AWS Cloud Projects: Insights from a Cloud Security Engineer

[00:00:00] We need to remember as well that these projects, they're not just a tick box for getting a job. They're actually there to teach you something and I think that's really important as well. You know, there's projects that I've done that maybe felt a little bit pointless at the time. I can definitely call upon that knowledge later on when I'm actually working on my own workload. And it'd be great if you could run us through two projects that our audience could benefit from. So I'll give you one sort of cloud native one and then one a little bit more DevSecOps,

[00:00:26] sort of a gentle introduction. W.J. Pearce. I'm one of the most popular cloud influencers on TikTok. He provides aspiring cloud professionals with high quality projects that can help them impress employers and get jobs in the cloud industry. In today's episode, W.J. Pearce shared a couple of

[00:00:48] quality projects in AWS that could help you impress recruiters and hiring managers. He also shared advice for those interested in getting into tech and a short roadmap that could help you get there. This was a great episode with many practical and helpful tips. I can't wait for you to see this. Make sure to like

[00:01:12] and subscribe to the channel. Let's get right into it. Let's start off with you telling us a little bit about what you do as a cloud security engineer. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Good starting place. The role of the cloud security engineer, I think really, really differs from place to place. And it differs from month to month as well. I think a lot of companies have had a hard time sort of defining what a cloud

[00:01:41] security engineer is as well. And they just kind of, it's a bit of a malleable role. Obviously there's some cloud security in there as well. So, I mean, I've done everything from standing up and maintaining AWS native security tooling. I've worked with GRC teams to help understand the results of IT health checks. I've done basic stuff like looking after our IAM estate, but the central point of contact for managing like certificates and GPG keys. At the moment, my role is sort of shifting into looking after that

[00:02:09] internal security tooling. So we're talking like SaaS tools, SCA tools, sort of onboarding teams into using these tools and into their build pipelines. You know, it can be creating automations to improve our internal security tooling. Recently really interested in metrics as well. I think there's a lot of value there about, you know, can we look at vulnerabilities found month on month within our cloud estate and can we give, you know, maybe senior management a high level view very, very quickly.

[00:02:37] Yeah. So as I said at the start, I think the role of the cloud security engineer is very malleable. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. And I've worked in that role, but I think for myself, it was a little bit focused on like Azure and Azure implementation. And I kind of, I'm happy about that, but at the same time

[00:02:59] is a role that I didn't get as much leeway to, you know, work with other tools and products outside of my particular area and what the company I was working for used. So, so really interesting that you say that. And I suppose there's so many things that you'd have worked with. What would you say are the core technologies that you, you know, worked with or implemented and how you go about implementing those

[00:03:27] things? Cool. Okay. So for cloud, for my sins, I've actually only ever used AWS. I don't know if I should admit that on this call or not. Maybe, maybe don't share this one to LinkedIn or something. Only ever used AWS and it's, it's on, it's on the back of my list to do, to do some Azure stuff as well. I would like, you know, I know the basic terms in Azure. I could fumble my way through a call. I'm

[00:03:53] sure if we were talking about Azure deployments and stuff, but like in terms of actually hardcore deployments, I've only ever used AWS. I think I spun up a load node server once when I was following a network Chuck video. It's not very exciting. My tech stack, it's really like, it's pretty black and white. It's just containers. I've used Docker, Docker compose. I've used Kubernetes a little bit. I need to get my head around it a little bit more infrastructure, obviously Terraform, CICD, using Jenkins, GitHub actions programming, Python. I need to get better at Python, but you know,

[00:04:23] I'm sure like yourself, it's, it's something that you're consistently getting better at. So you can't ever turn around one day and be like, okay, cool. Completed Python. A bit of bashed, SaaS tooling, like sneak and mend. So yeah, it's pretty, pretty boring tech stack really, but in terms of how I implement them, there's a good question that, and I think there's like a big difference between being good with technology and being a good engineer. I remember at the start of my career, and I'm sure

[00:04:48] any engineer we're listening to this will agree that you are so excited by the tools and the technology that you have a tendency to jump in. And I think the mark of a good engineer and how to properly implement, you know, whatever project you're doing, whatever tooling you're trying to implement is to take a step back and really just spend way more time in the planning stage than you think you should. I'm a big fan of just getting the minimum viable product out there after some planning and

[00:05:15] then building upon that. So like, try not to overcomplicate it and spend more time in the planning stage than you think. I think that would be my, like my core takeaway for how to actually implement a lot of the technologies that we're talking about today. Great, great. I really appreciate that. And you running through that, you know, I want to really use this opportunity to touch on

