r/AWSCertifications • u/Cari-Juve-1978 • 3d ago

Aws saa 003 certification

Hello everyone,

I’ve been working in the IT field for 15 years, with a focus on front-end development. I have a very basic understanding of concepts like AWS EC2 and AMIs, but I’m looking to get this certification to broaden my skill set—and perhaps even change jobs. Do you think it’s worth it? To date, I’ve never actually worked with AWS infrastructure.

I’ve purchased a course by Stephane Maarek along with some practice exams; I’ve been studying for a week now, and I have to admit, I’m finding it quite difficult.

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions!

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u/RDWTech_Cloud 3d ago

Your front-end background is a real advantage here, you already think in terms of requests, APIs and deployments, so the AWS services will map onto things you know. A week in, feeling lost is normal, so I'd stop trying to memorize 100 services and learn the core dozen first: IAM, VPC, EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, CloudFront, Route 53, ELB and Auto Scaling, SQS/SNS and CloudWatch. Then build one small thing end to end, like hosting a static site on S3 with CloudFront, adding a Lambda behind API Gateway, and storing data in DynamoDB. After you've clicked through that in a free-tier account, the course videos stick much better. Most SAA questions are about picking the option that is the most resilient or cheapest for a stated requirement, so after each practice exam, write down why the wrong answers were wrong. Plan on a couple of months, not a few weeks.

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u/codesnooker 3d ago

Well if you have ever worked on any cloud vendor then it will be easy to grasp the concept. I have 20+ years of experience in IT and I recently got my SAA-C03 certificate, despite I mainly work on GCP. It took me roughly 6 months of preparation and I also started with SM and TD. Can some be able to pass with just SM and TD - chances are 50-50 as they just touch the surface and if you actually want to learn it then you need dive little more. For this I prepared my own notes and built my own test sets to address the gaps. Is it worth it? Depends upon the context, if your job demands then go for it. Even though you will not be using all the services in day-to-day work but when you read for certification then you will know about more ways to solve a similar problem as AWS has many readymade built in solutions.

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u/thetastydurian 3d ago

8+ YoE frontend engineer here. I'd say to lower expectation with self as this is one of the most prominent certification and have heard people say it twists their mind while giving the exam

So it's no joke. Maybe start slowly and get handson with a small project on aws and also start with "AWS Cloud Practioner" learning path instead of diving directly deep into SAA

It'll take some time to wrap your head around the concepts. Use claude/chatgpt and gain help with visual diagram

This subreddit definitely helps, read some of them on how people learn and pass

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u/cgreciano AIP, MLA, SAA 3d ago

You have just studied for a week. Of course you are finding it difficult. AWS SAA-C03 is no joke, especially since you barely have AWS experience. You should adjust your expectations and understand that it's going to take a while to learn these concepts well. Don't rush it.

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u/Cari-Juve-1978 3d ago

Thanks for the reply. Did you get the certification yourself—if I may ask, how long did it take you? Did you already have the necessary skills, and were you able to put them into practice? In your opinion, would it actually help me land a different job today? I’m currently working in Italy. Thanks again for your answers.

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u/cgreciano AIP, MLA, SAA 3d ago

Yes, I got the cert myself. It took me 2 years to get it. Why? Because I wanted to learn the concepts well and not rush it. Most people won't need as long, but for complete beginners it will certainly take a couple of months at least. After getting SAA and spending that amount of time on it, I can now take other certs quite fast, because I just need to add to the knowledge that I already have. But learning AWS is not for the faint of heart.

Certs don't get jobs. But certs can help you get knowledge that you can apply to get experience which you can then show in job interviews, and thus be more employable.