This week we have another guest interview with the multi-talented Forrest Brazeal (
site,
twitter,
newsletter) who is one of the most passionate cloud advocates in the world. Definitely check out A Cloud Guru's
Cloud Resume Challenge if you or someone you know is interested in getting into the cloud, and stay for his hot takes on mid-century children's literature!
0:00 - Intro & Background
1:55 - Cloud Resume Challenge
- a child of the pandemic
-
https://twitter.com/forrestbrazeal/status/1254822417203113986?s=20-
https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/-
https://acloudguru.com/blog/news/introducing-the-cloudguruchallenge 5:57 - Success Stories
- Hall of fame https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/halloffame/
- Pay-as-you-go cloud made this much more affordable
9:17 - Community & Cohorts
- Join the Discord https://discord.gg/2PTwAth
10:09 - Employers
- Most people don't even need Forrest's network
- You learn real knowledge going through the projects
- Being able to grow inhouse talent is a competitive advantage
- We need more internships and rotations in the industry
14:23 - Cloud Specializations
- Monthly challenges are themed
- Kesha Williams Machine Learning Challenge
https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/cloudguruchallenge-machine-learning-on-aws15:20 - Career Advice
- Be careful about general advice - we all start from different places
- What DOES work is sharing your network and privilege
16:58 - The Value of Networks
- Don't play Resume Roulette - spray & pray
- Networking is not beneath you
- This is you evaluating the industry as much as the other way around
- Giving the gift of your network and referrals does way more than advice
19:15 - The Right Way to Get Referrals
- always see if you can get a referral when applying
- "How do you know this person" - Cold DMs for referrals don't work
- engage in the community, write blogposts, try stuff out, tag the creator
- Pick Up What They Put Down
22:16 - Why Own Your Content
- Its fine to start on Dev.to or Medium
- But eventually it's important to own your domain/mailing list
23:45 - Specialization vs Megatrends
- Didn't choose the Serverless life, Severless chose me
- Can't forecast 10 yrs ahead - just listen to megatrends
- Generational trends - Lindy effect
- Hypergrowth trends - capturing big % of population every year
- Text Editor wars -> VS Code
26:41 - Mid-century Children's Literature
- Perceptions of reality
- Virginia writing alternate history of the Civil War
- Japanese WW2 equivalent
- Subjective vs Objective Reality
29:05 - The Read-Aloud Cloud
-
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51645863-the-read-aloud-cloud- explain Cloud to non-technical people
- people don't have an intuitive model for why Cloud exists
- helps them ask the right questions
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Speaker Links
- Forrest Brazeal (
@forrestbrazeal):
Site,
Twitter,
Newsletter,
The Read Aloud Cloud
- Randall (
@randallkanna):
The Standout Developer- Swyx (
@swyx):
The Coding Career Handbook-
Discuss this episode on Circle