If you want to know how we build cloud architects, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of GoCloud Architects. And we're an
organization dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing careers. I've
been working in technology for over 25 years, and I've been helping others get their first
tech job or get promoted in tech for over two decades now. And today, we're going to
talk about how we build cloud architects at GoCloud Architects.
See, we have a process. Becoming a cloud architect is a fantastic career with near limitless
career opportunity. And there are massive shortages of capable, qualified cloud computing
professionals, especially cloud architects. Yet for new people, it's near impossible to
get hired. But it doesn't have to be. Our students come with us, we train them, and
in about four months, they're typically hired. So we're going to tell you how we do this.
First and foremost, it begins with a plan. If you want to get to your destination, you
have to know your starting point and your destination point and all that becomes with
the plan. So we help our students build the plan to go from where they're at now, to where
their goal is. And we have to take into consideration their past experience, their work experience,
their lack of experience, whatever certifications they have and their goal career. And we help
them do that.
And because we have been architects ourselves, we know how to guide people for cloud architect
positions because the jobs we've already had. As architects, we know how to guide architects.
So that's part one is the plan. But we've got to train the architect, so how do we do
it? For us, we know that video on demand is helpful and it's part of the solution, but
it's not the whole solution. You just can't become a professional by watching videos.
So we have two live sessions per week, just like our real class. But we do it over Zoom,
but we make these practical sessions. In fact, when we have these sessions, here's what we
do. We have the students do a mock interview of an executive, just like they would in the
real career. They will ask the business, the legal, the technical, the regulatory requirements,
our goals, and then all of our students together will design a cloud solution.
And that cloud solution we've been wanting to solve business problems. Our students will
design it from the requirements. They will design it for two possible clouds, and they
will present it back to us, just like a real cloud architect. So that's live training and
our students get at least 100 hours of that in our program of live training. Live training
gives us an opportunity to evaluate our students, see their strengths and weaknesses, and make
any corrections as necessary. So, that's how we do what we do for the live instruction.
That's part of it.
The next part of it is we still do use prerecorded videos, because even though we have live sessions
on Mondays and Fridays, there's five other days during the week, and time when we're
not teaching and we still want our students studying. So this is where we use prerecorded
videos. And videos alone provide a good opportunity to fill in the gaps. We work on business acumen.
We work on cloud technologies, network technologies, all the things related to technical and non-technical
skills our students may need. And we do these via on demand videos, but videos alone aren't
enough. You still have to put into action. You need that hands-on element.
So we have our students do homework assignments, and they submit them to us in our slack group.
And again, we provide feedback, because we have to make sure that at all times our students
are knowledgeable and they're doing things correctly. Because practice makes permanent,
it does not make perfect. What if you've done the same thing wrong for 10 years, guess what?
You know how to do it wrong. So we want to make sure our students know exactly what to
do. And with that, we give them assignments and they submit them to our slack channel
and we give them feedback.
Feedback is critical part of the process. And if you're watching videos as one of our
students and you're lost, no worries. You just submit a request to the slack channel
and we will answer it. Either one of our students will answer it, or we will. Because we built
a community to make sure that everyone gets through this process, and learns everything
they need to, to get cloud architect hired because it's possible. So, that gives us part
of it. But you see, it's still not enough.
You have to understand that the cloud architect is a cross between a business executive and
an engineer. And because the cloud architect or the solutions architect is a customer-facing
role. And part of those customers are going to be the C-level executives, meaning the
CEO, the CIO, the CTO, the COO, CFO, that kind of thing. We teach our students how to
be CXO relevant, because if you can't get the requirements or the strategy from the
CEO and the CFO and the CIO and the CTO, you're not going to know what they want.
And if you don't know what they want, you can't design the system to them. And even
if you could design the perfect solution, if you couldn't communicate the solution to
the decision makers, they would never want the solution anyway. So that is a critical
part of our training program, the business acumen. Now we also have to teach presentation
skills, because as a cloud architect, you're going to be doing a lot of presentation skills.
We have to teach a cloud architect writing skills, because it's absolutely critical.
How else could you do these things, if you're not trained? These are not natural skills.
These are business executive writing skills, married with technical skills. So we teach
that.
