The Interview - with Jaya Sai Krishna

Hello Everybody!

This blog's got a new category now! That's *drumrolls* "The Interview". I am planning to do this every - Now and Then.

The Interview

My mentor from my ex-company took pity on me and agreed to do this. So he is the first interview-ee of Awesome Blossom. I have known him as a person who is always extremely driven to learn something new. He could be found in his natural habitat(cube) learning some new trending technology or cracking some puzzle. In my brief stint with him, I saw him learning Android coding and Pega tool. The best part is - his zeal to learn is contagious and he tries to motivate others to learn new things. He guides and mentors people and constantly gives them a push to keep learning. Does this all sound like he is all technical? Nope, it is always a lot of fun talking with him. There used to be only two topics in our discussions- technology and movies. 

Who is he? Before I give away too many details, here we go!

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Tell us about yourself(so typical of me to ask the standard question).

I am Jaya Sai Krishna, I am working as DevOps Consultant/Java Developer/Oracle Fusion Middleware consultant in Westpac through Limepoint in Sydney/Melbourne.

Sydney/Melbourne? Both places? 

Yeah one week in Sydney, two weeks in Melbourne.

How and why did you end up in Australia?

I joined OFSS after Convergys, I was asked to work in Melbourne for three months, because one of the guys working there went on leave to India for two months. Since then, there is no looking back, its been 4 years and 3 months I have been in Australia. I have got myself a name in the Westpac Bank and in my parent company, because of that I am still working in Australia.

How is work culture in Australia?

Anywhere if you work under Indian manager, you won't see any different culture no matter where ever you work in the world. Luckily I have worked with Australian team mates. If you see my sentence carefully, I worked under Indian manager, I worked with Australian team. That's the work culture in Australia.

Best thing in Australia? Worst thing?

Best thing is climate, worst thing is also climate.

What's the Visa process?
If its 457 visa, your company will take care of it. But if it's PR, its long process, we need to have separate session for it :) By the way 457 visa has recently been cancelled.

Will the visa change impact you? 

Nope, company should handle that.

What are the other ways to get into Australia as the 457 visa is cancelled now? 

Permanent Residency.

How was your career so far and what are the plans for future?

I did Bachelor of Computer Applications and started off my career with TechMahindra. I have 11 years of experience.So far I worked under someone on different technologies. Future plan is to work for me to build solutions to current and future problems. 

Looking back at your career- starting as a fresher and ending up as an architect currently - what do you think are the main reasons for you to be successful?

I cannot say I am a DevOps Architect, I am aiming to be DevOps Architect, May be by this year I can call myself that. Two major things that drive me are to be close to technology advancements and my interest to be in race with changing technology.  I don't think I am successful as of now, when I start something on my own then may be I can say I am successful.

Many people tend to relax once they hit some kind of saturation point in their career. What drives you to prepare and learn new things for so many days even after years of experience? 

When you think big, you never tend to relax ever.

Have you always been like this since childhood? Or any incident that changed your outlook or perspective later in your life? (I really wanted to know The Secret of success, so the pestering)

There is no incident that changed my outlook or perspective, it's just me, I am like this since I can remember . Manufacturing defect ;)

(That explains a lot)

Is there someone in your family or best friends who influence you to be like that? (more pestering)

I like competition in life, had competitive colleagues/friends who make me to sweat to be in competition with them.

(I did find an external factor, yay)

Why did you decide to get into DevOps? Anything specific motivated you? 

It was the next big thing and I thought it will suit my attitude.

How did you know what are all the techs to prepare to get into DevOps as a beginner? 

Did lots of research.

What's the future in DevOps? What's going to become obsolete?

Future is bright for DevOps. DevOps is not a technology, it's a culture, it's something like development.

What are the best sources-site/books to learn about DevOps?

Devops.com gives latest improvements in DevOps. Packtpub books are good source to start with.

What does a DevOps architect do?

In order to know what a DevOps architect does, you need to first understand what DevOps is -

"DevOps establishes a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing software can happen rapidly, frequently, and more reliably". 

As a DevOps Architect, we do the following things:

• Implement, maintain, and improve Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery environments.
• Advise business and technology delivery leadership on how to translate the client’s infrastructure. 
• Automate business requirements into executable technology solutions.

How does anyone become a DevOps architect? What are all the things one should know or learn? Pre-requisites?

First you need to observe the DevOps culture, DevOps is not a single technology to learn. 

Normally a DevOps engineer should have awareness from configuration management system(building OSI) to end product testing. A DevOps person has to know the following things:

• Proficient in one of configuration management tools like Chef or Puppet or Ansible or Salt .
• System Administration (Oracle Linux, Redhat Linux Administration).
• DBA skills.
• Log management tools like Splunk.
• Metric collection tools like Nagios.
• Automation tools for build, deploy and testing like Jenkins, Jira, GIT.
• Code Quality and Enterprise Security tools like SonarQube, HP Fortify.

Did you prepare on any specific topics to get into DevOps? How? How much time was spent?

As I said this is not single technology to learn, it was an ongoing process to adapt and learn the technologies, I have spent hours, days to understand what exactly DevOps is and learn technologies. To become a DevOps engineer first you need to be adaptable to the changes and be agile. Anyway in the above question i have mentioned you the topics you need to be familiar with to be DevOps engineer.

Apart from DevOps, what else are you good at?

I am good at learn new technologies without anyone's help, I mean I read books and refer sites, but I don't need someone to teach me something.

What are your favorite books in other technologies?

Books and tutorials on Augmented Reality and IoT.

Apart from technology, where else do you invest your time?

I am Cinephile, I watch lots of movies, language is not a barrier- I watch all language movies.

How should one prepare for interviews in general?

There is nothing to prepare for interviews, you just have to show in interview what you are good at, and why the interviewer has to select you.

What do you think is lacking among people in general, when you are interviewing them?

When I am interviewing any candidate for interview, I would like see whether he is good at basics, because strong foundations makes great buildings, That's lacking more in most of the people. You code in Java, but if you don't know how JVM works then how are you going to write fine tuned code?

How can they improve?

Have strong foundation and see how it's going to shape you ahead to do more complicated things

What do you look for mostly while selecting a candidate in interview?

I have answered this in above question, but to add more to it, Strong basics, Think different, be adaptable to the only thing constant in software i.e., Change.

According to you, what are the technologies that are going to be trending in future?

IoT, Augmented Reality, DevOps, Docker

Who inspires you?

Anyone who works hard and are innovative inspire me. 

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You can see that I tried to extract his secrets of success with a lot of pestering, even then he answered all my question patiently. As he says, some people are just manufactured like that to be driven, to be passionate about something. And yes, continuous self learning is the key. The only external factor I could see was competitive friends/colleagues, as they say you are the average of people you surround yourself with.  

Thank you Sai for taking out time to answer all my questions, sharing all your experiences and throwing some light about DevOps and career in general 😊