Growing Wiki

12 Weeks Action Plan for my career change

🌿 Budding

Context

This plan is design with my current life circumstances in mind - working 20 hours and private life things. In addition to that, I have also taken into consideration related skills and experiences that I already process.

I will also be documenting my progress as well as what I learn throughout this project, if you’re interested.

The progress and documentation is tracked in week numbers:

Progression Tracking

PHASE 1 - The Foundation and Certification

WEEKS 1 - 5

Week 1: The Enterprise Linux Gap

This is where I will be bridge the knowledge gap between personal Linux and enterprise Linux.

The goal is to have a local VM running a hardened web server ( SELinux Enforcing ).

  • Install a RHEL-based distro ( Set up Rocky Linux or Fedora in a VM )
  • Master Package Management ( dnf or rpm instead of pacman )
  • Learn SELinux ( Learn how to check logs and audit2allow )
  • Learn nmcli
  • Firewall ( Learn firewalld )

Week 2 - 4: Deep Dive ( SAA-C03 )

  • CIDR Notation ( Subnet ranges )
  • DNS Debugging ( Master dig and nslookup )
  • HTTP Status Codes ( Memorise difference between 401/403 and 502/503 )
  • The Packet Journey ( Be able to explain what happens when you type an address into a browser, e.g. growing.wiki and DNS -> IP -> TCP Handshake -> TLS -> HTTP )
  • Content Consumption ( Adrian Cantrill’s or Stephane Maarek’s AWS SAA-C03 course. Focus on VPC, S3, EC2 and IAM )
  • VPC Networking and IAM ( Most people struggle hardest with )

Week 5: AWS Certified Solutions Architect ( SAA-C03 )

  • Practice Exams ( TutorialsDojo practice exams )
  • Exam ( PASS IT )

PHASE 2 - The “Literate DevOps” Portfolio

WEEKS 6 - 9

The goal here is to build two professional projects using org mode.

Week 6: Tooling + “Skeleton”

  • Learn and set up LSP’s ( terraform-ls and docker-langserver )
  • Set up Doom Emacs for writing code
  • Set up Terraform Remote State ( S3 bucket for state and DynamoDB for locking )

Week 7: Project A ( Static Site Migration ongoingarchive.com )

Don’t just make it work, make it secure!

  • Architecture ( Migrate the site to AWS S3 for storage and CloudFront for CDN )
  • Terraform ( Write a literate org file documenting both explanation and Terraform code, required resources: aws_s3_bucket, aws_cloudfront_distribution, aws_route53_record )
  • Security ( Implement Origin Access Control )

Week 8: Project B ( Container Orchestration growing.wiki )

Build a secure “Production” environment.

  • Containerise ( Write a multi-stage Dockerfile, from build stage to runtime stage, to keep the image small using Alpine Linux )
  • Orchestrate ( Use Terraform to deploy this to AWS ECS Fargate )
    • Create a VPC with Public/Private subnets
    • Put the Application Load Balancer ( ALB ) in Public
    • Put the Fargate Tasks ( Containers ) in Private
  • Outcome ( A URL that load balances traffic to the container )

Week 9: CI/CD Automation

Automate the deployment for Project A + B.

This is where you transition from “someone who knows AWS” to “someone who works in DevOps”.

  • GitHub Actions ( Create a workflow for both projects )
    • Project A: git push -> sync to S3 -> invalidate CloudFront cache
    • Project B: git push -> build Docker image -> push to AWS ECR -> force new ECS deployment

PHASE 3 - The Job Hunt

WEEKS 10 - 12

Basically at this point, what’s left will be to get interviews and land a role using my resume and portfolio.

Week 9: Resume Engineering + Literate Documentation

  • Retail Translation ( Rewrite retail experience to suit new career )
  • Tech Highlights ( Linux and Terraform skills )
  • Project Links ( Link my GitHub and projects )
  • Polish .org files ( Make READMEs look professional )

Week 10: London Market Integration

  • Agencies ( Register specifically with LinuxRecruit, Oho Group and Client Server, call and not just email )
  • Platforms ( Create profiles on Otta and Cord )
  • Meetups ( Attend London DevOps and/or Cloud Native London, socialise and network )

Week 11-12: Interview Drill

  • Scenario Prep ( Practice answer question like “A server is high on CPU, how do you debug it?” top, htop, pidstat, check logs )
  • The “Arch” Question ( Be ready to answer questions like “Why Arch?” )