Skip to main content

The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim and Kevin Behr

This was briefly available for free on December 19th, so I picked it up to read over the holiday, enjoying a good novel.

 I like the pixel art!

It's how a fictional company goes from guesswork to greatwork regarding the many, many facets of its tech departments.

"Processes are there to protect people."

I realized quite a few interesting things: 

High, lofty titles like VP of Technology may be for some people, but not for me. Give me good old, on the ground IT Help Desk or Network Technician any day. This had me rethinking my entire career path - applying for 3 years to possibly get into a company like this?

But every career has its challenges and tough times. Nothing is immune, and if it is, it's not fun!


However, if you'd like to share this blog with others so we get some views and maybe a sponsor, well, I won't be opposed to that.  #AvoidCorporateRigamarole2020




Tech departments are a lot more varied than I thought. There is a segment where a critical server is down, and multiple departments are blaming each other, from Database, to Developers, to Networking. I understand why recruiters may be annoyed at a submission to a role that seems similar to us, but not to them.

There is a reference to the second greatest movie of all time.

The bureaucracy and politics of big business for resources is for other people, not me. There's even a line that says many of the factory workers live paycheck to paycheck. There's not enough money to even help the business run at first.

These are the environments we try so hard to be a part of so we don't starve.

Small startups have their problems (Hi, Away, WeWork, and probably others), but at least it doesn't take 3 weeks to make a change. This does encourage me to ask employers about their change processes for further up the ladder -

Do we need to log our requests / changes in any particular system? Is there one set up?

Your boss isn't listening to you. I hope that's the exception and not the norm.

Of course, this is pre-fixup, before our main character jumps in to reorganize the tech department.It's interesting, and everything is okay! Sure there are challenges, but it's not putting out fires all the time. It's facing new things and learning and making the company better. And that's all we want!

Also; Wes is my favorite. 

A good portion of the book - about 20% - is dedicated to explaining DevOps things in depth, without a narrative blanket. Much of it makes no sense to me yet, but it's a good place to read and start learning from.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting IoT Devices to a Registration Server (Packet Tracer, Cisco)

In Packet Tracer, a demo software made by Cisco Systems. It certainly has changed a lot since 2016. It's almost an Olympic feat to even get started with it now, but it does look snazzy. This is for the new CCNA, that integrates, among other things, IoT and Automation, which I've worked on here before. Instructions here . I don't know if this is an aspect of "Let's make sure people are paying attention and not simply following blindly", or an oversight - The instructions indicate a Meraki Server, when a regular one is the working option here. I have to enable the IoT service on this server. Also, we assign the server an IPv4 address from a DHCP pool instead of giving it a static one. For something that handles our IoT business, perhaps that's safer; Getting a new IPv4 address every week or so is a minimal step against an intruder, but it is a step. There are no devices associated with this new server; In an earlier lab (not shown), I attached them to 'H

What Do You Need? [AKA; List of Offered Services / My Next Role] (2020)

UPDATED 2021 I am a trusted outsourced remote consultant for your company.   I enjoy having the flexibility to take on temporary projects from time to time! I start at part-time, temp work for now. If we like each other, we can renegotiate. If anything sounds weird, out there, or unusual - Feel free to e-mail me , because I probably think it's awesome. 3 Services Offered Technical: Cloud Technician     Azure [ See tag ] Subcategories: Infrastructure As Code (Specifically Terraform/Azure and CloudFormation/AWS ) Azure Networking I really like the Azure space, and will continue down that path.  Support [Web: Example Job Description ] [Text : Example Description ]     I help you with adjustments in HTML, CSS, and Javascript.     When you email a business a question and they answer? That's me.   Auditing :  Something doesn't work on your page or in your app. I can find it. [ Here ] [ Example Job Description ]   I really enjoy testing apps and webpage concepts! I have an

Using Terraform and AWS Cloud9

Wanted to try Cloud9 but didn't feel like making an EC2 instance in the GUI. So I made a Terraform file instead, remade a default VPC, and it took 20 minutes of troubleshooting. #AWS — Morgan (@runtcpip) February 1, 2022     👉🏾 Find the Notion page of this post here , if it's easier for you. It certainly looks nicer!   Setup: An EC2 instance A reference to the default VPC, which I had to remake, as I had deleted mine.    Downloading Terraform into Cloud9: Instructions here . Done and Done. Now, How About Using It? The kicker (or blessing) is that Cloud9 doesn't auto save, like I’ve set my VSCode up to do. Had to do a lot of manual saving, but it wasn’t a struggle. The lock file is created, but I don't see it in my file system to the left until resources have been pushed, so I made a simple bucket to try it out. Because this instance is attached to my AWS account, I suppose anything I make within this will be as well. Let's see! Does Every Terraform Command