DevOps step by step, or the career story of Marcin, one of Hostersi's employees.

We live in a time when virtually every efficient company on the market has to be a 'technology company' regardless of the industry in which it operates. The demand for IT professionals is proliferating. More and more people are considering re-branding themselves and the possibility of developing their competencies, specifically in IT. When they look into how to do this, they often come across two opposing camps. The first offers training in the formula ‘DevOps in a weekend’, ‘Programming in a fortnight’ and a brick wall of success immediately after receiving a certificate of completed training. The other, on the other hand, argues that IT is a job for the chosen few and that there is no point in trying to change careers if you haven't felt the calling. So, where does the truth lie? As with everything in IT - it depends...

However, in order not to leave you entirely without an answer, we decided to present the development path as seen through the eyes of Marcin - one of Hosters' DevOps, who made his way with us from Infrastructure Operator to DevOps, and now lives and works for us ... from Japan.

Beginning

My beginnings at Hostersi date back to April 2015. Right after graduating from an IT technical school, a colleague and I found an ad online for an IT Infrastructure Monitoring Operator. While the name of the position sounded a bit exotic to me at the time, the scope of responsibilities indicated in the ad was close to my heart. It turned out that the experience I gained hosting servers for local FIFA or CS games, supported by basic knowledge gained at technical high school (including using Linkus), was reasonably sufficient for a start. Looking back on it from today's perspective, I can even say that by a twist of fate, back in the ‘FIFA server days’ I was looking at my future from the standpoint of server administration because although today it sounds like a bit of a joke, at the time, for some reason, programming seemed...too tricky.

The work of a Monitoring Operator consisted of supervising infrastructures entrusted to us by clients. Whenever an alert indicated that any of them were malfunctioning, I would implement the strict emergency procedure described in the documentation. If this were not sufficient, I would initiate an escalation path. As failures did not happen often, this Operator position was conducive to learning. With access to the knowledge of colleagues (which they were always willing to share), documentation of various infrastructures courses and training, I had almost unlimited opportunities for development. All you had to do was want to broaden your horizons, and the tools to do so were available at your fingertips.

From Admin to DevOps

After about a year and a half of working and learning, I was promoted to Junior Administrator and, shortly afterward, Administrator. This was a position with a much broader remit and much more responsibility. My role was no longer limited to monitoring infrastructures and essential remediation. I could finally start building new environments from scratch, advising customers, and developing completed infrastructures. As I was never short of initiative at work, and the need to develop grew in me along with the knowledge I could assimilate, it was only a few months later that I got another promotion, this time to the position of DevOps. I felt that I was sailing into vast waters. I got my first in-house projects, for which I was fully responsible. It became clear very quickly that the enormous responsibility I had taken on with the promotion was having an incredibly motivating effect on me! All the time, I also had the confidence that no matter what problem I was facing, there would always be people in the company who would share their experiences with me, showing me the best way to reach my goal. This arrangement worked both ways. I was also happy to share my knowledge, often even with more experienced colleagues. All of this is because each of us specializes in a different technology, and the projects we have been doing at Hostersi, invariably, for years, are highly diverse regarding the technology stack. As a result, we never had a chance to get bored and often had an excuse for internal consultations.

DevOps in Japan

Before going to Japan, I worked with a great, played team. I can even say that we created a truly 'home-like atmosphere' in which I felt simply amazing. To corroborate these words, let me say that Hosters already made it possible to work remotely, and yet most of us still preferred to turn up at the office even if the commute took us a long time.

My partner's idea of going to Japan came in late 2019/early 2020. I had never thought about it before. Initially, we decided that we would treat it as an adventure of a few months, with no further plan. When I set up a meeting with Tomasz Dwornicki (CEO of Hostersi), I did not know how to tell him we had to end our cooperation because I was leaving... At that moment, I didn't even think another scenario was possible. So you must imagine my surprise when, quite naturally, Tom asked what we could do to enable me to work remotely from Japan! The relief was incredible, as it was complicated to imagine parting with the guys and the company. Very quickly, we were able to arrange everything so that I could seamlessly transition to working remotely from a different time zone (8 hours difference). This is how I have been working for Hostersi from Japan for over three years now.

I remember almost immediately proposing to Marcin that he work for us remotely from Japan. I think he was firmly taken aback by the proposal but quickly agreed to it. Organizing everything was no problem for us, and from a work organization point of view, someone so experienced, available during European night hours, was an excellent support for our third shift. In this way, we could retain a great DevOps person and create new opportunities for the company.

Tomasz Dwornicki

CEO Hostersi

These three years are enough time to say that we have put all the organizational issues together, including the selection of projects I am involved in. The only problem that, unfortunately, we will never be able to 'jump over' remains the lack of personal contact with people at work. For me, working in the office was a constant exchange of knowledge, excitement, and experiences between all of us. Besides that, it was just great fun. If I were to go back to Poland today, to my hometown, which is a dozen or so kilometers from the office, I could not imagine that I would be able to work remotely for Hostersi.

What next?

During my 8 years of work, I managed to collect a sizeable collection of certifications, mostly AWS-based, such as AWS Solution Architect Associate and Professional. I've also completed a DevOps track(AWS SysOps and DevOps), and quite recently I've earned a security certification - AWS Security Specialty. I learned a very large technology stack, from simple webservers to complex services like Apache Kafka. I have gained detailed knowledge of best practice DevOps / SRE strategies and the design, management and implementation of infrastructures using Infrastructure As Code tools. I learned to operate freely in container environments, which I also documented by gaining a certification related to kubernetes. I am directing my immediate plans towards exploring more Cloud Vendors. I started with Azure, where I passed the DevOps certification path AZ-104 and AZ-400. In parallel, I intend to gradually polish my Japanese so that shortly, I can converse freely on more than just basic topics. I do not intend to leave Japan in the next two years. What will happen later - time will tell! What is certain is that I will not give up my work in the Clouds!

In the WORK tab, you will find a career path we created, from Operator to DevOps Engineer, and current job offers for positions at different levels!