The DevOps Interview broke me down, slapped me in the face, and showed me the mirror.

In November 2025, I was laid off from my role as a cloud infrastructure engineer.

Since then, I’ve been sharing my journey navigating the U.S. job market while on an H1B visa, the interviews, the challenges, the lessons, and the strategies that worked and didn’t work.

This story is about one interview that completely changed how I looked at myself as an engineer.

It was the interview that showed me the mirror.

The First Message

On November 14, a LinkedIn message appeared in my inbox from a director at Spectro Cloud.

He mentioned that they were looking for engineers working on Kubernetes infrastructure and edge platforms and asked if I would be open to a conversation.

The role aligned closely with my experience, and the company was doing exciting work in the Kubernetes ecosystem.

We scheduled a 30-minute introductory call.

That first call went well.

We talked about:

• My experience at HPE
• The problems their team was solving
• What they were looking for in the role

At the end of the conversation, the director said he would forward my resume to the hiring manager. Everything seemed promising.

The Hiring Manager Call

The next day, on November 15, another LinkedIn message appeared.

This time it was from the hiring manager.

He asked about my availability, and within a few hours we were on a Zoom call.

At that point, I had not interviewed in more than five years, and I had never interviewed with a U.S. startup before.

I assumed the discussion would mostly focus on:

• My experience
• some behavioral questions
• A high-level technical discussion.

I took it lightly.

That assumption turned out to be my biggest mistake.

The Interview

The conversation started smoothly.

We talked about:

• My previous roles
• Work authorization
• what I was looking for in the next few years
• Salary expectations
• What the company expected from the position

Then the hiring manager began digging deeper into my experience.

Which is completely fair.

But then came the first question that caught me off guard.

“You said you’re a DevOps engineer. What does DevOps engineering mean to you?”

It sounds like a simple question.

But I fumbled.

I gave a generic answer about bridging the gap between developers and operations.

Even as I spoke, I knew the answer lacked depth.

And the interview had just begun.

The Deep Technical Dive

The questions continued.

None of them were unfair.

In fact, they were all related to my resume and day-to-day work.

Questions like

• What is the difference between containers and virtual machines?
• Why do we need Kubernetes?
• When would Kubernetes not be necessary?
• Have you ever deployed a Kubernetes cluster yourself?
• How would you deploy an EKS cluster on AWS?
• How do you access the cluster?
• What are the components of the Kubernetes control plane?
• How is the cluster state stored?
• Have you heard of etcd?

Some questions I answered well.

Some I struggled with.

Then he asked something that stuck with me.

“Do you have any certifications? CKA, CKAD, AWS Solutions Architect, or something similar?”

I didn't; you don't need a certification if you get the hands-on experience working on real-time projects in your company. I was under that impression, and I still somewhat believe it, but with fundamentals like this, I regret not taking the certifications.

The Debugging Question

Then came a question about debugging.

“Imagine something breaks in your Kubernetes cluster. How would you debug it?”

This was something I had done many times during my on-call duties.

This time I answered confidently.

For a moment I thought I had recovered.

Then came the follow-up.

“Now imagine it’s not Kubernetes. Just a Linux machine. Something is broken. How would you debug it?”

And I froze.

I had spent years working at the cluster level.

But when asked to debug a system from first principles, I struggled to articulate a structured approach.

The VMware Question

Later the conversation moved to virtualization.

My resume mentioned experience with:

• VMware
• Virtual machines
• Hypervisors
• Private cloud environments

The hiring manager asked:

“How do you deploy a virtual machine in a VMware vCenter environment?”

This was something I had done many times.

Yet in that moment, I couldn’t recall the details clearly.

I mentioned templates.

Then he asked:

“How do you create the template?”

I tried to remember.

But my mind went blank.

OVA. ISO images.

Concepts I knew suddenly felt distant.

At that moment, I knew the interview was not going well.

The Longest Hour

The interview continued for almost an hour.

By the end, I barely remember the final questions.

All I could think about was how quickly my confidence had collapsed.

The hiring manager had asked nothing outside my resume.

Nothing unreasonable.

But I had not prepared.

And that realization hit me hard.

The Aftermath

When the call ended, I was shaking.

Everything felt blank.

That night, I questioned everything.

What had I been doing for the past few years?

Did I really understand the systems I worked with?

Was I actually ready for the job market?

For a moment, I completely gave up.

The Next Morning

The next morning I gathered myself.

Instead of dwelling on the failure, I started looking for resources.

And something became very clear to me.

I wasn’t unprepared as an engineer.

I was unprepared for interviews.

Another realization hit me.

Over the years, I had become very dependent on tools like AI assistants and Copilot for quick answers.

And somewhere along the way, I had stopped actively rebuilding my understanding from first principles.

It was time to start again.

From scratch.

The Learning Phase

Fortunately, I had already been following a few DevOps newsletters and learning resources.

One by Vishakha Sandhwani and another by KodeKloud.

I had seen the resources before.

But I had never taken the time to go through them seriously.

Now I had no choice.

And honestly, I’m grateful for that.

I began rebuilding my fundamentals.

I started with Linux Foundation courses, including

• Linux fundamentals
• Containers and virtualization
• Kubernetes basics

At the same time, I subscribed to KodeKloud and started following their DevOps fundamentals path.

Within the first two weeks, I had already refreshed many of my fundamentals.

But I didn’t stop there.

For the first time, I started deploying Kubernetes clusters myself.

Using tools like:

• Minikube
• Local Kubernetes environments
• Hands-on lab exercises

I asked questions constantly.

I explored networking concepts.

I revisited system architecture.

And yes, I also used ChatGPT to help break down concepts and ask deeper questions.

That’s how the real learning journey began.

Resources That Helped Me

Here are some resources that were extremely helpful during that phase:

1. Newsletters by Vishakha Sandhwani (https://www.tech5ense.com/)
2. KodeKloud learning platform (http://kodekloud.com/learning-path/devops-engineer)
3. Kubernetes learning roadmap https://github.com/NotHarshhaa/kubernetes-learning-path
4. Linux Foundation courses (https://training.linuxfoundation.org/)
5. Cloud-native computing courses on edx (https://www.edx.org/)
6. My ChatGPT conversation : https://chatgpt.com/share/692e4d1f-b8b8-8012-ac19-770567232f97

Without these resources, I doubt I would have been able to rebuild my understanding so quickly. There is more to this. I will share them in the next posts.

Gratitude

I would also like to sincerely thank the hiring manager and the team at Spectro Cloud.

Even though it ended in rejection, that interview pushed me to confront my gaps and grow as an engineer.

Sometimes the most valuable interviews are the ones that expose our blind spots.

And I’m grateful for that moment.

And Finally

I cannot forget my experience at HPE, where I transitioned from a frontend engineer to working as an SRE and DevOps engineer on large-scale cloud infrastructure.

That experience built the foundation that allowed me to keep moving forward even during moments of doubt.

The Mirror

That interview just didn’t break me; it showed me the mirror.

And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need to grow.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are based on my personal interview experience and are not intended to represent or criticize any specific company or individual.

Follow me on Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rohankumarrshah