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I'm a DevOp!

30 Jan 2023
💬 EN

Table of Contents

Big news: I’m leaving behind working with Salesforce and Oracle and becoming a DevOp! What should I read?

Role

It’s a really unique opportunity. As you can see from the complexity of examples on my blog, at the moment I’m no expert on CI/CD, microservices, service-oriented architectures, event-driven architectures, serverless architectures, security, identity, etc. Luckily, I don’t have to be one. There are already dozens of experts on staff, and my position will begin as a sort of “internal developer relations” role. I’ll learn from the experts, invent proof-of-concept demo projects, write tutorials, and spark excitement about spreading standards and best practices throughout the organization.

Books?

Despite the gentle onramp, I should probably learn some things. Here’s the list I’ve been recommended so far. Have any additions to it?

  1. The Staff Engineer’s Path
  2. Thanks For The Feedback
  3. Radical Candor
  4. Just Work
  5. Atomic Habits
  6. Making Work Visible
  7. Switch: how to change things when change is hard
  8. The First 90 Days: proven strategies for getting up to speed faster and smarter
  9. Who Moved My Cheese?
  10. Accelerate: the science behind DevOps : building and scaling high performing technology organizations
  11. Designing Data-Intensive Applications
  12. Phoenix Project / DevOps Handbook

Thanks

Special thanks to Matty Stratton, Samantha Grumdahl, and Matt Broberg, Minnebar, and Devops Minneapolis for personalized advice and context.

Thanks also to Syntax.fm, The Rabbit Hole and the Party Corgi Network for making me just enough of a web developer (with a side of devrel / community builder tips) to hang on for dear life as opportunities arose in my world of databases.

Most importantly, I owe my professional and a great deal of my personal life to my amazing colleagues. You all made me who I am, in the best ways. Behind every last one of my career successes is a weakness you gently shepherded me through growing into a strength. You’re my friends and more. If I wrote myself little “What would ___ do?” post-its about every role model among you, I could wallpaper my office. I could never thank you enough to let you know how much I see you and appreciate you and love you. I’ll do my best to pay it forward.

Equity and Inclusion

I am so glad that this opportunity flat-out posted the salary band.

It made negotiating so pleasant. I only bothered going through the process because I could see that they wouldn’t pay any less than $A, and that they wouldn’t pay any more than $B.

When it came time to bargain, they offered $A.500, and of course I asked for $B. Simple! No more agony guessing market rates! I just asked for $B. Done. I mean, I had to write great letter explaining why I was worth $B and all, but that’s the same skillset as writing a great cover letter explaining why I should get the job or answering interview questions explaining why I should get the job.

Worst they could do was hurt my feelings implying, “Actually, we like you, but we don’t like you $B much. You’re worth $A.675.”

But at least they couldn’t leave me wondering if anyone had pulled a fast one on me, or if any of my male colleagues had gotten a better deal.

I could see exactly what percent of the distance between $A & $B I’d been offered.

And if I could manage to get $B, heck, I’d even know no one else was paid more than me and that I was being paid fair compared to male colleagues.

I love it!

We really gotta do salary on every ad pronto.

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