1. Describe yourself in 3 words: Team Player, Open, Intuitive
2. Why did you join Strategio’s Simulator? I had been looking to go into technology and Strategio did exactly that. When I heard the story behind Strategio I thought to myself, “this would be something special to be a part of”, to be a part of the group that first breaks ground at Strategio. To one day think to myself, “wow, I was a part of that, a group who all took a chance as well as contributed to Strategio’s story”.
3. What were you doing before you joined Strategio? I had finally decided I needed a career change after 5 1/2 years as an electrical engineer in the infrastructure discipline. I began to search for opportunities, review, and learn technologies desired in a technologist. I was on this step for a few short weeks before I received the communication began and my technologist journey began.
4. What are you most excited about this year? This year I am excited about my transition to a new career. Our lives contain many components, and I always lacked a career that I truly desired. However, through my experiences and with the help of Strategio, I feel that I’ve found it, and I am excited to have this new element and be on this path.
5. What made you decide to get into tech? I’ve always been interested in how things work, which led to engineering, where I designed for things to work. I felt that learning new and different technologies would give me a sense of value and pride. A pride that stems from knowledge in material that I was interested in and could explore on my own as well have a vast amount of resources and information to learn.
6. What do you like to do during your spare time? I have many interests and hobbies to enjoy in my life. At this moment, I am training for the Chicago Triathalon this coming August. I have also been learning different styles of Latin dancing such as salsa, bachata, and tango for a while now.
7. What is your favorite cultural value at Strategio? Be unapologetically yourself. This value stuck out through me upon completing the simulator. I always had trouble being myself because I felt that my speaking or how I carried myself was unacceptable in a real-world setting. However, I learned that the more allowed myself to be, the stronger my sense of belonging got through the simulator. Not only that, but I felt that I naturally began to contribute and participate even more.
8. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? I am torn between either Thailand or Brazil. Either one is a great next adventure.
9. What’s your favorite restaurant? The Thai restaurant down the block. Go-to order? Pad Thai with crab rangoons and an iced tea. Fire.
10. What advice would you give to the next group of technologists joining the simulator? Be open. This simulator is designed for YOU to learn, for YOU to experience, and for YOU to grow from. Take advantage of everything the simulator has to offer. It only does you good.

As always it is a pleasure to share on my journey as a technologist. Follow me for more top notch content such as this read.

Technologist Spotlight: Dennis Uriostegui was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Congratulations! You are now a technologist with Strategio and are about to begin your exciting journey with the simulator. I would like for you to breathe and keep reading, for I was once in your shoes. I partook in the first wave of technologists and although I have come out on top with my team, I have also emerged with lessons I wish I had when I first began my journey as a technologist. I have no doubt you will succeed but please consider the following.

Student Mode

Whether it’s been five weeks or five years, you will be a student. The simulator will contain some topics you may have familiarity with and other topics that will be brand new to you. Approach all the topics the same. When you go in with an open mind, you will take in more detail that further ingrains that information in you and will make your tasks easier. Be an honest student; everything is knowledge to be absorbed.

Details, Details, and More Details

Speaking of making things easier for you, I suggest to self-reflect and note the characteristics that caused you trouble in school. I tend to skip over details believing I would be fine if I had the general gist I would be fine. Do not be me. This lack of focus on detail was an issue in my academic career and boy did it create obstacles for me in the simulator. This fault of mine had me troubleshooting and debugging for an unnecessarily longer time than needed. Often, I found myself rereading the theory on particular technologies or tasks, and only after that, did I reach my solutions. So please focus on the details; they matter.

Save Yourself, Organize

Among my fault for detail, my minuscule strength in an organization was a hurdle that held back my potential. Because this simulator imitates a BootCamp, there will be an avalanche of new material everyday. A strong piece of advice here is to take note of what everything is and map it out as it relates to the other information you will learn. This will avoid clutter and confusion as the simulator proceeds. Outside of the material, it will be good practice to maintain a high-level organizational overview of all your installations as it can be overwhelming and cause confusion. Regulate the information and sources you encounter to enhance your understanding.

I hope you read this far and took note of all that I’ve said. Your technologist journey may not always be the easiest but it will always be well deserved. That’s right, you deserve to be here and don’t you forget it.

One last thing to remember is that you’re not alone. You are a technologist with Strategio, and the team you have behind you will be an incredible one and will always be willing to help you in the way you merit.

If you’ve made it this far, then please follow me for more articles such as this.

If You’re Reading This It’s Not Too Late was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We create and share code every day through code repositories. Repositories have allowed projects to grow as quickly as they do with the capabilities of version control capabilities. As companies migrate more and more into the cloud, cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide cloud-based repositories to further enhance the migration. This blog will build a repository with AWS’ managed source control service CodeCommit.

Prerequisites

• AWS account (free tier is sufficient)
• A basic understanding of GitHub is ideal but not necessary

Task 1

In the AWS console, search for CodeCommit in services. Then, on the CodeCommit, select “Create repository”, name your repository “create-repository” and select “Create ”while leaving the remaining fields with their default.

