Good for you, you're seeking out your knowledge and it sounds like you're dedicated to learning as well.

You won't get a good sense of what we do alone, especially because it is a very diverse field and can include specializations in storage, virtualization, databases, helpdesk, desktop support, mobile device management, security (which in itself has a number of specializations), operations, project management, monitoring and reporting, copper and fiber networking, firewall management, programming or developing... See my point? You can read a little more on the fields here

Anyway, if your computer is capable I would suggest you at least familiarize yourself with SOME of what we do, try and get Hyper-V running and learn some of the Powershell commands for interacting with the VMs, then use those VMs to run some *nix stuff and learn how to use those.

There is honestly a ton of free stuff, books, documentation and such available for you, you just have to know where to look and what you might want to see. The search bar here sucks but use the google advanced search for this subreddit and there is a ton of stuff to find, here's a few examples you may find useful:

• Lots of small tips
  
  
• The Sysadmin Bible #1 & the updated one, #2
  
  
• Microsoft Dreamspark has a lot of free software for students, including SQL Server, Windows Server, etc
  
  
• Free Powershell courses,
  
  
• Free books #1, #2, #3
  
  
• Learning to code with CodeAcademy, Free courses from Microsoft Virtual Academy incl training labs,
  
  
• Certifications: CCNA routing and switching videos, Server 2012r2
  
  ... I've got literally dozens and dozens of relevant links that you might find useful. My suggestion is to start wide and shallow and figure out what you might interesting, then explore that further. If you want career advice I would suggest you focus on programming and *nix administration (there's a great comment on here in the last year with a path of things to accomplish) as these would give you the greatest variety of skills to create programs, apps, shell scripts, admin servers, etc... Also, don't neglect your soft skills or negotiation abilities as they are very valuable in helping you complete work when not working alone. Good negotiating skills will help ensure you don't get a $14/hr job when you're doing the work of a $70k

Everything is over crowded. Even if you don't have any direct competition, your potential customers are inundated with choices to spend their money on that aren't you. People spend way too much time thinking about how inundated a market is. And not enough time thinking about how they can truly innovate and differentiate themselves.

Your description of what you're trying to solve is this: I have a group of friends and we'd like to buy a gift for one of our friends.

I might break that task into a series of steps:

1. Find out that it's my friends birthday.
   
2. Ask myself if I have any current ideas.
   
3. Mention those ideas to my friends.
   
4. Ask my friends if they have any current ideas.
   
5. If there are some ideas at this point, take a vote to get a consensus on what we're buying.
   
6. If we have no ideas, then we need to brainstorm. A good place is to figure out if my friend has picked up any new hobbies or interests. Look at Facebook/Twitter.
   
7. Ask my friends if they know of any new interests of this person.
   
8. Ask someone close to this person if they have any new interests.
   
9. If I still have nothing, I might ask the person if they've been doing anything new. Maybe indirectly over a beer or coffee.
   
10. Now we have some ideas. Now we vote on these ideas.
    
11. Now someone has to buy it.
    
12. Collect money from everyone.
    
    And on and on this goes.
    
    To innovate, just start eliminating or combining steps. Figure out something in this list where you could start making things easier. It sounds like your thinking along some of the right lines, but what if your algrorithm comes up short. Maybe it should also anonymously message the person or the person's closest friend about hobbies they've been into.
    
    You could eliminiate the voting steps above. Make that list of suggested gifts some kind of Reddit style list so I know what my friends would prefer we get as a group.
    
    This is the thinking exercise I've been using with Draft software I've created to help people write better. There's a million word processors and distraction free editors out there. But I spend a lot of time just analyzing the tasks I have as a writer and all the steps those tasks have.
    
    I've been able to create a tool that's very different than other online editors. Google Docs doesn't have on-demand copy-editing. But that's a common task writers have. So I built it in.
    
    If you spend enough time drilling into tasks people have, there's all sorts of areas you can innovative. I highly recommend an easy read and a great kick in the ass along this line of thinking: Something Really New.
    

