- Which one?
- Why?
- How many times did you try before succeeding?
- Was it useful?
- How did you prepare ( resources, ... )
I'm planning to certify for "Azure Solutions Architect Expert" and some feedback on usefullness ( in general or specific) would be nice.
The AWS associate certs are similarly low signal, anyone with some skill at multiple choice can pass those.
The AWS professional certs and AWS specialty certs (big data, ml, networking) are all a solid hiring signal, to me. You can’t pass those exams without handson experience. Memorization isn’t enough. The networking cert in particular has a lot of content that most struggle with in the cloud.
- To learn: maybe you're employed somewhere and you're adopting technology X going forward. This is usually helpful with little to no experience on the content.
- To be employed: you want to change jobs and this will make you more marketable. It's usually helpful to acquire certs from the bigger players like AWS, Java, ITIL, many of the CompTIA certs.
- To satisfy a personal desire: just cuz. There are certification "collectors". Usually folks whose employers will pay for certs.
The associate certs don’t mean a lot. They are a low speed bump. But they are also the first step on the ladder to the more impressive ones. At the very least, they are an indicator that you’re willing to put up with some pain to start down the path towards something that might actually be useful. But to pass, you have to know the official “right” answers, and not necessarily the answers that would actually be correct and useful in the real world.
The professional certs do seem to require some real experience and work to achieve.
Historically, most certs haven’t been worth the paper they were printed on. But there were some that were actually an indicator that the person actually knew something useful, like Netware or Cisco certs.
As for myself, after 30+ years in the business, I finally broke down and actually got a cert. It’s just an AWS CCP, which I could have gotten in my sleep. But I consider this to be the first step on my path to the professional certs.
I got them because I wanted to move on from an embedded developer role to a more cloud centric role. And it worked. Having the qualifications got me through the HR wall at companies and got me into the face to face interviews.
I also think the AZ-203 is especially good because it covers so much content and forces you broaden what you know about. Like I would have avoided learning things like RBAC and OAuth if they weren't on the exam.
I got a new job and now work daily in AWS but I'm still glad I did them.
GCP Cloud Data Engineer & Cloud Architect
- Why?
They are required by Google to be a partner.
- How many attempts?
One each.
- Was it useful
Yes. The exam wasn't, but the study and preparation that goes into passing the exam is helpful. It exposed me to tools that I didn't normally use in my job and the CDE exam in particular informed me on the important distinctions between all of the GCP tools available (there are a lot of overlaps between tools)
- How did you prepare?
Google helped create Coursera courses, so I took those. Plus taking the practice exam and using a sandbox account to reenforce my learning.
The GCP exams are all about memorization of nitty-gritty details. You will be presented with a case study for a solution, and all of the solutions will work, but there's a obvious best solution if you know the details of the tools available.
> To me, that's the definition of an unhelpful exam. I am curious that these new knowledge-based certifications aren't the new "Java certified associate" exams (which could not be more useless).
This is a case where the devil is in the details though. For example, GCP has five major database offerings: Bigtable, Data/Firestore, Spanner, Cloud SQL, and BigQuery. Knowing which one best applies to which situation is a pretty important aspect of being an architect. You can't just use "high level" knowledge here, because Bigtable and Firestore are both NoSQL databases, while Cloud SQL, BQ, and Spanner are relational. They are each optimized for specific workloads and picking the right solution involves knowing how each is optimized.
Using these services is relatively easy. The documentation is fairly comprehensive and Google offers sample applications for use as a jumping off point.
This applies across the GCP landscape. Lots of services have 70-80% functionality overlap with another, so choosing the right one for a particular situation involves understanding the appropriate use cases for each, and this information is what is covered in the exam materials.
(Though I get it for consultants/contractors etc. who have to impress non-technical people. Sure, fine, tick all the boxes you can.)
But I would take multiple practice exams first, and make sure you get decent ones and not just free ones you find laying around somewhere.
While I'm still studying, I've found many knowledge gaps due learning things through experience. I guess studying something in a structured way definitely has value.
If you want to learn new stack then please take the certification and get acquainted. Real world experience cannot replace the certification.
