Quote to start it off

“A Jack of all trades is a master of none - but still always better than a master of one.”

Are they?

40,000 hours

Let’s assume you spend 2000 hours a year working. You go on to work for 40 years. That’s 80,000 hours.

They say it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something. If you spend every minute at work deliberately practicing one thing then you will be able to master 8 things over your whole career.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend every minute at work deliberately practicing one thing. This means in the next 40 years I’ll be able to master less than 8 things. What a pity.

This thought motivates me to focus every minute at work (and outside work) on developing one skill at a time. At the moment the goal is to master the Cloud, DevOps and Kubernetes and as an end goal, becoming an expert in cybersecurity.

How should I structure my learning?

Paralysis by shiny

Like many, I want more. This field will punish you if you stop learning which fits my personality well however I am almost paralyzed by the endless rabbit holes I fall into, awesome-XYZ github repos I find and certifications there are to do.

It’s not good.

By constantly pursuing the latest tech, buzzword, framework, trend etc. I lose track of the foundational knowledge that I’m still very much in need of in order to build my way towards mastery.

The more you cert the more you earn

At work, I am encouraged - monetarily and otherwise - to pursue certifications. As a consultant this makes sense because the more certs I have, the more my company can charge our customers for my time. Certifications are a decent litmus test for someones ability to execute. They aren’t perfect but they are the best we have.

Whether or not you believe in the merit of certifications, I don’t think anyone can argue with the fact that they are a great way of taking a structured approach to learning.

The plan

I already have one certification. The AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals.

For myself, it is important to have a learning plan I can come back to, so I can ground myself and rip myself out of these techy rabbit holes I find myself in. These tangents aren’t a great use of my time even if I do learn bits and pieces along the way.

Focused learning it just better, otherwise I’ll just end up knowing 1% of everything instead of e.g. 60% of something.

Let’s go shopping, shall we? - The Wishlist

I’m going for the Kubernetes certifications first because it is knowledge that I really use every second of every day and all my interests build on this one thing.

I decided to get certified in Microsoft’s Azure cloud first because it’s what I use most at work and I already have one Azure cert.

Here are the certs I’d like to achieve in the next 18 months in somewhat of an order.

Certified Kubernetes Administrator

The Certified Kubernetes Administrator or CKA for short is one of (currently) 4 officially Kubernetes certifications. It is aimed at people wanting to learn the foundations of administering Kubernetes Clusters.

There is a parallel certification, the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) which is only slightly easier and aimed at developers who are deploying their applications to Kubernetes.

Link: https://www.cncf.io/certification/cka/

Course I’m following: https://www.udemy.com/course/certified-kubernetes-administrator-with-practice-tests/

My research (reddit comments and other blogs) has shown this really is the best course, it includes practice labs for every single scenario):

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist

The Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) is a step up from the administrator exam and requires you to have passed the CKA.

It is more focused on Kubernetes Security.

Link for more info: https://www.cncf.io/certification/cks/

Linux Foundation Certified Sysadmin

This certification is one I’ve always wanted to do as Linux will be following me through my entire life and I want to be very proficient at it since it’ll make everything I touch go smoother.

It is also tied to my work goals.

Link for more info: https://training.linuxfoundation.org/certification/linux-foundation-certified-sysadmin-lfcs/

AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator

This is the Azure equivalent of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate but for Azure.

Base knowledge of many of the services required to administer and deploy applications on Azure.

Link for more info: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-104

AZ-500: Microsoft Azure Security Technologies

Security focused Azure certification. Used to include stuff like Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft 365 Defender which have now been split out into the SC-200.

“Responsibilities for an Azure security engineer include managing the security posture, identifying and remediating vulnerabilities, performing threat modeling, implementing threat protection, and responding to security incident escalations”

Link for more info: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-500

SC-200: Microsoft Security Operations Analyst

“Responsibilities [of a Microsoft Security Operations Analyst] include threat management, monitoring, and response by using a variety of security solutions across their environment. The role primarily investigates, responds to, and hunts for threats using Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft 365 Defender, and third-party security products”

Link for more info: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/sc-200

Summary

That’s kind of it for now. I have many more planned like:

CISSP - https://www.isc2.org/Certifications/CISSP
Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) - https://www.eccouncil.org/programs/certified-ethical-hacker-ceh/
Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA)

but there is no point in going into them before I’ve taken a good chunk off the wishlist. This post was also there to help get me back into blogging and keep things fresh.

Until next time!

Saul :)