The Best Cloud Job for Your Personality — Go Cloud Architects

8 min readJul 1, 2021

Find the Best Cloud Job for Your Personality Type

Who am I?

Hello! My name is Michael Gibbs, CEO and Founder of Go Cloud Architects . I’ve been working in technology for well over 25 years. We are dedicated to building high-performance cloud computing careers that get you your dream cloud job and growing career. I’ve been working in technology for over 25 years, and I’ve spent 20 years of my career doing the following:

Networking
Security
Cloud computing
Teaching
Coaching
Mentorship

Finding the job that best suits you

Today, we’re discussing how do you find the right job for your personality. Oftentimes, our subscribers ask, “How do I find something that suits me?” When we work with new cloud architects or those that have had 1–3 years of experience and multiple jobs, we understand why because we’ve been there ourselves, so we’re going to help find the right job for you.

Here, we’re going to discuss finding the job for your personality, finding an organization’s culture that matches your desires, finding the right manager, then geographic things and whether they’re an effect on your career potential.

What’s the first step?

The first thing to do is to know yourself. Sun Tzu’s book “The Art of War” says “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” The point is, the more you know about yourself and the more you know about the company, the better and more successful you’re going to be.

Examine yourself. Are you a highly motivated person that likes to be rewarded for the things you do? Do you like to work alone? Do you like to go to the office? Do you like to work from home? Do you like to work in teams? Do you like to be involved in lots of meetings? All of these things about you are going to tell you what you need to know. These kinds of questions help you to better understand your personality type.

Your preferences:

Structured

If you are the type that enjoys a structured environment with lots of people, meetings, and processes where everyone is treated the same, seek a global organization and you will thrive.

Startup

If you’re the creative type that enjoys recognition and rewards for getting things done, seek an entrepreneurial company. Startups tend to be really good for highly motivated self-starter types. What’s good about a startup is you get to be an authority on many tasks and projects because they don’t have the support. So, you’re constantly learning.

Whatever you see or do will have a direct relationship with either the company’s product development or themselves. If the company’s doing well, they will financially reward and promote you very rapidly. Comparatively, start-ups are terrible for someone that needs structure. Why? Because in a small environment, you can’t expect a large pool of team members that will support you on projects or provide editorial support when writing white papers, for example.

So, if you want that structure, again, it’s going to be that big company environment. However, if you’re looking to go be yourself and contribute to something, be paid and recognized for it oftentimes, you’re going to be better off in a startup environment.

Now, there are some huge, highly entrepreneurial organizations around. These organizations really reward people for doing well. They promote them, they pay more, give stock options, and bigger bonuses based upon contributions. However, those types of entrepreneurial companies tend to have no structure.

Small environments

Now, when it comes to projects. In a small environment, it’s going to be very nimble. So, you’re going to find yourself being able to design things and test things and do many more things than you’re going to be in a big environment. When you’ve got 100,000 employees or 200,000 employees in a company and you’ve got a network that’s supporting them, you’re not going to be doing a lot of experimentation on that network, because it’s basically a service provider. It’s actually a cloud computing environment because they’re so big.

Decide which is best for you

So regardless of the organization’s culture, are you going to be a cog in a wheel? Basically, one person, part of a giant team, doing things. You do your job, you stay inside your window and you do well. That’s great if you like that. Or is it going to be the entrepreneurial environment where someone’s going to give you a task and expect you to “Just get it done.” If that’s you — thrive in the environment. That doesn’t make it wrong.

With process comes quality, but it also stifles creativity. So if you’re a creative person, go to a place with less process. If you are a non-creative person, but meticulous attention to detail, find an organization with process. If you’re like me and you’re hard with attention to detail and you really focus on it, but you still need freedom, find something where you’re going to be more entrepreneurial.

