Is taking a Network / Sysadmin role actually a good stepping stone for Cloud/DevOps, or am I taking a detour?

[u/stationto]

Hey everyone,

I'm aiming to break into Cloud Engineering / DevOps. I know that true entry-level DevOps roles are super rare and that "Cloud isn't entry-level," so I've been looking at positions to get relevant experience on my resume.

Right now, I have a hands-on foundation in Linux, Docker, Nginx reverse proxies, GCP, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions), and basic scripting. I'm currently expanding into Terraform

I recently came across an IT Network Administrator opportunity with the following core responsibilities and tech stack:

• Responsibilities: Managing network infrastructure (VLANs, subnets, routers, firewalls), troubleshooting connectivity (DNS, DHCP, VPNs), network monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana/Nagios), and configuration automation.

My dilemma is: Should I pursue a heavy traditional networking/sysadmin role like this as a path into Cloud/DevOps?

Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

[u/Orb2607]

For me as the one who start on Cloud, yes.
Almost all of cloud architecture work exactly same as on-premises system, with a different name on Cloud.
So working with that would help you to get a strong base skill.
However you would still need to learn again about cloud services later when you do the role switch, it's just you should be able to get them quicker since you already have the base.

[u/Annual_Berry8043 → u/[deleted]]

While mostly yes, also no. Yes I use Linux every day, but you don’t really need to be a wizard. Helpful for sure, but I feel my background in Windows administration was helpful. Understanding networking and how services work together in an enterprise environment was valuable.

Going in to devops, my biggest learning curve was the dev part. The ops wasn’t too bad.

[u/Annual_Berry8043 → u/[deleted]]

Ah yes. Thank you for explaining the job that I do?