PMP has been useful to take on Project Manager roles, but really PrM roles aren't all that exciting to begin with. Still helps when you want to run your own projects.
I'm currently studying to be a certified parliamentarian from the National Association of Parliamentarians. I'm interested in corporate governance and learning Roberts Rules of Order definitely helps.
I'm also a certified farmer (yeah its a thing), I have 5 sailing certs, 3 scuba certs, Wilderness Emergency Medical Responder cert, working on my pilots license, getting my real estate sales license, ham radio operator general class, almost done with my CDL, there's lots more I'd have to check my notes on.
I do want to get a Kubernetes cert done this year. Long term I want to knock out my CPA/CFA exams, but those are a huge commitment so we will see if it pans out.
Most of this response hasn't answered your question at all, because certs really are mostly useless. Still fun to collect.
I'd imagine financial certs would be the most useful (CFA in particular).
Pilot license is great because it gets you into thinking about how we make data driven decisions under pressure. And actual flying solo after you get your license helps because you do a kind of self analysis every time you screw up - even the minor stuff. There’s a lot of study and focus on human factors which is the primary cause of accidents. So it’s great to build self awareness.
Congrats on your OSCP - I run a cybersec biz and some of my colleagues have that cert and I’m always impressed when I hear someone has it. I’m a CISSP but I think an OSCP is more practical.
Ham radio extra which is elec eng focused rather than just rules of the airwaves is a good one. (I’m callsign WT1J)
In our biz I really appreciate it when folks have a Network+ or Security+ or a Linux admin cert because you can’t argue with the value of knowing networking fundamentals and the Linux command line. In fact knowledge of Linux command line is my leading indicator of competency for a QA role we have open. I look at answers to this question first every time. Next thing I look at is SQL knowledge- because I think both of these are strong predictors of deeper technical capability.
Certs are underrated IMHO because most of them provide practical knowledge that is immediately applicable in a work setting or other pastime. They give you real skills.
Lastly AWS certs are also super practical and very valuable IMO.
Au contraire, AWS has a stable of foundational services that have not moved in a long time and a worthwhile knowing, no matter what service-du-jour gets rolled out. Not a moving target at all.
At least you don't have to pay for renewals of Microsoft role-based certifications. "You can renew your Microsoft Certifications by simply passing a free, unproctored, online renewal assessment on Microsoft Learn, instead of retaking exams. The assessments measure the skills you need to remain up to date in your job role. They’re shorter than the original exams because they focus only on the latest technology changes." [1]
I genuinely did not know this, thanks for the info. Unproctored? Wow, either the exam material must be insanely difficult or they just don't care. Interesting.
AWS is also proprietary which I failed to point out - but it’s so widely used and has such great market share that it’s not a bad life skill at this point.
Fyi, you are then a "professional driver" even in a normal car driving to the grocery. If you get a ticket, many states will instantly double the fine because as a pro, "you know better". Plus there's the medical aspect and other bullshit.
Unless you're going to actually use it, dont get it. Learn to drive an 18 speed with air brakes etc, sure. Just dont get the actual cdl.
to add to this, if you dont actually use your SCUBA or first responder or pilot skills on a regular basis, those certs are worthless at best, and dangerous at worst.
I don't have wilderness first responder but I do have wilderness first aid and keep it more or less up to date.
I wouldn't try something complicated like a traction splint unless there was really no other option and possibly even then--not sure they even teach it in WFA any longer. But, for the most part having a weekend class to refresh a lot of first aid isn't a bad thing even if you don't practice it all the time, may have forgotten some of the details, and maybe your splints aren't the world's greatest. But so long as you're cognizant of your limitations having some even somewhat stale first aid training is probably better than having none.
[Of course, if you act like your 10 year old WFR or W-EMT cert means you're qualified to charge in and take over because you're "certified" that of course can be an issue.]
Most of the wilderness FA certs have a 3-year expiration. IDK if this was always true, but it's definitely a thing now.
If you're using your certification to qualify for a professional or volunteer position, then they usually defer to the expiry period set by the issuer of the certification.
