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Passed AZ-500!
averageguy72
Member Posts: 323 ■■■■□□□□□□
Been a while since I've been around, a lot has changed since my last post...so the first few paragraphs will summarize the journey...
My company was acquired a couple of years ago by a much larger company (we had gone from startup to mid sized, started with 3 people and ended up at nearly 800 before being acquired). RIFed after nearly 20 years on a conference call (no, I didn't work Better and this was a few months ago
), along with everyone else that was from the company that got acquired a couple of years ago. They offered nearly a year of severance but I had no interest in hanging around to train the offshore replacements, so I just went and found a new job. It wasn't a surprise, I expected it based on my research when we were notified who we were being acquired by.
I interviewed for a couple of companies and got offers from both pretty quickly. One from a young (7 years old, 100 people) company which was a solutions architect role and the other from a very large company in their security practice. Decided I wasn't really interested in another "startup" journey, so I went with the large company focused on security and served notice.
So far, after several months, the new job has been great. Good people, very organized architecture/security practice within the company (totally different market segment than I came from or had any experience in), 1/6th the work for the same pay. I've gone from job where I got 200-800 emails a day, 3-5 meetings a day, all while trying to rearchitect our multiple enterprise platforms; to a job where I get less than 5 emails a day and maybe 2-3 meetings a week; it's also remote. I review project architectures and provide security reviews and help develop security standards for new cloud services the business wants to use.
My new company is an Azure shop, where my previous employer was an AWS shop. They are early in their transition to Azure, so there isn't a large footprint just yet. We're developing standards and still have large on-premises environments that will not transition to the Cloud due to the nature of the business.
Long story short, if you're not happy where you're at or get dumped like we all did, it's probably a lot better somewhere else. So just keep your head up and keep going, onward and upward.
...On to AZ-500
Training/Studying
I'd done the Microsoft free training a while ago. Unfortunately, my next step was the acloud.guru (Linux Academy) AZ-500 course. It's out of date and surface level. After realizing that, I tried the Skyline Academy one on Udemy - it's actually pretty good with a lot of labs. acloud.guru does have a new one and it looks pretty complete, so that would probably be good - avoid the (LA) one.
Test
I normally prefer to use a couple of different practice test providers but I couldn't seem to find great ones, so I just decided the best way to see where I was would be the just schedule the test and take it. So if I didn't pass I was going to punt and refocus after recertifying some AWS certs, but I passed on my first attempt.
The test consists of single answer, multi-select, drag items, multi-select in order, multi-answer questions, had (i think) 3 scenario questions and no labs. None of the practice tests I found had anything other than single and multi-select answer questions.
Certification
A word here on getting your cert after passing - 48hr...not quite. Microsoft is apparently having a lot of problems. It took nearly two weeks to generate a certificate PDF and for the cert to show as active in the certification portal - so just be aware. Hopefully, they get that corrected.
Next
Moving on to AWS recertification
My company was acquired a couple of years ago by a much larger company (we had gone from startup to mid sized, started with 3 people and ended up at nearly 800 before being acquired). RIFed after nearly 20 years on a conference call (no, I didn't work Better and this was a few months ago
), along with everyone else that was from the company that got acquired a couple of years ago. They offered nearly a year of severance but I had no interest in hanging around to train the offshore replacements, so I just went and found a new job. It wasn't a surprise, I expected it based on my research when we were notified who we were being acquired by.I interviewed for a couple of companies and got offers from both pretty quickly. One from a young (7 years old, 100 people) company which was a solutions architect role and the other from a very large company in their security practice. Decided I wasn't really interested in another "startup" journey, so I went with the large company focused on security and served notice.
So far, after several months, the new job has been great. Good people, very organized architecture/security practice within the company (totally different market segment than I came from or had any experience in), 1/6th the work for the same pay. I've gone from job where I got 200-800 emails a day, 3-5 meetings a day, all while trying to rearchitect our multiple enterprise platforms; to a job where I get less than 5 emails a day and maybe 2-3 meetings a week; it's also remote. I review project architectures and provide security reviews and help develop security standards for new cloud services the business wants to use.
My new company is an Azure shop, where my previous employer was an AWS shop. They are early in their transition to Azure, so there isn't a large footprint just yet. We're developing standards and still have large on-premises environments that will not transition to the Cloud due to the nature of the business.
Long story short, if you're not happy where you're at or get dumped like we all did, it's probably a lot better somewhere else. So just keep your head up and keep going, onward and upward.
...On to AZ-500
Training/Studying
I'd done the Microsoft free training a while ago. Unfortunately, my next step was the acloud.guru (Linux Academy) AZ-500 course. It's out of date and surface level. After realizing that, I tried the Skyline Academy one on Udemy - it's actually pretty good with a lot of labs. acloud.guru does have a new one and it looks pretty complete, so that would probably be good - avoid the (LA) one.
Test
I normally prefer to use a couple of different practice test providers but I couldn't seem to find great ones, so I just decided the best way to see where I was would be the just schedule the test and take it. So if I didn't pass I was going to punt and refocus after recertifying some AWS certs, but I passed on my first attempt.
The test consists of single answer, multi-select, drag items, multi-select in order, multi-answer questions, had (i think) 3 scenario questions and no labs. None of the practice tests I found had anything other than single and multi-select answer questions.
Certification
A word here on getting your cert after passing - 48hr...not quite. Microsoft is apparently having a lot of problems. It took nearly two weeks to generate a certificate PDF and for the cert to show as active in the certification portal - so just be aware. Hopefully, they get that corrected.
Next
Moving on to AWS recertification
CISSP / CCSP / CCSK / CRISC / CISM / CISA / CASP / Security+ / Network+ / A+ / CEH / eNDP / AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty / AWS Certified Security - Specialty / AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional / AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional / AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate / AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate / AWS Certified Developer - Associate / AWS Cloud Practitioner
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JDMurray
Admin Posts: 13,028 Admin
Congratulations and welcome back to posting on TE!
Forum Admin at www.techexams.net
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volfkhat
Member Posts: 1,049 ■■■■■■■■□□
Mann...your post hurts my soul.to be so unceremoniously cast aside like that...
20 years is a long time to work at any place.i think that was probably your mistake.If an Employer doesn't offer a Pension... then an Employee should Not offer Loyalty.Always keep your Eyes open for something better.(It's a job... Not a Marriage)Nonetheless, i applaud your efforts.Keep pushing & rebuff that urge to be complacent :] -
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raleighbluetech
Registered Users Posts: 12 ■■■□□□□□□□
I'm currently studying for this. It's taking me 6 months. So there's a Udemy course by a guy named Alan I'm using. I've also used MeasureUp. The labs are costly. This was a mistake for me. I think other who are seeing this need to realize you have to set alerts. And turn off your VMs! -
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itdept
Registered Users Posts: 273 ■■■■■■□□□□
Congrats on the pass and the writeup with more detail of the journey