Hello 👋

Welcome to another week — and another opportunity to grow into a strong, confident DevOps, Infrastructure, or Platform Engineer.

Today’s issue is brought to you by The Engineering Ladder — where we share practical, career-shaping lessons in DevOps and Software Engineering to help you level up with clarity and direction.

💡 PS: Before we dive into today’s topic, I want to quickly share something important with you…

If you’ve been following The Engineering Ladder, you already know one thing I believe deeply:

👉 Real tech careers are built on evidence, not just interest.

That belief is exactly why we built CloudOps Academy.

CloudOps Academy is a hands-on training program for DevOps Engineers, Infrastructure Engineers, and Platform Engineers who want more than theory.
We focus on helping engineers build real systems, understand how production environments work, and gain the confidence to perform in real roles — not just pass interviews.

At CloudOps Academy, you don’t just “learn tools.”
You learn how to:
✅ Design and operate real cloud infrastructure
✅ Work with Docker, CI/CD, monitoring, and automation the way teams do in production
✅ Think like a reliability-focused engineer, not just a script writer
✅ Build projects you can confidently explain in interviews
✅ Grow from uncertainty to clarity with structured guidance and mentorship

Our goal is simple:
to help you become job-ready, confident, and credible as an engineer.

If you’re serious about building a strong DevOps or Cloud career — and you want guidance from engineers who are actively working in the field — we’d love to talk.

📞 Phone: +237 653 583 000
📧 Email: [email protected]

No pressure.
Just clarity on whether CloudOps Academy is the right next step for you.

Now, let’s get into today’s lesson 👇

Two weeks ago I attended a naming ceremony.

Nothing unusual about that, except this one stopped me in my tracks.

The child was named after me.

I sat there holding this tiny human, this brand new life, and I felt something I did not expect to feel. Not pride exactly. Something quieter than that. Something closer to gratitude.

After the ceremony I pulled the father aside and asked him directly.

"Why did you name him after me?"

He looked at me for a moment and then said:

"Because when I look at everything I have become and everything I am still becoming — I want my son to grow into that same kind of man. You are the standard I am raising him to reach."

I did not have words.

I still don't, fully.

Here is the part of this story that matters for you.

I met this man in a WhatsApp group in 2020.

Not at a conference. Not through a formal mentorship program. Not through a prestigious network or an expensive course.

A WhatsApp group.

He sent me a message. A simple, respectful message asking if I had time to answer a few questions about his career. I said yes. We talked. Then we talked again. And again. Over four years, I watched him go from someone who was uncertain about his path to someone who is now a confident, skilled engineer leading a team of his own.

He never asked me to be his mentor. I never formally agreed to be one.

It just happened — because he had the courage to reach out and I had the willingness to respond.

That is how the best mentorship relationships actually start.

Let me be honest with you about something.

The gap between a good engineer and a great one is rarely technical.

It is access.

Access to someone who has already made the mistakes you are about to make. Someone who can tell you which opportunities are worth pursuing and which ones will waste two years of your life. Someone who sees potential in you that you cannot yet see in yourself and holds you accountable to it.

A mentor does not just give you advice. A mentor compresses time. What would take you five years of trial and error to figure out on your own, a good mentor can help you understand in five conversations.

That is not a small thing. In a career, five years is everything.

Most people wait.

They wait until they feel ready to approach someone. They wait until they have something impressive to show. They wait for a formal program to match them with someone. They wait for the right moment.

The right moment does not come.

The engineers and professionals I have watched grow the fastest are not the ones who waited. They are the ones who reached out before they felt ready, asked genuine questions, and showed up consistently.

Mentorship is not a transaction. It is a relationship. And like every relationship, it starts with a simple human action — one person deciding to reach out to another.

Let me give you the honest, practical version of this. No fluff.

Before you look for a mentor, you need to know what kind of help you are looking for.

Are you trying to break into a new field? Navigate a career transition? Get better at a specific technical skill? Learn how to lead a team? Prepare for senior roles?

The clearer you are about what you need, the easier it is to identify who can actually help you — and the more valuable your conversations will be when they happen.

A vague ask gets a vague response. A specific ask gets a specific, useful one.

You need someone who is two to five years ahead of you on the path you want to walk. Someone close enough to remember what it felt like to be where you are now, but far enough ahead to show you what is coming.

