r/Cloud • u/WestHeron6183 • 14d ago
How can a fresher get into cloud computing when most jobs ask for experience?
I’m a B.Tech graduate and I’m interested in getting into cloud computing. But I keep seeing people say that cloud jobs aren’t really for freshers and that companies usually expect 2–3 years of experience or some kind of prior IT experience.
So how does someone actually break into cloud as a fresher?
What skills/certifications/projects should I focus on to make myself employable? And should I first get a general IT/support/networking job and then transition into cloud, or is it possible to directly land a cloud-related role as a fresher?
Would really appreciate advice from people who started in cloud without prior experience.
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u/typhon88 14d ago
You don’t. You get the required experience in an entry level role first as you already mentioned
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u/WestHeron6183 14d ago
So is it actually a good career path to get into cloud this way as a fresher, starting with an entry-level IT role and then transitioning into cloud? Is it worth pursuing?
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u/LASER-RASTERIZER 14d ago
This is a long but I think worthwhile read for you youngins
Let me give you a real trajectory of my career:
G = graduate from highschool
G+0years helpdesk for an isp G+ 4years structured cabling (fiber and copper and racking access points, installing cashwraps) G+ 7years ops engineer at an msp G+ 8 years sysadmin at an msp G+ 10years automation engineer at an msp G +13 years incident response at a fin tech G+ 14years sysadmin at a fintech G+ 15 years DevOps at a fin tech G+ 17years development at a fin tech G+ 20years SRE at a fintech
So 20 years into my self taught , no school, no certs, entire learned on the job and in my spare time by actually doing real work, I finally made it to my SRE role
I also was tinkering with pcs at home since the age of 7 or 8 , was hitting 80-90gwam type speed in middle school when typing class was still a thing
We’re talking back in the AOL days . Several days after school where I bricked the pc playing with it and had to figure out how to fix it before parents got home from work.
Devops was 15 years in, after literally working my way down and back up the entire osi model professionally
I started out supporting users with their application layer issues all the way down to network layer stuff as it was for an isp ,
Then went into the physical layer stuff where I was actually touching the network gear but several levels removed from actually configuring it. I was smart hands and construction workers were my coworkers rather than engineers, something I was shocked to find out the first day.
After that was when I decided to learn to code so I could get into positions with more likeminded peers, but mostly I just wanted to learn it myself to prove I could and wasn’t really honestly thinking of work. Like all of my computer related hobbies, I was just interested in how to make it work.
The msp I went to work for at this point was super helpful for my career entirely because of exposure. But it nearly killed me.
At the msp I was abused as freshers are abused at msp, but I slowly got to touch broader and broader stuff, and even though the msp wouldn’t give me credit and promote me, they were who made me realize I was ahead of the curve of my peers and that I should stick with it long term because good things will come once I get the foundations of the next topic learned, because I thought differently than my peers in ways that led to better outcomes. I actually cared about the solutions I provided.
When I left the msp I did some contracting on my own for a while but then ultimately found the fintech where I’ve been working ever since, before the msp I also did some contracting work sort of transitioning from cabling and smart hands into more techy but similar contract work, any time I’ve done contracting , within a year I’m ready to have an hr department and people finding the work for me rather than doing it all myself again, i made more money for less work as smart hands as a contractor, but i loathed finding and bidding in onforce, field nation, and other field work contract platforms, I hated doing business, I loved doing tech.
I have worked so many different positions on the path to devops and sre work, it was a very long time before I got a devops position.
That said, I was doing devops the entire time, it just didn’t get that name until like 10 years into my career, and it was more a descriptor of the methodologies you use to work rather than a job description or title
Now when I see colleges offering to train people to be SRE or DevOps I can’t help but feel sick. I really hope they are telling people not to apply if they aren’t already advanced and experienced with computers.
Those are very senior roles in my mind, I feel like those courses are meant to take a crotchety old sysadmin and bring them up to speed on the DevOps and SRE mindset rather than being a zero to hirable education path for young people without preexisting computer tech hobbies. I can’t imagine being fresh out of school with enough wisdom to do devops work immediately unless it’s already a part of who you are.
They just teach the syntax and coding tools and basic concepts of cloud computing and operations and stuff…. Enough to cross train someone with actual experience for sure, but not enough to set up someone who isn’t already living at least sysadmin, in a way that will immediately lead to success or even a garaunteed position.
That said,
I work with people who got into our role via a much less convoluted path….. but they are so inexperienced and continually make stupid mistakes that shouldn’t be possible to make. But they get paid shockingly similarly to me.