[00:05:38] some really key things that we always talk about when we're speaking about getting into cloud. Now, there's, you know, a lot of people that watch this channel who are aspiring cloud engineers or who are, you know, juniors in the cloud space and that sort of thing. And probably the most common

[00:06:03] piece of advice they hear is do cloud projects, do cloud projects or even, even cybersecurity roles. It's like, you know, do projects. You need to do projects to do this, to show this. Like I wanted to ask you, WJ Pearce, what is the importance of projects to get jobs in cloud and cybersecurity? Cool. Okay. Good question. Well, considering my TikTok page is all about projects,

[00:06:29] I guess you can understand that I'm not going to turn around here and be like, no, you don't need them. I honestly, I don't have a definitive answer for you. I think that projects are good. And I think that projects push the needle in your direction in terms of getting a job. But I think as content creators in this space, we have a tendency to echo our own experience of how we got into this industry.

[00:06:55] You know, I can only tell you how I got into this industry and it was very project based. You can only share your roadmap for getting into this industry. It might be very project based as well. So I like to think that projects are pivotal, pivotal when it comes to getting into this industry, but I don't honestly have a definitive answer. I'm not an industry analyst, you know, I don't have a definitive answer. But the one thing I do know is that every content creator I speak to,

[00:07:20] every colleague, peer, you know, whether it's like from, you know, similar industries or like different departments within my industry, the one thing they have in common is they all do projects. So, you know, you can take, you can take from that what you will, but that's the one thing everyone has in common is that they've all done projects. So I'm not, I don't, again, don't have a definitive answer, but yeah. Understood. And tell us a little bit about your journey, getting into this industry,

[00:07:46] industry and how sort of, you know, doing projects or, or anything else really just helped you on that journey. Cool. Okay. So I feel really, really, really fortunate how I got into this industry. And when I got into this industry as well, it was like slightly pre, pre when we all had to stay inside for a long time. Yeah. And as you know, like the tech industry was sort of booming at that point from what I understand, it's a lot more difficult to get your foot in the door at the moment.

[00:08:13] My heart goes out to anyone trying to get their foot in the door at the moment. I would just say, keep grinding like it is worth it. You will get there. But in terms of how I got in, I graduated, but I actually went to uni for art and film, which let me tell you does not pay the bills. I went back to college, got myself a HND in cybersecurity, sort of in my mid twenties. And then the week I graduated, I actually got a phone call from this company and they were doing bootcamps. You know, I know bootcamps are a bit of a divisive topic. Sometimes some people love them.

[00:08:41] Some people think they're like a waste of money. But I got a call from this bootcamp, basically saying that we will pay you to learn like cloud infrastructure, CICD technology. And I had nothing going on. I just graduated. So I thought, yeah, okay, I'll go for it. Spent three months with them, like pretty intense bootcamp, 40 hours a week, learning the basics of like what we know is like kind of core cloud technologies. And they actually deployed me

[00:09:09] into my first role, which was a government role. So I was sort of like in a cloud hosting support position. The best way to think about that really is like sort of a third line support position, but for a cloud environment. So it was a lot of whitelisting IPs, a lot of like, you know, fix on fail scenarios. So there's something wrong with like a load balancer, like we would, we would take a look and then that role kind of naturally transformed into being a fully fled

[00:09:35] cloud engineer. It's at that point that I had my own projects, you know, my own workload, you know, different things that I was working on. And I really got chance to like spread my wings and learn more about the core technology. And I'm sure, I'm sure like most people that first year in tech, you, um, you really have two jobs, you have your job during the day, and then you have your job in the evening learning what you've just done during the day properly, because there's a lot of fake in it till you make it a lot of studying in that first year. That's probably actually one of my

[00:10:02] favorite things about this industry is that you kind of get out what you put in. Like if you, if you go like really hardcore, put your nose to the books, um, like the rewards are huge. Um, and then from that cloud engineering position, because of my, uh, uh, HND and cybersecurity, and I was always asking the security guys like different questions and stuff. I transitioned into being a fully fledged cloud security engineer, and that's what I've been ever since really. So yeah. Amazing, amazing story and journey. Um, you know, something that

[00:10:32] um, we've spoken about a few times is, you know, boot camps and how there are some really good ones, and there are some really expensive, really costly, bad ones. And how do you, how do you tell the difference? It's like, I think a good sign is when they are paying you to learn. Yeah. Um,

