So basically I’ve gotten myself into a big boy job after graduating from university in IT infrastructure and Cyber security. However, because my degree is half Jippity and Half Google searches (not entirely true of course but you get the idea) I feel I am severely lacking intermediate programming skills. While my theoretical knowledge is fine, I feel I lack practical experience and mental models. As part of my graduation I worked as a Software (DevOps) Engineer. I learned a lot about software development in a big corporation and enjoyed doing learning the fundamentals (Even though I now know I don’t want to be a software engineer) and can say I (probably) have a good understanding of the core concepts and therefore would be able to fulfill a junior role(?). BUT during the other 3.5 years of my degree I mostly worked in Cloud engineering and Cloud security. So I feel much more comfortable in that area. I have a good understanding of cloud infrastructure and automation.
So did I go back to Cloud engineering? Hah, no! That would be too easy. Why do things the easy way when you can do them the hard way? Anyways, in my streak of job applications, I decided to apply for a junior Data Engineering role for the same reason I applied for the Software Engineer role. I wanted to learn something new and challenge myself. I can’t say I’ve always been a fan of data but I do enjoy creating infrastructure around services. That’s basically the same thing right? …right? I mean, I do enjoy creating pipelines and automating things. I just don’t enjoy the data part of it. 50 interviews later, I somehow managed to land the role. I was very happy and pleased with myself for getting a role outside of my area of “expertise” and I was excited to learn new things an such. However, I quickly realized that I landed a role that was… outside of my area of expertise. I knew basically nothing about actual data engineering and statistics. I knew how to create pipelines and things but I didn’t know how to do it in a data engineering context.
I knew I had to learn a lot and fast. That’s why I started THIS! This incredible blog that I haphazardly threw together in Jekyll, where I will hopefully document my path to becoming a data (devops) engineer to some degree before I start my job. As the title suggests, I very much feel like the imposter in this situation. So, to combat this, I will be writing about (hopefully interesting) things I’ve learned. This way I can share my knowledge with fellow imposters and maybe, just maybe, get rid of this feeling like I don’t deserve to be here.
I hope you enjoy reading my adventures because I sure as shit won’t be enjoying writing them.
