According to Betteridge's law of headlines, "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." Personally I think it's a bit more complicated than that, and the answer is a qualified "Maybe."

There's a lot of hype about AWS Certifications and how they will increase your salary and make you sought-after in the workforce. Here's an example from the summary of a training course:

Each of the AWS certifications commands an average salary of more than $100,000.00, with the average salaries of AWS-certified IT staff 27.5% higher than the salaries of their non-certified counterparts.

While these figures may be true (like all statistics given with no details of where they came from, they should be taken with a large pinch of salt), it suggests that a few hours of training will reap great rewards. I recently presented at the AWS Community Day Midwest, giving an overview of all the AWS Certifications. Afterwards I got many questions about whether the certifications would help in getting a job, so there's clearly a lot of expectations around the certifications.

Certifications provide a measure of your level of experience with AWS, but it's possible to study and pass the Associate certifications with very limited hands-on time with the platform. The Professional certifications are at a significantly higher level and require a depth of knowledge that is hard to get without using AWS for production workloads. If you've used AWS in one job and you're looking for a new job, a certification may be a good way to round out your knowledge and record your experience. I recently studied for and passed the SysOps Administrator associate certification, and learned a few new things that I was able to immediately apply at my current client.

When we interview candidates for Leading EDJE we are looking for people with strong technical skills in a range of technologies, and not necessarily looking for a fixed list of skills for a particular role. If I'm talking to a candidate with AWS experience or a certification on their résumé, I'm likely to ask them questions about the platform. If they've only studied for the certification test and don't actually understand or follow the best practices from the certification, that gives a negative impression of their general technical expertise.

For other positions with specific job requirements where AWS experience is either required or nice to have, then a certification is likely to help you pass the resume screening process, but it will depend upon the interviewer(s) whether it actually helps you land the job. If a position requires hands on experience with AWS then a certification by itself may be insufficient, but it does demonstrate a willingness to learn.

One other area to consider is the applicability of the certification for your role. Some people take the Solutions Architect associate certification because it supposedly commands higher salaries than the Developer associate certification. However, the Developer certification (in particular the new version released in June 2018) goes much more in depth into the details of developing with certain AWS technologies than the Solutions Architect certification, and is likely to be more relevant for developer positions. Of course you can take several or all the certifications, but you will find there is a lot of overlap between them at the associate level.

You should be conscious that the certifications only cover a small fraction of the services that AWS offers. AWS is constantly adding new services and making enhancements to existing services, so what you learned for the test may no longer be correct. If you're working in the AWS environment and following updates then you will be aware of many of these changes, but if you used the certification to learn about AWS and don't use the services on a regular basis you might get caught out in an interview.

In summary, the certification may help you get a job, and may allow you to command a higher salary, but don't believe all the hype.