Online courses are a good starting point but don’t guarantee job readiness.
Learning React can be more challenging than expected, requiring in-depth understanding.
Personal projects are crucial for practical application and skill development.
Continuous learning is essential to stay relevant in the tech industry.
The tech job market demands more than just basic skills.
Practical application of skills can lead to unexpected learning opportunities.
Overcoming challenges and maintaining motivation is key to success.
Image generated with AI. Only if even every long road looked like this.
Navigating the Tech Learning Curve: My Journey with Online Courses and Personal Projects
In the ever-evolving world of technology, the promise of online courses often seems like a golden ticket to a job-ready skill set. However, my experience has shown that the reality of the job market can be quite different.
I’ve taken numerous online courses, each one claiming to prepare me for the workforce. I’ve learned the basics of web development frameworks like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Recently, I decided to dive into React, a popular JavaScript library. While many say it’s simple once you get the hang of it, I’ve found it to be more challenging than expected. Unlike the ease of coding away on CodePen, React requires a lot more preparation and understanding.
Image generated with AI. Yes, you’re seeing that right. My guy, has three arms. Just don’t ask.
To keep my skills sharp, I work on personal projects. These projects may not be on par with those from big tech companies, but they keep me engaged and learning. Working alone, I’ve set specific hours to avoid burnout and maintain my passion for coding.
Starting anything new is always the hardest part. I’m comfortable with making mistakes, but constant setbacks can be disheartening. One of the biggest challenges is the need for continuous learning. Just when I feel I’ve mastered one concept, I discover there’s something new I need to learn.
My goal was to transition into a computer-based job after years of physical labor. The allure of IT jobs on social media made it seem like a quick path to success. However, I’ve learned that the job market demands a lot more than just basic skills.
Image generated with AI. Not me clearly, but my guy looks like he’s enjoying the countryside.
Reflecting on the applications I’ve created keeps me motivated. I design apps to simplify tasks, often driven by my own laziness. For instance, I was never good at math, so I created applications to handle calculations for me. This process has inadvertently improved my math skills, as I’ve had to delve into calculus and algebra to ensure my applications work correctly.
One of my projects involved creating an application for calculating money. In programming, we deal with decimals or “floats.” My app initially displayed more than two decimal places, which isn’t practical for users. To fix this, I had to learn more about handling numbers in programming, which led me to explore calculus and algebra.
In conclusion, the journey of learning technology is filled with challenges and continuous learning. While online courses provide a foundation, real-world applications and personal projects are where true learning happens. Despite the hurdles, the satisfaction of creating something functional and improving my skills keeps me going.
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AWS…I could’ve cut cost going with Google cloud. Multi-cloud nonsense. Photo by Nicola Barts, please support by following @pexel.com
Here’s a situation, you are working on your small business and you’re thinking about growing your enterprise so you can further scale to make your company become the industry giant you have set your sights on.
However, you begin to notice that cash isn’t flowing like it once was. You begin to question: “Why? How did this happen? I know my company is turning a profit. What in the world is going on here?” You check your business account only to find your money has been going places it doesn’t need to be.
You find you don’t need this stress since you have other pressing things to worry about and trying to get your finances back on track doesn’t rank high on your to-do list. This situation would be better suited if you had access to a certain team of people with a particular set of skills (my second Taken reference sorry).
There’s a name for a group of people that handles the operation of financing, but I just can’t recall it.
Counting money that doesn’t belong to me gets old very quick. Photo by Kuncheek, please support by following @pexel.com
Clouding Around
Do you want to cut costs and track your money in the meantime and all the while grow your business to new heights? How would one do this you might ask?
Well, you have two options which are 1) you could venture to handle everything yourself which in turn would be a complete and utter nightmare, seeing you go from 0 to 100 in 1.5 seconds flat due to the fact you got overwhelmed, or 2) find yourself a team of people who could manage and monitor, assess, and even advise your finances for you.
What group of people would be crazy enough to do such a thing? Financial Operations or FinOps for short. FinOps is a cultural practice that brings cloud technology and business altogether to drive accountability and maximize business value.
FinOps are governed by six principles: collaboration, ownership, centralized cost savings, reporting, value, and taking advantage of variable costs. If you’re looking to scale your business and moving to the cloud or growing your cloud is going to be on the menu, FinOps are going to be one group needed to make sure all resources are accounted for and the budget stays on track.
In a nutshell, you can think of them as accountants for your current or future cloud.
