
Ask HN: Did obtaining an AWS Solutions Architect certification help you? - pachico
And if it did, was it because of what you learned during the training or because of the certification itself?
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pickle-wizard
I hold the AWS Solution Architect Associate certification. I had a lot of fun
studying for the exam, and learned a lot.

However it did not help me one bit in looking for a job. Everyone wanted
someone with experience.

My certification expires in November and I'm not going to renew it. I've
decided that I'm going to work on getting an advanced VMware certification.
There is still a lot of on prem out there, and I have 15 years of experience
with VMware. So figure I should leverage that.

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zxcvbn4038
Most certifications are a scam in my opinion - if your employer wants you to
get one and is paying for it then ok, but I would never spend my own money on
a certification. A couple years hands on in an AWS environment and you’ll be
an old pro.

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1123581321
Typically you will gain deep, rather than broad, AWS experience from your job
because only certain stacks and configurations are used repeatedly.

Self-study and experimentation are viable routes to augment professional
experience but some prefer to learn from curricula.

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jqpabc123
In general, the value of any certification is inversely proportional to how
many are awarded. If they are easy to get and lots of people have one (think
liberal arts diploma), they're not worth much.

For comparison purposes, you might look at other similar proprietary technical
certifications that have been in the marketplace longer --- for example, RHCE
or MCSE (now defunct).

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pachico
Not really sure about that. I know for a fact that many companies ask about
just to be able to bypass the interview part about AWS.

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Solstinox
The question, if you have the luxury of asking it, is do you want to sign away
a big chunk of your life to one of these companies?

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pachico
Can you elaborate? Why a big chunk of your life?

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ChrisBode
People often ask me if gaining a certification like the AWS Certified
Solutions Architect Associate is enough to get them a job. The short answer is
that an AWS certification alone will not get you a job. There are several
other attributes that play an essential part in kick-starting your AWS career.
I think it’s also fair to say that AWS certifications are almost
prerequisites, rather than differentiators today. Unless you have several AWS
certifications, this is usually the case. Everyone seems to have their
Solutions Architect Associate certification so that’s not going to make you
stand out when applying for an AWS Solution Architect job.

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dangus
I got mine with very little studying, I happened to already be working within
a lot of AWS tooling and knew some general cloud architecture concepts, so in
my case it was more of a validation tool.

So far it’s hard to tell if it has helped with anything. I might have gotten a
look for an interview with it. But that’s hard to say, companies don’t usually
tell you what resume items made them interested.

I would imagine it would make sense to get one if you want to work for Amazon,
or maybe another big company that likes certifications. I don’t know that it
would help elsewhere.

Try to get your company to pay for it!

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pachico
What level was it?

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dangus
I got associate and then professional a couple months later. I studied for
neither beyond maybe an hour of looking at what the question formats looked
like.

I figured that it was a better use of time to study only if I failed, and then
re-take, since there’s no punishment for failure other than cost.

I barely passed professional, but I passed. Associate felt easy for me.

I have about 2-3 years experience working just about 100% within AWS for my
job. I would think that both exams would be way harder and require study
without so much practical experience.

Maybe an AWS certification could help you if you lack experience in your
resume and want to land a cloud engineering role.

Also, if you’re paying yourself, as of a few months ago it seems like Amazon
gives you a 50% discount code for your next exam every time you take an exam.
In other words, only the first exam is full price. I couldn’t guarantee that
this offer sticks around or anything.

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raffraffraff
Do you use Terraform? I'm just wondering because I interact with AWS 90%
(possibly more) via Terraform. I rarely use the AWS Console and have never
looked at Cloudformation or eksctl. I wonder if that's gonna make the
certification more difficult for me...

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dangus
Yes I do the same! Almost entirely through Terraform.

In no way does that hurt your knowledge! By doing everything in code you
probably understand a lot more to begin with, since you don’t rely on some of
the UI crutches and defaults.

Honestly I check the Terraform documentation before I even bother with AWS
docs 99% of the time.

The system architect questions are definitely more high level architecture
questions that revolve around understanding the AWS products and what trade-
offs you make by choosing one of the the other.

Like any other multiple choice test, much of passing the test revolves around
general test taking strategies (e.g. reading carefully and eliminating wrong
answers)

I’m sure you’ll get the gist of it from the example questions that are out
there (Amazon also has a few for free).

Understanding a few things about less commonly encountered products like
Kinesis could help, too.

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sloaken
I find certificates help when the person hiring you does not know enough about
the topic. As such they use your certificate as a crutch to confirm you know
something about the topic. It will also be used by recruiters to sell you,
once again to people who do not understand the tech enough to properly
evaluate you.

A certification might also get your resume past HR and to the hiring manager.

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finaliteration
I don’t have the Solutions Architect certification but I do have the AWS
Certified Developer certification. I learned quite a bit during the training
and it did help me get a job, though it’s hard to quantify how much as I’ve
also been in IT/IS for nearly 15 years which includes 10 years of software
development experience. I also get contacted fairly regularly by recruiters
who see I have the certification listed on LinkedIn.

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dave_sid
Yeah it helped me. I don’t think it really helped me get a job. I think my CV
and past experience was taken far more into account than any certifications I
listed. However, it helped me to become familiar with some of the aspects of
AWS that I didn’t use in my day to day job and also to solidify my
understanding of some other areas. I don’t regret studying and passing it
especially as it didn’t cost much.