>Is there any must know scrum master tips that a newbie should know.

Scrum's primary job is to highlight where your problems are. if things are painful, figure out how to fix them WITHIN the scrum framework. it's trying to teach you and your team things about workflow, process, etc. the things you encounter that make things harder within the framework need to be fixed within the framework.

Your job as a Scrum Master is somewhat fluid. you're part project manager, part process engineer, and part team manager. If work isn't moving, grease the wheels and help it move. if stuff is moving to fast, help people hit the brakes.

> Is there anything about agile you wish you knew when you started with it?

Start practicing Systems level thinking. your team is not in a vacuum. everything they do effects someone else. make sure you aren't making things harder for someone else.

I wish I had started reading sooner. if you don't have a lot of time to read: Audio books. use your commute to improve your skills.

Absorb as much information as you can. Scrum is not a silver bullet. it also doesn't do work for you. it only highlights where you need to focus. the rest is on you, so read and study. Scrum and Agile are about fostering a habit of continuous and relentless improvement. you should put this to practice on yourself as well. it's the one thing I wish I had started sooner.

If your company allows it, attend the local agile conferences. these are GREAT for newbies. they cover a lot of good information. one thing you want to do is start collecting stories about different implementations. there are hundreds of successful ones and the one that works best for your team will likely be a combination of those. the more stories you have to draw from, the greater your options for success. start collecting.


Recommended reading:
Phoenix Project: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262509
Crucial Conversations: https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second/dp/0071771328/
Lean from the Trenches: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Trenches-Managing-Large-Scale-Projects/dp/1934356859/
The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Lean-Leadership-Development/dp/0071780785/
When you're ready for something more advanced:
Tribal Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Tribal-Leadership-Leveraging-Thriving-Organization/dp/0061251321/
Toyota Production System: https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large-Scale/dp/0915299143/
Lean Software Development: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Software-Development-Agile-Toolkit/dp/0321150783/
Note: This last book is 'advanced' mostly because of price. It's worth it.

Poppendieck's bookshelf is also a good place to start. I'd set a goal to try to read every book on this list in the next 2 or 3 years. most of the books i've listed are also on their bookshelf.

http://www.poppendieck.com/reference.htm

I know this is days later but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

The Best Team Money Can Buy was great.

I also enjoyed The Arm.

The Big Chair by former Dodger GM Ned Colletti was a really interesting look from the perspective of the front office. It's more of a memoir so it starts about Ned's early life as a kid in Chicago. It gave me newfound respect for Colletti.

Currently reading The MVP Machine, which is a great look at player development.

Smart Baseball is a few years old but is a good book about newer stats and why things like RBI, pitcher wins, and stolen bases are pretty bad ways of evaluating players.

If you want more Dodger history from their Brooklyn days, Bums was a fascinating read.

It really depends on what your goal is for the reference and if you have any further education or learning goals beyond it.

The Management of Mineral Resources book will help you understand the decisions of you company executives and provide decent insight into what decisions may be coming next depending on the economic and financial environment, but is weakened in its overall usefulness in that all the problems given and solved are already all pre-scoped, and that some of the advice and direction can be ludicrously wrong from operation to operation. On top of that the information aggregation and decision making process is all about 3-4 levels above the actual operations, and so will be completely different to anything you are likely seeing currently or in the near-to-mid future.

The Mine Manager's Handbook is useful to understand the Mine Manager's decision and process (the obvious answer, I know), but I suspect from looking through the contents pages it is mainly about dealing with constraint and polling responsible parties while providing direction rather than identifying, solving, and optimising approaches to issues.