I sure could use a team of accountant to explain why business card keeps declining. Photo by energepic, please support by following @pexel.com
Sales in Failure are Final
Oh dear reader of mine, you may be thinking to yourself, “Why would I hire an accountant? I manage my bank account and business account just fine. I budget well, I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Well, as mentioned before, if you lack the skill set to operate in the cloud and begin to connect resources without a care in the world, your dollar sign will quickly get overwhelmed. Everything costs in the cloud down to the computing power which could range from a second to minutes.
So yeah, money management would get out of hand before you even completed computing “Hello World” using a Lambda function. Therefore, having a FinOps team would be very beneficial. What group of people would turn to FinOps for information?
Financial planners, analysts, business managers, and advisors use reports from FinOps for cost allocation and forecasting. This is like having a weatherman in your business, but they’re actually paid to get the forecast right.
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Third quarter isn’t looking good, might be another quarter in the red. Photo by fauxels, please support by following @pexel.com
Fins Cuts the Budget
How much does FinOps have a play in the world of today you might be wondering. Well, that depends on what part of the world you are in, if you’re the employer, you’re more likely to hear about how certain cloud resources are outside of your budget and how you should be focused on cutting costs.
If you’re the employee, then it’s more likely you’re hearing about how cloud resources you could use, and need are outside of the company’s budget and how much the company needs to focus on cutting costs.
FinOps has been around since 2012 and many companies both big and small have adopted the FinOps framework to run their business. This adoption helps edge out the competition by enabling companies using FinOps to be capable to make better data-driven decisions, reducing costs on wasted resources, creating investment opportunities, and increasing transparency.
Just think of them as all good things to have if you get hit with an audit. Again, this group has a particular set of skills that work in your favor, just don’t forget to pay them on time.
So you think you have a future in FinOps? Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, please support by following @pexel.com
Choosing Paths
So, you may have the response “Nah, I can handle my budget and others with no problem. Just tell me, do I need a degree?” There’s some good but pricey news, you don’t need a degree to get into FinOps, just need to be familiar with their core principles.
FinOps is a cultural mindset developed to provide accountability to a business. Your time will be better suited to pursuing certifications with some specialized credentials like a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) or Certified Equity Professional (CEP) however, obtaining these certifications is not going to be easy, and knowing your stuff when it comes to financing is a must.
Another option is you could join the FinOps Foundation and select from their courses to become either a certified practitioner (I know I mentioned this step but skip becoming a practitioner, employers don’t recognize them) or hop right into becoming a certified professional. Just know, this is going to get pricey since this ranges from $599 – $3,750 (I did say I had some pricey good news).
But if you’re trying to learn on a budget, again Zero daddy has you covered. There are other resources, Coursera has one course on FinOps provided by Intel, and there are several courses on Udemy. Just stay away from getting caught up in tutorial hell. Gain a deep understanding of the basics, build upon them, and keep on moving.
After obtaining some of these credentials and online courses, you will be able to demonstrate your knowledge of investment and financial management best practices. Or you could do a combination if you have the time and money, it all boils down to what goals you have in place.
Goals without actions are only dreams. Photo by Markus Winkler, please support by following @pexel.com
Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.
Would like to give sincere thanksto current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.
Think there something that might have been missed about Finops? Script a comment below.
Truly a photo representation of the school system that never hit so hard. Photo by Lukas, please support by following @pexel.com
I’m just going to assume all the people reading this are grown adults and have experienced that moment in their career (or job) where you’re being tasked with finding someone to lead your team.
You’re provided with a room full of people and still, you manage to find no one who would fit the bill. This shocks you. Why? Because all too often people say they have the “juice” to lead but when placed center stage they fold faster than origami paper.
Embarrassing I know; however, time is ticking, and your client isn’t going to wait for you to find the “right for right now” candidate. But then again, what would be the perfect candidate for this situation?
A good Scrum Daddy will never be an absence father…unless it’s his day off. Photo by Hannah Nelson, please support by following @pexel.com
The Chosen One
So who is this person that the company is going to have to employ in order to run your band of misfits? Don’t look at me, it’s not me, although Z-daddy makes an excellent leader.
Quickly subscribe to join Zeroclay Nation, so you can join the one and become an army of none. Shameless plug-in aside, back to answering the question. Well like most creative, non-so-creative names in the IT world, they’re called Scrum Masters.
