Tier 3 College to Amazon 😳 0–1 YOE DevOps Journey | Real Story + Interview Experience #devops #aws

All right, welcome Rutandeep. So, today is a very auspicious day, a very important one. And congratulations on getting selected on Amazon. So — Yes. Well done. Uh I've been knowing you for some time now. So, you have been a part of our mentorship program. Uh we also conducted a mock interview for preparation for this uh interview in Amazon and I'm very happy that you're selected. Now, this is special interview is it's just about a general chit-chat. Uh how you feeling now? Are you relieved that you got into Amazon? Are you excited? Are you nervous? So, what's happening? So, basically, first of all, thank you for hosting me. And talking about that, I like I am feeling a bit excited about the future journey and also a bit nervous like uh it will be a completely new adventure for me. So, yeah, I am a bit relieved. I'm going to take a good off for a couple of days. Absolutely. So, it's a dream for all of engineers Yes. — to get in big companies like Absolutely. So, it's a it's a very good achievement and you're so early in your career. So, in the interest of our viewers uh let's talk about your initial journey and how you actually went on to Amazon. Between you have got around 0 to 1 year of experience. I believe 8 to 9 months of experience, right? So, let's start from the beginning. Uh I think many of us will be interested. So, did you pass out from IIT, NIT, any any A league college or what sort of college have you been? What's your degree? So, I have like I have completed my degree last year in 2023 and I'm passed out from a tier three college. So, what we call in India, tier three colleges. If Yeah. So, and I have completed my degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering. All right. And that's my educational background. And after that, I joined Vodafone Idea, one of the biggest telecom company in India, as a network engineer. Where I was working in networking part. So, it was mostly the hardware that I configured remotely. Yeah. Since 7 months, I was working on that. Uh Right. So, when you were in Vodafone, did you get a campus placement or did you did you search for a job then after your college degree? So, college I got internship in Vodafone Idea through the college. And the this like uh was internship and those converted into PPO. So, sort of I got placed through the college. You can say that. — Okay. Yeah. So, you have been working into Vodafone more mostly towards the telecom and the Linux admin side. So, what prompted you to go move on to DevOps and cloud technologies? So, I was a little aware about cloud and all those technologies, but like not those more expo those exposure to these technologies. After completing our college, one of my close friend was working in cloud. So, like we talk about cloud uh like we started discussing cloud daily basis. So, this thing like triggered my interest in cloud. And we also work closely with development in current organization for the feedback we receive from the user for the improvement. So, I have I had made a couple of friends in development team. So, yeah, that was the like this is the point where I got interested in cloud and DevOps all the things. Uh Yeah. Yeah. So, cloud computing is very interesting. So, for people who have managed Linux boxes on their own, who have done administration, they'll find cloud very easy to learn. Very exciting, lots of different services. And DevOps is the field to be in at this time. So, you have done in deciding the right stream. Actually, like we kind of work on a similar sort of things. So, we actually configured the hardware which are remotely in around all around the India. And we configured them remotely by accessing Yeah, so it's kind of similar thing for me like working on VM. But yeah, that are the vendor machines. Yeah. So, I know that you have been a part of mentorship program. So, we go through cloud boot camps, we go through DevOps boot camp. How did you initially start picking up? And when did you realize that you wanted to have a professional program which can help you? So, like everyone says you learn from your experiences and through the mentorship you learn from others experiences. So yeah, this is the main point like

main factor deciding so to go for the mentorship program. So, while like exploring my cloud journey, I was like doing sometime cloud stuff or some DevOps stuff. So, I was not following proper path. So, I like randomly choose YouTube videos or any random courses. Sometimes I learn cloud for two or three weeks, then I suddenly shift to CI CD and in such scenarios I like come across your YouTube pages. And so yeah, I started exploring this and I found those very interesting. So, these videos were very raw, like not recorded like pre-recorded lectures. Those are very raw, recording from the classes or the discussion classes, not editing and stuff. So, uh I feel sort of transparency in this videos, so I contacted uh I think Sanjeev uh and we had good discussion with him. So, because of this like transparency, I got I have decided like I will join and the main thing many courses uh said that I will help you for the placement or getting interview calls. So, as like join while joining the mentorship, you told like you will help in our journey. So, it's completely like you will show us path we have to prepare those path. Yeah? So, yeah, this thing I like this thing. Uh like not fake promises and everything. So, yeah. I like uh transparency and I joined this. Yeah. So, in the in the mentorship program, do you think it impacted you uh in in learning the way that you