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Exploring the Intersection of Cloud, DevOps, and AI in Modern Tech Careers
Cables2Clouds
Navigating the Cloud: A Developer Advocate's Journey
This chapter explores the speaker's experience in the tech industry, specifically in cloud technology and software engineering. It highlights the challenges of being a developer advocate, the limitations of traditional education in tech, and a comparison of cloud platforms, with a focus on Google Cloud's user-friendly networking approach.
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Speaker 1
And then it varies widely. Again, we've got Cisco Live coming up in February, which seems like it's really far away, but it's really not. So usually spend a good chunk of my day trying to ignore everyone after that. And, you know, become an expert at whatever it is I'm talking about, because that is a big misconception is that we're just complete experts at everything we talk about. We're like everyone else in tech. We have to learn and then we teach. And then the afternoon, I like leaving an ample amount of time for shit catching on fire. So honestly, my app is pretty
Speaker 3
flexible. As it does.
Speaker 2
As you do. Okay. No, that's great. It's funny because I have many developer advocate friends, and it's pretty simple across all of the different silos of developer advocacy. That's the main goal, if you will. Very
Speaker 1
different philosophies around it, for sure. It's just very different from company to company, org to org. And Cisco in particular, it's a little more challenging because we're not a traditional developer program. That's
Speaker 2
true. We're talking about DevNet, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a very good point, actually. Most of the developer advocate types are with a developer-focused company, like one of the CSPs, for example, it's a lot of the DAs I know, or with like, you know, like HashiCorp or just one of those developer-focused type of organizations. Okay. So, all right. So let's, how did you get started with the cloud stuff? I mean, obviously you probably didn't, like Like all of us, you didn't start with cloud. So how did you get started into the cloud from where you were?
Speaker 1
Right, right. So this is one of the things that I thought could be insightful or interesting, or maybe it's just going to validate what you guys already know about how developers approach the cloud. So I was working a lot of different gigs after my undergraduate degree. I was most recently, before being in tech, working at Star all and managed to get back into a master's program of software engineering. So granted, I was looking to have a challenging and rewarding career. And my dad was a software engineer. And for some reason, there was some sort of disconnect where I never learned what he did or why. I just knew he liked his job. And I'm like, what the hell? I know I'm smart enough, probably. And so I went into this software engineering master's degree at East Carolina. And I would say that even though I had a lot of catching up to do, my experience when it comes to the cloud was probably pretty typical with every developer's learning experience, especially if they're going the academic route. And that is that, you know, development, we're very much focused in the IDE or in the developer environment where it's just you learn to master a language and you don't really give a, I don't know, should I be cussing less? No, that's fine. You're good. You're good.
Speaker 2
This is that kind of
Speaker 1
give a fuck about anything else, right? You know, so I think that it's a lot more naive and siloed than coming from an IT network engineering background where you kind of have a general well-rounded sense of how technology works and how things communicate in the real world. you know, you're just sitting there in university, you know, learning variables and methods and whatever other programming concepts and being happy that you are printing a little line statement to the console. Eventually you get more advanced, right? Depending on your interest, mobile app development, game development, whatever. But what's not taught in university is really anything beyond just building the code. The
Speaker 2
language itself. Yeah. So
Speaker 1
in terms of how are real world apps deployed? Where are they deployed? What do you have to consider when deploying them? Everything, I mean, I talk about this a lot with DevNet too, but everything from code security to how you document, how you work with other people, not just on your homework. It's a pretty big problem in my opinion. And it really, I was, I guess, a little bit lucky because in university, I ended up taking a Google Cloud Platform course. And it was because they had some kind of student program that they had partnered with ECU and they were giving, you know, a certain number of free credits. A professor that I absolutely adored had been, I think he applied for this program and was chosen and they gave him some, you know, PowerPoints and materials and he did a great job with the course. Um, but so I'm lucky in the sense that I was at least exposed to it before, you know, the real world hit me in the face. But, um, you know, this, this program, it essentially just kind of throws you into a series of labs and the labs are hands-on, they're well done. They're meant to get you familiar with different GCP services and using the CLI and all that. But again, as a developer, you just have no idea, like, why am I learning this? Why do, like, why am I, there's a huge disconnect, right? You don't have any understanding of networking or how applications run. So, you know, I took that course and it, it was exposure, but nothing really stuck. Um, what's interesting is that, um, my experience and stop me whenever you want my experience, both as a student and later on in startup world was all with Google cloud platform because they really push heavy on those, you know empowering you to use the platform, free credits, all that. But afterwards, I've never touched GCP. It seems to be they're really trying to claim the market there on the little guys and girls. Well,
Speaker 3
we've been talking about it on this pod for a while. It seems like GCP is, or as we should say, Google Cloud. Google Cloud, yes. It's not GCP anymore, but Google Cloud. It feels like they win the developer battle almost every time. They are very attractive to developers day in, day out. Do you have a take on why that is? Is there something in that realm that was more friendly to you that was inviting? I mean, obviously there's credits and there's incentives to use the platform so that it's cost effective but like the platform itself, what's, what's, what sets it apart in your mind? It's
Speaker 1
honestly, it's interesting to hear you say that because I, okay. So I think it's easier to use, I think it's easier to use an AWS. I don't think there's anything particularly special about how Google cloud is set up. I just think there's less services to choose from and it's not as confusing as AWS. Interesting, okay. And in the developer world too, I don't know, maybe this is the same for network engineering, but there's basically Microsoft shops and non-Microsoft shops. Oh
Speaker 3
yeah, right, sure. So
Speaker 1
if you're a Microsoft shop, you're using Azure no matter what. And if you're not, and again, and you've never been exposed to a cloud platform, you're probably like, oh, AWS is complicated. You know, jump over to Google.
Speaker 2
Yeah. What's interesting is something we observed, and I still think it's true, is that I feel like Google Cloud's networking was built with developers in mind. Like the way they do their networking was built like, you don't have to care about it. We'll just kind of do it all for you. Like built towards developers that won't know or care how the network works. We'll just kind of figure it out for you, which confuses a lot of us network people because it doesn't work like you would expect networking to work.
Speaker 1
Well, and I think it's part of that disconnect to the farther we abstract what's happening in our cloud services versus what's actually happening in the data center. You know what I mean? As a developer, okay, that's great that you're catering to us and giving us these babyfied developer-centric cloud services. But again, I don't know. it's kind of the same as when like network engineers, like I work with them, enabling them on the code side. And, you know, they want to take shortcuts or just use low code, no code or whatever. It's like, I know this was built for people who don't want to learn and it's easier, but it's not really great.
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