How I schooled my seniors

I started a new job at RemoteState as a software development engineer in May of 2020. Post the initial plunge, settling into the role was relatively easier for me due to the experience I had gained in working on open source contributions in the Layer5 community. My experience with open source had also been a big plus for me throughout the application and interview process. As a direct result, my colleagues and seniors became genuinely inquisitive about Meshery and its functionality as the Kubernetes Manager. So when asked, I happily agreed to deliver a session on the subject to the entire team.

I pitched my idea to Lee Calcote and in his usual supportive form, he was as excited as I was about the session. A brainstorm session led to creating an entire presentation with suggestions from Lee. The Layer5 community offers a number of resources to contributors, including these two decks (Meshery - the cloud native management plane and Layer5 that I drew from as a basis for a personalized presentation and demonstration to my new team.

When the day arrived to present the concepts of service meshes, Meshery, and other cloud native initiatives to my team, I held a Google Meet with a full attendance. I started the session with a reader’s digest version of microservices and service meshes to set the stage for any newcomers to the world of cloud native, I went on to elaborate on Layer5 ‘s contributions to the CNCF landscape and the SMI project. This was followed by an in-depth discussion on data planes, control planes, and management planes. I spoke at-length about Meshery’s functionality including, its features for facilitating the benchmarking, interoperability and standardization of service meshes. I wrapped up the session with some insider tips that I have learned in my months as an open source contributor in the Layer5 community. In the stream of feedback received from my colleagues, the session seems to have been a success.

This whole experience has been an amazing journey for me. From being a complete noob to utilizing my expertise in the service mesh domain to landing an actual job, the experience has been a maze of ups and downs. But, I feel like I have finally arrived and arrived with a pot of gold. I’m eternally grateful to Lee Calcote for motivating me and providing me with the appropriate resources. Entering and exploring an open source community can be a daunting task and the resources provided by Layer5 helped them in overcoming that challenge and enabled them to learn more about the widespread work of Meshery.

I’m glad to have found a community that not only feeds my professional success, but also my personal growth. It’s not out of obligation, but out of a sense of gratitude and paying it forward to others (a tenant of the Layer5 community) that I now spend much of my time as a MeshMate. I help welcome and guide other new contributors along their open source path as they learn and grow. Giving to others and while continuing to grow professionally and personally is time well spent. I encourage you to join me and others in the Layer5 community by jumping into our Slack to start meshing around!