AWS has more popularity and acceptability. There are so much of free and paid tutorials online and one pass with relatively minimal effort.
If you are targeting to work in Enterprise sector, I would recommend to take Azure Cloud certification. Azure certs are gaining lot more traction.
Taking a Niche or Specialty certs like (AWS ML, AWS Security) will have lot more weightage during the interview process. The specialty certs are difficult to crack and need some real experience.
Here is my journey of taking AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certificate.
https://www.rasikjain.com/posts/tips-and-resources-passing-c...
Good luck.
What is it you want to do? is the certification the best path to reach that goal?
So why not take advantage of it.
Certificates have NEVER been a strong indicator of skill in my experience and I generally disregard them when looking at applicants.
I give every applicant a very basic fizzbuzz-style test when hiring. You'd be surprised how many people claim to have 10+ or 20+ years of experience, a CS degree, and 3+ certifications and can't answer a question you should be able to master after reading only the first 2 - 3 chapters of an introductory programming book for.
I hired a director of DevOps just eight months ago and I couldn't tell you whether or not he had any certifications. I did, however, explain to him the challenges we were facing and he immediately came up with a solution no other applicants had even mentioned previously. We made an offer the same week.
If you want to work for a company that values certification then I suppose try getting a certification. If you want to work at a company that values your contribution then learn to master your craft: no certification necessary!
that means you are biased against certifications. the probability of not interviewing any candidates those having certifications along with the experience/skillset you look for is next to 0. certifications aren't only for juniors, many seniors also take them because it a proper and short way to refresh your knowledge and the challenge of these exams is just fun!
While this is focused on AWS, the same holds true for Azure and GCE.
And I'll note that if you're at the point where you're getting the expert-level certs, those do stand out and are trusted by hiring managers across the industry.
The use is debatable. There is definitely a gap between the certificates and the real thing. Had some issues with the first components, I added to the cloud. OTOH you get to play with the Azure Cloud and get some practise and you can get around better than without the training.
In terms of preparations, the MS Learn platform is a really good start. You can complement it by browsing some dumps that are freely available on the Internet
Seems very clear indeed. Thanks!
How long did you study for them?
In the past, RHCE fetched you a job because to get it, you had to demonstrate practical knowledge. Nowadays, RHCE is definitely not enough for a job, but I'd argue it's a much better indicator of knowledge than something where you answer multiple-choice questions.
I'd go for something like CK{A,AD,S} unless you're trying to break into the industry and have no CS knowledge (in which case these AWS/GCP certificates can probably get you an entry-level tech support position in some companies).
As a side note, when interviewing people, I've not given much weight to the certs. A few weeks ago, I got excited about a candidate who passed CKAD. When I asked the candidate about their opinion (!) about pros and tradeoffs when dealing with distributed systems, they could not answer.
I'd argue that passing CKx when you know nothing about distributed applications/systems is counterproductive (because it'll make me ask about that thinking that I'm helping the candidate with some easy questions to break the ice).
I started working more with AWS and felt like there was a bunch of services and concepts that I didn't know. My employer paid for a three day course and the examination fee was included in the price.
It was useful mostly in giving me more confidence in my role, but I also got a better understanding of the huge AWS ecosystem. Helps us with clients sometimes that I'm "certified"...
The course was extremely boring (a lot of reading aloud from the textbook), but forced me to focus on the subject for three whole days. I also spent a few hours studying the textbook on my own and spent a few hours on parts of a Udemy course.
If you want to go to FAANG, it can still be useful, but open source contributions and learning data structures might be a better use of time.
If you're aiming at going to a high-growth early to mid stage startup however, be aware that certifications (especially a lot of them) can be an anti-signal. As a startup hiring manager myself, I view certifications at best as a basic aptitude check, at worst as signal of a personality who is fine with wasting lots of time into learning copypasta knowledge.
In that case, you might find a better investment in building presentable side projects.
YMMV.
I have had had good experiences with some of the Udemy courses. In fact, when I lead a study group for the AWS CCP, we used the acloudguru course as the baseline, but the weekly quizzes I threw at them were based on Udemy material.
