Why get certs

For me it's important to get certs to show that I can actually do what I say I can. I've worked with some great people, but also people could claim to have used some technology, which they rightly have, but not to the same proficiency, amount or relevancy as another person in that timeframe. For instance, if person A sets up and configures something and fixes every issue with it, and person B uses that something once, both could put on their resume that they've used such and such technology, but only one has mastery of it.

My certs

• Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator

• AWS Solutions Architect Associate

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator

• Red Hat Certified Engineer

Which ones helped the most

They all help in some ways or another, but in order from least helpful to most:

• Every part of the RHCSA is vital for every day work, so ensuring I know every part of this is vital and filling in gaps in my knowledge was extremely helpful. I got almost 96% on this exam so it was the easiest one for me, but it's necessary for the RHCE. It was fairly trivial linux admin.

• The CKA helped force me to be quick with using kubectl and also helped to simplify my understanding of Kubernetes, but it was one of the easier exams and a low threshold to pass. It seems to be popular in the DevOps world, but I think that it only touches on the basics of Kubernetes. Configuring monitoring and something like ArgoCD requires more than surface knowledge.

• Studying for the RHCE while using ansible regularly in a work environment helped shed light on how I could better structure my playbooks and incorporate roles, vault and shared variables amongst other things. It is extremely useful in a real world scenario. The exam was straightforward, even with 5 hours sleep the night before the exam (it's a lot of money, I was nervous!) but the studying for it, alongside real world work, was a real boost to my skills with ansible and linux engineering in general.

• AWS SAA was definitely worth it for me. It showed me how to properly set up various solutions, various services, cost management, migrations, etc. There's a lot you don't know just from going from on prem to the cloud. I worked with AWS for some years prior to this exam and there's a lot you wouldn't consider just from working with it alone. Studying for this really helped to understand the cloud a lot better and why its services are so useful.