On May 16, Club-Freelance officially became Mindquest. In this article we tell you the reason behind this choice.
What prompted Club-Freelance to becomeMindquest? Read the article to discover its values, mission and ambitions.
Club-Freelance became Mindquest
Club-Freelance: the heart of Mindquest
In 2014, Thomas Delfort, former CIO of large multinational companies, and Manuela Garampon, an expert in recruiting IT profiles, teamed up to create Club Freelance.
Manuela and Thomas’ goal was to help companies cover all their technology staffing needs through comprehensive freelance recruiting services.
Since then, Club-Freelance has grown rapidly.
During 2017, they opened a Sourcing Hub in Spain, bringing the number of its locations to three: London, Paris and Barcelona.
From the Barcelona office a sourcing team specialized in IT careers and offerings helps clients and consultants to meet and exceed their IT goals.
Club-freelance became Mindquest: the answer to the ever-changing IT and technology world
Technology is reshaping not only the way we live and communicate with each other, but also the way we work. Therefore, the skills and resources that IT professionals need to succeed in their careers and those that companies need to succeed in their IT projects are constantly evolving.
In addition, the ways in which companies and teams operate are changing dramatically. And this is just the beginning.
The classic relationships between employees and employers are being radically redrawn. The boundaries between permanent and freelance work are blurring. The talent gap in the tech sector continues to widen, and job seekers and companies have different needs.
As a result, today’s IT professionals are concerned about how best to manage and build a successful career in an ever-changing environment where skills must be constantly updated to remain relevant.
For companies and IT managers, it’s about figuring out how to adapt and keep up with this changing landscape while maintaining agility, competitiveness, and a cohesive approach to talent and operations.
Being flexible, keen to learn and adaptable became then the key to success. The technological IT recruitments must also keep pace with innovation and new horizons.
Therefore, in 2021 Club-Freelance launched Mindquest: the answer to the ever-changing IT and technology world.
Mindquest: a globally integrated talent solutions company with a digital edge
Drawing on the experience and expertise of Club- Freelance, Mindquest adapts to a borderless IT & Tech world.
With Mindquest, in fact, the company expands its offerings.
No longer just a freelance recruitment service in the IT industry, its
expertise now includes permanent recruitment and expands support for clients
across borders.
But, how to reconcile the two positions and help the global
IT industry reach its full potential?
Mindquest likes to think of it as a lifelong journey for both professionals and companies. It is a quest that requires all parties to be in constant motion. To get out of their comfort zone, to make a few mistakes, and to learn to keep moving forward.
Mindquest: value and mission
Mindquest offers companies and candidates in the IT sector integral, high-quality recruitment services, combining the speed and convenience of the latest digital tools with a human touch.
That is to say, the company matches an innovative digital platform for IT jobs. This with a dynamic team of recruitment experts who are highly skilled in the IT industry.
More specifically, Mindquest’s unique model is based on approaching each position through a professional duo consisting of an experienced business key account manager and a talent sourcer specializing in the technology stack of the offering.
Mindquest’s model
This ensures an agile and deeply experienced-driven hiring
process. Moreover, both the company and the candidate receive close,
personalized treatment. They deal with a single point of contact as they are
assisted at every stage of the process, from onboarding and job search to
offboarding.
The company’s mission is to help companies secure the right IT professionals for their technology projects and support IT experts in finding the best career opportunities.
Find more about Mindquest recruitment and career services here.
Mindquest’s ambition
With offices in London, Paris and Barcelona, Mindquest builds on its previous experience revolutionizing the IT freelancer industry as Club Freelance to help businesses and tech experts across the world be successful and make the global IT industry thrive.
In conclusion, Club-Freelance becameMindquestto bridge the gap between Europe’s most brilliant minds and innovative brands.
Need advice on how to start or develop your freelance consulting business in tech or IT? Need to start a new permanent or freelance assignment? Join Mindquest and get support from our team of experts.
Christoph Rumpel is a PHP developer and Laravel expert from Vienna who has his own development and consulting company and teaches others through Laravel Core Adventures and Mastering PhpStorm. He discusses how he got started with coding and his transition from employee to independent developer.
I began coding 10 years ago when I was at university. I started university a little bit late because I was playing in a punk-rock band for around 10 years, and we tried to make that happen. We started when I was 14 and we played till I was 25 or something like that, and we really wanted to make this dream come true. But the music business is so hard, and it was very difficult.
After three albums and a lot of concerts in different countries, it was going quite well. But it wasn’t enough to say “okay, this is working out as we expected.” And then, 24, I thought “okay, what should I do next? Should I get a normal job, something similar to what other people have?
I had had contact with doing little websites for the band, making videos, recording a little bit. So, everything regarding multimedia was of interest to me. Then I started university doing something where you did all those things, but also where we had design and programming. And that’s when I started programming.
And yeah, right from the beginning, I thought “okay, this is really cool. You just have a text editor, you type something, you code something, and suddenly you can create something.” And it was this feeling which really got me right from the beginning. I switched my focus from audio and video recording to coding, and that’s when I really started coding and started using PHP. I think I’ve been using PHP for 19 years now, so quite some time.
Why did you decide to become a PHP developer in particular?
I chose to use PHP first because it was very easy for me to use. We also had Java at university and I struggled a lot with it, especially coming from a creative design perspective. Java wasn’t something that I enjoyed, right from the beginning.
PHP was pretty cool because it was very easy to start with and you had a lot of dynamic features already. And, yeah, those easy wins I think is what drove me to use PHP at the beginning. But it wasn’t like it was always fun.
After the first two years of PHP, I felt that I was evolving but I felt like “okay, it’s cool, but it feels like PHP is holding me back.” Especially back then, like 8-10 years ago, PHP was in a phase where you felt like it was getting old. It was maybe not maintained that well anymore. The sources available were not that good anymore.
It didn’t feel like professional coding to me at that time, so I thought about switching to something else like Ruby. I started with a little bit of Ruby for a few weeks or months, and I really enjoyed it. Everything is an object, it’s still simple, but also clean and more professional. And, I thought, “okay, I’ll stop with PHP and I’m going to be a Ruby developer now.”
And then what happened?
But then I got a new job and they were using PHP. And then I was back with PHP again and I’m like “oh my, okay, so I still have to work with PHP.” But it was like a turning point for PHP, I felt.
I think the release back then was something like 5.3. And I think they introduced namespaces and also closures, and then, suddenly, there was Composer. Suddenly, everything changed because now you had this way of getting packages, of getting code from others. You could also check out those repositories, see if there were tests done, how many people were working on it. Suddenly, you had this scale. It was like suddenly PHP is evolving again and there are a lot of things happening.
Also, It was back then when I started with the Laravel PHP framework. And Laravel at that point was using the latest features of PHP. It felt like PHP but also looked very different. I thought “okay, maybe I should give PHP another chance”. And yeah, I’m pretty happy that I did and don’t regret my decision at all.
Speaking of decisions – after some time being an employee, you decided to go off on your own and become an independent PHP developer. How was the transition?
The transition from being employed to having my own company was, of course, a big one. Everything changes from one moment to the other for me.
