Getting into Cloud (ft. Forrest Brazeal)

Career Chats with Swyx and Randall

This week we have another guest interview with the multi-talented Forrest Brazeal (site, twitter, newsletter) who is one of the most passionate cloud advocates in the world. Definitely check out A Cloud Guru's Cloud Resume Challenge if you or someone you know is interested in getting into the cloud, and stay for his hot takes on mid-century children's literature!

0:00 - Intro & Background

1:55 - Cloud Resume Challenge

- a child of the pandemic
- https://twitter.com/forrestbrazeal/status/1254822417203113986?s=20
- https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/
- https://acloudguru.com/blog/news/introducing-the-cloudguruchallenge

5:57 - Success Stories

- Hall of fame https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/halloffame/
- Pay-as-you-go cloud made this much more affordable

9:17 - Community & Cohorts

- Join the Discord https://discord.gg/2PTwAth

10:09 - Employers

- Most people don't even need Forrest's network
- You learn real knowledge going through the projects
- Being able to grow inhouse talent is a competitive advantage
- We need more internships and rotations in the industry

14:23 - Cloud Specializations

- Monthly challenges are themed
- Kesha Williams Machine Learning Challenge https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/cloudguruchallenge-machine-learning-on-aws

15:20 - Career Advice

- Be careful about general advice - we all start from different places
- What DOES work is sharing your network and privilege

16:58 - The Value of Networks

- Don't play Resume Roulette - spray & pray
- Networking is not beneath you
- This is you evaluating the industry as much as the other way around
- Giving the gift of your network and referrals does way more than advice

19:15 - The Right Way to Get Referrals

- always see if you can get a referral when applying
- "How do you know this person" - Cold DMs for referrals don't work
- engage in the community, write blogposts, try stuff out, tag the creator
- Pick Up What They Put Down
22:16 - Why Own Your Content

- Its fine to start on Dev.to or Medium
- But eventually it's important to own your domain/mailing list

23:45 - Specialization vs Megatrends

- Didn't choose the Serverless life, Severless chose me
- Can't forecast 10 yrs ahead - just listen to megatrends
- Generational trends - Lindy effect
- Hypergrowth trends - capturing big % of population every year
- Text Editor wars -> VS Code

26:41 - Mid-century Children's Literature

- Perceptions of reality
- Virginia writing alternate history of the Civil War
- Japanese WW2 equivalent
- Subjective vs Objective Reality

29:05 - The Read-Aloud Cloud

- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51645863-the-read-aloud-cloud
- explain Cloud to non-technical people
- people don't have an intuitive model for why Cloud exists
- helps them ask the right questions

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Speaker Links

- Forrest Brazeal (@forrestbrazeal): Site, Twitter, Newsletter, The Read Aloud Cloud
- Randall (@randallkanna): The Standout Developer
- Swyx (@swyx): The Coding Career Handbook
- Discuss this episode on Circle