Avoid this BIG mistake as a new Solutions Architect!

six figure salaries everywhere you turn people are saying you can make crazy money by working in the tech industry you keep hearing influence on Instagram even saying you can land a job in six months woohoo six figures by summer let's go but there's one big doubt in your mind that keeps holding you back and that's coding is that Matrix looking stuff that people in tech seem to spend all day doing what is that Wizardry how does that work the more you think about it this coding thing isn't right for you after all you kind of sucked at math back in school you don't have a computer science degree or a background in it and you don't want to spend a day at desk in a dark room anyway that's not you you want a job that's a Visionary you want to be the ideas guy right surely there's someone who manages the coding people and tells them what to do you go in search of that six figure job in Tech that doesn't require coding and that's when you stumbled across the solutions architect role architect now that sounds Visionary Solutions architect is apparently this job people do in the cloud the cloud is this part of tech where people keep saying that you don't have to code okay okay sounds interesting no coding but a big paycheck that's what I'm talking about as you research the solutions architect role though some people keep saying that you actually do have to code okay okay now you're officially confused is this solutions architect roller coding role or not this was your golden ticket into Tech you didn't even need to learn to code so is it back to the drawing board to try and find another role in Tech that doesn't code ah you don't want to do that hello I'm Lou and welcome back to open up the cloud so in many ways today's video is a continuation it's almost like a sequel of a last video now the topic of that video is actually talking about the solutions architect role and how in the Modern Age the role itself is actually changing a little bit for some cases actually can be more of a customer facing almost sales oriented role then maybe what is typically seen as as a more builder or implementer type role because those guests mentioned so many interesting things to me but I couldn't fit them all in that original video so I wanted to make a follow-up however today we're going to tackle a different topic which is a very common question that I get asked and that is whether or not you need to code as a Solutions architect now there's probably a couple of different reasons that a lot of people find themselves going after the solutions architect role now the biggest and most obvious one is probably simply just salaries and pay now the solutions architect role appears in many of these different surveys talking about the highest paying job in Cloud and another reason that I think that people often go for the solutions architect role is down to certification naming if you look at the certifications in Amazon web services you'll know that the solutions architect is an associate level exam and also a professional exam now that's associate level exam is often recommended to beginners because this high level overall certification that looks at all of the different services in Amazon now I can understand that from people going and getting the advice to take the solutions architect associate exam they would naturally think that the solutions are because their career path makes sense for them as a next step and then finally I think one of the third reasons that people look into Solutions architect as their Cloud career is on this idea that you can use it to avoid coding and they often find themselves upon the solutions architect now we're going to dig into that a little bit more today and trying to figure out the truth behind this like how much do Solutions Architects actually code do they all code do they all need the code now as I've been researching this video I've come across some very different polar opinions on one end of the extreme I've met people that say that absolutely not Solutions Architects should never touch code and there's absolutely no need to come from a technical background is all about business influencing leadership and that type of thing and then on the other end of the spectrum people that say that as solution psychosep actually must have come from a builder or implementer role and there's no way you can be a Solutions architect without having that background as a implementer or a technician of some kind now I believe both of these polar extremes to be problematic I will actually break this down for you and why some Architects might code some might not in addition to Gwyneth Andrew and Luca from last time we actually also have another guest anarag who is an architect in the cloud industry has been for many years and is an AWS data hero okay so let's jump in and get on with things let's turn over now to Luca who's going to give us an introduction to the solution architect role for me the architecture role that has been a while that I'm doing goes outside the AWS is an interesting one because he's marrying um let's say three areas that I'm I'm quite interested um a cover stack obviously uh it covers uh the relation uh between human beings in general and uh and then it covers also the business organizations there is business there is people and there is technology now as much as the business and people side of solutions architect is a big aspect and could be many videos in itself what I want to do today is focus in on just a technical side of the solutions architect role so when I asked GPS this question of whether Solutions Architects code I thought her reaction was super interesting I really do believe that you can't fully Escape code is not even the right word for me it's more like becoming comfortable with automating things because you can you can use non-coding services to implement something that like non-coding tools or I guess languages whatever to implement what code is there to do like you can lose you can use low code no