In my experience, basically nobody gets any first aid practice, in between re-certifications. And these are perishable skills, so I wouldn't trust in the ability of most people to execute anything complex after even a year has gone by... But that has to be balanced against the cost of re-training. WMR is usually an 80-hour course (IIRC) and re-certs more like 30-40? That's an absurd time investment for most working people.
Yeah... I'm trying to work out how to fit it in, later this year. I have a 40hr cert that's expiring, later this year, but the stuff I'm really interested in doing requires the full 80hr WFR.
I hope that more of these courses can evolve into a hybrid online model, where you can use distance learning to spread some of the coursework out, ahead of time.
This is true, but I do try to keep the training up. I'm certainly not doing it every weekend, but I train a minimum of 3-4 times per year for W-EMR. Scuba, honestly so long as you do it once or twice a year you're fine, it's really not terribly hard.
i have an open water cert and dive 4-6 times a year. it's fine for just myself, but if you have a higher level cert like rescue, then you may be asked or expected to assist others in emergencies.
thankfully, most places are very careful not to take cert cards from unfamiliar faces at face value.
I thank that is a crappy attitude. If I am on a dive and there is a lost diver or some other incident in the area, I want to have the skills to be able to help.
I would note that "asked or expected" is different than "required", so there really is no downside to doing a rescue diver class or a divemaster program. In fact, I highly recommend it and it was a lot of fun.
There is a negative, though, and I have experienced it diving. Diving is often a razor thin or no margin business, and selling cert courses can be easy money. Few scuba schools will fail students who are not up to snuff, because they might have to issue a refund or endure bad reviews. Some of these certifications will give incompetent divers a false sense of ability, and in an emergency situation, rather than staying out of the way, they create another problem.
The solution to that would seem to be recommending that people choose dive schools that take their Job seriously and don't pass people who haven't mastered the skills. Recommending against getting training is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If you have no experience, just a cert, then you should stay out of the way with those with experience and help as requested.
However, with many dive accidents, you don't have the luxury of waiting for a more experienced diver and having that training will give you a better chance of saving your buddy's life.
The people should definitely get the training, but probably without the cert. The cert for certain things, like rescue in particular, should probably be validated by an external agency that isn't the school
On the flip side, if you have never tried to rescue an unconscious diver and have to do it for the first time without any training, you are not going to have the luxury of making all the mistakes you will make in the rescue class.
While a cert is no substitute for experience, if you are going to gain that experience, it is much better to have a cert than not.
For recreational scuba this is misleading. The cert is proof of going through training at some point, which differentiates you from someone who has never been breathing under water, cleared your mask and reg, and knows basic buoyancy control. These skills are not intuitive so the main thing is exposure, which the cert proves to a large extent.
Dive shops with more advanced dives ask for total and recent experience as well, and sometimes require you to do a refresher or dive with them once before they take you on the advanced dives (deep, night, high current, overhead obstacles etc). The OW cert is a big contributing factor, but it's not the only data point.
That said most other recreational certs are useless and just a money grab, even including advanced, imo. Shops generally rate OW+30 recent dives higher than OW+AOW, and rightly so.
The National Association of Rocketry which supports model rocketry clubs and such has a tiered certification for High Power Rocketry (HPR) which is where you get into building very large models and packing your own motors. These certifications involve the usual written exam, but you also have to design a rocket in your target class- and get the design reviewed, and then build it- and get the build reviewed for safety, and then fly it. Since it's more than a book -> test certification and involves an actual hands-on engineering project, I'd consider it a fun one.
I got irritated with the size of a quote for my heat pump repair, so I got an HVAC certification and did the repair myself. A little time, $300 worth of equipment from Amazon and it is still running great after several years. I needed the HVAC certification to buy the refrigerant. Saved several thousand dollars.
I was going to add the EPA 608 as well. Not only does it allow you to buy/use refrigerant, but it usually counts for warranties for HVAC equipment. Mini-splits and things like that usually want a 'certified technician' to do the install (or at least the refrigerant work), and your EPA number qualifies you. My state doesn't even have the concept of an HVAC licensed contractor, only the EPA cert applies.
