Nigeria to UK: How He Became a DevOps Engineer Before His Visa Ran Out

I had the vision that okay if I give up after my studies if I can't get a job that's going to sponsor my visa that means I need to go back to my country. I came from not like an IT background like I did civil engineering back in Nigeria. Every day looks as if time was taken out like I need to get on this very fast. That sense of unencessy what is it at stake if I don't get this right? So becoming a devil's engineer alone has already put you way above other professions put you in a better position for you to be sponsored. My journey is just kind of amazing. I don't know how to say it. The truth is that I didn't even apply for the job. — 9 months, that's how long it took Israel to go from civil engineering with zero IT experience to a lead DevOps engineer role in the UK. Not junior, not mid-level engineer, lead engineer. And here is what makes his story different. He didn't have money. He was working night shifts at retail jobs. He had a ticking clock. His visa in UK was running out. And yet companies eventually chose him as their lead DevOps engineer over many other candidates who had it much easier than him. Why? Because he understood something most people miss about getting hired in DevOps. And I'm going to show you exactly what it is. So in this video you will see his complete timeline, what he learned in what order and how he structured his days while working at his retail job. You will understand why conceptual knowledge beats syntax memorization and you will see the exact interview answers that got him hired for a role he wasn't even confident to apply for. So, if you're trying to break into DevOps, learn these seemingly overwhelming DevOps skills, and you are stuck applying for jobs with no responses, this is the road map you could literally follow step by step. So, let's start with where Israel was before any of this happened. So, I need to say this that I came from not like an IT background like um I did civil engineering back in Nigeria because originally I'm from Nigeria. I went through the university after my graduation study civil engineering. Something within me tells me that this is not for me like I feel that like there's no way I can continue you know going studying civil engineering. One thing I said to myself that I want a skill that is like a global skill because what you think about civil engineering and those kinds of professions they kind of you know specific to one country. So I needed something that is more global that we you know allow me to travel around the world and also work remotely for international companies. That was when I started looking into IT in general. So after that I started doing my research to see which IT field you know that I need to that picked my interest that I'm interested in. So I started you know going through online. First of all I saw software engineering was it called um at the front end using front end web development and I did that for like one month. It didn't pick my interest at all. So I just put it on the side. So I also saw Python for data science and machine learning and stuff like that. that I said okay let me try data science I tried it didn't work at all at that point I was just confused I come across a friend of mine who told me about Azure like he 900 and stuff like that certification is really nice like I should get it so I did the certification but then doesn't still make sense until I came across he told me about devops that devops is a nice feed and all of that one thing about me is that if I hear about something like a concept or whatever things somebody tells me I go online I do my own research to see how it So I did my research on DevOps. I said, "Okay, let me I think this look really nice. Let me give it a try. " And then I started working for my I think in one of my in-laws companies. They were into real software development company but they were doing some sort of like web development and all of that. So then I started to say let me join and see if I can learn one or two. So when I joined I think it's like not s. So I was just working with them but I was not gaining anything. I was not getting any hands on from that experience. I decided to buy a course on Udemy. So I bought his course DevOps beginners to advance. So I started going through his course and mind you during this time I was actually doing my master's degree in the UK because I actually relocated from Nigeria to the UK. I was doing everything at the same time. So basically to kind of formulate it in my words. So you basically dive into this new field of engineering because you want to learn something which is future proof which is globally required. So you're not just tied to your own country, but you can discover the job opportunities elsewhere and you dive in and you start learning like pieces like one thing here, one thing there and it kind of becomes super overwhelming because you don't know like where to start, what to learn. You don't even know which IT profession is actually something interesting for you, right? And because you can't get like a full clear picture of each profession, you're

like learning bits and pieces here and there and it kind of gets like too overwhelming for you over time because it looks like you went through like this long journey of trying, you know, front end development, the back end, the DevOps, but you still get it. You did the course like what made you still persevere and be like, I'm still going to continue learning and finding out how to get into this field and not give up and say maybe it is not for me. maybe I should learn something else other than engineering like what made you stick to it long enough? One thing about me is that when it comes to I have like that kind of resilient spirit, you know what actually kept me not giving up all this while I was I had the vision that okay if I give up because then I was in the UK and you know her visa restriction is and you know and all of that it means that after my studies if I can't get a job that's going to sponsor my visa then that means I need to go back to my country. That was a huge motivation for me that I can't go back to my country without having a company that will sponsor me. Being a devos engineer in the UK alone gives you that opportunity that leverage for any company to sponsor you because devos engineer they are highly skilled and they are highly paid. If you are being paid that kind of salary automatically you beats the salary threshold for copying to sponsor your visa. So becoming a devos engineer alone gives you has already put you way above other professions put you in a better position for you to be sponsored. So that was one of my major reason. every day looks as if time was taken out like I need I need to get on this very fast you know that urgency that sense of urgency what it has at stake if I don't get this right all those actually what actually kept me and seeing the brighter side of it that if I give up now so what else do I need to do should I go back to my country or should I pick up jobs like bar restaurant and those kinds of job that was my major focus so I was just putting in my effort and sometimes when I go to all these like side jobs like retail job when I come back I feel so exhausted but then I said no I can't if I allow this to be that means it will take me longer time to achieve my goals so then when I come back online I remember that time when I go when I close by 2 p. m. the night when I come back home I still open my laptop and go through your CK course learning how all of that works doing my hands on labs on a QDM and all of that was my major focus when you have something at stake let me explain why Israel's situation matters because