From IT Technician to Cloud & DevOps: My Journey Has Just Begun

Hi DEV Community!

This is my very first post here, even though I've been part of this community for over a year (yes, I just unlocked the One Year Club badge and realized I never actually posted anything ). So let's fix that.

Where I'm starting from

I'm currently pursuing my BCA, and alongside my studies, I work as an IT Technician — a role I've been in for about 1.5 years now. My day-to-day involves troubleshooting systems, handling support tickets, and keeping things running smoothly for end users.

It's a solid job, and it's taught me a lot about how infrastructure actually behaves in the real world — not just in theory. But somewhere along the way, I realized I wanted to go deeper. I didn't just want to fix systems when they broke; I wanted to understand how to build, automate, and scale them.

That's what pulled me toward Cloud and DevOps.

Why AWS and DevOps?

A few reasons, honestly:

• IT support gave me the "what." DevOps is teaching me the "why" and "how" — why systems fail, how automation prevents that, and how infrastructure can be designed instead of just maintained.
• AWS is everywhere. Almost every company I look at, big or small, is running something on AWS. Learning it felt like the most practical next step.
• I like fixing things at the root. DevOps culture — automating repetitive tasks, catching issues before they become incidents — matches how I already think as a support technician, just at a bigger scale.

What I'm learning right now

I'm currently getting hands-on with:

• Core AWS services — EC2, S3, IAM, and VPC fundamentals
• Linux — because almost everything in this ecosystem runs on it
• Git & GitHub — version control basics and workflows
• Docker — understanding containers and why they matter
• Shell scripting — automating the small repetitive stuff first

Nothing fancy yet. I'm deliberately going slow and making sure I actually understand each piece instead of rushing to collect certifications.

The honest part

Balancing a full-time IT job, BCA coursework, and self-learning AWS/DevOps is not easy. Some days I only get 30–45 minutes to study. But I've learned that consistency beats intensity — a little bit of hands-on practice every day adds up faster than I expected.

I'm also learning to embrace not knowing things. Coming from support, I was used to having answers. In DevOps, I'm often the one Googling errors at 11 PM — and that's okay. It's part of the process.

What's next

My near-term goals:

1. Get comfortable enough with AWS to build small real projects (not just tutorials)
2. Learn CI/CD basics with GitHub Actions or Jenkins
3. Eventually move from "IT Technician" to a Cloud/DevOps role.

I'll be documenting this journey here on DEV — the wins, the confusing errors, and everything in between. If you're on a similar path (support/helpdesk → DevOps/Cloud), I'd genuinely love to connect and swap notes.

Thanks for reading my first post — more (and hopefully more technical) ones coming soon!