Are you looking to kick off an amazing cloud architect career? If so this video is for
you. (silence)
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 made
this video in response to a rumor that's been floating around out there in the certification
community. And it's a rumor that's very dangerous and can cause people to spend six months or
nine months studying that will keep them away from the ultimate job they're looking for,
their cloud architect job. And because of this, I wanted to make a discussion on opportunity
cost. Opportunity cost is a term used by business and every business makes their decisions this
way, where they look at if they place an investment of time, people, or money in one location,
and they place their money on time and people in another location, which one is going to
yield the most profitable results? That's what a business does. So if you can invest
$1 million in project one and $1 million in project two, project one nets you $3 million
in a project to net you a half a million dollars, invest a million dollars in the thing that's
going to make sense. Project one, that's going to give you $3 million.
Well, the same thing happens to your career and the same thing should happen to your certification
portfolio. I heard a rumor and it's such a dangerous rumor, I want to address it. I coach
my people and I say, "Look, when we build presentations and we build resumes and we
build certification portfolios for you, what we're trying to do is give you a competitive
advantage." We're trying to make you look better than the average person in a similar
situation so you can get the interview. And then we try and coach people to have enough
depth of knowledge and the perfect interview skills, so they can win at the interview.
But let's talk about making that resume look good, just so you can get the interview in
the first place. And then we'll talk about the rumor that's been perpetuated that can
be very damaging to many people and that's why we're making this video.
So as our rule, if someone does not have experience, they're going to have to build a portfolio
that looks really great. Say for our cloud security architect, they're going to need
to show both the knowledge of the cloud and both the knowledge of security. And a portfolio
to do that might look like a certified solutions architect professional, which shows some moderate
cloud knowledge and say a certified ethical hacker or a CISSP, which is going to show
some great security knowledge. You send a resume like that to your recruiter and it's
for a cloud security architect, and you will get phone calls, because it looks good and
it looks strong. Now combine that with experience, combine that with architecture labs, combine
that with other things on your resume and building a good brand, you will have an amazing
career.
Now here's the dangerous rumor. There has been some certification providers that have
convinced people that in order to pass the certified solutions architect professional,
first they need a cloud practitioner, then you need a certified solutions architect associate.,
Then you need some kind of DevOps associate, then you need a Sysops associate. Now granted
they're selling a lot of training courses, but look at the opportunity cost of your career.
All of these certifications, no matter how simple or not, are going to be very hard to
do. Why? Because the people that make the test work very hard to make the test challenging.
And if you want to pass the DevOps test and you want to pass the Sysops test, it's going
to take you if you do it honestly and you're not using dumps about three months per test,
and that's going to cost you six months.
And the people that are perpetuating the concept that says, "If you study this Sysops and the
DevOps is going to help you a lot with the exam." Well, maybe you'll get two or three
answers right on the Certified Solutions Architect Professional from doing all this DevOps and
Sysops but it costs you six months. Six months that you could have been earning $600 a day.
So don't do that. Instead do the following. If you know you need the certified solutions
architect professional work on that. If you know, for example, you want to work on the
network side or the security side during those six months, learn that specialty skill. So
let's say you wanted to work on cloud security. Do the certified solutions architect professional
and at the same time, start working on the security. See when you start working on the
security certification, it's going to help you a lot with the certified solutions architect
professional. It'll explain to you, I am or AAA, whichever term you like to use, it will
explain security frameworks, it will teach you encryption, it will teach you IPsec, which
is encryption of traffic, but some other things as well.
It'll teach you about firewalls, it'll teach you about VPN concentrators, it will teach
you everything. And then when you have to do these things on the cloud, they're super
easy. So the shortest path to the destination from point A to point B is a straight line.
So we hate to see people take detours on their path because it costs them an opportunity
cost. So let's evaluate this again. If your goal is to pass the certified solution architect
professional, because you need to show that that your cloud hireable, great. Go from the
certified solution architect associate straight to the certified solutions architect professional.
One step, you don't need multiple steps. And for that extra training time that you would
spend doing other associate certifications, which are not that valid to employers, spend
it learning exactly what you need to for your career and you will have an amazing career.
Now there's another reason, I don't like a lot of the associate level certifications.
First, it is the opportunity cost. It takes an incredibly long time to do all of them
and it's not going to benefit you in your career. The second reason I don't like them
is because for us hiring managers, we know the associate level certifications are kind
of like an introduction, like you just about almost have enough information to get started,
but we're going to have to teach you a lot. It's kind of like the kindergarten or first
grade of the cloud architect world. And if you go take four of them and you've gone to
kindergarten four times, it shows that you're great at going to kindergarten. But if we
need someone that's got that college level experience and we're looking for professionals
and we see three to five different associate level certifications, we still think you're
a beginner.
So it's not going to help you in your career and it may even hurt you. So not only did
you lose the opportunity cost, the hiring managers are often going to say, "If this
person wants this and they want to be cloud security, what are they doing in DevOps? What
are they doing in Sysops? Are they confused? Are they mixed up? I want some that's focused
and capable and ready to do that job." So they're going to hire someone with a more
focused resume. So it can hurt you in three ways. It takes your time, it takes your money
and it makes you look unfocused. So if you have a goal and you have a dream, map out
the plan and run as fast as you can for it. And when you get stuck, get help from anyone
that can help you.
That's my advice, that's how we've coached our people to build the best careers and I
produced this video specifically because sometimes the best things that I can do, even for my
students, especially the smart students that want to learn a lot of things, is basically
to teach them to focus on the things that matter the most, be great at everything you
do, and the world will love you, the world will hire you and the world will pay you more,
be the best and stay that way.
Let me tell you about some free services offered by GoCloud Architects. Every Monday and every
Thursday, we have a free webinar. And on this webinar, we teach you everything that's necessary
to get your first cloud architect job. We teach you what employers want, we teach you
the things that should be on your resume, we teach you how to build a certification
portfolio based upon your goals and we teach you what it takes to get hired. We do this
completely for free on Mondays and Thursdays and we spend an hour after our presentation
where we even answer your questions. Now every Tuesday, we have a free cloud architect experience
webinar, and we talk about what it takes to get valid experience that employers will like.
So you can get hired and you can become incredibly cloud competent. Most Wednesdays, not every
Wednesday, but most Wednesdays, we have a live stream on YouTube where you can ask us
any question related to your cloud architect career, and we will answer them for you real
time.
We also have a free AWS certified solution architect associate ebook, I'll leave the
link in the description below. We have a free AWS certified solution and associate e-course,
I'll leave the link in the description below. And our team is getting ready to release an
AWS advanced security book and an AWS advanced networking book and we're going to release
them completely free. We're going to leave the links to these two books in the description
below.
Finally, I want to talk about one last free service that we're offering and it's called
the "Ask Cloud Mike". I'll drop the link to my email. We want to do everything we can
to assist you in your cloud computing careers and we know sometimes you have questions and
you just can't get one on one of our free webinars to ask. So you can email us your
questions and if it's related to cloud architect, career development, we will make a YouTube
video for you or at least we'll try, sometimes we get a lot of requests and we will make
a video and we'll release it on YouTube within a week or two. And that way you can have answers
to your questions on our YouTube channel. I have to say it's such an honor and a privilege
to be part of this cloud architect community, and to be able to present videos to you and
be able to interact with all of you, it's a wonderful experience and I'm so grateful
for the opportunity. I look forward to seeing you in another video very soon.