Note: the EPA 608 has multiple levels. For mini splits under about 2 tons, you might be able to get by with just your EPA 608 core and Type 1 (small appliances, <5lb of refrigerant) Type 1 + core can be done online, open-book, and costs $25. Nobody should install a mini split without it!
You can do it without the cert, it's just the recyclers usually won't take your reclaimed refrigerant.
I'd feel worse about it, but generally the HVAC companies in an area are extremely predatory and only quote out new systems when a simple repair would suffice.
I got the cert 10 years ago (EPA 608, not automotive EPA 609). 60 minutes of studying two different study packets I found online. Found a local test-giver, and called them up to schedule the test.
I watched a lot of videos made by technicians and did a lot of reading. It doesn't take too long to study enough to get the basic certification, but that is not the whole story. I have done lots of electronic prototyping and test system creation, copper plumbing, etc., so I felt comfortable with tools and electro-mechanical systems. If your entire career has been behind a keyboard, you have a lot more than an hour of studying ahead of you.
As far as I know, CPA in most states requires 150 hours of college credit, of which many must be in accounting. My CPA friends largely joined the big four firm on the strength of their CPA, spent a little time in audit, then promptly switched to consulting. What you get from that certification is the ability to sign corporate audits, own an accounting firm, and the right to prepare and defend tax returns. Unless you are preparing for a second career in accounting, CPA seems like a lot to bite off, but good on you! I don’t envy you all the cost accounting headaches and audit rules.
CFA requires that you have work experience making investment decisions and can get references to that effect, but in all it would be easier than CPA.
Can confirm, plus there’s a 1 year requirement to work in the industry to get the certification after passing the test, and a continuing education requirement to maintain it. I studied accounting and passed the test, but immediately started working in tech so technically I’m not certified. The test was a beast and took about a year and a half to pass all 4 parts, and if you don’t pass all 4 within a window of time the old ones expire.
I perked up recently when I learned that one can now become an accredited investor via a Series 7, Series 65, or Series 82 license, bypassing the income/net worth requirements[0].
Unfortunately, the Series 65 is the only one that you can do without working for a financial company. Moreover, you need to not only pass the exam but we registered with the state and pay an anual fee. I believe.
Wow, that is quite a collection. What kind of work do you do?
One thing I am wondering is how much these certificates cost. For example, quickly glancing through your OSCP link says the minimum is $1499, it is not cheap!
Thank you for mentioning NAP, I didn't know this was a thing (I suspect most people don't)
Fun certs - I did this last year https://www.pearsonpte.com/ and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unlike many tech certs, to pass language exams one has to really know the language. This exam is 100% computerized, so we don't have to deal with biases of examiners, which is what happened to me with IELTS.
https://www.nmra.org/education/achievement-program offers 11 levels of certification for people like us who have a profound need for external validation. My certification list overlaps with yours about 60% but Certified Parliamentarian is next level, my hat is off to you
Aviation - private pilot airplane single engine land; instrument rating airplane; complex, high performance, and tailwheel endorsements; part 107 remote pilot; DC flight restricted zone; instrument ground instructor (this might be a good one for you, just take the FOI and then AGI or IGI written tests and visit your local FSDO to get the cert issued). Considering getting my commercial, multiengine, and CFI certs
Maritime - master 100 tons inland / mate near coastal plus a bunch of random crap the USCG throws on there if you get those (need to renew these this year); American Sailing Association 101, 103, 104
Scuba - just the useful ones here cause I have a whole wallet memorializing money flushed down the drain: rescue diver, ice diver, solo diver, drysuit, open circuit advanced nitrox/deco procedures, 45m helitrox closed circuit rebreather w/deco, certified Poseidon regulator+rebreather repair technician (though the big thing I learned was just to send my gear to pros working with this stuff every day). Currently my big focus is training up to take the 60m normoxic trimix rebreather course in the fall
Radio - general class ham (failed the extra by like two questions, in my defense I had only studied for general), restricted radiotelephone operator (literally just a cash payment, needed this once for a flight I had planned to Canada)
Other - authorized to perform marriages, motorcycle endorsement on driver's license, certified analytics professional (took the test on a whim and passed, it's since lapsed but I might see if they'll let me re-up it), notary public (lapsed), have thought about doing PMP since I'd be good to go on experience reqs
I started an EMT course a while back but I dropped out after realizing I was never going to be able to remain at all proficient. I'm like this with my aviation instrument rating as well, I keep legally current with it but I am pretty cautious about relying on proficiency since I'm not flying multiple times a week
Probably some others I'm forgetting but these are the big ones! I remain really impressed with your list, you've come up with some good ones...will have to think on whether I need to pursue some of them myself :-)
Also, just to clarify my verbiage on the ground instructor bit, not at all saying that you couldn't do all the other aviation ones too (and you should, they were all a blast to get) and more...just that ground instructor is one you should specifically look into because it is relatively little-known, is straightforward and cheap to get for people like us who clearly find tests easy, and offers a fair amount of practical benefits (advanced ground instructor can teach ground for ANY part 61 rating, also you don't have to retake FOI if you ever go for CFI...flight schools in my area will absolutely hire someone on a ground instructor cert alone). No intent meant to cast any aspersions or to minimize any accomplishments!