this isn't just about motivation it's about understanding the UK job market economics for international students to sponsor a work visa in the UK companies need to prove pro that they are paying above a salary threshold and for most roles that's around £38,000. But here's the key. DevOps engineers typically start at 45 to 60,000 even at junior levels. So you automatically clear that threshold just by the virtue of applying for DevOps jobs. Now, compare that to other entry-level roles like marketing, general IT support, even some software development positions. They often do not meet the sponsorship salary requirement. And this is why Israel specifically chose DevOps. It wasn't a random choice. It was very strategic and practical. Now, this created massive pressure. He had maybe 12 to 18 months after his master's degree to lend a sponsored role or he would have to leave the UK. And most people would panic and just take any job. But Israel did the opposite. He invested those months in intensive learning knowing that a DevOps role would solve both problems, the visa sponsorship and the salary. So this is the first lesson. Understand the market that you are entering. Do not just learn skills randomly. Understand what problems those skills solve for you and for employers. What is the demand? What is the supply? Where you have the most leverage and advantage. So, Israel made it to the UK. He's doing his master's degree. The visa clock is ticking. And like most people trying to break into DevOps, he starts with what seems logical, online courses. But here's what happens with scattered learning. You take a course that promises to teach you DevOps from beginner to advanced, zero to hero. You complete all the videos. You follow along with the demos. And at the end of the course, you still can't actually build anything that works in production. It's too shallow. It's too basic. It doesn't convince anyone. Why? Because most courses teach tools in isolation in at a very basic level. They show you syntax. They show you some basic examples that are absolutely detached from real projects, but they don't show you how everything connects in a real system. What you'll be dealing with in actual project at work. So listen to what Israel experienced with this approach because this is the trap

most people fall into before they find the right path. And this may resonate with so many of you out there. Before we continue, I've actually put together a free DevOps career guide that breaks down the specific job requirements that companies are actually hiring for. It also includes realistic salary ranges and the various career path that you can take. So, if you want to grab it, the link is going to be in the description of the video. Now, let's get back and see what happened when Israel started his scattered learning phase. So I did the DevOps it called beginner to I finished the course and after finishing the course I said to myself I still don't like although I had like a little understanding of how DevOps works I couldn't factor in how different tools and the technologies and everything comes together like especially on Kubernetes I was still a little bit confused so I decided okay let me try and apply for jobs nothing was coming in no interview nothing you know at that point I was really frustrated so what I did was that I say okay let me try getting a certification like Kubernetes certification. See if that's going to help. That was my first point with your boot camp. I think it's CK course. When I went online, I was searching how to like the best course for learning how to become a certified Kubernetes administrator. What Google gave me, I saw your platform there. I clicked on it and I saw that it was your platform. But before then, I've been seeing your videos on YouTube and all of that. I say okay, that's nice. If you remember clearly, I messaged you on Instagram and asked you. I was thinking that the if I wrote for the boot camp is going to come with the what's it called the certification subscriptions and all of that but I was not so sure. So I went through your CKA on your platform. It was really nice. I went through the course. Initially my focus was just getting the certification with that course. But when I started the course I realized that so many things I literally learned from that your course. Your course gave me a Kubernetes. It got to a point whereby I could even go to the Kubernetes documentation and read all the documentation and also understanding what everything is talking about like the missing piece the intricacies and how every component in Kubernetes you know work together. So I wrote the exam I smashed the exam at one goal and that was amazing. So I started applying for job with the certifications to see but still it didn't work. Although I were getting interviews I was not going through past the interview and all of that. So I said, "Okay, I think at this point I really need to do something different. " — You kind of got the taste of how it is to follow a structured learning material with the CKA course. And you pass the exams for the first time, you have this whim moments, right? So you have this success feeling of okay, I'm getting somewhere like I'm getting confident about some of these technology. You kind of get optimistic about it. You're still not getting the job. So you're landing some interviews. So you're applying in UK like I said earlier like so I decided to do certifications to see. So I did the certification which is a huge win for me like CK is one of the highly recognized certification in the industry and I passed it. I was so excited. So I started applying for jobs but I was getting little interview you know and also being that I was like an immigrant that actually put me way behind especially when it comes to visual sponsorship because my experience at that time was not that strong for a company to employ me let alone sponsoring me. I decided to go through your boot camp, the structural learning part, everything was just there and also the massive community because then I think you had a community on Facebook. I think we were on Facebook before you shifted us to migrated everything to Discord. Seeing feedback from people on the CK who has also enrolled on the boot camp motivated me and then I decided to go through the boot camp. At that point when I went through your course like when I saw the price it was I think it was like $1,500 and when you compare it to pounds is like I think one two or something like that there about like I had no pennies at them because I was just working you know shift jobs and just to pay my rent like I had like little left over to just sustain myself and it was really hard. This is the moment most people get stuck. Israel saw the boot camp curriculum. He saw that it matched the job requirements that he was researching, but he had no money. So, let me break down his decision-making process because this is absolutely critical. So, he was looking at £1,500 boot camp while working retail jobs barely covering his rent. Most people would say, "There's no way I can afford this. This is way above my financial means. " But Israel did the math differently and used a different logic. So instead of his current salary and financials, he looked at DevOps engineer salaries, 45,000 to 60,000 for entry level, which is 3,750 to 5,000 per month. So the boot camp cost way less than 1 month of his future salary that he would get because of the boot camp. and he could pay in installments which was just around £250