used to earlier? And how you're doing it now? Did it give you any sort of guidance? Yeah, like uh I would say the right track is given by the mentorship program to me. So, as I said, I work like sometime I work on uh I was like work on working on cloud, learning cloud. Sometime I was like learning CI/CD Jenkins. And suddenly I go to Kubernetes. So, after joining the boot camp, so I got a clear idea like where should I start, uh what should I prepare first. So, after joining the mentorship, I think we had a one-to-one session for the career guidance and which path we should follow and everything. Yeah. So, I followed the exact same path as you guys said. First go to the cloud, learn cloud basics and everything. Uh so, and then move ahead with DevOps part. So, I starting started with client and had a certification with AWS solution architect as you said. And yeah, that the actually this invite from Amazon was actually because of certification. So, yeah, that helped me a lot. So, I would say the right track is given to me through the mentorship. I would say I have used Google Map in these terms for my career. Yeah, I'm I'm very glad the program helped you, Ratandeep. So, it's very well intended. Uh We do not do fake promises, as you said. Yeah. And, uh we are very honest in the way that we teach. So, I'm very really happy that you got selected. I think it's a uh it's not only just mentorship, it's also a student's hard work which comes into play. Because uh unless and until you do hands-on practices, go and revisit the lectures, it's there's only a limit to which uh even a mentor can do. But, yeah, hands off to you that you actually tried to follow them. So. Yeah. I believe mentor will show you the right path, but uh walk how to walk on those path uh path is up to all of on us to how we go ahead. Right. Because everyone has a access to good mentors and good resources. That is absolutely correct. So, you have to do your own hard yards. Yeah. But, it it's uh just that you have to follow the right path, follow the right people, and look where you are now. So, I'm and this is uh really a good milestone because you're less than 1 years in your career. And, you cracked Amazon, so there's a big career ahead of you, but you've got a giant leap and giant step now. And, it is a like very big thing for me. So, from core technology to the cutting-edge new technologies like a cloud. And, as long as you as long as it excites you to work on the new technologies, you'll always find things very interesting. Challenging things are more exciting, and that that's what keeps you up. So, similar for myself as well. So, like I have been like more than 20 years in my career and even now I'm learning every day. So, my latest project in my job is more on uh AI and ML stuff. So, we are all and new things do excite. So, it's very good that if you have that sort of relationship with the new learnings and that will

the with the new learnings and that will always keep you going. Now — I believe if uh like uh one thing you I believe if like we like anything or we love technology, so every new technology excites us to know more about it. So, that's the thing. If we are excited by technology, so eventually we go with the trend or you can say new technology. Absolutely. Now, let's start up with your interview. So, how did you apply for Amazon? Did you apply through a job portal? Did you How did you come to know about this opportunity? So, I just [clears throat] I applied this job through the Amazon job portal. Uh so, this was the like I was randomly searching for that and yeah, like I was searching for cloud support roles like I can try. So, I got this one. So, I just applied and like I don't I I wasn't expecting that they will reply me or Yeah, because it is a very big company for us. Uh so, yeah, I got a test invite from them. So, it was a basic test where they test our like [clears throat] decision-making abilities and situational abilities based on their Amazon 16 principles. And some basic Linux troubleshooting scenarios and yeah, basic Linux uh MCQs you can say. Uh that sort of questions. It is about like Uh, there is no time limit for the test. Uh, and it will take around half an hour or maybe 1 hour. Yeah, these are the three sections. One is behavioral questions based on Amazon principles. One will be your One will be testing your like decision-making ability, and one will be MCQ and troubleshooting part. And after clearing this, uh, I got invite for the Right. It was a remote test, right? So Yes, uh, it was virtual. Okay. And after you did the test, how many days did the did it take them to come back to you and ask for an interview? So, they like after completing this, I got a mail after 3 days that you have cleared the test, and we are scheduling your interview. So, they will schedule your interview after 10 days after completing the test. And they Yeah, after 10 days, and there is a, like, pre-interview call, which will be scheduled 7 days before your interview. Mhm. And in the pre-interview call, they will tell you everything about the job role and your date How your date will be, and your shift rosters, and anything like they want to highlight uh, that will be, like, impacted on your job. So, and everything and how should we prepare and everything stuff. And these were, like, three loop interviews. One was on Around one was on Linux and OS. Round two was on networking, and round three was on management. Every round was around 40 to 45 minutes. Right. And this is where just before these rounds, we had a mock interview. Now, this interview is already posted on YouTube. I'm pretty sure that after looking at this