Cloud skills certification can add zeros to your pay cheque As IT recruiters collectively bemoan the dearth of cloud professionals, the doom-and-gloom predictions that cloud services would result in the death of the IT department now seem nothing short of laughable. The most recent research from industry body the Cloud Industry Forum suggests that cloud computing has achieved …
I reckon my Cyclying Proficiency Certificate is worth more. The ones creaming it in are the centres giving the courses and handing out the certificates.
As if you can't tell I hate certificates, the one mentioned is the only one I have. Any manager who hires or selects candidates based on certificates should be taken out and shot. I could go on but you get the idea.
I have no computer related qualification. Here's why:
1) There was none for machine programming a Deuce computer in 1964
2) There was no or very few computing degrees in 1967. People who liked computing would probably do Maths instead (as the Maths department traditionally ran the card punch room - and all that was hidden behind it).
3) Ditto for Z80 Assembler in 1975 or thereabouts
4) Ditto for practically any other innovation in the IT industry
5) Been using and setting up clouds for sometime. Taught by my peers online. Success at last?
I generally find people who come to me with IT qualifications are very good at what they are qualified in. The problem is that's all they know. A few selected silos without even realising the connections between them. Yet alone how to exploit them.
So I am a dumbass at computing. There is always someone better than me to help fix an issue that tests me. But very few who can see an IT project as a whole. That's helpful in spotting black holes that will screw the whole system while all the bits are claiming success.
That's also why I probably earn less than the average qualified coder/designer/analyst. Not that I would ever want to trade places. You can't price pride, enjoyment and just understanding of the subject. Oh, and sometimes making it work.
I'm like you. We do the 'stuff' that makes all the crap the Dev build actually work.
some people call it 'Systems Integration'
This is something you learn from experince. There are no courses in this. You just have to think in certain ways that are totally baffling to most others. (wizzardy rules ok)
The sad thing about this is that the likes of you and me (and a few others who post here) are getting long in the tooth, have grey hair (if any at all) and are actually looking forward to retirememt. Where are the young whippersnappers who are coming up behind us and want our jobs?
{cue cold wind blowing}
There aren't any and that is a shame.
A friend of mine who retired some 5 years ago is now back at work writing cobol Applications simple because there are very few young people who are any good at it and a sufficiently large carrot was dangled in front of him.
Clouds, here yesterday, gone tomorrow.
Yep we is dinosaurs allright.
There's nothing wrong with certificates as such. If you need your botnet herd looked after properly then wouldn't you rather have someone who's studied his socks off and is now a Certified Botnet Shepherd?
Unfortunately where the model falls down is that nothing in the IT biz stays the same for long. The "getting the right certificate" cycle is longer than the "what's hot this week" cycle and people can't be expected to run looking over their shoulder on a permanent certification treadmill.
Would I rather have someone who's studied his socks off enough to remember the answers to a known(*) pool of multiple choice questions with a pass rate of 60-70% without even having used whatever the cert is for. No I wouldn't I'd rather have demonstrable experience.
(*)Known because after a couple of weeks you can find all the questions and answers online to most certification exams.
Microsoft Certified Cloud Engineers, looks like the late 90s have come back around. :-)
Last time people, Cloud is...
- VMs running on your machines or someone else's
- Easily changeable networking
- Flexible storage
- Flexible provisioning model
- In some cases, magic SaaS that you're told to ignore the inner workings of
Any systems guy who understands all of the underlying technology and can work with whatever automation framework ties it all together is a Cloud Engineer. The main difference with the Cloud in terms of AWS/Azure/whatever public or private cloud is that developers get the chance to run wild on someone else's hardware and without properly sizing/scaling their application. And in the public cloud, developers often don't see the results of a bad architectural decision or a runaway application because of the scale of the back end.
The thing is, the public cloud is pretty cool taken with the right grain of salt. For the most part, Amazon and Microsoft have made sane architectural choices, and provide devs the opportunity to properly build in failover, etc. into the system. The problem is when developers who may or may not get the entire "big system picture" are able to throw up huge production applications with big flaws in their design in the name of agile development. That's when you hear of a startup's web applications falling over because someone decided not to invest in the additional availability zone, etc.
I think the big thing that's coming up next is that systems integration, aka the "make shit work" department will be seen as more important than it is now. Devs are great, sysadmins are great, but the real test is when you slap 17 things that weren't designed to go together into the same space and start grinding out the dependencies. (This is what I do, and it's something that there's no certification for...you need a very good teacher and OJT in the form of a stream of crazy problems to solve.)
"(This is what I do, and it's something that there's no certification for...you need a very good teacher and OJT in the form of a stream of crazy problems to solve.)"...
... and it's fun! I would tell people that I'd do it for free and they would look at me like I'm insane. (Actually, I am and in keeping with the topic at hand, certified no less.) The meanest, nastiest puzzles you'd ever meet but....
Cloud, DevOps, yada, yada, are all attempts at dealing with the complexities on integrated (often with super-glue, duct tape, and a sacrificial goat or three) of these systems. I suppose certifications are especially nice for attempting to translate IT needs into HR/business wants. Gatekeeper and all that. What you really need are jobs completed and a stack of (verified) references. Experience.
I really like the emphasis on lifelong learning.
Borrowing French words doesn't address any of the security holes in what is clearly a Swiss 'fromage' ... Bash and heartbleed are the tip of the iceberg... Exploiting vulnerabilities is already big business and its only going to grow exponentially the more juicy the prize...
Although we can be pretty sure that the CloudFog community took a nasty punch to the stomach following the Edward Snowden revelations, there are still serious shortcomings in the way we develop web apps and services: 1. In the development, testing or 'assumption' phase, and 2. in the underlying tools themselves. Until such a day comes that these 'holes' are better addressed I predict the weather for CloudFog will be cloudy, except for CEO 's / CIO's with fast VC 'Exit' strategies...
But please stand by for more important messages from your local CloudFog representative...
Within the technology "milieu", Pointy haired boss types would be the equivalant of "brosses a chiottes."
Milieu gives it an international flavour and thereby easier to sell to the ExCom crowd.
["Brosses a chiottes" = Extremely low level French term for "Toilet Brushes".]
Sometimes! I was peripherally involved in a guide to Cloud/SaaS for small legal firms. (I was cynical enough not be surprised at how they treat they're paper work being my main qualification). There was then an attempt to role it out across other associations. Sadly I put a hole in that plan by pointing out that generally the legal profession were the only ones who could legitimately have accused terrorists and criminals as customers and not 'aid the authorities' and therefore their requirements were unique.
Training is not the be all and end all, but adding it and proof of certification to real world skills and experience can only add to your value.
I have been in IT a long time and in cloud 8 years and was 1st in the UK to pass CompTIA cloud Essentials exam. Learning and exams doesn't replace experience, nor does experience replace the need to continue to learn !
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