past decade. Today, the most common terms we encounter are Full Stack Engi-
neer, Full Stack Developer and Full Stack Teams. DevOps Engineer also makes
its way into the daily cloud program discussion. What everyone wants is a sin-
gle person who can do it all. While they are out there, they are rare.
The Full Stack Team is a group of engineers who have a common goal of build-
ing, testing, releasing and supporting an application. You want to be on that
team — in whatever capacity that best suits you — providing a function that is
valuable to the whole.
So will there ever be a complete, Full Stack Engineer and Full Stack Developer?
Like any need in the market, as demand continues to increase with the adop-
tion of public cloud, the Full Stack Engineer or Developer will ultimately morph
from being a unicorn to becoming the norm. In the meantime, learn a specific
cloud technology and get good at it.
Where Do I Start?
Step One: Cloud Training and Certification
While your company may be proactively offering training to assist you, there is
no substitute for directing your own learning. The good news is that it’s never
been easier to access high quality information and training. If you don’t already
instinctively reach for Google search when you need to understand a new term
or technology, you’re already behind. All three major cloud providers provide a
wealth of online information and documentation that’s just a click away.
Beyond simple ad hoc searching, there are a whole range of more formal train-
ing courses that are indispensable for advancing your cloud capabilities and
understanding. Videos, labs and documentation are typically provided, cor-
relating to the areas where cloud certification is offered: architecture, engi-
neering, DevOps, etc. Some good examples of this type of training can be found
at lynda.com, coursera.org, acloud.guru and linuxacademy.com. If your com-
pany is already deploying on public cloud, focus first on training and certifica-
tions for that provider.
Step Two: Scripting and Coding
If you are still working in a traditional IT environment, it may be difficult to
believe how much “infrastructure as code” is changing IT. Believe it. If you’re
used to manually logging into your favorite pet servers, networking devices
and databases to perform operations and maintenance, those days are ending
sooner than you think. Regardless of your area of specialty, the majority of
interactions with IT resources are rapidly becoming scripted and coded.
What should you know or learn? AWS, Azure and GCP all have services to
deploy infrastructure as code functionality; they form the basis of the next
generation of IT deployment. Here they are with their respective underlying
languages, which are essential for their use:
70 | THE DOPPLER | WINTER 2018