AWS and other certifications for being a DevOps Engineer

[Shammikit]

Hi, I am currently working as a Platforms engineer for a software company. I have been working in this position for about an year now managing the company AWS cloud. From my interests and experiences, I feel the best path for me would be to go forward to become a DevOps engineer. Therefore, I'm thinking of getting a few certifications done.

 

First one I have been thinking of doing is the AWS CCP. However, I have heard from a few places that this can be skipped to an associate level certification. Soo here I am wondering if I can straight away go do the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate exam. I am not seeing the AWS CCP certification as a prerequisite in the website for this SysOps exam either. So is this true, can the CCP can be skipped?

 

Also would like to hear other certifications that could support my path. 

 

Thanks for your input.

 

P.S: I am also thinking of studying for the Azure AZ900 exam after I complete one of the above AWS exams as I would like to get some exposure on Azure as well.

[wasab]

i talk with my manager about certs. he is the head of engineering at my company and he's ex microsoft and a couple of other faangs i think. he told me certifications(aws and cloud) are mostly just marketing and he does not look at them highly. you should also speak with your own manager about this and see if such things are valued at your org. mine isnt so i wont do them. 

[Levent]

Devops guys here who has been actively interviewing for the last couple of months. Nobody once asked me about my certifications.

[Shammikit]

5 hours ago, wasab said:

i talk with my manager about certs. he is the head of engineering at my company and he's ex microsoft and a couple of other faangs i think. he told me certifications(aws and cloud) are mostly just marketing and he does not look at them highly. you should also speak with your own manager about this and see if such things are valued at your org. mine isnt so i wont do them. 

 

5 hours ago, Levent said:

Devops guys here who has been actively interviewing for the last couple of months. Nobody once asked me about my certifications.

 

I'm thinking of switching my job and all the recruitment ads that are local to me asks for at least an associate level certification. As my current job is hardly scratching the surface of Devops stuff I'm guessing I will have to do a couple certs. 

 

 

[tiagojsag]

I find myself in a similar position to yours, and basically my approach has been to prepare for the AWS certifications without actually doing the exam. By going through the different exams AWS has, I can basically use those as predefined growth paths, and then use the learning resources available for the specific path I want and learn from that - basically, I picked a course, searched for it on Udemy, and bought a course for it for €19.99. Time spent watching the videos aside, I feel like this is a pretty cheap growth path, and I can always take the exam later on if I want to switch jobs and having the certification is worth it.

So, in your case, you could prepare for but not take the CCP exam, and then move on to the more focused exams/growth paths. From my experience, there is a lot of overlap between different certificates, so it's not all time wasted.

[Skiiwee29]

As many alluded to, certs are good on paper but do nothing to demonstrate you actually know the material and how to use it in a real world situation. Any hiring manager should have a scenario or 2 prepared during an interview to allow you to demonstrate your proficiencies. Did network engineering for nearly 8 years with zero Cisco certs and was setting up routers, switches, cmts's etc for isps across the country. Conversely, we had a guy who was incredibly book smart and great at taking tests and getting certs, but had zero skills when it came to actually applying or using that knowledge real world. 

[kasugatei]

As someone working a lot with AWS I can tell the following:

- learning for obtaining the certificate WILL NOT teach you how to setup or configure anything. 
- it will teach you about concepts and best practices which is a valuable skill 

Lots of people will use cloud platforms in suboptimal manners (eg. having virtual machines running 24/7 for simple batch jobs instead of serverless code engines or containerized tasks etc)