My Top Secret Plan for the Hiring Off-season

Let's be realistic: I shan't get a start as a junior developer  before Christmas, nor can I expect to be hired before the end of January.  Back in September, I had hoped to get a start in late November, maybe get something lined up in December, but that did not come to pass.

Would I prefer to get a start straight away?  Of course I do.
Can I change prospective employers' hiring practices?  No.

I could bemoan the effect of two months of unemployment on my savings, but that won't get me anywhere.

Instead, let's look at this as an opportunity: I have two whole months in which to learn as much as possible about programming in Ruby, and build up a portfolio of code in Github.  I can't batter down doors that are closed for Christmas and New Year's, but I can put myself in the best position for when they re-open.

So what's the plan?

• Complete Learn Ruby the Hard Way
• Blog about what I learn
• Learn about test-driven development (TDD)
• Transfer the contents of my Pastebin to Gist in an intelligent way
• Build the web scraper for my research tool and get it up on Github
• Build the analysis component of my research tool and get it up on Github
• Go to meet-ups
• Participate in Slack
• Find a mentor to review my code
• Write an end-of-month summary for all the Leads and Contacts in my CRM

In addition to all that, work on the Odessia, keep a clean home, cook, exercise, early to bed and early to rise, and enjoy every weekend with my beloved, friends, and family.

So this year, Christmas 2016, there will be no reason for me to slow down, and every reason to push harder into 2017.

DevOps Career Path Map, Version 0.1

DevOps Career Path, Version 0.1

This is my first attempt at charting the course towards DevOps.  From what I can tell, DevOps engineers are drawn from the ranks of experienced software developers, or failing that, Computer Science graduates who need minimal training to work competently in a DevOps role.

Unfortunately for me, I meet neither of those requirements, which means either working my way into a software development career or going to university.
I have spent enough years at university; as far as I am concerned, if I need a degree for the job, the job's not worth it.
Ergo, the path to DevOps will be via software development, which raises the question of how to become a successful software developer?

I see broadly two avenues:

1. Working as a junior developer or serving an internship.
2. Getting an auxiliary role, e.g. in technical support or on the customer helpdesk, to get into the company, from which point I can work to be promoted into the development team.

For the latter I am already eminently qualified.

For the former, my daily work can be divided into three areas:

1. Studying programming, i.e. learning to code at a professional level.  A good starting point is Code Academy and Udemy.  Once I have completed the courses through those websites, I think I'll have a much better idea of where to go from there.
2. Online self-promotion.  This includes my blog, using LinkedIn, etc.
3. Schmoozing with professional developers and DevOps engineers.  In Melbourne, there are Meetup groups for DevOps, Python, Ruby, etc.  I have already joined those and will keep an eye out for any others.  At the moment I'm quite enjoying Ruby; although I started on Python, I think Ruby might become my favourite language.  I'll see how I feel in a couple of months.

That's it for now.  Does this seem like a good plan to you?  Any suggestions?