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It's been a long time coming that I learn in public.

Today I am a DevOps engineer, teaching enterprise developers how to ship code to AWS with automation! It involves deploying and managing Kubernetes clusters and writing CI/CD components. But it also consists of writing technical documentation and tutorials to demysify the ever-growing landscape of DevOps technologies. When it comes to learning new tool quickly, nothing beats hands-on experience and simple but effective architecture diagrams. I tell my students all the time to maintain a growth mindset and to foster confidence in what they are doing through said hands-on experience.

Practicing what I preach, however, has been an ongoing struggle, particularly the fostering confidence aspect.

5 years ago, I quit my job teaching at the Academy of Art University's architecture model shop in Downtown San Francisco right before the world locked down due to COVID. I decided to go all in learning to program at Galvanize's Hack Reactor bootcamp.

I remember, upon graduating how excited and scared I was to enter the competitive job market. It was a relief to be nominated by my cohortmates to teach in the next cohort (the role was Software Engineering Immersive Resident). I stuck around for another three months teaching exactly what I had just learned and was introduced to some folks on the enterprise side of Galvanize. I found out they had openings for instructors. I went through several interviews, some behavioral and some technical, including a practice teach in front of a panel of instructors. I had never taught in a corporate environment before. Although I coded for the last 6 months, I had not seen production code yet. But, ultimately, I was extended an offer. I accepted it knowing it would be a challenge that would push me quite a bit.

I thought it incredibly odd that I was being hired to teach technologies I had only just learned. I was quite terrified. I was terrified of not knowing enough to be effective in my role. I was worried about not being able to answer my students' questions. Still, I did my research, practiced what I learned, and pushed through the fear. I was hired to teach things I had just learned because it seemed to others that I could find the right words to explain complex concepts. Whiteboarding helped to convey my thoughts and ideas.

There was no escaping the fact that I was a new developer teaching other seasoned experienced developers. I had to introduce myself to the class and explain my credentials, or lack thereof.

Imposter syndrome was deeply rooted in my psyche. Coupled with a horrible habit of perfectionism and rarely calling things finished, I had many excuses for never starting a blog. Even before learning code, while I taught in other domains like carpentry, model making, and 3D modeling/printing, I downplayed my perspective and experience in favor of focusing on what I did not know yet.

I thought that I needed to see production code before I could call myself a "real developer" or perhaps not a "junior developer".

My job was to rapidly upskill myself, learn new technologies, write about them, and produce projects that could be used to teach them, all in very short turnaround timelines. A year into the job I began receiving solo assignments. I was responsible for my own infrastructure, lesson material, projects, classroom management... the whole nine yards. The company's expectation was for me to lead developers at Fortune 50 companies to build and ship, all while managing the day-to-day operations of the teams.

The idea to start a blog has been on my mind ever since I graduated from Hack Reactor. I always came up with excuses to not start one. I was too busy, I had already written for work, I didn't know enough to be an authority on anything, and the list goes on. I was also afraid of putting my work out there for the world to see. I was afraid of being judged, and ignored. I thought that if I put my work out there and it was not air-tight, perfect, it would be a reflection of my worth as a developer.

While writing this, I wish I could go back and have a conversation with my past self. It seems so silly now to not have just shared my process years ago.

I'm at a point now where the evidence of my work has been piling up around me and my teammates and students are pointing out that I simply need to give myself more credit. Since I began developing and teaching, I have been fortunate to be exposed to many different developers working in telecom, finance, insurance, and the US military. For many of those classes, I maintained multiple AWS accounts and organizations, wrote and maintained Terraform modules, built and deployed Kubernetes clusters, and wrote CICD pipeline templates (now Components). What's more, I needed to craft coursework and projects that would be used to teach these technologies.

Due to the speed at which we went from course sales to delivery, I often did not have the time to second-guess myself. I needed to also onboard other instructors regularly. I pushed to main regularly and often times my work is in front of the eyes of my peers and users within hours of inception. It was nearly always received better than I expected. I think that anxiety pushed me to overprepare, something at the expense of my health. I've gotten better at finding a balance that suits me.

I've pushed off starting a blog for so long.

Along the way in these last 5 years, I also fell in love with the process but also the technologies. It seems now that even my hobbies are tech-related.

I'm starting a homelab and want to document my journey. What's more, I want to share my process, successes, and failures.