From DevOps to DevRel

Hi. My name is Shon, and I am a Developer Relations manager for Spot by NetApp.

And if you're like me, you're wondering how I got here.

When I started my tech career in 1999, I thought I wanted to be a SysAdmin. Getting my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certification in 2000(ish?) was what I thought the top of the Tech mountain. I spent several years working my way through as a Systems Administrator, all the way up to Director of IT.

Fast Forward to 2017.

I could see that the cloud was coming, and coming hard. Traditional networks were moving to Microsoft's cloud to offload the number of servers they kept on premises. The mandate from my employer at the time was one of "Cloud first, cloud preferred". IT was becoming a service-based consumption model. Instead of working on budgets and hardware acquisitions, the question I was getting the most was "how can we stuff {application name here} in to the cloud to minimize the risk of something going wrong."

So I made a pivot. I jumped with both feet into the CloudOps/DevOps space. I didn't know much about "DevOps" other than it becoming more and more of a buzzword people would ask me about when we talked.

Then I read "The Phoenix Project" (a great book that everyone should read). Which really put the idea of project management, operations, IT, and the cloud together for me.

For most of my career, I had been in a team of one. Always being your quintessential "IT Guy" I managed a bit here and there, but usually, I found myself working as the fix-it guy who people went to when stuff was broken.

Has your Mail Server upgrade gone sideways? I got this. Did your IT Staff rip out the wrong storage array? (who knows how this happened) Take it to Shon, he can figure it out, even if it takes a bit longer. Production Database deleted? No current backups? Call Shon. Build Pipelines broken and not upgrading correctly? Call Shon. Need some help with your deployment for unit-level testing? Call Shon (Can you see the pattern yet?)

Being the IT Superhero worked. At the expense of blown plans, canceled events, late nights, and so many other unintended side effects.

So this last summer after 20+ years in that space and mindset, a former colleague called me and said "I need a technical brain who can help sell the value of the cloud and how to manage continuous optimization."

My first thought was, "Me? Sales? Oh Hell no." but then as we talked and I found what Developer Relations was all about, I thought, maybe, this is something I could get into. I have always been good about communicating and selling plans; why not the value of the cloud?

See, the fact is as more-and-more companies move to see services and even infrastructure as Op-Ex instead of CapEx, the value of the cloud sells itself. But managing and reigning in those costs and infrastructure loads is something that can get out of hand if you aren't in the mindset of continuous optimization. You will quickly find yourself with stale instances, multiple copies of some random volume that was unattached by a terminated instance, or IP addresses sitting open with nobody taking precautions or securing the ACLs of what traffic is allowed to pass.

So in September, I said goodbye to my co-workers and friends at my last employer and jumped in with both feet, and joined Spot by NetApp, working with the Hyperscalers and their cloud offerings on our Alliances team

This transition isn't without some challenges. Sometimes I find myself bored and twiddling my thumbs, trying to figure out what I will do next. Sometimes I am head-deep learning the Spot portfolio, sometimes in meetings, and now that I am making progress, you can even find me working on a presentation or some kind of strategic plan with marketing. But I can also tell you having my weekends free, not worrying about deployments and releases, and being able to be part of a larger strategic program is actually quite enjoyable.

So I guess the whole point of this long-winded blog is as much for me to record making a career path transition I never thought I would be a part of because DevOps is fun, rewarding, and challenging. But DevRel is the same even if I am not 100% sure what I am doing or what I am going to do next, or how some of these plans I need to come up with will unfold, but I hope that by finding this little corner of the internet, that you get some use out of the more technical content I will post here.