per month. So here's the calculation he made. If this investment gets me the job 6 months faster, I'm not losing,500, I'm actually gaining 22,500 or 30,000 which is 6 month of DevOps salary minus 6 month of retail work just because I can get there faster. But there's a second calculation that most people don't even think about, which is time. He'd already spent a year doing some scattered Udemy courses or YouTube tutorials trying to piece things together. And he was even getting interviews, but he was failing them because his knowledge was just not good enough. And that was a signal. So he was close, but something important was missing. And structured learning solved this for him. Instead of spending another year guessing what you need to learn, how deeply, how to build actual hirable skills, you simply follow a complete road map. No detours, no searching for different resources and doing your own research. You literally have everything laid out in front of you and you just follow it step by step, just executing one step after another. And you build projects that actually demonstrate your integrated knowledge. Not some isolated scattered bits and pieces of knowledge, but the complete integrated knowledge. You learn in the sequence that makes sense, not some random order that YouTube algorithm suggests for you. And this is why he chose the installment payment option. 250 per month was still tight for him, but it created accountability. When your money is on the line, you don't skip days. You don't procrastinate. You show up because you know you've invested a lot in this. So, you want to take advantage of that investment. And here's what Seal did for him. He saw in our curriculum that every single module integrated tools together. So, in the Terraform module, you're not just learning Terraform. You were using Terraform with all the tools that you've learned in the previous module. Every single one of them. In the Kubernetes module, you're not just learning Kubernetes. You're using Kubernetes in the ecosystem in combination with all the tools that came before like Terraform provisioning infrastructure that Kubernetes runs on with CI/CD pipeline automating deployments to that environment with monitoring showing what's happening in your configured cluster and infrastructure. And that's exactly what he was missing from those countless Udemy courses and free tutorials. And that's what employers actually need you to know. And that's why he was failing interviews because that level of knowledge was missing. Anyone can do a 2-hour Udemy course. Doesn't mean that they're going to succeed in the interview. If they did, we wouldn't have almost 60% skill gap of DevOps engineering in the market today, which is growing even more because of AI, not in spite of it. Because every AI project now needs DevOps engineering skills. So he did all this analysis and he made the decision. He enrolled with the installment payment plan while working retail sheets. But now comes the hardest part. Actually doing it, staying consistent when you're exhausted, not quitting when Kubernetes gets difficult. Building the discipline to study every single day. So listen to how exactly he structured his time because this is where most people fail. Many people enroll in these trainings, they start excited and then life happens. And Israel also had every excuse to quit. But he built a system that made quitting harder than continuing. So listen to his journey. But before we dive into Israel's learning system, I want to give a huge shout out to Control Plane who is the sponsor of this video. Here's the reality for many enterprise companies. They want to use multiple clouds, specific services from AWS, maybe BigQuery from GCP, certain tools from Azure. But here's the problem. Running and managing separate Kubernetes clusters in each cloud gets expensive very fast and the operational overhead is massive. And this is where control plane comes in. They solve this with what they call a global virtual cloud. Their platform can combine locations from all major and secondary cloud providers as well as onremise bare metal machines into one unified environment. Your workloads run serverless and they leverage AI autoscaling so you only pay for what you need and this can result in 60 to 80% of cloud cost savings. On top of that, their automatic ge routing sends traffic to the healthiest region closest to each user for high

availability and low latency worldwide. Check out controlplane. com for a 30-day free trial to see what's possible with it. Link is going to be in the description. Now, let me show you exactly how Israel structured his time to learn in our program while working exhausting retail shifts. I was just putting in my effort and sometimes when I go to like side jobs like retage or when I come back I feel so exhausted but then I said no I can't if I allow this to be that means it will take me longer time to achieve my goals. So then when I even come back online, I remember that time when I go when I close by 2:00 p. m. in the night when I come back home, I still open my laptop and go through your CK course, learning how all of that works, doing my hands on labs on a QADM and all of that. That was my major focus and that was when alongside your CK this thing, I also saw your boot camp. So I went through the reviews, everything looks nice. One important thing about your course is that is well structured like I went through the map and everything well structured. Nice. All the high in demand tools at that time were there like terraform, kubernetes, aneu everything was just that was good. I also did that with dev sec ops and also the kubernetes security part was also amazing. Everything on your boot camps like the dev secops and the devops till today I still use them in my sometimes when I face talk trying to fix something I just refer back to some of your boot camps and tutorials. One thing I also want to understand because for me I feel like this is super important when I create those because I imagine you and other students and other people in our courses basically doing those trainings. So I kind of put myself in their emotional state. How important it is for you like for confidence and like emotional level that when you run this demo and it works and you see like you've built it yourself only that it works but you also understand like why it works and how you build those pieces and like if something went wrong that you would know how to troubleshoot it and how to fix it. Like how relevant or important that is for you that you actually understand conceptually like very deeply what you just built. The very first day I used CI/CD to push my image to a repository. That was my first port for portfolio moment. Like the way I automated everything when I make changes to my code, the pipeline runs, everything is built automatically and then I see my image on Docker Hub or even on ECRO. That was actually a fulfilling moment because — Oh wow. Okay. So that that's actually pretty early like it's not even like the full CI/CD just the first part. — That was actually amazing like seeing my work and how everything has been triggered. I would took a screenshot of the pipeline but mind you before then I was having like multiple failures the pipeline were failing for some reasons and all of that. So when I managed to fix it and I have like the green button in Jenkins and that was actually you feel for at least you are doing something meaningful and you can see the result and all of that was actually one of the key point in that journey. Notice what Israel just described his first major win was not at the end of the boot camp. it was actually way earlier like module six or seven where you built your first CI/CD pipeline that actually deploys something and this is intentional in how I structured the boot camp. You're not learning theory for months before seeing any results within weeks. You are actually building things that work that make you excited and confident