Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SK il framework.
Rafal Goralski: impostor syndrome, that's that's
something that I think people who are rescaling or starting
something new have to manage to overcome, because this will
appear very frequently appeared with me if I can advise
something to anyone. Don't be discouraged by this.
Eveline Oehrlich: Hello, everybody, this is Evelyn Yoli,
Chief Research Officer DevOps Institute with another episode
of our humans of DevOps podcast. And this one today is a very,
very, very special one. The title is a risk telling tale
from physiotherapist to DevOps engineer. And with me, I have a
now very famous person who was introduced in London at our
skillup festival. How falgu ASCII Hello, fall. Hello,
Rafal Goralski: nice to meet you. Nice to be here. Thank you.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yes, thank you for taking time out of your day,
which I'm sure is very, very busy. So let me give you a give
listeners a quick introduction today. So I heard about a file
at a as I already said, skill up event in London at the festival,
where one of our ambassadors one of our great ambassadors, Pablo
porch, I hope I say his name right, was talking about a
learning journey and teaching DevOps and in his story, he was
in his slides, and in his presentation, he mentioned the
story of Gasol. And the room was very silent. Everybody was
listening in you could hear a needle drop because I and that's
when I thought I have to meet this gentleman first. And
second, I have to bring a story to to our listeners. But before
we come to Europhile, I just wanted to say a few words on
Pavel. So Pavel actually leads the DevOps Academy at EPAM, or
EPM. And EPM systems is an American company that
specializes in service development, digital platform
engineering, and digital product design. They're operating out of
Newton, Pennsylvania. And if Pavel if you are listening,
hello, Pavel. Thank you again for introducing me to FL. And
thanks to fall again to jumping on this call. I think like
within almost like 72 hours, I had you on there. So
Rafal Goralski: that's correct. You are very, very time
intensive moment. But I did what I could to join you.
Eveline Oehrlich: Super? Well tell us a little bit about
yourself. Kapha.
Rafal Goralski: Yeah, so like you mentioned before
transitioning into DevOps, I was a physical therapist for roughly
nine years. I finished the school in my hometown, and then
started postgraduate studies on academia of osteopathy, here in
Poland, when unfortunately, the pandemic came. And for some
reason, the clinics have PT workflows for a long time,
because it was the whole 2020 20 was closed. So I searched for a
different occupation. So it was it had to be something with
computers because we were locked in home. So I thought that this
will be a great choice. And I encountered on my email. The
first contact was scholarship offered by CNC F Susa and
Udacity. If I wanted to participate, and I didn't have a
clue what CNC F was, was, will be the cloud where we'll be the
tooling there. But I, of course, said yeah, I want to
participate. And I didn't get into that at first. So that was,
it should lasted three months. But I was accepted after a month
because the seats were already taken. But for some reason, they
made one more seat, or a couple of more, and I could get in. And
that was the first contact that I had with the tools that are
used in DevOps, which I didn't know that those were DevOps
tools, then because it was introduction to Docker to
Kubernetes to see ICD pipelines, and on a very high level, so
that was only the theory and some some some basic repetition
of the things that were done on screen because it was online and
self paced. So that gave me this sort of ticket to get into the
EPM academy that was organized. And the funny thing is that I
got into the EPM academy after it was closed the registration.
So I reached out directly to the email that was provided on site
and as the root of my story that I really, really want to
participate and if there will be a chance to make it happen. And
one of the Are the people from HR reached out and said, Yeah,
we could take you and it's it hasn't started yet. If you pass
the interview, then it's going to be okay. And those previous
experiences from from the CNCF and Udacity course, were helpful
to pass the interview and get to where I was, I was overwhelmed
by, by the, by the amount of great people around me and the
positive experience that was joining the Academy because it
was a small community. We were nine people then. And we started
learning intensively for eight hours a day. But it was it was
joyful and fun. And I really miss that that period of time.
Eveline Oehrlich: So two things you have for sure is tenacity
and perseverance, which are great human skills to have in
this in this world. So have you in your physical therapy, and in
your journey through your PT time, which I think is also a
great profession because we need that, particularly for those who
sit in front of our screen all day long. You hear about DevOps
heavy? Did you know what DevOps was before that?
Rafal Goralski: Not at all? Not at all. It was just something
that was sometimes a title on the internet where I was
browsing, but I didn't know what it what is the programming
language was something else. I have no clue. So yeah, I know
that sounds childish, but I didn't know what it was a
learned all those things in the meantime.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah. Not childish at all. Because as you
might know, and as you have done that, reskilling reskilling is a
very, very, very hot topic right now. There are things like with
great resignation, that's probably I like to read name it
to a great reshuffle, where people are saying, Hey, I'm kind
of done with what I've done for the last whatever years, and
they're really looking for rescaling themselves. So you are
the example of a reskilling journey, which I think is
fantastic. So I have another question for you. So why? Why
DevOps? Was it? I mean, obviously, you said, right, you
needed to do some changes, and you wanted to do something, you
had home office, we all were locked into our places. So why
why specifically, DevOps Was there another motivation behind
that it was a pure coincidence with the CN CF.