Managerial compatibility

Now, the next phase which is going to determine your success in an organization is the CEO and their views and what their goals are, but also your manager and your manager’s manager. These are the people that are going to have the biggest impact on your life. Do you like your manager? Are you philosophically compatible with your manager? Does your manager agree with the way you want to do things? Is the manager a micromanager? In which case you like that, that’s great. If the manager’s a micromanager and you don’t like that, and you want more creativity and you want more freedom, then that’s going to be a horrible job for you.

What if your manager’s good, but their manager’s manager is not, or they’re still very good, but they’re not good for your personality type? Well, your manager can retire or get promoted, or your manager could get laid off and your manager’s manager could be your manager. So, you need to really know those two steps before you act.

Location, location, location…

I hate to talk about geography, but geography matters. Where is the organization located and is your location going to affect your career potential? I worked for one of the largest tech companies in the world, it would have been much more advantageous for my career, at least for many of the years, if I had moved to Silicon Valley where the organization was located. Lots of the positions that I would have liked to have taken were exclusively there. I still had a phenomenal position and was very happy.

However, I was much happier living in South Florida where I could go to the beach at will than living near Silicon Valley. Realize in certain cases that where you live may affect your organization’s potential. For example, if you’re working in another country that’s headquartered in the US, you might not get the kind of visibility that’s necessary that you would if you were living where the organization was located.

If you’re in an environment where you’re closer to the executives and managers and you’re doing great work, you’ll get more visibility. So, if you’re looking to join one organization and spend the rest of your career there, chances are you need an environment that’s closer to the leadership to have long-term career potential.

Takeaways

So, we recommend you find the right job for your career. Know yourself, know the organization, and find an organization that matches your personality type, goals, and dreams. If you do that, you’ll be very happy and have a long and successful career.

How we can help you WITH YOUR CLOUD CAREER

Career Development Programs

At Go Cloud Architects our goal is to improve the cloud computing as a whole, by developing individuals to succeed in their roles. Our Career Development Programs are the primary focus of our efforts in this area. These programs not only provide technical training, but also the much overlooked soft skills and emotional intelligence that determine whether an individual can reach that dream career. In these group training programs, we provide a combination of live group training sessions, on-demand web-based content, and extensive labs. We also provide server access to our students, to build their own cloud architectures from the ground up. You can find more information on the programs here.

FREE AWS Networking Bootcamp

After our AWS CSA-P Bootcamp in June, we realized great demand for networking content. With this in mind we have developed an AWS Networking Bootcamp for YouTube Live. The Bootcamp will be July 13 — July 16. Please register for the event at the link below.

Our FREE Offerings Every Week

Mondays and Thursdays

Go Cloud Architects offers the “How to get your first cloud architect job” webinar twice a week on Monday at 9:00 AM EST, and Thursday at 12:00 PM EST. You can register for the next call here. We conduct a presentation in the beginning and afterward, participants can ask any questions they want. We will even help build a career plan Go Cloud Architects offers the “ How to get your first cloud architect job “ webinar twice a week on Monday at 9:00 AM EST, and Thursday at 12:00 PM EST. You can register for the next call LIVE on these free calls. We will talk about:

Tuesdays

Every Tuesday at 9:00 AM EST we have a “Cloud Architect Experience Webinar“ about getting actual cloud architect experience and competency from home that employers desire to help you get hired. You can register for the next call here. In these sessions, we provide a real-life scenario, and participants design a cloud solution in real-time. Afterward, we address any cloud architect career questions, and help you learn what you need to do to get your first cloud architect job!

With Our Compliments

Go Cloud Architects is truly excited to offer our AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate training completely free to the cloud community. That’s Right — FREE. The complete online course is posted here on our YouTube channel. We also offer a free AWS Certified Solution Architect eBook, which can be found here. This eBook includes everything you need to pass the AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate exam! We want to help everyone achieve their dreams without the financial challenges of paid training.

We look forward to you joining our Go Cloud Architects community!

Originally published at https://gocloudcareers.com on July 1, 2021.