IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[null]

Did they explain what kind of "cloud experience" you need for business intelligence and data analytics? Or where they on some ?

Those mainline AWS certs (cloud practitioner, solutions architect, sysops administrator) lean into the general tech/IT/IS domain. I can't see someone in business intelligence or data analytics needing broad knowledge in compute, networking, security, etc.

Being a DBA or DE are typically specialists. I would imagine needing more specialized knowledge in Spark, Snowflake, or some other data engineering framework.

You may need to reach out to someone in your company that already has one of those positions to see what qualifications you need.

 

[OSUBaneBrowns]

Did they explain what kind of "cloud experience" you need for business intelligence and data analytics? Or where they on some ?

Those mainline AWS certs (cloud practitioner, solutions architect, sysops administrator) lean into the general tech/IT/IS domain. I can't see someone in business intelligence or data analytics needing broad knowledge in compute, networking, security, etc.

Being a DBA or DE are typically specialists. I would imagine needing more specialized knowledge in Spark, Snowflake, or some other data engineering framework.

You may need to reach out to someone in your company that already has one of those positions to see what qualifications you need.

For the data analyst position, the manager told me that she needed someone with cloud experience because no one else on her team had it except for the person who they were replacing it for (retired) and the new hire would be working with AWS/Azure directly. My team works with her group directly so I didn't get the vibes from her.

As for the business intelligence rec, the HR rep hit me up 2 days after my interview stating that the hiring manager needed someone with experience with Databricks (not included in the job description), marketing experience and the cloud. Databricks is getting introduce in the company overall so I don't know why he expected me to have it already when the company is still on SSRS. I do have some experience with working with the marketing team on some reports but people are going to roll who they are the most comfortable with at the end of the day .

As for my current career goals, a part of me does want to get into IT, I just do know where yet. I still want to work with SQL but I want to get out of the business aspect and more on the technical side. I work in mortgage servicing and overall, it not a big revenue generator so our pay reflects that. I want to keep obtaining hard skills that I can use for other industries if I was to leave or get layoff over time.

 

[Sonny Bonds]

They don’t communicate properly at my job. We have a bunch of 3rd party contractors with full access in the company Slack. The security manager changed them all to guest accounts and it broke stuff.

He had mentioned that he wanted to do it, but he didn’t tell anyone that he was going to. He’s overseas, so he did it last night and woke up this morning to chaos

I got pulled into a Slack chat with: the head of operations, CEO, COO, head of security, my manager, and a CS manager. It’s fine, I’m not in trouble.

The contractors are supposed to have managed laptops (with EDR) or a virtual desktop set up, provided by their employer. And the IT team isn’t supposed to create their accounts if they don’t have that. This CS manager didn’t know that and I didn’t really communicate that until the end of the day. I also didn’t know that she didn’t know that. And there’s a couple of contractors that are supposed to start on Monday.

This team has treated these contractors like they’re employees. So they’ve had full Slack access, can see all the financial (stock) related announcements and event has private channels with just the contractors. My manager and the security manager are clamping down on this because it’s pretty silly for them to be using our infrastructure and to be all unsecure. Like for a while they didn’t even have 2FA active on their accounts.

 

[WHolla09]

Did they explain what kind of "cloud experience" you need for business intelligence and data analytics? Or where they on some ?

Those mainline AWS certs (cloud practitioner, solutions architect, sysops administrator) lean into the general tech/IT/IS domain. I can't see someone in business intelligence or data analytics needing broad knowledge in compute, networking, security, etc.

Being a DBA or DE are typically specialists. I would imagine needing more specialized knowledge in Spark, Snowflake, or some other data engineering framework.

You may need to reach out to someone in your company that already has one of those positions to see what qualifications you need.

I’m currently a data brokering engineer. We primarily use Kafka and Nifi for our data pipelines in our company. However must job ads I see for my position at different companies, talk more about Spark.

 

[WHolla09]

I just finished the 2nd course (Compute in the Cloud) and the material is not hard at all. I just have to watch the wording with the assessment questions at the end of each session. If I focus a hour a day on it, I should be done with the class within 2-3 weeks. Can I download the cloud for free on AWS so that I can use it?

I think they do. I selected the free one I thought, and then got charged $5. I probably selected the wrong one or something, maybe. However, for the cloud practitioner test, you don’t really need to use the cloud to pass the test. I’m sure when you move to the next level you will, but not for this intro test.