code Solutions to create some sort of automation but the mindset of like stepping through something and telling this tool to like automate automate it for you is you're like programming you're just not typing it in right so I think Gwyneth makes a really great Point here is that it's not just about coding it's about these other aspects do you understand how the internet works do you understand how machines can be networked together so they can communicate do you understand what an application programming interface is and how those are used to network between computers all of these different subsections and sub questions are actually what we should be asking here it's not just code that they might be interfacing with it's not just code that's relevant to the job so I asked a very similar question to Andrew of whether or not Solutions Architects code and his response also was very interesting because what he pointed out was also the fact that architecting in the cloud is different to architecting in Tech more generally let's have a listen to what he had to say you need Cloud Pro I say cloud programming uh someone's asking me the other day like do they need programming for something and I always say cloud programming so you know because I mean maybe application programming but you know it's it's like working with apis where like the whatever sdks and stuff like that but um you know you're not going to really be able to do any kind of technical role without programming in the cloud okay so hold up I think this is super interesting Gwyneth mentioned that it's not just code that we should be thinking about and Andrew also introduces this topic of cloud programming now I think this is really interesting because the world that we live in now when you're working in the cloud is different to the world from before and actually technical work in the cloud looks very different to architectures of the past so when it comes to asking the question do you need to code it's kind of a broader question we have to address and understand the different technologies that exist in the cloud today that we might be interfacing with now we are certainly seeing this trend to more fine-grained systems what that means is smaller code bases that means systems that communicate over Network boundaries rather than in code in the past we might have had much larger code bases much more monolithic potentially millions of lines of code whereas today we have fine-grained Services microservices small Lambda functions that talk to each other the world of coding in the cloud is changing and now there is a more strong emphasis on things like command line interfaces build an automation tooling monitoring and observability infrastructure as code all of these different paradigms make up the aspects of what comes to be known as Cloud programming as Andrew calls it now so far we've basically talked about different technical aspects of the solutions architect's role which raises the question so are there people that work in the cloud as Solutions architects who maybe don't code or maybe aren't as Technical and that's the exact question that I wanted to pose to Luca so let's hand over to him and hear what he has to say no matter what now I would say is not 100 of The Architects that I met in my career that our Architects maybe our own networking part or let's say more low level constructs where coding for them was never a theme but they know inside out how to build up a network from scratch and you say okay fine I don't even I don't know even where to start but I'm glad for them um I think there are nowadays uh uh especially because unless you are that type of let's say architect that is going way in in underneath the the the coding part so you're taking care about all the infrastructure uh in the true science of infrastructure um I think understanding how to code and having uh let's say an experience as a developer helps no matter what I'm personally very glad that I had like over 12 15 years of coding experience and that helped me a lot and I'm still coding uh in my spare time and when I need to write pocs for understanding if what I have in mind is going to work what are the drawbacks Etc because otherwise you might risk that you are missing some points so now I believe we're getting into the heart of this question about whether or not Solutions Architects code and as Luca mentioned just a second ago there is an array of different types of profile skills and people working in Industry as a Solutions architect so Luca mentioned something in that last segment where he referred to this idea of low level now you might hear this a lot in the tech industry but it's not just a figure of speech it's actually in reference to the OSI networking model which talks about how Community computers communicate with each other now when information is passed between two computers first it goes through a cable and it starts at very low level and a networking layer eventually that gets passed up through this stack this OSI networking stack and then gets to the top levels which is the application and presentation layer which is typically Associated more with your regular software Engineers now of course if you come from a networking or a data center type of background then potentially looking at architecture roles that are lower in the stack might be more suited to you however if you come from a software engineering background you might want to look at Solutions architect roles that are close set to the top of the stack that is one of the many ways that Solutions architect roles differ in terms of their technical ability and that answers a little bit that question about whether or not you need to code it kind of depends on the type of role that the company is looking for and whether or not they're looking for someone that is higher on the stack or lower on the stack okay so what I'm getting here from what Luca Gwyneth and Andrew are saying is that clearly coming from a technical background can certainly help you as an architect however I wanted to