Mike Pfeiffer is a cloud technologist, start-up entrepreneur, and the founder of CloudSkills, a firm that educates and advises individuals and teams on their cloud and DevOps engineering journey. They offer this through blended learning experiences, coaching, consulting, advisory services, and custom workshops. Mike has spent more than twenty years in the IT industry and most recently worked as an engineer and cloud architect for Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.
The experienced, tech-savvy entrepreneur is an author of six books, creator of over thirty-five online courses, the voice of over one hundred and twenty podcast episodes. Mike has also had the privilege to train over half a million students on topics covering Azure, AWS, DevOps, Kubernetes, and web development. On top of this, Mike also publishes a new podcast episode every week on CloudSkills.fm, providing technical tips and career advice for people working with cloud-native technologies.
He wants to empower people to build the skills they need to work in tech without going to college and earning a degree. He is specifically wanting to help people get into the "cloud computing" space, which is experiencing exponential growth. This includes teaching them the technical aspects of engineering in the field and the non-technical aspects, such as taking ownership of your career, soft skills, including communication, productivity, habits, mindset, being a team player, long-term career strategies, and personal branding.
According to Mike, most colleges are not student-minded. They are businesses that profit off students without giving them an equal exchange of value in return. He believes that the tech industry is so dynamic that students looking to get into the space are doing themselves a disservice if they are not proactive about their own learning.
"We need more young talent in the tech world. There are opportunities for all types of people and personalities. I never thought I would end up making a career and helping others in the tech world. College failed me in its teaching style. I think some students don't think a fulfilling, high-paying career in tech is feasible for them because they don't get good grades. I want to help show them that it's possible," explains Mike.
Mike also points out that the tech industry has major cultural issues that stem from the earliest days of technology. To him, many people are insecure about "looking bad" or admitting they don't know something. He adds that there is also toxic masculinity and neverending "us vs. them" politics.
"Bad company culture has always slowed down my ability to innovate, except for when I was working for big tech (especially AMZN). I'm still working to overcome this, and it will be a big part of my personal brand marketing going forward. We have a lot of work to do," asserts Mike.
Mike aspires to see himself and CloudSkills redefine how people learn and upskill to build their careers in the tech industry. He wants to be known for injecting the most effective engineers into the job market. Mike has spoken in countries all over the world and aspires to see himself continuing to speak and influence the next generation of tech and cloud professionals to make a fulfilling difference.