A more general reference like Operations Management for Competitive Advantage is so general that you will often wonder how you could apply it to your current circumstance (and examples in books like that are almost exclusively manufacturing or supply-chain related), but gives you the insight into the driving factors of decisions from the bottom-up. This is the book if you want to understand how the blast crew, mining maintenance planning, mineral process group, grade control, et al. manage to actually create a final product in a reasonable time, cost, and continuously. So it is a book about the individual steps to The Dance that is the many hundreds of daily interactions and compromises that make an operation function, while the Mine Manager's Handbook is about choreography and managing the dancers, and the Management of Mineral Resources is about producing and selling the music video the dance is in. Hopefully that analogy isn't too forced or ridiculous.

On a personal front, I tend to dislike the first kind of book as it is designed around MBAs coming in without a great understanding of the industries that are being written about (so, for people focused on business, rather than people who focused on an industry then wanted the business knowledge). The second kind of book is a useful reference on the various groups that need to be managed, but (likely) focuses on directing, managing, and integrating their output rather than understanding or producing the outputs, and often times most of the information that the book contains could be easily had at any time with a simple question at work (and if the question are discourage then you have a useful bit of info about your corporation and your value in it). And the last kind of book is a good learning resource, and useful to the times in your career where you may be in other industries, but requires a lot of personal thought on "where the hell does this apply in what I am looking at?"

Operations Management is pretty neat and useful stuff to go into and study and is one of those fields where so many people think they know what is going on (because they have studied Project Management) but are usually unaware of the real driving factors and directions.

This book has been suggested a few times so I finally got around to reading it. I think it has some good information in it. I'm only about halfway through it, but I like it so far.

Time Management for System Administrators

Other books would be any of the social books like "How to influence people", "7 healthy habits..." Etc.

I haven't read this one yet, but It has been suggested to me if you plan to go more into management/leadership Start with Why

Other books that have I have ear marked due to being mentioned:

• The Devops Handbook
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration
  
• The Practice of Cloud System Administration
  
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - This one might have been a joke, but as someone who has dealt with depression and burnout on the job. I think this could be beneficial.
  
• How to win friends and influence people
  
• How to win friends and influence people in the Digital Age
  
  Also, do a search for "Books for IT Professionals" to find a lot of other suggestions.

u/sigbox here is a reply for now from my partner:

---

Win Probability Added (WPA)

We will be publishing a full article comparing the WPA statistic with the RunPlusMinus RPM statistic.

Wikipedia defines WPA as a sport statistic which attempts to measure a player's contribution to a win by figuring out the factor by which each specific play made by that player has altered the outcome of a game. Fangraphs gives a good description of the WPA statistic here and contains references to related articles. As well, Keith Law’s book “Smart Baseball” devotes a whole chapter to WPA.

The RPM statistic measures the contribution of every player’s involvement in every play relative to the historical average contribution of a player in the same role in that game situation. The most succinct way of comparing WPA and RPM is to show the differences when considering their respective adherence to the 5 “CRAZI” principles described in the post “The Best Baseball Statistic”. These are summarized in the table below. The forthcoming article will provide much more detail on each principle.

|Principle|RPM|WPA|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Comprehensive|Yes (all players & events)|No|
|Run-Based|Yes|No (win based)|
|Additive|Yes (player & team)|Yes* (player only)|
|Zero-Sum|Yes|No (average is zero)|
|Independent|Yes|Yes|

The applications of RPM are more extensive than those of WPA. Specifically, RPM results can be used to: assist in-game decision making, predict game winners with more than 50% accuracy, forecast team standings, suggest fair salaries, rank all players and teams on both total and component (batting, running, pitching, fielding) performance.

---

I hope that helps!

- Ivan

The senior part is more of a technical grade level and not necessarily management... granted I'm in the lead role here, it's my first time as one. All I can say is what help me spring forward at a lull at mid-level was picking up Thomas Limoncelli's books, [the sysadmin one] (https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512041042&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+limoncelli) and [the cloud one] (https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1512041042&sr=8-3&keywords=thomas+limoncelli) /r/sysadmin recommends them too. These are your best practice books, these tell you why to do things, not how. It will turn you from being the guy that mops the floor in a burning building into knowing when to yell, "FIRE!"