about your practical hands-on skills, not just theoretical understanding of concepts. And that feedback loop is critical for two reasons. First, it proves to yourself that you can do this. It gives you the small wins and progress checks that keep you motivated. When you see that green check mark in Jenkins, when your Docker image appears in the registry, when you can access your deployed application, that's not theoretical anymore. You built something real. And second, it shows you how tools integrate. You're not just learning what is Jenkins or how do you write a pipeline code. You're learning code gets pushed to Git. Jenkins detects it, runs tests, builds a Docker image, pushes to Docker registry, deploys to Kubernetes that is running on AWS cloud. That entire flow, that's what employers need you to understand, not how to write a Docker file or a Kubernetes manifest file. And here is what most courses get wrong. They teach you perfect syntax and perfect configurations, but in reality, you will spend most of your time troubleshooting failures. Israel mentioned that he had multiple failures before getting it to work. That's the real learning. When the pipeline breaks, can you read the logs? Can you analyze and understand what went wrong? Can you fix it? Do you understand the concepts and tools properly enough

to actually find a solution? And the boot camp projects are designed to be complex and to break at some points, not because they are poorly made, but because you need to experience some common failures and learn to solve them. And that builds troubleshooting skills, which is 80% of the actual job. And the greatest thing is that we have actual senior DevOps engineers in our support team who will jump on every single question that you have and help you analyze those issues and troubleshoot with you to help you learn much faster, much more efficiently and get unstuck as soon as possible. So you're never learning alone. You have literal senior DevOps engineers on your side helping you like your own consulting group helping you throughout the whole journey. And here is why this troubleshooting skills matter for interviews specifically. When Israel was asked how would you optimize a CI/CD pipeline? He didn't just say use caching. He explained Docker layer caching, parallel jobs, dependency caching because he'd actually debugged slow pipelines. So he'd actually experience the problem and solve it. And that's the difference between memorizing answers and understanding concepts deeply with practical experience. Now, Israel had structured learning. He had clear road map. He was building real projects. But none of that matters if you can't lend the interview, right? And this is where most people get stuck. They learn everything, they feel ready, but they're invisible to employers. And he had an advantage that he didn't even plan for. So, let me show you how he got noticed because this changes how you should think about your online presence. My journey is just kind of amazing. And I don't know how to say it, but the truth is that I didn't even apply for the job. Being that I was coming from a boot camp, the thought of even applying for a lead devil's engineer role is just far away from me. So I would I didn't even have the boldness or the confidence to apply. I think the talent recruiter for my company sent me a DM on LinkedIn. I wasn't even posting anything. I just posted my CK certification. Then I did Terraform certification. That was what I did. And there was nothing special about my LinkedIn. What I did was I just added some keyword on my LinkedIn like DevOps engineer listed some tools on my bio and that was he messaged me on LinkedIn that he would like to speak to me about a lead devops engineer role like if I'm interested when I saw the lead I was like okay I was very scared like I said okay let me give it a try that was what I sent him my CV and then he said he's going to give me a call in 30 minutes times. — Oh so you included the project portfolios as well from the boot camp. — Yeah. Yeah in the GitLab. I also added my GitHub portfolio as well. What I do is that whatever I learned using GitLab, I try to do it in GitHub as well just to see aha it works. So I added GitHub, GitLab and I also added my certifications just my CK and Terraform. I just added everything then and then sent him to the recruiter. The shocking part was that my GitLab link was broken. So I changed my username in GitLab. So I was using my first name and my last name. I change it to another name. And you know when you change your name in GitLab automatically your link the GitLab link is going to break because along the slash path. So when I sent him over to the line manager, he said when he click on the link, the link was broken. On a normal day, he would just throw my CV. He just, you know, throw it and bring somebody a CV. But something told him that, let me give this guy a chance. Let me see what this guy have to say. That was when he said, "Okay, he invited me over for the interview, for the first stage interview with the head of infrastructure. " — This is one of the most important lessons from Israel's entire journey. His portfolio link was broken. His CV was not perfect, but he still got the interview. Why? Let me show you what actually mattered on his CV. First, it was clear positioning. His LinkedIn headline said DevOps engineer and listed specific tools, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform, AWS, everything that you learn in the boot camp. Not some generic IT professional or aspiring DevOps. Clear specific positioning. But that's the baseline. Second certifications as proof on his profile. He demonstrated two certificates. the CK certificate that he prepared for with our CK course and CK certificate is actually one of the few practical hands-on certificates among hundreds of certifications and passing it actually signals that you understand Kubernetes deeply not just at surface level but he also had our DevOps practitioner certificate which proved his actual DevOps skills verifiable by the employer. they were actual proof of

some serious learning. Third, the DevOps boot camp completion itself. So when the hiring manager saw Techroana DevOps boot camp, he knew what that meant. He had probably seen our YouTube channel. He knew the quality bar that we have. And that is social proof. And that's why it's worth completing some recognized programs, not just random tutorials out there. But all of this aside, here's the most important part. The line manager told Israel later that the most applicants had impressing CVs because anyone can write whatever they want in a CV, but they couldn't answer conceptual questions in interviews. They could say, I use Jenkins, but could not explain how CSD works or how to optimize a pipeline, what problems it solves, how to troubleshoot when it breaks. So even with a broken portfolio link, Israel got the interview because his profile showed structured learning plus certifications as proof of his knowledge. And he got the job because he could explain concepts, not just least the tools that he had worked with. Just collect certifications and hope for the best. or even worse, do not just list tools on your CV and hope that this will lend you an interview. Build an actual understanding because that's what the interviewer will test. Now, let me show you what happened in that interview because this is where everything he learned came together. So after the screen called the recruiter, the second one with the head of infrastructure was if was technical. He was asking me about Terraform pipelines. He didn't ask me about Kubernetes in that first one. He was just asking me about my terraform CI/CD pipeline AWS like EC2 load balancer those kind of