I was pretty happy at my last company. We had a really amazing team and amazing company. But I always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to try something on my own.
I also enjoy working alone quite much so you have to think about several things. Do you like working alone? Do you like doing your own taxes, your own finances?
These are things that definitely change a lot, and you switch from maybe coding 80% of the time to maybe only coding 50% of the time because the rest you have to be thinking about your company.
You have to get clients. And You have to talk to them. You have to go to meetings. Everything that is normally spread amongst all the employees, you have to do on your own, and you have to think about that a lot before being self-employed.
But for me, I was always the type of person who really wants to be part of every task at a company. So, if there is a design decision, I wanted to take part of it as much as possible. Why are we doing this? What is the benefit? I always ask myself that, and not every company wants you as a developer to be in everything because it could be difficult. I really like being part of all the tasks, and this is why it was a perfect fit for me.
Another thing you have to think about a lot is how you get clients, or what you want to do to make money. For me, currently, it is about doing freelancing. So I help other companies with coding, maybe just helping them out as a consultant. So, I can help them in very different ways. But I also have my own products, video courses. And these are the two different ways how I get my income.
What was particularly helpful during this transition?
The one thing helping me a lot while making the transition from having a company to being autonomous was that I was already quite active in the community. On Twitter, and I was also active at local meetups one or two years before I switched, etc.
I didn’t pay attention to it at the time, but by the time I decided to be autonomous, people were already coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, I know you are autonomous now, could you help us with this or that?’” So, I didn’t have to ask anyone. People were already coming to me and asking me if I could help them with stuff.
I only realised later how helpful was for me to be out there. Sharing code on Twitter, on repositories or on GitHub, writing blog articles, etc. In everything you do, at some point people will notice you and may come back to you for help, and that was a great help.
It helped me get clients and projects. Especially the first year, when you want to have something so that you can make some money and that the transition is not too big.
What’s the best career advice you have ever been given?
It’s a very boring one. But it’s just true and it just has helped me so much. And that is going step by step with everything that you do. It sounds super boring but it has helped me so much in my career, with every project, with every goal that had in my life.
It feels super overwhelming at the beginning, it feels maybe even impossible. But if you break everything down into little steps, then you see a road down which you can go. You have those little wins with every step that you take and that will help you stay focused, stay motivated and keep going and going step by step.
It’s the one tip that was shared with me many years ago and that now I’m sharing with others because it has just helped me so much on my journey.
from Oracle to developer advocacy: a database career
Franck Pachot is a Swiss database career expert working as a developer advocate at the open-source distributed SQL database firm Yugabyte. Here’s how this Oracle ACE Director, Oracle Certified Master, and AWS Data Hero went from consulting to developer advocacy, his take on new database technologies and his advice is for those looking to go into the field.
Interested in more database management career advice? Here’s how becoming an Oracle Certified Master led this expert to a stellar DBA career.
How did your database career start? What’s your career story?
Actually, I’ve always been working with databases. At university, I even started some projects on Oracle. I did my first internship developing with Oracle Forms, and then I’ve been working in development teams on Oracle and Db2. I also did a lot of data warehousing with business objects on Db2, then on Oracle. And mostly as a consultant.
My big change, a few months ago was to move out of the consulting part. But before I was always working at the customers’. Also, I started to look at open-source databases a few years ago with mostly Postgres because this is where users of Oracle are looking at when they want to move to open source.
So, I started on the development side, and I learned and enjoyed working with databases. Then I did also some DBA stuff and some operations work, as well as things to do with the development and data modelling. And what I really like is the communication between the two, developers and operations. That is not always something easy to see in all companies.
Why Oracle Database?
The database I know the best is Oracle because I’ve been working with it many, many years and I really like the technology. I think that the decisions that were made at the beginning are really good ones.
I mean, the architecture made at a time where databases were in megabytes or gigabytes is still valid for databases today, so this is really great. And also because this database is quite old, it has a lot of instrumentation and troubleshooting tools. And this is really what I like about it.
You can really try to understand what happens, in fact, What I’ve seen with many other databases is that people try to guess: what about adding memory? What about adding this index? And my experience on Oracle is that you can understand what happens, where the time is spent, and then try something, but based on facts and things that you can measure.
Also the community around the vehicle. I’ve been an Oracle ACE and an Oracle ACE Director. Going to conferences and the communication with the Oracle product managers, that is really good.
What about NoSQL databases? What’s your take on them, what’s making them so popular?
It was first about the scaling, but I think really that the thing that platforms like MongoDB or AWS DynamoDB are doing really well is to provide the API that the developers wanted rather than telling the developer: it’s not efficient to get things object-by-object from the database. But they wanted to get objects because they have objects in Java, and then Mongo DB provides this API. Then you lack some features, some performance. But at least you provide really what the users want, and then they improved the things behind.
And that’s really different from what I’ve seen with SQL. I’ve seen a lot of people just telling developers: your code, your design is bad. For example, I have a lot of colleagues, DBAs who hate Hibernate because they see bad queries coming from it. But they do not realize that development today needs something more agile than building complex SQL queries that are difficult to test. I mean, you can test them, but it’s a different language, different test suites and all of that.
We need to listen to the users that need it. Maybe we think it’s not the right choice, but they have all the constraints and they need that. And we need to provide them with that. And this is what NoSQL vendors like DynamoDB, MongoDB are really good at, selling this API.
What would you encourage newcomers to the world of IT to focus on?
I would encourage people to look at databases because we really lack people in databases, in both development and in operations. But, of course, it depends on what you like to do.
I really enjoy databases for many reasons. First, because you really get to have a look at the basics of the software, the data structures. Also, in the business world, you work with users from different departments, and that’s also interesting. I especially loved data warehouse projects because you talk to the user directly and you provide them value in a direct way.
They spend the day entering data into the system, and you can show them the value of having all this data. That they can query it and make reports, and that’s interesting. Everything that touches users, developers and operations is interesting. And it’s a good thing about working with databases.
What would you recommend to those looking to get started with their database career to do first?
My advice is: to try to learn SQL.
At first glance, it looks like an old language, like writing in English like in COBOL or those old languages. But manipulating data with sets of wholes is really powerful.
I would encourage anyone who has to develop with or for a database to at least understand how the database works, that it provides a service to process data and not only something like an object store or JSON store.
Data scientists and DBAs: how do these two positions fit together?
We need communication between the two.
If the data scientist manipulates a lot of data and does a lot of analytics without knowing how it is stored behind. Well, they will get frustrated if they expect the same response time as a search on Google for example. Because they think that it’s just data they query and that they should have the result. This without understanding the complexity of storing, indexing, partitioning, and all of that. So, communication between the two is quite important.
The task of the DBA will probably change with managed services with cloud. Less time spent on patching and what I call the boring stuff. Some people like to do recurrent tasks. But installing, patching, that’s not where I like to interact with databases. I prefer performance training, looking at the design and working with the users and developers.
You went from a database career in the consulting world to being a developer advocate at Yugabyte. What was the transition like?
The advocacy part was already something I was kind of doing, being an Oracle ACE director, being an AWS Hero, blogging a lot, and being probably too much on Twitter. So, this advocacy part was something I was doing. The difference is that now it’s my full-time job. I don’t go to customers, so this is just another step into this world.