Cert wise, unless a specific company or contract requires it, I don't bother with the time and money on certs if you already have years of experience on the books. I'd probably go for a Security+ and then go for a Red Hat and/or CCNA certification as they are both prestigious. Red Hat is a big deal just by its practical application test.

If you want to go into cloud related stuff, you might want to brush up on your programming. This is what is limiting me, I have very minimal bash scripting experience coming from military in the Windows world then making a move to Linux.

Honestly, I would focus on being both as they both overlap very often unless you are in really large stovepipe enterprise environments, but you never know if you need to make a move to something smaller where you have the many hats role. I'd get your degree in something Computer science related (CS, CIS, EE, CE, etc) and then go RHCSA/CE and maybe Sec+/Net+ or instead of Net+ just go for something Cisco related. My networking is Net+ strength at best and I resent not doing better when I was younger.

EDIT: Also, if you can do the math, BS is Computer Science all the way... sysadmins are still really kind of not doing well in the degree program department, mainly because were so... trade-like I guess. Honestly, we're the new Millwrights like my dad was. We keep the factory going and fix it when production stops. It's kind of cool actually, it's nice to be able to have some kinship to my dad in that way.

Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List

Read This First

1. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
   
   

   Fundamentals
   

   
   

2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
   
3. Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
   
4. Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML
   
5. Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
   
6. Rework
   
7. Writing Secure Code
   
8. Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
   
   

   Development Theory
   

   
   

9. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
   
10. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
    
11. Introduction to Functional Programming
    
12. Design Concepts in Programming Languages
    
13. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
    
14. Modern Operating Systems
    
15. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
16. The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
    
17. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
    
    

    Philosophy of Programming
    

    
    

18. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
    
19. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
    
20. The Elements of Programming Style
    
21. A Discipline of Programming
    
22. The Practice of Programming
    
23. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
    
24. Object Thinking
    
25. How to Solve It by Computer
    
26. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

27. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
    
28. The Intentional Stance
    
29. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine
    
30. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    
31. The Timeless Way of Building
    
32. The Soul Of A New Machine
    
33. WIZARDRY COMPILED
    
34. YOUTH
    
35. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

36. Software Tools
    
37. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
    
38. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
    
39. Practical Parallel Programming
    
40. Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems
    
41. Mastering Regular Expressions
    
42. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
    
43. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
    
44. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
    
45. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
    
46. SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
    
47. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
    
48. Data Crunching: Solve Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and more.
    
    

    Design
    

    
    

49. The Psychology Of Everyday Things
    
50. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
    
51. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
    
52. The Non-Designer's Design Book
    
    

    History
    

    
    

53. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality
    
54. Death March
    
55. Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
    
56. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
    
57. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
    
58. In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    

59. The Art of UNIX Programming
    
60. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
    
61. Programming Windows
    
62. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    
63. Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals
    
64. lex & yacc
    
65. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
    
66. C Programming Language
    
67. No Bugs!: Delivering Error Free Code in C and C++
    
68. Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    
69. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
    
70. Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
    
    

    DevOps Reading List
    

    
    

71. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart
    
72. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services
    
73. The Practice of System and Network Administration: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT
    
74. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
    
75. DevOps: A Software Architect's Perspective
    
76. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
    
77. Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
    
78. Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry
    
79. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
    
80. Migrating Large-Scale Services to the Cloud

I think all of those things you've listed are valuable in their own right, however I think a bit of focus may help. First, determine what you are actually trying to accomplish because learning all those at once is not really feasible. Break that long term goal down into more meaningful steps.

For example, a good long term goal may be:
> Deploy an source controlled application on AWS using a configuration management tool, leveraging Infrastructure as Code to make it repeatable and Immutable Infrastructure to provide stability.

