How I built my cloud career?
Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing well. I have been asked a lot of times how I built my career in the cloud, how much did I pay for it, what courses did I study, etc. So, I wanted to share with you how I built my career in the cloud with the hope that this helps and inspires you to build your dream career.
This is my story, the story of Udesh, a.k.a, The Cloud Pilot
If you’d like to skip my emotions, feel free to click here
The beginning
I used to be an ambitious person from my childhood. I always had bigger goals which people around me looked down on due to the place I was born in, a remote village in a small state in India. But I was lucky to be born to my parents who were able to provide me with an education. My parents didn’t complete their formal schooling due to their family backgrounds. But they made sure I get those that they couldn't afford to have.
So, I had been very studious right from my childhood, starting from staying in the top 3 all the time in class, winning scholarship exams, scoring medals and cash prizes, and so on. After my 10th, I moved out of my village to a different city to get my 12th-grade education, after which I moved to another city for my Engineering degree.
When I joined college for my bachelor's in Technology, I had to pay around INR 35,000 as a tuition fee for a year. By the next year, I scored enough marks to secure the college’s scholarship which brought down my yearly fee to INR 8,500. The next 2 years were a rollercoaster ride for me, enjoying time outside, losing focus on my studies, scoring low marks, and so on. But I always made sure that I don’t get a backlog in any semesters.
I was in the bottom 15% in class, according to the GPA scale where the class average GPA hit at least 8. The studious ‘me’ had been lost somewhere in between. This time I was a young man with bigger goals and no idea how to execute them. Then, unfortunately, COVID happened. A lockdown was imposed and I was stuck at my home.
During that time, a few events happened in my life that pushed me into a depression. I was destroyed, shattered, and lost hope in life. I was about to let go of all my dreams and goals. Everybody has an angel in their life. Someone who lifts you at your lowest. You won’t realize then but you’ll identify them when you retrospect. For me, it was Mahalingam PR, who was my mentor and a faculty at the college.
He didn’t know what I was going through. Neither did I share these with him. One day, during the first lockdown phase, the college announced that they will be providing Coursera subscriptions to all students and they are expected to complete two courses. I was not in a mental state to accept their demand and I bluntly said NO to the professors. They said that they were helpless and I had to do it. Then I asked my mentor, Mahalingam sir if it was necessary or not.
He knew it wasn’t compulsory but he said YES. So, to complete it, I immediately finished two random courses and sent them back the certificates. Then I went on to be in a gloomy state. But sometime later, I realized that I had forgotten all my sorrows and was focused on getting my tasks done while I was going through the course. So, I decided to try it again.
This time, I took a course and finished it. I felt normal. Then I tried the next one. Then another one. I started feeling interested. Then, I went on to explore courses in various domains, including cybersecurity, data science, python programming, ethical hacking, web development, project management, and the cloud. In the next 3 months, I finished nearly 130 courses inclusive of all these domains.
The Cloud Journey
I don’t remember the day I first encountered the course on the cloud. I saw Google Cloud has a few courses on Coursera. Out of curiosity to know what is cloud and being a Google fan, I decided to explore it. Also, my inside voice told me to learn this and that it’d take me somewhere good. It was an attraction at first sight. The way they presented was so immersive that I started digging more into it. I learned the first course about the basics of Google Cloud. It was interesting. I moved to the next one, then the next one and it went on. In the next 5–6 days, I finished around 7 courses on Google Cloud. I was starting to get the feel of it.
Then, I looked for more courses on Google Cloud and I found them. Started learning and digging more. The more courses I learned, the more interested I was getting into the domain. I finished all the GCP courses on Coursera. I wasn’t satisfied. I started getting into hands-on. This is where my struggle started.
Mistakes and Struggles
I started with a mistake — learning Google Cloud Platform without learning what is cloud.
When I started to do hands-on labs from Cloud Skills Boost, I didn’t understand a bit of what I was doing. That’s when I realized I was blocked. Then, I went back and searched all over the internet for materials on cloud technology and read anything I got. After quite a substantial amount of time, I was able to build my foundation on cloud concepts.
At that time, I started to explore LinkedIn. I had an account but I wasn’t using it. Once I started using that, I saw posts from people above and below my age doing amazing things in their life.
I asked myself, “Why can’t I?”
There started the journey to answer my question. I found Google India offers a program called Cloud Ready. I reached out and got in touch with a few students who were part of the program. I asked them how to get an entry into the program and somehow fetched Google’s point of contact for the program. I reached out to him and convinced him to bring the program to my college so that I could enroll myself. Then I continued to learn. It’d be better to say that I lost track of the time I spent learning.
I was spending 14–16 hours a day just learning Google Cloud and getting my hands-on skills on GCP.
This also adds another point to my struggle — the sacrifice I had to make. I sacrificed my family time, created a world of my own, stopped talking to people, confined myself to a room, and stuck my eyes to the laptop. Unhealthy both mentally and physically. There were a lot of days when I had disappointments and burnout and it happened constantly and frequently. But, it was me breaking out of my comfort zone.
Breaking out of comfort zone
I was on the verge of quitting but one day, I broke out of it. Things started becoming easy. Then, I started preparing for the certifications. First I got a voucher from Aviatrix for their Multi-cloud Networking Associate exam. I put in my best effort and passed. My first cloud certification!
