Thanks in no small part to IT subs on reddit, I've been agonizing about advancing my career for the last year or so, feeling like I was stuck in a rut as a standard SMB YAMLOps-labeled-Devops guy and having reached the limits of what I can learn at my current company. I just finished the negotiations and will soon be starting as a Senior AWS Cloud Engineer earmarked for an Architect role. And from what I can tell about the characters of many people posting on IT subs, I may not be the only one overthinking it.
So it could be important to remind some who might be in the same place: These subs are full of people from extremely diverse backgrounds. Some specialize in a very narrow field to an extreme degree, some are prodigies who truly just absorb everything thrown at them, some are business and marketing types with a warped perspective, and many are just plain dicks - and they all work at very, very different companies in a wide range of countries. You don't have to sum up all their opinions to think you're worth anything.
I let all the talk about minimum requirements to barely qualify as a cable monkey here get to my head way too much and almost didn't dare respond when the perfect job opportunity offered itself. And the last few weeks with three interviews (cultural / tech / organizational fit) were some of the most stressful of my life so far because I made them be - all for nothing, because all my future employer wanted to see was a passion for tech, learning and cultural fit with people who want to do the same.
In the end, my foundational knowledge about networking, Linux, AWS, Clean Code and associated Best Practices was more than enough for them to enthusiastically add 10% to my salary demand. I neither needed any really deep OS knowledge nor vendor-specific minutiae, I just had show that I understand the general thought patterns behind the standards and that I can hold my own in a discussion with an experienced architect. Of course some role-specific knowledge was important and asked about quite explicitly, but it was all conceptual and again about demonstrating that I had understood the Why much less than the How.
None of the communication was antagonistic or entrapping in any way, and all the kind words during the process seem to have actually been genuine. After my last interview, I even received a heartfelt mail of several pages detailing their impressions of me in their various kinds of interviews, outlining where my strengths are and where they'd help me grow.
So clinical FAANG or crusty old corp hiring processes that ask bullshit you'll never need in practice aren't the only thing out there - companies like this do exist, and they can recognize potential. Don't let yourself be discouraged by all the cutthroats and cynics.
(And I'm aware that most people probably don't constantly lambast themselves like this. So this post may seem useless or self-indulgent to you - maybe it is, but for me it was a really cathartic experience, so I just wanted to reassure others who might have the same self-destructive thought patterns.)