The Reality of Working as a DevOps Engineer in Cameroon
Most "how to become a DevOps engineer" posts are written from places where electricity and internet are background assumptions. Mine isn't. I build and operate cloud infrastructure for teams across six countries, from Buea, Cameroon. It works, and it's a genuinely good career. But it's not the frictionless picture the highlight reels show. Here's the honest version: what's hard, what I do about…
Working as a DevOps Engineer in Cameroon presents a unique set of challenges that are not typically discussed in typical career guides. The primary issues are electricity and internet reliability, which can be debilitating during work hours. Cameroon experiences frequent power outages and slow internet speeds, especially when compared to Western countries.
To mitigate these obstacles, the author employs several strategies. Firstly, they use a laptop instead of a desktop computer, along with a UPS and a power bank to provide a backup power supply. Additionally, they incorporate infrastructure-as-code, Git, and CI into their workflow, enabling them to resume work seamlessly even after a power outage.
When it comes to internet connectivity, the author employs multiple backup solutions, such as a mobile data connection from a different carrier, and they perform heavy lifting tasks in the cloud. They also cache aggressively and communicate asynchronously to minimize the impact of unreliable internet connections. The author highlights the benefit of time zone differences, as Cameroon is on WAT (UTC+1), offering a significant overlap for working with US teams.
They allocate early morning hours for deep, uninterrupted work, and they rely heavily on written communication for status updates and reviews to compensate for the lack of real-time interaction. However, the author emphasizes that these challenges have their benefits. They have built a resilient, automated, and observable infrastructure, thanks to the constraints they faced.
This experience has made them a better engineer, and they believe that remote DevOps careers can be highly rewarding for those in similar situations. They encourage other engineers in Cameroon or similar environments to pursue remote DevOps opportunities, as long as they plan for the associated friction and make their work undeniable.
The author concludes by stating that their decision to become a DevOps Engineer in Cameroon was the right one, as it allows them to work on globally recognized projects, develop exceptional skills, and contribute to the local DevOps community.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
