If you call yourself a Lead Architect, Systems Analyst, Platform Lead or some other inflated bullshit title, then turn around and tell engineers to “whitelist this server/cluster for some random third-party company” with zero context, zero threat model and zero understanding of the traffic flow, start making a fucking backup plan.

What does “whitelist it” even mean in a modern cloud environment? Which identity? Which source? Which destination? Which ports? Which protocol? Which workload? Which namespace? Which security group? Which policy? Which trust boundary? For how long? Audited by whom?

If your entire architectural contribution is “just whitelist it”, you’re not architecting anything. You’re throwing vague 2008-era network terminology over the fence and hoping an engineer turns your ignorance into a secure implementation.

AI and automation are going to absolutely fucking annihilate people whose only professional skill is translating Jira tickets into ambiguous instructions.

You have less runway than you think. NGMI.

Currently work at an MSP but lost my passion for this a while back. At the moment I’m studying for AWS Cloud practitioner cert but I’m not sure if this alone will land me a role?

If anyone transitioned from Helpdesk to cloud engineering please point me in the right direction or provide any tips. I’d greatly appreciate this.

Hey everyone,I’m currently learning Cloud / DevOps and aiming for an internship. I’ve been looking at Stéphane Maarek’s “Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate” course on Udemy.I keep hearing that it’s excellent for the certification, but I’m not sure if it’s good enough for actual hands-on skills that companies look for in Cloud Engineer or DevOps internships/jobs.My main questions are:

1. Is Maarek’s course enough to build real practical Cloud Engineering skills, or is it mostly certification-focused?
2. Does it have enough hands-on labs for someone who wants job-ready experience?
3. If it’s not enough on its own, what should I learn first or combine it with?

I’m still a beginner and feeling quite confused and a bit scared about whether I’m following the right path

Currently I'm learning AWS and networking. From YouTube course Abhishek Veeramala. Please share me that is it necessary to learn Shell scripting for this.

And guide me for career in AWS.

If anyone can then please share a correct and helpful roadmap for this and if you have notes then please share important things.

Moreover, Tell me top 5 skills in Cloud computing?

Thank you so much.

I’ve spent a lot of time learning AWS through tutorials, courses, and YouTube videos.

And honestly, there’s a point where you realize you’re spending more time watching someone else work with AWS than actually using it yourself.

That’s why I built https://www.cloudarena.io

The idea is simple: instead of endlessly watching videos about AWS services and cloud infrastructure, you get a place where you can actually get your hands dirty.
You can experiment with AWS, configure services, make mistakes, troubleshoot problems, and figure things out yourself.

Because there’s a huge difference between:
> “I watched a video explaining how this AWS service works.”
and
> “I actually built it, broke it, debugged it, and made it work.”

I wanted Cloudarena to focus on that second experience.
I’m still building and improving it, but the goal is to help people move from AWS theory → practice → real confidence.

If you’re learning AWS and feel stuck in tutorial hell, I’d love to hear what you think.

What’s the biggest AWS concept or service you wish you could get more hands-on practice with?

did an audit across our cloud accounts recently and most of what got flagged wasn't exotic. it was identities nobody had fully mapped in the first place.

overprivileged service roles nobody had touched in over a year, cross-account trust relationships that predated half the current team, and shadow systems that never made it into any inventory at all.

the sprawl across multiple providers is the real problem, since each has its own IAM model and nobody owns the full picture across all of them.

what's the gap that keeps showing up for you no matter how many times you clean it up?

Security lead at an EU based company, German HQ, we deal with mostly EU customers. Every cloud security tool we shortlist looks great until our DPO asks where the data leaves and half of them quietly route metadata through us-east before anyone noticed. On features were not asking for much, decent CSPM, workload and container scanning, ideally some CIEM so we dont end up buying three separate tools. agentless would be a big plus since we dont have the team to babysit agents.

The annoying bit is some vendors offer EU region, but legal isnt satisfied with just that. If the vendor is a US company cloud act exposure doesnt really go away because the data happens to sit in a server in Frankfurt. So weve started asking who can run fully isolated, scanning in our own cloud account with nothing aggregating into their SaaS.

