Learning AWS: Why Doing AWS Certification Is a Big Mistake
Hey Hey,
Happy Weekend! Here in Australia, we are celebrating the Easter Weekend. This is the first big break that we get after the hangover of the new year! Hope you have a break too.
The break also gives you an opportunity to pause and reflect on how you are going. This article is also a reflection of my experience and it will give you food for thought if you are doing AWS certification.
Before I begin, I am grateful to all the new subscribers for clicking the subscribe button. You can click too if you have not done already:
Let’s Dive In
In the current scenario to learn about AWS, AWS certification is a logical or intuitive thing to do. But as with many things in nature, the logical or intuitive can trip you.
Here are three reasons why certification does not help:
Jack of All, Master of None
The certification makes you learn about the many AWS services.
But on the job, you do not need to know so many services. Most software companies use only a few services in their architecture.
What that means is learning about so many services is unnecessary.
Look ma - clean hands
You get hundreds of practice quizzes that can help you crack the exam.
What that means is you do not tinker with different services and patterns.
You do not build any meaningful projects that will help you on the job.
The complexity of requirements on the job is far more than most practice exams you can do.
So unless you build something on your own, most of the concepts that you tried so hard to understand will disappear into the ether.
Mile Wide And Inch Deep
You come across a plethora of services, but your understanding of each service remains limited as you are spreading yourself too thin.
On the job, it is more about working with one service at a time rather than knowing about so many concepts at the same time.
You re-read the documentation so many times to solve one problem. But getting that certification does not give you the practice of reading the docs.
Takeaways
To really learn about AWS, you do not need to do the certification. What you need to learn is:
Cloud Computing Concepts
Understand few services in-depth - EC2, Lambda, S3, Dynamo DB, IAM
Solve a real-world problem using some of these services
Add that experience to your resume
This approach will give you a far better understanding and preparation for an actual job than learning about a hundred services in AWS.
Keep in mind, these are the initial steps to learning AWS. You need to continue learning even on the job for continuous improvement and development.
Few Good Reads
Thank you again to all my new and existing subscribers!
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