discussion, many of the people will go back and have a look at the interview that we did around 5 days back. So, did this interview, the mock interview, did it did it help in any way in actually your real interview? Uh yeah, I have given the mock interview 2 days before the my actual interview and it helped me a very good way. So, like I was lagging in some points as in mock interview. I think you have already Yes. So, I was lagging in some point point. I was struggling to explain the concept. Like I was I know the concept actually but I want but I was the struggling to explain concept to the interview. So, I have worked on that point and the tips you I shared to how to like use your job JD to make questions and how to make scenarios to answer those back your questions answers properly. Yeah, so this feedback helped me a lot. I have worked on that day the feedback you have given. The main thing like I got exposure to the thing that how actually interview will be. Context of the interview as you said don't move around the bush. I exactly remember this lines Yeah. Yeah. Great. Let's come to the day of the interview. So, did you dress formally with a tie and suit or how did you go? What's the attire? Uh so uh on the pre-interview call they told us like wear whatever you want. We are also okay if you wear t-shirt or formal attire. Yeah. Whatever makes you comfortable wear that. So, I was in shorts and a good

shirt. Uh normal like virtual things. Mhm. So, yeah. They are okay with if you wear t-shirt. They told us whatever you are comfortable in wear it. Okay. And so when you reached in there so you had you said that there were three rounds. So, the first was on Linux, right? So, how many people were in the panel? So, there uh there were two people in the panel. So, one was a senior in uh software India. Uh he has 7 to 8 years of experience, and one is 3 to 4 years of experience. Right. And what sort of questions did they ask you there? So, they firstly started about my own laptop. So, what's your laptop configuration, and what's your uh so, what's your CPU and basic stuff, how much cores your CPU has, and they slowly started moving towards the OS. So, basic of OS, like how OS boots. Sorry. Uh and then like what is BIOS, what is GRUB, and everything. Uh they firstly asked me the booting process of OS, and then the specific components of the OS. And they slowly moved to the Linux part. So, in Linux they asked me the file system, and then the basic troubleshooting of Linux, network troubleshooting, uh that sort of questions. And they I think they mostly focus on the scenario-based questions. Like they will not directly ask you the question, so tell me what is OS. So, they will make a scenario, and you have to answer those scenario using those uh those things. Uh those sort of questions they asked. Like they asked me one question, so suppose you have a only 4 GB of RAM to your uh laptop, so how will you run the game of 20 GB uh let's say 25 GB. So, there is a one concept in OS called virtual memory. So, they are actually pointing towards uh like those concepts. So, they asked this sort of questions. Similar to so, uh I have answered them in like in the context of GTA 5. So, yeah. So, like it's good to answer them in two uh like scenario uh based questions in the scenario form. Correct. Like we if you also make one scenario, so they also got interested into the answer. Right. Any questions which you did not know answer of? So, yeah, there are one or two questions that I was unable to answer. So, one was how actually file system is implemented in Linux. So, I was a bit aware about file types of Linux. So, but I don't know exactly how file types are implemented in Linux. One was related to the double shooting. So, they started with the how will you double shoot the like slow working of your network. And they slowly started and then the in this same scenario, they asked me, "Suppose you are facing the issue in slow speed issue in transferring the file between two your two of your virtual machine. " So, yeah, I like these questions specifically which use FTP. So, my asked you was So, to a question which you did not know the answer, did you tell them that you do not know the answer or did you try to attempt it? So, like when they asked me though if you are facing the issue in transferring file between two your VMs. So, as like I tried to answer the question as much context as I know. So, I tried like basic double shoot. I will check the FTP port. network statistics. So, like I completely said not to the equation, but I tried it. But, I will say this, do not fake the scenarios and don't give the like don't give answers to the questions if you don't know. They are completely okay if you don't know any concept. I have faced the same scenario in second interview. Yeah. I think we also discussed that if you do not know, it's okay to say that you don't know rather than beating around the bush and because Yeah. And Amazon is very big on training by themselves, so they would provide you adequate training. I've known about the trainees who get trained for up to an year before they're actually deployed on to client side, so it's okay if you don't know, but just admit that you don't know is the key. Yes. So after your Linux round, you had another round as well, right, during the day? Yes. Okay. And what was that? It was a networking round. Mhm. So they like they were supposed to ask only network question in this round as interviewer panel, one of the panel from the interviewer side was from the Red Hat background. So he started my network interview with Linux. Mhm. So he initially asked me some basic of Linux.

