Wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation…

For some background, I installed my first Linux server as a teenager around 2000-2001. I started working in ops around 2007, transitioned into SRE around 2011, have been working in that space ever since, and I’m now comfortably sitting in Sr SRE rolls.

For that entire time, I never did any formal training of any kind. I’m entirely self taught. Because of this more unconventional approach to this industry, I am positive that I have knowledge gaps. The thing is, I don’t really feel affected by those knowledge gaps very often. I think I have written code in at least a half dozen languages… I can pick a new language up pretty quickly too. What I’m writing isn’t generally very large projects but I’m not typically writing large projects at work… Since containers took over I feel like +90% is simple automation or glue code… I’ve never really had a problem I couldn’t solve in code though.

The situations where I feel these gaps the most is in the interview process. Algorithm design might be important for some people but I really don’t come across situations very often where I need to be concerned about perfect O(1) performance.

System design questions during interviews aren’t great either… “How would you make this system better?” I can explain some things but the closer I get to the front end, the weaker I get… I personally just have zero interest in front end development so I’ve never cared enough to learn it.

Lately I feel like I’ve missed out on working in more interesting roles entirely because of these types of interviews. Sometimes not even because of failing a challenge… Late last year I was interviewing with Etsy and the feedback I got was, “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone on the team said yes but there was another candidate that everyone said yes to as well. They just had a little more experience than you did in a few areas. We only budgeted for one new engineer though so we took the other guy.”

Maybe I don’t know what I don’t know though…

I guess I’m wondering what a solution for this might be? Part time comp sci degree? Bootcamp? Library card and some willpower?

  • @iliketurtlesEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I’ve thought about this a lot as well. Really the hiring process is just so goofy and feels so negative. I try not to let being passed by get to me, and try to learn from it all. For example, my last technical interviewer really hammered away the sql questions. I did ok, but realized I really need to brush up on it. Maybe work on some practice projects involving it. Lastly, I’ve given up entirely on the big leagues (faang, etc). It just is what it is. Even some of the mid level tech companies may be out of reach for some time for me.

    The don’t know what I don’t know feeling happens a lot. I’ve been trying to learn basic CS and dabble with C. It has helped a bit opening up my mind.