This week we have another guest interview with the multi-talented Forrest Brazeal (site, twitter, newsletter) who is one of the most passionate cloud advocates in the world. Definitely check out A Cloud Guru's Cloud Resume Challenge if you or someone you know is interested in getting into the cloud, and stay for his hot takes on mid-century children's literature!

0:00 - Intro & Background

1:55 - Cloud Resume Challenge

  • a child of the pandemic
  • https://twitter.com/forrestbrazeal/status/1254822417203113986?s=20
  • https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/
  • https://acloudguru.com/blog/news/introducing-the-cloudguruchallenge

5:57 - Success Stories

  • Hall of fame https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/halloffame/
  • Pay-as-you-go cloud made this much more affordable

9:17 - Community & Cohorts

  • Join the Discord https://discord.gg/2PTwAth

10:09 - Employers

  • Most people don't even need Forrest's network
  • You learn real knowledge going through the projects
  • Being able to grow inhouse talent is a competitive advantage
  • We need more internships and rotations in the industry

14:23 - Cloud Specializations

  • Monthly challenges are themed
  • Kesha Williams Machine Learning Challenge https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/cloudguruchallenge-machine-learning-on-aws

15:20 - Career Advice

  • Be careful about general advice - we all start from different places
  • What DOES work is sharing your network and privilege

16:58 - The Value of Networks

  • Don't play Resume Roulette - spray & pray
  • Networking is not beneath you
  • This is you evaluating the industry as much as the other way around
  • Giving the gift of your network and referrals does way more than advice

19:15 - The Right Way to Get Referrals

  • always see if you can get a referral when applying
  • "How do you know this person" - Cold DMs for referrals don't work
  • engage in the community, write blogposts, try stuff out, tag the creator
  • Pick Up What They Put Down

22:16 - Why Own Your Content

  • Its fine to start on Dev.to or Medium
  • But eventually it's important to own your domain/mailing list

23:45 - Specialization vs Megatrends

  • Didn't choose the Serverless life, Severless chose me
  • Can't forecast 10 yrs ahead - just listen to megatrends
  • Generational trends - Lindy effect
  • Hypergrowth trends - capturing big % of population every year
  • Text Editor wars -> VS Code

26:41 - Mid-century Children's Literature

  • Perceptions of reality
  • Virginia writing alternate history of the Civil War
  • Japanese WW2 equivalent
  • Subjective vs Objective Reality

29:05 - The Read-Aloud Cloud

  • https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51645863-the-read-aloud-cloud
  • explain Cloud to non-technical people
  • people don't have an intuitive model for why Cloud exists
  • helps them ask the right questions

Speaker Links

  • Forrest Brazeal (@forrestbrazeal): Site, Twitter, Newsletter, The Read Aloud Cloud- Randall (@randallkanna): The Standout Developer
  • Swyx (@swyx): The Coding Career Handbook
  • Discuss this episode on Circle

See All 18 Episodes of "Career Chats with Swyx and Randall"