Scrum Masters, while the name sounds like an underground kink club, are accountable for helping their team succeed. They are responsible for managing the exchange of information between team members.
This is done as a team member or collaborator. Most scrum teams (I say most because working in teams with different people creates “experiences may vary situation”) can run themselves so having top-down management isn’t ideal for this band of misfits.
A Scrum Master often helps in groups or on a one-on-one basis (to all of you who thought of Hall and Oats, a big shout out to you, stay classic).
They may facilitate exercises, give guidance, or help people come to conclusions on their own. Scrum Masters are like having a coach that everyone on the team likes and can get along with and who doesn’t stare at you from around the corner while you’re taking a shower.
A good Scrum Daddy will protect his team, but Z-daddy will always protect his nation. Photo by Tatiana Syrikova, please support by following @pexel.com
The Perfect Supervisor
Have you ever played the video game Bioshock? Your answer was no? I’m shocked. For those of you who have played you’ll know what I’m laying down and for those of you who don’t, let me explain.
Bioshock, in a nutshell, had an underwater city and within that city were these little girls with syringes who went around drawing what looked to be blood but wasn’t.
I’m not going to get into the whole details, just know every time you sighted a little girl, she wasn’t alone. There would be a giant known as “Big Daddy” walking and for the most part, protecting her. So long story short, don’t mess with the little girl or you would have more than a double barrel to worry about.
Anyway, back to the point, Scrum Masters in a way act as the Big Daddy to a scrum team. Scrum Daddies help their teams by coaching in self-management and cross-functionality, creating focus in providing high-value increments that meet what the client defines as done or better known as “the definition of done”.
Scrum Daddies in times of need will, motivate and remove any impediments to the team’s progress, and ensure all Scrum events taking place are positive, productive, and kept within the timeframe also called timebox.
Scrum Daddies also help product owners by facilitating stakeholder collaboration as requested or needed, leading, training, and coaching them in their adoption, and by finding out what exactly is expected and conveying that to the scrum team.
So you can think of Scrum Daddies are like having that cool boss you can “ascend to a certain level of awesome” with and can be a google translator between the team and product owner.
I’m sure all you kids are mine…I think. Photo by Denis Gvozdov, please support by following @pexel.com
Scrum Daddies are important…right?
You may be thinking to yourself, “these guys sound nice but what makes them so important?” If you have ever worked or even played on a team, you’ll know that not everyone thinks the same.
Do you remember the days when you were in school, and the teacher instructed you to get up and go find a partner and it took the class forever for people to settle into their groups? Like you would have a group that already knew they were going to link up but to the other groups developing, the awkwardness and the petty (if your ex and her friends that made up most of the class) was real.
Then you would be instructed to figure out who was going to be the team leader or in my case “you seem smart enough and I have no clue as to what I’m doing, and I assume that you do”. This is a retrospective apology, to my old classmates, sorry, you let the eyeglasses and calm demeanor fool you.
After figuring out the leader you would quickly find that most if not all people couldn’t lead well. There are many elements that go into making a good leader. This is why Scrum Daddies are so important, a good Scrum Daddy (and I say good because I know there are bad ones out there) will do everything in their power to keep the team focused, motivated, and moving along.
You know it’s like having a father instead of seeing them only on the weekends, they live with you and you guys play catch in the yard. Trust me, I’m not emotionally broken.
If we put Taco Tuesday on a Wednesday, we could boost productivity. Photo by Yan Krukau, please support by following @pexel.com
More of a Father Figure
So do you want to become somebody’s Scrum Daddy? Do you think you have what it takes to protect your team of little ones? Good, in this field, having a degree would be nice but at last, you don’t need one.
Not to become a Scrum Master, instead, you’ll need to start building skills that will empower you to lead your team to the best of your ability. Developing problem-solving skills, adaptability, motivation, effective communication, and organization are going to be skills needed in this role.
Always a key thing to note is to never take sides or have any predisposition for someone’s opinion. Instead, Scrum Masters should serve as a mediator helping the parties reach a solution.
You could pick up some online courses which would help you gain a deeper understanding of what is expected in this role. Just remember when you are a leader, depending on who’s on your team, they’re all your children…you just don’t have to pay child support this go around.
I finally get to keep my paycheck this go around! Thanks Z-Daddy! Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, please support by following @pexel.com
Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.
Would like to give sincere thanksto current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.
Do you think you have what it takes to be a Scrum Daddy or Momma?
Script a comment below about what you think your experience would be like.
