What it’s like to work at ACG?

"What's it like to work at A Cloud Guru?" It's a question we're asked all the time. To give you a look behind the curtain, here's the low down on day to day life at ACG!

What does being a technical instructor involve?

I spend most of my time keeping up with the latest cloud technology and doing research for my courses, then recording video and creating the actual slides. There’s a lot of staying one step ahead – researching, getting a grip on the technology, and creating practical labs.

A single course can take 4-6 months to complete. And believe it or not, recording is probably the smallest part of it! 

Then, after the course is complete and live, I work on maintaining it and keeping everything up to date as the exams evolve and shift their focus. 

I’ve been asked to do so many things that I never used to have to do in my previous role. There are so many more skills in play, and I'm learning all the time - it's my job to learn! This means that every day is different.

Most of the instructors at ACG have never done any of this before, but that's the beauty of the company. Everybody is an engineer. We’re all from industry. We're not trained to be the perfect presenters. We're not trying to be the perfect teachers. We make mistakes and we get things wrong, but that's just the same as everybody else in everyday life. Factually it needs to be correct, but the content doesn't need to be the most polished. If we spent all of our time trying to create something completely perfect, we'd never produce anything!

Let's back up a moment. How did you find your way to ACG?

Before I joined A Cloud Guru I was a Solutions Architect. Day-to-day my role was working with business teams and technical teams to help them bring out a new system or a new service.

I’ve always enjoyed learning new stuff, so a few years ago I took Ryan’s AWS Solution Architect - Associate course on the A Cloud Guru platform because it was obvious that everything was moving to cloud and I wanted to embrace cloud technology. I was approached by ACG to do a student testimonial and Ryan watched it and thought I’d make a good instructor. I got an email from him asking if I’d consider a job at ACG.

It sounded like an amazing opportunity!

What are some of the challenges of your role?

It’s difficult at first, especially if you've never used video editing software before, and I never had. But anyone can do it. Just look at all the YouTubers out there, they're all editing their own stuff, so if they can do it we can do it, too! 

The biggest learning curve for me has been non-technical – the recording and presenting. It's challenging because you're not talking to a room of people sitting there smiling at you and asking you questions when they don't understand. There’s nothing to feed off.

Just like cloud, presenting to a camera is a skill. A lot of people aren’t going to be great at it straightaway – it takes practice. 

What do you love about your role?

I think for me, researching, scripting and presenting AWS This Week has been really fun. Meeting students at the Summits I go to has been great, hearing their stories and hearing how we're changing lives. You really feel like you're making a difference, and that’s why this role is completely different to others that I’ve had in the industry. I feel I have a direct impact on the product and on the success of the company, and a direct impact on the lives of our students. 

How do you stay hands on and retain your practical knowledge?

You’ll get more hands on in this role than you would as an architect – guaranteed! 

We have to design systems all the time and you still have to think through how something you build is going to be architected. How it’s going to perform. How it’s going to do disaster recovery. How it’s going to be secure. There’s still that architecture element, just with a slightly different slant on it.

At ACG I get lots of hands on time and I can get involved in different areas of technology. In any other job there are so many services that you may not use. When I was working for a bank, everything was either an application server or a database. We hardly ever ventured beyond those. 

There’s more variety in the instructor role, you're never going to stagnate. This role is only going to give you better skills. 

What would you say to someone thinking about becoming a Technical Instructor?

I would say, don't worry about all the things you can't do, because you'll get to learn. I know it's a challenge, but challenge yourself to do it! And I’d also say that you get a lot of support and everybody appreciates how difficult it is to create amazing content. 

Nobody is expecting perfection and the team will work with you and help you.