Breaking that down we have a series of things to learn:

1. Getting comfortable with source control systems (Git is obviously popular but others work just fine as well)
   
2. Learning the core constructs of AWS
   
3. Configuration Management
   
4. Infrastructure as Code
   
5. Immutable Infrastructure
   
   These things can be done somewhat in parallel, but I would say focus your efforts will most likely provide the best value. The order in which I've listed these I find is the most useful to instruct people that are new to the area.
   
   AWS:
   Building A Scalable Web App on AWS
   
   General Cloud Architecture
   The Practice of Cloud Systems Administration
   
   GIT
   Git Book

There is a really great solution that works great when it is politically practical: fold the dev and QA team together and tell them that they own releasing a quality product. That is the only real fix I've seen.

If you are stuck with separate teams, then I have two pieces of advice...

First, stop tracking anything that is per-discipline; only track "feature is ready for release/not ready". The reality is that "dev complete" is not a useful state from the business perspective, so just stop tracking it. Your devs will likely resist this because they have been getting rewarded for "dev complete" even when it's crappy quality. You want them thinking about optimizing the "dev + QA" time, not purely the dev time.

Second, start doing bug categorization. I wrote up how I did it here. I had *amazing* luck with the first team I did this with and it was a team with separate dev/qa roles; my devs felt that having "foreseeable" bugs come up in the feature they worked on was a pride thing. I don't remember the numbers, but merely by reporting the stats monthly at the end of an iteration, they went from 45 foreseeable bugs in the first month to 4 foreseeable bugs 4 months later, and that was with me expanding the definition of foreseeable along the way. It drove dev/qa discussions in a way I have never seen elsewhere and pulled in our product owners in a very agile way as well.

I also recommend that you go read "The Goal" by Goldratt as it provides some insight into optimization across groups (others recommend "The Phoenix Project" as that's IT-based, but I think "The Goal" is a better choice).

I also wrote a blog series on applying the theory of constraints to software; you can find it here. Read from the bottom up.

Operations Management - Nigel Slack is a well known author in this field and I've found this book helpful in my MSc. It is quite broad and covers a lot of topics. If I were to buy any book I'd buy this one (but buy it second hand unless you are rich).

If you are looking at organizational culture and behavior I can vouch for Management & Organisational Behaviour. Mastering the key models in this book will help you create a more productive and pleasant business. If you are looking at progressing into or further within a leadership role then I would definitely give this a read.

If you work in manufacturing or something a little less service based then The Lean Toolbox is an absolutely excellent guide, although the publishers really could have done with adding some colour. It was recommended to my by some consultants who used to work in Toyota's leadership. A lot of information, that is a lot of help.

If you are looking at business from a process perspective Business Process Management is quite good.

If you want a decent read, something not textbooky and more like a story then The Goal is good, but uses Goldratt's theory of constraints approach which can be viewed as a little dated in comparison with more modern business transformation philosophies. Still good though!

Here you can find some recommendations: https://agilestash.com/books.html

Apart from the ones in the website above, I'd like to recommend to you as well:

• Implementing Lean Software Development, by Mary and Tom Poppendiek (A fanstastic book)
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Implementing-Lean-Software-Development-Concept/dp/0321437381/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1527189551&sr=8-2&keywords=lean+software+development
  
  
• Lean for Dummies (Don't be fooled by the title, this is an excellent book)
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Dummies-Natalie-J-Sayer/dp/1118117565/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527189536&sr=8-1&keywords=lean+for+dummies
  
  Happy reading!

Sounds like you are interested in Operations Research as a discipline.

If you are looking for something to give you ideas about what longterm projects and outcomes look like, something like this book here(The Applied Business Analytics Casebook: Applications in Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, and Operations Research) might be good.

If you are looking for something more hands on, then either the Rardin or Nocedal and Wright books might be a good starting point.