Rafal Goralski: So there was the pure coincidence at first with
cn CF. But I didn't know that this would lead me to DevOps
directly. So the next thing, my friend told me about this
fantastic book, the Phoenix Project, when I read that, I
read it as a thriller. So I thought that it would be a great
opportunity to be a part of such a team to change something, and
to have all those crazy roller coaster that they were in this
book. And that kind of established my way of thinking
and my way of evolving. So I thought that, yeah, this is
something that I really want to do. I read obviously, a lot of
articles, then what is DevOps, some some community sites. And
also this broadened my my point of view about DevOps and I, then
I knew that I want to be a part of it, and I want to evolve in
this direction.
Eveline Oehrlich: Excellent. So if you go back into those times,
as you already indicated, tough, tough times, eight hour
studying, besides the time investment, and I'm sure you had
challenges when it comes to dealing with the pandemic and
all of that. But what other challenges would you say you
had? What was the toughest thing? Where you go back and
say, I made it through?
Rafal Goralski: Yeah, so there were a number, a large number of
those. So basically, I had no experience in Linux. So the
first contact with the terminal was on the CNC f course, when I
open terminal type ls, and then something came up and I was
like, Whoa, yeah, it's works. So great. So I was really clumsy in
Linux. So I really spent some time improving this. So I could
be a little bit better, faster. And also a lot of things that I
didn't knew that came up a lot of terms. So the best thing that
I did probably was reading extensively about any detail
that I didn't understand that I didn't know on an even higher
level, just to have a broader understanding about what I was
doing because following instruction from the screen and
doing replicating them, it's easy, but knowing what it
actually does, it's something else. So I think that that's
this is the thing that I did so reading the things that I didn't
know and those were the challenges was a lot of them a
lot of challenges. But like I said, gaining that deeper
knowledge helped me to kind of understand it better,
Eveline Oehrlich: any specific tips you would give to people
who are thinking you up your sleeves you would love to share
and I know our audience would love to hear.
Rafal Goralski: Yeah, so the first thing that it's the
imposter syndrome, that's that's something that each of us have,
I think people who are rescaling or starting something new have
to have to manage to overcome because this, this will appear
very frequently appeared with me. And I think that the best
way was to learn even more because that the head is
occupied with something else. And I didn't have that feeling
very long when I when I extensively learned about
something that I didn't knew. But it came occasionally back.
So don't be if I can advise something to anyone, don't be
discouraged by this impostor syndrome, because you're
learning and that's, that's natural, I think. And, yeah,
just a lot of lot of courses, small courses, about the same
topic. So if I was learning about Kubernetes, for example, I
like to read books, watch films from from different providers
just to have the same topic from a different point of view that
helped me somehow to understand the topic a little bit better.
And, yeah, that's, that's something that I would encourage
everyone to do, not just one course and a very long one, but
take some shorter ones on a high level, and understand the topic
and then go a little bit deeper into the rabbit hole.
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Eveline Oehrlich: Of course, we all learn differently, right? I
learned by reading, but I also learned by doing so where there
are a lot of labs and things you were able to do so that you can
actually test your skills. Yes, yes.
Rafal Goralski: So the the really fun lab was organized by
Google, it was Google upskill. It was a very fun lab, because
it was all time based. So there were 30 days to complete it. And
it was very, very good. Because there was the terminal there was
that there had to be no subscription made, no credit
card provided. And you can really dive into it. So check
the terminal, check the services that are provided. Also, AWS has
some latest and Microsoft so it's all free. And I think that
it's worth giving it a shot, because there's a lot of
extensive materials around there. And also, they're
practical, so we can get into the terminal to the to the
border, or check your skills in the cloud on a on a server. So
that's, that's great.
Eveline Oehrlich: So you kind of give up through those labs, you
get your confidence up, you know, you can you get that self
worth, right rises more,
Rafal Goralski: yeah, those small rewards, those are really
important that it's not only the red font on the screen that
something's going wrong, but also the green ones that yeah, a
small success, you can go forward. And that's something
motivating and I think it's also for us, I mean, I'm I was born
in 84. So my whole generation has this sort of attitude that
we like those kind of small rewards, like, you know, if you
post something on Facebook, we like that someone views it likes
it. And this is the same sort. It's really addicting. And I
think this is the the exact same feeling when something is done
for the first time and it works. That's that's just amazing.
Eveline Oehrlich: So this is a little bit of a fairly personal
question, so you don't have to answer it if you don't want to.
But one once you started how long did it take you? Until you
realize this is it I'm really I'm really liking it. I really
love this and I don't look back to my PT time. Was it six
months? Was it nine months was it? It's still not maybe maybe
you're still not there?