Can personally recommend a Part 107 cert for flying drones. Particularly since you mention your pilots license. It's nice to fly and not worry someone is going to say you're posting might be commercial - because that's ok with the cert. The FAA card is actually pretty nice, and whipping it out can stop some (though not all) of the folks who want to complain about any drone they see.
CFA and CPA are not really comparable (even though they're both 'finance'). A CPA charter is closer to a JD degree / bar exam in that it is the necessary entry requirement for a legally defined profession (with quite steady demand). A CFA is more like a Master's in that it can help you get an interview for financial analyst jobs, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to work as one. But it can help a great deal, that's true, especially when you're transitioning.
Also, those are some pretty serious things to do as a hobby.
A co-worker once told me he had two of three certifications for fireworks. I forget what they were exactly, maybe one for manufacturing, one for transportation, and one for operations.
I believe these can vary by state in the US but there’s some ATF requirements as well. ‘Operations’ are called ’exhibitor license’ and there are two of them. I’m getting my assistant exhibitors license now, which is the entry point. Once I have demonstrated sufficient proficiency, a lead exhibitor will sign off on my application to become a lead exhibitor. This will likely take a few years.
There is a separate certification for anything involving open flames. Including things like Dave Chapelle using a lighter to light a cigarette.
Storage, transport and manufacturing certs are independent of these and and all involve the ATF in the US (starting with Form 54). It’s actually pretty complex trying to figure out alone, I had to get plugged into the local pyrotechnics guild for them to lay it out for me.
My number one tip for anybody interested in this would be to contact the Pyrotechnics Guild International any locate in-state guilds that can take you under their wing and help you along the way. There are two in my state and they’ve both been remarkably receptive and helpful.
If you don't intend working in finance, but rather want that knowledge for your own investing, it's possible to just follow the CFA books on your own. AFAIK, level 3 is useless for the non-professional that won't be managing a portfolio worth millions.
I had started learning level 1, but realized I'm kind of wasting my time allocating much brain juice to it before growing my income/net worth.
That's true, but I'd still like to give it a shot. It's a massive commitment as you know, so we'll see if it pans out. If I do it I'll probably be committing to 2 hours per day for the next three years.
It's not. Fit trumps quantity and quality any time.
I'm not OP, but I also have quite a bouquet of certifications. Why? Mostly because I love to learn and I also love to work towards goals. Also most certifications[1] are not that hard once you've figured out how to deal with scenario based multiple choice questions. It's a low effort way to focus my learning.
When it comes to hiring - and as someone who sat at both sides of the table - any certificate outside of what is expected in your industry does more harm than good.
> When it comes to hiring [...] any certificate outside of what is expected in your industry does more harm than good
Huh - this is surprising to hear. I would have thought that random extra certifications would act as indicators that a) you're a naturally focused and capable person (rather than just cosplaying one for salary), and b) you have interests outside of work (so will be a more well-rounded and pleasant person to work around). Can you elaborate on the ways in which you find non-standard certifications to be harmful?
Being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive, that should be obvious. Having lots of unrelated certificates signals the latter. If it's the case for you, only mention what's relevant for the job or what actually reflects your personality (so if you're a serious scuba diver, by all means mention it under 'Interests'; but if you got a certificate on vacation 5 years ago and have haven't done any diving since, just don't).