stuff on EC2 secret manager and those kind of stuff. So that was what he was asking me. It was my first time. I wouldn't say that was much intense. It was you know pretty light that actually gave me confidence. Especially when you go for interview let me say the four the first two to three questions you are very good in it. It gives you that confidence to go on that kept me I was answering the questions I did well but obviously it's my first time having that kind of intense interview with especially with the head of infrastructures of a company. So he asked me if you provision a resource like other resources that are not provisioned by terraform when you for instance if you have EC2 instance running on your AWS account but you don't have it on your terraform it's not managed by Terraform. So if you destroy your infrastructures is it going to affect the one on the environment that's not managed by Terraform. It took me a while to actually think it through. I was saying okay if it's not managed by Terraform that means Terapform does not have any access to that. So it's not going to destroy it. So it's going to destroy what is exactly on the state file. And that was what I said also. So he also asked me a question about state file. What happens if a state file got corrupted? How to restore it back. I also had to think about it. I said okay if you have a state that is corrupted if you have virtual control for your because on the boot camp you told us how to you know version using a backend storage back end like S3 which you can actually version when you turn off version. So if you lose or a copy you still have another version. So that was what I was able to you know explain to him that okay this is how you can recover back from that. Most of the answers when I was not that confident about those of the answers but you know your interview even if you are getting it right or wrong they're not going to say anything they will just be nodding smiling and also the CI/CD part one of the second stage interview was really intense between the CTO of the company the head of infrastructures and what guy like that so it was three of them it was like a panel so they invited over to Psmont the company is based in Posmont in UK so they invited me over to the interview and they were just bombarding me with a lot of question. One of the question I was asked that actually gave me that selling point like actually pick the interest of the CTO was if you have a pipeline that is taking too long to run for like 10 minutes, how do you shorten the pipeline? How do you optimize the pipeline to make it run very fast? Because sometimes developers feel frustrated when pipeline is taking too long, you know, to run and all of that. That was one of the stuff I actually learned from your boot camp. had to optimize the pipeline by using caches by caching dependencies leveraging docker caching layers in the docker file all of that. So that was what I explained that to the like I explained it very well. I told them how docker leverages you know layers as then if you want to build an image it's better for you to place those layers that don't changes frequently at the top and the ones that changes more frequently at the bottom. So I was able to explain this conceptually and all of that. So the C the CTO was just nodding his head. That was my first task as well when I joined. You know I was trying to optimize the pipeline to measure builds are very fast, efficient using caches, dependencies and you know etc. — Okay let's stop right there. This is the

critical difference between engineers who get hired and engineers who don't. Israel was not asked what tools do you use for CI/CD? That is a junior engineer question with a simple answer like Jenkins, Gitlab, CI, GitHub actions, whatever. He was asked a problem like pipeline takes 10 minutes, developers are frustrated. How would you fix it or optimize the speed? And this requires you to understand multiple things. First of all, why pipelines are slow like repeated work, no caching, sequential jobs, how Docker images are built in layers cached individually. the strategy for optimization like caching the layers changing the order of layers and finally how to implement it docker build cache CI/CD cache configuration parallel jobs so you see how many indepth parts knowledge pieces are involved in answering this one simple question across multiple tools even and he was fully equipped with all this knowledge from the boot camp that demonstrates how deep our students and graduates actually understand the concepts that we teach them because notice he didn't just say use caching. He actually explained the Docker layer concept. He explained the whole strategy. He explained the concept of parallel jobs, the concept of optimizing pipelines in Jenkins and how it's done with actual implementation steps. So they clearly saw that he understands the concept. He knows how to implement it. So if he got hired, he would actually be able to do that at work. And that is theoretical plus practical understanding. That is the most valuable for companies. And that's what separates someone who completed tutorials from someone who actually understands how to build things. And here's the proof why that was important. They gave him this exact problem on his first day at work. So the interview was not theoretical. It was testing if he could solve real problems they actually had. And he proved with the knowledge he learned in our devil's boot camp, he was absolutely prepared to do it. And this is why our boot camp focuses on concepts before syntax and basic configuration options. You learn why Kubernetes works the way it does, not just how to write a deployment YML file for Kubernetes. You learn why CI/CD pipelines fail, not just how to copy paste a Jenkins file. Because in your interview, they will test your understanding and not your memory of how to write syntax of Jenkins file or Kubernetes manifest file. Let me share something with you. I need to say that I landed two offers, not just this one. The first one with was a company. The company was based in Poland, but they have the headquarter here in the UK. That was a junior devos. It was a junior devos role. I smashed the interview. Even before the end of the interview, they were already asking me how much do they need to offer me to take my CV off from the market that they don't want people to apply for any job. They just want to take me as there. But because I was naive, I was looking for a job. I was so fast. I just want to get something. I said, "Okay, I needed something between 30 to 40,000 thereabouts. " They were like, "Okay, they're going to send me the contract. " And just 1 hour after the interview, they sent me a contract to sign because I already interviewed for my current company. I was waiting for their feedback. So this is like on Friday with this company. They sent me the offer letter to sign. But I decided to delay that. the contract till the next week Monday just to see if I can have feedback from my current company. So I did that. I said okay, I'm going to sign a contract let's say on Monday or on Tuesday next week. I'm currently on holiday in the next week because I was interested in this my current company because most of these tools and technologies that my companies are using are what I liked. They were using Kubernetes, they were using terraform, they were using anible which I'm currently learning the boot camp. They were using GitLab. I'll come to that a bit and the other company they were using ECS for the orchestration which is like elastic container service in AWS. That was what they using and they're using some kind of legacy toolings which you know I'm not that I actually don't like those kind of legacy tool. I wanted those high in demand tools that would give me like I can apply from what I'm learning. They gave me a good offer for like 35,000 thereabout and then additional bonus every month for the junior deos role. in the next week which is on Monday I send a message to the talent recruiter on LinkedIn that if they're not willing to progress with my offer or with my application I have other job lining up that I need to answer so you should get back to me. So he told me that he was on leave that when he come back he's going to send me a feedback so he came back on Friday I think on Thursday and then he told me that congratulations that the CTO is willing to hire me that was it say that they're willing to offer me and to give me that position. — Yeah. So it wasn't that your CV was like