And then he moved ahead with the networking part. So initially asked me the OS OSI model. And then the what's will be the difference between TCP/IP model and OSI model. And then they moved ahead with typical question what happens at the background when you type in amazon. com. So yeah, the complete flow when we type amazon. com. So I have told them the complete flow till the page loads in our window. And after that they moved ahead with the DNS part. So they were like they want a good DNS guy or anything, so they asked me a DNS in quite deep. So started with the DNS flow, how DNS work. And actual flow, there are two type, recursive call and like recursive and iterative. And talking about DNS servers, subdomain servers, root servers and everything. So they asked DNS quite deep. And after that they moved ahead with troubleshooting part of DNS. Suppose like you are about you get a IP address of website using the DNS lookup command. So you are while you are pinging the ping you IP you get a ping, but while pinging the amazon. com you don't get a ping. So what will you do? This sort of questions. So yeah. They are like quite straightforward and like looking for a good DNS guy, I think. It was a good one day. Okay, and the third round was? Third round was a managerial round. Okay. Yeah. More of — was talking about the saying no questions. So I have one incident in second round. So they asked me the what is the name of the file which is saved in configuration for the like network file which will be saved in the Linux. There is a network file in the Linux. So they asked me the name of the and I was not aware about it. So I told them So I don't know. And actually he told me so these are the some kind of questions we ask candidate, but we like we are we don't expect answer for such questions, but we are just checking or testing. You will get to know about these files and everything with your experience. Yeah, this was the words he said. Yeah. Yeah. So in the behavioral round so what sort of questions did the manager ask you? So behavioral round was like it was sort of managerial round. They check on your decision-making abilities and based on 16 leadership principle and the star pattern of Amazon. So they start with the introduction. So interviewer gave me a brief introduction about himself and told me to give brief introduction about myself. So he was interested in thing that on which part I work on which thing I work. So I have given in brief introduction on what technology I used, what systems I use, how I connect, like who are the point of contact when I get into trouble, for whom I work, everything this sort of stuff. After the introduction, they clearly like clearly said that every question we ask you have to answer in a star format. So, there is one star format in Amazon we used to answer. So, yeah. So, every — star format, yeah, that refers to your situation, task, action, and what was the result of it. Yeah, so — Yeah. Yep. So, they started with this and first question I think they asked me uh I think uh what is the situation where you have to deep dive into any situation or into any topic? So, yeah, this was the first question they asked me. So, you have to answer in sort of situations, then like what was your task? What action did you take and what was the result of the action? This sort of three or four questions and after answering they like uh questions ask questions based on your answers. So, why don't you do this? Why did you do this? So, this sort of questions. It was around 35 to 40 minutes and like uh there were was around four questions on the managerial round. And they are like uh quite ask quite deep into your answers. So, they will move around your answers and try Cool. I will suggest don't make fake scenarios in front of them as they are very experienced person. The person who was taking my managerial round was around 18 years of experience in cloud. So, they will catch you easily if you are making the fake scenarios. So, he also told me that if you don't have encountered any scenario in your organization or in like so simply say no, we will like move

