Cloud Certifications are not really essential anymore!

Hey everyone,

This post was inspired by conversations I had with my Tokopedia colleagues at a Japanese restaurant in Blok-M while we were enjoying dinner together. It was a particularly enjoyable day since it was Friday and we had just visited Gojek's office to set up a workspace. We wanted to explore and try out the game room, various meeting rooms, and other facilities. It was an exciting day out, just before the weekend. Thanks pengyou!

And without further ado, I was taking notes about my thoughts at that time. Yes, it is well-recognised that to be an expert in this digital era requires sophisticated and up-to-date skillsets by taking certifications. For instance, a network expert, they need to take a cisco CCNA as fundamental knowledge standard, or to be a cloud expert need to take CP (Cloud Practitioner), DevOps, AWS or GCP or Azure solution architect associate or professional more more and more certifications. Some people think they are a necessity, some people also mentioned that they are a good addition for skillsets. Yes, I know, it is good. But, I would say that, those are not essential things anymore.

I know, I know. This is gonna be a sensitive topic for some people who are dedicated on achieving this spectrum, however please don't be salty first ❌, we might need to think differently and I want to share a little bit story and explaining the tradeoffs ✅.

Chill everyone. Stay calm, Don't hate me~

The starting point

When I was in college in 2018, that was my second year and I have almost spent my whole time to fix my old-fashioned laptop that is limited due to its specification, Lenovo X230. This laptop is built differently 😹, so I was still using it for almost 8 freaking years since its release date on April 2011. Even if it is not well-maintained, it was worked like a charm still, the only thing I remember was just replacing the ONE and ONLY slot of disk to SSD from a former disktype: HDD. And due to my financial stability at that time, I only have a budget for 1 slot of 128 GB kingston SSD.

This limitation, however, I need to take care of it very carefully. At the first time, I had installed windows as an operating system, however due to its natural pre-installed softwares and dependencies, the baseline disk of windows was occupied for almost 60% even before installing my personal workstations, e.g. Offices, projects, android studio, VHDL, many things related to my computer practicums. That is way too painful, and I need to think harder to make my laptop handle it without worrying to destroy my tiny disk 🙈.

The first thing I have tried was searching to google. More and more research until I can sum up my key takeaway... Linux. Why didn't I try linux? It turns out Linux has managed the disk size very efficiently as the same set quality of functions as windows.

After overthinking it for almost 1 day, I decided to use Linux Ubuntu 16.04 as Operating System for my tiny laptop. It was soo weird, but it brought me to the gate of real Computing world. When it comes to software installation, Linux is way too hard compared to windows. Therefore, it took me a while to understand the way of linux works at every aspect. And from understanding linux for almost 2 years,

I am getting used to it...

For...

11 out of 100.

However, so many things need to be installed, I have had a limitation to buy a brand-new SSD. My tiny laptop was eventually giving up. And I need to distribute my work to a new laptop, as soon as possible, until I desperately opened google to do more research again.

It turns out opened my gate to the world of Cloud Computing, as by hosting our work to the virtual machine, we can do that flexibly, elasticly. My gaze was focused on AWS (Amazon Web Services) as my first cloud service provider, and the most convenient ones at that time. I got dozens of education credits to know more about it. Thanks AWS.

As the first leg of the journey, I learned AWS by evaluating their cloud products, read all pricings, and calculate my workloads manually, for 1 year in 2019 to 2020. In addition, the documentations gave me some sort of new knowledge about cloud computing best practices: A well-architected pillar framework. I amased of their standard operating procedure, it is just like an OpenStack cloud orchestration (Heat) as opensource Infrastructure level as a service. I learned openstack during my research intern in NTUST Taiwan, telco on-prem 5G, and IoT over Kubernetes but it was cancelled due to covid 😆. And the most important thing is the nurturing culture as their mission in creating demand in southeast asia during that time was unforgettable. There are like AWS Invent which was held at every year-end, this event was very helpful to know more about a brand-new update from AWS cloud and I had explored it, and it generated 25 USD credits for me after filling one constructive feedback and can be stacked 5 times. Not only in AWS invent, credit was also easily to get from annual surveys for 100 USD or something, and also I have applied my company to use AWS activate, and got so much credits like almost 2000 USD equivalent credits. As I am still learning about cloud computing while doing my first product inventions (https://submit-manuscript.org and https://iotnesia.id) I was contacted by one of AWS Demand Generation Representatives (Malaysia): Mr. Ariff Ridzuan in 2020. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariffridzuan)