>Being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive, that should be obvious.
If I had a hiring manager say this to me in an interview, I would not want to work for that manager. Random interests outside of work have zero influence on a candidate's ability to perform a job well. I enjoy working with coworkers who live fulfilling lives outside their 9-5, but outside of illegal activity, I wouldn't let their outside life influence my decision to hire them. If they find value in playing video games every hour outside work, that's fine. If they want to obtain random certs and skills, that's fine too.
I'm also in the process of getting my private pilot's license. Do you expect me to start flying in the middle of the day instead of working? If anything, being able to focus on a target goal that can take 6+ months to accomplish indicate focus and drive more than a lack of it.
The SCUBA diving example mentioned is an interesting life experience for someone to have, and doesn't deserve someone gatekeeping whether or not the individual is "serious" about their hobbies or experiences.
Well, I was playing devil's advocate to some extent there, I am 'guilty' of lots of seemingly random interests too (in several cases with certifications that took years to acquire), and even multiple academic degrees in 'hard' subjects. It's just that I don't necessarily put all of it on my CV (the hobbies, the degrees I feel I have to list, even though less would probably be more there too), especially if it's been a while since I last practiced them.
The scuba example was on purpose, because if you list credentials for things that you aren't actually proficient in, it shows something else about your attitude towards being honest about your skills (which can be crucial in technical roles). At one of my old employers, my later boss warned me that the last interview round with a very senior guy was mostly a formality, as long as I'd been honest on my CV. He liked to grill people a bit about their inner workings and their journey, and he'd famously once rejected the team's top choice because the guy had claimed to be fluent in a particular (natural) language on his CV, and then turned out to be anything but (that language was of course in no way needed for the job). In situations like that you feel vindicated if you've had a think about whether old credentials that you acquired a long time ago realistically still belong on your CV. Skills that you don't practice can be lost, regardless of what some paper says.
But if you are serious about them, then by all means put your hobbies on your CV. It can lead to great conversations sometimes, and it's also a form of honesty. And yeah, sometimes people will read things into it that are beyond your control (if you're a pilot, those will mostly be positive, if you do MMA, they may be more mixed, but I'd argue you should mention it regardless).
I'm glad this conversation played out productively and respectfully - another reason why I enjoy this site.
For what it's worth, I initially misunderstood your statement that "being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive" in the same way that the other commenter did, as implying that someone with a life outside of work cannot be a good employee. I see now that you were stressing the "_lots of random_" part of the statement (that is - if you have 20 different "passions" in a month, you cannot truly be said to be focused on any of them) - in this case, I agree!
> a very senior guy [...] famously once rejected the team's top choice because the guy had claimed to be fluent in a particular (natural) language on his CV, and then turned out to be anything but...
Wow - an extreme, but defensible, position! Integrity is important.
I cannot reply for that person, but to me a certification would mean that you know a given subject, so I could ask more in-depth questions and expect better answers than the average candidate. Sometimes this is the case (and if so then getting a certification is not harmful in my opinion), but often it just gives you a very high level, very passing understanding of the subject so candidates just end up being judged against a higher bar without the tools/skills to match it.
I agree with you and would be excited to see a resume like what some of these cert masters could present.
However, I understand that some people shut down when they see a lot of extraneous detail. Think of it like reading a news article. You'd get confused if you started reading "Ferry sinks, injuring 11" and halfway through it starts talking about cricket, then a fire, then congress, then...
Right, that's fair. If I saw a resumé that included, say, references to SCUBA diving and motorcycling, I'd see them as indications of a Real Actual Human behind the professional façade, with whom I could probably have an interesting conversation. If the list of extracurricular interests sprawled over half a page, I'd get fatigued.
I can see this being the case just for the fact that certs are usually paired a structured curriculum for learning a new skill. This takes a huge mental burden off and decreases time wasted in deadend exploration.
Honestly, I enjoy learning but I don't like having nothing to show for it.
Unstructured learning like going to a library and picking out a random book drives me nuts, I quickly feel overwhelmed.
