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I found that trying to explain or teach concepts and ideas (even if it's just the concept of the job itself) helps me solidify what I've learned - I also hope that some of my experiences and explanations will help others in this field (or hoping to join this field) - when people end up at AWS or in a tech/cloud job and I feel like a played a small part in it, I find that really rewarding. It's just a side effect that this content might help me out as well if it scales well to an audience. Also, I really enjoy the process of making videos, sharing ideas and this seems like an area where the content might come more easily to me and I can try to hone some skills - conceiving of ideas, creating videos, figuring out how to reach people. I'm not sure what a PCS consultant is though!

Thanks for giving a thorough explanation. I enjoyed the video. I think you gave a good personal high level view of what an AWS SA does. I get more excited about the opportunity to be an SA the more I learn about the flexibility. A few questions : 1. What was in your professional past involving Dev Ops that made you choose a focus on Business experience ? 2. What is your desired promotion speed and could you elaborate on the performance incentives? What does a travel day look like and what are some of the places you could travel to?@@soupereffective

1.I realized a lot of what makes DevOps work is not just picking the tools and the processes that make your big machine run, but convincing stakeholders at all levels that it's a good idea and to follow through. Eventually going down this track, I also realized that this meant that I needed to improve my business acumen to communicate with proper context. I also find the business side of things to be quite dynamic and fun - a lot of it involves putting together assumptions and hypotheses backed up by some data (financial modeling usually) - all of this makes any proposal way more influential. 2a. I consider myself pretty driven so I pretty much set a rough target of some sort of promotion every 2 years. Gives me something tangible I can focus on and allows me to put some (productive) pressure on myself to keep improving or gunning for accomplishments. I don't expect performance incentives, but I use a variety of sources to keep myself updated on industry/role-specific compensation to use as a gauge. I also weigh the work-life-balance piece into this calculation though... 2b. not much travel for me these days - probably about 1-2x a month or so for a couple days. Compared to consulting where it was mon-thurs or mon-fri week after week for months, it's negligible. I look forward to team events in nyc (new offices are way cool) and these days I try to keep travel closer to the boston area if I can @@chris.magneto

will do so in a future video!

it’s in the description of the video - feel free to add me 😊

it really depends... my team meets up maybe once per quarter in NY or Boston offices. I also might head into the customer's office once a month or so. And there are always info sessions, workshops, hackathons, gamedays that are optional (but fun and valuable) to attend in person as well!

Don’t worry he’s been sleeping outside now - first time dog owner so still figuring things out along the way 😅

definitely - applying and interviewing to any role is always nerve-wracking, but I'll try to give tips on how to approach this the best I can

If you’d like to go towards a complete non-technical side, a list that I can think of could be account management, business development, training, program management - are you aware of what these are? Depending on what type of strengths you have, you could still go down the technical account manager or solutions architect roles - no need to code but you’ll have to let the team know that up front - sometimes you might code a bit for demos (if you want to)

@@soupereffective then which aws certification should I do next for these roles?

@@ahsanali-gm4ci if you're looking at the total non-technical roles, actually you don't need to pursue any more certifications really. I would take a look at the job posting on amazon.jobs and check out the descriptions there - they'll mostly be looking at relevant work experience (resume and phone screening) and you'll have to have enough stories ready to demonstrate the Amazon Leadership Principles at that point (try to come up with upwards of 15). If you're thinking of going the TAM or SA role, I would also mostly focus on working on those outcomes that can help your stories - use the certifications as more of a guideline to understand the various services and various things you need to be aware of when designing systems in the cloud (or in general) - I'd highly recommend checking out the AWS Well-Architected Framework as a starting point! I'm working through some life stuff right now, but once that's done, I'll focus on these topics in my next video

That’s awesome to hear! Don’t worry the channel’s not dead. I want to help more people learn about the SA role, just working on not sounding inauthentic/cringe…

@@soupereffective we all appreciate the sincere efforts, do your thing bro.....we are here to see it!

how could you know if you were so close for the passing line but just missed 20 pts in saa ?

@@dannylps you have to create an aws account and from there they give you the test results a few days later, there is also a baseline you have to score over.

yeah the baseline is 700point. i also fail last month . had 687point. so close. hopefully next week i make it happen.

help. im being held against my will. jk, I like being in the city and having quick access to big parks, the ocean, the river, 15 minutes from the airport and food all around. yeah, the tradeoff is that apartments are generally smaller than houses and anything larger than a 1 bedroom (or even studio) in a city like Boston quickly gets into the-rent-is-too-damn-high territory regardless of pay

it's actually not that great that day considering there were so many meetings that day. I might do a video on how I work with Trello to create my daily workflow if that helps people out

@@soupereffective do that!!!

@@soupereffective still haven’t done it!

@@asoli haha sorry, getting some life stuff in order - there will be one in october!

It definitely helps if you want to put together some demos but it’s not required - it helps if you can read basics like cloudformation templates, run cli commands, json but it shouldn’t be too intense

Nope! Solutions architects that work with AWS can also work at partners that help implement projects using AWS - you could be a consultant at a large partner like Deloitte, Accenture, Slalom etc. advising customers and designing architecture. There are also many, many small/medium consulting partners that have AWS solutions architects as well - lots of opportunity out there

SAA is a good start as it mostly goes through the basic concepts and can really help you orient yourself - sysops questions tend to dig in a bit deeper on some technical jargon. Your sysadmin experience can come in handy since troubleshooting problems is something that is common across all IT roles, including what SAs might run into (though there might be a bit more breadth of challenges)

Congrats! If you're in the TechU program I would ask an "alumnus" from that program via LinkedIn (or somewhere else). The training on the job is quite intensive/thorough and you'll have mentors at AWS so from a life perspective (based on my own personal experience), take a trip or relax before you dive into the working world!

Gotta work standing up sometimes! I might do one of those desktop setup type videos as well…

Same, I’m taking my test tomorrow

Update ???

You don’t necessarily need to know how to code though it can come in handy if you want to tweak some demos. If you have a heavy background in networking that is actually a plus because it means you have a head start in becoming a specialist (if that’s what you’re interested in). Just try to get a 100-200 level understanding across other domains so you can expand on breadth of knowledge. I’ll cover that in the next video as well!

yes I do! I plan on covering not just the SA role, but other roles at AWS (or partners) if you want to go a more business-y or more technical route

That's great to hear and sounds like valuable experience! I was in consulting for about 10 years working with enterprise customers - currently working on a video to talk about the SA role, misconceptions, tips for applying, etc.

@@soupereffective looking forward for the video.

Currently, most teams are remote since most customers are still mostly remote as well. There are some internal in-office meetings but it's not every day (team dependent obviously)... you usually have plenty of time to plan in advance so have a go-to doggy daycare in mind. Play with the dog between meetings and just schedule your morning and evening walks and it's totally manageable!