Mehul has always been a helping hand, met him via twitter and have been following from a long time now. He really loves what he does and it shows. Looking at his feed on twitter you can surely guess what he is on to nowadays :). Linux, cat, open source, cycling are some of the elements about him. Do check this short QnA with him.

Who are you? what do you do?

I am Mehul Ved - a techie, a triathlete, a coffee brewer and a cat hooman.

What is your profession?

I am a DevOps Engineer by profession.

How did you stumble on your profession?

After getting my first PC in 2005, and soon after being introduced to GNU/Linux by a friend, got me hooked on to learning more about computers. I spent a lot of time around Linux User Groups and similar communities, learning a lot of things and eventually being offered my first job in a Linux lab as a sysadmin and a FOSS evangelist.

Is there a path which you followed to pursue your profession?

No. I didn’t really know what I really want to do and just went around with job offers that come across as interesting. Even now I have a few different paths that I want to take in my life and unsure how it’ll eventually work out.

Is there a curriculum you have, which can be of help to early starters, if yes please share

I am a very unstructured learner and never followed any curriculum. I follow an approach that’s a mix of hands-on and reading the manual then design documents by people who have implemented similar technologies. But beware, never follow them blindly. Understand their context and go down the path only if it fits your scenario.

Any blogs / professionals we could follow, please list / share?

Tech blogs of various top engineering firms. Look for blogs of companies that you think do interesting work. High Scalability is another great website that I like. Spend reasonable amount of time on twitter, reddit and other social sites to understand the pulse of things around you and find people to share ideas with.

How do you balance work and other interests?