Free Resources to Become a SRE/DevOps Engineer

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The purpose of this post is to centralize a set of free resources in order to present a way to understand and develop Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps skills. The content of this post is based on a return of several years of experience in the industry and a willingness to share content that may still be unknown to some people who would like to evolve in their career or open themselves to new opportunities.

The purpose is not to explain what an SRE is or what the DevOps methodology is, but to describe probably the major aspect of these roles: the Continuous Learning.

Continuous Learning is an opportunity anyone should have to learn and develop professional skills simultaneously while working. The main idea behind that concept is to develop habits of acquiring skills, knowledge, and abilities to help anyone become better at their jobs. Obviously, to ensure effectiveness, people are required to have a desire to learn and grow, resources (free or paid), discipline and time.

Many of these factors are personal, curiosity and open-mindedness (are you ready to question your knowledge? To find new ideas? Etc), time allotted (professional or personal) to research, reading, watching video content. Obviously, this work should be done during work hours, like during training sessions, R&D sessions with coworkers, lunch & learn, etc. But, again, it is related to the time each person wants to allocate to his or her own learning path.

This post will not find the right formula for you, but we hope it will give you a great overview of all the existing resources that you can use to get your own continuous learning path off to a good start.

Join Slack and Discord Communities

The main purpose of DevOps is to increase the communication and collaboration between Development and Operations teams. In contrast to emails, which tend to be more formal, Slack and Discord are two collaboration hubs that bring the right people, information, and tools together. They provide a more personal and lighthearted platform, similar to Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. They offer communication updates in real-time, so urgent conversations or important notices can take place immediately.