Task 2

Once again in your AWS console search through the services for IAM. In IAM, go to users, select your user and go to the “Security Credentials” tab. On the Security credentials tab, you will see the option to “Generate credentials” under the HTTPS Git credentials section. Generate the credentials and in the pop-up window download the credentials; these will come into use later.

Task 3

You will want a virtual machine so we will create an instance using the EC2 service found in AWS. In the “Instances” section you will see a tab called “Launch instance”. Upon selecting it, you will see options for the type of machine you desire. For our purpose, we will select the free tier Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS (HVM) and choose the free tier option t2 for instance type. Once those are selected may “Review and launch” and then “Launch”. You will see your created instance on your “Instances” section and you may then start your instance under the “Instance state” dropdown. With your instance running you can now “connect” via “EC2 Instance Connect” and make your username ubuntu.

Task 4

From the CodeCommit console, select your repository, and “Clone HTTPS” under “Clone URL”. The copied URL will go at the end of the following git command in your shell; git clone Cloned_URL , where “Cloned_URL” is your URL. You can access your repository by entering the credentials you copied earlier. First, change into the repository input the following command; cd create-repository . Next, create a file in your repository you can use the command echo "lab" > lab.txt . Add the file lab.txt to your local repository. The following commands in your shell will follow that process: git add lab.txt , followed by git commit -m "First repo" . You have cloned a repository onto an instance and added that file to your local repository.

Task 5

To cap it all off you will want the file on your local repository pushed to the remote repository on AWS. Use the command git push and enter your credentials from task 2 to complete the process in the shell. Next, check your create-repository in the CodeCommit console, and you will see that the file lab.txt will be present within your create-repository.

Congratulations

If you’re reading this then give yourself a pat on the back because you just learned and practiced a truly essential function in technology with CodeCommit and repositories. You may very well have gotten lost along the way, but that is a part of learning in technology. With this introduction, you can now go back and study the process and commands. I definitely recommend the review because the knowledge and skills to use code repositories will benefit you greatly in your current or next role.

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In The Cloud: Code Repository was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) provider that allows users to host an application on the cloud. In order to accomplish this, a user usually designs for computing, storage, and networking for their application. Lightsail includes these features for quick deployment. Let’s build a simple WordPress instance using Lightsail with 3 tasks.

Prerequisites:

• AWS account (non-root user preferably)

task 1

From the AWS console, search for “Lightsail” and go to the service. On the console section “Create instance” select your region and availability zone for your application’s instance to be located. In your instance, you will want an instance image, which is another way to describe a prebuilt instance. In this case, the instance will be on Linux and use the WordPress blueprint.

Lightsail will require an instance plan that will determine parameters. Being that this is a small task, I chose the $3.50 option since I know I will terminate this instance at the end. On naming your instance, a globally unique name must be selected. Once the name has been selected, you can “Create instance”.

Task 2

On the newly created instance, select connect via SSH. When the SSH window opens, enter the command cat $HOME/bitnami_application_password and save your password. In a browser, go to http://PublicIpAddress/wp-login.php, where you will replace the phrase with the public IP address on your instance as shown below. Log on to your instance.

Task 3

Back on AWS Lighsail, you can create a static IP for your instance. In the networking tab of Lightsail, you will see the option to “Create Static IP”.

Scroll down to select your instance and name your Static IP and “Create”.

Upon completing this small task, you will have used one of AWS’ many services. With Lightsail you got to create an instance on a virtual machine and were able to see some of the characteristics such as compute, storage, and connectivity to that instance. Lightsail makes it simple to interact with AWS Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), allows you to break down what resources Lightsail uses and how that ties into specific AWS services such as EC2. Play around with Lightsail and see what other services it handles and what service AWS has that ties directly.

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In The Cloud: Introductory AWS Feature was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First Things First

My go-to plan when it came to studying was to first learn everything about the test itself: duration, questions, format, passing score, and the topics covered. From that point on I dove straight into the lessons on OpenEDG and began my learning. Typically I would take notes as I went along with lessons and so on. But not this time. My experience with tests in the past has proved that knowing a definition or a straightforward example would never be enough to truly understand a subject. No, to truly understand a subject the comprehension has to be a little more than surface level.

Boldface textbook definitions rarely got me great test scores. Expanding a definition, checking other sources, and practicing with a subject is usually what got the job done. When it came to the PCEP I experimented a lot with the python sandbox as I went through the lessons. Experimenting with different inputs and attributes made me question the subject more as it required me to think further than a simple math equation. This process further solidified my base understanding of the topic at hand.

Without applying the information we learn then how do we know if we’re actually knowledgeable on the subject? My answer to that is practice exams. I did not expect to be as out of touch academically until it came to taking these practice exams. The testing ability that had to come back to form was my attention to detail. After my first practice exam, I realized I was making sloppy mistakes for not reading all my choices clearly. The cleverness in exams is that they mix in the correct answer with very similar incorrect answers. The second exam proved more of the same. Upon my third and so on I took a little more time to study the answers. Although I spent more time on my practices, my scores improved to the point where I had full confidence in my PCEP exam.

