DevOps Engineer Review

My role involves creating and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, containerisation and other DevOps practices. I primarily work with AWS and IBM cloud. Every morning I join a standup where I explain my tasks I have completed in the previous day, plans for the day and any blockers. I contribute to sprint review where I present what work I have done to relevant stakeholders.

There is a big push on learning within IBM. Joining IBM I had no prior DevOps knowledge, so IBM has helped me achieve confidence in popular DevOps tools such as terraform. During my time at IBM I have been encouraged and have gained certifications such as AWS cloud practitioner and Associate

I enjoy my program as each project has something different to offer. Every project is unique and offers different opportunities to use different skills I have picked up (possibly at university or through IBM training days). I enjoy being able to put these theoretical skills into practice in an environment where I have peers to help me.

The programme is very structured, I have a foundation manager, who attends meetings with my university to keep up to date on my progress. I can always approach my foundation manager for concerns about university/ my career and future goals as they aren't related to my project or my day to day tasks.

I receive a lot of support as I have many different peers that are always open to help out. For example I joined the mentor programme where I now have 2 mentors who i discuss with biweekly. This means I can ask them for advice which may not be applicable to my foundation manager.

My training provider does provide us with a lot of resources such as the library and helpful online sources. However during lectures, I often find the content difficult to follow, which makes it challenging to apply the information effectively. At times, the material feels very unclear sometimes leaving me to independently learn the lecture topics in my own time.

The content doesn't always mirror what happens in the workplace, however when it does it is very helpful to have the prior knowledge to make a good start on a task or project. For example particular modules such as networking and app development gave me good knowledge foundations to build from.

In IBM we do have many different communities (Sports, reading, womens communities) that are open to join. There are also plenty of opportunities for professional networking events. For example my team were nominated for an award outside of IBM, where we were able to attend and meet other peers in the DevOps space.

Yes

The community at IBM is lovely, with everyone very open to help out with whatever concerns or issues you are facing. There is also a very large early professional community, which is helpful to chat with people at a similar stage in their career to you, or are a couple of years senior so they can give advice.

IBM values your attitude to work and learning over your current technical knowledge, as long as you show a want to learn and improve, as an apprentice they build you up from foundational skills into more complex knowledge. Also even in a technical role you are always working with other collegues and presenting to stakeholders, so never underestimate the importance of soft skills.