DEV Community: A Black Lady Tech Blog

I finally got a DevOps role! Then I got laid off after less than a year.

A Black Lady Tech Blog — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 16:30:52 +0000

So much has changed/happened since my last post in summer of '22 after I completed Forrest Brazeal's Cloud Resume Challenge! Two months after completing the challenge (through some heavy networking, luck, and perseverance), I was able to secure my first DevOps role at a great small series A startup. It was remote with great starting pay and benefits, with plenty of opportunity to learn and grow.

I was able to quickly put my skills to work, and learned so much from my teammates and others. I designed and built infrastructure, learned how to set up application monitoring, containerized applications, and got familiar with multiple tools and technologies. My new gig was everything I'd hoped and more.

Five months later, my boss (Director of Engineering) was let go (bad sign). There were rumblings about the state of the company, but I kept my head down and learned as much as possible. Things seemed to be steady, but I did have a nagging feeling that things weren't going as well as they could be on the business front.

Three months after my boss was let go, four out of six engineers on our team (including myself and my DevOps teammate) were laid off along with others on the business side (about half of the company). Ouch. I had JUST started to catch my stride in my new(ish) role, and the opportunity just evaporated.

I'm almost two months in with my job search for a new DevOps role. Wish me luck!

Part Four: Terraform

A Black Lady Tech Blog — Mon, 23 May 2022 22:09:25 +0000

I know I haven't posted in over a month...that's because I'm still working through redeploying my site using Terraform. Instead of importing my infrastructure, I found this ~~too good to be true~~ CLI tool called Terraformer that generates Terraform files from my existing AWS infrastructure...aka Reverse Terraform.

I'm building the file structure in a GitHub repository, and will also figure out how updating my infrastructure works using Terraform vs the AWS interface. I feel like ~~I should've just used a SAM template instead~~ I will be spending a lot more time on this final step.

Part Three: CI/CD

A Black Lady Tech Blog — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 15:54:48 +0000

After researching the different CI/CD tools (Jenkins, Github Actions, etc.), I decided to go with CodePipeline since I'm already working in AWS, and most of the updates were to my frontend code, not the infrastructure (remember I've been building this site manually the entire time and hadn't used IaC). Up until CodePipeline I was just editing my website code in GitHub, downloading it, then uploading to S3. It was ~~torture~~ not the most efficient workflow. Being able to push new code and have the site update automatically was a game-changer.

Now I'm embarking on a rebuild of my site using IaC, something I was supposed to do way earlier in this challenge. I've decided to go with Terraform, even though AWS SAM was the recommendation. What can I say...I like to live dangerously. Stay tuned :)

Part Two: Building Out the Backend

A Black Lady Tech Blog — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 15:40:18 +0000

This is the part where I wanted to throw my laptop out the window at least twice a week. When I initially read through the Cloud Challenge it was mentioned that this is where a lot of people get frustrated and quit. Building the backend became an endless rabbit hole of researching errors, poring over AWS documentation, piecing together and debugging code, and random screams of joy when I was able to get things work.

I ~~struggled~~ pushed through.

Visitor Counter

I needed to include a visitor counter that displays the number of visits to my site. As of this post, I JUST got this working. Javascript is not a language I knew. At all.

DynamoDB, API Gateway, and Lambda

In order for the visitor counter to retrieve and update its count, I needed to create a database table to store the data (DynamoDB). I also needed a way to increase the count in the database every time someone visited the site (Lambda), and most importantly for the site to be able to communicate with the database (API Gateway).

Full transparency, I've built everything manually up until now. If I didn't skip around while reading the instructions for the challenge, I would've realized that I should've built the infrastructure using an IaC tool (more on that later). I don't feel bad about it though, building the infrastructure manually reinforced my understanding of the different AWS services I've been leveraging in this challenge.

The next step was building a CI/CD pipeline.

Part One: Building a Static Site in S3

A Black Lady Tech Blog — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 16:09:59 +0000

In my previous post, I mentioned the Cloud Resume Challenge. I was splitting my time between a Python course and studying for another AWS certification (Solutions Architect Associate), but ultimately decided to get some practical skills and experience using both Python and AWS. I'm spending as much "free" time as possible between my job as a Product Manager and life (which amounts to about 5 hours a week).

Since I've already taken and passed my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam back in 2021 (a prerequisite for the challenge), I was able to get right into building my resume website.

I began building the site in AWS using S3, Route53, Certificate Manager, and CloudFront:

Route53 for domain registration
S3 to host the site files
Certificate Manager and CloudFront to deliver the site's content to visitors quickly and securely over HTTPS

For the front end design, I leveraged HTML and CSS design elements from a few website templates and combined these with a reworked version of my PDF resume. For the site's visitor counter, I googled and hacked together some JavaScript (this took awhile to grasp, and I plan to tweak the presentation a bit as I get further into the challenge).

I ran into some blockers of course since I'm not a front-end developer (google and Reddit are my friends). I also tapped some developer friends for guidance with HTML and CSS. VS code is a great IDE, especially since I've been working in different languages for this challenge so far.

I had some false starts and needed to do some reading to grasp some of the AWS concepts as I moved through the steps, but I am pleased with what I've built so far. This phase of the challenge took me about six weeks to complete.

NEXT UP: Part two...Dynamo DB, Lambda, and configuring an API Gateway in AWS. Stay tuned for my next post!

It's Starting...Again.

A Black Lady Tech Blog — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 21:04:50 +0000

I've officially restarted my learning journey in the world of programming and DevOps. After two years of studying Python off and on and getting my introductory AWS certification (Certified Cloud Practitioner), it felt like I needed to push myself to get to the next level. I chose the cloud resume challenge to get some practical experience using what little I know so far. It's hard, fun, and is really forcing me to understand the breadth of skills I need to succeed in a DevOps role. I'm about a month in and still going strong. Stay tuned for my next post where I catch you up to where I am now in the challenge.