Now, we have to build competency. How do we build competency? We have to teach you the
network and the data center, because the cloud is just a network and a data center that's
been virtualized. And you're coming from the network and the data center to the cloud.
So if you're going to meet with a client and ask them, what are your systems that you want
to take to the cloud and how we get them there? You have to know what they are. So, this is
where we really get heavy into technical competency.
First and foremost, to make sure you've got hands on experience, the kind of experience
the employers care about. We make you do a set of labs. Now these are not basic labs.
These are not eCourse labs. These are network labs and data center labs. What are these
labs? We have you work with server virtualization, that's infrastructure. That's the basic enabling
technology of the cloud. Then we have you set up containers. That is the second computing
platform on the cloud. Then we have you work with Linux machines, because it's the primary
operating system in the cloud. Some of our students do some Cisco networking on our Cisco
networking simulators. Our students build the Linux, Apache, my SQL, PHP Web stack cause
it's extremely common. Our students build Linux firewalls, Linux VPN servers. They set
up windows active directory to learn IAM. Our students set up Samba shares, NFS shares,
our students learn it all.
And then our students build a cloud, I mean it, a real cloud. Why do we build the cloud?
Because after you build a cloud, you know the cloud, and everything else is silly easy,
but that's not the only reason. So we've got to perfect your resume and resume review is
part of our process. We teach you what should be on your resume, what shouldn't be on your
resume, and the ways to get it viewed, as well as the way as the hiring manager likes
it. So that's part of the process, but what does the hiring manager going to love to see
on that resume? Experience, and what kind of experience are you going to have?
All of the things that employers care about, server virtualization, containers, Linux,
firewalls, VPN. So you've got the security hardware and their active directory for IAM.
Now you've built a cloud. So one of the things that employers desire are highly motivated,
highly enthusiastic people that are willing to go above and beyond. So, when someone else
has on their resume, they set up an EC2 instance, and you've built a cloud, first, who do you
think they hire? But who shows motivation, energy, and enthusiasm, things that employers
absolutely desire. So now you know most of the are parts of our system, but now that
you know the technical competency and we've taught business acumen, we've taught presentation
skills, we've taught leadership skills. We've taught architecture skills, which is the critical
component. There's still more we need to do.
We teach about 30 hours of AWS skills. And why do we focus on AWS skills? Look, it's
the dominant clouds. We want to make sure that you've got some form of single vendor
knowledge at some degree of depth. All of our students, by the time they're finished,
complete a Certified Solution Architect Professional exam. We view that as the minimum level for
entry into the cloud world. It used to be the Certified Solution Architect Associate
was enough. It is if you've got experience, but then again, if you've got experience,
you don't need any certifications. But without experience, the Certified Solution Architect
Professional, plus everything else we've talked about as part of our package. So we make sure
that our students get a lot of training there, as well as networking and security.
And then after that, now it's getting ready to start working for your job. So what do
we do? We spend a lot of time teaching you how to interview. Without the perfect interview,
you might not be hired. So we make sure you interview, and we have to teach you to deliver
the perfect interview, especially in your first cloud job. See, the reason this is so
important and it's so much part of our system, is when it's your first job, we need to make
you look better than the competition. See, when we evaluate people as hiring managers,
it's not 100%, this person's worked 20 years. It's 50% of their score when we evaluate them
as related to their technical competency, and 50% is related to soft skills, emotional
intelligence, empathy, enthusiasm, attitude, that kind of thing. So we work to get a 50
out of 50 there. So then we can get maybe a 35 or a 40 out of 50 on technical competency.
That gives us an 85 to 90, which blows away the competition, and makes it easy for our
people to get hired.
It makes you more desirable, which makes you get hired. It makes you more desirable, so
employers are willing to look over gaps in expertise. It makes you more desirable, which
equals a higher salary, because people want you more; they're willing to pay you more.
Now the last part of our process is to teach you how to negotiate a higher salary. See,
negotiation is pretty important in business. And as a cloud architect, you're going to
be negotiating deals too. Why not learn how to negotiate a higher salary? So we give you
a lot of information on how to negotiate a higher salary, because we need to teach negotiation,
because it's a critical cloud architect skill.
Now I hope you've understood what goes into our cloud architect career development program,
or how we train cloud architects. Thank you so much for watching this video, and I look
forward to seeing you very soon.