The big change for me was that the technology I was using for 20 years, Oracle, I just stopped using. I didn’t connect to an Oracle database for a few months. And that’s a strange decision, taking the thing that you know best and saying: okay, I will not use that anymore. I have to learn new things.
But in the end, it’s also very rewarding because then you realize that your experience is not only about one technology or a few keywords. And what I was doing on databases, I’m still doing that on the same concepts and learning moving is also very interesting and motivating.
This part was probably what I thought would be the most difficult, but it’s perfect and I really enjoy the developer advocate position.
What does the developer advocate position exactly involve?
It’s a lot of different roles. I help some users, but I’m not in support. I discuss with our development team, but I’m not in product management. I also help with presales and advocating for and showing the database at conferences, but I am not in sales.
I really consider the developer advocate role as a paid user that gets to play with the product, learn about it and advocates for it to be sure that people know about it and that, if they try it, they try it in the right conditions. That’s also something important, being in touch with the users to be sure that they use it correctly, in the right way. If not, they will be frustrated.
What’s the best career advice you have ever been given?
I think the best is one I got when was a junior, from someone with whom I wasn’t working directly. She was in another team and, when left for another company she told me: do not change. Do not change yourself, stay the same. And I think it’s the best advice I’ve been given.
Of course, you change a lot, you get more experience, you learn things. But it’s important also to know that you don’t have to change that, that you have the right approach, that you might want to change and improve things, but you don’t have to.
And that’s probably a good thing. That’s also why I stayed in the area where I was happy, databases, and still changed a lot of things around.
For more tips on pursuing a database career and working with database technologies and Yougabyte, make sure to follow Franck on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.
data scientist, maxence azzouz-thuderoz, ai, nlp, automatic speech recognition, data science phd, interview, behind the screens
Maxence Azzouz-Thuderoz is a data scientist specialising in AI and natural language processing at French consulting firm Axys Consultants. Here is how he went from studying economics and econometrics to embracing data science, and why he is now thinking of pursuing a PhD in automatic speech recognition.
Your background is in economics. How did you end up working as a data scientist?
I went into economics and econometrics because I wanted to be an economist when I was younger. But at the end of my graduate education, I discovered data science.
I got some short lessons and, in the last year of my studies, I decided to change my plans and move to data science.
That’s how I started with economics and ended with a data scientist job.
What did the shift to data science require of you, how was the process?
It requires coding. In economics we didn’t study code that much, so I learned coding. But the transition was kind of easy because I had the mathematical and statistical background that we have in economics and specifically in econometrics, a domain of statistics and economics.
And the transition to data science and traditional machine learning tools was kind of easy because it is about the same mathematical tools, the same statistical tool. So, it was kind of easy.
What was the most challenging part then?
To work with real data. You can find open-source data that is very clean, very nice for studying something, but when you are working with real-world data it can be very complicated.
So, how did you actually manage to get from your economic studies to your current position as a data scientist?
I got a very good friend that found a job in a consulting company in northern France, and he knew that I was looking for an internship. So, he called me and said “Max, I have an opportunity for an internship as a data analyst that I think could be a nice first step for you.”
So, I started at the of commerce with a little internship for my studies and then, when I finished my studies, I went for an internship as a data analyst. Then I found a data scientist job in the consulting industry.
What’s a typical day like in your current role as a data scientist?
Our days are very different because we are always making different things, but, in general, the data scientist job is 70% working with data and 30% is about modelling. No, actually, I would say it’s 70/20 and then maybe 10% is for industrialization. That’s something we have to consider.
What’s the hardest part of working with data these days?
It’s about the information you have about the data.
Some time ago, I was working with a big French banking group, and we did not have all the documentation about the data. Documentation is a very important aspect because you can have the data, but, if you don’t know what it corresponds to, how to work with it, that is a big problem. Sometimes we were working with data that we didn’t completely understand, so we didn’t really understand what we were doing.
It’s about the information you have about the data.
Some time ago, I was working with a big French banking group, and we did not have all the documentation about the data. Documentation is a very important aspect because you can have the data, but, if you don’t know what it corresponds to, how to work with it, that is a big problem. Sometimes we were working with data that we didn’t completely understand, so we didn’t really understand what we were doing.
Where do you see data science and AI 5 years from now?
I think we will see the first industrial applications of quantum computing in AI.
Additionally, 5G is going to change many things. We will have super-connected houses, apartments, etc. So maybe we will have new projects for AI.
Also, cell phones are becoming more powerful every year. So, I would not be surprised if we have AI technology that today we cannot make work on our phones become a reality in coming years.
For example, automatic speech recognition needs a lot of resources. It’s a big challenge. A big part of current research in automatic speech recognition is about the reduction of the parameters in models so that it all needs fewer resources. So, in the years to come, we might see some kind of automatic speech recognition technology working on smartphones, for instance.
You have decided to pursue a PhD. Why is that?
In my current job, I discovered what it was like to work on research and development projects. It was the first time I was working on such ambitious projects, and I found it very interesting. And I really became aware of the difference in understanding between someone who is simply a skilled data scientist and the scientists, PhD people.
People with a PhD were working on the same project as me, and we were absolutely not at the same level of understanding. I think this is one of the reasons why I want to go ahead with a PhD program. Because I want to reach another level.
And the other reason is that I’ve always been interested in research, the university research system. So yes, it’s a little dream, an old dream that I have and that I think could be nice to realise soon.
So, I recently started to check out universities, looking for a PhD program around automatic speech recognition. It’s a big area.
For more tips on data science, AI and automatic speech recognition, make sure to follow Maxcence on LinkedIn.
Andy Jones is a London-based Microsoft Technical Architect working for BT Enterprise. He writes about modern desktop solutions on his blog Move2Modern and is a co-creator of the Cloud Management Community YouTube channel.
He recently sat down with us to talk about the work he is doing helping the endpoint management community and share some tips for those just getting started.
I didn’t start off down the tech route, to be honest. I wanted to be a quantity surveyor but ended up decided to make a move and do an MSc in computer science. Then, on the back of that, I got offered a position for coding, and I went to a bespoke development house. And that role basically put me on the road. I was going from place to place and basically living in different towns, spending a contract here and a contract there. Coding banking systems, mainly.
And, while I was doing that job, a company I was doing some work for picked me, and it was a good position back in central London. And I was kind of living there at the time, my mum was quite ill. So, it served a purpose, and I decided to jump ship. And I’ve worked for them ever since. I’ve actually been here for quite a few years, like 25 years or so.
Why did you end up not going down the quantity surveyor career path?
The time in which I graduated wasn’t a good time in the economy, I was finding it difficult to find a job, so I decided to go back into education.
And I’ve actually got a twin brother who’s always been into engineering, and he already had a job. He’d been through university, and, funnily enough, he works for the same company as me. We reached a point where people confuse us. He lives in a different part of the country to me, but I’ve had people in America come up to me thinking I’m him and what have you. But he’s always been technical, and I kind of followed his lead a little bit and we kind of do fairly similar stuff now.
