Why Did I Choose To Learn Cloud Computing Despite Having No Prior Server-side Knowledge?

Over the years I’ve learned many skills and acquired experience in a few. The most difficult thing I came across while learning new skills was staying focused, consistent, and most importantly accountable. Therefore, I’ve decided to write regularly to share my learning experience with you all. This way I’ll be able to track my progress and I hope to find like-minded folks from the industry to learn from.

So here we go…

A bit about myself (Optional)

For context, it is important to know where I came from. After high school, I started working as a support representative for a renowned multinational online course provider. Later, I got promoted to sales and worked for a good five years before taking a leap into computers back in 2013.

Like many, I had no idea about computers…

Like many, I had no idea how computers worked except for handling spreadsheets, browsing the net, and using Skype for calling! Programming, at that time, was nowhere in the picture, but my sales job was not every interesting, so the trade-off seemed quite reasonable.

Coursera came to rescue…

To get the hang of programming, I enrolled in one of the free online Python programming courses from Coursera, and surprisingly, I started enjoying it. This turned out to be a turning point in my life and I soon enrolled in one of the best computer training institutes in the city.

As it turned out, usual classes weren’t enough to quench my thirst for learning in this new and exciting and rapidly changing world of computers. So I went back to online courses, which provided me with updated info and the comfort of learning from home.

Hard work paid off and I successfully switched careers from sales and marketing to software development. I worked for a few web agencies and software houses and was involved in various web and mobile-based projects down the road.

Dark and cold SSH terminal…

Life took another turn in January 2018 when one of the top PaaS cloud hosting companies came knocking on my door.  It was a career switch* from developing fancy websites and mobile applications to struggling with Linux and server-side queries inside the dark and cold SSH terminal.

*(Note: I call it a turning point because it was not like any job switches I had previously made)

Majority of you will agree that in order to stay at the top of your game, you have to keep yourself up to date and learn new skills, unless you code in JAVA 😉

A similar thing happened with me a few months ago when I found myself stranded and had not been able to make any progress, both career-wise and skills-wise. I knew that learning is evident but what to learn was the question I couldn’t get an answer to. Until one day which I vaguely remember was in the month of March 2019; a friend of mine told me about the new training program starting on Cloud Computing!

So.. what the heck is Cloud Computing?

As per Wikipedia, Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user.

Let me translate that to you in simple English. Cloud computing is a modern way of leveraging the computing power in the most efficient and economical way possible. The term ‘Cloud‘ usually refers to a cluster of servers present inside a modern data center.

Giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have been using cloud computing to accommodate a large number of user’s data and to ensure optimum performance and security to the end-user.

Reliability, performance, and security are the essence of cloud computing.

Why did I choose to learn Cloud Computing?

Well, the decision was not an easy one. For a few months, I was utterly confused between Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing. But I had to make up my mind and the best way to convince anybody for anything is data, facts and lots of research!

I started reading about it over the internet and talked to a few individuals. I followed a pattern and aligned my research with my goals. I even made a document where I listed both the pros and cons of choosing Cloud Computing as there was no going back once I’m committed to this so I needed to be 100% certain.

Let’s talk numbers!

According to Forbes, in 2018 the average salary for cloud computing professionals was $146,350.  And it is speculated that by 2021, cloud service will become a $300 billion industry.

As far as the jobs are concerned; in just three years, jobs related to cloud computing, cloud infrastructure, and cloud engineering increased by 108%  with over 101,913 open positions available worldwide.

Employers across various industries are more inclined towards hiring individuals who have some knowledge of cloud infrastructure and are able to work  directly or indirectly in the cloud computing domain. The best part is you do not require a degree in order to work as a cloud engineer. All you need is a commitment, passion and some direction to enter into cloud computing world.

What’s next?

I hope that you all enjoyed reading about my journey and as promised I will be posting my new learning experiences every week and will share on my Twitter and LinkedIn. I look forward to meeting new people from the industry and excited to share more stories.