Nice work on completing all these, very impressive. For becoming self-employed, you potentially can go down two routes which both will require you to setup a company with Companies House
1. Become a Software developer contractor focused on DevOps or General Software development(DevOps is really hot at the moment and with your skills, you should easily get into a role. Possibly can get a certification such as the AWS DevOps associate)
2. Setup a Software company and find clients yourself and develop bespoke software for their needs -. Alternatively, you can find a need and develop/ host one of your cool software as a service.
All the best and let me know if you need further information. All the best.
1. Become a Software developer contractor focused on DevOps or General Software development(DevOps is really hot at the moment and with your skills, you should easily get into a role. Possibly can get a certification such as the AWS DevOps associate)
2. Setup a Software company and find clients yourself and develop bespoke software for their needs -. Alternatively, you can find a need and develop/ host one of your cool software as a service.
All the best and let me know if you need further information. All the best.
Original post by Aqua boy
I have built command line games in Java, microservices, android apps such as a 2d game, dating app, school management app, emoji app, taxi app and more all on a self taught basis.
I've also built a game in c# in unity.
I can do JavaScript well too.
There's more to languages that is databases, git, web technologies, testing, oop etc.
I know software development practices.
When and how can I be a self employed software developer?
I've also built a game in c# in unity.
I can do JavaScript well too.
There's more to languages that is databases, git, web technologies, testing, oop etc.
I know software development practices.
When and how can I be a self employed software developer?
sh*t man i thought i was the only one who realised devops jobs are minted rn..
fr, is it possible for me to get one of those straight after graduating out of uni if i do some work alongside my degree? if so, how should i go about that?
fr, is it possible for me to get one of those straight after graduating out of uni if i do some work alongside my degree? if so, how should i go about that?
Absolutely... supply and demand driving the rates. Certainly an opportunity to take advantage now before the season passes.
You should be able to, but better to get a DevOps certification on AWS or Azure. To really stand out, you can also go for https://www.cncf.io/certification/cka/ certification. All the best.
Original post by identitymatrix
sh*t man i thought i was the only one who realised devops jobs are minted rn..
fr, is it possible for me to get one of those straight after graduating out of uni if i do some work alongside my degree? if so, how should i go about that?
fr, is it possible for me to get one of those straight after graduating out of uni if i do some work alongside my degree? if so, how should i go about that?
But that costs money 
Original post by careersupport
You should be able to, but better to get a DevOps certification on AWS or Azure. To really stand out, you can also go for https://www.cncf.io/certification/cka/ certification. All the best.
Original post by identitymatrix
But that costs money
The skills you learn are going to be the most important thing really. Employers won't expect many graduates to have that certification unless they happened to go to a university which is partnered with Microsoft or Amazon.
There's a lot of free training you can get online, and maybe if you start learning now, you could build it into your final year project (that project is a great opportunity to start building up the skills for when you're out looking for work). For example, you could look at setting up a full CI/CD pipeline for your project to get it to trigger builds from GitHub, deploy into containers, run automated tests, split into different environments for development, testing and production. (using a free cloud account).
You could also use that as an opportunity to look at how to make sure everything is all properly secured, with appropriate users/permissions set up, and get to experiment with different cloud architectures that might be useful for whatever system you decide to build for the Final year project. (such as using "lambdas" for some of the back-end logic, hooking into a cloud database, communicating via cloud messaging, controlling access to your project with a cloud identity service)
A lot of DevOps tasks in the cloud are focused around automation and using configuration files to describe how the environments are set up (There's a tool called Terraform which is popular, although both Amazon and Microsoft have their own tools for this too). The configuration files can be used to automatically set up your cloud services (This is a good thing to learn since doing things in the cloud can involve spending a lot of time clicking through UIs to do a lot of boring error-prone stuff by-hand so most employers want it automated to save all that time and overhead that they'd otherwise be doing every time something changes)
Have a look at Microsoft's training for Azure; they have lot of free material for learning how to use their platform. Azure is pretty close to AWS in terms of job prospects so it's a good one to learn (better documentation and support than AWS as well really), and many of the concepts aren't too different to AWS anyway: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/azure/
Other things which are really useful and important to learn include Linux, Docker and GitHub. Again, these could all be something to explore for the final year project, and there's tonnes of free material online for them:
https://training.linuxfoundation.org/resources/?_sft_content_type=free-course
https://www.docker.com/get-started
https://lab.github.com/
(On Linux -- maybe give Ubuntu a try? That's a fairly beginner-friendly distribution. You can even run it in the Windows 10 Linux Subsystem nowadays)
(edited 4 years ago)
Hi @identitymatrix
I'm a DevOps Contractor
DevOps roles are a hybrid role, and do require a wide range of hands of experience, not just a few online certifications. I'd be amazed if someone hired based on that alone (Anyone can pick up an AWS DevOps certification, and there's a ton of guides online that will walk you through it without having any actual experience, they mostly just test you for being able to use AWS products rather than actual DevOps skills).
