Are you looking to build an unstoppable cloud architect career? If so, this video is for
you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects and we're an
organization dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing careers. In today's
video, we're going to talk about your cloud computing career development plan. See, in
cloud computing, and in general in architecture, you have two career path options and it's
the management versus the technical career path. And both are excellent and both are
options, but you have to train for the option you want in order to be able to get the job
you want.
So in this video, we're going to talk about optimizing your cloud computing career options
then we're going to talk about building your tech career development plans. And see, there
is a pathway for architecture and there's a pathway for leadership, and as a cloud architect,
you can migrate fairly easily to either one. Here's the reason why. A cloud architect is
a cross between a business executive and an engineer like a cloud engineer. So business
executive, cloud engineer combined and married together. And because of that, you have the
opportunity to learn the leadership style and go down the leadership path or you can
get very technical and we'll talk about how to do both.
Let's first begin with the tech pathway. And realistically speaking, the tech pathway is
to go from cloud architect to senior cloud architect to principal cloud architect to
distinguished cloud architect. And we're going to talk about what you would typically do
in these roles and how to train to get there. And when we're done that, we're going to talk
about how you move into management or leadership positions. And we're going to tell you what
you need to learn to get there. So this will be your tech career development path and your
tech career leadership program all rolled into one in this video.
So what are we really going to be talking about? Let's begin with the cloud architect
career path. The first type of cloud architect we're going to talk about is the cloud architect.
And this is sort of your entry level cloud architect position. And as I mentioned, it's
a cross between business work and technical work. And why do I say that? See, an architect
is not like an engineer. An engineer focuses deeply on a small area and they get into extreme
depth and they are strong at it. They're very solid at it, but they focus on how do you
build something, the configuration of it. But as an architect, it's much more of a position
where you meet with clients. So even at the introductory level as a cloud architect, you're
going to meet with a client. You're going to ask their business, legal, technical requirements,
any regulatory challenges they have. And from there, you're going to design a technology
solution that is going to help solve the customer's problems and/or get them to meet their goals.
That's the role of a cloud architect.
Now, as you move up the ranks, your depth of knowledge is going to need to increase,
but also your business communication skills, which we'll talk about next, are going to
increase. Now, going from an architect to a senior cloud architect is generally speaking
much deeper technical knowledge and much deeper knowledge of cloud computing. So if you want
to go from architect to senior architect, just get better, really build that technical
competency, build that depth of knowledge, narrow your focus to something that you can
master and master it. And if you want to go from cloud architect to senior cloud architect,
that's what you should do.
But what if you have bigger aspirations? What if you want to say, take positions in cloud
architecture that are the equivalent of management, but you'd still like to be on the technical
side? Well, that's where we start talking about these principal cloud architect roles
and these distinguished cloud architect roles. Let's begin with the principal cloud architect
role, which is typically speaking the next step up from the senior cloud architect role.
And in the principal cloud architect role, which is a role that I've had as a principal
architect for many, many years, it becomes more of a hybrid business and technology position,
but it typically has more of a focus. When you get to that principal level, your customer
base may change a little bit. See, your customer base may be cloud architects in your organization,
sales teams in your organization, but also customers. So this is really a leadership
position. In fact, in many organizations, a principal cloud architect and a manager
or senior manager are at parody. They're at an equal level. So we're really talking about
building this up.
So going from a senior cloud architect to principal cloud architect is going to take
the following. Typically speaking, it forces you to become a subject matter expert in a
simple area. Cloud databases, for example, cloud security, cloud networking, and you're
going to build some real depth of knowledge here. You're going to create some content
around it. You're going to have a body of work that you've created that's going to be
in your area of expertise. And you're going to be consulting to the cloud architects,
cloud engineers, sales teams, business teams, all across your organization. This is a highly
strategic position and getting there is a concept of building your technical knowledge,
but also building your leadership skills, specifically your soft skills like your emotional
intelligence, your empathy, getting your presentation skills really spot on, your writing skills,
writing for readability and content. This is where you're really going in that principal
cloud architect role and this is a fantastic role. I can tell you, I've enjoyed it thoroughly.
Now, if you want to move from there to the next logical step, which is a distinguished
cloud architect, this is really where you've got to do the following things. This is where
you've got to niche down even more to blow up. And what I mean by that is as a distinguished
architect, you're an industry thought leader. You're an expert on something and your expertise
is so valuable that people from all over the world are going to come reaching out to you
to hear what you say.
So what do I mean by becoming a subject matter expert and niching down? I'll take me for
example. 25 years ago, I used to practice internal medicine as a nurse practitioner
and then I moved into tech. So let's say I was a principal cloud architect in tech, and
I decided to start focusing on a vertical industry like healthcare. So at that point,
that's when you're dealing with these extreme subject matter experts. You're dealing with
someone that's got at least as deep of a technical knowledge as a principal cloud architect,
but now they've got a specialty, maybe an industry vertical. Maybe you become an expert,
for example, on cloud security for banking, or you become a cloud high-performance networking
expert for the service provider industry. Whatever the case may be, this is where you're
combining a lot of leadership skills, a lot of business skills, a lot of industry expertise
and deep cloud skills.
So in order to do this, you're going to basically spend 50% of your time staying technically
competent, focusing on the technology expertise area of yours. Speaking at conferences, going
to conferences, reading the newest white papers, really staying completely informed, but you
can also spend 50% of your time outside of this environment. You're going to be focused
on learning what's going on in the industry. You're going to be really honing in on your
presentation skills. In this role, you're going to be getting in front of customers
constantly. You're going to be speaking to C-level executives constantly. In this world,
you need to know exactly what the CEO cares about, what the CIO cares about, what the
CTO cares about, what the CFO cares about, and you're going to have to be relevant to
all of them and you're going to be constantly communicating with them.