Look around you:

LinkedIn — follow people who write about the problems you are trying to solve. Read their posts. Leave genuine, thoughtful comments. Over time you become a familiar face. When you eventually send a connection request with a personalised note, it does not feel cold.

Communities — WhatsApp groups, Discord servers, Slack communities, Telegram channels. This is exactly where I met the man whose son now carries my name. These spaces are full of practitioners who are generous with their knowledge if you approach them with genuine curiosity and respect.

Twitter and Newsletters — engineers and professionals who write publicly are already in the business of sharing what they know. They are often more approachable than you think. A genuine reply to something they wrote is worth more than a cold message that starts with "Hi, I am looking for a mentor."

Events and meetups — local tech events, online webinars, community gatherings. The conversations that happen in the margins of these events — before they start, during breaks, in the group chats — are where real relationships begin.

This is where most people either do not try or try badly.

Do not send a message that says: "Hi, I am looking for a mentor. Would you be willing to mentor me?"

That puts the entire weight of defining the relationship on the other person before they even know who you are.

Instead, do this:

Start small. Send a message that asks one specific question about something they have written or shared. Something genuine. Something that shows you have actually engaged with their work.

Something like:

"Hi [name], I read your post about handling database migrations without downtime. I am currently facing a similar situation with a PostgreSQL database and I am unsure about the expand-contract approach. Do you have five minutes to share how you thought through it?"

That is it. One question. Low commitment. Easy to say yes to.

If the conversation goes well, continue it naturally. Ask another question the following week. Share something useful back. Express genuine appreciation. Show that you are applying what you are learning.

Over time, the relationship builds itself.

The man who named his son after me never sent me a formal mentorship request. He just kept showing up, kept asking good questions, and kept doing the work. That consistency is what built the relationship.

This is the part nobody talks about.

Mentors are busy people. They have their own careers, their own responsibilities, their own problems to solve. When they choose to spend time with you, they are giving you something they cannot get back.

The fastest way to lose a mentor's attention is to take without giving anything back.

Here is what giving back looks like in a mentorship:

Show up prepared. When you have a conversation, come with specific questions, not vague ones. Don't ask "what should I learn next?" Ask "I am choosing between deepening my Kubernetes knowledge or learning Terraform. Given that I want to move into platform engineering, which would you prioritize?"

Apply what you learn. Nothing is more rewarding for a mentor than hearing "I tried what you suggested and here is what happened." It shows you are serious. It shows the time they spent with you was not wasted.

Share things that might be useful to them. An article. A tool. An observation from something you are working on. Mentorship should feel like a conversation between two people who respect each other — not a one-way download.

Say thank you. Specifically. Not just "thanks for your time" but "that advice about negotiating my salary changed the outcome of that conversation. I got the number I wanted." Specificity shows you were paying attention.

I want to end with this because it is the lesson that has shaped my career more than any technical skill.

The man whose son carries my name — I never mentored him because I expected something in return. I mentored him because someone once did the same for me. Because I know what it feels like to be lost in your career and have someone take thirty minutes to show you the way.

Investing in people compounds.

Not always in ways you can predict or measure. Sometimes it comes back as a recommendation. Sometimes as a collaboration. Sometimes as a friendship that lasts decades.

And sometimes — on a warm afternoon at a naming ceremony — it comes back as something that makes you sit very still and feel the full weight of what it means to show up for another human being.

Give generously. Mentor where you can. Ask for help when you need it.

That is how careers are built. Not just with skills and certifications and portfolios — but with relationships that carry you further than you could ever go alone.

✅ Identify one person who is two to five years ahead of you on the path you want to walk.

✅ Engage genuinely with something they have shared — a post, an article, a talk.

✅ Send them one specific, respectful question this week.

Not a mentorship request. Just a question.

That is how it starts.

The best things in my career did not come from algorithms or job boards.

They came from people.

People I reached out to. People who reached back. People I invested in without knowing where it would lead.

Find your mentor. Be someone's mentor. Build the relationships that outlast every job title you will ever hold.

Your network is not your net worth. Your relationships are your legacy.

PS:
At CloudOps Academy, we help engineers make this exact transition — from uncertainty to clarity — through hands-on training, real systems, and structured mentorship.

If you’re ready to move beyond theory and start building real DevOps skills, reach out:
📞 +237 653 583 000
📧 [email protected]