Hey Reader,

I used to get imposter syndrome anytime I was asked a question at work someone expected me to know.

I felt like a fraud saying I'd get back to them, if I'm the lead or senior shouldn't I be the one with the answers?

Until a mentor pointed out how stupid that is and showed me the CNCF landscape.

Open https://landscape.cncf.io and look at the wall of logos. That's every project that is part of the CNCF landscape as of today.

My prior belief would mean I need to tell you how every single one of these projects works, plus tons of other information not accounted for in that picture, off the top of my head at any moment.

Of course that's stupid…

Yet most people trying to land their first DevOps role believe there is some level of knowledge that they're "ready" for their next role.

From my experience, none of it matters. A hiring team wants to see that you can learn those tools.

The way you prove that you can learn those things and succeed in a role is by demonstrating the fundamentals well.

If you're able to speak about a homelab you built with Terraform, Helm charts, and GitOps, the team will not care if you run Kubernetes on AWS, Azure, or some old laptop. They also won't care if you used GitLab instead of GitHub, or ArgoCD instead of Flux.

Every one of those tools is a different answer to the same problem.

ArgoCD and Flux both do GitOps. GitHub and GitLab both store code and run pipelines. AWS, Azure, and that old laptop all run Kubernetes.

If you understand why GitOps exists, switching from Flux to ArgoCD takes a weekend.

That's why the fundamentals matter so much more than the exact experience a job req asks for.

But here's the hard part.

Look at that CNCF picture again. When you're starting out, it's almost impossible to ignore.

So most people pick whatever tool is trending, take a course on it, and three months later they can click through that one tool but still can't explain what's happening underneath.

That's exactly why I built KubeCraft.

Mischa

P.S. The KubeCraft Winter Sprint starts Friday Nov 6. 60 days to lock in the fundamentals, build the homelab and ship the projects, so you're ready when the January hiring wave hits. 45 people are already in. Book a call here if you want to start with the group on Nov 6.