Don't let minimalism get in the way of discoverability and usability. iOS 6 struck about the right balance. If you want to see if your app is truly usable, see if one and two year olds can figure it out. Kids like buttons. Kids like distinctive icons and colors.

iOS > Android > Windows Tablets

YouTube > YouTube Kids. However, they always get trapped in comments sections and popup menus, and whenever they end in live chats. The luckier ones figure out how to get into the app switcher and how to force kill apps.

A good minimal website will be navigable in lynx, a text only web-browser. This is also important for blind users, and other users with accessibility issues. This is also important for users of various screen sizes or who may also increase the font sizes for readabiity.

A good minimal website will look very similar if you run it through it through a "readability" filter that many modern web-browsers use. (It used to be called the readability extension, but the original creators open sourced it and now Safari, Brave browser, and various extension writers have picked up the slack).

If you're talking about things like minimizing workflows and supply chains. . .

https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Sigma-Dummies-John-Morgan/dp/1119953707

TPS predates Six Sigma and Lean Production. Lean actually came out of TPS. As they show in the video, Lean can be applied to pretty much any process. Toyota uses it for manufacturing, here they apply it in a food bank, and it is also widely used in software development.

Notice how they apply Value Stream Mapping. They start by looking at what is happening, and listing all the steps that add value, and those that do not. Putting food in a box adds value, running around to get the stuff does not add value and is waste. By eliminating waste they can reduce the takt time from 3 minutes to 11 seconds.

Another important aspect of TPS is respect for people. In its entire history, Toyota has never laid off any (salaried) workers during hard times. Instead it uses the free time to invest in kaizen.

In this case, respect for people means giving back to the American people, because the USA helped rebuild Japan after WW2.


If you want to learn more about TPS, go read Toyota Production System: Beyond Large Scale Production, written by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System.

I can also recommend The Toyota Way and The Toyota Way To Lean Leadership. These are a bit more recent and an excellent insight in the Toyota way of working.

As everybody else here says in different ways, do these three steps
1: find out the business problems people are trying to solve by going to where they work and sitting down with them. LITERALLY where they work. The gemba, as it's called
2: this will tell you the decisions they need to make.
3: this will tell you the data they need to make these decisions. A handy heuristic, once you've started providing data ask the recipients what decisions they COULDN'T make if they stopped getting it. If they couldn't think of any, you're providing the wrong data.

Have a read of what people have found before you. They've written it up so you can learn it quicker than they did.
I'd define myself as a systems thinker, and so what I'd recommend is skewed towards that way of thinking
This guy is good and has a book coming out soon specifically about how data can provide value when analysed properly.
https://www.leanblog.org/tag/process-behavior-charts/
This guy writes well about something most analysts have never heard of it, it's worth an hour of your time and is invaluable. Trust me, browse it.
There's HUGE amounts of brilliant stuff online. One of the best books I've ever read on this is Understanding Variation, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Variation-Key-Managing-Chaos/dp/0945320531
It's short, oriented to problem solving and process understanding, and eminently practical.

Your job sounds brilliant by the way, but don't get bogged down in learning software packages. People who receive your output need to know what it MEANS. This can often be left out of fancy pretty graphs. Analysis should produce insight, not just the workings out. Get to know the business and be a business person, not just a data person. Data has no meaning stripped of context, and you should steep yourself in context.

Welcome! Product management is an equally exciting and confusing place to be in. Here are some resources to point you in the right direction.

A few articles/websites for you to read to get a good overview of the product manager role:

1. What is a Product Manager? by Martin Eriksson
   
2. What Does a Product Manager Do? by Brett Tworetzky
   
3. SVPG Insights Blog
   
4. @MindTheProduct on Twitter
   
   These are my two favorite books that really helped me understand what product managers should be doing.
   
   
5. Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love
   
6. Making it Right: Product Management for a Startup World (not just for startups)
   
   ​

It sounds like you're trying to use technology to solve a problem that correct and useful documentation and processes would solve.

You don't want your team to have to re-invent the wheel every-time a patch is required.

Here is a useful book I would recommend.

