.
I’ve thought about this a lot as well. Really the hiring process is just so goofy and feels so negative. I try not to let being passed by get to me, and try to learn from it all. For example, my last technical interviewer really hammered away the sql questions. I did ok, but realized I really need to brush up on it. Maybe work on some practice projects involving it. Lastly, I’ve given up entirely on the big leagues (faang, etc). It just is what it is. Even some of the mid level tech companies may be out of reach for some time for me.
The don’t know what I don’t know feeling happens a lot. I’ve been trying to learn basic CS and dabble with C. It has helped a bit opening up my mind.
check out www.launchschool.com
excellent course to level up with
