Grief is tough to control, it comes in unpredictable waves.
Keeping that in mind, the people who made me feel better were those who added some occasional (repeat - occasional) humor and positivity to lighten up the mood.
So rather than being all gloom and doom with the grieving if you notice them going through a less painful moment until the next wave hits, try engaging them in some upbeat conversation.
Looks like the acceptance towards this is growing. If there was a service that wouldn't inconvenience anyone to manage my burial/cremation I would check out in a heartbeat.
I spent over a 100 hours working through MOOCs and video tutorials over the past month only to find out that all I would learn at the end would be the basics that wouldn't really be help if someone asked me to 'go build'. I'd have the same feeling even after completing an advanced level course.
What we need are technical MOOCs that discuss what decisions to make when approaching a problem, evaluating trade-offs, what are the common practices you'd come across in a production environment and where the concept you learned fits in the big picture.
I haven't found any MOOC that talks about the above in depth for web dev and the only youtuber I found who talks about this is TechLead but he mostly puts out 10 minute clips instead of complete tutorials.
I've gone back to books and I'm learning much more per time spent studying something.
I thought tech lead was a satire (as a millionaire).
Practical application is an area I've always thought was sorely lacking. There's lots of places to learn the theory, but I still don't get it until I understand the applications. Then I start to get a fingertip feel (Fingerspitzengefuhl if you want to come from a certain view).
Whenever I see "Application is left as an exercise for the reader", I read that as "I don't actually understand the subject well enough to teach it fully".
I checked his channel after your comment and it seems he's gone all-in on the satire recently. He does put out a really good video occasionally.
To give you an idea of what he does that's missing in MOOCs, take a look at his video in which he migrates a database to a new server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4EYnCgIwc
Throughout the video he talks about why he chooses a particular method among the different approaches available, discusses their pros and cons, what are some of the issues you might encounter in the real world that you should consider. Even if the video is about migrating a database he goes through many other related topics like DNS, choosing the server hardware and OS. He also talks about his past experiences and observations throughout. It feels more engaging and you feel like an apprentice rather than a passive consumer.
I think I am 4, it's too hard for me to manage my own distro and update my packages when this will be EOL, so I have to wait and see, is there any alternative to CentOS aside of Debian and Ubuntu ?
Why not Debian? I've always used either Debian or Gentoo, depending on what I'm doing. I know Gentoo isn't everyones cup of tea, but Debian seems similar enough to Centos in my eyes.
EDIT: Reading elsewhere in the thread, the answer seems to be “enterprise”, which I consider something to be actively avoided.
Thank you so much for posting this! I found many things in your story that are similar to my experience and it gives me hope.
I have a few questions I hope you don't mind answering as I'm trying to change careers to work full-time on public cloud for a technology driven company.
A little backstory (feel free to skip):
I began my career working in a company that did structured cabling, PBX systems and rack and stacking data centers. I was rapidly taking on more responsibilities and was managing a team of 40 people within 2 years.
Things were steady but I felt like I was missing out on all the incredible things that were happening in tech (I spend a lot of time on HN). After discovering AWS I was blown away by the possibilities and decided Linux and cloud were what I wanted to focus on as a professional.
I resigned to start my own consultancy and got the pro level AWS SA certification (with mostly self practice and no real-world production experience) and approached many businesses to sell services as an 'AWS certified' consultant. I got a few small wins but the sales cycle was longer than I expected and many potential clients would engage in long technical discussions but then cancel once they saw the TCO calculations.
The unstable cash-flow made things like paying rent on time very stressful so after two years I got a job at a small consultancy that provides mostly on-prem IT infrastructure services. I've learned quite a lot over the past two years and realized there were many holes in my knowledge. Yet, most of the clients' work was still on premise and now because of the pandemic many of them put their projects on hold or outright canceled them to cut costs. I've been furloughed without any income and right now I'm trying to survive by installing internet in homes and taking support calls while looking for a new job.
Many of the cloud related jobs - either solution architecture or Devops, require experience working in an agile software development environment, which is something I don't have and I have a major case of imposter syndrome because of this.
Now for the questions:
1) Is it possible to learn enough about agile practices and development to be productive without real-world production experience?
2) When you were looking for a 'real job' after running your own IT business, did you face any objections during the recruitment process on why you were looking for a job despite running your own business?
3) I was thinking of applying for 'cloud support engineer' type of roles because I really want to work in this field, but would that be a negative signal to recruiters because I'm an experienced (albeit in other areas) candidate?
After all these years I started to question if it was possible to go from rack and stacking to cloud but since you've explained it in such detail I see a path now. Thanks!
1) The answer to this lies in the question. Agile is a practice and it'll take some to get up to speed. One path I took was taking jobs in tech support, answering phones calls, and finding opportunities to engage with the product teams. You can start by giving feedback on the top issues you're seeing and breaking down ways the product can improve to reduce related support calls. And Boom, you are now apart of the Agile process, providing a feedback loop that helps development teams incrementally improve the product. You also help reduce support cost; don't worry, if you automate yourself out of a job, there will be a better one waiting for you.
That's how you open doors for yourself. Many great Q/A and operations engineers started in tech support where they honed their troubleshooting skills.
2) Yes, I use to get those questions. My answer was, "I'm starting a family, and I'm looking for something a bit more stable, and bigger challenges than the ones I was getting on my own".
It's all about being able to demonstrate your skills. Some times it's whiteboard coding exercises or logging into a live system and "making it work". My IT certifications helped me earlier in my career and now things like GitHub and blog posts are a great way to showcase your skills.
3) Remember, you can always tailor your resume for the job you want. If you want to avoid looking over qualified, then re-frame your experience to align with the job requirements. Instead of "I ran a business doing X,Y,Z", you can re-frame it, "As a _ I did X,Y,Z".
During the interview you can show off your full skill set by giving deep answers demonstrating your understanding of the big picture and how to make a business impact.
If you ever want to discus this stuff further, shoot me a DM on Twitter, I've been where you are, and I know what's possible.
Keeping that in mind, the people who made me feel better were those who added some occasional (repeat - occasional) humor and positivity to lighten up the mood.
So rather than being all gloom and doom with the grieving if you notice them going through a less painful moment until the next wave hits, try engaging them in some upbeat conversation.