What do you do these days? What does your job involve?
In theory, I work within the pre-sales team, but my specific unit is pretty small, so I get involved with basically talking to the customers with our account teams picking up the requirements for modern management type solutions, largely Windows devices but it also might be iOS or Android. And then I take that requirement, put it into a proposal and that goes back to the customer. And then, if and when we win, I lead the engineers, assigning engineers to that project and overseeing it. In some instances where we don’t have the resources, I implement the solution myself as well.
So that’s why I like to keep technical. I don’t like to be in front of customers and not know what I’m talking about. You know, it’s a bit like going to an electronics store and asking someone about this latest TV and they don’t have a clue.
You need to know what you’re talking about, so I improved my skills and learn many things, hence the creation of a YouTube channel to participate in the community.
Let’s talk a bit about that. You are the co-founder of the Cloud Management Community YouTube channel, which focuses on the modern management of end-user devices and identities using Microsoft’s cloud. How did it all start, what prompted you to begin this adventure?
I started this community around about seven months ago or something like that. I started it with a colleague who worked with me at the time, and it was during the lockdown period. Everyone was online. Everyone was looking to do more online. My job kind of continued because I work from home anyway the majority of the time, but I challenged myself to learn. And the way I thought would be a good way of doing it was to write a blog and create a YouTube channel. So, we started the channel.
There were very few options out there where people provided videos around the nuts and bolts, a step-by-step approach to do things like configuring, rolling out, you know — managing devices through the cloud. There was one other channel that’s still quite big out there, but we thought we could give a slightly different take on it, and I wanted to give content to which someone who was in my shoes, starting out, could relate to. I wanted to give back to people that might be starting in their journey and, in a way, document my own journey. The other colleague that I worked with on it was more advanced. And he had more experience, so he could kind of tackle some of the more complex solutions. But we started out doing videos together.
What was the most challenging part of that process?
The whole environment, starting up, trying to give yourself a persona and basically not embarrassing yourself on camera, editing and what software to use — there was a whole new field for us there.
But gradually we learned it. Gradually we got better, and that enabled us to concentrate more on the content rather than on the quality of the videos, etcetera. So yeah, it’s been a long journey, although it’s only been seven months but I think we are progressing quite well.
What have you learned so far from the experience?
I’ve learned that there’s a hell of a lot of people in the community that are really open and willing to help you. They’re on a learning journey themselves. They’re raising their status, if you will, within the technical community but, at the same time, they’re really learning a lot, and I think that’s probably a call for a lot of people. Yes, they probably want to develop their career to a higher status, but they’ve also got a hunger to learn.
What’s your advice for those just starting?
I would certainly say get some qualifications under your belt. But that’s not everything.
Build yourself a reference system. Get hands-on experience. Play around with it for yourself and use that as a model going forward. If you’re in a community and you’re asking a question and someone says, try this, try that — you’re not going to be able to do that unless you’ve got your own computer system. Set up your own lab to try and test things out. I think that’s really key.
And keep learning. Keep up to date. But be curious. Ask questions and don’t be afraid to fail. We kind of live in a society where people are maybe a bit afraid of that. But you learn from your mistakes and it’s only then that you really get to the bottom of understanding, sometimes, when you make a mistake or you’ve done something wrong.
Where do you see the device management world going? What are the most promising areas in the space from a career perspective?
In the modern management world, pretty much it won’t be too long before the majority of people move over to cloud management of devices. We’ve already passed the 50% mark from on-premises to cloud, and I think that will accelerate.
But within that whole realm of device management and cloud management, database management, artificial intelligence and IoT — I think those are going to be clear winners for a number of years to come.
For more tips on cloud management, modern desktop solutions and cloud careers, make sure to follow Andy through his blog and the Cloud Management Community’s YouTube channel, as well as on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Cybersecurity engineer Lola Kureno shares cybersecurity career tips and discusses how a single event set her on a completely unexpected professional path.
Lola Kureno is an Israeli-born cybersecurity engineer living in Tokyo and working for IT training and certifications provider INE. An expert pentester and ethical hacking advocate, Lola shares cybersecurity career tips and discusses how a single event changed her life forever and set her on an unexpected professional path.
Interested in more cybersecurity career insights? Discover what makes a state-of-the-art SOC.
You have quite an amazing career story. You set out on a very different path, and then a major event changed everything. What happened?
It’s quite a long story. My background was not in tech at all. Since I was three years old, I was a classical ballerina. That’s what I was set to be my whole life, or so I thought. I was a professional. I was with dancing companies and had all my life centred around classical ballet. That’s all I knew how to do.
And then I had a very bad car accident. I spent six months in the hospital, plus two years of rehabilitation just to get back on my feet. It was really bad. I was a passenger in my coworker’s car. She broke a couple of bones but was okay. But it was a frontal impact for me, and it was not only the physical side of things. It is not good for your mental health to think that all that your life is about can end in a second.
After I was kind of physically recovered, I really didn’t know what to do. That’s why I left the US, where I was living, and went to Europe. I spent about a year not doing anything. I didn’t know what to do with my life.
Later I went to Lisbon and that’s where I met my husband and got married. We moved to Tokyo, and life here was very different from anything that I was used to. And eventually, I had to get a job, but I didn’t know how to do anything else besides ballet.
So, I got a normal job in a company, like 8 to 5, but I wasn’t happy. It paid, but it wasn’t anything that let me be ambitious, be competitive, learn and study. It was boring. Get back from work and watch TV, go to sleep and repeat. The same routine. It didn’t make me happy.
And then you found tech. Why did you go into IT and pursue a career in cybersecurity?
Computers were always a hobby for me. My father was an engineer, and I got my first computer when I was really young. But it was just something I did when I had time.
And I shared with my husband that I was feeling like I was a waste, that I wasn’t doing anything. And he said “well, you shouldn’t. You’re smart just do something with the computer. You like computers.”
But, you know, I had that image, that thought that if I didn’t have a degree in engineering or computer science or something related, I couldn’t do anything. And I was in my early 30s, I was not a kid anymore.
I didn’t know what to do, so I started researching about maybe getting a first degree, something like that that I could do. And I came across something along the lines that you could actually hack for a living. And I was like really, hack for a living? That was very intriguing to me. I was very curious about it. So, I started researching and that’s when I learned about cybersecurity and something got into me. I started researching more career options and that’s how it started.
So, how did you actually get started in your cybersecurity career?
After discovering all of this, I couldn’t think of anything else but that. I still had my full-time job, but I would come back from work and be back on the computer. I did that on the weekends.
And, talking to people, I met someone who was studying for the eLearnSecurity Junior Penetration Tester (eJPT) certification. And he said, well, there is this platform where you study and, when you feel ready, you just buy the test, take it and can get certified. I had read about some other certifications, but I didn’t feel qualified to take any of them. I was just starting, you know.
So, I would study every day using materials from the cyber mentor Heath Adams. He was my first big source of information. And then I started looking at cyber security content from Neal Bridges. That was another community that really gave me lots of information. From there, I met many amazing professionals like Phillip Wylie, an amazing pentester who now is a personal friend of mine besides being a colleague in the industry.
