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Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#22

I don't think tech courses or certificates have ever been a top consideration when reviewing backend engineer qualifications. Only if we're hiring for a specific technology that's niche. Most certificates just teach you how to understand/sell a specific technology stack which sometimes is helpful, but other times can make you not see simpler solutions. I'd check out what's freely available first. Your 400 dollars is…

It’s probably an L&D stipend

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#24
post #7

I don't think tech courses or certificates have ever been a top consideration when reviewing backend engineer qualifications. Only if we're hiring for a specific technology that's niche. Most certificates just teach you how to understand/sell a specific technology stack which sometimes is helpful, but other times can make you not see simpler solutions. I'd check out what's freely available first. Your 400 dollars is…

Highly depends many consulting shops have to have requisite amount of AWS certified professionals to maintain the partnership status with AWS. They highly value people who have appropriate AWS certs.

which AWS certs are these in particular?

Is worth considering other certs e.g. gcp, azure for the same reason?

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#25

Certs just aren't that important anymore, but if anything, I'd do the AWS cert. If you just want to improve your skills, a few good Udemy courses will take your far if you follow along.

Which AWS Cert in particular?

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this, my startup's backend is elixir. really simplified making thing distributed from the get go. phoenix is just an amazing framework for building webapps anyway.

Erlang/OTP is great for distributed coding, but how well does Phoenix integrate with AWS/GCP?

ec2 is just vps. you can put whatever you want on it. my startup uses eks (aws) with some extra tuning. for one, you need to allocate one container per vps as the beam likes to grab all the cores. there's also the additional network configs to make sure the nodes can discover each other. swarm has tooling for this. I won't say its easy but its doable and pretty resilient once you have it up an running.

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#27
post #4

Mid-level backend engineer? Buy the book "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" and read it.

I’m a junior engineer and my manager recommended this book. A lot of it flew over my head but now I can sit in meetings and kind of following along with what’s going on. It’s a dense book and I’m glad I read it!

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#28
I got GCP certified for Cloud Architect and Data Engineer in the past and it's been actually super helpful to get a rough overview what products they offer and how to connect them together to solve (hypothetical) real world problems.

I don't regret doing it, but don't see the benefit in maintaining the certificates on their renewal schedule.

The certs themselves won't help you at all, it's really the things you learn along the way. There was also a cool "Cloud Architect" sweater that I'm still wearing that they threw in :)

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#29
post #7

I don't think tech courses or certificates have ever been a top consideration when reviewing backend engineer qualifications. Only if we're hiring for a specific technology that's niche. Most certificates just teach you how to understand/sell a specific technology stack which sometimes is helpful, but other times can make you not see simpler solutions. I'd check out what's freely available first. Your 400 dollars is…

Highly depends many consulting shops have to have requisite amount of AWS certified professionals to maintain the partnership status with AWS. They highly value people who have appropriate AWS certs.

Indeed, the AWS/Azure certifications are quite popular/sought-after & the only ones that seem worth getting, even for non-consulting jobs.

Also the Java Professional certificates are the big ones for Java shops.

Re: Ask HN: Best Tech Courses/Certifications Under $400 for a Back End Engineer?

#30
post #28

I got GCP certified for Cloud Architect and Data Engineer in the past and it's been actually super helpful to get a rough overview what products they offer and how to connect them together to solve (hypothetical) real world problems. I don't regret doing it, but don't see the benefit in maintaining the certificates on their renewal schedule. The certs themselves won't help you at all, it's really the things you learn…

Came here to say this as well.

Great for learning the product and how to use them, and get the cert to prove to yourself you know the material.

I’d put the cert on LinkedIn but I’d be hesitant to put any on my resume.

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