What’s the best approach to teach new engineers about cloud architecture?
Posted by Firm-Goose447@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 6 comments
New hires often struggle to understand complex environments. How do you help them get up to speed effectively?
Dry-Hamster-5358@reddit
What worked for me was starting with a really simple system and building up from there
like one service, one database, basic deploy, then slowly adding complexity
If you throw full architecture at someone from day one, it just doesn’t stick, also letting them break things and debug is huge
That’s where most of the understanding actually comes from
PalpitationOk839@reddit
Most people struggle because they only see theory.
Let them work on a small real setup end-to-end and explain it step by step.
Once they’ve deployed something themselves, concepts start clicking fast.
Ethancole_dev@reddit
Honestly, diagrams first before anything else. Let them draw the architecture themselves after a walkthrough — even if it's messy. The act of drawing forces questions that reading docs never does.
Also: small broken environments they have to fix > perfectly working ones they just observe. Nothing teaches AWS networking like debugging a security group that's blocking your app for no obvious reason.
desrtfx@reddit
Step by step, one system at a time, and lots and lots of drawings/illustrations. Visual language explains better than text can, especially for overviews and system explanations.
From my own teaching experience: if you spice up the drawings/illustrations with a bit of humor (not talking emojis), e.g. simplifying the moving parts with figures, retention and understanding are usually better.
Turbulent-Hippo-9680@reddit
I’d start with one tiny system, not “cloud architecture” as a giant concept.
App, database, queue, storage, auth, monitoring. Then show how requests move through it.
People learn faster when the pieces have a job instead of being a slide deck.
SalamanderFew1357@reddit
We use a mix of online courses from a cloud provider and internal workshops. Focus on why choices matter like cost vs performance. It helps them connect dots faster. Have you considered modular training based on their background?