Any Good Advice?

Everyone has their way to prepare and this was my way. Nevertheless, test preparation is a skill to be continuously developed and as long as the effort is there then everything becomes obtainable.

I hope you enjoy this little read. I would love to hear from you and get your thoughts on the matter. Follow me for more.

Study, Eat, Python was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This January I was invited to partake in the Annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summit hosted by Entrust. This summit got to put into perspective some of the issues plaguing the technology workforce and what actions throughout the industry are being taken. The event allowed Entrust to bring to attention the reality of representation in the sector and how it can play a factor in success. The summit granted the opportunity for Strategio to demonstrate how they are playing an active role in closing the gap in talent that exists today. This all allowed for other voices to be heard throughout the summit and point to a conclusion that we’re all in this together.

As Entrust pointed out early on, diversity in any situation allows for different perspectives to be brought to the table. With additional angles, in any situation, you can increase your chance to succeed. Additionally, numbers show that the top quartile of companies for diversity was 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than the bottom quartile. Whether from a human perspective because it’s honorable or from a business perspective because it’s good for business, it’s clear that accurate reflections of the communities we serve lead to the results we all want.

Strategio got a chance to participate, and CEO/Founder Conor Delabanque began with the discussion of the war on talent. Nowadays if you attempt to join the tech world with little experience or education then your chances of making it are slimmer than they would be in other sectors. Why is that? If you look around most entry-level opportunities are searching for candidates with 5 plus years of experience or an experienced individual with an extensive background that is rarely achieved at entry-level. This talent gap ensures that those early in their careers have doors unnecessarily shut on them and that the talent companies do have is experienced individuals who are not easily retained.

Fortunately, there are innovative groups such as Strategio that create a talent pipeline to end this unnecessary rubbish. With groups such as these, there can now be a new generation of technologists entering the world of tech and establishing themselves as accomplished individuals. Individuals who will grow with their teams and contribute to their success.

During the summit, there were members from Entrust and Strategio that discussed the attributes that defined them as diverse individuals. These attributes not only included background but also their positions in life such as parent, spouse, and personalities. A thread that was seen from this is that we all bring a different perspective regardless of the boxes we check on a form. By all of us fulfilling the criteria of diversity then we can all participate in achieving inclusion for all.

So what? It’s clear that there is work to be done before we can achieve full parity in the tech workforce. There are the employers, talent services, and us. With everyone playing their part we can and will achieve parity.

Enjoy the article? Have different perspectives? Comment below and follow for more content like this.

Lessons From ENclusion 2022 was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

DevOps, short for Development and Operations, is a set of practices that seeks to improve an enterprise’s ability to enhance the quality of their products and services with a fusion of people at its core. Quite the mouthful I know. But what is it exactly? And is it just a phase or is it a real game changer?

A Brief History

Traditionally the software development lifecycle (SDLC) has been the waterfall model.

Each phase can in the cycle be considered a team of technologists independent from the other phases. You can imagine that this sequential process of development plays its own kind of game of telephone. With each team being self-reliant there’s not much consideration that one phase has for the other even though they’re all on the same team. This method is time consuming as well with feedback coming at the end of the cycle and being backlogged for the beginning design phases. How can the software development cycle be improved?

Enter: DevOps

Instead of looking at the development lifecycle as sequential with one giant loop from top to bottom, DevOps seeks to streamline that loop in a way all parties are involved in the continuous integration and continuously deployment of a product.

In DevOps, the development and operations teams now become a cross-functional team and now all share in the duty of the final product. With this lemniscate model there is a continuous input into the planning from the monitor phase. This continuity allows the DevOps team to continuously make changes and receive input to keep the loop going thus ensuring a better-quality solution. The constant loop eliminates lag time in development that would occur with the traditional sequential waterfall model. Within the loop there can be more automation as well with the constant deploy that would occur with such a process.

Is That it?

Outside of the process itself the biggest change that truly benefits everyone is culture. The DevOps culture allows for more communication, more teamwork, more time to be innovative, and for more resources across the different phases. This culture thrives because no one is disconnected from the whole of the product. Regardless of your role, you will have a more direct hand in what goes on and that ignites a passion to strive for the best possible solution.

The Proof Is in The Pudding

You may not realize it but you’re probably reaping the benefits of DevOps in your daily life. After dinner you may hop on Netflix and enjoy a good show to watch but have you ever thought about how far Netflix has come since it’s DVD rental days? Netflix is a leader in the benefits of DevOps and we reap the rewards. Development engineers have access to the production side and through that they take on a greater responsibility but with it a greater ambition for the best solution. Without this model there would be significant downtime for us as users to a point where we might question whether we should bring Blockbuster back. Thankfully Netflix sets a great precedent with their use of DevOps and we can keep streaming for years to come.

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DevOps: Fad or Evolution? was originally published in Strategio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.