ahead with the another question. So, yeah. Okay. All right. So, and I believe that uh your joining is probably in a couple of months time, right? So, you still have got some time to before you join. So, maybe yeah, it might be a good idea to continue with the mentorship program and uh just prepare more. Yes. Like I'm planning to continue it after also joining my job. So, Which is which is great. Yeah. Yeah. So, because like it will eventually help me become let's say experts or we can say experienced people. Yeah. Uh Yeah, the guidance matter most. I think the kind of discussions that we do there uh Sanjeev, myself, Avinash. So, we are we are very experienced in all these technologies. So, you'll always keep on learning uh from all the discussions that we have. So, we are very focused on security, on the best practices. So, this is something that really helps you edge out. Something that you don't get to learn while reading the books. So, it always helps to be in there. So, Yes. The great thing I like about the as you always say, uh no question is a silly question. So, yeah, these things always So, like there are if I ask in to my manager certain things, I will hesitate to ask him like what he will consider as the I don't know these small things. Yeah. But we don't hesitate while asking in mentorship program or our classes. So, yeah, that's a good thing. No question is a silly question. So, yeah, we ask questions without hesitating. And that's the intention of it as well. So, it's a Yes. It's an open forum where you are not judged based on whether you ask intelligent questions or silly questions. Uh that's where everybody is. So, everybody is in a learning phase. So, we are all learning in the life. And we are all trying to help each other out, so that's that's the best part of it because you can ask anything, you can discuss anything, you can even discuss about the problems that you're having in a job. Or if you are if you want to switch over to a to another job, what sort of things that you should do. I just like as you came to me that you have interview in Amazon, can I take a mock for you? These are the types of help that is invaluable, so and it always helps to have a mentor so whom you can talk to and who can listen to you and provide guidance to the best of their abilities. So, I think it's a it's a very good way in which we can help you out as well and I believe that you would do the same for others as well. So, you would grow ahead in your career and if there is a fresher or somebody who is less experienced, always try to help them out. So, that's and it's a great feeling when you are helping people out and they're getting success in life. Yeah. Nothing like that. So, that's what we do and uh that's what we like to do as well. So, it's not just uh mentoring, so it's more of a long-term friendship that we nurture with everyone. So, your case with Amazon, so we got one guy who got selected in Redis. Uh And there are multiple similar sort of success stories that we have and it makes me very proud that the students are getting selected and yours one is the latest, so Amazon is something that everybody looks forward to and this is excellent. In terms of your future career goals, uh just wanted to know what do you want to actually do? Um So, you want to stay more into DevOps or are you planning to go into AIML or what's Do you have any interest in specific technologies? So, I have a specific interest in DevOps. So, I'm planning to get uh more like more hands-on in cloud using my current role. When I will join Amazon, I will explore cloud more and work on cloud more. So, when I got a good experience with the cloud, I will like I will move ahead with DevOps. Explore DevOps more. And then and DevOps continues even in AI and ML. So, in machine learning, so you have got you have ML ops where you create ML pipelines. So, it's a similar sort of concept which keeps on extending and DevOps is a good career to be in and also it's very interesting because you're automating a lot of things which are being done manually. You know, implementing security, DevSecOps. I find it very interesting. I think you do as well. Yes. Cool. I think that's that's a great discussion and I feel very happy for you, Ravinder. Thank you very much for joining us today. You can now put your head down for a while and uh pre prep for joining Amazon. I'm very sure that you'll have a long successful career and right at the start of your career you got such a big break and this is going to be massive. And I believe that uh people might try to look you up at LinkedIn which is very fair and I think you will start getting being an inspiration for a lot of freshers

who plan on joining large big enterprises. And your success story is going to help a lot of people getting motivated and also they will also land up in big companies as well. So, thank you for your time today. And I've said enough that I feel very happy and I do. So, uh thanks for the thanks for your time, Ravinder. I'll just pause the recording now and So, I