By Gwyneth Peña-Siguenza — Jan 5, 2023

6-Month Cloud Engineering Study Plan

Get Started in Just 6 months

💡

Consider donating :) https://www.buymeacoffee.com/madebygps

🧠 Protocol

Study Time: As many hours as you can a day, with a minimum of 2 hours of deep, non-distracted work.
Focus Techniques: If you're having trouble focusing, try the Pomodoro technique. I use it every day.
Minimize Distractions: Your phone is a massive distraction. Use Do Not Disturb (DND) mode to minimize interruptions.
Study Journal: Keep a study journal. Use any app or paper that works for you. At the end of each study session, spend 5 minutes writing a summary of what you learned, struggled with, resources you used, and what you will do next.

🏁 End Each Section with a Project

Project Importance: Difficulty does not matter. Clarity and understanding do. Projects are meant to prove your skills and can be showcased in your portfolio and resume.
Showcase: Put your projects on GitHub, or better yet, make them live.
Cloud Credits: Use free credits and tiers from cloud platforms. Set up budgets and don't hesitate to spend $20 a month on learning. It's an investment in your education.
Documentation: Factor in 3 days for each phase for documentation purposes. Use this time to create a blog post, LinkedIn post, or YouTube video summarizing your project, challenges, and resources used.

📃 Instructions

Choose a Cloud Platform: Create a free account on a cloud platform. The best way to pick a platform is to check job listings on LinkedIn or Indeed and see which one is most in-demand.
Set Up a Learning Budget: Allocate $20 a month for cloud services. Set up alerts at 25%, 50%, and 75% consumption to monitor usage.
Document Your Learning: Create a blog or YouTube channel to document your learning journey.
GitHub Account: Create a GitHub account.
GitHub Copilot: Sign up for a trial of GitHub Copilot to get hands-on experience with AI assistants.

📒 Study Plan

🐧 1. Linux and Bash

How you will interact with servers.

In your cloud account, deploy the cheapest Ubuntu VM possible. Use this for your studies. Turn it off after you’re done but also configure it to turn off at a the end of the day in case you forget.

Here is a free 2-hour course covering the basics of Bash.

2 weeks

10 Days studying and working in that Ubuntu VM.
4 Days writing scripts.

Project

Build the capstone from LTC on the VM.
Create a GitHub repo and make sure your script is there.
Make sure your repo README.md is well documented.

📞 2. Networking

How all machines talk to each other in the cloud.

Resources here

2 weeks

10 Days networking concepts.
4 Days building a project.

Project ideas

Create a well-documented network architecture diagram and become familiar with diagraming tools.
- Diagram and document a 2-tier architecture.
- Diagram and document a 3-tier architecture.
- Diagram and document a microservices architecture.
Become familiar with the architecture center of your cloud platform.
- Browse and find an example that interests you. Read it in and out. Look up any concepts you don't understand. Create a blog post/video explaining the architecture of your choice.

👩🏽‍💻 3. Programming, Git, and Prompt Engineering

The best programming language for Cloud Beginners.

You should’ve learned about variables, loops, and more programming concepts in the Bash section, build on that here.

5 weeks

3 weeks learning Python.
1. Work through the 7 days of Python project. Spend several days on each day. Go through each day, ask Copilot questions so you can gain deeper understanding.
2 Weeks building a project.

Project: