FOND OF DevOps - on joining FOND OF

I took my last exam a few days ago. My bachelor thesis has been turned in and now the next step is coming up. By a lucky coincidence, I will start a job as a DevOps Engineer at FOND OF in mid-September. This opportunity has come about through a now good friend (Hi Till) who already works at FOND OF. I met Till at the Meetup 3 years ago. My First Developer Meetup. Funny enough, I almost didn't go to that React Meetup at all because I wasn't feeling very well that day. Who would have thought that 3 years later that decision would turn into one of the best opportunities for me?

Who is FOND OF?

FOND OF contains the textile brands ergobag, satch, Affenzahn, and others. They primarily produce sustainable products e.g. backpacks from recycled PET bottles, clothes and shoes for children and soon also bicycles. Accordingly, FOND OF owns several online stores and services that need to be reliably available. FOND OF also uses managed services from well-known cloud providers, which is new to me in terms of content. However, through learning platforms like A Cloud Guru, it should be easier to get an understanding there.

Why FOND OF?

When Till asked me if I would be interested in joining FOND OF as a DevOps Engineer, I was immediately taken with the idea. I have been following the company since I started my apprenticeship. I am using AEVOR and pinqponq products that are build by FOND OF’s sister company Baesiq GmbH since then, and I am very interested in the company's culture, which values sustainable collaboration. FOND OF puts a lot of emphasis on the development of each employee and supports her/him to reach their potential. Every idea is listened to and discussed. This creates a culture in which a lot of new things are tackled, while existing solutions are also thought through differently.

In addition to DevOps topics, there is also the opportunity to get a taste of other areas and help out there, which I find very exciting. I'm still very interested in the WebDev area and am constantly trying to develop and try out new technologies. DevOps otherwise would not work when there is nothing to deploy.

What do I hope for in the near future?

In the upcoming time I am looking forward to cool projects in the FOND OF brand universe and to get deeper insights into Digital Infrastructure and distributed systems. I'm looking forward to solving complex problems with code to make processes even easier.

I plan to learn as many and different areas of DevOps engineering as possible and also try to support Open Source projects with my acquired knowledge. The DevOps area is still young, so a lot will change in the future. I would like to be part of it and try to contribute and deliver as much value as possible. Furthermore, I would like to expand my programming skills in Go and create first production services in the language.

Furthermore, I find working in agile very interesting. I was able to gain some experience during my studies, but I'm looking forward to gaining more in-depth experience in a larger environment. During my working student job, the teams were never so big that required working in agile frameworks.

Another intermediate goal for me will be to get a more solid feeling for where I want to go in the future and in which area I feel most comfortable. In addition, I want to build on my strengths and develop new skills, possibly in other areas as well.

I am extremely excited about the time ahead and am incredibly grateful to be starting my professional career at the company I have wanted to work for for years. Especially due to the unexpected occurrence of the opportunity, my motivation to generate as much value as possible through my work has increased. I plan to pass on my acquired knowledge in the form of blog posts and possible lectures. So stay tuned.

Thank you for reading,
Niklas