Employee Spotlight – Andru Estes, AWS Training Architect – Info Linux

Before coming to Linux Academy, I was an AWS Cloud Engineer for a startup company dealing with payment processing.  It was an extremely challenging and fast-paced environment where I learned a TON.  I came here to get out of technical aspect for a while; being on call 24/7/365 is very exhausting.

3. What do you like most about what you do?

My favorite aspect of this job has been how it has forced me to learn a very unique skill set – quality public speaking. Being in IT, you don’t usually deal with speaking to mass amounts of people, so this was a shock to my system for sure.

4. What’s your favorite part of working at Linux Academy? 

Two things come to mind, the people I work with daily and working remote!

5. You just released a new course, Lambda Deep Dive, can you tell us about it? 

One word…serverless. ???? But seriously, it will walk someone who is a complete beginner with AWS Lambda and guide them to being able to create unique and powerful serverless architectures. I did my best to break it down so you build off of previous lessons learned with each proceeding video. I can also tell you I learned a ton and had a lot of fun doing it.

6. How do you live out one of our core 5 missions? 

Well, I like to think I live them all out, but if I had to pick one I would say I “dedicate myself to pushing the boundaries of online learning.” I spend a ton of time creating realistic, complex learning activities for our students, and I put my heart and soul into my interactive diagrams.

7. What are you currently learning? 

 I recently started the Nginx Deep Dive we actually just released! It has been great. Next is some GCP!

8. What do you like to do in your free time? 

I am a gym rat 100%. But, besides the gym, I love to either play some type of sport with my wife or take my hyper Australian shepherd to a local park to burn off her endless energy. We also starting picking up cooking, which has been interesting (to put it nicely for us).

9. What’s your favorite food? 

It would be a tie between soft shell tacos and pizza. I could live off those alone.

10. What’s your favorite quote and why? 

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” by Elbert Hubbard. It really makes me do my best to appreciate and learn from everything that happens to me, good and bad.

11. What’s something you’re really excited about right now? 

We are having a symbolic wedding ceremony in Riviera Maya this October, and a bunch of close family friends plan on going.  It will be a blast that I might forget each night. ????

12. What do you like to collect? 

Sneakers, it is honestly almost a problem. It stemmed from growing up working at Finish Line and Foot Locker.

13. If you could have any superpower, what would it be, and why?

I think I would do teleportation. Vacations would be amazing that way.

14. You’re a new addition to the crayon box, what color would you be and why? 

Robert Red. Robert’s my legal first name, and red is a color that tends to stick out amongst others which I like to try and do.

15. Teach us something we may not know in 10 sentences or less. 

Every banana you eat from a grocery store is GMO ???? Yum!

16. If you could interview one person (dead or alive), who would it be? 

Elon Musk would be amazing to hear from.

17. What’s one thing on your bucket list?