A few weeks ago I sat and passed the AWS SysOps Associate exam, rounding out the Associate tier of certifications. For me, at least, SysOps was the easiest , of the three – partially because I took it on the back of of the Developers Associate exam and took advantage of the overlap, but also partially because I’d spent so long as a sys admin, so I only needed to learn the AWS services, not the principles involved.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about having 3 certs, to be honest. The combination of working in the cloud while studying for certification exams has definitely been beneficial. For me, at least, they really go hand in hand. What I’m learning while studying helps me be more effective at work, and what I’m learning while on the job is making it easier to pass the exams. So for that reason, continuing down the certification path make sense, particularly while my employer is paying for the exams. It also seems to benefit my employer in some way as an AWS partner, although I’m not sure how exactly They sure are happy when a new cert shows up in the partner portal, though.
On the other hand, though, I’m well aware that there’s a certain somewhat nebulous cutoff where having certs is no longer beneficial, and starts to brand you as someone focused on exams, rather than actually being experienced. My hope is that all my previous experience, along with my current role, helps offset that. The structure of the certification path is very helpful for me gaining more knowledge about the tools I’m working with every day, particularly when I’m butting up against the limitations of various services. Sure, I absolutely could get that information without studying for a certification. But I also know there are services I wouldn’t have looked at very much until I needed to use them, and by studying for the exam, I’ve significantly shortened the time needed to get up to speed to use the service, and that time is valuable.
So, what now? My plan had been to get the Solutions Architect Professional cert, and then the Security specialty cert. SA Pro is probably a good idea sometime in the next year, as a minimum, so it re-ups my SA Assoc. But….I’m pulled in a few other directions as well. Looking at job descriptions, I think I’m missing two, possibly three big skills – Terraform, Kubernetes, and other clouds.
Of those, Terraform is probably the most tempting to work on. I do now have a fair bit of IaC experience, but it’s all using AWS CDK. That’s great for my current job, because we’re almost all AWS, but most other places have adopted Terraform as their IaC, and I suspect potential employers will pass me over for not checking the Terraform box. That’s also a downside to focusing on Terraform, though – it feels like an alert to my employers that I’m looking elsewhere, because it’s not relevant to my current job.
Kubernetes is the next tempting option. Again, lots of folks using that in production, and I’d be wise to at least be knowledgeable about it. I’ve used it a bit in the past – a few projects using minikube, and helping support gitlab on GKE. I find K8s VERY confusing, though. Part of me thinks that’s a good reason to try and steer away from it. Part of me thinks studying for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam will force me to try and understand it, though, and that might be worthwhile. It’s an expensive exam, though, and there aren’t a lot of inexpensive study materials available.
I also feel like I should demonstrate the ability to use other cloud providers. The most obvious one is Azure – there are LOTS of companies using Azure, and with MS’s push to get rid of on-prem AD and Exchange, that’s not going away any time soon. But much like I tried hard to not be an MS-centric sysadmin, I don’t think I want to be an Azure-centric cloud engineer (or whatever title is being used atm). I’m just not a fan of the Microsoft way of doing things. I’m not anti-MS per se, it’s a perfectly valid way to configure things, it’s just not a world I like being in. Maybe that’s a bad move, and will limit my future options, but there are so many places that need cloud knowledgeable folks, I think I might have the space to avoid Azure for the most part. Of the other clouds, I don’t know which might be worth focusing on. Google seems like a possibility, but it’s obvious they haven’t invested as heavily there, and I’m not sure that’s worth my time when there are other providers starting to get heavier usage.
So….I don’t know. I’m leaning towards continuing with AWS for the time being, and working on Terraform alongside, but waiting to certify until AWS is done. That will put me in a good place when I’m ready to start looking for my next role, without putting a big neon sign on me that I’m leaving. Plus, I’m in a good spot to keep working on AWS, because the hand-in-hand of experience + studying is still in effect, and I should take advantage of that.
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