Are you looking to transition careers? Do you want to be a cloud architect or
a solution architect or an enterprise architect? Then this video's for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs, and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects.
We're an organization that's dedicated towards building high performance call
computing careers. Personally, I've been working in tech for over 25 years, and I've been helping
others get their first tech job or promoted in tech for over two decades. But see, I didn't
always start out working in tech. In fact, I'm a healthcare professional. I'm a nurse practitioner.
And before I ever started in tech, I was a nurse practitioner with my own internal medicine office.
And one day, I kind of woke up and said,
"I want to work in tech." In fact, I woke up and said, "I want to be in networking."
And you know what? Six months later, I was the lead architect for my team at the world's largest
internet service provider. The point is, I could do it and any of you could do it too.
An architect is a wonderful job. It's something I've done for almost a quarter of a century,
and I love it. And I want you to have the same ability too.
I want you to know that if you want to be a cloud architect or a solutions architect
or an enterprise architect and you come from another career,
don't worry, you can be an architect and get to this career in a very short period of time if you
work hard. I want to share my story with you, so you know exactly how to transition careers.
If you want to be a cloud architect, solution architect, or enterprise architect,
go get it and we'll show you how. Now, to begin to really talk about how you transition careers,
we have one rule. My one rule at the Go Cloud Architects Go Cloud Careers is that
there is no such thing as no experience. I'm going to say this again. There is
absolutely no such thing as no experience. Life is cumulative. Whatever you have done
yesterday can make you better tomorrow. The key is being able to leverage those lessons,
being able to show that hiring manager those lessons, and being able to draw the
parallels from your seemingly disconnected past to your totally connected future.
And I promise you, they are connected if you draw the connections, and drawing those connections is
everything. We're going to start with my old job, being an internal a medicine nurse
practitioner. And then I'm going to show you how that job prepared me to be an architect,
and then how that same job prepared me to be a management consultant, which guess what?
Is just like an architect too. Let's talk about the practice of internal medicine.
When we talk about these three careers today, we're going to begin by the goal, because most
people have architecture and engineering confused. We're going to begin with each career's goal.
Now, when I practiced medicine, I had one goal, improved my patient's health and wellness.
That is the medical goal, make my patients healthier. Now, how do I accomplish that? And
each one of these jobs has a slightly different way we accomplish these things. In medicine,
the first thing I do is I ask my patients questions. What brought you in today, sir?
How are you feeling? Does this make this pain better? Does this make it worse?
Et cetera, et cetera. And I ask the patient, can I listen to your heart and lungs? I assess their
systems. I start out by asking questions, and I do an assessment of their systems, their circulatory
system, their orthopedic system, musculoskeletal system, what have you. I do an assessment of their
systems. Now, after I've asked the questions and I've assessed them, I make a diagnosis.
Okay, what's the problem? And then from there, I build the plan to get my patient better.
Now, the plan could be a prescription. It could be diet, exercise, stop smoking, physical therapy,
whatever it is. Here's the process: ask questions, assess, make a diagnosis, and build a plan.
That's what I did in medicine. Now, six months later, I got my first network architect job,
which by the way, is basically the same as a cloud architect job or a solution architect job. It only
changes that it was more networking versus other things. Now, when I got this first architect job,
the first thing I thought about is, what is my goal? What do architects do?
I searched and I asked my management team and they said,
"Your job as an architect is to make your customers' business better with technology."
I said, "So what you're saying is my job is to transform the business?" And they said,
"Exactly." And then I said, "How am I going to do that?" And then I thought about it. I went
back to practicing internal medicine and I did the following. You go to your client, and this
is what we architects do. We ask the client questions. Tell me about your business.
Tell me about your competition. Tell me about your business challenges, your pain points, what have
you, your goals. Remember what we did in medicine, we asked the person what brought them in today.
What did we do as an architect so far? We asked the client, what are your goals?
Now, back in medicine, I took out my stethoscope and listen to somebody's heart and lungs. But now,
I ask the client about their business. I know what the current state of their business is,
but what do I not know? I don't know the current state of their technology systems.
What's working? What's not working? Do they have capacity? Do they need capacity? Are
they leveraging the newest inventions? I have no idea. You know what I do?
I examine their systems. Now, I don't use the stethoscope to do it. I might
use a team of cloud engineers to do it, but we baseline the company's systems.
Now, armed with the knowledge of what the business's goals are and the knowledge of the
current systems, I go into my architect knowledge base and I think about what kinds of technology
could improve my customer's business. Now, the doctor went into their brain and said,
"What kind of medications can improve my patient's condition?"
The architect went into their brain and said, "What technologies can improve my business's
condition?" Same thing. It's just the treatment plan that's different. And then as an architect,
you know what I do now? I build a plan. Now, the plan is called the architecture.
Now, it's going to include a design and a write up and a picture and a whole bunch of presentations.