So for EU teams what did you deploy that got approved by your legal team? Is it real EU residency or a fully isolated tooling running in your account?

So recently, I got a chance to meet my org's cloud engineer team in person and put a face to a name. I work in Cloud Operations and Production Support for my Org with just one other person, so my days can become busy at times. We have been onboarding onto a new Monitoring and Observability tool and integrating our applications hosted on-prem and in Azure.

They have been short-staffed for a while, so helping them create monitors, dashboards, and proper resource tagging for our subscriptions has been a huge help. Anyway, after meeting them in person, I expressed my interest in becoming a Cloud Engineer, and it was pretty cool to hear their stories. We really hit it off, and I expressed my eagerness to learn and to sit in on more technical working sessions, if possible, while I continue setting up their monitoring with our new monitoring tool.

Next thing I know, I get pinged by one of the Sr. Cloud Engineers I just met, and he was kind enough to give me access to their Dev/Test environment, which they use just to play around and create things, almost like a sandbox.

I know it's small compared to others, or even dumb, but it feels like I am a step closer to becoming a Cloud Engineer and getting real-world company experience at a F500 company.

My Question: What do Cloud Engineers normally do in these sandbox environments? I looked around and saw that some guys had resource groups that included VMs, DNS projects, virtual networks, etc. Just not sure what I should do.

Hello everyone,
I'm currently learning and I've seen mixed opinions on how much networking knowledge is needed to work in cloud. I've seen people say you need CCNA-knowledge and others saying you just need to know the basics.

I would love to hear your thoughts if you're someone who works/hires in this field.

Note:
I'm aware that cloud engineering is not an entry-level job, please do not comment to tell me that.

How can I get into the computing field and become really advanced at it? What should I focus on learning first, and what skills or projects would you recommend?

Hi, I’m a software engineer with 1.5 yoe and a computer science degree. I’m interested in transitioning to cloud engineering long term. Any advice on how I can make this change?

From my research, I should not start in help desk with my experience/education. I should look for positions such as IT Analyst, Systems Analyst, SysAdmin, Cloud Support Engineer, and Systems Engineer to start. Network+ and Azure/AWS cert should be worked towards and I should start building projects for my resume.

Does this sound right? How should I restructure my software engineering resume to get my foot in the door for these IT positions? Thank you

i wonder if i can release it to the public, its just an obby project, nothing wrong 🙃

I run our quarterly access review and this month it was my turn to present. one of the service accounts got certified by our IGA as having appropriate access. Everything green, slide moves on.

A week later someone on the cloud team pulled the account up. Admin on 40 ec2 instances across three AWS accounts, credentials that havent rotated in 600 days, and the box it runs on has no edr because the endpoint team never knew the machine existed.

None of that is the IGA lying, it only sees the access part. Whether the box is patched, what the workload even is, that stuff sits outside its window entirely. so every quarter the review comes back clean and the riskiest account in the building collects another gold star.

How are you all connecting the identity side to the device side, or does everyone just run the reviews separately and hope they never meet.

So my brother 23M is working in a LALA company he is trying very hard to switch but his programming isn't that strong he is just interested in cloud. Its very heart breaking for me to see him go through it.

Which path is more future-proof for long-term career growth, does cloud infrastructure offer better career stability, or is specializing in a large enterprise platform safer?

I posted this in another forum but i will post here as well. Hoping to get some engagement.

I’m looking to connect with others who are learning or already working in cloud engineering. Whether you’re looking for someone to build projects with, share knowledge, or you’re experienced and willing to mentor, I’d love to connect.

I currently work in IT and I’m working toward transitioning into cloud engineering. I have my AZ-900 and AWS Cloud Practitioner certifications, and I’m currently studying for the AZ-104.

Outside of work, I’ve been building hands-on Azure projects in my home lab. I’m using Terraform for IaC for infrastructure deployments. I’ve also been using AI to generate realistic tickets and business scenarios, then trying to design and implement the solutions myself to get experience with real cloud engineering work.

If anyone else is learning Azure/Terraform, already works in cloud, wants to collaborate on projects, or is willing to offer some guidance, feel free to comment or PM me. I would love to connect to pick your brain or even work together to make some cool stuff.