This week I didn’t get a job I went for, and I’m trying to figure out what to do next. I’ve also got someone new on the team, and I’ve been catapulted into figuring out things that are interesting and should already have been figured out.

MiSc

This week’s random page: OpenConfig. A way for networks to be managed in a more modern way that feels similar to infrastructure as code. I’m keen to learn more about this.

I’m in week 2 of ‘Security Management and Governance’. It’s my least favourite module so far, focussing on international standards for information security – specifically ISO27001 and the NIST Cyber Security Framework.

At the moment it’s just a slog to understand them, but I’m hoping that we’ll get a chance to apply them and get feedback. I may also see if I can dig out anything online to see some examples – though I reckon they’ll be massive stacks of documents that are not amenable to reading.

We’ve also got new classmates. The course has two intakes, in October and April. At the moment myself and a few others are trying to distil the knowledge we’ve learned from the last six months into pithy posts, so that folks stop asking the same questions. There’s a broader cultural question for me though, which is: how do we get people to search first and then ask? Is that a thing that’s to be desired? Maybe these simple questions are a good way for people to get acquainted and warmed up to each other.

Work

I’m fighting with bits and pieces of AWS, and trying to learn what good practice looks like for my slice of the organisation. I suspect it looks the same as the rest of the organisation, so now I’ve just got to access that. It’s good practice for the MSc, because it’s the same process of taking guidance and best practice and actually applying it to my context.

I’m still struggling to find the time and headspace to build out the infrastructure for the mentoring project I was working on. It’s a corporate objective I thought I was done with, but it’s come back with a vengeance all of a sudden and I’m scrambling to find the time. I’m also trying to navigate setting up a service in my organisation, which has a higher barrier to entry than I remember. Have any other civil service folk had any luck with lower-barrier tools like Heroku? Feels like the neatest and lowest-effort approach, at least to prove the concept.

I also found out this week that I didn’t pass a technical test. I felt like I hadn’t passed it in the moment, and I have had some feedback. Some is useful and actionable, but others feels like further evidence (to me) that high-pressure timed tests is not a good way to test me. At least on code. With that being said, I am very slowly coming round to the understanding that I need to do a little more upfront design and talk a little more about the big picture when I’m coding, rather than the lower-level explanation of what the code does. I know why I do that – I do a lot of mentoring and teaching with people newer to coding. But it’s a fair critique to say people with a decade of coding experience don’t need to be reminded of basic things. Tricky. I hope pairing some more over the next few months will bring me back up to scratch.

I’m going backwards and forwards on a separate project, which I hope to learn a lot from. It’s fairly high pressure and the deadlines are closing in, but I’ve also got a clear sense of the vision for the piece of work and some hunches that I’m hoping will be tested in the early phases.

That’s all this week. A lot of struggle, and not a lot of learning.