Then, as part of Google Cloud’s Cloud Ready program, I got a voucher for the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer exam and I started preparing for the exam. On October 2022, I passed the exam and also became one of the early students in the world to be certified in GCP. But I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to do more. I did further digging into the GCP ecosystem and tried to understand the cloud industry as a whole. I was elected as the President of the Project Management Institute (PMI) chapter at college and grew the club multi-fold in a year.
I started to talk to whoever worked in the industry, especially those who worked in the cloud, made a lot of meaningful connections, got a few mentors, and absorbed the maximum knowledge I could from them. This also pushed me to take a step forward and do market research on my own to see where things are and how it is going currently. To my surprise, there weren’t many GCP experts back then as compared to now. This opened a door for me with a huge potential to be known in the Google Cloud space.
Leveraging the community
LinkedIn was the platform that brought a change in the way I saw things in the industry. Through that, I had a clearer vision of where I wanted to be. I wanted to build a community for the cloud. As I had gone through a rollercoaster since the day I started to get back on track, I decided to help others not face the same phase.
I’d never allow anyone to go through the struggles I went through.
This decision pushed me to share my knowledge by creating content around the cloud. I started a YouTube channel, The Cloud Pilot, and started posting GCP-related videos on it. It was quite well received by the community I was part of. This motivated me to do further and I started writing blogs on Medium. I also made myself available for others to help them get their dream job, as a mentor. I got invitations from various colleges to speak about cloud computing, career building, etc and I accepted every request happily. I went on a talking spree by hitting 35+ talks in 2021.
Wrapping up college
“Make your parents proud. Become a great man in life.”
These were the last words from my grandmother whom I lost to COVID in March 2021. It was the biggest loss in my life. It was one of the hardest blows I got while climbing the ladder to my cloud career. I fell head over heels as I couldn’t bear the emotions. Whenever I and my grandmother talked, she always used to say that I should learn well. After a week of isolating myself from the rest of the world, I decided to make a return — to fulfill all the promises I gave her.
I restarted learning cloud and decided to take the Professional Cloud Architect certification. One of my meaningful connections on LinkedIn and the college decided to fund me for the exam. The college gave me INR 30,000 as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Award by the Muthoot Group. Then, I started preparing for it. I pushed myself so hard that I even fell ill due to burnout but I was determined to not take a step back from the goal. I tried the exam first but I failed. I took time to realize what I did wrong and took the exam again after the retake period and passed it on the next attempt.
I felt happy and proud but with tears that the one who wanted to see all this was no longer with me. I decided to take the next step forward. I gathered my friends for the final year college project and decided to do something different than the usual convention in Kerala. We didn’t opt for AI/ML projects and chose cloud technology instead. We built internal software for the college with much better features all deployed on Google Cloud and I proudly wore the architect hat for the project.
As the graduation time was closing, I got a call from Deloitte for a Google Cloud Consultant. I attended the interview and I passed and landed my first job at Deloitte. I started working there but soon got a much better offer and moved to a Google Cloud Premier Partner as a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer.
The Work Life
I had a very short stint at Deloitte after which I worked at a Google Cloud premier partner for the next 1.5 years. I was part of delivering a lot of projects in the infrastructure and DevOps space. I got myself certified in other Google Cloud and Kubernetes certifications in the process, thanks to the vouchers I received as a perk of being a partner. I volunteered to contribute towards growing the organization as well as to build a practice in the delivery for DevOps. I talked at more events, including events from Google, Google Developer Groups, and their student communities.
After getting a substantial amount of experience in delivery, I decided to move to the Presales role, which I aimed for since the day I figured out how the cloud ecosystem works. The various challenges, learnings, and blockers helped me crack the technical part of the cloud. My mentors at Google always say this.
To become a good customer engineer, we need to empathize with the customer, understand their problems and find resolutions.
I was sure that I had good enough experience to drive calls and pitch in technical solutions. You never know which way prosperity comes. One day, I got a message from one of the profiles I visited on LinkedIn. She asked me, “Are you looking for an opportunity?”. That question opened doors to my current job, as a Customer Engineer.
The Retrospection
It has only been 2 years since I started my career with Google Cloud. Within 2 years, I feel proud of what I’ve achieved. I’m still not done. I have a long way to go and a lot to do. Today, I’m known to a few as The Cloud Pilot, a mentor, an Udemy course instructor, YouTuber, Podcaster, and a Google Cloud Champion Innovator. I have achieved all the certifications from Google Cloud, Kubernetes, and Terraform. I can arguably say that I’m the youngest person in the world to hold all of these.
What did I pay to get all of these? My time — the biggest yet best investment in my life so far. It was an overwhelming rollercoaster ride but I always followed the following principle.
Learn something and go to bed smarter every day.
I never failed to follow this and will never fail to follow this. As long as I can do something, I will always learn and help others with whatever I know. I would not want to keep you longer reading this as I have already kept you for a long. I hope this inspires or motivates or lights a spark in you to do big in your life.
I started from scratch. If I can, you too can. Start now!
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Thanks for reading! Have a great life ahead. Live happily! The Cloud Pilot, signing off…
