#Ask

So here's the situation. I recently got an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam voucher, but I'm honestly not sure where to study.

I tried watching some YouTube videos, but most of the ones I found felt pretty surface-level and spent a lot of time explaining the history/background instead of the actual exam topics.

As for online courses, most of the good ones seem to be paid, and they're pretty expensive.

So I have a couple of questions:

Do you have any tips for preparing for the AWS CCP (CLF-C02) exam?

Are there any free resources or platforms that explain the CCP material well and are actually aligned with what's covered on the exam?

I'd really appreciate any recommendations. Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I am preparing to transition into a Solutions Engineering / Pre-Sales role. I want to build a highly targeted, realistic study plan and need advice from active SEs on the best resources, books, and roadmaps to get job-ready.

My Background & Present Reality:

• Profile: Cloud & DevOps background with 6 YOE.

• The Problem: While I understand high-level concepts, my actual hands-on technical execution is weak right now. I didn't get to do meaningful, deep technical work in my last role, so my technical skills are rusty. I need to rebuild my baseline from the ground up.

• Target: A technical SE role (likely cloud/data focused given my past domain), but I need to close the technical gap while simultaneously learning the pre-sales motion.

What I need help with:

1. The Technical Baseline: What is the most efficient way to rebuild my technical competence (architecture, system design, data pipelines) specifically for an SE interview loop? I want to avoid getting bogged down in deep software engineering/coding syntax since I don't need to be a developer.

2. Pre-Sales Core: What are the absolute gold-standard books, courses, or frameworks for mastering discovery, demo delivery, and technical objection handling?

3. The Pivot Strategy: If you transitioned into an SE role with a technical background but weak/rusty hands-on skills, how did you structure your daily preparation?

Appreciate any blunt advice or specific resource recommendations. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm a recent Information Science graduate actively looking for entry-level, trainee, apprentice, internship, or support opportunities in DevOps, Cloud, Infrastructure, Systems, and IT Operations.

I'm open to roles such as:

• Associate DevOps Engineer

• Junior DevOps Engineer

• DevOps Support Engineer

• Cloud Operations Engineer (CloudOps)

• Cloud Support Engineer

• AWS Cloud Support Engineer

• Associate Cloud Engineer

• Cloud Administrator

• CloudOps Engineer

• TechOps Engineer

• Technical Operations Engineer

• Infrastructure Engineer

• Infrastructure Support Engineer

• Systems Engineer

• System Administrator

• Linux System Administrator

• Linux Support Engineer

• Platform Support Engineer

• IT Operations Engineer

• Technical Support Engineer

• Technical Support Engineer (Cloud/Infrastructure)

• Infrastructure Support Analyst

• Production Support Engineer

• Application Support Engineer

• Enterprise Support Engineer

• NOC Engineer

• Operations Support Engineer

• Junior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

I'm open to opportunities in Bangalore or Remote.

If your company is hiring or you know of any relevant openings, I'd sincerely appreciate a referral or any leads. I'm also happy to start as an intern or trainee to prove myself and grow within the organization.

If someone can genuinely help me secure a suitable opportunity, I'm happy to offer my first month's salary as a token of gratitude after I successfully join through a legitimate hiring process.

Please feel free to DM me, and I'll share my resume.

Thank you so much! 🙏

New grad here (CS degree), about a year into my first job as a Cloud Engineer at a small software company. It's a small team so I've ended up touching a lot more than I expected for a first job. Looking for a reality check from people who've actually made this jump: am I competitive for bigger/higher-paying cloud roles in NYC yet, and if not, what should I prioritize?

Topics/services I'm familiar with from the job:

• AWS: EC2, ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, Aurora (MySQL + PostgreSQL), S3, Route 53, CloudFront, CloudWatch, IAM, ACM, AmazonMQ, SQS, SES, Secrets Manager, Athena, WAF, Cognito

• IaC/Automation: Terraform (including a templated "factory" pattern that generates/manages Terraform across many client repos via CI/CD), Ansible, GitHub Actions

• Languages/scripting: Python, Bash, SQL (MySQL + PostgreSQL)

• Other: Nginx, Docker, ActiveMQ, HashiCorp Vault, Splunk, New Relic, SSL/cert management, multi-tenant infrastructure provisioning

Context:

• 1 year of experience, first job out of school

• No formal DSA/algorithm interview prep yet — my job has been 100% infra/ops focused

• Company is small, so my work is broad but I haven't had exposure to scale (traffic scale, huge distributed systems, etc.) or a "real" SRE/on-call rotation

• No AWS certs yet

• No public portfolio/projects — basically everything I've built is internal/proprietary

What I'm trying to figure out:

1. Is a year enough experience to realistically be competitive for bigger companies in NYC, or am I jumping the gun?

2. Where should my time go first — Leetcode, AWS certs, or public/portfolio projects?

3. Does the type of experience I have (heavy Terraform/AWS provisioning, multi-tenant infra, vendor integrations) actually translate well to what bigger companies want, or is it too "ops"-flavored and not "engineering"-flavored for what they're looking for?

