Confessions of a 10x AWS Certified LinkedIn User

I'm done with IT certifications but that doesn't mean you should be.

Sep 19, 2022

My cloud certification journey began in 2017. I read one of those “top paying IT certifications” articles you see from time to time. The salaries listed for the various AWS certifications were significantly higher than my salary as a software engineer at the time, so I wanted to see whether the hype was real or not. So I set out on a journey of obtaining as many certifications as possible as fast as possible. This is partially what my gmail inbox looks like when I search “CertMetrics”:

I’m not going to go over study tips in this post. There are plenty of prep resources elsewhere. You can see above the general order in which I took the exams though. One frustration I experienced through my certification journey was the “moving target”. My goal was to obtain ALL AWS certifications which I think did a couple of times, but AWS kept releasing new certifications! I eventually moved on to obtaining Kubernetes and GCP certifications. You can see many of my certifications (and past certifications) here if you’re interested.

So yeah I’m one of those obnoxious1 10x cloud certified people you see on LinkedIn from time to time (or at least I used to be)!

So was the cloud certification hype real?

For my compensation, the hype was real. After achieving 8 or so AWS certifications (I eventually got 10), my next salary (from switching jobs) increased by 50%. I had multiple comparable offers like this. Additionally, one company I worked for started offering large bonuses (5k-10k) for each additional certification achieved. So getting certified can definitely improve your compensation though it is not guaranteed. You still have to successfully interview!

For my knowledge, the hype was real. Before beginning my AWS certification journey, I worked with AWS everyday while wearing multiple hats (Admin/Dev/DevOps/etc). My team administered a non-production AWS account, and we also worked on our company’s CI/CD tooling. I already knew a lot about AWS! But getting certified forced me to learn more. This is especially true if you take certifications that are less related to your role. For instance, I’ve never worked in a Big Data role so getting the “Big Data” certification (rip2) forced me to learn about Hadoop.

For job hunting, certifications can be helpful. Many companies take cloud certifications very seriously (while some do not care at all). I was actually shocked by how easy some of the interviews were. Interviewers often assumed I was cloud competent so they didn’t really ask technical questions and instead focused on whether I was a cultural fit or not (this is scary btw! As an interviewer don’t do this!). On a side note, cloud consulting companies take certifications more seriously than most anyone else because having certified employees is often part of their brand.

Certifications can streamline an interview process at some companies. Think of it this way. DevOps/Cloud Center of Excellence/Cloud Engineering teams require engineers with broad experience and set of skills. One of the difficulties interviewers face is figuring out how to fairly interview a candidate based on their resume. For instance, a Cloud Center of Excellence team needs people with software engineering, linux administration, cloud knowledge, DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, IT knowledge, etc. Most candidates will only have some of those qualifications. As an interviewer, it is more fair to focus on what the candidate claims to know for these types of roles. When an interviewer sees certifications on a resume, they immediately can ask questions that a certified individual should know. This makes it easier for an interviewer to interview you!

Certifications do not replace experience. I would usually prefer to hire a candidate with experience than a certified candidate with no experience. There’s no replacement for actually using the technology. However, you CAN get experience outside of work by doing personal projects or challenges! I highly recommend the Cloud Resume Challenge if you are in a situation where you have certifications but no real world experience. Not all employers will count this as relevant experience, but some will (and should IMO).

I’m personally “done” with certifications

Regardless of all these benefits, I do not plan to renew most of my cloud certifications. Why? Keep reading.

Recertification sucks. Since I achieved most of my certifications within a few months of each other, I basically had to re-certify most of them at around the same time. I did choose to re-certify the AWS Professional exams. The rest I let lapse or am going to let lapse. My GCP Professional Architect certification expired this past month in fact! For me, re-taking an exam every few years that I have already passed in the past (heh) is uninteresting. I would prefer to focus my time on my work and family than taking exams.

I’ve reached diminishing returns. While pursuing more certifications could improve my knowledge, it isn’t likely to improve my compensation. Furthermore, any additional IT knowledge I need, I can simply gain by reading the docs and trying out the tech.

Beware of fraudulently certified people

I have interviewed hundred of candidates throughout my career for software engineering, cloud engineering, DevOps engineering, Cloud Architect etc. Often, I interviewed candidates that fall into one or more of the following buckets:

claim to be certified but can’t prove it
are certified but can’t answer basic cloud questions

Unfortunately, cheating is rampant for certification exams. Cheaters either get someone else to take the exam for them or study “exam dumps” that have exact questions that another test taker copied directly from the exam. Either case can lead to an individual being fraudulently certified.

However, it is pretty easy to identify these people during an interview by asking basic cloud questions. For instance, every AWS certified individual should know the following:

The difference between an AWS region and an availability zone
Be able to simply explain what S3 is
What IAM Roles are used for

A certified individual should know a lot more than these, but if they can’t answer these then that is an indicator that they could possibly be fraudulently certified.

AWS Certifications for an SDE at AWS

So is being AWS certified important for working as a software development engineer at AWS?

Being AWS certified did not directly help me become an SDE at AWS. The interview process for an SDE is focused around problem solving with code, system design, and leadership principles. The interviewers do not assume the candidates know anything about AWS and rightfully so because not every software engineer has experience with AWS!

The knowledge gained from being AWS certified has tremendously benefited me at AWS. The reality is that I was able to onboard and become a (hopefully!) productive member of my team much quicker because of the certifications I achieved. Many teams at Amazon (including mine) leverage AWS services extensively. Services/tools such as CloudFormation, EC2, CDK, DynamoDB are very important to know. I would go as far to say that SDEs at AWS who don’t learn the core services that their team use will struggle to be effective members of their team.

Miscellaneous Confessions

These are fun.

You might be able to pass some exams with “minimal prep”. AWS used to have an “Alexa Certified Skill Builder” exam. A few of my friends and I signed up for it on the first data of its beta. Instead of doing extensive prep for it, we crammed for it the night before and shared notes before taking it.

We all passed.

In reality, the “Alexa Skill Builder” certification could have been called the “Serverless” certification + Alexa. We passed because we used Serverless at work extensively. So you could say that our work experience was the true prep.

I tried doing the same thing with the Machine Learning AWS exam. That didn’t go so well, but fortunately Amazon gives a free retake if you fail a beta exam :D (or at least they did at the time).

Adding a certification badge to your Outlook signature might make people respect you more. Or it might not. I did this after getting my first few certifications, and I feel like I got less pushback whenever asking engineers to tighten up their IAM permissions. However, I also was in a meeting where someone rolled their eyes at this, so some people might find it obnoxious. I guess just know your company culture before adding the signature.

I usually think I failed at the end of every exam. I don’t know how this can be since I usually get pretty good scores. But the moment I hit the “submit” or “end test” button, this moment of dread fills my soul. Did I just waste $300 of my employer’s cash? What if I fail and someone asks me how it went? And speaking of which…

Surveys at the end of exams before scores are shown are HELL. Please stop doing this test administrators! I know people are more likely to take the survey if they can’t see their score without it. However, my heart rate is faster while taking those surveys than during the final minute of Bama’s football game vs the Texas Longhorns a couple weeks go.

This is a joke! Please do not be offended if you are one of these people!

AWS has discontinued the Big Data certification and replaced it with an Analytics exam that covers roughly the same material.