The Tech Career Nobody Knows About (Pays $500K+)

Uh engineer level salary probably starting would be around 100-120. Usually it would be around the 150-ish range. So, I don't think you will ever be a perfect technology person. You know, things are moving fast. Everyone wants to do their thing, but you're like the roadblock in between most of the people because you're trying to do a lot of balancing. [music] All right, guys. Welcome back. We are covering a new skill set that we have not done before on this show. It is the skill set of platform engineering. I'm seeing a lot of these roles in my recruitment business and I brought on an industry expert. His name is Amin Sherali. He is the principal platform engineer at JetBlue. And Amin, welcome to the show. Thank you. Uh it's a pleasure being on the show. I really appreciate the opportunity to come talk to you guys. So, I think uh yeah, when you go to the tech shows and things around that, there is multiple names used for this profile in general, which is like some people call it DevOps, some people call it SRE, some people call it things. But, flat platform engineering in itself is a little different. Um what platform engineering really means is basically it does things um it could be multiple spaces. Uh I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all. I don't think it is something that just does everything justice. Um so, platform engineering, if you have to really put it in one space, is um it's everything that probably helps support developers to do their thing mostly that point. Um it's creating and managing platforms. it's uh it's basically the expertise of building and managing anything that's around platforms. Could be infrastructure, it could be anything that supports the developers to be able to, you see, you know, develop and uh deliver their product in your high-level. That's kind of what we do. Um how does platform engineering be separate from DevOps is basically um we provide the platform for the devs and the operation guys to be able to do their thing in a better, easier, secure, and more reliable fashion now. And when it comes to SREs, uh I think SRE is kind of sits very closely with DevOps as well. SREs kind of do the operational part for developers. SREs do have more technical expertise when compared to the ops guys. They're more developers supporting the operational activities. So, um again, more of platform engineering provides a platform for both SREs or the DevOps or the operations or the devs. There There multiple names for it. Uh but it just basically provides a platform for people to do their thing uh securely, reliably, and quickly as possible. I think uh it's it's funny. Uh I feel like tools and and, you know, technology can be learned. Uh the skill that I think that is most necessary to be a platform engineer is curiosity. You have to be curious about something. You have to be extremely curious, extremely hungry. Uh trying to automate things, trying to make things better. How can I make this better? How can I make this quicker? How can I make this simpler? If you don't have that mindset of making things simple, quick, easy, uh better, automated, uh curious about how to fix something, how to make it easier for anybody in general, that probably will define if, you know, platform engineering is the right place for you or not at point. Uh it's actually funny I say this but because this actually sits well with any engineer in general, but I do understand that the platform engineering it's a little more high high high-paced at point. Um you're moving fast, things are moving fast. Everyone wants to do their thing, but you're like the roadblock in between most of the people because you're trying to do a lot of balances between uh uh you know, security, networking, and infrastructure, and developers. And you're trying to hop around in in in four different places at point. So, if you're not curious, hungry to learn, think, move, and automate things faster, the the faster you can get people to do their thing, um the better you are for platform engineering you really are at that Yeah, but uh you said the technologies can be learned, but like what are some of the first ones that they do learn in these these jobs. So, I think from a job perspective, if someone's looking for a job in platform engineering, the technologies that the companies probably will be asking for is things like IAC. Terraform is kind of a big thing today. So, uh Terraform or OpenToFu, which is the open-source version of Terraform, is one option. GitHub Actions is kind of pretty big. Um I do see a lot of the DevOps and, you know, platform engineer and everyone talking about Jenkins, but I feel like Jenkins is kind of I see it slowly fading out of the industry a little bit, and I see a lot more of GitHub Actions coming into picture. It's something I recommend over Jenkins, though the Jenkins skill is amazing to have. Um but GitHub Actions seems to be more of the industry standard at this point. Um observability platforms is a big part. You should be able to spin up and manage an observability platform, how they integrate with all of your infrastructure for reporting, you know, copying data, moving data, and things around that data point. Docker is another uh skill for CI/CD. You need to build your container images and things around that. Kubernetes is heavy. Uh I don't think uh uh I personally am a big fan of Kubernetes. I think it's probably the best thing in general, and uh I know a lot of the industry standard is moving away from the virtual machines to more Kubernetes and Docker containers and things around that there. Python is a good to have because automation kind of comes into play, uh especially in the era of, you know, uh AI and data and data engineering and stuff. Python is a pretty big content contender in general for for automation and things around that. Uh I think knowledge of YAML and JSON always helps. Um I think it's more of a basic skill to have. I would say, you know, you should know how to just write things with YAML, JSON, by Q, JQ, and things around that. CI/CD tools, I do think a CD tool is important. Uh from what I've seen industry-wide, Argo and Flux are kind of the primary two contenders, but you can know any CD tool is more of standardized. If you know something, you can always transition to the other one. I don't think it's that bad, though, but a CD tool in some form. High level, that's probably the skills I would put up there. Yeah. And And you know, right now, what is the kind of best way to pick up some of these skills? Is it just kind of like on the job starting out, or are there kind of educational platforms that can teach you some of these? So, me myself as a person, I think I learn it something new every day. Um I I if I use LinkedIn Learning to a certain extent, it's provided by the company. Uh I do Pluralsight. I was a big fan of Linux Academy, which then got bought over by the other company. I forget the name, but I can find that for you. Uh but I've been I've learned all of my skills starting from Linux Academy. Uh this was back in 20 2007 2008 when I started this off. And I've been a big fan of Linux Academy, whatever. Uh and I think Pluralsight bought them up. So, it's kind of everything's coming to Pluralsight at this point. So, I do use Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning a lot today. That's kind of where I do most of my skills training. Udemy is a good one if you want to kind