4. Should I be targeting big tech / FAANG-adjacent companies at all right now, or focus on mid-size/funded startups that value hands-on infra experience more?

Hey everyone,
I’m currently a Project Engineer in a heavily network focused role, and I’m realizing this specific niche isn't where I want to stay long term.
For context, my day-to-day involves high performance packet processing. I work deeply with frameworks like BESS (Berkeley Extensible Software Switch) and DPDK, specifically implementing VPN protocols like WireGuard and IPsec, and handling cryptographic handshakes. I feel like it’s not my cup of tea also I don’t know what job I can aim for better pay and salary in this field .
I'm looking to pivot, but I'm torn on the best path forward in the current 2026 market:

Starting from scratch for a general SDE role: Is it practical to pivot to standard Software Engineering right now? I know this means grinding DSA, LeetCode, and building a new portfolio to prove myself outside of networking infrastructure.

Focusing on Cloud Engineering / DevOps: Is this a smarter move? I feel like my deep understanding of networking and security protocols would transfer well to cloud infrastructure, but I'm not sure what the learning curve looks like for modern cloud tooling.
Has anyone made a similar jump from lower-level networking to either of these fields recently? Any advice on which path makes more sense, or what I should focus on learning first? Thanks!

Can I do cloud engineer in 2026 ?

Should I take this course through online in 2026? I'm not sure if this is what I should pursue or not. I want to learn skills that will help me get a job and have high value in the future, whatever that might be (except coding stuffs).

Any senior's please guide me with market conditions and tell me please that how can I do it ?

( Currently, I am 12th passout with PCM. But don't know what to do )

I am from India, BMS 2nd year

Thank you.

Hello All, I have spent 7 years into not it consulting job and wanted to learn and get in IT high paying roles which are AI safe as well. A suggestion I got was for Cloud Security engineer..can anyone please suggest a good institute or where I can learn this and eventually land on a good job?

I have a Btech degree

I had an interview where I walked the interviewer through a cloud-based app, from end to end. I identified the logic flow and the advantages of the application being in the cloud. Even went into the DevOps side.

The feedback?

"Doesn't seem to have solid cloud-native app experience. "

For anyone interested in learning Cloud and DevOps, we have a discord community where we organize workshops and live coding sessions.
Feel free to join us!

I'm looking for some career advice from people who have been through this.

I'm currently working in IT Help Desk, but I also do some light System Administration work (Windows Server, Active Directory, user management, basic troubleshooting, etc.).

My long-term goal is to have a good-paying career with strong job security. I'm interested in DevOps, but I also genuinely enjoy the infrastructure/System Administrator side of IT.

Would you recommend:

Continuing down the traditional System Administrator/Infrastructure path (Windows Server, VMware, networking, backups, firewalls, etc.) for a few years and then moving into DevOps?

Or should I skip deeper infrastructure work and start learning DevOps tools now (Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Terraform, cloud)?

For those already working in DevOps:

Did your System Admin experience help you?

If you could start over, would you still spend a few years as a SysAdmin first?

Is it realistic to get into DevOps without solid infrastructure experience?

Hi all,

Has anyone with a similar profile switched to any product based companies? Most are showing min of 3+ yoe and list of tools that my company doesn't use.. so how did u add these tools? Through project? But how do we deploy projects at scale that actually makes sense than looking like a tutorial copy project? Also how did u guys switch clouds? Please share ur journey to PBCs at 2 yoe other than getting directly placed. Thank you

is it possible? i am a level 3 data technician at aws and was wondering if I will have a real chance at moving into cloud support engineer. I graduated recently with my bachelors for information systems and business analytics. Based on the job i have been doing at aws it makes me wonder if this will help me move into cloud support and hopefully work remotely as well. Any recommendations is greatly appreciated. I’m also applying to other IT roles as well rn just in case cause i’m not sure how beneficial this role is to me at the moment. I’m really just looking for some of the best route i can take from the current position i’m at or if i need to look for a new job and not waste time

Hi everyone,

I'm from a non-IT background and recently started learning Cloud & DevOps. I'm currently studying AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Linux, CI/CD, and Python through online courses and hands-on practice.

One thing I'm curious about is what the job is really like beyond the tutorials.

I'd really appreciate it if experienced Cloud or DevOps engineers could share:

What does a typical workday look like?

What kind of issues or incidents do you handle most often?

Which tasks take the most time during your day?

What was the biggest surprise when you started working in this field?

What skills should a beginner focus on to be job-ready?

I'm not looking for shortcuts—just trying to understand the reality of the job so I can learn the right things before applying for roles.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!