You need an understanding of the full software lifecycle, from software (great if you started of as a developer), to infrastructure. For me when hiring DevOps Engineers, I tend to look for people who started as a software developer, and moved into or had exposure to systems administration, and someone who is multifaceted, as there's alot of elements to learn, you'll be writing code for automation/monitoring, building infrastructure (either cloud of physical), will be working on network (again, either physical of SDN), build and test processes, and performance/load tuning and maintaining services that power applications.
DevOps positions tend to be those who have been in the industry for a number of years and built up that variety of knowledge. There are the odd occasion where someone might hire a junior DevOps to learn on the job, but it's not often I've seen those pop up.
So really, start as either a software developer, or sysadmin, train/learn, and progress into a DevOps role.
Hope that helps, happy to answer any questions
I'm a DevOps Contractor
DevOps roles are a hybrid role, and do require a wide range of hands of experience, not just a few online certifications. I'd be amazed if someone hired based on that alone (Anyone can pick up an AWS DevOps certification, and there's a ton of guides online that will walk you through it without having any actual experience, they mostly just test you for being able to use AWS products rather than actual DevOps skills).
You need an understanding of the full software lifecycle, from software (great if you started of as a developer), to infrastructure. For me when hiring DevOps Engineers, I tend to look for people who started as a software developer, and moved into or had exposure to systems administration, and someone who is multifaceted, as there's alot of elements to learn, you'll be writing code for automation/monitoring, building infrastructure (either cloud of physical), will be working on network (again, either physical of SDN), build and test processes, and performance/load tuning and maintaining services that power applications.
DevOps positions tend to be those who have been in the industry for a number of years and built up that variety of knowledge. There are the odd occasion where someone might hire a junior DevOps to learn on the job, but it's not often I've seen those pop up.
So really, start as either a software developer, or sysadmin, train/learn, and progress into a DevOps role.
Hope that helps, happy to answer any questions
(edited 4 years ago)
Yeh, pretty much the same roles, although depends who it is you're working for. SRE roles tend to have more towards app performance, where as DevOps roles don't.
DevOps is actually a set of practices, so it's more of a way of working than a role specifically. So DevOps engineers are usually individuals who follow those practices.
How long is a piece of string? It can vary massively, experience, location etc all play a part in salary. eg. a contractor in London who specialises in a specific technology would be earning significantly more than someone outside of London with only experience in AWS products.
Contract types also play a part, if you're on short term contracts, you could have a month or two in between contracts, over someone on a 12 month contract. Breaks result in lower annual turnover of course.
That's correct, it's typical for a DevOps engineer to not have much to do with the product itself day to day, they'll be focused on the tooling and services around the product that supports it, such as infrastructure, monitoring, CI/CD tooling, etc. Some roles will be more hybrid, so you might be more hands on with the product, but it's usually more from a performance/reliability aspect.
DevOps is actually a set of practices, so it's more of a way of working than a role specifically. So DevOps engineers are usually individuals who follow those practices.
How much do most DevOps contractor make per year?
How long is a piece of string? It can vary massively, experience, location etc all play a part in salary. eg. a contractor in London who specialises in a specific technology would be earning significantly more than someone outside of London with only experience in AWS products.
Contract types also play a part, if you're on short term contracts, you could have a month or two in between contracts, over someone on a 12 month contract. Breaks result in lower annual turnover of course.
How is DevOps different to a standard software engineering role? is it more focused on infrastructure rather than product?
That's correct, it's typical for a DevOps engineer to not have much to do with the product itself day to day, they'll be focused on the tooling and services around the product that supports it, such as infrastructure, monitoring, CI/CD tooling, etc. Some roles will be more hybrid, so you might be more hands on with the product, but it's usually more from a performance/reliability aspect.
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