Recently, a chance meeting with a friend of mine has spurred me on to commit a few months to become an AWS certified cloud practitioner. Often I see AWS, IaaS/PaaS etc in job advertisements, along with the other laundry list of wants from job recruitment agencies, I have decided to investigate a little bit more. Whilst I am currently continuing to work on personal projects to make myself more job-ready as a junior developer, a fantastic opportunity appeared and I decided to investigate further whether I would pursue it or not; whether to learn about networking, cloud computing and to become AWS Certified. Sure, I subscribe to Amazon Prime for the goods and video on demand, but that’s about as far as my relationship has gone with Amazon so far! It turns out that they’ve created an empire in cloud services over the last 15 years and it’s a fully-developed, thriving industry focused on innovation that impacts several other industries — cloud computing is very cutting edge and due to its dynamism, pretty much impacting all aspects of IT in organisations and companies. It is disruptive and in turn exciting, in my humble opinion. Also, it turns out that there are AWS meetups internationally where engaged industry professionals discuss the latest and most pressing issues of the moment.

I recalled that a good friend of mine was a ‘Solutions Architect’ and recalled that was some job title related to AWS. It turned out that I was correct! A computer science and information systems grad, he had begun as a software engineer but had developed his career focusing on cloud computing for the last number of years in a dynamic and interesting career path. After further discussions, he let me know that these skills were complementary to the web developer path that I am following, but also highly in demand and I could definitely forge a career in cloud computing if I wanted to, just like he had some years ago. Cloud computing has become an awfully important factor in the global IT industry, with 2019 reports showing that the worldwide public cloud services market, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), grew 26.0% year over year in 2019 with revenues totalling $233.4 billion, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker.¹ The reliance on cloud computing has only increased in 2020 with the advent of the global pandemic and more and more businesses have been getting on board with, higher use of cloud computing and less reliance on traditional data centres often yields higher company revenue.²

I have just finished week 6 of the 12-week AWS re/start course offered by Amazon and locally the Yapang Initiative in Australia.³ In order to help people launch careers in the cloud, the course piloted in the UK in 2017 and is now being offered globally, where Amazon has paired up with various local training providers and I’m very happy to be a part of it.⁴ The first 6 weeks have been jam-packed with lots of content from a fundamental basis of how computers to servers to subnets, security and more. In previous studies, I have touched upon Linux and Bash Scripting and now, having the opportunity to use these in practice for real-world purposes have strengthened my core understanding of the topic. As well as learning such things as the OSI Model (The OSI model describes seven layers that computer systems use to communicate over a network) as well as the importance of understanding binary numbers (1011 0011) in order to calculate setting up subnet masks and the importance of security and the AWS services that are used to protect customers and clients (AWS Security Groups, IAM, CloudTrail, Config etc). By gaining a deeper knowledge of Information Technology by learning about AWS and cloud computing, I feel much better equipped when I enter the workforce and begin my first job in the sector.

In a recent article, Max Frenzel noted that all too often, everyone says that they are a fast learner — yet it probably is not the case and people just say that because that’s what they believe others want to hear.⁵ Like Max, I would also call myself a slow learner in relation to certain subjects and there is nothing wrong with that! In his article, Max recalls the slow, deliberate training of his Kendo club’s sensei who taught movement techniques for the first several months only focused on deeper moving techniques which would build their fundamental core skills before even touching shinai⁶ which led to many becoming frustrated and dropping out of the club. It seemed to be a style that very much was in tune with his sync with his learning method.

I also recognise that I might be a slow learner and take more time to pick things up, but I have grown to become okay with it. I recall that most of my time at university was spent under various trees on campus reading and writing, whereas others, who might have been more intelligent or quicker to pick up new concepts probably had a fuller social life and so on. But I just put in the hard work, spent a long time and got there in the end. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say. I can’t help but think that Mr Miyagi was on to something.

Mr Miyagi in the Karate Kid (1984)

As Anonymous⁷ once said, “Excuses will always be there for you. Opportunity won’t.” When looking at participating in this AWS course, I started to wonder whether it would be a huge deviation from my journey to become a developer and be a waste of my time and effort, or whether it would actually be a complementary skill set that would enable me to further understand the IT industry. It turns out that is the case and so much more. Not only am I learning more and more fundamentally about computers, networking and computer science fundamentals, but it is also opening up a new pathway for me to pursue if I wish. I feel like with the completion of this course I may either continue the path of a developer with the ancillary skills of cloud computing and networking, or I may follow the cloud computing path and have beneficiary knowledge and skills in developing, where both have garnered me a broader understanding of the IT field that I will be entering.

Photo by Greg Garnhart on Unsplash

¹ idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS46780320 ² reseller.co.nz/article/688097/why-lagging-b.. ³ aws.amazon.com/training/restart ⁴ blog.aboutamazon.com.au/aws-re-start-progra.. ⁵ betterhumans.pub/the-dubious-trait-of-being.. ⁶ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinai ⁷ Anonymous says a lot!