Carol Dweck, an American psychologist, coined the term growth mindset more than two decades ago. The findings of her research define that individuals who believe their talents can be developed through hard work, strategies, and input from others have a growth mindset. How does a growth mindset relate to learning or cloud technology training? At CloudifyOps, we believe having a growth mindset is critical to an individual’s and the overall organization’s success. Every CloudifyOps engineer goes through a comprehensive internal training program that fast-tracks them from basic to expert-level professionals in relevant tools and technologies.
As IT professionals in today’s digital world, developing your talent is critical if you want to stay in tune with the changing and ever-growing technology landscape. It is important to understand and identify important technologies to master and consistently incorporate feedback into your learning program.
In this blog, we talk to Kumaradas P K, Director of Technology, CloudifyOps, to find out how our engineers are upskilled in the latest technology.
1. According to you, what are the most prominent challenges people face in developing their professional skills?
I find the biggest challenge to be mastering the fundamentals. Unless you are strong with the basics of technologies or tools, it becomes tougher when you progress to advanced concepts and apply them in projects. A related aspect that some find challenging is problem-solving. Mastering the fundamentals will make it easier for you to know where to look when an error message pops up, how to backtrack and work your way to the issue, and identify the right solution.
CloudifyOps Training Program:
2. How do you organize your training sessions?
We provide basic training material for all engineers joining CloudifyOps. We curate the entire material in-house, focusing solely on hands-on experience rather than just highlighting theoretical knowledge. We give practical scenarios, which they have to fix based on the theory they learned. Some of these training sessions sometimes end up being live project issues that we discuss and resolve. One of our successful programs is the buddy system, which has young engineers tagged to senior/experienced team members within the organization.
Another significant aspect of our training is certifications. We always encourage our engineers to complete certifications on basic and advanced Cloud and DevOps technologies. This builds credibility for the engineer within the team and the organization. As an AWS Select Consulting and Microsoft Azure accredited partner, certifications are essential to improve our services and consultations for our customers.
3. Do you cater to different learning styles? If yes, how do you approach cloud technology training sessions when there are always different people with different learning styles?
While there are many standard course materials available, customized training sessions for individuals are important. We get to know the person, their personality, and what motivates them. We understand their learning style before we begin in-depth training. This may lead to individual training sessions rather than a group.
Training evaluation:
4. How do you evaluate and track cloud technology training and program effectiveness?
Every engineer is given hands-on evaluation exercises on each topic they are trained in. After the exercises, they self-evaluate their knowledge one-on-one with the trainer. For each DevOps and Cloud technology track, we have customized training evaluations. Individual feedback sessions help us understand each trainee’s morale before proceeding to the next topic.
5. Share an example of how you helped coach or mentor someone.
There have been fresh engineering graduates whom I have coached from the very basics of various technology platforms. Now, those very individuals are confidently training new batches of engineering graduates who join us. It is personally very satisfying to watch them identify their capabilities and realize their potential.
Technology trends:
6. If you were to pick three of the latest technologies, platforms, or tools that a DevOps engineer should focus on mastering, what would they be?
Before I say what is important, I have to say three is less considering the current tools landscape and changes in the Cloud market. The focus should be on skills more than picking specific tools or platforms.
DevOps as a culture is all about putting the customer first. Any action that an engineer takes should be valuable to the customer. Decision-making, collaboration, communication, flexibility, and taking ownership – are all important skills to be a successful DevOps engineer.
In technical skills, you should know Linux fundamentals and scripting languages, infrastructure as code, Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery, and basic knowledge of DevOps tools. You should be able to select the right tool that meets the customer’s requirements. To get to this level of expertise, you need to be constantly learning and enhancing your knowledge.
7. What have you done to improve your skills lately?
Preparing to train the team is a constant way of upskilling myself. 🙂 I spend a couple of hours each week reading up on the latest technologies and doing some online training. At times, sharing interesting advancements or technology improvements with the trainees helps keep them motivated during training days.
Read about our team’s expertise in various technologies in our case studies.
Reference:
https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means
