Developers often feel the pressure to be experts and know everything – yesterday.

Traditional ways of teaching tech can be ineffective, as sitting in a virtual space and receiving information in the form of a lecture and PowerPoint presentation doesn’t always encourage active participation. On top of that, developers can be wary of asking questions that their peers might deem to be “stupid.”

Polar Squad’s Tuomas Palosaari, Mika Tuominen and Katariina Vakkuri are changing how DevOps is taught with their new approach.

“We focus on the learning experience, not just on sharing knowledge,” says Vakkuri. “Our tailored training sessions are designed to help developers learn on their terms and not feel burdened by an information dump,” she explains.

New school

Polar Squad’s new training model features a safe space where everyone, whether newbies or experienced techies, feels welcome.

Polar Squad’s experienced DevOps consultants take participants through 2–4 hours sessions instead of a full-day training, which means students have more time to reflect between lessons.

“Having time to ask questions, process, and engage during the training process is very important,” says Tuominen. “We view training as a tech service, where the focus is on the actual learning experience, not just on a series of modules that are passed onto students,” he says.

In addition to structure, Polar Squad’s flexible approach departs from those offered by others, as it includes follow-up sessions with trainers and the opportunity for online tutoring and asking questions outside of lessons via Slack.

“Providing better tools for a better working life means we don’t leave you alone after training, which greatly improves the learning experience,” says Palosaari.

Deep dive

Polar Squad training packages include all core DevOps fundamentals, such as understanding the history and reasoning behind DevOps; learning what DevOps is and isn’t; getting familiar with popular tools; adopting a DevOps mindset for your daily work; and the future of DevOps.

As Kubernetes can be a key technology in some companies, we offer the expert score on topics including why it was created; its pros and cons; getting familiar with key architecture and components and how they interact with each other; understanding Kubernetes security; the ability to manage and debug complex applications in Kubernetes as well as platform-specific content (Azure, AWS, GCP).

All, of course, delivered with a healthy dose of criticism.

Our DevOps consultants have, on average, 10+ years of IT experience, and with the best DevOps people, we make tech work meaningful by transforming tech and culture. We enable people and organizations to focus on the things that matter.

Polar Squad has been helping customers with Kubernetes since 2017 when we opened shop.

As the first Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) in Finland (2019) and a Kubernetes Training Partner (KTP) since April 2021, we are also a Cloud Native Computing Foundation member.

If your organisation could benefit from increased DevOps knowledge – the fundamentals, advanced knowledge or practical know-how concerning Kubernetes, containers or Docker, have a look at our training portfolio.