I'm going to be including to technology such as networking and storage and compute. But the
key is, nothing really changed. Whether it was a doctor interviewing a patient,
or an architect interviewing a CEO, or whether it was a doctor listening to somebody's heart
and lungs, or an architect or an engineer base lining an organization systems. Whether it was
a doctor saying, "Okay, patient has a red throat and it hurts them. The most likely
bacterial cause is beta-hemolytic strep group B. Prescribe amoxicillin," and the architect can say,
"Wow! The routing looks kind of bad over there. Maybe some BGP tuning would be there."
But whatever the case is, it's still making the same diagnosis and the same treatment.
It's just a plan. The only thing that changed is one use tech. And you know what the next
one used? It used prescriptions. Same job. It just changed. When you want to change careers,
just see many of these jobs are related. I'm going to show you another job
that's not called a cloud architect job, or an enterprise architect job,
or a solution architect job, but you know what? It's the same job.
When I was at Cisco, at one point, I joined this really cool team and we did a lot of management
and strategy consulting. I was a management strategy consultant. One day I wake up and I'm
now a management strategy consultant. Now, what's my goal as a management strategy consultant?
To improve my customer's business. Wait, right before that, I was an architect,
and what was my goal? To improve my customer's business.
I'm not an architect right now. I am a management consultant right now. How do I
improve my customer's business? Well, the first thing I do is I ask those business leaders,
"Tell me about your business? What are your business goals? What are your pain points?
What are your competitors doing?" Same thing the cloud architect does. Same thing. Now, what do
I do? I'm a management consultant. I evaluate the organization's systems, people, processes,
and technology. I'll see what people are doing. Are they efficient in their jobs, for example?
Is there some tech thing that's holding them back? Is there a business process that's holding them
back? Et cetera, et cetera. How do I fix it now as a management consultant? Well, I'm going to make
can hypothesis, and hopefully I can test these hypotheses, and then I'm going to build a plan.
Now, this plan is going to include workflow redesign, potentially new technology systems,
potentially new kinds of employees or employee training, et cetera, et cetera. Here's the thing,
what was my goal? Improve the customer's business. How do I do that? Ask questions.
I make assessments, and I build plans. So whether it was medicine,
architecture, management consulting, it didn't change.
How about somebody being somebody's lawyer? They ask their client questions,
right? They assess the available evidence. They put it into their head and they build a plan.
An accountant, same thing. They look at the numbers you give them. They've got a goal.
They look at all the rules and regulations and they make a plan. It's the same job.
What I want you to know is when you want to change jobs,
leverage your past experience. Now look at different kinds of experiences and the
things they can teach you to make you better in your cloud architect job, because there's lots
of jobs you could have come from. What if, for example, you came from customer service.
I love customer service roles. And you know why I love customer service roles?
They teach people to become more emotionally intelligent, how to deescalate and how to make
people happy. That's a critical skill for the architect. Maybe you played on a team. Did you
know hiring managers value teamwork? It's one of their most critical skills. Leverage that
team sport. Leverage that teamwork ability. Show it to the hiring manager. We just talked about
how consulting roles are really architectures also do it. What if you worked in engineering?
Now, engineering isn't typically as consultative as those other roles.
When engineers want to move into architecture roles, they typically have to learn that process.
But engineers know all the tech. They, typically speaking, don't have to learn the tech.
For one way, the engineering people are advantaged, because they don't have to
learn the tech, but they have to learn the business processes. And guess what?
It's about equally as difficult. No matter where you're coming from,
it doesn't matter. You can do it. What if you sold products before or services before?
Well, as architects, sales skills are going to be so critical to our effectiveness. I might be doing
design and I might need to borrow 20 resources to build the design for the next six months.
I have to sell the internal management team to do it. I have a design and it's for the customer.
I have to convince the customer they need it. That's sales. Sales is everywhere. Whatever
you've done in your past, it'll make you a great cloud architect. If you win sales, it'll make you
a great cloud architect. If you win engineering, it's going to make you a good cloud architect. If
you're in healthcare and how to relate to people, it'll make you a great cloud architect or a great
solution architect. Connect the dots from your past career and get cloud hired today.
This is Michael Gibbs. I'm a nurse practitioner, but I'm also a cloud architect who's been a
network architect and an enterprise architect. And let me tell you, you can do anything you want
with hard work, focus, and dedication. Look forward to seeing you in another video. Take care.
It was so nice having you join us for this video today. Let me tell you about some free services
we do for the cloud community. Once per week, we actually have a free question and answer session
live on YouTube, where you can come and ask us any questions you want about building your career
related to cloud computing or networking, and we'll answer them in real time for you because
we want to get you to your goals. Several more times per week, we have guests from industry,
industry experts that I've known for decades that are movers and shakers that have changed the world
that can give you information so you can build the best career. I invite them periodically.
They are on my show. If there's a chance to do some free chatting on our channel,
we'll do it live because we want you all to have the best skills for the best career.
Please subscribe and hit the bell. I look forward to seeing you, and I look forward to assisting you
in your technology career. Thank you so much. This is Michael Gibbs from Go Cloud Architects.