Junior DevOps Engineer Review

I've recently changed my role to being a Junior DevOps Engineer, where I have currently onboarded onto an internal training academy for this. At the moment, my day-to-day consists of mostly learning and attending virtual calls and webinars related to completing this academy and up-skill myself ready to then hopefully be assigned a new project to work on within the company.

Absolutely. At the moment, I am learning a ton of new skills related to my new role, which is a completely new change for me as I've changed over from initially being a Software Test Analyst. Although, even when I was working as a tester from the very start, I learnt a lot of new skills & came to grips with a load of different technologies, especially in relation to learning Java & specialising in test automation which I effectively learned as part of my working role. So yes, plenty to learn and take on board in order to develop yourself.

The workload has definitely become larger and alongside that there has also been a natural rise in the pressure and stress surrounding this, but I'm still grateful and welcome the challenges which I have to face on a regular basis. For myself, I can see the value and reward which I get from doing the work, even if I feel like I'm up against the wall with it sometimes, but I have people around me who support and look out for me in my role.

Overall, the structure of the "working" side of the programme/apprenticeship itself is fine, I see the value in it and enjoy the work which I do for the company. The "university" side of the apprenticeship however I think could use greater improvement, mostly in relation to having this interlinked with the company more for better communication and overall organisation of activities. Also, the aspect of 20% off-the-job training for completing the apprenticeship still seems to have little acknowledgement/concern from both the company & the university. There just seems to be a lack of proper structure, understanding and shared awareness from both parties in relation to supporting us (apprentices) with this & myself and others struggle to get a universal understanding of this and ultimately question the value in how it is currently being done.

My employer provides a lot of support for a variety of different things, there are different mechanisms in place for raising concerns. At a local level, within my team and business area/department, there is lots of support and I feel comfortable to reach out to anyone for this. As you start to stretch out from this area however, I feel like the support slowly dwindles a bit and loses its momentum in aiming to get a problem resolved.

The university provides a range of different support structures as well, although I think some of this needs to be communicated and pushed forward a bit more towards people in actually encouraging them, making them aware and getting them to utilise this support. For example, the learning development centre provide a variety of support and different resource themselves but then I've had little experience of my lecturers/modules actually promoting or pushing this forward to students to say "this is useful on the LDC" or "go here for further resources" etc...

I've learnt some really useful information to get we started off in certain topics and areas of study. I've gained a greater sense of awareness and understanding around the higher-level concepts which are important to consider for my role & career path going forward. I think the general concepts and information which we are taught is related to my role, but I do think some of the module contents could be updated/changed for more modern alternatives which are getting increasingly more popular and mainstream, for example I have learnt very little surrounding Cloud computing and infrastructures from the University which I'm interested to delve into more.

Yes, there are a variety of clubs, communities and groups which you can join and get involved with. In my personal experience, these have mostly been organised and held virtually over the last year or so but more of these are starting to do things in-person again and organising to have physical meet-ups.

Yes

Because overall, I have progressed massively in developing a great start to my career in learning new technologies and gaining skills which I never thought I would. I love working with the people and I've been able to make a variety of different connections with people during my time on the programme & within the company. The experience is challenging, but its a worthwhile one which you can clearly see the rewards and benefits from the work.

Be open and honest, don't be afraid to admit if you don't know something at first glance because at the end of the day, no ones an expert. As long as you develop an attitude to go away and put the effort into learning new things, then that's the main thing which will get you to the finish line. If you can demonstrate that behaviour and willingness to keep on developing yourself, then your all set😁