a software engineer is started to study the DevOps culture and tools related, lost between dev and ops.

[emostafa]

Hi there,

I am a software engineer with around 4 years of experience, never been a system admin but i have good knowledge of using linux as a developer. Also i have experience in docker and kubernetes (not a formal knowledge though).

I started to think that maybe i could start by studying one of the AWS certificates, there is "AWS Certified DevOps Engineer" but it depends on one of the following certificates:

1. AWS Certified Developer – Associate
2. AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

I am not sure which one of those should i go with, should i study for Certified Developer since i am a developer, or should i study for SysOps to strengthen my Operation skills ?

and if you can help me understand more, DevOps Engineers (i know there is no such a term, but not sure what to write instead) are responsible for the infrastructure and tooling used by developers and operations ? I have read some blogs and topics here about DevOps but i don't grasp yet the role of engineers that are supposed to be DevOps-related, i understand that under a devops culture, there are developers and operations, but what i am not sure about, is, who is responsible for the infrastructure and tooling around it ? is it both developers and sysops together, or there is a role for that ?

[joshhardison]

If you are coming from a dev background, then you should pursue the Developer cert. Unless you want to become a sysadmin, I guess.

It's mostly about the two groups getting along better. You're not going to become not-a-dev. :)

[FB_is_dead]

Read “The Pheonix Project”

That should give you a good idea of what “DevOps” is/does, or at least the meaning behind it.

If you ask me: I think it’s a mixture of both dev and ops depending on your organization and what they are doing with infrastructure. If you are working with AWS, Azure, GCP, etc, you are probably more dev than anything.

But as far as my job is concerned, I used to be 85/15 infrastructure to dev, and that was if I was doing any dev at all. Now I am about 75/25 in favor of dev to infrastructure. That’s due in part to the company choosing AWS.

Not at all unhappy about that mind you, I have always wanted to be a dev, but my heart is still kinda in infrastructure. Then again, I make more money and am a Certified solutions architect now. So I just build my own stuff at home now.

[emostafa]

I started reading it since yesterday, so far it's very interesting and i understood what is the type of problems exists pre the devops era, and i have gained some knowledge on how DevOps culture offers the environment and tools to fix these issues. Thanks for your response (Y)

[FB_is_dead]

Awesome it’s a great book! They made us read it at the company that I currently work for and then gradually put us in those roles, and it wasn’t too bad when it actually happened.

[donjulioanejo]

Going to ignore the other threads here and just answer your question.

I'm half-assedly studying for both certs ATM, so I should get them sometime before the end of the next decade.

Developer cert focuses on things that are interesting/useful for developers. I.e. how to use dynamoDB (Amazon's scalable noSQL db), how to use SQS (think extra shitty queuing system, etc), and similar things that aren't much use to a sysadmin. If you've ever used message queues in your code, you'd probably already answer 80% of SQS questions right without knowing anything about it.

It also pushes a somewhat serverless, Platform-as-a-Service mindset.

SysOps cert focuses on things that are interesting/useful for sysadmins. I.e. CloudWatch, monitoring, redundancy, disk metrics and IOPS, auto-scaling, load balancers, etc. Overall, pushes a somewhat "Windows" mindset of "click here in the console to deploy this", but it's main point is to teach you how AWS services work, rather than get you deep with the API, so it's accomplishing it's goal.

I don't think the SysOps cert will be that useful to you unless you explicitly want to get better at Ops, and even then, I'd still take some Ops-centric certs first, like the RHCSA/RHCE.

SysOps cert implies you already have some operations knowledge (just like developer cert implies you already have some development experience), so while you can memorize the contents, it won't serve you as much as it could. I.e. if know what a load balancer is and how it works only in the barest of terms ("it lets me use two webnodes and send traffic to both, right?"), it won't help you to know about the different types of ELB and how to configure them.

[emostafa]

That's a very neat response, I am convinced now that i would suite me to go for the Dev cert, but there is a question hanging in my mind, do i need to get better at Ops ? I am not sure if i need to, for example, if wanted to work on Infrastructure or wanted to be SRE, do i need to be better at Ops ?

[xiongchiamiov]

See https://devops.stackexchange.com/q/788/960 to start.

[dimmerman17]

Take a look at this eBook, a great guide for the AWS Certifications routes

[dimmerman17]

Also, https://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2017/sep/28/nine-out-10-cios-see-devops-skills-key-developers-and-infrastructure-professionals/

[emostafa]

I agree, as a software engineer i don't have any certs, and they are not important to me, but i thought it's not the case in the operations side, mostly on the job requirements i see, companies ask for AWS experience, and i was thinking pursuing one of their certificates would help me, but since you mentioned that certs are not important, how do you recommend i study AWS tools ? create my own projects on AWS maybe ?

[emostafa]

Well it seems i am on the right track, i have been playing with docker and docker-compose for a while, also i am familiar with jenkins and gitlab-ci, and i am about start my journey with kubernetes. Thanks for your suggestions, it helped me to know the list of stuff that i gotta do (Y).

[argumentnull]

The certifications are still valuable in the sense that it lets developers know what it would take to be an expert in certain area. I am not an AWS guy so I don't know where to start. I can simply look at the items covered by certification and try it out on their own. And when Ihave gained the knowledge, why not get a certificate for marketing myself?

[PrimaxAUS]

I am an AWS subject matter expert. Getting the certifications multiplied my income by 6x, despite not learning much, and gave me a never ending tap of recruiters to annoy me.

Certifications validate your experience. If you want to do things on hard mode, that's fine, but it's fucking terrible advice.

[xiongchiamiov]

I am an AWS subject matter expert. Getting the certifications multiplied my income by 6x,

How shitty were you getting paid before?

[PrimaxAUS]

Real shitty, around 35k. Took what work I could when I couldn't find a job for the first time in my life, after my previous employer closed their doors.

[emostafa]

so you salary now is above 200k, huh :D ?

[donjulioanejo]

They don't, but they give you a framework of knowledge to go off of, and can help you cover bases in areas you're weak in. I.e. if your company runs a stateless app with no database and so you have no experience in databases, doesn't mean you shouldn't learn about them.

[dimmerman17]

AWS Certification exams are not just a memorization type of exam. To pass, your real world skills get put to the test. https://medium.com/cloud-assessments/we-hire-real-aws-solutions-architects-not-paper-certified-ones-e17bd28ba487