Meet DevOps specialist Dale Gates! Having recently celebrated his 3-year anniversary with Expert Thinking, he’s also just been promoted to Principal DevOps Consultant, his second promotion since joining us in 2021. Excellent time to sit down with him and talk about all things career progression and learning and development.
You’ve recently been promoted to Principal DevOps Consultant. Tell us a little bit more about what your day-to-day looks like.
I now suddenly find myself in a position where I am trusted to drive change for the business, propose new projects to potential clients, and steer the direction of ongoing initiatives. These are just a few of my new responsibilities.
It now means my days are even more varied than before, and no two days are the same – it’s what I love most about my job!
I typically find it is a feast or famine with the backlog of work. Some days, it feels like I’m just reviewing proposals, statements of work, and qualifying new potential work streams all day. However, when I am actively working with a customer, I’ve found that the role is very communication and soft skill-heavy. Yes, you are still expected to lead the technical aspect as well, but stakeholder management and reporting definitely take up a larger proportion of your time on a project.
How would you describe the work environment at Expert Thinking?
What I particularly like about Expert Thinking (ET) is their open-door policy, you really do have a voice here and there is also a strong emphasis on career progression, what you put in is what you get out. Over my three years with ET, I’ve advanced from an intermediate DevOps Engineer to a Senior DevOps Engineer, and now, to a Principal role.
Because of the size of the org your input also has a significant impact, and your contribution doesn’t get lost in the sea of bottoms on seats as is the case with some of the larger well-known consultancies. While some people are content to sit back and just coast along, that has never really been me.
Speaking of career progression, what’s your advice for people looking to break into the tech industry or advance their career in tech?
Firstly for the younger generation (or possibly even those older looking for a career change) , Skip university – Computer Science in particular– unless you’re wanting to actively work in academia and at the forefront of discovery , you just don’t need the debt ( I have friends who have upward of 60k of debt and the goalposts of interest for student loans are constantly shifted but that another topic… ) and the syllabus – at least whilst I was there – was completely irrelevant and focused more on programming. I believe there are now courses more geared toward actual business focused IT but personally I’d just leap straight into a junior or support role in the industry and work your way up – I’d be 3 years ahead in my career and heavier wallet if someone had told me this earlier
As for which role to go for – I honestly believe it should be a mandatory requirement to do a stint in support of some sort . Troubleshooting skills are essential and its quite surprising the amount of people in the industry who don’t have these core skills – Whilst you’re not expected to know absolutely everything off the top of your head ,knowing where to look and being able to find information fast is a skill in its own right.
Once you have your foot in the door and then advancing your career. Get your head down. Get involved. And constantly learn. The landscape of technology and cloud computing is ever changing, and you can quickly fall behind if you don’t attempt to keep up.
As you mentioned, it’s so important to stay on top of your knowledge and you should always be learning. With that in mind, what’s your stance on certifications?
My opinion on certifications is some people treat them like Pokémon cards, I’ve interviewed people who have the full collection but when pushed on specific real world solutions which they have implemented, its a struggle to give an answer. This to me completely defeats the purpose of why they should be taken. They should be used as a validation of knowledge and not just taken to get the badge and move on.
Closed book timed exams I also don’t deem a good method of validation – in the real world we have access to the endless sources of information online as well as vendor documentation , I feel it is only fair it should be able to be utilised during an exam , I personally like the recent(ish) way Azure has done their expert level exams where they give access to the Microsoft Learn documentation which is good to rejog your memory but the time factor still prevents you from using them on every question ( you will sharp run out of time )
Strong technical experience is obviously important to advancing your career, but what would you say is an underrated but essential skill in tech consulting?
Whether you’re a customer-facing consultant or an engineer, you can always work on your soft skills. We all deal with people daily, from stakeholders to colleagues & customers. In my opinion, being able to translate what you’re doing and express your opinions concisely, is what separates the proficient from the true experts in their field.
You’ve been with Expert Thinking for 3 years now. What do you like about working here?
I’ve worked for previously for one of the larger IT consultancies and to be honest I much prefer working somewhere smaller. Instead of navigating through 6 layers of middle management for approval, you can just message and get an answer almost immediately, the flat structure here really is nice to have and you are actually listened to.
Another benefit I’ve found that the work can be a bit more varied, if there’s a project or a piece of work that you really want to get involved in, you can obviously just ask. Expert Thinking will give you the time to pursue it.
If you were to look at the rest of my career history, I’d usually be out the door after two years, and judging by how many people have left so far ( there certainly isn’t many) they must be doing something right here!