Episode 37: Hiring in the Cloud “I assume CrowdStrike makes drones”

What’s hiring in the world of Cloud like? What are companies looking for in possible employees? What kind of career trajectory should applicants display?

Today, we’re talking to Don O’Neill, who has had an interesting career path and the archetype of who most companies want to hire. He’s been an independent contributor, platform leader, and Cloud consultant. Currently, Don is platform engineer manager at Articulate, an eLearning software solution for course authoring and eLearning development. He works with platform engineers to automate Blue Ocean pipelines with Docker, Terraform, and various Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies, such as Elastic Beanstalk.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Don reached out to his network to ask people that he had a professional relationship with about who was hiring and what challenges they faced
• Don’s “Therapy”: Go to meet-ups to talk about DevOps topics; serves as a “I’ve-got-to-get-my-hiney-out-of-the-house-and-get-some-social-time”
• Don’s journey from being a “wee lad in the industry” to a senior member/leader and giving back as a way to recognize those who helped him along the way
• Hiring Horror Stories: People going through borderline ridiculous levels of hiring games and terrible interview paradigms
• Companies sometimes look for something too specific - exact match instead of fuzzy match; they never have time to train, but time to look for a perfect unicorn
• Articulate’s Hiring Process: Day 1 - Slack interview; Day 2 - Technical pieces; and Day 3 - Pairing with others
• Articulate looks for people enthusiastic about technology, able to learn, and with emotional intelligence; company values independence, autonomy, and respect
• Companies that spend several hours to make a hiring decision tend to have less success with those they hire
• Cloud Certificates/Certifications: Can be valuable for applicants with no real-world experience; they don’t indicate how they’re going to work or learn
• Applicants need to demonstrate a base level of knowledge; if they don’t have a skill set, they should start a project to learn about something - learning is fun
• If you’re established in your career, reach out to someone just starting out to guide them
• If you’re starting out in your career, reach out to people to talk about the next steps to take in your career (contact Corey or Don)

Links:

• Don O’Neill on Twitter
• Articulate
• Hangops.slack.com
• CoffeeOps
• AWS
• Azure
• Docker
• Terraform
• Elastic Beanstalk
• Autoscan
• Marchex
• Apex Learning
• Dice
• Monster
• Indeed
• Switch App (Tinder for Jobs)
• Kubernetes
• Spotify in Stockholm
• CrowdStrike
• re:Invent
• AWS Summits
• Digital Ocean