I remember that I am really into a certification, instead of deepen my hands-on knowledge about cloud computing in AWS.

And even, an AWS representative said this to me.

At some points, I was only spinning around and talked about certification-certification-certification-hell without any conclusion about my real problem: lacks of AWS and cloud knowledge to build my IoT app constructively. And in the end, something that is really help me is not a certification AT ALL, but this.

Credits was really super duper freaking helpful to initiate and boost my research in cloud computing. I didn't even think about the certification anymore, since 3000 USD Credits in my account adequately provides my needs to explore all the things within the AWS cloud, I have mastered it for only 1 year and got so much experiences. I was just relying on a 3D: Determination, Dedicated and Discipline, I can build my high-scale digital infrastructure faster than ever.

He was a good person. Thanks Mr. Ariff.

Engineer Mindset has been changed

I'm not overly skeptical, just a bit. However, my understanding of the cloud computing spectrum differs considerably from that of others. This has caused a dramatic shift in my mindset. Nowadays, I feel that the cloud certification market is oversaturated, almost to the point of plus-plus-plus excess. The increasing number of certified professionals has led to a saturated market with high competition for cloud-related jobs.

Nonetheless, it's possible to find entire sets of questions and answers available for exam practice. This potentially can be considered as cheating, and may create bias against the true achievers in the cloud computing field. It can cause those who gained their certification through diligent study and practical application to be undervalued, as it muddies the distinction between those who genuinely understand the material and those who simply memorised the answers. Where is the professionalism? The true manpower quality?

In such a scenario, merely giving a certification may not proper a significant advantage. So, where does that leave personal value?

Oversaturated = more supply = decreased gaji alias low wages = decreased quality.

Not a slippery slopes. But it make sense, doesn't it? It ended up to the situation where certification is not special anymore, yes it adds up the value, but it won't help much too for the role sustainability. Have you ever heard about AI that can take an exam? What is the difference between AI and human then?

I may not be as brilliant as Albert Einstein, but I love to think differently, similar to Isaac Newton who adopted a slightly philosophical thinking approach. Doing so helps me build and realise my unique value, enabling me to fill my own 'glass'.

I changed my user perspective from:

to become:

Some may ask, Why not both?

• Too much cost
• Time consuming

As engineer, we only need a widely scope training playground to explore cloud computing in real life application, rather than recycling our mind to the certification hell situation to showcase it to the world. By doing so, we can build more ideas of digital products and their under-the-hood engineering processes from helicopter-view. It would produce more takeaways at the growth of every aspect of computer and engineering.

Final Thoughts

You will get my points.

From my perspective, Cloud Certification, while valuable, isn't the be-all and end-all in tech spectrum. Yes, It'd be considered good for learning path, I agree. Though it helps validate our skills and offers structured learning, this certification is becoming oversaturated. The increasing number of certified professionals not only devalues these credentials but impacts wages due to higher supply than demand. The availability of entire sets of practice exam questions and answers can also create bias against genuine achievers in this field. This scenario can potentially lead into reduced overall quality in Cloud Computing roles area. Forget about certification when we are thinking about "showcasing" to seek attention from others, but do it when you really wanted the knowledge to your own business. Nevertheless, by thinking differently in this challenging landscape, we have the opportunity to build and realise our unique individual value, irrespective of conventional certifications.

I appreciate for your visit this dumpsters site😂. Cheers~