A new era of the Cloud Resume Challenge

I'm pretty excited about this.

Lots of Cloud Resume Challenge news in this post. TL;DR: all-new, lower-cost editions of the book for AWS, Azure, and GCP; free monthly sprints; more community challenges.

Introducing v2 of the Cloud Resume Challenge Guidebook

I released the first version of the Cloud Resume Challenge Book almost a year ago. Since then it’s sold several thousand copies and helped a bunch of people gin up the nerve to take on the challenge. But the original book had a few problems:

• It was almost entirely AWS-centric, because that’s where my head was at;

• It assumed the reader already knew how to set up and safely operate a cloud environment - not a fair assumption!

• It included several wonderful bonus challenges from guest contributors - but these challenges were unrelated to the core Cloud Resume Challenge, so most people didn’t have the energy to do them. It’s hard enough to stay motivated through the Cloud Resume Challenge itself without having to do a bunch of extra projects just to fill in a few extra skills.

So today I’m releasing a new version of the challenge book. Well, actually, make that three versions. I’ve translated the original AWS challenge into Azure and GCP flavors and provided cloud-specific setup, safety, and learning resources throughout each book.

The first edition of the book was about 135 pages long; each cloud’s version of the new edition is bigger and better, about 210 pages. I’m also happy to be reducing the price of the cloud-specific editions by 20%; you can get any of them for $20 or buy the full “multicloud bundle” together for $30.

If you bought the old, AWS-centric version of the book, you have access to all three of the new versions at no extra charge - you should have received a separate email this morning about that.

What’s inside the reimagined AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud guidebooks

I’ve majorly restructured the new editions to make them (I hope) more systematic, focused, and useful as both a Cloud Resume Challenge guide and a cloud career aid. You can check out the full table of contents and read some samples here.

Whichever version of the book you choose has three main sections. In the first section, I give you some background about the Cloud Resume Challenge and break down the challenge into six smaller “chunks”, which I propose tackling over six weeks.

These chunks are designed to be independently valuable as standalone mini-projects; if you quit after 2 chunks, 3 chunks, 4 chunks, or 5 chunks, you’ll still have built something useful and interesting that you can talk about in a job interview or use as an entry point for future learning. There are many paths to a cloud career, and it’s completely okay to use just part of the Cloud Resume Challenge to fill a gap or spur further exploration.

But if you’re new to cloud, you should continue on to the second, longer section of the book, where we walk through each chunk in detail. I’ll give you a bunch of preparatory reading suggestions to help you get your head around the new concepts introduced in each section. I’ll give you some pointers and hints on how to tackle each chunk of work.

Perhaps most importantly, each chunk includes “mods” at the end - extensions you can make to the core challenge project in order to practice key skills. These mods come in three flavors:

• Developer Mods

• DevOps Mods

• Security Mods

I would suggest picking one set of mods to add on as you proceed through the book, depending on what kind of cloud job you are looking for. For example, if you do the security mods, by the end of the challenge you will have gained additional hands-on experience with secure DNS, IAM misprivilege detection and remediation, web application security, and secure software supply chains - all great discussion topics for a cloud security job interview.

What I will NOT do in this section is give you step-by-step “click here, then run this command”-style instructions for how to complete the challenge. Don’t worry - even with the additional resources and guidance you’ll find in these pages, the learning will still come from you!

The third and final section of the book, which you can read at any time, comprises six essays (corresponding to the six challenge chunks) that provide deeper advice on how to leverage your work on the challenge toward a successful cloud career.

The book contains links to many of what I consider to be the finest learning resources in the cloud world, some of which are true hidden gems you won’t see recommended everywhere; you need to follow these links, do the exercises, and play with the interactive environments. You need to do the mods, not just read about them. The Cloud Resume Challenge isn’t about passively consuming information. You truly will get out of it what you put into it.

Oh yes - there is a team license for the guidebook as well.

Also, sprints

Second thing - many people have mentioned wanting to do the Cloud Resume Challenge in a cohort with other challengers. We are going to start doing this in August via the CRC Discord server.

The sprints will be focused 4-week pushes that use the challenge attack plan laid out in the guidebooks. We’ll have live office hours, motivational speeches, maybe even some swag.

The sprints will be community-oriented and free (though spots may be limited depending on how much interest there is) - buying the guidebook is suggested but not required, this isn’t one of those lame college classes where you have to buy the professor’s $600 textbook. You can sign up here.

Build something real

The bonus challenges from the old Cloud Resume Challenge Book haven’t gone away; I’ve open-sourced them in the community challenge repository and recommend you check them out. This Kubernetes challenge is a good place to start. This repository is growing all the time, and I’m excited about some additional partnerships coming later this summer.

In the meantime, thanks as always for your support of the CRC project and community - these changes are based on the feedback from this year’s community survey, and your needs shape the challenge as I strive to keep it a useful resource for anyone making the career switch to cloud.