I quickly learned that my Computer Science degree barely prepared me for a career in DevOps. As an intern at The New York Times, I joined the Cloud Infrastructure team and was thrown into the deep end. I had used AWS before to deploy a simple app in a class, but I had yet to learn how these deployments happened at the scale of a company like the New York Times.

Although my degree did teach me technical problem-solving and continuous learning, I initially felt separated from the traditional coding work I had done throughout college. Despite this, I’ve learned to love DevOps and the large-scale problems DevOps presents. I’ve learned that expertise is not required for success but a willingness to tackle various technical challenges and the ability to learn from them.

In this talk, I will share my journey from intern to DevOps engineer and the lessons I’ve learned. I’ll discuss how I approach technical problems with limited background knowledge and how I’ve gone from fearing these tasks to seeking them out.

Additionally, I’ll also share the countless non-technical skills I’ve gained from DevOps from working with both partner DevOps teams and internal “customers” on a daily basis.