First-person accounts

Stories from people doing the work

Every story answers the same four questions: where they started, what nearly stopped them, what actually helped, and what they’d tell you. Filter by the one that matters to you today.

Career pathfeatured storyillustrative example

The process measured reading speed, handwriting confidence and calm under surveillance - none of which is the job.

Interviews, not exams: how I changed the way we hire infrastructure engineers

Our old interview was a whiteboard spelling test wearing a lanyard. Here's what we replaced it with, and what happened to the quality of our hires.

An infrastructure engineering manager read the story

Career pathillustrative example

From warehouse floor to cloud engineer: the route in when reading is the tax

No degree, failed A-levels twice, and a CompTIA book I never finished. What got me in was a homelab, YouTube at 1.5x, and one apprenticeship interview that let me demo instead of describe.

A cloud engineer · 2 min

Tell yours

The tagged examples above hold the space until real stories replace them. If you work in infrastructure and your brain works differently, we would like to publish the honest version.

Offer your story in the forum