And yeah, that’s how it started. I eventually took the eJPT test and passed it. Later, I got an internship, being an intern for Neal Bridges’ personal consulting company. I spent some months being his intern and learned a lot of things.
I was learning continuously. It was an everyday thing. I didn’t do anything else, just study. And then the opportunity to work at INE was presented to me, and I took it.
What does your current position as a cybersecurity engineer involve?
Actually, penetration testing is just a small portion of my current job tasks. I do much more than that. I would say that penetration test is maybe like 15% of it all, 20% perhaps.
Lots of what I do involves talking not only to coworkers but talking to clients. If you don’t know how to talk to people, you’re behind. So, you need to have those soft skills.
Are programming skills a must for a successful cybersecurity career?
You don’t need to be a developer, you don’t need to be a coder. But it helps to at least to understand what’s going on in a piece of code. You use Bash, PowerShell, Python, Go, Ruby. Those are some of the languages that we are always using.
You don’t need to know how to use these languages at a development level, but knowing what’s going on helps. If you come from a development background, it helps. Absolutely, very helpful.
What skills would you recommend others to focus on to advance their cybersecurity career?
would say that it’s wonderful that you’re focusing on all your hacking and pentesting skills, but know that you need some other skills to go with that.
Right now, a big part of my routine is learning cloud. My job is a lot in the cloud. Of course, I’m still studying pentesting, but I am studying cloud because I need it for my job. I know the fundamentals, but I still feel that’s not enough, and cloud it’s now a crucial skill for the whole cybersecurity world. It doesn’t matter what your job is in cyber: you need to know some cloud.
What other advice would you give to people pursuing a cybersecurity career?
There is always room for improvement. It doesn’t matter if you are someone who’s one year into the industry or 10 or 20. There is always something new to learn. It doesn’t stop.
Talk to people. Don’t hide behind your computer screen. Network.
Also, make sure to have an active LinkedIn profile. Many people think that LinkedIn is only for job hunting, so after they finally find a job, they let their LinkedIn profile die, and that’s a big mistake.
The fact that you already have a job doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be open to opportunities. There are always things to do, not only your full-time job. So, keep networking, keep talking to people.
Go to conferences. If you can’t go to a conference, volunteer for them. Volunteering for conferences gives you the opportunity to be in contact with wonderful people. Brush your soft skills.
And if you’re not in the industry yet, if you’re still hoping to get your first cyber job, finding a mentor is a good idea. Plenty of people would be very happy to help you out. Don’t be afraid of connecting to people.
Lastly, don’t give up. Many times, when I was job hunting, I came very close to giving up. But, since I had networked so much, I had so many people who knew that I was job hunting. And they didn’t let me give up. That’s another benefit of networking. These people have your got back, they keep you accountable, they keep you on track. So, don’t give up.
It’s hard. You will get many noes for silly reasons. You will get 10, maybe 15 or 100 noes. But you will get that yes.
For more tips about pentesting and cybersecurity careers, make sure to follow Lola on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Jake Furlong, Technical Lab Developer at AWS tells us about his DevOps career and how we went from US Marine to becoming an all-around DevOps specialist.
From US Marines to AWS, a DevOps Career. Jake Furlong is a Technical Lab Developer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and a self-taught DevOps expert, Site Reliability Engineer and cloud architect. He tells us how he went from being in the US Marine Corps to DevOps Career and to becoming an all-around DevOps specialist. And shares DevOps career tips and insights.
You spent several years with the US Marines and your educational background is in business. How did you transition into tech and devops career?
I got out of the US Marine Corps and, honestly, I just took the first job that I could find. I started training new employees on how to use an Avaya telecom system; which I myself had no idea what that was. I did that for a few months and then they moved me into another role; as director of admissions systems and analytics. I had access to some free courses. So I took calculus and some computer architecture classes because that was kind of was interested in.
Then I stumbled across a CompTIA certification road map online and picked up an A+ book. I started reading through that and I stumbled across a book called Automate The Boring Stuffand started learning some Python. And most of my job was done through CRM and a lot of Excel, a lot of functions. I just started converting it to Python to automate my job and then I automated my friends’ jobs. And before you know it, it was all just running Python.
And I was talking about it while playing World of Warcraft, of all things. I had a friend in my WoW guild who worked for an SAP company and said “hey, we’re hiring if you want to switch into tech”. I talked to my family about doing a complete and total career switch.
The interview went horrible, but they were very very nice. I was willing to learn and they had seen how much I had learned in such a short time at my previous job and gave me a chance. I got an offer and that was the beginning.
You have quite a portfolio of certifications. Is that how you learned the most?
As I said, I read through that A+ book, but mostly for the knowledge. Based on what I wanted to do in IT, I didn’t really want a hardware-related certification. Because I think that, for hiring managers, sometimes it’s easy to misconstrue a person’s skills based on what certifications they have. So I wanted to make sure I was marketing myself in a way I thought was relevant for the things that I wanted to do.
That’s when I found AWS and I kind of looked at the state of IT at the time and figured that cloud was really the way forward. I got AWS certified and then my company was getting really hands-on with GCP. So I got GCP certified and all of that was through free online courses and a paid Linux Academy subscription. I thought about getting an IT degree but it was just too expensive and there wasn’t enough hands-on. It was mostly theory. So I kind of took the theory from the books that I had, and then once I found Linux Academy, I just did every course.
Anything operating systems, Windows, Linux, database programming, web stuff, web development, cloud — whatever I could find. Then I found a site called Open Source Society University, and they have a GitHub page that basically gives you a list of courses from edX, Coursera or other free online tools that teach you the equivalent of a computer science degree.
That was very, very helpful. Then I just took that information and volunteered for every project at work. I took any ticket and tried to automate it, stuff like that. And the whole time, I was told that certs aren’t important to all the people that I worked with. But I think that hiring managers and HR might disagree. And let’s be honest, it’s kind of hard to get jobs without proving you have the knowledge and.
Since I don’t have a degree in anything technology related, I felt I needed to kind of differentiate myself a little bit. So I got those to kind of compensate for not having a degree.
What’s your opinion on free courses vs bootcamps or official certifications?
I always go with free stuff or at least like the inexpensive Udemy sales. I think bootcamps are great for entry-level, but they don’t really allow you to work past that and most of the content online will get you through the basics. Try to solve a problem or find a problem to solve and really get your hands dirty with development or cloud engineering.
Certs are fine if you need them for a specific position or career goal. But I wouldn’t do one to learn. I might take the study guide and use that, but I think certs are a huge market and there’s a lot of money to be made from people that are looking to get certified.
I honestly just went to a lot of meetups. And I pretty much changed my podcasts to tech podcasts and just listened to those all the time.
I also focused on vendor documentation as opposed to online learning. Whether that’s the Kubernetes administrator guides or AWS or GCP documentation. Because you’re getting it straight from the horse’s mouth, and, as a musician (I studied jazz) we always go back to who was the original musician and study their technique and their ideas. So I kind of took the same approach to tech. Where did JavaScript come from? Where did Python come from? And try to study the root of where that came from.
How was the experience of being with the Marines. What’s your biggest takeaway from your time with them?