Rafal Goralski: The only times where I looked kind of back at
Pt career was when someone close or from the friends that I
haven't seen in a while asked me about it. That was the only time
when I looked back and said no, I don't want to go back because
here is it's the learning curve is steep, but it's really
rewarding. Like I said it Edie is also, you have to learn a
lot, because there are a lot of courses, a lot of new models of
treating patients with lumbar diseases or any other
dysfunctions. But here, it's all you can reach out there, there
are a lot of tools that are free, open source, whenever a
new technology comes out, you can, all you have to do is try
and reach out for it and try it with PT is a little bit
different. Because you have to organize a course you have to
attend this course, then you have then there has to be tested
on a couple of patients to make it work. But here is it's under
each of your hands, actually, this this whole knowledge and
it's overwhelming. But it's it's great.
Eveline Oehrlich: So the worst moment of your, of your journey
so far, if you look back some some moment in time where you
say some developer screamed at me or whatever any any worst
moment, and we follow that with the best moment.
Rafal Goralski: Okay, so I didn't encounter those moments
where anyone yelled at me or did something I wouldn't be pleasant
about yet. But that may made to come. I think that the kind of
wake up call was when we were divided into groups and in the
DevOps Academy, and we had to do something in threes. And I
didn't know who was who were the participants in DevOps Academy,
I thought that everyone was on the same level as I was, which
was the true because those people were superstars in
computer science as it turned out. But that gave me a wake up
call that I need to work harder, even that I did. So just to
catch up just to have be near on the level that they are. And
that was a huge wake up call for me that I needed to speed up a
little bit. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was it was a
wake up call. If we talk about pleasant things, I encountered
really great people that are on my path. People who had over 20
years of experience, senior developers who took me in like,
on like a Padawan taught me a lot of things. And yeah, that
was That was excellent. I went to one of the projects that I
was assigned to and EPAM, after the academy, that I was accepted
to one of the developers was very kind and had a huge impact
on my thinking about a lot of things.
Eveline Oehrlich: And so that coach that peer, co who
motivates you, who gives you some tips, that's great. I
remember having that person as well. Way back in my IT
operations career, which even at nighttime, I was going home and
just thinking that person in my head to keep me abreast and to
keep me motivated. That's great to hear. So
Rafal Goralski: great. Because whenever I had a small success
outside, even when the project ended, and I had a small
success, like passing official exam from Microsoft, I
immediately think them that yeah, I managed to do it. And we
were like, we weren't talking for a couple of months. But then
I decided to share and he was also very happy that Yeah, you
did it. So great.
Eveline Oehrlich: Super shout out to that person. Fantastic.
One, one additional question. And then we're about ready to
wrap up is when you Where are you? What's next for you in
terms of learning? I'm sure. I mean, you you always learn,
right? We all learn every day on all kinds of things. But
specifically, have you set yourself some specific goals for
the rest of the year? Or for next year? Where you want to go?
Rafal Goralski: Yes, yes, of course. So this year, the sixth
of October, I'm taking the Microsoft az 104 exam. So that
will complement the one that I already have. So that's the plan
for this year. After that, maybe next year, maybe somewhere
around January, February, I would like to do the CPA. But
that's something I need to prepare a little bit more for
that. And I think the next would be also pursuing the Microsoft.
So aizat, three or five Solution Architect, but that's a little
bit in the near future, but a bit more distant than that.
Eveline Oehrlich: Fantastic. Don't forget to live a little
bit, because outside of the pandemic, and we can come to
Germany, come visit me. I'll take you out for some local
beer.
Rafal Goralski: Oh, there'll be there'll be excellent. Fun as a
little reward
Eveline Oehrlich: for for your hard work. That would be fun.
Well, certainly if you are in the in the in the area. I mean,
the northern and the southern part of Germany, stopped by
happy to guide you through some of our local breweries or
whatever else, whatever beverage you'd like to prefer. Fantastic.
Rafal Goralski: Well remember that thank you very much.
Eveline Oehrlich: This has been a great conversation. This has
been really, really a pleasure. very motivational, very
inspiring thing. Cuba file for your fantastic honesty and your
you are the spirit of DevOps. I can see it, I can feel it. I
have one more question a little bit more around fun part. What
is it you like to do on the weekend? Well,
Rafal Goralski: on the weekends
Eveline Oehrlich: I have you studying? No, no, no, I
Rafal Goralski: try to I try to limit this a little bit. But I
have two small daughters. So I tried to spend my time with
them. But in the evening, I cannot promise that I will not
be studying. So that's something that I do, just like in this
book that I read about, just for fun by Linus Torvalds. It's the
same. I mean, it's just a fun journey being paid for what
what's actually fun. Yeah.
Eveline Oehrlich: Well, that's a great summary to your story of
this was great. Thank you so much for being with us at the
humans of DevOps podcast. Stay safe, stay human, and hope that
everybody who's listening in to the next time about greetings to
you have a wonderful rest of the day and the weekend is coming.
Rafal Goralski: Yes, let's let's keep this in mind. Thank you
very much. Thanks for having me.
Eveline Oehrlich: Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
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