So you want to get a job in Devops. Or maybe the first step is that being a question...?
Devops is a new tech buzzword. It's the combination of code, containerization, infrastructure and the pursuit of automation of these resources. Getting a job in Devops means you understand lots of aspects of modern computing, but it's far from an extension of your typical OS or desktop experience.
Typically, you start out using the console/GUI to do things. In Windows Server, that's similar to a Windows desktop experience. You have all the familiar things like the Start button and Wizards for installing/configuring applications. In Linux, this is more abstracted by using Bash, or maybe you're using Gnome or something else, but primarily using a Terminal to configure and execute. Abstracted further, if you understand virtualization, maybe you're using VMware, or Hyper-V or public Cloud infrastructure, so you're mounting disks from a serial console, but in any way you use computing, you're usually starting out using a console.
Now do it using code. PowerShell for Windows, Chef/Puppet/Ansible for Linux. Use images in Cloud, Cloudformation in AWS, AzureRM/JSON in Azure. Whatever you're doing by button-fucking, do it with code, and now you're on your way to being a Devops Engineer. Pass some certification tests. This doesn't mean you know everything. In fact, it means you know the basics. Certs represent a baseline of understanding, much like getting a degree in College. They represent a commitment to a subject or subjects, but they are far from being as valuable as real world experience. They represent your desire to learn so much about a subject, that a manufacturer of that product says, "Yup, this person knows some shit."
Get a job in tech. You may have to start out doing shit you don't like, like Desktop Support. I started out as a Helpdesk tech in a local municipality. It sucked, but I showed initiative at work, and I sponged up as much information as possible. Within a year, I was promoted to a Tier 2 position. I kept learning more about enterprise networking and routing, virtualization in a datacenter environment using VMware, physical datacenter servers, physical SANs and related media. Within another year, I was promoted to a System Admin(Tier 3). This is where I really cut my teeth with private cloud infrastructure. I stood up and replaced servers, I was responsible for data backups, I managed and maintained Active Directory, Exchange, File Server Resource Manager, and Systems Center. I implemented new changes that brought value, like Quotas on SMB shares, and disaster recovery by utilizing high availability and fault tolerant architectures. As soon as I vested, and I decided I was ready for a change, I found a job at a Managed Services Provider.
These are companies that sell IT as a service. Here, I was exposed to hundreds of environments. It teaches you about how smart, capable people fuck things up. They teach you about
leveraging best practices. They teach you why you never want to do things
certain ways. And you'll spend countless late nights deciphering
someone's bad decision. You'll probably have to take out some garbage out for awhile.
Then I shifted to Public Cloud. I got all my certifications-9 in Azure, 2 in AWS, 1 in GCP. I spent a year
and half, heads down, studying, learning, passing tests. I proved to
people that I knew the basics. When you combine that with my actual
experience, demonstrable skills in understanding how computing,
networking, systems, and virtualization work, I had 10x more hardened experience than
anyone else. Right now, the market is flooded with two options, people
who never touched traditional infrastructure, and those that think they
know everything already. Being in the middle is a rare commodity. Most
people coming into Devops come from a software engineering background
where they learned how to do some cloud because they needed it for
software deployment reasons. There is a real gap for people who
learned with traditional infrastructure, Windows, VMware or Hyper-V, and
then move into Cloud.