Should You Train To Be A Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 2
This is the concluding part of this article. For the first part, please look up Should You Train To Be A Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 1.
My recommendation for a cloud computing career is not only because of its longevity, but also because of the high salaries on offer. During my recent internship, I was working on a project to analyze several high-growth industries and recommend the most attractive ones for the city of South Bend to target for its proposed tech park. Cloud computing was one of the industries being studied and my interviews with several people in upper management at different companies yielded information very attractive to the student looking to make it a career. One interviewee said that the person with the right skill can “dictate his/her salary.” Granted he was speaking of experienced professionals, but it does provide an idea of the money chasing talent.
One of the criteria that we were using to compare industries was their average salaries. While we could not find aggregate data for the industry from any reputable publication (not unusual considering the relative newness of the industry), we used data on hiring websites as a proxy. Thus, using Simply Hired’s database, we determined that existing jobs on the website that had the words “cloud computing” in their descriptions had an average salary of $105,000. Compare this with jobs with the words “software engineering” – they had an average salary of $82,000.
However, I won’t use only personal research to substantiate my assertion of cloud computing as an attractive career. According to EMC chief technology officer (CTO) Chuck Hollis, job seekers with cloud-related skills “make between 20% and 40% more in the job market than their non cloud-trained peers.” Writing in technology blog APC, David Braue lists several jobs and their salaries in Australia, data that he compiled from hiring website Seek.com.au.
While experience positions had salaries between $100,000 and $200,000, junior employees could expect packages between $50,000 and $70,000 a year. Braue also mentions some of the certification courses that can help interested candidates – IBM’s Certified Solution Advisor – Cloud Computing Architecture and Infrastructure, The Art of Service’s three-level Cloud Computing Certification course , or Salesforce.com’s courses for developers, administrators and consultants. I would like to add one more to the list, the first University course in cloud computing (See: Cloud Computing Goes Mainstream with University Certification Course ).
In conclusion, cloud computing is an attractive career choice not only because of its immense potential (See: Where Is Cloud Computing Going? Up, Up And Away! ) and longevity, but also because it pays well, very well, for the right talent.
By Sourya Biswas
——————————————————————
“Strategy Guide to Converged Infrastructure in K-12 Education“ – This strategy guide will explain how, by using HP’s Converged Infrastructure, you can upgrade technology, standardize equipment and improve IT practices in your school district, all of which can reduce IT costs, cut network downtime, increase productivity, improve learning, and enable more efficient and effective data collection and reporting.
[...] Should You Train To Be A Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 2 … ← Cloud Computing Outlook 2011 Survey Results via @Zenoss [...]
[...] viable career option (See: Should You Train To Be a Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 1 and Should You Train To Be a Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 2 ). Now, computing giant Dell has announced the expansion of its Taiwan Design Center, with the [...]
[...] As cloud computing grew increasingly popular by the day, there were fears that it would lead to drastic job losses. I had explored this issue in earlier articles, arguing against the idea (See: IT Workers Will Survive In a World on the Cloud). In fact, in spite of some downsizing, cloud computing is expected to create jobs (See: How Cloud Computing Can Create Jobs), and this was one of my arguments when I proposed the field as a lucrative career choice (See: Should You Train To Be A Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 1 and Should You Train To Be A Cloud Computing Professional? – Part 2). [...]