I had a great time in the Marine corps. Believe it or not, I thought it was a lot of fun.
My biggest takeaway was really about how to work on a team. As much as there’s a lot of technical things I learned and things like that.
There’s just something about being humble and being a life-long learner and always striving to be better. About knowing your weaknesses and seeking self-improvement and being self-reliant and self-disciplined.
In tech, you have to because nobody is going to force you to hone your skills or learn a new programming language or how to administer Docker containers. You know, just that whole self-reliant aspect of being a continuous learner.
You design and implement technical labs, which are training programs for AWS customers. What does that involve?
I work on the training and curriculum team, and we deliver content to our AWS customers. We have an awesome team.
I work with them to help build and design labs and lab instructions. So, if you were to go to AWS, and want to take a course to learn how to be an architect, for example, we have designers and curriculum developers, architects, managers and product managers that we worked together with to formulate a plan to build a course.
And my job day-to-day is to go through and support them so that, when they get to the hands-on portion, that a student can click start lab and that everything underneath the hood is provisioned and ready, works every time, and is repeatable across multiple devices or operating systems. I also ensure that the lab instructions are clear and easy to understand, from people who may have a lot of experience to people for whom this is their first time working with the cloud.
So it’s a technical role, but there’s a lot of human aspect to it. Understanding how people learn and how people learn technology – as a person who is basically self-taught, I use that a lot in this role.
First in DevOps career, now DataOps. The DevOps philosophy seems to be permeating all areas of IT. What do you think is the success behind this way of thinking? What will be the next “Ops”?
I will start by saying that I don’t think DevOps is a real thing. As a community, we can’t even agree on what it is. We’ve been doing this since the 70s, the 80s? Really since the 60s. With Deming, and all of the work he did toward continuous improvement, total quality management, things like that.
And I think what we’re going to see is that we’ll revisit value stream mapping. How can we best automate and streamline value stream maps. Right now, we’re automating everything, and it’s all about pipelines and getting the developers close.
I think that’ll be short lived. We should have always been doing that, and I think connecting development to automation and ops problems is good. I think DevOps, the core of it, we want the developer problems and ops problems to kind of be the same problems, right? Where ops informs development workflows.
Developers use that workflow to produce either new tools or better tools, or even more consistent infrastructure. But sometimes ops doesn’t want things to change. And, as somebody who’s worked in the ops world, I totally respect that and I completely understand. As somebody who’s worked on the devish side of DevOps, I understand needing to get new versions of things out and upgrading things and patching things so that there’s a balance between it.
But I think what we’re really going to see is that, as you get to DataOps and really anything that needs to inform ops, is that everything is going to be data-driven. But it’s going to have to be value streamed.
So, what is the most important? What do you get the most benefit from as far as value? How much money are we really making or saving by approving X project or making Y operations a department priority?
I think, eventually, and once you start finding an efficient way and accurate way to attach dollars or time to these things, you may have some time and value attached to them as it pertains to the business and not just how many commits you made last month or something
DevOps career: What’s the day-to-day of a DevOps team like
A lot of it is requests for automation, declarative infrastructure, tons of monitoring, moving into containerization or modernizing orchestration tools, stuff like that.
I think a lot of it is also developer advocacy and just DevOps evangelism. Because it’s been around for a while, but it’s still relatively new. It hasn’t really permeated all the cultures yet. So, while a lot of people have a DevOps team, the cultural side I think needs a lot of work. So a lot of time is spent explaining why we’re doing this.
It sounds like the value is obvious, but it still takes up a lot of time to describe why we need resources, why we need time, why we should be doing certain projects.
A lot of the time is spent researching new tech, building up labs on your workstation or in the cloud somewhere, and testing a deployment meeting with ops teams to discuss their pain points.
And then, of course, all the pipeline things, so it’s a very collaborative job. You’re not going to see a DevOps person in a silo.
On a given day, you never know what you’re going to do. But it’s always going to be automating something or fixing something or updating something or monitoring something, justifying what it is that you’re doing.
What’s the best career advice you have ever been given?
Ironically, it actually came from a conductor of a music organization. He said “find something you love and do that because, no matter what you do or where you go, you’ll always be doing something that you enjoy.
Just do what you know is right and provide value to everyone around you and don’t worry too much about certifications. If you have the knowledge, it will all come together.
Just always be learning.
For more tips about DevOps career, make sure to follow Jake on LinkedIn.
John Micale, Customer Experience Account Manager at oXya, shares tips for efficient SAP project management SAP career advancement.
SAP project management expert John Micale is Customer Experience Account Manager at oXya, a Hitachi Group company delivering leading SAP run management, consulting and cloud hosting services.
John is tasked with ensuring that a consistent, high-quality service is provided to all of the company’s customers, overseeing client relationships, project management and business development.
He tells us about his career beginnings and shares tips for efficient SAP project management and career advancement.
Interested in SAP careers and SAP project management? You might also enjoy this interview about another possible career path for an SAP consultant.
How did you get started in tech? How did you start working at oXya?
I’ve been using computers, playing video games and using technology since I was a kid. When it was time to choose a university, I decided to pick one that specialized in engineering and technology. I earned my degree in computer engineering, and that kind of led me on to this track of IT and how I wound up at oXya. And it’s kind of a funny story.
When I was in school, I was looking for a job in my last year. I was doing interviews and did an interview with oXya. I had no idea who they were or what SAP and Basis were, but they were really compelling, and they said that they could teach me.
I actually got a job offer from them. But I still had one semester of schooling left, so I couldn’t take the job. But they said “try again in the springtime. And so, I applied for the job again in the spring and they hired me. I really appreciated that opportunity from them.
What are the advantages of working at a specialist consultancy or service management company like oXya, as opposed to working in-house for a sole company?
Number one is definitely diversity in experiences. So, having the exposure to different industries, different customers using different products. You gain a lifetime’s worth or even multiple lifetimes worth of experience and background in just a few years. And I think that was incredible for me and for many of my colleagues working at oXya.
Number two is diversity in projects and technologies. So, touching every kind of operating system and version, every kind of database product, every kind of SAP product. Many companies say “OK, I’m going to use ECC, or I’m going to use Linux.” And that’s it. That’s the decision they made and maybe, every 10 years, they change products and you’re stuck with the same thing. Having that diversity keeps you sharp.
Another thing is that clients who typically use SAP are large and very corporate customers. And, if you are working with them, you’re automatically included in a very corporate environment. Being part of a smaller company like oXya, we have more of a startup-like vibe. So you kind of get the best of both worlds. You get smaller teams and a tighter community, and you move more rapidly, but you can still support this product, SAP, which is this huge corporate tool.
What about the challenges?
The learning curve is really steep. For example, I didn’t know what SAP was, or I didn’t have a lot of strength in database technologies, and to take all of that in at once is quite a lot. If you stick with it, you can catch up at some point, but the learning curve is really steep.
And the projects don’t ever end. That can be a good thing too, that can be in the good category. It depends on what kind of personality you have, but there’s no respite. You are working for a big corp, and they have this upgrade project that lasts two years. And then that’s it for them for a while, whereas, on our side, we’re doing a new project every three months, and it hasn’t stopped in 10 years for me.