the most beautifully designed and the best template, but also the fact that they actually clicked on those project links means that that's where they went. As an employer myself of engineers, I rarely check the CV. I want to see like what projects they have worked on, what things they've built themselves, whether it's, you know, writing blog articles, sharing their engineering knowledge, or just doing projects. It confirms that they basically went straight to the projects. And when you don't have any project any practical projects that you can't put anything on the CV which kind of compensated for your lack of like a lot of work experience in devops like you had some but it wasn't like matching the lead engineer but that kind of compensated with the project. Very interesting. So it basically saw the level and depth of your knowledge through interview which then made you stand out among other candidates. Do you want to expose how much higher that salary was compared to the other one that you were confirmed? You can give me a range. — It was like 25% more than the other one. So it's between So I had like three rise within the year. So it's like 60 to 70 within that range. — Wow. Nice. I have two offers. One at 35,000 for a junior role and one at 60,000 for a lead role. That is not a coincidence. That is not luck. That is a strategy playing out. So, let me break down what Israel did here because this is a masterclass in negotiation most people would completely miss. First of all, he didn't stop interviewing after getting one offer. He had two processes running simultaneously. And this is critical. When you have options, you have leverage. When you have one offer, you are in a weak position. Take it or leave it. With two offers, you can create urgency. Second, he told the second company, I have another offer in writing, which is confirmation of his skills, that he's indeed valuable for other companies as well. And that's pressure. They know if they wait, they will lose him. So, the recruiter came back faster with a decision. And third, this is for me the most impressive one, he chose based on technology stack, not just salary. The 35,000 offer used ECS and some legacy tools. The higher one used Kubernetes, Terraform, Enzible, exactly what he learned in the boot camp. And he chose the one that matched his skills and would give him better long-term career growth. And this is top level strategic thinking. Most people would take the first offer out of fear. But he understood that the technologies you work with define your next opportunities. If you work with legacy tools, your next job options are pretty limited. If you work with modern in- demand tools, the ones we teach in our boot camp, every company wants you. And notice he negotiated a 25% salary increase by having competing offers. That's an extra 25,000 per year. Over 5 years, that's 125,000 more in earnings. All because he did not panic and take the first offer. And this is the final piece of the puzzle. Learn the right skills. Build projects that prove you understand them. Get multiple interviews running. Use competing offers as a leverage because when you have options, you can use them as leverage. And most importantly, choose based on long-term career growth and not just immediate salary. So when you got the job and you know you see the title of the job says lead DevOps engineer and you don't feel like that's your level of experience but you get this job like what was your experience thought process like before starting like did you feel anxious like how I'm going to perform a job — I felt really anxious what actually gave me confidence you know during the job was that when it come to my the company they were although they were not using like managed kubernetes service we were using like a bare meta, you know, bootstrapped using self-manage based on some policies and some compliance stuff from the government because of the kind of data that we handle. So, we're not obligated to use the cloud like EKS manage platform. So, we need to self-manage our Kubernetes service and that was what actually stood out for me because most of the DevOps engineer that was interviewing for that role they had, you know, they were just had knowledge on EKS which is good. I think when you want to actually learn Kubernetes, you want to be very good at it. You need to understand it from building it from the scratch. That's how you understand the missing pieces. But you see people going straight to EKS which is like a level of abstraction from what is actually you know going on under the hood. That was actually one of my advantage like I understood Kubernetes in and out. I was able to build when I joined the company right from the start I was able to build a new Kubernetes cluster from the scratch making it production grade

installing add-ons you know put Prometheus monitoring and all of that I was able to build it from the scratch and being that I started like when I joined the company it didn't take me much time to start you know adding value to the company that actually gave me that confidence to say okay at least I'm not just a dumb — this is the proof that the boot Kemp worked not just for getting interviews, not just for passing interviews, but for actually doing the job on day one. He was anxious. Of course he was. He'd never worked as a DevOps engineer before. And suddenly he gets a senior DevOps engineer title. But within weeks, he was building production Kubernetes clusters from scratch. Why? How was he able to do that? Because he had already done it in our programs. So he was just repeating what he had already practiced before. But now in his actual work environment, most engineers who learn these different DevOps tools, they try to take shortcuts. They try to learn the abstractions go the easy route, but they don't understand what's actually happening in the background. when someone breaks, how to troubleshoot those tools like Jenkins, Kubernetes cluster, when Terraform apply fails, how to troubleshoot what happened because they don't know what's happening under the hood because they just learned basic syntax and some abstraction layers because they never took the time to learn the fundamentals to dive deep into every single tool and concept like we do in our trainings. And this is why I personally always focus on teaching fundamentals before abstraction layers and conveniences. So you learn Docker before Kubernetes because you need to understand the container concept before you go to container orchestration. You learn cloud before Terraform because the cloud components at a lower level. So you know what you're automating on this cloud infrastructure with Terraform. And here was the result. He added value to his company immediately, not month of onboarding and training him on his job which would make him cost for the company but he started contributing from week one and that's why they kept him. That's why he got the title his salary level because he was