A collection of notes from my ongoing attempt to learn new things, navigate life’s surprises, and make sense of both. You’ll find AI experiments, study notes, career reflections, personal stories, and the occasional reminder that not every lesson has to be learned the easy way.
Career Dashboard Current Target Role: AI Solutions Engineer (Leading Candidate)Original Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 MonthsCurrent Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–5 MonthsConfidence Level: MediumRemaining Skill Gaps: Today’s Question What happens when I stop researching and start building? For the first week of this experiment, I’ve spent most of my time reading; I’ve reviewed job postings, explored different career paths,…
Career Dashboard Current Target Role: Cloud / DevOps Engineer (primary); Platform / MLOps Engineer (secondary)Original Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 monthsCurrent Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–5 monthsConfidence Level: MediumSkills Acquired: Hands‑on completion of AWS free‑tier tasks, a small Terraform repo, and a Dockerized microservice.Remaining Skill Gaps: Kubernetes cluster management, advanced Terraform patterns, CI/CD pipeline complexity, observability stack, cloud networking,…
Career Dashboard Today’s Objective Analyze active market job postings to build a concrete, evidence-based list of technical and presentation skills required for a modern Solutions Engineer. What I Worked On I scraped, cataloged, and analyzed 30 current job descriptions for Solutions Engineer and Solutions Architect roles across North America (focused on FinTech and enterprise software…
Career Dashboard Current Target Role: AI Solutions Engineer (Tentative)Original Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 MonthsCurrent Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–5 MonthsConfidence Level: MediumRemaining Skill Gaps: Today’s Question How much of my previous experience is actually transferable? Three days into this experiment, I’ve noticed something unexpected. The more job postings I review, the less convinced I become that this transition…
Career Dashboard Current Target Role: Cloud / DevOps Engineer (primary); AI‑adjacent Platform Engineer / MLOps (secondary)Original Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 monthsCurrent Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 monthsConfidence Level: MediumSkills Acquired: Inventory and conceptual understanding of Terraform, Docker, AWS fundamentals, and CI/CD.Remaining Skill Gaps: Kubernetes orchestration, advanced Terraform patterns, managed cloud services (EKS/GKE), observability tooling (Prometheus/Grafana), security hardening, and…
Career Dashboard Today’s Objective Conduct an initial assessment of the tech job market against my 11-year generalist background to find the fastest, highest-probability path to employment. What I Worked On I spent my 8-hour block auditing my own resume and analyzing current hiring trends across major job boards (LinkedIn, Indeed, and specialized tech boards) in…
Career Dashboard Current Target Role: UndecidedOriginal Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 MonthsCurrent Time-to-Hire Estimate: 3–6 MonthsConfidence Level: MediumRemaining Skill Gaps: Today’s Objective Before learning anything, I wanted to answer a simple question. What am I actually trying to become? That may sound obvious, but after a layoff, it is surprisingly easy to confuse activity with progress. There…
Lately, it feels impossible to avoid conversations about AI. It’s everywhere. AI models. AI assistants. Agentic AI. AI tools. Every day there seems to be a new product, a new framework, or a new prediction about how AI is going to change everything. As someone who spent most of his career working in enterprise environments,…
After writing my Progress That Doesn’t Look Like Progress post, I figured that instead of spreading my attention across everything, I should try to focus on one thing to improve first, build a solid habit around it, and then move on to the next one. So eventually, I decided improving my communication skills would be…
It’s been three days since the layoff. Although I thought I’d be more alert and on my toes trying to get back to work, I actually found myself enjoying the small freedom. I figured that I shouldn’t rush into looking for jobs just yet. To be honest, I’m not even sure what interviews look like…