Book

Herding chickens is the only one I read, but very good. http://www.amazon.com/Herding-Chickens-Innovative-Techniques-ebook/dp/B001D78FZ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382962857&sr=8-1&keywords=herding+chickens

Keep in mind that project management is about communication. You can use whatever tool or approach you want, a good project manager is someone who can listen and talk. Consistently.

already translated for you, from the Grand Master:

from another post:

This book is pretty good. Very direct, compact, written by the guy who implemented lean production at Toyota https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large-Scale/dp/0915299143/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1542149684&sr=8-13&keywords=toyota+manufacturing

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

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amazon.it

amazon.es

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amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
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> What knowledge do you carry over from the history of our field that you can't easily learn or discover now?

and

> Instead of one system to do everything for the business, I am starting to see a trend towards many specialized systems that are built to interface with other systems.

Go together nicely. This is how things were before the PC took over. What did the old-timers do? What approaches to system design need to be taken into consideration when dealing with multiple vendors that are not interoperable? What about support contract management? These things haven't changed much. And they are hard questions to answer through a book.

Books to read? Hmm. I generally suggest:

• Managing Human-Computer Networks - the Theory of Network and System Administration (Burgess)
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition (Limoncelli, et. al. )
  
• The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, Volume 2
  
  And yes these are written by old people.
  
  

I've just have 1 book that I want to finish this summer, though I have a backlog of several hundred I'd like to read at some point. The Six Sigma Handbook It isn't exactly the most entertaining read (it is interesting), but how often is technical writing entertaining (some of his mistakes are amusing at least).

Though you're asking in the context of AWS, there are many best practices for designing and operating a distributed system at scale whether it's under AWS or not. The Practice of Cloud System Administration is platform agnostic and a fantastic place to start. No referral link!

Do you know anyone in business? Ask them. If not, write to people in your market or industry - people will help you for sure if you ask the right questions and are polite.

> Are there any recommendations on books to get me started.

One I've read that was really insightful from a hardware perspective i.e getting a physical product to market - From Concept to Consumer

Highly recommend it.

Well I'll be the first one to give you generic information that you could have found with the search function.

You just do the needful.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/032194318X/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3IXCECMPTZ0C5&coliid=IJFXHOHENJ2FH

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321492668/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3IXCECMPTZ0C5&coliid=I3J2AR8V86JZMD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596007833/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3IXCECMPTZ0C5&coliid=I2OPTI4J0S4UG2

Good screwdriver set.

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/64-Bit-Driver-Kit/IF145-299

A network tone tester in case you need to map out your network and document everything. Also functions as a basic cable tester.

https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-Networks-MT-8200-60-KIT-IntelliTone-Toner/dp/B00N2S6RPY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1473701817&sr=8-5&keywords=fluke+networks+tester

A punch down tool.

https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Punch-Krone-Blade-TC-PDT/dp/B0000AZK4D/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702091&sr=8-1&keywords=punchdown

An ethernet crimper.

https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-RJ-45-RJ-12-RJ-11-TC-CT68/dp/B0000AZK4G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702137&sr=8-1&keywords=ethernet+crimper

A quick cable stripper.

https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Stripper-Cutter-Cables-107051/dp/B0069LRBU6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702190&sr=8-3&keywords=ethernet+stripper

A usb hard drive dock.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HDD2/dp/B00IKC14OG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702021&sr=8-2&keywords=usb+hard+drive+dock

A notebook.

https://www.amazon.com/Rhodia-Meeting-Book-Made-France/dp/B001DCDSW6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473702220&sr=8-1&keywords=rhodia+meeting+book

Your necessities may vary, this applies to more of a one-man shop, and there's plenty of other things you'll want to get that I don't have listed here depending on your job.

I dunno how much you should get paid.

Sysadmin, I've been doing Lead SysEng/DevOps/SRE for the past 4 years and literally have multiple written offers I'm trying to choose from right now.

I only started looking 3 weeks ago.