ask anarag the same question that I asked Luca which is his understanding of people that have worked in more technical or non-technical roles when it comes to the solutions architect position here's what he had to say at the beginning I said I have seen solution architect that have pure business orientation so but and they produce the solutions I mean they produce these uh let's say solution designs but their history lies somewhere in which they were operational in their previous careers and when I say operational I'm trying to include everything in this they might have been a code or a test or a QA something that they delivered some sort of a technical artifact so that they can understand that these things really work together so now I would actually like to steer our conversation into a slightly different but adjacent topic and that is about projects now projects are very popular when it comes to the cloud industry as a way to Showcase your skills uh to an employer and potentially help you out with the job hunt a project is typically building some sort of real world type of application you can put on GitHub and then use this evidence throughout the hiring process now the question is do Solutions Architects engage with projects should they build projects is that relevant for them as part of the job hunt now I should note that whilst I'm also a big fan and have talked about projects in the past that many people are not on board with the idea of projects more generally and specifically they're not on board with the idea of projects for the solutions architect role now what I understand the reason to be behind that is because they think that Solutions Architects should know about code and Technical aspects but they shouldn't be the ones that are writing and building the code so I asked anarag how do you evidence your skills then as a Solutions architect how should you build sort of a portfolio and show that you have competence especially if you maybe haven't done the solutions architect role before and you're trying to convince an employer to hire you try to write blocks which are more nuanced and telling the business context telling the things that were disregarded why they were disregarded what are the choices that you make or if you do not want to do that then you can write on your personal takes on how you would implement this project if blogging is not your kind of thing then definitely let's say do meetups uh present at conferences again people appreciate much more when you talk about the nuances or the things that were considered filtered out and not just purely want to listen the fairy tale out of the uh let's say out of your presentations now I love what anurag had to say here because this is a very important point about building evidence for the architect role as opposed to software engineer Cloud engineer or other Builder type roles rather than writing let's say a blog or a piece of evidence that talks about what is ec2 or what is AWS Lambda you should actually be comparing and contrasting different Technologies and applying a very critical mindset now I'm going to hand back over to Andrew to talk about something that comes up a lot now it's very common for people to build projects and only focus on what Andrew calls toy applications now what he means by that is just building the happy path doing the simple thing building a to-do application or building a hello world type of application or proof of concept but not pushing that to its limit not finding the difficult Parts not finding the boundaries and where the architecture or technology might start to fall apart because that's where the gold can be mined but I won't speak too much on this and spoil the point I'll hand over to Andrew to talk about that now when I say toy app I mean an app that doesn't hit any hard bits right it's like I'm gonna go build and this is not me saying it's a bad project because I it adds a lot of people should do this project because it adds a lot of value helps a lot of people the cloud resume project right so like if you do and even for us will say like well you know you got I give you a bunch of stretch goals go do them right because if you don't then it is a toy it doesn't say that per se but I I interpret it as that so if you if you like you know use S3 cloudfront static website hosting a Lambda function that's not enough right like I was building a Twitter clone the other day and so like I got it to work like to post messages delete messages follow people and then I came to the home feed and you know I couldn't use dynamodb I tried elasticsearch it was kind of there but then it became super complex and then people just stopped right there you know what I mean they don't push forward into that so like a solution architect what they would do is they would go that's the part they're looking for they're looking for that part that's hard and they're gonna and they're gonna push right into that and try to build experiments around them and and evaluate them they're not projects they are in some sense but they are and and that's what they're going to do so they'll make an architecture they'll make a hypothesis they'll go look for those hard bits and that's the stuff they'll dive into and then they'll come back with information saying this is possible based on pricing and costs and stuff like that so that's what they have to do so if you don't have a background like a history in Tech and Implement implementing stuff you can't just look at it and suggest it so I hope that you can start to see that it's not just about the question of do you need to code I think it's very much about having the technical understanding the language the skills the tools and ultimately the confidence to be able to go away and investigate aspects of technology that you need to and look into as an architect and then be able to confidently communicate those conversations back to different stakeholders in the business and the only way you're going to be able to do that is if you understand the technology that you're