[igotroot]

As a non-developer whose code would probably make your average SRE's brain implode, how competent would this 'course' make me?

I started my IT career 2 years ago and my programming isn't that strong. I got pinged for a SRE job recently (my background so far is very much Linux based so I must have matched some filter) but I'm not strong in development, k8s (or even containers), or all of the other cool stuff I see on HN. I know I can lab stuff out, but that's not anywhere close to doing it live.

I don't want to be a SRE for Google, but I'd like to learn some more on the reliability side of my world and bring things like Git, Puppet, System design, etc and not be left behind in this wave that's approaching. My organization isn't too involved in the cloud, so a lot of upcoming tech seems out of reach.

[darkerside]

I'm a little confused by the other responses you're getting here. I don't have these kinds of expectations for recent college grads. The breadth of the document is impressive to me, and as someone with decades of technical experience, I see plenty that I could brush up on. And the Linux basics section seems to do a pretty good job of starting from foundations. It's a bunch of the things I had to figure out myself starting at a command line with little to no help.

I wouldn't treat this as a course to be completed. Think of it as a guide, or a map, on your journey to getting smarter about tech. And it's a lifelong journey. Don't let anybody here convinced you that you're supposed to know everything, because technology is so complex at this point that nobody knows all of it. Just keep broadening your skills, and deepening them where you are passionate, and you will build yourself an enjoyable and productive career.

[908B64B197]

It's a good recap but it's all things I expect a college grad to just know or be able to grok pretty fast.

Also why not Google?

[igotroot]

I'm just not there from a skills perspective. I feel like being a SRE at Google is the top of the food chain which I'm no where near.

Not trying to bring myself down but trying to be realistic :)

[nextos]

Unless you already know this really well, I'd start even at a more fundamental level than what is suggested by LinkedIn. I'd try learning Unix and a little bit of C by using The Unix Programming Environment by Kerninghan & Pike plus Kerninghan & Ritchie. It's quite timeless. Files, pipes, pointers, etc. That's the plumbing of software engineering.

Then also learn the calculus of software engineering: Logic. A good short intro is Huth & Ryan. The book covers some advanced topics in later chapters, but you don't need that if you don't want to. Logic is also timeless, and very practical. You can gain the ability to model check things, which is really really cool and used pretty often for e.g. distributed systems. This can unlock many cool positions for you.

Logic can also take you to logic and declarative programming. Something also worth investing into, and pretty addictive. For that, there's nothing better than The Art of Prolog.