So, if you want to get AWS certification, there’s at least two sets of resources there that I think are useful. Maybe not the best available, but still useful.
If you are using it to learn it’s not a bad tool to learn unless you have some pet projects you want to try out on the platform of your choice.
I’ve been working with AWS for the last 6 years and have been certified for the last 5. I learned new things through certification, but my practical experience tells me where the sharp edges are.
What type of contacts require those certifications? Government?
I did some poc deployments on both these clouds -- started with wordpress deployment, kafka deployments , oracle installs and and migrated the POC from one cloud to the other and back. Took a few months and some $$ but worth it. These certifications on my linkedin profile did help me get noticed.
Use powershell exclusively for all Azure task . Use AWS CLI for all AWS tasks.
Could you give a comparison according to your observations between the two?
Azure has 2 exams you need to clear to earn the architect certification AZ303 and AZ 304. AZ 303 requires you to recall a powershell commands -- thats why start using powershell to build all you Azure pocs. Az 304 required a lot of insight on AD configuration and features ; I found this to be the hardest as I never had an opportunity to work on AD configuration professionally.
AWS certification does not require you to recall commands and the exam itself is closely aligned to what you would be doing already as an architecht. You just need to remember to do it in AWS prescribed way. I think AWS is really pushing you to be expert at Lambdas and API Gateway-- I recall that a lot of the question were related to these
Both AWS and Azure expect you to be really familiar with cloud migrations and backups and cross-region replication. They both have their own version of NoSQL databases -- you need to know Azure Cosmos and MS SQL configurations, replicaion and cost structures for Azure and for AWS certication , you need to have the same knowledge for AWS DynamoDB and Aurora and be able to identify which to recommed in a given scenario.
I hope you find this information useful .
Thanks!
Azure is huge in Denmark and there’s a massive shortage of Azure specialist. We have sufficient AWS resources, but the customers are asking for Azure.
If you can ask around in your area.
I have a few co-workers with GCP certifications, but there’s little demand for GCP, at least in our area.
Certifications are mostly relevant when your looking for work. The AWS certs are fun and interesting, but no substitute for hands-on experience.
Why do these at all? For me, I was first in a role with a Microsoft partner. Certifications count towards their partner level, so they are incentivized to get their people certified in areas that accrue to their partnership. For a few (often regulated) clients, the certifications qualified them to participate in RFP processes.
They didn't hire based on certificates and had a great understanding of what different certifications brought (zero to a little.) Taking a recently introduced certification over an older one was preferred because Microsoft introduced lifetimes at some point. Support in terms of materials or time-off to take exams was provided.
Many companies have Azure and AWS, or AWS and GCP, etc. to try to create some competition when renewing deals and avoiding lock-in. It doesn't always work out in practice for them, but if you moved into the consulting space then you'll find that having a Microsoft cert and an AWS one will you pivot more easily. There is a lot more value in knowing two of these than just one.
I've moved on, but since then I have discovered that at times there is value in using certs to quickly attack a new area. This is only to get a lay of the land and force yourself to cover things that an advanced person will often skip. If I see something new I'll often jump in, get stuck, and then reverse engineer my way out. This is very important, but spending some time on the boring cert-level stuff enhances learning when it's available.
In terms of getting the certs, it depends on the exam. Lower-level Microsoft ones have been achievable with just reading and limited hands-on work. They've now got some more depth and you are best to have quite a bit of hands-on with more resources easily applicable to someone writing .NET. Adapting to another platform probably will help making the content stick. I would expect most people to pass these on the first attempt. Watch for vouchers etc. enabling retries.
Microsoft Learn seems like the new place to go for training now. I've done a few of their courses on Sentinel and other tools and it reminds me a lot of their old school cert training. I had good and bad experiences with certification tests. You need to check the reviews for your specific exam.
Additionally, there are AWS partners which have to have a certain % of their workforce certified. So that's one thing to consider.
[0] https://cloudonaut.io/5-good-reasons-not-to-get-aws-certifie...
If you want to learn Cloud, definitely go ahead with Azure certifications.
If you are expecting to get hired because of certifications, that may be hoping for less than 5 percentile outcome.
Certifications do provide a defined goal and courses to get started.