working with so that you can do those investigations push those boundaries when you go and communicate that to the people that you're working with I would like to hand over to Luca as well to talk a bit more about how his background as a software engineer also impacted his career as an architect and how that helped him unless you are that type of let's say architect that is going way in underneath the the coding part so you're taking care about all the infrastructure in the true science of infrastructure um I think understanding how to code and having let's say in an experience as a developer helps no matter what uh I'm personally very glad that I had like over 12 15 years of coding experience and that helped me a lot and I'm still holding in my spare time and when I need to write pocs for understanding the what I have in mind what is going to work what are the drawbacks Etc because otherwise you might risk that you are missing some points and uh and when you need to implement that and explain to a customers without having an understanding what kind of pitfalls they might find and what are the Alternatives and why you decide to go with one thing or another one um it's important that you have also that skill so as we've heard not all Architects clearly work in a very technical capacity now as we mentioned in the last video certainly if you go into a more customer facing or a sales oriented role as an architect that can help you lean more to the business and people side certainly if you don't have too much of a strong technical background and from there you could sort of pivot your career into a more technical Direction now I wanted to ask Luca the question though or are there any downsides to this approach what happens if you become an architect not from a technical background so let me say I've seen Architects that they didn't have large experience on coding and I see them reaching the seal very quickly uh because the the challenge is that at some point you will have that kind of challenge where you need to understand how the code works this is a really interesting point I think that Luca makes about ceilings now careers can be very messy it doesn't mean that you're going to hit guaranteed a glass ceiling if you don't come from a technical background but it's certainly something that's worth considering now I want to pause here to actually talk about something that I've seen throughout my career that I think has a tangential relationship to the topic we're talking about today and that's the fact of whether or not you need a degree for your role in technology now if you've done any Research into this you'll realize much like the topic today is it depends you don't necessarily need a degree to work in technology however I want to share a very interesting Insight that I've seen over the many years that I've worked in Tech and that's that people without a computer science degree often have a bit of a chip on their shoulder now despite asking these people specifically what they think they're missing in terms of their skill set and their role often they can't give me a very concrete answer it's more of just a feeling a sense that they are missing some foundational knowledge that they would get from a degree typically they would still want to go off and do a degree in order to remove that chip on their shoulder and that ultimately came down to this aspect of confidence which I think is very important now if you don't have a technical background that might affect your confidence it might affect your ability to communicate and talk with other stakeholders and you might end up having this sort of chip on your shoulder that you carry throughout your career that always feels like a nagging feeling that's holding you back now of course you can start your career and then go back and re-educate yourself get a degree go back and go through different rounds of Education later that's totally up to you everyone's journey is entirely different but I did just want to mention that observation because that's something that maybe it's not a prerequisite maybe you don't need that as part of your journey but it might be something that you want to do even if it's just for your own confidence now I know that a lot of people watching this video are trying to find their role within the tech industry maybe considering their next move or their next pivot into a different position now Luca points out something very important here which is that it's not just people with the architect title the architect within the tech industry so if you're interested in the idea of architecting you don't necessarily only need to apply for roles that have the architecture title architect role has always let's say is irresistible uh Etc a registerable title if you want I aim for that for several years uh but I have to say I think it's more the mindset that is uh that is approachable I I've seen principal Engineers doing architecture very well and successfully I've seen senior developers doing architecture successfully so it for me you know often I know that uh in in these uh in this industry the role models but probably we we started to be too much obsessed on that uh and uh and instead if we start to to focus on what really like to do about the role uh that definitely salary is always a thing but uh it cannot be the primary thing in my opinion uh it should be it should be let's say what you like about the architecture part and then take the shot also in different roles I remember I was designing when I was senior developer the first year in London I was designing architecture for uh let's say a gambling company and uh and I I did that and then I became the Tecla Tech leader or the principal engineer as they call that um and uh and then despite I was senior developer I started design architecture and made sense and I changed the way how a department was working so the thing is uh I don't think is you need to be an artist to do architecture or you need to be uh let's say something else for for doing specific things that you are doing