[00:10:57] and you know that if you're getting paid to learn, it's likely that you're, you're a good one. Oh, they have invested interest in you doing well. Exactly. Exactly. And, and they're deploying you as well. And they have those, you know, contacts with, um, firms that, you know, they can, they, they have, they can, you know, deploy engineers or people they've trained to. Um, so I think, uh, we, we, we had a guest not too long ago that,

[00:11:27] you know, that, that was also their route into, um, starting and they came onto the podcast after, you know, they were just like four months into that. And it was like, wow, this is crazy. And a lot of people get paid to learn. Um, but it is a thing. Um, and I know that we're, we're in the UK and

[00:11:57] I'm not sure, you know, maybe I'll, I'll do some research and try and link some of these resources at some point, but for the people in the UK, there are a lot of schemes that, uh, and boot camps that the government will fund for you. Um, yeah, a lot of grads boot camps, especially. There you go. And they, they're a lot, they're quite invested the government in training people in it. And

[00:12:23] of course these, these trainings, they cost thousands of pounds. It costs like 5k to be on that. It's like fire brand boot camps and like loads of other ones. It could cost five to 10k. And realistically, there aren't many people who would pay that. Um, but they, they, there are some government funded programs that could really help people. Um, just wanted to put, put that out there.

[00:12:51] Yeah. No good shout for sure. Yeah. And let's talk a little bit more about projects. And I wanted to take the opportunity whilst we have you to give our audience, you know, one or two projects that they could go away and implement, I guess they would be AWS space. Of course, as you being an AWS focused, um, professional and, you know, I've, I've seen your tick tocks and, and some of those projects that

[00:13:20] you, you, you put out there and share, and it'd be great if you could run us through two projects, um, that our audience could benefit from. Yeah, definitely. Cool. Good question. Um, so I'll give you one sort of cloud native one, and then one a little bit more DevSecOps, sort of a gentle introduction. So first project, and it's one of the first ones I ever did actually, when I was, uh, kind of learning

[00:13:47] AWS is dumping some API results. So basically at a high level, we want a Lambda that's querying an API, and we're going to dump those results into S3. So very, very, very high level walkthrough. You want to spin up a Lambda bonus points. If you're using Terraform, if it's your first time, maybe just poke around the console, you then want to write a script that queries an API, takes those results and dumps them into S3. Now at a high level, that seems super, super straightforward. You know, a lot of

[00:14:13] people could do that in their sleep, but I think with these projects is that you have to consider all the additional things that you will learn along the way. So there's with this project, AWS access keys, how are you going to configure your Lambda? How are you going to configure your environment variables, presuming that the API has some sort of security on it? You know, how are you going to configure the IAM permissions for your Lambda and your S3 bucket? How are you going to configure your bucket properties and your bucket permissions? Are you going to encrypt your

[00:14:38] bucket? So you can see how you can take a very simple project of querying an API with a Lambda and dumping the results. And as quickly it becomes like, you know, not complicated, but there are more things than you think you need to consider. And again, if you're doing all that through IEC and Terraform, then it becomes, you know, a little bit more complicated. So you can very quickly take a simple project and really level it up quite quick. Second project, DevSecOps, a very gentle introduction to DevSecOps. What you're going to do is you're going to basically build a GitHub action to scan for secrets

[00:15:08] in a pull request. Now we're going to do this with a workflow. So workflows are sort of like, best way to think of it is like a recipe. So there's individual steps in this recipe and these are called jobs. These workflows run automatically when like a specific thing or event happens. So when you push code, open a pull request, or, you know, you schedule something or a specific developer comments a keyword on your pull request. So the way you're going to do this is you're going to create yourself a repo. You're going to create yourself a workflow file. You're going to build out the YAML

[00:15:37] that's going to trigger on a pull request. You're going to check out the code and then run something called get leaks. Now you're going to upload those results to the GitHub security tab. So once you've got that, you want to push it to main, make sure that's all good and make sure the action's running. You then back on your local machine, want to create a new file with some sensitive data in it. They could be passwords, API keys, credentials of sorts. You're then going to push that, create a PR. And if you've configured it correctly, get leaks will run and present the results. So, you know, in less than

[00:16:06] an hour, well done. You've just introduced secret scanning into your dev workflow, which might seem like again, quite a simple project, but how can you take that one step further? You know, can we self-host an LLM somewhere like on AWS bedrock to give us some extra steps here in the PR? Can we integrate these findings that get leaks has found into some sort of third party dashboard? How are we going to host that third party dashboard? Is it going to be containerized,