Learn multiple clouds(I've done the big 3 in prod and other ones for utils/tools/hobby/legacy systems), Kubernets/docker, Linux, distributed systems and ansible/puppet/chef


Read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X/
and this:
https://www.amazon.com/Site-Reliability-Engineering-Production-Systems/dp/149192912X/


See if you can buy time for the internship offer, having multiple offers is always better :)
Is the internship paid?

Might as well get the follow up:
https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X

The book is good, but again a little too Google focused.

The "Practice of System and Network Administration"; probably a bit too early in your career but has some strong advice.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165

There's also a volume 2 which is cloud/site reliability engineering related.

The title is a little misleading, but the latest version of The Practice Of Cloud System Administration is excellent.

Time to immerse yourself in the world of Lean manufacturing and production. Good reading includes The Goal, and Taiichi Ohno on how Toyota learned to really manufacture efficiently, and anything written by Shingeo Shingo. Don't think "manufacturing" reduces quality, in fact if anything modern manufacturing concepts increase quality while reducing waste, and are optimal for small scale production such as roasting.

It's a book. Like others said. Here's an amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Possible-Release-World-Warcraft-PlayStation/dp/3659762296

Black Belt Librarian and First Time Manager were helpful for me.

This mentions The Practice of Network and System Administration, and how it could do with an update; that would be here, in The Practice of Cloud System Administration, which as I understand is effectively the 'replacement' book, at least for an approach more suited to modern infrastructure.

"The Practice of Cloud System Administration" is my bible. Every time I have a question like this, I find the answer in here.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X

Personally i also like:

The practice of System and Network administration

The Practice of Cloud System Administration

Stay on-prem.

Unfortunately, you're asking a very broad and vague set of questions. All of those topics you're asking about are an issue to be managed even if you're only using a single cloud provider, let alone multiple ones. Books have been written on these topics. Read those books and build the answers that apply to your job. That's the best way to handle those challenges. There's no silver bullet, not for any one of those topics.

Here's a good starting point, especially if you literally don't know where to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=7D6GJ0MDAF0DA469WJK1

My top 3:

• The Hardware Startup: https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Startup-Building-Product-Business/dp/1449371035/
  
• From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas Into Money https://www.amazon.com/Concept-Consumer-Turn-Ideas-Money/dp/0137137478/
  
• Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Processes-Design-Professionals-Thompson/dp/0500513759/
  
  Just came across this one, but haven't read it yet:
  
  
• Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market https://www.amazon.com/Prototype-Product-Practical-Getting-Market/dp/144936229X/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/032194318X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Second those and add The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, Volume 2 1st Edition

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large-Scale/dp/0915299143

I found the O'Reily Linux Networking book to be very informative.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Linux-Network-Internals-Networking/dp/0596002556/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543153401&sr=1-3&keywords=linux+networking

Also here
https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543153468&sr=1-1&keywords=cloud+administration

Keith Law. https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Baseball-Behind-Ruining-Running/dp/0062490222/

If the Practice of System and Network Administration is a bit dated, check out The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, Volume 2, September 15, 2014, by the same author.

And [The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services] (https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Cloud-System-Administration-Practices/dp/032194318X)

Here are my nominations:

• Time Management for System Administrators
  
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration
  
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition
  
  
• The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, Volume 2
  
  
• The Complete April Fools' Day Rfcs
  
  I haven't read them all through but have started on the Time Management book. So far so good.

This is more of an operational problem and less of a programming problem. The troubleshooting aspect is about the only thing problem related, i.e. stack traces, perf, flame graphs, and logs on the programming side.

The operational side is how do you keep the program running adequately and the simple answer is to detect when it fails automatically, and have a new process start if its failed. So healthchecks, triggers, siem, and probably a cloud based 3-4 tier topology (load balancers, orchestration [docker], app, databases/fileshare [state]) if it needs high availability or the ability to scale.

The Practice of Cloud System Administration is a must have for a starting point in developing resilient services.