Thinking of a career change? Find out how Chioma quit her monotonous job at an oil company, moved to Canada and secured a fulfilling job as a DevOps engineer by impressing the hiring managers 😃💪
Meet Chioma 👋
Hi, my name is Chioma and I’m working as a DevOps Engineer in Canada.
Chioma is one of our successful DevOps Bootcamp graduates, who sent us this heartfelt email some weeks ago 💙
After reading what she shared with us, we just knew we had to chat with her and share the story with our community 😊
Keep reading to find out how this all happened. 🤩 👇
What did you do before you became a DevOps Engineer?
I studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering back in Nigeria and worked as a
Production Engineer (Instrumentation and Control discipline) in Shell for 3.5 years.
After which I moved to Canada in 2021 and decided it was time to try something
different.
Why did you decide to switch to DevOps? That's a big career decision, so what motivated you to do that? 🤔
Even though I earned good money at my job, I did not like the role because I found it
boring, and it was not challenging.
Being happy at what I do is what I've always longed for.
Basically the goal is, waking up every morning and looking forward to go to work and spend the time at what you enjoy the most. 😊
I liked programming in school, even though I was learning an obsolete language (Fortran)...lol. I decided to learn Python on the side during my spare time. I also learned SQL and thought I was going to be a Data Analyst 👩🏾💻
When I moved to Canada, it was time to explore and discover what I would like for a new
career. I knew it was going to be Software Engineering related but I didn’t know the
exact branch.
I took 3 bootcamps before Nana’s bootcamp.
One was purely Data Analysis. I liked mining data, but I did not like the visualization aspect, that was how I knew it was not Data Analysis I wanted to pursue. One of the other bootcamps was Python, SQL and DevOps and that was how I learned about DevOps and Cloud. It was absolutely mind blowing. The 3rd one was purely Cloud and DevOps.
DevOps is the field that binds the Software Development team and the IT operations together with lots of Automation.
That was interesting for me. I also found it a lot easier to get started with 👍
With all those previous bootcamps, why did you decide to enroll in yet another one - TechWorld with Nana's DevOps Bootcamp? 🤔
Even though I was taught how to deploy things at the previous bootcamps I was NOT confident as a DevOps engineer, because while learning, I was mostly just copying and pasting code.
I didn't know the links between the various tools and how they all came together.
I remember using Jenkins to automate things in the previous bootcamps I did, but the reality is that I did not know the role Jenkins was playing in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and why I was using it.
The truth is that understanding the “why” is more important than the “how”, because tools will always change but the underlying concepts remain the same.
So I started searching for more on Youtube... and Boom! 🔥
I found this great Instructor called Nana. I watched Nana’s free Youtube videos and I was amazed at how she explained the concepts. I then wondered that if she taught THIS good for something that is free, how then would her bootcamp be?
I enrolled in the bootcamp immediately! (After convincing my husband 😃)
And did your expectation hold true?
Absolutely!
Nana’s bootcamp is a definition of structure. I liked everything to be honest.
Everything I learned in the previous bootcamps began to make sense, because
Nana taught the Basics right from Linux File System, which I had never properly learned. So Nana explains all the tools from basic to advanced level in the bootcamp.
She would tell you how everything ties together. Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, Jenkins and their role in the SDLC.
Everything about Cloud/DevOps made sense to me when I took her bootcamp. It was the
gamechanger.
Rather than copying code and seeing it work, Nana explained the concepts and even explained what the code/scripts were doing. I could even tweak it to achieve the same thing.
I was so happy that I was becoming confident in my DevOps skills 😊
How did you secure the job? How were the job interviews like?
After I took Nana’s course, I was confident to attend the job interviews.
I created a master DevOps resume and applied to companies. I got 2 offers in less than 24 hours of attending 2 interviews back-to-back.
For the 2 offers I got, I knew I was going to get the job right during the interview.
I remember that for one of the companies, where I got an offer, the hiring manager took a pause during the interview and told me, that he must say he is very impressed with the answers and would likely extend an offer to me.
He said he doesn’t say that during the interviews, but he just had to tell me! 😊
I remember, they asked me DevOps questions and one of the interviewers shared his screen to show me a Kubernetes service manifest file and asked me to explain what it was doing. ☝️
When I saw it I was smiling in my mind, knowing I can explain every single line, since Nana had explained everything in detail in the bootcamp. I was able to go line by line to explain this code, the importance of labels, selectors etc.
If not for the TechWorld with Nana DevOps Bootcamp, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.
As I said earlier, the other bootcamps (which were even more expensive) would just give me the code to copy without explaining it.
Is there a big difference in earnings in this new role from what you made? 💸
The oil and gas industry pays well and I was working in one of the top paying companies in my home country, so I really cannot compare because my current job is my first in Canada.
However, what I would say is that I was able negotiate a $20,000 increase in the annual pay offer I was given and that is because I had impressed them so much.
During the interview, the hiring manager had asked me
“what can we do to make the offer attractive to you”.
I couldn’t contain my joy. I emailed Nana to say thank you :)
Any recommendation or tips for someone who is just starting out on the same journey as you went through?
I would say people should have a passion and drive and choose a good course to get
started. I recommend TechWorld with Nana. That is all. Nana teaches in a way that
even a child can understand.
If you get it right the first time, and take Nana's bootcamp, you won’t have to pay for multiple courses like me 🙈
So all you need is one right course... to get started and move on from there.
I wish I knew about Nana when I first started.
Do YOU want to start a new career in DevOps or Cloud?
If you’re like Chioma and want to finally transition into a more fulfilling and enjoyable career in IT, be sure to check out our popular intensive DevOps Bootcamp, which earned Chioma such an attractive job offer along with compliments on her DevOps knowledge.
Thousands of students use our bootcamps and courses to upskill and become highly-demanded DevOps and Cloud Engineers.
If you're starting with zero IT knowledge, no worries, we also got you covered. 🤝
If you’re not sure where to start, check out our custom career path quiz for some advice on where to start and what path to take ✅ 🙂
