Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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An interview with my friend Paul, who proves that you can make a career out of a love for BOTH software development and infrastructure/cloud tech.


0:00 Introduction
2:15 Early Career as a Sysadmin
4:20 Company size
5:50 Ruby and Chef
8:20 Early AWS work
9:15 early devops ideas
10:00 Ruby on Rails love
11:00 CloudKick
12:25 Great tech interview idea
13:00 git skills
14:22 How to learn programming
16:08 Tech Learning Projects
17:30 Stages of Programming Skill
19:20 Most influential tech books
21:40 Functional Programming
23:10 Paul's Tech Learning List
24:00 Monitoring, Tracing, Observability
26:00 Degree and First Job
31:40 If you had to start over...
34:15 Tech with Friends
36:14 Current Work
40:58 Which skills do newbies neglect?
47:20 Real Tech Career Planning
48:48 Experiences in Management
51:47 Niches and Tech Sub-Industries
54:52 Cultural markers of a good company



Paul's GitHub profile: github.com/pwelch

Stephen Ball: Deliberate Git rakeroutes.com/deliberate-git
sublime merge

Sandi Metz: sandimetz.com
Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby: amzn.to/3dNRtgx

Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook: amzn.to/3AvzkO5
Cloud System Administration Vol. 2: amzn.to/3yu5Ga2
The Little Schemer: amzn.to/3hDFXW6
The Four-Hour Workweek: amzn.to/3ypm1gn
Camille Fournier: manager's path - amzn.to/3jM2zGm