[00:16:30] et cetera. So again, it's about taking these very, very core high level, simple workflows and projects and really building upon them. And then obviously again, bonus points, if you're documenting the whole thing, you know, that's a big part of it. Documentation and really showing the employers that not only have you done the projects, but you have the ability to document it as well. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Those are two great projects. And for the audience who are AWS focused,

[00:17:01] aspiring engineers, or even if you know, you're in that space already and are building your own stuff, definitely put this into action. I'm challenging you. And that, that was great. WJ Pierce. We have some big news. It's been a long time coming, but the tech certified community is finally live on discord. This is a space where tech professionals and aspiring tech professionals have come together.

[00:17:28] Imagine a space where you can ask questions, share ideas, and learn something new every day from different people. The community is growing fast. There's so much collaborative learning going on. We're having weekly video calls. And the best part about this community is that it is completely free. So what are you waiting for? The link is in the description of this video. Go and join the tech certified community.

[00:17:52] Let's get right back to the podcast. I wanted to touch upon that and even ask, you know, what is the best way to, to, to represent this, you know, to employers because, you know, doing projects is great, but when it comes to, you know, using these projects in like a, even interview environment or an application or representing that on the CV or, you know, how you document that, you know, what,

[00:18:21] what are the best ways to, you know, show the employer that you've done this stuff? So I think, I think people get really caught up on this question and I'm sure like yourself, I get it a lot. Like, okay, this is great, but how do I show it? Et cetera. I wouldn't, I wouldn't get too hung up on this question. You know, the go-to answer is a GitHub repository. You can put pictures in there. You can put your source code in there. You know, people can actively see what you're working on when you've worked on it. That's the obvious answer. But again, don't get

[00:18:49] caught up on it. You know, you could host your own blog, you know, both bonus points of your host, your own like WordPress or something and upload it that way. I think if you just allude to the project you've done on your CV, so you give a very, very, very high level. If you've got this, this is, if you have no work experience, you know, if you put a very, very high level on your CV of what the project is and then a link to your GitHub. And if the employer or the HR person wants to, they will. A lot of the times, you know, it's an automated check and they won't actually,

[00:19:16] but it's when you get to that interview stage that they're going to dig a little bit deeper. So if you've like alluded to the fact that you've done projects, and then when you're at that interview stage, then you link to your GitHub. I think that's probably the way to go. I'm actually yet to have been asked in an interview scenario, like, can I see your GitHub? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I think projects are really critical for people that don't have that work experience to it, to show that they do have some sort of experience in doing this. And GitHub is the best way to show

[00:19:44] that I would say. Amazing. Amazing. Definitely. And I've seen so many examples of this recently, just, you know, doing, you know, mentoring sessions with people and seeing, you know, the way their CVs have set up. You know, some people coming, come into mentoring sessions with me and they're good to go. I don't need to tell them anything. Right. And there was one particular

[00:20:08] person, shout out to him. He'd gone through a certain course and program. And through that, they kind of helped him set up his CV with his projects. And I was just looking at it from the perspective of a hiring manager. And I was able to see that, you know, this guy had done the stuff, even though he'd never worked in tech and never had an IT background. You could clearly see that

[00:20:37] he had the ability to do this stuff. And I was just looking at that from a hiring manager's perspective. Even if he had no experience, you could see that he knows what he's talking about and knows what he's doing. And that for me was like, okay, yeah, no, these projects, they, they, they do have a lot of benefit. They do make sense. And if you don't have experience, you need to be doing some projects for sure. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think touching on that as well, like, you know, people, people get

[00:21:07] so obsessed with, um, and rightly so, you know, not to get too deep, but we live in a capitalist society. People are so obsessed with, with landing that first job and, and whether that's right or wrong, we need to remember as well that these projects, they're not just a tick box for getting a job. They're actually there to teach you something. And I think that's really important as well. You know, there's projects that I've done that maybe felt a little bit pointless at the time, but I can definitely call upon that knowledge, like later on when I'm actually working on like

[00:21:33] my own workload. So try, try, try, take these projects for obviously, you know, they are a gateway to getting employed, but try and enjoy them as well. You know, that's what it's all about. If you're not enjoying it, then, you know, well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. Like it's, it's for the job and it's for the CV, but it's also just for your learning. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a good point. And typically no one says that it's like, yeah, projects,

[00:22:02] get it on your CV, do the work and, and, you know, the hiring manager will see that you've done it, but that's a really good point. Just like, enjoy it. Yeah. This is cool stuff we're doing. Like, I mean, if you want to work in this industry, I'm willing to bet that you're probably a bit of a nerd, like lean into that, you know, that that is, this is cool stuff we're doing. Like, I remember like my dad, he was, he was in tech as well in it and he was doing projects like this, that they were vastly different. You know,

[00:22:29] he was fiddling around with like, you know, a me girl. I can't even remember the name of some really old PC. Um, but he did it for the passion. And I think that's what people, people need to remember that as well. Hmm. So true. Wow. Okay. Let's move on to, uh, another question and you've already given so much value, um, to the audience who are watching this. They've already picked up projects that they can do.

