AWS Training and Certification Portal

Do you mean the ones who are actually employed by AWS, or anyone who works as a Solutions Architect focussing on using AWS technologies?

Are the exams all online? How do they know it's "me"?

If they can successfully do this it's interesting because Amazon must have a great interest in ensuring there are enough competent people to make best use of AWS to avoid a choke-point where AWS wants to expand but the shortage of talent raises costs.

There are devops and developer tracks. Devops has some policy JSON but not bad. I'm old and a product marketer and have done well in practice tests so far. But I do admin 12 AWS instances and issues with 3rd party developer's. So lots of problems, er. experience.

You'd be suprised to find how many people become architect just having some certifications and I have worked with a few they are horrible.

When I interview people for DevOps job I don't weigh in whether the candidate has a cert or not. I have worked with people with and without cert. Getting a cert is like graduting from school. Many people don't remember 90% of the things they learned by going to lecture, they only learn 10% of the totoal knwoledge and those 10% are the practical skills they gained from working on a project.

Bottom line is: if you have a cert I respecr it but I expect expert answers. What I care about for the most part is the candidate's ability to brainstorm and explain his or her thought. as far as software engineering skill it is nonetheless crucial (know testing etc) but a collague who can't explain system design thoroughly is harder to work with.

I am not self-flattering but I don't have any certs yet I am capable of what an AWS architect can do. I just need more challenging projects (do things at bigger scale).

It's hard to say. If you want a full time employee position, I don't think they're particularly useful. If you're looking to get into consulting or similar, suddenly they look a little more appealing. At the end of the day, nothing beats experience - though you probably get at least some of that through the certification.

I'm a college dropout with only a few years experience, and I'm looking for opportunities to learn - this looks pretty valuable, as well as nice resume material. Do y'all agree?

A lot of the value comes from getting opportunities through the AWS Partner Network (APN, https://aws.amazon.com/partners/). To advance through the partner level hoops as a company, you need more and more 1099 or W2 employees who have AWS certifications. Therefore, if you get some certifications, you'll be a lot more attractive as a candidate to companies (mainly tech consultancies) that leverage APN to get business.

I hear that the basic ones are very easy, but the professional ones have a bit of heft to them. From a business standpoint, there's no reason for these to be too hard on developers--AWS is trying to push its agenda and needs workers ready with shovels to do so. The benefit could be to identify the most eager partners who can pass a basic competency check to reduce implementation risk, and of course, the training can tour you through the gamut of AWS offerings.

It's a signal. One of, hopefully, many. Personally, and I speak as someone who interviews many people each year, I tend to care more about projects you developed than your certifications. That said, it all adds up. So I'm not saying don't obtain such certifications. I'm saying, obtain demonstratable experience (e.g., through projects in your spare time) and don't count on certifications alone. The key should be gaining experience and adding several positive signals to your resume. For example, an active github account, open source contributions, cutting edge languages or technologies mentioned on the resume, interesting projects, a blog on the subject of programming, and yes AWS certifications, are all good signals.

I work at a SaaS company in the energy industry, 4 of our engineers including myself (3 electrical, 1 chemical) have gone though the certification for solutions architect associate. We did this as we all transitioned to working on our SaaS product from our previous engineering disciplines. It's fairly useful but served more to verify that our web infrastructure is correctly implemented rather than teaching us new paradigms. I think you'll probably come close to certification level through usage of the docs and implementing real-world solutions - as we have. I think the professional level courses will probably be more challenging and useful.

Also worth mentioning that these courses tend to propose AWS products as solutions to common problems in infrastructure design, keeping a critical eye for these problems allows you to learn what's actually happening and why you "need" to use the correct AWS product. If you do this you won't feel as locked in to AWS as a provider and will be able to transition to GCE or similar if needed.

I had a CCNA, it helped me zero (maybe hurt me in the long run).

In my experience interviewers for software engineering positions at large companies view certifications as a negative signal.

There are a lot of certifications in the industry that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. But, they make a nice way for HR departments to eliminate people who don't meet the minimum requirements.

But Cisco certs have historically been very high value. You actually have to know quite a bit of computer networking to be good enough to pass the exams.

So, it all comes down to how good the exams are, and how good you have to be in order to pass them. I haven't seen any of the AWS certs, so I can't speak for any of them. But IMO, reaching the level of quality set by Cisco would be a very high mark, indeed.