First couple years of experience tend to pay poorly in this industry because some people can't program novel solutions well despite credentials. A degree demonstrates knowledge of theory but doesn't guarantee ability to apply it regularly. The first job is the hardest to get and I've heard it said, while I tend to agree, take any first job you can for a year or so. It makes switching fairly easy but will likely be not great. 2010 US based college dropout here but with a good job since a one year each of two rough personal growth jobs.

No problem - I've had a couple unofficial mentors myself. In the tech world it's also impossible to not be riding the shoulders of the giants before us.

Yeah, happy to elaborate!

When I first started (hourly) I was doing basically field tech work at an msp. That means I was just a monkey following a document and would call for backup if I experienced any issues. I started getting some basic tasks to come up with newer processes, script some existing ones, and generally manage existing clients. I mostly got familiar with OS stuff, took a few Microsoft certs, that sort of stuff.

Second and third job I was doing more engineering of my own. I'd get higher level tasks like design an implementation of a next Gen firewall here, design next developer image, implement monitoring system, revamp backups, etc. Third job involved some public site management but I wasn't yet too responsible for app deployments themselves though was often involved as escalation in app support.

Fourth job was more of the same but focused on automation this time. Our group was called 'automation team' and we revamped processes at a larger regional bank while adding automation. Before I left there we transitioned to DevOps team, but was more of a DevOps processes and platforms team. We wrote a lot of ci and automation but the goal was to have existing app support teams to own it. That model largely worked and we helped train the ops folks to be DevOps folks.

I moved to a cloud consulting company bc I wanted cloud experience and to get closer to app deployments. If you work on line of business applications then you're more likely to demand higher pay while doing more interesting and important work. Managers usually need to improve the product so they're less likely to be wanting to stick to the status quo.

The last two are similar, both justify architecture in the name. The previous though had a lot of bad practices, status quo managers, and was generally miserable. I'm currently quite a generalist because we're at a small business. That said, main responsibilities include writing and supporting cicd pipeline, all infrastructure changes and automation, 3rd party mail system config, etc.

If you have any more questions lmk.

I didn't finish my degree so ended up going ops -> devops route.

Salary include estimated benefit values (ending salary) 12/hr -> 50k (60k) -> 70k (80k) -> 115k (125k) -> 115k (counter offered 185k upon resignation which I rejected) -> 190k -> 210k

There's a lot more to the story but that might give an idea of possible bumps. Each jump I took mostly to progress my career where they were looking for skills that built on top of what I had already been doing. I went from like a windows admin, to network admin, to windows/network automation, to ansible automation for anything (and other devops-y things), to a cloud consulting company which focused on automation, to a internal platform architect on a team, to a small business where I'm pretty much the infrastructure wizard, with a junior team member, who does the infra deployments, changes, design, cicd for dev and own team, etc.

When I took a pay decrease from 125k -> 115k it was because the weekly cash was still slightly better but the benefits were far worse. I mostly took it because I needed to get to a cloud focused company to progress my career where I wanted it to go and my company at the time couldn't get me any meaningful experience in cloud stuff at all. The pay jump after that really proved that the experience was worth it. I kind of wish I never joined the 190k company and instead took the counter offer. The 190k company I ended up really not liking leadership's direction and handling of things.

Super happy now at 210k company where I am a bit of a manager. I really like the people, responsibilities, etc. Pay is pretty great, more than I need for sure, so paying extra on the house and good bucks in retirement for later. Of the higher paying places I've been at it is the only one I feel fulfilled and not constantly frustrated.

GitHub is not likely to follow that trend just because it has more value for them if it sticks around. They bought github, I think, for the branding as they've struggled immensely to get people to trust team foundation server and later azure devops brands because they sucked so bad early on. Using GitHub to put an entry-point for azure focused products in front of a huge audience is sly as well. Microsoft only needs to extinguish things if it is a threat (usually when they don't own them). They're happy to buy successful brands and roll them into integrations with their other products, making partnerships with growing orgs hard for said org to avoid. That's what they want possibly more than anything as big enterprises take ages to begin working with entirely net new partners so they look at who they already have agreements with.

I don't think anyone needs to be on github that's just there for OSS projects (ie. being hosted on gitlab or somewhere else should be fine so long as it is public and search-indexed). Internet search and content aggregating platforms are good enough at getting me to where I need to go. GitHub's search has never really been useful for me on that front.

I've put my gitlab link in my resume and it has never had anyone spark a question. Usually the recruiter isn't concerned with it saying "github" so much as you try to answer it with something instead of a blank stare / left on read.