[00:22:55] You know, they've already, you know, heard about how they can represent these projects on their, um, CVs and portfolios, but let's go into this next question and just give them, sort of a step-by-step of someone going from, you know, no experience to getting their first role.

[00:23:17] And what advice would you give someone who is interested in breaking into tech? If you could give us a short step-by-step of what you would say. Cool. Okay. Good question. Um, again, I think as content, I've already said this, but as content creators, I think we have a tendency to echo our own experience and to echo how we got into tech and whether you go into tech like five, six, seven or eight years ago, the market is always shifting. You know, what you need to do now isn't true what you needed to do five years ago.

[00:23:45] So I guess what I'm trying to say is take what I'm saying with a pinch of salt, you know, carve your own path. Don't be afraid to do things a little bit differently. Just because somebody said you need to do X, Y, Z way doesn't mean you can't stray from this path. You know, everyone's on their own journey and you'll find your way in eventually in the end. Um, the one thing I would say, having said that is that the fundamentals remain the same, you know, technologies and tools, they do come and go, but the fundamentals do remain the same.

[00:24:10] And if you can nail those fundamentals, then like you're laughing, you know, and that stuff like it's stuff you've already heard. It's stuff that's on every single roadmap. It's stuff that every single content creator hears about, talks about cloud, the next IC programming, get, get hub containerization, automation, you know, focus on the fundamentals and everything else will fall into place. I think we can get really obsessed with like, uh, I've got to be doing this and I've got to present

[00:24:38] my project in the right way. And, you know, I've got to be, uh, introducing like some sort of AI into my projects and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I've got to get this bootcamp. I've got to do that course. And I'm sure we were all, um, guilty of buying a million Udemy courses or humble bundles and never actually doing them. My advice again, would always just to be focused on the fundamentals, fundamentals. And if you keep on focusing on those fundamentals, like I said, everything else will fall into place. Also don't be afraid to go like a different slight different path into the

[00:25:06] industry. I think a lot of people, um, hammer home the point that you go like, uh, it support, third line, it support, cloud hosting, cloud engineer, you know, there's a million different ways to get into this industry. Just because one, one person has done like one thing, one way, it doesn't mean that you should do it that way. You know, I've heard about people getting into like starting off with like a bit of database administration, you know, and then slide swapping into like a bit of cloud database administration. And then from there becoming like a fully fledged

[00:25:34] cloud engineer. So, you know, there's a million different ways in, and that's actually one of my favorite things about this industry. If you want to be like, I've said this before, if you want to be a doctor, you got to go to medical school, you got to get that degree. There's no way around it. If you want to be a vet, you got to go to vet and reschool. There's no way around it. But if you want to work in security, there is no path in that's like a golden path. That's the cool thing about it though. Like you can, you can go a million different ways into this industry. So true. So true. And really appreciate

[00:26:02] those, the steps that you shared and just, you know, getting those fundamentals down. And that just, you know, carrying you the rest of the way. Really, really appreciate that. And again, for the audience watching, if this is your path, don't take this lightly. Now, let's move on to my

[00:26:25] favorite part of the podcast. And this is where we talk about an interesting career story from the guest. And it could be interesting in a good way or interesting in a bad way. But over the past year, we're coming to the end of the year now is Christmas time. Whenever this episode comes out,

[00:26:50] it's Christmas time. We've had some incredible stories shared. And people on TikTok, especially, I love a new stories. Now, we want to hear the story that you'll share with the audience, whether it's good or bad. Cool. Okay. Well, I'll give you one, I'll give you one of each. I'll give you one good and one bad. And I'm sure the bad story I'm about to tell is a story that I'm sure

[00:27:16] everyone that's worked in, let's just say IT has a story like this. And you can probably already guess like what's going to happen, but it was in my first, my first role. So as I said, in that cloud hosting position, and I don't know if you're familiar with AWS step functions, but a very, very, very high level, you can tell them to do stuff at a specific time, trigger different actions, et cetera. And in my first role, we had a bunch of servers that needed to come up in the morning and pay a

[00:27:42] bunch of people. They were all triggered by step functions. I was working on improving something within the step function. It was kind of like quite late at night. I got blasé, copying and pasting, copying and pasting, and I was half asleep. I had been doing this in like a replica step function that I had made. So I wasn't affecting the one in production. I'd finished, I tested it, it all worked. So I deleted the replica one. It turns out I deleted the actual one.