 

[StretfordRed]

Need to do my GCFR by mid August, kinda over studied for it then had to reschedule and honestly cannot be bothered to do it.

But also got some red teaming GCP and AWS to do this year and the GCP security administrator course.

Lots to do, I think I’ll only do the exam for the GCP course as it aligns with work directly and like an idiot I put it on my yearly review plan.

 

[Mirin4rmfar]

What are your studying these days? With my new job, I should finally have time for self development.

I am thinking renew my AWS-Sec and Google Cloud - Security. and get some palantir certs in my pocket.

 

[papa pimp]

What are your studying these days? With my new job, I should finally have time for self development.

I am thinking renew my AWS-Sec and Google Cloud - Security. and get some palantir certs in my pocket.

palantir

but to answer you sc-100 and then on to AI900 and AI102

 

[Sonny Bonds]

I’m seeing a lot more jobs asking for AWS experience.

 

[WHolla09]

I’m seeing a lot more jobs asking for AWS experience.

I think the government is moving towards Azure. I know we will be transitioning towards Azure in the upcoming year. Seen other jobs advertise that they want Azure. It’s a crapshoot on which one you do. They should be somewhat similar with their different proprietary items. I’d imagine if you learn one, you should easily pick up the other if needed

 

[Secure Da Bag]

 

[null]

because she gets a lot of resumes ...?

 

[BrooklynBuckets]

Any advice for a young breh (24).

I punched up resume with my 5 years of help desk experience kind of being the one stop man in company,

did a internship that went unlisted on the resume to gain some experience in helpdesk/networking and learned alot so transfered those skills as well

Currently just accepted a offer for 55k as a support desk and struggling with studying for the net+

Wishing to jump to hire salaries (70-100K) soon and any also in school for an information systems degree remotely

What certs should I grab instead of the net+ as i know networking is the base of cloud and I want to gain that foundation as my degree might take longer to be able to throw on the resume in the next 1-2 years

 

[null]

Any advice for a young breh (24).

I punched up resume with my 5 years of help desk experience kind of being the one stop man in company,

did a internship that went unlisted on the resume to gain some experience in helpdesk/networking and learned alot so transfered those skills as well

Currently just accepted a offer for 55k as a support. DESK and struggling with studying for the net+

Wishing to jump to hire salaries (70-100K) soon and any also in school for an information systems degree remotely

What certs should I grab instead of the net+ as i know networking is the base of cloud and I want to gain that foundation as my degree might take longer to be able to throw on the resume in the next 1-2 years

i am not a certs champ but why don't you do some of the cloud certs? aws, google, azure? you'll gain additional networking as part of that.

 

[WHolla09]

Any advice for a young breh (24).

I punched up resume with my 5 years of help desk experience kind of being the one stop man in company,

did a internship that went unlisted on the resume to gain some experience in helpdesk/networking and learned alot so transfered those skills as well

Currently just accepted a offer for 55k as a support desl and struggling with studying for the net+

Wishing to jump to hire salaries (70-100K) soon and any also in school for an information systems degree remotely

What certs should I grab instead of the net+ as i know networking is the base of cloud and I want to gain that foundation as my degree might take longer to be able to throw on the resume in the next 1-2 years

You should definitely get Sec+. A lot of government contractors require it. Government contractors tend to pay good money and help you get a security clearance which could lead to bigger money.

Studying for Net+ sucked. Lots of info. Andrew Ramdayal on Udemy had a great class that made it easier for me to understand it. Especially with subnetting. Just remember, never pay full price for a course on there. They always have sales. Shouldn’t have to pay more than $10-$15. Anything more than that, just wait. Professer Messer has free videos on YouTube you can watch as well.

If you really want to do networking, skip net+ and go for CCNA. More respected by employers. You can do net+ to get foundational knowledge but if you want to save money, jump to CCNA.

As far as schools, WGU seems like a great option for you. All of their tech degrees includes classes to get varying certs. The networking degree includes CCNA or net+. The cloud degree includes Azure or AWS certs. It’s six month terms and you have to pass a minimum of 4 classes per term. However there are no maximum amount of classes you can take. So you can, in theory, get your degree in 1-2 years because some classes you can test out and complete in a couple days. There’s a WGU subReddit on Reddit that has more info if you want to look more into it.