A cert at least gives me some goal to shoot for -- where I can prove some basic competency in the subject by virtue of having the cert.
I need something to "show" for my efforts. Project-based learning can work for me as well, but it takes extra work to figure it out for a given skill. I'm learning photography and I have a goal of doing 1 portrait session per week for a few months. That kind of thing helps me feel like I'm making measurable progress.
My work requires me to take certifications and keep them renewed.
What I appreciate from certifications is actually taking a well-made test. (Instead of a carelessly made normal school or university test.)
For well made certification tests, the question writing process is interesting and a whole specialization by itself. Each question is beta tested. And metrics are collected as to how a question is correlated or predicts that someone will pass the test. Tests should avoid mixing question pairs that hint the answer of another question. And writing multiple choice answers in which the answer is not possible to guess. Also writing questions so they are well written and easily understood. So that the question measures knowing or not knowing the topic, rather than affecting the test taker due to unclear wording.
I'd imagine financial certs would be the most useful (CFA in particular).
I’m similar to you - have a ton of certifications and I’m an insanely good test taker.
Several years ago I signed up for the Level 1 CFA exam in late August to take it on December 5th. So I had a little over 3 months to study for it.
My first inclination that I made a horrible mistake was when one of my portfolio manager coworkers said to me, “I got my bachelor’s in finance, got my master’s in economics, studied for that test for 6 months, failed it and gave up. It’s just too hard.”
350 hours of studying later, I was the only one from my company that passed Level 1 that year. 33% pass rate.
I’m in software engineering. It has provided no discernible career benefit even though I work at an investment bank.
I’m happy that I proved I could do it but the CFA program is not a certification to collect on a whim. It’s literally a 3+ year commitment and you will come close to killing yourself studying.
Good call on PPL. It's a lot of fun and opens up alot more cert opportunities (mountain rating, float planes, IFR, multi engine, CPL, etc) so you will be in heaven.
I warmly recommend the UML certifications. They test whether you know UML syntax rules by heart, not whether you can model software decently. It's absolutely useless, great fun!
In some states, carrying lockpicks is presumptive guilt unless you're a locksmith, but I never figured out whether that's a certification or just a business license or what.
Also very interested in this one. I do some casual locksport but would love to be able to legitimately carry tools and help out friends and colleagues.
Sadly I simply am not capable of learning languages.
I've tried, really hard. I did 4 years of french, 2 years of spanish, 4 semesters of Arabic, 2 semesters of german, 1 Berlitz tutor session for 3 months in Russian and 3 months of tutoring in Farsi. Most of my grades were AWFUL and I barely qualified for anything. I really tried, but I just don't have the medium/long term memory for language. It also doesn't help that I live in the US.
FWIW, I felt the same way. Studied French for years, through middle school, high school and college, and never gained any real degree of fluency. Then I moved to Japan and took language classes for 4 hours a day for a year. It worked.
There were people who still raced around me -- I'm not gifted at languages, by any means -- but for the first time in my life I'm actually modestly capable in a second language. I continue to study now, and it's still accumulating, however slowly.
After this experience, I believe that most people can learn a second language, but they don't because the barriers to entry are insanely high. If you really want to learn a language to a conversational level of fluency, you either have to be truly gifted (5% of people) have to want it so much that you'll immerse yourself in it 24/7 (the rest of us).
> I did 4 years of french, 2 years of spanish, 4 semesters of Arabic, 2 semesters of german, 1 Berlitz tutor session for 3 months in Russian and 3 months of tutoring in Farsi
It took me about 3 months of daily immersion in Japanese life (plus the 4 hours of daily school, of course) just to get to a point where my ears could hear words reliably. If you translate this to coursework...it's got to be 1+ years of college-level study.
I'm in a similar boat. I absorbed German really easily, but when I moved on to picking up another language, my brain constantly switched between the two, even during an intensive study course that was basically several hours a day exclusively in one. I tried beating my brain into the right shape, but no amount of effort made me anything but embarrassing in anything other than my native tongue.
I used to be a pentester, so it was pretty applicable...
