Episode 46 – Is DevOps a good career for me?

What about DevOps? When a listener asked Arsalan this question over email, he just had to create a podcast episode to answer that. And then another listener asked a question about her dilemma: remove a weak experience from her resume or show it and be ready for pointed questions during interviews. Listen to this episode to find out.
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: This episode of Mentoring Developers is dedicated to all the wonderful listeners, the community of listeners, as well as all of your struggles and triumphs. I really enjoy making these episodes. It’s a lot of fun talking to developers, mentors, and everyone associated with this industry.  We really are trying to make this industry a welcoming and easy place for you guys to get started in and thrive in. I think it’s better for everyone. It’s a win-win situation.
Arsalan: Some of you have emailed me at us@mentoringdevelopers.com. Some of you have joined my email list at mentoringdevelopers.com/list and have gone through The Five Steps to Success email course. I think I’ll be sharing a lot of good tips and tricks in future emails that I’ll be sending out. So, go ahead and join it if you’re interested in expanding your career and being successful. It’s what we all want and together, I think we can make it happen. We just need to have empathy and this is a point I like to emphasize in all of my episodes.
Arsalan: I’m super excited that I have all these intelligent listeners who are thoughtful and send me all these wonderful emails. I thought I would just read a couple and we could go over some of the issues that they bring up and find solutions and answer questions live on this show. Hopefully, it will benefit a lot of people. Thank you again for sending me those emails and keep sending them here. We’ll try to address them as best as we can and as fast as we can.
Arsalan: So, I will read these emails out, but I won’t share the last names or any other personally identifiable information. I’ll just share the first name to respect your privacy. Know that if you send me your emails, they will not be shared with anyone else, but if they have useful content of questions that other people can benefit from, I think it behooves me to share it with people.  But, I do still want to respect your privacy.
Arsalan: Here is the first email. It was sent by “Zack.”  Zack says “Hi, Arsalan. I’m loving your podcast and I’ve signed up for emails. I love those too. I had a couple of suggestions for the podcast. I listened to the manual tester episode and I’d be interested in hearing more from testers, specifically those fluent in and using automation often. Even more, than that, I’ve been seeing more jobs for something called “DevOps,” which could make for an interesting episode. It seems like that’s a hybrid career where someone develops a bit, but is more responsible for making the company’s infrastructure work to deliver solutions for the company’s products.
Arsalan: After that Zack talks about a friend of his who is in the military along with him. Zack is also in the military, and he thinks that it would be good for me to interview him. For privacy concerns and reasons I’m not going to share the name right here, but I appreciate how he thought of his friend and he thought of how he could benefit and we could benefit by having him on the show. I really appreciate it. If you’re listening to this episode right now, and you want to recommend somebody who would be a good guest for this show, please do that. I really appreciate it.
Arsalan: So, Zack’s in the military with his friend and they’re looking to start a career after they get out of the military. I can imagine how hard it would be for somebody in their position because they have a very serious job. When they get out, they need to restart their life and restart their career.
Arsalan: Computer science and software developm...

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