TechBrain Review Newsletter 2024-03

Hey there ??

?? Welcome to the TechBrain Review newsletter, Issue No. 3, March 2024! ??

As in the recent issue, I would like to focus mainly on those three areas:

#Technology

Multicloud is a future!

Multicloud is the future... certainly for me. This is my personal belief and I want to specialize in multicloud.

Do you remember vendor lock-in? (No 1 of this Newsletter) The way to avoid it is multicloud. When choosing several cloud service providers, we naturally do not stick to one favorite one. This is also a good approach to have more interesting possibilities than just sticking to one supplier and quickly "patching" the gaps with scripts if a given service is not available in our vendor palette.

The multicloud implementations I saw were very different, some simpler, some more complicated. Let's consider three model approaches:

1. Simple implementation: AWS + Azure. Disk, computing, and network resources in AWS, and in Azure a tool for managing users, groups, and accesses (now Azure Entra; used to be: Azure AD).
2. A slightly more complicated implementation: AWS + Azure. Resources are divided per type (e.g. VM in Azure, Storage in AWS, IAM and access management in AWS, etc.) or per project (e.g. selected project in Azure, another in GCP), or finally per region (e.g. most resources in Azure for EMEA customers, some resources for APAC customers in Alibaba Cloud due to more competitive pricing and geographical proximity).
3. Most unified implementation: GCP + AWS + Azure + On-Premises. Centrally manage applications containerized by GCP Anthos, which allows you to manage Kubernetes clusters on Azure (AKS), AWS (EKS), GCP (GKE), and on-premises. It's a convenient and powerful solution.

What do you think? Is it useful? Share your thoughts in the comments below ??

#Management

Ethics matter

Now it's going to be a little more personal. Recently I had the opportunity to test my code of ethics in practice. I took the exam to assess my professional skills as a cloud architect, and 24 hours before the exam I received a task description. It turned out that I had been given such a task before (a different exam) and I knew the solution perfectly. However, the examiner did not know this. So I could "hide" this fact and take the "easier path", but precisely because of my personal code of ethics I was not able to do it and, what's more important, I absolutely did not want to do it in a cheaty way. So I told the examiner that I solved this task on a different occasion and would like to ask for another one because it would be unfair. I got a new assignment task and the exam took place on time. What is the lesson from this story? Always do the right thing and follow your code of ethics in life. Craig Groeschel quoted earlier, said that "if you are faced with a choice of a path and there is a shorter and easier path, as well as a longer and more difficult path, the right choice is very often the longer path". I agree with this one hundred percent.

#(Self)Development

How did I finish 5 university degrees?

Some of you probably know that during my long journey through higher education (11 years of study), I completed 5 fields of study. It was a fascinating journey, full of challenges and experiences. I studied at that time in 3 cities, both during the day and part-time. I studied quite different fields: technical sciences (computer science, especially programming), life sciences (cognitive science), social sciences (sociology and educational sciences), and humanities (philosophy). Okay, but how did I manage to do it? Here are some thoughts and tips:

• parallel studying; I studied a maximum of 3 fields at the same time;
• time management and planning tasks in advance (e.g. during the semester I had ~30 exams per semester in all the fields I was studying at that time);
• excellent work organization - this is absolutely crucial! I was constantly making various notes, and mind-maps, using my knowledge of several foreign languages, and taking care of holistic education (continuous, not in spurts, even in the queue at the store or in public transport);
• combining theory with practice from the beginning - e.g. during my sociological studies I worked as a researcher in quantitative and qualitative research; while working in IT (initially in application packaging and scripting) I started IT studies to be able to supplement my practice with the necessary theory and expand your thinking horizons;
• it was also important to establish so-called "hard breaks", which means forced time to change activity and rest; this is particularly important because it is easy to lose yourself during such an intense learning time.

For sure these helped me ?? what is helping you in your personal improvement and learning? Let me know in the comments below ??

Note: If you want to improve your productivity I recommend my Udemy course Be calm, focus and productive! (link here). Check out as well my brand new research and science Udemy course (link here), which with a promo coupon TECHBRAIN-50 will be half-priced this month.

#Misc

Books that influenced me the most. Part 1

The book La Citadelle Intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle by Pierre Hadot. The book was quite a discovery for me. Pierre Hadot, as a French philosopher and an outstanding expert on the history of ancient philosophy, draws attention to the role of spiritual and intellectual exercises in human development. One such exercise is the titular internal fortress, which means a space for personal reflection, remaining with oneself, in isolation from the surroundings and all distractors. You don't need anything big, a special room, or a number of conditions. This is about a mental internal fortress that is a personal space for relationships with oneself in order to maintain peace and clarity of one's own thoughts. In my opinion, this is an absolutely stellar concept because it allows us to remain calm even in difficult situations that are beyond our control.

Thanks for reading this newsletter! I hope it was useful and you enjoyed it ?? I'm going to share more content related to Multi-Cloud Architecture (Azure, AWS, GCP, Alibaba, and Oracle), DevSecOps transformation, Productivity tips, and Education (5x University graduate in IT, Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Sociology and Education; getting more fluency in 5x languages ????????????????????).

Dr Przemys?aw Chmielecki

Rendez-vous dans le prochain épisode! Merci, très chers, d'être ici!

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