We hire skilled AWS Solutions Architects, not just paper-certified ones

Charles walks into an in-person interview looking to get a solutions architect position. He’s been studying for months prior to this day — he even earned the AWS Certified Solutions Architect certification, which is what got his foot in the door.

Certifications aren’t worth much unless you can walk the walk

This $10 certification prep course I flew through in a couple of weeks is really paying off! He thinks in his head as he walks towards a room with a few people ready to test his knowledge and cultural fit.

They shake hands, introduce themselves, and then get down to business.

One of the lead architects asks:

Explain what makes these subnets (points to a white board) public, and what makes these subnets private.

Charles responds:

The public subnets are attached to an Internet Gateway which makes them publicly accessible through a public IP address, while the private subnets are not attached to an IGW and therefore cannot be publicly accessed.

Lead architect:

What does that mean: “it is attached to an IGW?” and how does traffic flow to and from the public internet to our resources inside of the public subnets?

Charles:

Hesitates — provides incomplete thoughts — doesn’t really answer the question, but instead goes back to using abstract concepts

This is a scenario I personally witnessed some time ago. It’s also an example of a scenario that our business customers encounter on a regular basis when hiring Solutions Architects.

There were other complicated questions involved in the same interview that resulted in a similar outcome.

The candidate looked great on paper because recruiters had helped make his resume pop. He was also able to give great answers to the pre-screen phone interview. The reason for that is because he had been recently studying for AWS Certification exams and so he was able to answer conceptual questions well.

However, as soon as we tried peeling back layers of abstraction, Charles (a fictitious name, in case you are wondering) fell apart. As soon as we asked him to implement certain architectures with gotchas you’d only know about if you’d used the services before, he went back to abstract concepts.

We asked him how he trained for his certifications, and that’s when it clicked. He bought a course on sale for $10, flew through the video material, and then took a practice exam a few times until he felt ready. He took the certification exam a few days later and passed.

He was now a paper-certified AWS Solutions Architect. Not a skilled Solutions Architect.

Let’s be real

Let me clarify something real quick — we’ve trained many thousands of certified Solutions Architects at Linux Academy and we’re now training people to pass the CompTIA Security+ at Cybr, so we believe that certifications have significant importance when they are backed by practical skills.

I’m not saying that they aren’t worth anything.

What I’m saying is that certifications are not worth much unless you can also apply what you are learning.

Watching videos and taking notes isn’t enough.

It might help you pass the exam, but if you think that’s the end goal, you are setting yourself up for failure. Big time.

You need to do. You need to jump into the AWS Console and break things. You need to solve broken multi-tier applications. You need to set up highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable applications — and you need to test your architecture as if it were running in production.

Because guess what, this is the type of stuff you will be doing in the real world. Not selecting A, B, C, D, or E. Solving real problems that cost organizations thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of dollars.

You’re not going to learn that only by taking a cheap course you found online that doesn’t give you access to real AWS environments and scenarios. You need access to hands-on labs with real scenarios and problems for you to solve.

This takes more effort and it takes longer than just watching videos, but this is how you make concepts really stick and how you build practical skills.

All of this, I promise you, will go a long way towards solidifying your career in tech.

Good luck, and let me know if I can help you get started.

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