you cannot do during your day-to-day job is your motivation and uh how and angry you are on on uh um aspiring for a specific role uh to make you let's say do something special and it's not the title that you become an architect day one and if you're not an architect it doesn't mean that you cannot do architecture I think for some people this video will be very validating you might be aware that the solutions architect is a tech adjacent role and you will need to develop some technical skills in order to land a job as a Solutions architect however there will be other people watching this video who are the type of people I mentioned at the start who are looking at the solutions architect role because it is a way for them to avoid coding or technical skills now if that's you let's hand over to Andrew who's going to introduce and talk as well about some different roles different avenues that you can go down in the cloud industry if you're looking at a role that has less technical or less coding aspects to it rather than the solutions architect role so like someone gets that sister associate with no programming what can they do well if you're an older fellow uh like like seniority and things like that then you know maybe you are uh acting as a Solutions architect in your organization in the sense that you know maybe not like a CTO but maybe like a very very small organization um or you know maybe you're going into a technical adjacent role so we're talking things like technical uh project manager right or program manager or Cloud support engineer or things like that where you know you only need a certain amount of knowledge to uh to be able to do like maybe you can get through with click Ops figure out enough things but uh you know if coding might not be what you can do or you maybe you have the support of your team so they say well you know your wealth of knowledge you know programming will pair you with these folks but you know again those are more some others are more down the line roads and some of those are entry roles but you know neither are technical um so yeah it's kind of a dead end there um unless you have programming and that's a gap that we don't have it's not like there's a cloud programming certification um I guess supposedly you need to know how to do it for the cloud developer and uh the cis-off administrator but it's still extremely lacking in terms of practicality okay so I'm hoping that gives you some ideas about different roles like program manager about support there are many others and probably would take an entire video to talk about that as well however I did ask Anna rag the same question of different roles in Tech that don't necessarily have to code that people might want to look into as a substitute or as an alternative to the solutions architect role so you are somebody who is with uh let's say want to get into Tech and really don't want to code then I would say that look for positions like business analysts to start with business analysts bring in again the business Acumen of the industry and to help the developers build the product that is right for the industry again this is this again goes to the same thing leverage your existing experience you come in as a business analyst you see how the involvement is and how how the players how the people are operating around it and you go to the next step slowly now I hope this video today has helped you understand some different perspectives I hope that hearing these different voices these different backgrounds and these different experiences help you to start to make sense of whether or not Solutions architect feels like it could be the right role for you now as I mentioned at the start clearly it depends on many different factors but I hope this has given you some food for thought to think about when it comes to picking and choosing your career and whether or not Solutions architecture is right for you now as we look to wrap up this video I do want to hand over quickly just to GPS to mention one last thing she mentioned this to me in the conversation with her and I thought it was particularly inspirational my mindset is anything can really happen you can land any role you want to but you can't I don't know you just have to be very realistic with yourself because if not you're just going to make it more difficult like if you if you if you go in with the mindset of like I can get this role in this time and then you don't accomplish that because the reality is like it's a lot more harder than you think then you're just gonna like the emotions or the mindset is just going to make you more difficult but if you go in knowing like it's going to take some time I might have to work my way up I might have to take a side step before I can move forward then you're gonna have just like a better like all right this is just part of the process like I just gotta trust the process whose Dojo do you want to go to we're all we're all learning to fight um just in a slightly different way but um you know I think that there are Realms of where wolves see overlap like absolutes and then there's outliers and again it's going to be affected by what solution architect you think is the solution architect because we said there's more than one so okay so I really hope this video helped you out if it did go ahead and subscribe I'm making these videos as frequently as possible also go find to open up the cloud on Instagram and Twitter and go subscribe there as well and if you like this video I seriously would suggest that you go back and watch that last video that I mentioned where we talked about whether or not Solutions architect is a more customer facing role or a more builder and implementer type role if you're looking at Solutions architect definitely would recommend that video and as always I look forward to sharing your I got the job post on social media see you in the next video

Channel: Open Up The Cloud

Views: 13,830

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Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023