STOP Learning Kubernetes (Do This First)

Key Takeaways

Everyone says learn Kubernetes for DevOps. Well, that's actually not a correct advice for most people because here is a fact. 70% of DevOps jobs do not require deep Kubernetes knowledge. The required core skills for DevOps are cloud fundamentals, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code. Even in job descriptions that mention Kubernetes, recruiters, they simply put Kubernetes in their job description just because it's a buzzword, not because the project or company actually needs that skill. My recommendation is before you even get to Kubernetes, learn the cloud concepts first and then infrastructure as code and then dive deeper into container concepts with Docker. Once you have that covered, learn just the fundamentals of Kubernetes, which is pods, deployments, services. Because if you're not a full-time Kubernetes administrator, you don't need to really deeply understand how the control plane components work. But you do need to learn all those basics hands-on and that will be sufficient for 80% of the roles out there. and the deep expertise of Kubernetes which is the operators, the custom controllers, CRDs, cluster architecture and so on. That's for specialized roles such as Kubernetes administrator or platform engineer or a senior DevOps engineer level which are also paying pretty high salaries. So my advice is simply do not let perfect be the enemy of good and know how to prioritize what skills you need to learn in which order. As I said, you don't need to master Kubernetes to land your first DevOps role. Understanding that 20% fundamentals will be enough to have a normal conversation on a job interview about Kubernetes without having to be an expert. But this ties into a general problem that a lot of people have, which is you don't know where to start learning DevOps, what technologies and tools to learn, and most importantly, to what level. And that's exactly why we decided for a short period of time to offer free orientation calls for engineers in our community all over the world who want to figure out how to structure their learning to get from their current skills to where they want to go in the shortest amount of time. So the main purpose of this call, which is absolutely free, is for you to have enough clarity by the end of the call that you know what your immediate next action step is going to be. So if you want to take advantage of this temporary offer that we have, then make sure to reserve your spot and understand what you need to do as a next step in your career. The link is going to be either in the comments or in the bio. So check that out and reserve your spot.