3, 9, 10 & 12
I have worked in COTS package implementation, system integration, data centres, DR, infrastructure design, testing and operations at different time. I've an engineering masters, various IT body certifications and I've never ever coded in my career. I've had to do a hell of a lot of scripting and some code reviews but I have never coded anything since a half assed robot control programme in college during the last century. Don't assume your career path is the only career path.
One advantage of public cloud is that to implement anything there you have to be able to describe it and the vendors generally offer good patterns and guidelines that mean it's harder to do something completely stupid without anyone noticing than in your own data centre. Just figure out how you plan to monitor and manage everything before putting it live.
Integration tests, operational tests - just because it works doesn't mean it works with everything else. This is probably coming from someone with a coding background (see 3) who doesn't see scale and complexity.
Get some young smartarses straight from college, get some greybeards, get some women, get someone whose spoken english isn't too good and makes you explain in simple language. I can't see my own blind spots and neither can anyone else my age, educational and cultural background.
PS: I work (currently) for a large UK bank
Biting the hand that feeds IT