not just filling a role he was solving real problems that this company had with his newly learned skills. So when I joined the company we were using some we using zabis for monitoring zabis I don't know we using zabis but then I introduced them to prometheios which is like trying to pull the metrics from those servers instead of pushing and all of that. So I introduced prometheios and then we started using prometheios and graphfana you know to monitor our servers our applications and also on our kubernetes. — Oh nice this is a very interesting use case. So you start working there then you take the last module of the boot camp you learn it and then you go back to your work project and you say let me implement this actually in our environment to kind of make it better. Okay. I really admire your mindset because what I kind of see now as a pattern like through our conversation is that you are like super motivated with a very pragmatic reason to like you know get this job and get a salary but also like you have this another layer on top of that like really important mindset that is pushing you to always learn. You do this DevOps boot camp which is already intense and you complete it and you land the job and you are now a lead engineer and now you decide that you want to do another boot camp which is even more advanced and also intense next to your job. So you decide to enroll in Dev Sec Ops. Why? Let me say something. I will go back to that question. When I joined the company, it was like my what's it called? My probation was supposed to last for 3 months but then even after 1 month I already passed my probation. Obviously one thing about me is that I don't like being in one place for a very long time. So I want to be upskilling make sure that I become much more relevant that you know the company can't even afford to let me go. I spoke to my boss that there's one boot camp as then the boot camp was not yet out but I actually told my boss that this boot camp I want to get it is dev sec ops and then I imputed my email to be on the waiting list. When the boot camp came out finally I told them that okay this is the course. I think it came back I can't remember the date but it came out very late May June something like that. So I told them and they decided to like enroll me for the boot camp. One thing is that I saw our system and I saw that security was actually lacking in some of our deployment and you know just deploy without actually going through the code and all of that. How to embed security into our workflows like the scannings of our containers our images scanning our codebase and all of that. So I learned that from your dev sec boot camp how to put them in the pipeline and then we using gitlab and also you also use gitlab in the boot camp. So that kind of make it really easy for me to actually grasp um some of the concepts. The first boot camp which is like you know you did it in sections

you did the first up to kubernetes I think — there's a part one which is like the fast and all the test and then there's the kubernetes and then cloud security and stuff like that. Yeah. What I did was as I was going through the boot camp as I was seeing them I was implementing them in real world putting them in our pipeline. So it got to a point I had to redesign our pipelines because sometimes we have like build test and deploy. So I had to change is that even before building applications let's scan the code to see if there vulnerabilities like secret management using the git leaks and also using some snake. But then we having like proof of concept with some companies which we can use for our internal system and all of that. So snake was one of the companies we contacted to see if we can use their platform. But the way the architecture is that most of our meta data from our codebase will be going through their infrastructures which we don't need. We want our own self-manage. We want everything to be contained within you know our environment. We don't want anything living. Yeah. So we decided not to go with sneak. But then GitLab has its own security features like SAS DA. So we decided to go with GitLab. But then we using like a premium version. GitLab wants us to upgrade to like Optimate which the CTO was not happy with because of the companies wants to they don't want to spend a lot of money but then so I started looking for those open source um tools that we used like the Sam Gre some of the open source scanning so that was why I used added it to the pipeline to as I was learning I was implementing it like I was putting what I learned you know in use I think that's actually one of the greatest way to learn when you are actually implement what you are learning in real time — and then you're seeing the results also in real time and you know that you implemented is something which is usable for your company. Did you learn during work hours? — Definitely I learned during work hours. After work hours I open my laptop start learning doing demo and all of that. So I was learning I was doing two things. I was working full-time job after the work. Sometimes even at work if I just feel like if I'm given a task that I'm just it becomes tiring I just decided to just you know watch the videos and go through it. Did you get any feedback from your employer, from your manager? It seems like you were actively trying to improve the processes without them having to tell you like hey Israel can you do something like you are self motivated to learn implement those learnings like what was your feedback from the managers — performance review added that to because we have like a performance review every first quarter and being that I was on my provision was supposed to last for 6 months my review had to elapse for like one year so in the annual review I added that as one of my I improved the security posture of the companies by making sure that containers are not running as root users in production to ensure that we are using the least privilege you know for our deployment and also giving proper um arrowback permission to service accounts that are running um stuff in Kubernetes and also implementing scanning our containers scanning our pipelines to see if there's any hardcoded credentials what's it called I added that to my PDRO and after that I had a pay rise which is like 10% of my base salary all of that actually added to my performance review. So I had a feedback from my manager was super happy. The CTO were happy. They were so happy about my work rate, the value that I've added to the companies, you know, across the years. — Very interesting. I'm going to try to summarize a little bit of like your journey and why I think that you became so successful to kind of pass it on to whoever would be watching this as a additional motivation. You are not only someone who wants to learn like technically stuff. You are very smart about how to use that. You know, you basically did the analysis of the job market at the very beginning and you say okay what can I do like reverse engineering to what can I learn like what certificates can I get to increase my chances highest so that I can land the first junior role. And once you did that you basically do this on research of this is the right thing to learn. certificate to get and then you position it on LinkedIn. It's visible for others and you start devil's boot camp. Then you use the offer that you have from the job to kind of get the better one. It was a very smart move for you to decide I actually want to work at a project where I can work with and learn technologies that are globally demanded instead of some archike and legacy stuff because that's going to help me in the future. So you're not only thinking about what salary I'm getting or you know like being very hungry about the job but also long-term. So every decision you make is like has this long-term perspective basically and that was the same with default. So I see the pattern basically throughout your entire journey. — I also did that with dev sec ops and also the kubernetes security part was also amazing like everything on your boot camp like the dev sec ops and the devops till today I still use them in my sometimes when I face talk trying to fix something I just refer back to some of your boot camps and tutorials. I want to ask you the final question

