Launching ITSyndicate DevOps Courses: A Journey of Growth
Maxim Yemleninov
DevOps & Cloud | AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes | COO at ITsyndicate
In the last two years, our company has initiated on a thrilling venture, introducing our DevOps courses and effectively training and placing eight engineers. These engineers have fitted well into our projects, and what this has shown is that the training program that we gave them a chance to undergo was well adapted. In this article, I’d like to tell you about my experience in starting courses, what you should prepare for and expect, and a few words about what we teach to interns.
Why did we start conducting courses?
In our case, several facts came together:
- Difficulty finding quality engineers. The market is oversaturated with people wanting to enter IT. Conducting 50 interviews a month and hiring engineers, I realized that even if we carefully checked the candidates, not all of them met our high-quality standards. It isn't easy to retrain an established engineer to do something in a way you need it to do. A young specialist can be taught to do it right.
- Training an engineer in 3 months is more economically profitable than finding him. Looking at the situation from the outside, you will understand that the search and interview process involves not one person but at least two or even more. This is all the time that is converted into money, those people or you can spend time on more valuable things. And this is not fiction; according to my analysis, on average, closing one DevOps position in the Canadian or US market takes 6-8 months. During this time, you or your employees will spend much time on interviews and checking test tasks.
- Desire to share knowledge. Due to the fact that we have been on the market for more than 10 years and have completed more than a hundred projects, we have an understanding of how to build and maintain infrastructure properly and how to develop projects from a technical point of view. In our company there were engineers who wanted to share their knowledge, and I am very grateful to them for this!
How to start courses for newcomers in your company?
1. Needs Assessment
2. Course Design and Development
3. Platform and Delivery Method
4. Trainers and Facilitators
5. Find students
6. Start Courses
6. Continuous Improvement
7. Conduct courses on an ongoing basis!
Our program
Our DevOps courses cover a wide range of essential topics to ensure a well-rounded education for our students:
1. Cloud Basics: Cloud Practitioner
2. High Availability, Scalability, and Core DevOps Practices
3. Infrastructure Provisioning and Security
领英推荐
4. Configuration Management with Ansible
5. Learn Docker by Doing
6. Advanced Docker Practices
7. Kubernetes Quick Start
8. Securing and Auditing a Kubernetes Environment
9. Kubernetes the Hard Way
10. Implementing a Full CI/CD Pipeline
11. CI/CD Deep Dive
12. Monitoring, Logging, and Alerting
Practical, Real-World Training
The thing that makes the concerns of our courses unique is the fact that our issues are realistic, and the students are expected to complete real-life assignments. It is not just about offering training documents to our interns but also about training them on real projects derived from real-life occurrences. Thus, it is possible to state that the main aim of such tasks is to let interns learn in practice, given the tasks they will face during their work in the future. This way, they are not only informed but also skilled and ready for real-life situations as they occur in the market. Upon completion of the course, each student sets up their project from scratch, consolidating all aspects learned in this type of coursework.
A thorough two-year audit of my accomplishments
I feel that after conducting these courses for the last two years, I'm very pleased with the quality of the program and, even more importantly, the quality of participants it attracts. The engineers we have hired are now busy handling different projects and showcasing the practical experience and skills we imparted.
The most enjoyable part was cooperating with young specialists, especially because they came to us with a remarkable desire to acquire knowledge. This energy, not just in the learning process but also in the work that they do, has not only served them well but also contributed to the enhancement of the entire team.
These positive findings have further strengthened our belief in delivering high-quality training. As for the second question, we claim that education is the key to the growth of a company and the whole technological community, and we must do everything possible to support new talents. Our courses have been beneficial not only to our students but also to building a competent workforce in the country.
Looking Ahead
As we progress, it is crucial to continue to develop and enhance our education in DevOps initiatives. The future goals include further attraction and retention of talented individuals to implement our projects and develop the relevant sphere. Thus, promoting the policy of studying and learning as our key to excellence, we are dedicated to the advancement of education.
In summary, launching our DevOps courses is a great step forward for us. The stories of our students and the positive changes in the projects show the necessity of training and developing employees. We will keep embarking on this process, cultivating new talent in DevOps and sustaining the goal of delivering high-quality training and practice in DevOps.