After two years in a technical position, you transitioned into a more managerial role. What advice would you give to other specialists looking to take that step?
Being a manager is a job. It’s not just an extra task that you have to do. It took me a long time to realize that, and I see that mistake happen often with new managers. To do it correctly, you have to prioritize that role. It’s not just about having to approve someone’s time off or something like that. The investment in training and people is a full job. If you’re mixing this job as a manager with your technical job, for example, that’s often a recipe for disaster where you choose one priority over another and one of those two will suffer.
Internal company relationships are really important too. That’s an important part of being a manager. It’s not about being a brown-noser or saying nice things to your boss. But management roles are based on trust and execution. There’s not a binary output most of the time, so you have to be a reliable person, and you have to make sure that you are sharing your reliability and your credibility with your managers and with your team.
What are the keys to effective SAP project management?
Understanding the project. I think that’s like the number one. It sounds like a silly thing to say, but I think often folks come in and they say “OK, here’s a project and I’m going to follow a checklist.” But you have to really understand why. Why are we doing this project? What is the real purpose?
Normally there’s a CIO or CFO at some company who has to make some decision, and that trickles down eventually to many projects. And, if you’re not aware of the big picture, then you might not really understand what kind of impact you’re trying to make. So first, you really need to understand the project.
Secondly, coordination in SAP project management is incredibly important, the synergy. And not just internally with your teams and your company, but with your customers or with their third parties. Every customer now has 5-10 vendors, and there’s an expectation that vendors can work together, that there can be synergies and there is not a weak link.
Also, keeping commitments is really important for project management. Everything is essentially a stack of dominoes. If you miss a target, that’s going to affect the whole project. And that doesn’t build trust and or credibility. So, if you’re making commitments, they have to be realistic and you have to keep those commitments. Everything else falls right into place once you meet that.
The deadline to migrate to S/4HANA is rapidly approaching. What do you see as the biggest challenges for a smooth transition?
It all starts with a kind of a legacy mindset. Most customers that are on ECC today say “it’s been working this way for 10 years, 15,20 years. Why do we need to change it?” They say “they will move the goalposts again. Why do we need to make this transformation?”
But the web of external interfaces that connect to ECC makes any concept of transformation really challenging for most customers, especially these really legacy customers. S/4HANA is designed to solve that problem. It’s designed to eliminate the complexity, simplify the code base, simplify the connectivity to it, and kind of futureproof SAP customers from that kind of problem in the future. But making that transformation is still really painful and usually very expensive.
I think the value proposition is really what isn’t obvious for most customers. If you can communicate the future state of the company, not what it will look like in one year or two years after some migration or upgrade, but what it’s going to look like in 5, 10, 15 years; if you can make them see how S/4HANA or cloud-based tools can reimagine their supply chain or things like that, I think that’s when they have the a-ha moment.
It’s not about taking your car and just changing the tires. It’s about turning it electric. It’s a total redesign of the whole concept.
What’s the best career advice you have ever been given?
I would say I had two great career advices. One was to stay humble and have humility with your peers, have humility with your customers. If you’re scoring all the time, it feels good to think that you’re a champ and everything goes right. But then you’re exposing yourself to vulnerabilities or blind spots. So, stay humble. Wins are wins, which is great, but sometimes you need to have an open perspective.
And the second best advice I have been given is: be a buoy. What do I mean by that? Like a buoy in the ocean. Sometimes you want to just be like a Godzilla and knock stuff around and shake things up, especially when things aren’t going well. But, almost all the time, people are looking for stability. They’re looking for reliability, accountability. And, I’ve realized over the years that people will flock to you naturally if you’re stable, if you’re consistent. So be a buoy like in the ocean.
Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
I want to help radically change what customers experience from SAP outsourcing. That’s like a super bold claim, but I think that outsourcing as a concept has always had a bad rep. And I think that a partner can be more empathetic, less transactional. We can be an equal in their organization and be a real partner.
And I’m seeing with my customers that, when they’re treated this way, we get a different experience. They treat us like people, they treat us like partners. They even have more flexibility with us, which says a lot. They don’t have to give us any kind of flexibility, but they do it.
So, I would really like to make that kind of change, and I really want to help train others in this kind of methodology.I want our industry to be more empathetic and more partner-focused. In the real sense. Not in the corny corporate sense, but in a real in a real sense. To really make a difference. Because, otherwise, what are we doing?
For more tips on SAP project management, careers and consulting, make sure to follow John on LinkedIn.
You can also explore our S/4HANA careers guide for a comprehensive overview of how to embark on this promising career journey.
My name is Thomas Mercier, and, almost a year ago, I began a reskilling journey to become a web integrator and web designer.
My name is Thomas Mercier, alias “TomCodeur” on Youtube, and I am 24 years old. Almost a year ago, I began a reskilling journey to become a web integrator/web designer.
We are at the end of October. It is a little after 4 p.m., and I am in the office of my employer’s accountant in order to finally sign the termination of my contract.
I say “finally” because this transitional moment had been hard to accomplish. To undergo this reskilling, I had to find a way to finance my training.
My plan was simple: call on Fongecif, an organization accessible to employees wishing to retrain without having to terminate their employment contract.
Rather attractive, isn’t it?
Yes, except that I never managed to benefit from it. And I wasted over a year trying to put together cases that were all turned down.
So, I decided to change my plan and discuss it with my employer. Luckily, my boss was understanding and offered me a mutually agreed departure. The advantage? It provides access to aid for getting back to work, which includes financing for training.
Well, there was still an important step left:
Convincing the French governmental employment agency Pôle emploi of the seriousness of my reskilling project and show that this decision was not taken on a whim.
I told you that I wasted a year before starting my training. In reality, it was not completely the case: during this year, I took the time to inform myself and I discovered multiple web development training courses within the Haut-de-France region.
This research greatly helped me when I had to demonstrate to my government unemployment advisor that I was highly motivated and determined to carry out this project.
During this “lost” year, I also completed a few self-taught development projects. They were greatly appreciated by my advisor and it really made a difference.
My effort and serious commitment paid off in the end. My financing request has been accepted.
So, here I am in the accountant’s office. All the documents have been signed, the withdrawal period has passed and my month’s notice is over. I am finally leaving my company and my current position, on the way to developer training!
Want to know what happened next?
In the three months after I graduated from Pop School, a 6-month boot camp to become a Web & Mobile Web Developer, I had five interviews. Out of those five interviews, I received two offers. This proves that there is work for the reskilled profiles.
So, what do I take away from this whole story? Reskilling cannot be done overnight. It takes a long time, a time in which we doubt and we are afraid of failure. But it is all well worth the effort.
You just have to believe in it and don’t let go!
If I had to give four tips to someone who, like me, to completely change their career and start working as a developer, I would say:
1. Prepare to learn: your brain will be your best friend in this new adventure. So help it receive all the information you are going to feed it.
2. Set up a routine that suits your lifestyle.
3. Eliminate all distractions: organisational tools and lo-fi music … give yourself every chance to stay focused and be productive.
4. Test your future job: you must ask yourself if it is possible … but know that there are different ways to do it and that this initiative will teach you a lot about your future job.
