Need advice on learning AWS

[Monocle Money Mouth]

I'm being laid off at the end of next week. A lot of the jobs I have been looking at want people with AWS experience, particularly Lambda and S3.

For the last 5 years, I've been a test engineer writing automated tests for a legacy product that is usually installed on premises. I haven't had a chance to learn and use AWS while I'm on the clock.

I was looking at Amazon's website for AWS training to figure out where to start.

https://aws.amazon.com/training/digital/?th=tile&tile=ways

Is it worth it to pay for a subscription and get some sort of AWS certification? If you have gone through their training, how long did it take? I don't mind paying to expedite the learning process, I just need to figure out how much money and time to budget.

[SmashYourSmartPhone]

Find relevant projects that use the features you're interested, and look interesting to you.  Install them.  Use them.  Then hack on them, modify them, etc.

S3 is pretty straightforward.  It's a public set of data storage buckets obfuscated by an API key checked into github, that allows you to pretend your data is secure until some hacker dumps it for the world to see.

Learn how to make that not-true and you're ahead of many. ;)

[Monocle Money Mouth]

So what you described is what I normally do when trying to learn a new technology. For example, when I wanted to learn how to build a REST API, I used ASP.NET Core to build it and used an Angular front end to access and update the data. I then deployed it a VPS server I use for learning stuff.

I guess I could try to do the same thing with AWS, it just seems like overkill for a relatively simple web application. It's like hiring a cement truck to bring enough cement to pour a single 4x4 square of replacement sidewalk. 😄

I'll follow the Amazon training and see what it says. I just figured I would ask about other people's experiences and try to avoid stepping on any landmines.

[neo von retorch]

I have limited experience with AWS (EC2 and S3), and some experience with Azure (storage, Data Factory, DB, Functions which works like Lambda).

AWS - if you're the admin, you can create resources like S3 and Lambda pretty readily. I've only used the web interface for placing files on S3 and setting their permissions. You can set them to public, or have them "private" but grant access to something like AWS's load-balancer.

If Lambda is anything like Azure Functions, you can set up "one" Azure Function, but within it have a whole collection of code including shared libraries. These can be set up to have access to your S3 or database - they can hit external data sources or hit APIs. They can do a lot. But they tend to be super cheap as long as you make each "function" do something relatively isolated and quick. You can choose your language - all of my Azure Functions were Python. I liked putting JSON configuration in file storage, and pulling it in based on the environment (e.g. test, staging, production). But put any credentials in something like the Azure KeyVault (whatever AWS' equivalent is) and populate environment variables to point to which KeyVault and which storage/db/etc. you might be using. (Though depending on use cases, you can configure some things in JSON in file storage, as long as the actual secrets are still pulled from the KeyVault.)

[STEMorbust]

There’s a difference between learning AWS vs knowing enough to interview. Many jobs will list AWS experience as a requirement but only need engineers to interact with it as using S3 for file storage, Redshift for relational databases, and EC2s for everything else.

If you understand cloud and can match the main types of products to offerings from AWS and Azure, you’ll pass the majority of interviews.

I also say all that with the belief that ‘knowing’ AWS is much less valuable technically than writing good code. It’s just a set of products. You’ll learn the stack quickly if it’s what your employer is using. The only people who need to know the ins and outs of AWS are consultants and sales engineers.


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[Monocle Money Mouth]

Thanks for the input everyone. I'll try to get some hands on experience with AWS and make sure I can explain what the features do in my own words, but won't worry about the certifications.

[ender]

"Learning AWS" is impossible. There are hundreds of services in AWS to learn, I'd be impressed if you got to the point you could even know all of them let alone be meaningfully proficient in all of them.

What you should do is have a goal in learning it. What types of jobs do you want? Do you want another QA job for a legacy system? Then learning AWS is much less meaningful than if you want to work for a SaaS startup fully on AWS. Do you want more of a QA job? Or a software eng job?

Those answers will dictate what types of approach you want to take.

[Monocle Money Mouth]

"Learning AWS" is impossible. There are hundreds of services in AWS to learn, I'd be impressed if you got to the point you could even know all of them let alone be meaningfully proficient in all of them.

What you should do is have a goal in learning it. What types of jobs do you want? Do you want another QA job for a legacy system? Then learning AWS is much less meaningful than if you want to work for a SaaS startup fully on AWS. Do you want more of a QA job? Or a software eng job?

Those answers will dictate what types of approach you want to take.

Right. I knew AWS is more than one thing even before posting. Most of the jobs I've been looking at that ask for AWS experience have listed Lambda and S3.

I never had a chance to work with it with my soon to be old job. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about learning this stuff since I don't have a corporate account to use.

[ender]

But the "best way" is going to depend on what your goals are though.

[STEMorbust]

Still lost on why you’re bothering ‘learning’ it. IMHO you should memorize a few product names, get the CPP, and learn the rest on the job. Focus on interviewing.


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