Where are you studying? I have seen many schools use AWS as part of the curriculum. Also you should have classes in distributed systems, chances for independent study, etc.
The scary thing is that the industry will change significantly in the next two years, so the CS department wants to teach you something that is as timeless as possible.
Bootcamps don't teach you AWS because that would cost them money and eat into their profits if they showed anything useful. Plus they probably don't want to be on the hook for some student goofing up and running up a huge AWS bill.
I get alumni surveys all the time asking what things they should teach and the one thing that is consistently never on the list is ops/cloud-related training.
That’s a really bad example if you’re trying to show one that’s not portable - there are literally thousands of jobs at hundreds of companies for people trained in AWS.
IMO the AWS certifications(and maybe other clouds equivalents) are the only certifications that mean something other than full university degrees. The software industry is not big on certifications and prefers people to prove their skills by using them.
There are a number of courses to prep for AWS certifications (example: Cloud Gurus), but the are heavily focused on actual test prep and less so on actually using AWS to build something.
I was specifically speaking with regard to this offering. AWS has a pretty mature certification program (though I think was recently outsourced), so I figured they would have some sort of certification track to motivate people to consume their educational resources.
I'm still trying to study for AWS Cloud Practitioner, because my employee uses AWS and I wouldn't bother otherwise. TBH I'm really struggling to finish the course due to the fact I find the subject matter incredibly dull - it's just a whirlwind tour of all the major AWS services. Learning OS internals, networking, software architecture, etc. would be more useful and interesting...
We are given AWS technologies inside specially-provisioned sandboxes to teach at the university, and the courses are marketed and badged as AWS. Students get free training, certification discounts and more.
No money changes hands, but AWS provide all the tech free, sponsor AWS awards for the students, come to jobs fairs... all the while hoping that X% of those compsci students will, in the fullness of time, come to be decision-makers who choose AWS technologies for their organisations rather than Microsoft or Google.
It's the Happy Meal principle, hard at work today.
Not AWS in particular so much as a class has a certain amount of credit they could spend with AWS, Azure, etc. So they can use cloud resources to support what they do -- particularly good if you want to stack up a distributed system.
So far as syllabus I say talk to your profs. For a compilers class today it would make a lot of sense to hack on some open source compiler rather than start from scratch and there are many cool compiler-like things that center around Javascript.
> I can see how it's a bit like indoctrination though, but as another thread mentions, the AWS certification isn't that different; the first certification you can achieve there is pretty much learning the marketing message and talking points from AWS and cloud computing as a whole.
In other words, AWS certifications suck too. I don't see how that excuses MS or GH.
3 courses with hands-on exercises, and you can't beat the price either. They are also run by AWS Tech Training staff. I finished the "building" one, and I'm looking at starting deploying soon
It's like they're trying to add an extra layer of stuff that must be learnt in order to use AWS. I have to wonder if it's intended to gear them toward being able to create AWS-specific exams & certifications.
Are these certs actually worth anything? I usually see tech certs as a red flag. I couldn't imagine hiring a highschool grad with an aws cert and expect anything close to someone with a cs degree.
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