And this position, like I said, is an equivalent typically with a director level position.
And because it's a hybrid between business and engineering, 50% of your time should be
focused on the technology and 50% of the time should be focused on your leadership and management
skills. That's how you go from principal cloud architect to distinguished cloud architect.
Now let's talk about the management pathway. Since I had mentioned previously, you have
the option to go from right up the technical chain, or go up the leadership plane. So now
let's discuss the tech career path for leadership or how you transition from a cloud architect
to a leadership position. And this is a very different tech career development program.
To move into your leadership, you still need to stay technically relevant because you're
going to be leading teams of cloud architects, for example. So in this environment, you still
need to spend approximately 20% of your training time focusing on your craft, staying relevant
in the cloud computing environment. So if you're spending 20% of your time focusing
on staying relevant, where do you spend the other 80% of your time? And this is what your
tech career development program should look like for a leader, someone that's moving into
leadership.
If 20% of your time is going to tech, the 80% of the time is going to go to these leadership
things. And what are these leadership things? First, writing skills. As a leader, you must
be able to write for executives. And as a leader, you will be writing for executives
constantly. You need to be able to write for the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, or any of these
C-level executives, because they're going to be your customers and you're going to be
writing to them.
At this point, you're going to also have to become an expert on your presentation skills.
And they're going to be both customer facing presentation skills to C-level executives,
but also non C-level executives and you need to know how to communicate to both. You're
also going to be presenting to your leadership inside of your organization. You're going
to be presenting to your teams and you're going to be presenting across the organization.
So your presentation skills to move up into leadership, they need to be solid so work
on them.
At this level, your business acumen needs to come up as well. You need to be able to
read a financial statement and understand top line revenue versus net income, operating
income, and all these other metrics. You need to be able to look at the expected value of
an investment and determine if it's a good investment. You need to be able to do ROI
modeling on technology investments so that you can work with your clients and help build
business cases, but also be able to understand what's in the best interest of your client.
At this level, when you're moving into the leadership side, you have to learn how to
read people. You have to understand their body language, their tone of voice and what
it means. And when you're dealing with people and you're managing people and you're leading
people, you have to work on your soft skills. And the most critical soft skill is probably
empathy. This is where you need to be an expert at seeing things from another's perspective,
because that way you'll be better able to communicate with them. But also you'll be
able to understand other people's positions, because if you understand their positions
and you can support their positions, you might feel the same way they do and it will change
the way you have your discussions.
This is where you focus on your executive presence. For people that don't know what
I mean, I'm sure all of you have been in an environment where someone quietly walks in
the room and they haven't said anything, but you instantly feel them. You know they're
there and for some reason you know they're in charge without a single word that's been
sent and that's executive presence. And as a leader, you're going to have to develop
that.
As a leader, you're going to have to learn how to resolve conflict, no matter how good
you hire, at some point, conflict in your team is going to be inevitable. And you're
going to have to learn how to resolve that conflict. You're going to have to deal with
managing difficult conversations. When you have an employee, for example, that's not
necessarily performing up to snuff and you need to work with that employee, you're going
to have to be able to have difficult conversations and you need to do them well. So you can't
basically take someone, have a conversation and destroy the relationship. As a leader,
that will destroy your leadership, it will destroy your team, and effectively, you will
be losing your job. And one other thing you need to focus on as a leader is negotiation.
It could be negotiation in a sale or it could be negotiating with your team or other members
of your organization. So these are things that are absolutely critical when you move
into leadership.
So realistically speaking, there are many options for your cloud architect career path,
management versus a technical career path. And in this video, we talked about how you
boost your technical career path and the things to do by specialization and developing depth
of knowledge and the business acumen, things that go with it. And we also talked about
how to go from being a cloud architect to a leadership role and all the things you need
do and how to get there.
Let me tell you about some free things that we do for the cloud architect community. Every
Monday and every Thursday, we have a free how to get your first cloud architect job
webinar. On these how to get your first cloud architect webinars, we teach you what you
need to do to get your first cloud architect job. We teach you how to build the optimal
resume. We teach you what hiring manager desire. We teach you how to build a portfolio to make
your resume look better. We teach you how to get technical competency, and we teach
you what employers desire. We do this free on every Monday and Thursday.
Almost every Tuesday, we have a cloud architect experience webinar. And on this webinar, we
teach you how to get industry relevant cloud architect experience so you can get hired.
Meaning, how do you build the technical competency to impress employers enough so they can hire
you? We typically do that on most Tuesdays.
Almost every Wednesday, we have a free YouTube live where you can come and bring us any kind
of cloud architect question you want about your career development and we'll answer them
real time live. We don't do them every Wednesday, but we do them most Wednesdays. So please
subscribe to the channel and hit the bell and you'll be notified of the next time we
do a live stream.
And of course, if you're working on certifications, we do everything we can to make these certifications
free for you. So if you're working for the AWS certified solution architect associate,
we have a completely free AWS certified solution architect associate e-course. I'll drop the
link in the description below. And we have a free, completely free, AWS certified solution
architect associate ebook. Again, I'll drop the link in the description below.
If you have any questions about your cloud architect career, or you would like us to
make a YouTube video, send an email request to Ask Cloud Mike. When you send that email,
we'll evaluate your email, and if we can, we will try to produce a YouTube video on
that in the next few weeks to answer your questions. We can't always do it because sometimes
we don't have the staff to answer all the questions we get, but we love to answer your
questions and we love to get closer to the cloud architect community. So please send
us an email at Ask Cloud Mike if you'd like us to cover any kind of content.
Thank you for the opportunity to work with you today and speak to you via this presentation
and I look forward to seeing you in another video very soon.