FP2 Industry Engagement: Radio Access Network & Journey from Software Engineer to DevOps

Reflection on Industry online Talks / Webinars attended

With Covid-19 in ongoing, I participated in two webinars related to the course I am studying (Information Technology). I am able to obtain some perspectives from the modern IT industry through the two webinars. The two webinar sessions I participated in are the "Radio Access Network (RAN)" where the speaker talks about the future network, such as 5G, and "Journey from Software Engineer to Dev / Ops," where the speaker talks about transitioning from a Software Engineer to Dev / Ops. In this report, I will be writing and reflecting on "Journey from Software Engineer to Dev / Ops" as this webinar offered further insight into my future dream job.

Throughout this webinar, I'll learn what the skillset requires to be a Dev/Ops, what the role does and how he transit from a Software Engineer. Neeraj Verma, the speaker, is a senior software engineer who leads a DevOps team with over 8 years of experience working with various technologies & platforms.

Here are some of the details I’ve learned in the Webinar:

I learn the definition of DevOps. DevOps is the blend of Software Developer (Dev) and IT (Ops) operations. Their goal is to shorten the SDLC and provide high software quality in continuous delivery.

The dev part of DevOps is responsible for ensuring that the development process is smooth, and that code quality and performance are strong. Provide and ensure that the developers have enough tools to be confident of the codes they write and transfer their codes to production. Helping them set up their test.

The ops are to make sure that the production side operates with proper monitoring and alert in place. Using software such as NewRelic, CloudWatch, Grafana, etc for monitoring. Ensure that the practices of monitoring and alerting are good, and the developers know what tools available and different ways are of using it.

DevOps adopt a zero-ownership strategy. They set up the infrastructure and then transfer the infrastructure to the development team. The developers will need to know where and when the code will run during development. DevOps must not become the bottleneck. Usually in a typical company, when the developers want a new server or infrastructure, they must go through the infrastructure team before processing back to the developers. DevOps allow developers access to make changes to their own environment, but make sure that breaking stuff is difficult for them. To do so, they must ensure that developers are granted with correct permissions.

The knowledge needed to transit from Software Engineer to DevOps is the understanding of Stack, how the world is moving towards everything as Code. For example, how people used to login to the server to configure the settings, in the modern world, people use code to do the configuration. Knowing about the infrastructure is very important like are different infrastructure that is available. Always willing to learn new things to be able to debug any issue faced by the developers. Even though DevOps does not do the coding, the still must be part of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle).

The reason I chose this Webinar talk is that it's my area of interest. Since secondary school, I've always wanted to become a software engineer or a mobile app developer. I believe that the DevOps will understand the flow of IT company well and hope this webinar session would give me a more in-depth understanding of the work, at the same time to identify the skills needed.

As a student studying information technology, this webinar session can help me to become more diverse in my learning. I can see and understand how the skills I have been learning at school will be used in a development team in the future. For example, I do not understand the purpose of the analysis of the OOAD (Object-Oriented and Analysis Design) module and I was not really interested in it. After this webinar, I begin to see how important OOAD is to the flow of how modern IT organizations operate.

My goal is to become a Software Engineer in the future. I have always wondered how the life of Software Engineers and DevOps was and this talk gives me a more in-depth of how an IT company and developers/development team works. Not only I learn about how he transits from Software Engineer to Dev/Ops, but also what are the skills required to be a Software Engineer itself. I pick up some points of what the essential skills are needed to become a Software Engineer by understanding how his life was before he becomes DevOps. This webinar talk will help to understand the skills that is needed to become a Software Engineer and which area I should need to focus on.

In conclusion, this is the first webinar I attended, and it was a very pleasant experience. Although some terms have been used, I am still not clear about them, I'm able to watch the replay again, and have my own time to google it. I see this webinar as a good opportunity for many to share and learn even though they are stuck at home during this pandemic situation. This webinar session helped me gain a better understanding of my dream job in the future. Right now, I am still a student and have a lot of stuff to know, and this webinar has given me a clearer understanding of the ways I 'm going.