The final word? Stay motivated and don’t give up!
For more advice on how to get started in your web developer career or transition into development, make sure to follow Thomas on YouTube and through his website.
Rune of Learn Python With Rune tells us about his career story and how one should go about mastering this powerful programming language.
Rune holds a PhD in Computer Science and works as a freelance Python consultant specialising in big data and back-end development. When the pandemic hit, he kickstarted the learning platformLearn Python With Rune to teach others how to learn Python and apply it. He tells us about his career story & how to learn Python, how one should go about mastering this powerful programming language.
How did you go from doing a PhD to working in tech?
Back in the days when I started university, I actually didn’t think of doing a PhD in the first place. I was just starting but I thought learning is awesome, so I immediately decided I wanted to get a PhD.
But while I was studying for my PhD, I realised it wasn’t really for me because it wasn’t really deeply about science. It’s more about publishing papers and getting funding to continue your career.
So after I finished my PhD, I started as a developer mainly in the security area (I’ve been working a lot in the security business.) I realised that the one thing that I liked was getting things done, getting projects done. So, I slowly became also a manager type person and worked a few years as a manager. Then I continued working in a SaaS company as an engineering manager for architecture and back-end teams and stuff like that.
But then you went back to development. How is that? When did you decide to kickstart Learn Python With Rune?
I realised I missed programming a lot, and that’s actually where my journey with Learn Python With Rune started.
I wanted to learn programming again. As a manager, you slowly lose touch with programming because you’re not really doing any professional code anymore. And I kind of missed that.
So, a bit more than a year ago, I got the idea. It was actually when the coronavirus pandemic started. I had more time and was working from home, and I was like “I want to program again.” So, I started this small project. I started producing small projects, publishing them on a web page, and one thing led to another. And it just escalated.
Now, I work as a freelance consultant and they hire me and I do programming again in a freelance manner. And the reason I like that is because you kind of get more freedom. So, if you want to have some vacation, you just do it. It’s more freedom.
Why Python? What makes Python so great?
I had to start somewhere, right? I hadn’t been programming that much in Python professionally, but I’ had been programming in C a lot. C is a really low-level programming language and it’s very effective, but you can make so many errors, pointers and stuff like that. It’s just a pain when you don’t know much because you can just do what a processor can do.
But Python is abstracted away. And what happened with Python over the last maybe 10 years is that it has so many libraries. So you can do everything efficiently. It has been developed a lot, for instance, in data science and big data and stuff like that (I myself work with Python in the big data and back-end side of things.) And you can do all this processing now because you have the libraries that can do all the heavy work, but you just manage it in Python code so it can get beautiful.
It’s easy to understand, It’s readable. It’s almost super code. That’s the main reason I love Python. But there are also some things that I’m not so fond of.
Like what? What is Python not so great at?
It does hide some of the things away, some of the objects and how they are represented. When you are programming in C you know everything exactly on a byte level. In Python, it’s kind of hidden away.
And I see a lot of beginners having a hard time and struggling with what an object is and what object-oriented programming is, for instance. Because we say that, in Python, everything is an object, but really, is it?. I don’t know. It depends on the implementation. And then they confuse object-oriented programming on top of that.
So, I think it does a really good job, but there are some areas that are not easy to understand in Python. But the pain you get from that is way less than the efficiency and productivity you can get from writing code in Python.
How should one learn Python? What are your main pieces of advice?
Nowadays it’s difficult to start actually, in some sense, because there’s so much information out there. So my first advice is to ask yourself: what is it that you want to achieve with Python? What is it that you want to learn? What is it you want to code?
If you just start thinking “I want to program in Python,” then you start a little bit here, a little bit there. All the information is available. The problem is that it’s unstructured. So you get excited about this little bit here, and then you do that, but they are different types of using Python.
If you want to program back-end like I’m doing, then that is one kind of doing. If you just want to do data science, that’s a different way. You don’t really need to master programming that well, you just need to use some libraries and understand a little about math and so on.
So it really depends on what you want to achieve. I think people often go around too much. So, advice number one is figure out what it is that you want with it.
Then find one teacher, one style. It’s just easier. If you take a little bit of this tutorial on the Internet, then a different tutorial, people can do things very differently and it can be difficult to have a cohesive approach.
The third issue is about managing your expectations about how fast it is to learn. When you learn a new language, you can listen to it and understand it. But when you have to express yourself, it’s different. It’s difficult. You don’t know how to say things, but you understand it. And it’s the same with programming.
Suddenly, when you see the solution, how people solved it, you go “yeah, I understand it all and that makes total sense.” But when you have to write it, you might have no idea how to solve problems. And that’s kind of the same problem you have right when you start. You understand Python, but you cannot express yourself in it.
So, I think that would be my three main pieces of advice for beginners.
One: figure out what you want to do. Two: find one tutor or one style of programming, one book. Three: manage your expectations. It takes a bit more time to learn to write Python than to read it.
What’s the difference between a senior Python developer and a junior one?
There are actually some aspects I think people overlook.
One of them is that, when you have a junior in a work environment, you need to help them. If you take somebody straight out of college, for instance, there are a lot of things they don’t teach in college. You know, how to do metrics, monitoring, how to ensure everything is healthy in your system. They don’t teach them that, so that’s one thing they’re lacking. It’s the experience.
Another thing that juniors tend to do is focus on building small systems. Most college-educated and self-taught people tend to do small projects because they’re easier and you have greater chances of success.
But there is an enormous difference between having one tiny system with one tiny server and a distributed system with tens and sometimes hundreds of systems that need to interact with each other and you need to figure out what to do.
What happens when you make changes to this small thing here? How do you rebuild it when it breaks? How do you build systems that scales in features and amount of users and volume of data?
Juniors usually can solve small-scale problems, whereas a senior developer can handle bigger scale problems.
Another aspect I noticed over the years is that juniors are often a bit afraid. When starting in a team, when starting to develop, a junior will not be so quick to contribute to it and will want people to check the code more often and to help them more, because they are a bit afraid.
So, when things go wrong, they don’t really have the confidence to just do stuff. and break stuff and put it back up again. They like that kind of experience and confidence.
My advice for new people is to build something bigger. Build something with somebody else.
You might have done tiny projects in college, or you may have worked together with other people for a bit. But try to make something bigger because you need to be able to build interfaces that interact with each other., where somebody builds one piece and somebody else builds another piece. That will teach you the kind of architecture design principles behind all of it.
I still think that’s a less important part today because there’s a tendency to go to all these microservices or services that are small in framework. And that makes them easier to understand, easier to debug, easier to maintain by other people.
So it’s not as difficult as back in the day when you had this one big monolith that was running everything. Right now, you have small services that are easier to understand, but it also moves the problem somewhere else. How do you find where the problem is when the system goes down? You need to have really really good monitoring to find things nowadays.
So you actually move some of the complexity over to the infrastructure guys or the SREs (Site Reliability Engineers). That’s why they are paid a higher rate now than they used to be. A good SRE is so valuable when you need to find problems in big systems.
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He’s working on a new course portfolio focusing on how to use Python for financial analysis, so stay tuned!