[00:28:07] So that's like complete panic. I ran through to the other room after closing my MacBook and immediately got on Indeed to start looking for another job because I thought I'd like messed up so badly. And I spent the entire weekend really, really quiet. And I remember my partner kept asking me like, are you okay? Like, what's up? And I was like, it's fine. It's fine. And she kept asking me like, what is going on here? And eventually on Sunday evening, I was just explained

[00:28:33] what had happened. And she was like, Oh, so went in Monday morning. And I don't know why, maybe I was just young and naive at the time, but I just went in and pretended like nothing had happened. Of course you can't do that in a cloud environment. There's logs everywhere. So I went in, went to the standup. Obviously everyone's in a complete panic and it became very, very, very obvious what had happened and it became very obvious who had done it. So I just had to stand up

[00:29:01] and like take it on the chin and say, yeah. And I actually pretty good life lesson from that. Like, if you do mess up, like, you know, just stand up and say, because it turns out everything was backed up and it was fine. You know, if I had said on Friday, look, I've deleted this by accident, it would have been fixed in a matter of minutes, but instead I spent the whole weekend panicking about it. So again, good lesson there, you know, just, just, just be honest straight away. Oh wow. Yeah, no, really good lesson. Yeah. And that's, that's something I've heard from,

[00:29:31] from guests recently. It's like, if you make that mistake to say it, don't hide it. Yeah. You can hide, especially with the amount of logs in like in any cloud environment, there is no hiding. Exactly. No, great story. Great story. Now we have a good one as well. Oh yeah. Good one. It's not, it's not really a story, I guess, I suppose. Um, well, I've just like something that I've found that has happened as I've started working in tech, uh, and cloud and

[00:29:58] cybersecurity and whatnot, um, is that I, you know, you go through school and you have your friend group, you go for university and you have your friend group. And a lot of the time we think when we get into our career that we're sort of done making friends. Um, I would say that's not true. Like I have made so many friends through work, through this community and, you know, made so many connections with people that I just never thought I would. So I think that's like an overlooked part of this

[00:30:27] industry. We all get into this industry because we want to work with exciting tools. We want to get paid really well. We want to work from home, but honestly, like the connections I've made as well, they've like bought so much value into my life. So I would just like a shout out to that as well. Like don't, don't, don't overlook that part of it. I think it's really easy in this kind of work from home world to look over that part, but yeah, there's, uh, something to look forward to if you're trying to get into this. Amazing. Amazing. Thanks so much for sharing that as well. Just the

[00:30:54] community. Um, and, and the people you can meet on this, on this journey. Um, two great stories to add to our portfolio. Can't wait to release them on TikTok. Uh, WT WJP is thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the podcast before we end off. I want to, you know, give you the opportunity

[00:31:19] to just share anything you want to shout out and share to the audience, you know, where they can find you and you know, anything else you're working on or anything you want to shout out at all. Cool. Okay. Thank you very much. Uh, YouTube WJ Pierce, TikTok WJ Pierce. Um, my ebook came up this year blown away by the response. Thank you to every single one that has got a copy. Um, the feedback

[00:31:45] has been like, again, it has blown me away. It's called tech one 20. The link is in my bio. Um, it's full of projects and kind of explainers and really things that I wish I had explained to me at the start of my career. Um, and kind of simple projects to really get you started. And again, I'm really grateful for everyone that's, uh, bought a copy and enjoyed that my newsletter, uh, cyber brew, um, comes out every week and there's some extra projects in there as well. And so usually the projects that I've spoken about on TikTok, they're quite high level. You know how

[00:32:13] TikTok is, you know, you don't want to be getting too into the weeds and TikTok, but, uh, in my newsletter cyber brew, I go through it step-by-step really give you the commands for every stage. Um, and yeah, and that's it. Thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Amazing. Of course, of course. And everything you mentioned will be linked in the description. So go check that out. WJ Pierce. Thanks so much for joining this episode and to the audience. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next week.