because I want you in your own words to address someone who is in the same position as you were before landing your current lead engineer job. Let's say if someone they don't have that same mental clarity as you do, but they want to get into it and they're hesitating and thinking about it. Like what would you tell them? like give me like tangible practical advice that someone in that position would hear to motivate them to get to the same level that you are now. The first thing I would tell anybody is do not chase after certifications at the first time because chasing after certification most times just keep people in the loop like watching tutorials. Most of the certification we see out there are just like multiple choice question like terraform you just need to click even the solution architect by AWS is just like you know multiple choice question you need to click A and B. I would advise them to go hands-on understanding what you are doing not just chasing certifications because at the end of the day certification is not going to it's not going to get through past the door right it can be attractive but I think in 2025 as it is currently in the market your certification is more or less useless if you don't have the skills and secondly you need to get a structured path for yourself it is very easy for you to get distracted by just learning tools and all of that and sometime when you come on LinkedIn you see people posting different kinds of tools it It's very easy for you to be overwhelmed if you don't have like a structure path like something that you need to follow. Just make sure you follow strictly. My second advice is that get a road map. Get a structure path. Make sure you are following that. And thirdly, you need to put whatever you are learning into practice. So instead of you learning stuff in isolation, learning terraform and all of that. Even if you have just one project and you're able to build you build that project using these tools like CI/CD pipeline, terraform to provision infrastructures, kubernetes to deploy your microservices and all of that. If you can integrate everything into a project, I think that gives you idea on how it works practically in the real world because we're not doing anything isolation. You can't be doing anible on its own. Definitely you'll be using anible with some kind of CI/CD. You can using terraform with you know CI/CD. You can be using Kubernetes with hem customize those kind of toolings. Don't learn anything in isolation. Make sure whatever you are learning you are trying to integrate them together use that to build project. And other one is that don't just focus on learning the tools because as you may see it if I was tool centric I was if I was only focusing on the tool without understanding the concept and the problem they were trying to solve that means I wouldn't have even landed my job because I had experience with Jenkins and not with GitLab. But the fact that I understood what the concept was all about and the tool was just like a means to an end you know just to you know achieve what I want to achieve it's just like a mechanic or somebody who is a mechanic that has different tools me who's not a mechanic if I have a spanner that does not make me a mechanic right so it comes with the understanding the concept understanding what you are trying to solve and not just the toolings and all of that I think actually gave me confidence sometime when I come online when I see people posting this using different tools I'm not bothered because all Those are just like tools. They're not the main concept. The main concept companies want to see is that can you build a robust CI/CD pipeline to cut down you know release time from this to that and not just learning junkies without understanding what you're trying to solve. So [snorts] let me summarize Israel's 9month timeline so you can see the complete road map. For the first few months he was in a scattered learning phase doing Udemy courses, YouTube tutorials trying to figure it out on his own. He got confused. He had no clear direction. Then he did CK certification course which was the first structured learning he had experienced. At this stage he started getting interviews but he couldn't pass them because he was still missing something. In the next stage he enrolled in DevOps boot camp. He completed end-to-end projects, built CI/CD pipelines, deployed to Kubernetes, learned Terraform, Enible monitoring, understood how everything integrates, which was the most important phase of his learning journey because that's where the roots were growing for his future success. And the final stage, the culmination was the job offers. with two job offers. He chose the one with better technology stack, higher salary and lead DevOps engineer title. So nine months from zero IT experience to lead engineer. But here is my take on what made it all work. First of all, he had urgency. Visa pressure created focus. He couldn't waste time on scattered learning. He needs something to get very fast, efficient results. Second, he invested in structured learning. Even when he had no money, he went for installment payments to make it easier for him, but he made it non-negotiable. Third, he studied after 2:00 a. m. shifts. No excuses. When you have a

clear goal and a deadline, you find time and you find a way because even if it's hard, it's still a temporary sacrifice. You don't have to do it for years or your whole life. You just have to do it for a few weeks or months, long enough to get to your goal. The next one, he learned concepts, not just syntax. He could explain why behind every concept in technology, not just how. And that's what separated him in his interviews. That's why he got those job offers. Number five, he built a portfolio. Projects from boot camp showed his integrated knowledge. It was a demonstration of his actual valuable skills and even broken link to his portfolio did not matter because the learning was real. Number six, he leveraged competing offers. He didn't panic and take the first one because he was desperate. He chose based on technology and long-term career growth. So, if you're trying to break into DevOps, become a DevOps engineer like Israel. This is the blueprint you can follow. It's not the easiest. It requires sacrifice, but it's absolutely realistic and possible if you follow a structured path, build real projects and focus on conceptual understanding. Israel is literally a proof that your background does not matter. from nonIT background to lead DevOps, no computer science degree, no previous IT experience and it was still possible for him because what mattered was strategic learning, consistent effort and understanding what employers actually need. So if you want to follow the same path, the road map is clear. The question is, are you willing to put in the work? I really hope that this story resonated with you. it inspired you to take action towards your engineering goals. And let me know if it was inspiring and what your next action steps are going to be in the next few weeks or months. Share them below and keep that motivation to keep going. And with that, thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.