of do these zero to 100 courses. There's a lot of these, you know, zero to heroes, or they call it, or zero to 100 courses, or they call it. I do think you need to come in with some basic knowledge. Like, Terraform is a language it's it's HCL. You HCL. You have to kind of learn the language. You just cannot come in and be like, "I'm going to learn on the job." I think some basic knowledge of Terraform is good. Obviously, you will build and hone that to a certain extent on the job itself, but at least knowing how to use Terraform probably is an important part. The same thing with GitHub Actions and things around there. And those the the last two you mentioned, Terraform GitHub Actions, where would they get those skills? Uh there are a lot of courses on uh um Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning. There are also like these full-level courses on Udemy as well that you can take. Um I had taken a zero to 100 uh zero to hero Python course as well on Udemy. I had liked that course better, so I had done that on Udemy. But, yeah. I think obviously the spectrum is pretty big depending on the skills you're actually working with. But um um I think on an average if I have to really say uh engineer level salary probably starting would be around 100, 120. um sorry, that's a yeah, the engineer. The senior engineers would be around the 150-ish range. And uh anything above that comes as a manager, which again changes things. But usually I've seen the engineer and the senior engineers is what the salary range is usually is between the 100 100 to 170 depending on what position you're in. And then and then one thing I want I definitely want to ask you. for these careers as far as AI's influence, AI um is it helping you currently? Is it potentially going to take some of these careers away in the SRE DevOps platform roles? Um I mean, what are you seeing right now? I see um I know there's a lot of fear in the in in the industry about AI at this point. I know a lot of people kind of worrying about losing jobs. I really see the AI as a friend. Um it's um it's basically helping you look at data uh and providing you with answers rather than you uh let's give you an example. Like the I I know when I was a Linux admin, one of the things I would have to do was I'd I'd have to go into the logs and keep reading the one of the one each of these logs to see what exactly is breaking and what is the log telling me at that point. Um I've been seeing a lot of these new things coming up where AI explains to you what the error is and what you can do to fix it. Um this was something and this is something I've been reading about and that's kind of where I've seen. I was I was reading about something on um Medium and uh it was about this company that was implementing this thing called K8s GPT. what is K8s GPT? It's basically like a chat GPT but for applications within your Kubernetes cluster. Um what it does is it's reading your logs, it's trying to find the errors and giving you to output of what this could mean and what you can do to fix it. Um it kind of makes your mean time to mitigation really quick because you don't have to go digging into a you know, it's like digging a needle in a haystack. Going into the logs is like pretty much going looking for a needle in a haystack at that point. You don't as a human necessarily have to go in and kind of do that. Uh the application talks to you of what exactly it's doing at that point and what's happening at that point and how can what can you do to fix it at that point. I personally think it's going to make it better. Um it makes jobs easier. Uh not necessarily you lose jobs. Uh again, I think different industries is different but at least in the platform space, I don't see it to be more of a enemy but more of a friend to us at that Mhm. So, make you more efficient. When I interview people, the one thing I'm looking for is again as I I I keep repeating this word but I keep looking for curiosity. Um how much has somebody, you know, been interested in this whole space? How curious is somebody? Does somebody have a home lab that they try to, you know, mingle around with to see how they can actually do something new? Um I've come across people who've done really interesting things on their home labs. Somebody's actually spun up their own on their own observability platform using the whole Grafana stack in monitoring. So, this person had actually deployed a Kubernetes cluster on their home network. They were monitoring all of their devices, the smart devices in the house and actually managing it through that. This was one I I was really impressed by that one. Um I was I'm interested to do things like that but I feel like sometimes time is a factor. But this person had actually got all that set up and and just the curiosity with which the person was explaining this was was commendable. I think it was very nice. Um the person obviously got another position somewhere else that they preferred and they moved on to something else. But um that being said, that doesn't deter me from keep talking to people. Like I don't think I'm looking for you to have skills of something to the team. Like if I say I want you to know Terraform, I don't want you to know Terraform to be able to just do everything that I want you to do. You just have to be curious to be able to, you know, figure things out. Um Curiosity is what I'm constantly looking for. Uh basic knowledge of skills is a requirement. I would not say it's If somebody just says I'm come and says comes and says I'm curious, that's not enough. Right. You need to know what your basic skill is and how you actually use your curiosity to do something that's interesting. Or maybe an idea of how you would want to implement something somewhere that makes things better for the the dev teams or the security teams or whoever is communicating with that point. that's where that's what I look for in interviews. the more curious you are, the more interested in learning, the more you move up, the more you move to better parts. Um that's how I think of it is. Um at least in this space. Um The technical skills learning, I mean, technology is changing every second day. so I don't think you will ever be a perfect technology person. You have to keep learning every day, otherwise you become as uh you become obsolete at some point if you don't move on with the technology itself at that point. So, if you're curious enough to learn the new skills, then that's kind of what's primary for me. This was great. I mean, I mean, it's great that, you know, we finally had someone kind of in your skill set to come on and shed some light on exactly what these roles are cuz people are probably starting to see them a little more and more. Um like you said, some of those titles are changing. Maybe, you know, people have seen DevOps probably, uh maybe even some SRE, but uh now they're probably seeing a lot more platform engineering. So, thanks so much for coming on and shedding some light on everything for us. I mean, It was my pleasure. Uh it was nice to be on the show and uh good luck for all the people looking for a job in the career. And it was nice talking to you, Chris. always a pleasure. Yeah. No, no, I'm so glad we made this happen. And uh next time you get on that flight, just think about think about the army of men like I mean that are that are making sure you're getting there safe. So, Yep. There's a there's a big army of all the men and women who really spend