Pentesting really requires "full stack" systems knowledge, from networking, to OS, to API analysis, malware analysis, binary reverse engineering. OSCP is an applied cert, so it really forces you to be able to leverage knowledge in a practical way.
However my favorite benefit of offsec is really being able to see things from an attacker's perspective. This has been super valuable in many situations and I've found I'm many times the only person in the room with an awareness of an adversarial mindset.
I'm thinking about getting into pen-testing and eventually getting an OSCP. Would you mind offering a few words about why you left the pen-testing field? Also, do you have a CEH or do you recommend bypassing it in favor of the OSCP?
CEH is literally useless, I used to have it because I did DoD. That’s the only reason to do it.
I got out of pentesting because no one follows your recommendations. I could give 40 recommendations after doing a pentest, come back a year later and none of them would have been implemented.
People don’t care about security—-it’s why everything is broken and it’s getting worse.
I moved into Distributed Ledger Technology because I think it could help solve security issues people face daily in a way where they cannot mess up. That’s the idea anyway.
It does make risk analysis more interesting. It surprises me how people will think only of the positive or accidental case, leaving adversarial ones off the table (and risk mitigation)
I've thought about it, but teaching is such a long commitment. I almost signed up to be a teacher at my local community college in CS, but I just don't want to commit my schedule to something like that.
If you had a four year degree you used to be able to sit for the Realestate Broker's Exam. That ended a few years ago with yearly lobbing by brokers.
Now the easiest white collar profession (8 courses that are easy) require we work for a broker for years. Usually a broker who got their licence without becoming a salesperson first.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill because he wanted competition.
Commercial driver and pilot could maybe be better described as licenses. Those have recurring medical requirements, and CDL holders can be picked for drug testing at any time. Strangely most of the flight docs are ignoring the FAA disqualification item of taking a medicine within two years of it being released. At this point, most commercial and military pilots should be grounded for taking the new virus shots. The two year requirement is reasonable to protect flying public from things not found in rushed medical studies, like heart attacks.
MSHA part 48, or others, is useful to be allowed to be unattended on a mine site. The scope and size of some mines, and the operations and equipment, are something to experience. Of course, the mine owner must want you to be there.
I hadn't seen that. That explicitly grounds the pilot for 48 hours after procedure. It does not appear to change the requirements for the yearly flight Dr. recertification regarding new medicines.
This will not apply to all companies, but for our hiring decisions certs have an adverse effect. If someone puts many certifications on their resume my expectations are lower and I likely won't consider them for interviews. It's a negative signal in my experience. Your time is better spent working on side projects, contributing to open source, writing a blog, etc. I.e. do real-world stuff instead of wasting time on artificial tests that require memorization and exist largely as a revenue stream for certification providers.
Be careful about the bias in single-metric gatekeeping strategies like this. Contributing to open source projects, having side projects, et al are pursuits of leisure. Certificates are possibly the only foot in the door for folks working multiple jobs with kids, etc. and the government often pays the tuition for low income folks. Once you’ve got them, even if you’re more established, it would be crazy to leave them off of your resume, right?
Not only could you be bypassing people passionate enough to work their way into the field through pretty adverse circumstances, you could be inadvertently reducing the diversity of your workforce in doing so. I know it’s tough to have to whittle down a list of candidates on paper, but the closer you are to judging a person’s path rather than their capability, the more likely you’ll be to favor people who mirror your cultural identity and experiences. So if someone looks like they’ve got the requisite skills. It certainly doesn’t mean everybody with a pile of certs is worth considering, but it’s probably not a good immediate disqualifier.
I agree with you in principle, but it's difficult to draw the line when the hiring process needs to be practical. We can't interview everyone and perfect recall isn't necessary. My experience from dozens of interviews has been that many certifications are a rather strong negative signal, at least for our standard software/data engineering roles. I'm sure there are many exceptions to this, but I'll happily miss out on 1-2 good candidates if that means I can filter out 50 bad ones using the same signal.
Of course it's never a binary decision and the complete picture of the resume matters. For example, if someone got a bunch of certs 20 years ago when they started their career that doesn't have any negative impact. But more often, people try to use certs and MOOCs to pad their resume and hope use them to hide the fact that they lack real work experience.
