What makes a profession?
So far, I have tried to keep my medium posts talking about technical things. However, now I wanted to write about how come I chose SRE as my profession. What this job gives to me. What I mean when I say it is not my job, it’s my profession.
When I was a teenager, I learned a lot about productivity. My opinion was that half of my job could be done by machines and I would have more free time. I read a lot and I realized that the language to tell the computers what to do is a programming language. So I wanted to learn that. Years elapsed, I got into a technical school to learn IT and after that, I got my B.Sc. in computer science. As a Jr. Software engineer, I still realized, I don’t automate my job. I automate others’ jobs and I still do things mechanically, with my hand and not with a script or tool. I needed more freedom to automate useless, time-consuming routines.
At that time I was keeping in touch with a very good friend who told me about things and tools like Ansible, DevOps and he told me, that they even use bash scripts to help their job. I thought that’s so cool, so I applied for a job, especially for their department. I got hired. That was the point when I finally felt, that I arrived somewhere and I am on a path which I enjoy. I loved the theory of automation and make others’ and also my life easier with scripts and tools.
A few years later I got to know what is a public cloud and how useful and easy it to use. That was in connection with an exercise of a job interview. That was another tiny bit of direction change. I wouldn’t even call it a direction change, just a tiny bit of adjustment. Since then I have wanted to work with the public cloud and around a year later my desire was fulfilled.
After 5 years in DevOps, Tooling, and SRE I still feel the passion and the engagement that brings joy to my day-to-day life and which gives me the perseverance to overcome difficulties and gives me the strength to become smarter and wiser every day even though the valley of the knowledge about SRE is bottomless because it’s a constantly improving field in IT.
Also, when I do my job I experience the full immersion. A feeling when I am fully involved and just enjoy what I do. The complete absorption in the task. In another name: the Flow. And while I absorb in what I do, I try to do the best workpiece as I can imagine.
I always take my job as my art, because I still create. I create code and infrastructure and crossovers between them and there are many solutions to solve problems and achieve goals. And the main goal is to simplify everyone’s life. That’s why I’m working for and that’s why I get up every day.
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” — The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