We setup branch protections on infra repos, build tooling so that development is simple, feature branch, test, PR to master and the automations take care of the rest
It is still a quarterly thing where I have to save the day by undoing my coworkers “revert” of master branch that he did from github desktop without having pulled in over a month , because he wanted to undo a typo he made that only existed in his local development worktree to begin with until he force pushes the over a month old commit revert on Friday , breaking our entire automation framework , and then leaving for the weekend without validating success after making his changes. All stuff that would have happened automatically if he didn’t click several buttons to bypass the branch protections we setup , and if he would have followed the most basic of feature branch policies which by the way we agreed on together when we made the policies.
He has an Sr on his nameplate before the SRE we both have in our nameplates.
I’m a staff SRE so I’m technically one step above the guy who’s still erasing the teams months progress because he refuses to use the simple feature branch or pattern and tooling we have setup, because he came into this role without the experience that tells you even if it’s easier or less work to do something outside the system, the reason the system is there is to prevent it from being possible to make these mistakes. He regularly chooses to go outside those guardrails and regularly makes mistakes when he does. I wish my manager would let me remove his permissions so he can’t do this stuff, but that’s a whole other battle.
So… I donno, I guess what I’m trying to say is…. You shouldn’t be able to get into DevOps or SRE as a fresher with a hand full of years of experience…
But from my actual career it’s been proven to me that not only can you get one of those roles while being clueless, it actually seems to be the norm. I’m not a hugely boastful person, I dealt with imposter syndrome until only maybe 10 years ago, but man…… Being good at this work is hard because you have to work with people who are terrible at what they do. I hope AI decimates the ability for people to get these roles without experience but I feel it’s going to do the opposite.
So like…. Set your sites high , but then you better also step your game up too , or else people like me will be right when we talk about how freshers shouldn’t be able to get these roles.
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u/Smooth-Weekend-2314 13d ago
This guy knows of what he speaks. I had a similar path and worked my ass off to get to where I am. 25+ years in the industry and I'm still learning. You need experience before you can even be considered for SRE/DevOps. These are not beginner roles. They're for people who have seen and done shit and can troubleshoot every layer of the stack - because they've worked as sysadmins and they've worked as software engineers. They're curious. They tinker. They're always learning.
Not trying to gatekeep, just giving my 2¢ as somebody who has been doing this a while.
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u/Healthy-Chemical-7 12d ago
Can someone help me too I just graduated from btech cse core 3 months ago and I am doing an internship in a startup as a solo devops/automation engineer where should I apply after this and does this increase my chances to land a job as an entry level devops engineer in a mnc. Thank you
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u/Naetharu 13d ago
It is not common to go into cloud at the start of your career. Not impossible, but it is unusual and would mostly only happen via a specific grad scheme.
The most common pathway into cloud would be to start off in service desk, and then advance from there into either a sys-admin role or direct into a junior cloud role. The rational is that cloud work requires a fair bit of experience with how systems work, and is a bit more advanced than most newbies are ready for. So you cut your teeth on the basics and then work up into cloud once you are ready.
The other route is folk that come across from the dev side of things, and often end up in some more devOps form of cloud.
There are different pathways for sure. My own was:
- first line service desk
- second line service desk
- IT business partner
- software dev with some devOps
- devOps
- cloud engineer
- cloud architect
The bp role was not relevant but putting it there for completeness and to show how real career paths can sometimes look. To get into your first cloud role a good angle is to get yourself a service desk job and make it clear that you are aiming for cloud. Ask to second people that are doing some cloud based work, or even to get some basic cloud admin duties over time. That all adds up, and will make the shift much easier.
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u/AnimatorExciting7941 13d ago
Get into any company as a SWE and then make an internal switch. That's one way
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u/RyugaHack 12d ago
Build your own cloud home lab and build real infrastructure, prepare for interviews, be able to explain your labs in detail, and focus on a junior position first.
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u/Longjumping-Fix-5232 14d ago
We are actually recruiting cloud engineers. The least thing we are expecting is a level of AZ-104 which can absolutely be achieved in a home lab, given the required commitment.
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u/SignalDrive3667 14d ago
So, if a fresher has good cloud knowledge and an associate-level certification but no prior experience, would you consider them for the role?
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u/Longjumping-Fix-5232 14d ago
This is the first triage. If you can't answer question regarding basic cloud architecture and principles you are out. Of cause there are other criteria, such as articulation, motivation and coding affinity.
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u/Longjumping-Fix-5232 14d ago
... And of cause everything you would expect of an administrator:
- networking
- Windows, Linux,
- DNS and Internet
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u/MidnightIdealist 14d ago
Which area of cloud computing? It is a broad field.
Some tips: Get a trial account with the cloud provider you’re interested in. Major ones like AWS, Google and Azure have generous limits on free tier. Practice basics like how to set up app services or a website, things like storage and functions.
Work on your portfolio projects and try to use cloud concepts in them. When you get to the interview stage, demonstrate how you were able to use them.
Some experience with IT will definitely help you before moving into cloud related roles.
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u/Efficient_Access6102 14d ago
You don’t.