Me: Hello… Serverless Engineer! Can you hear me? Anyone out there?
Them: Who is that?
Me: Relax, nothing serious! I am on the lookout for a Serverless Engineer.
Them: Who on earth are you? Are you some sort of technical geek on the lookout for your next book title?
Me: Oh no no. None of that.
Them: Oh, you are one of those philosophical types talking at conferences, right?
Me: Not philosophical, but talks, yes.
Them: Hmm.. so you are being paid by some innovative recruiter to come up with a fancy hiring title then?
Me: Oh no no! Not that lucky. By the way, did you just say “innovative”?
Trait #1 — Innovative
Them: Ok ok, we can guess. You are someone floating around and screaming in the cloud?
Me: Please no! There are experts more qualified than me doing that already.
Them: But we do hope you understand and know at least a little bit of what ‘cloud’ is.
Me: Absolutely! We are in sync there and glad to hear that you all see cloud as a thing and not as vapour, which is great.
Trait #2 — Cloud First
Them: Oh .. calm down, calm down there. We are not here to stir up an argument. Vapour is the past. Cloud is present. People progressively moved on and are embracing the cloud. Lets park the vapour argument right there.
Me: You said it. Progressively, and I like that. It is an important factor for cloud-first serverless development.
Trait #3 — Incremental & Iterative
Them: Wow, this whole idea of serverless is making us lose our sleep. Do you realise that it hypnotises everyone and sucks the money out of their pockets without them noticing?
Me: That is not true at all. I totally disagree with you all.
Them: Ok, challenge us then and show us where it saves us money? And why is that no one is willing to show us exactly how much it would cost?
Me: Now we are talking! Allow me to explain. With serverless, in most cases, you only pay for what you use. Hence no one can tell you exactly how much it will cost you. Got it?
Trait #4 — Cost Awareness
Them: That sounds really spooky and confusing to be honest. We are custodians of many servers and we know exactly how much we spend on our infrastructure.
Me: Wow! Pleased to hear some stats coming out of you. Does that include the money you get paid in order to keep your servers maintained?
Them: [angrily] Can you stop making personal attacks? We are professionals you know.
Me: Mercy… mercy! I am just trying to explain the benefits of serverless.
Them: So, in your world of serverless, you are saying that our intellectual software is kept somewhere in a black hole and brought to life only when we need it?
Me: Precisely! See, you are now getting the gist of it. I am so glad.
Them: OK stop there, stop right there. We are not in the same place yet. We haven’t even started talking about security. We hear this everyday and see it all around that people are clueless when it comes security in your serverless black hole…
Me: … as if you are already an expert and know exactly how security worked in your server-ed world?
Trait #5 — Security
Them: Why should we? We are engineers you know, and we work with highly capable and trusted security and infrastructure experts to deal with those stuff.
Me: I see. Got a clear picture of your profile now. It sounds like you all still live in the past with the mindset of offloading things to others and not getting your hands wet. Software engineering is moving very FaaS my friends! You need a serverless ‘mind-shift’.
Them: What’s the fuss? Are you trying to scare us? You know what, we’ve been through the thick of things in the industry. Tell you one thing, we aren’t sounding glitzy or glamorous but we are pretty content with what we have, even if that keeps us in the darkest dungeons, if that’s how you see us.
Trait #6 — Function Thinking
Me: I laud your humbleness! That’s exactly why you need a serverless engineer to rescue you from your dungeons and show you the path to paradise!
Them: [laughing uncontrollably] You are hilarious indeed. So, explain us how that ‘whatever’ engineer is going to be like to enlighten us with the paradise?
Me: That engineer is going to be just like you and me but is innovative, efficient, capable of building secure, cloud first and cost effective functional solutions iteratively using managed services.
A software engineer who is innovative, efficient, capable of building secure, cloud first and cost effective functional solutions iteratively using managed services.
Them: [after hearing the definition of Serverless Engineer] Ha ha ha! Got you! Is that your groundbreaking wisdom? Ha ha ha! But there is no serverless in your definition!
Me: Blimey… [this is my ultimate chance to silence these naysayers]… ok ok, I see your point. It’s not rocket science. Just think similar to the situation where there are no servers in serverless…erm… or, …may be there is one…!
Them: [silence]… [their heads spinning]… [after few seconds…. all tumbling to the ground unconscious]
Me: ??!!!
Faint distant voice: Hello sir, I am here. The Serverless Engineer you are searching for.
Me: Welcome! Lets Go Build Serverless!
Serverless Engineer, where are you? was originally published in LEGO Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.