I hear you and have been in your shoes. Hiring is hard, and the steps to hire people ethically are pretty nebulous, which makes it much harder. Especially when the outcome would be the same in many cases, it does seem awfully impractical.
But that's the problem with bias in general, though— It's always a matter of practicality. It's been some time since most discrimination deliberately stymied people with a background or makeup the dominant culture considered objectionable. These days it hides in the subconscious mechanisms governing the purportedly rational generalizations we rely on when lacking time and resources to properly investigate something.
I don't think it's anybody's fault— it's a bug in our brains and we can't control that. I do think we're ethically obligated to push back when practical requirements compel us to make those generalizations. If we expect police to do it when someone may or may not be pulling a gun out of their pocket, we should certainly expect ourselves to do it when we've got a queue of resumes to process.
I think it's an interesting point to make, and it's important to understand that this type of selection is a form of bias. But I think the comparison you are making here with law enforcement using bias towards people of color is not exactly right. There is a difference in signaling by choice (what to put on your resume) vs signaling by nature (skin color). I think we agree that there are some things we cannot change by nature, and a selection bias based on these properties is (in every case?) ethically unjust. I do not agree that it's ethically unjust to have a selection bias on things that are behavioral.
If someone is coming into an interview naked I'm going to reject that candidate. Am I being biased towards unclothed people if I do that? Should I continue the interview and try to find the candidate's fit for the position and disregard that they are choosing not to wear clothes? I think it's no different for a candidate that chooses to list certain things on their resume. Nobody is forced to list all of their certificates on their resume. It is a choice the candidate makes, and what else do I have to judge a candidates fitness than the choices they make in how they represent themselves and their skills?
You can certainly make an argument that listing many certificates is a shallow signal and you should invest more time into getting to know a candidate better before you choose to reject. If someone chooses to use this signal you can make an argument that they will possibly miss a few good candidates. But I don't think you can make an argument that it's ethically unjust to do so.
The whole point is that disadvantaged folks are more likely to use certificates to get a foot in the door and economic hardship in the US is not evenly represented among skin colors— not even close. Folks who don’t natively have the right accent, word usage, cultural reference points and demeanor to seem “credible” and be a “good fit” for internships or jr positions don’t have a lot of options to obtain that credibility. Things like certificates and associates degrees from for-profit colleges might be their only feasible option regardless of how smart or talented they are. Dismissing that entire group out of hand because it saves time is ignoring the economic and cultural realities of who you’re dismissing by doing so. You can separate the cultural implications of nearly any subconscious bias if your analysis is shallow enough.
This seems circuitous. You pre-suppose that the 50 ones you reject are "bad" because of this signal, then support the use of this signal because you rejected them. And then go further to assume the ratio of good:bad of people with this signal is 1-2:50.
I mean, you do you, but it seems that if you were actually interested in the truth you'd have a blind-interview strategy where you interview and judge based solely on the actual interview not knowing about their certificate status a priori.
Note: I don't have a lot of certs (I don't even know that the couple I do have are even up to date, nor on my resume), but this kind of response I see quite often and it feels quite smug.
I find the process of going through the effort to get a cert quite valuable, as it exposes me to aspects of <subject> that I probably would have not hit just "spending my free time on work-type projects", which is another red flag for me as an interviewee. I've been a dev my whole career spanning 30+ years, so I get the desire for "fire" and "passion" for the craft, but as soon as someone asks about what I do OUTSIDE of work that could be brought to bear for work stuff, I'm out. I can see what kind of company they are representing.
All overgeneralizations start out as conclusions based on observation. Having certificates could not possibly decrease someone’s ability to do a job. Assuming that everybody with certificates is a certain type of person and those types of people make bad workers is clearly not based on rational analysis. Might it generally indicate a some kinds of shortcomings? Maybe. If that merely leads one to investigate, that’s one thing. If that turns into a check in the con column for that candidate, that’s the very definition of bias.
Consider a certificate that, let's say, is pretty useless, just meant learning some software terms by heart for a short while and then forgetting.
If a candidate includes it on his/her CV, this can give the impression that s/he might not have realized that it's useless. Which can make a slightly bad impression
I suppose it depends a bit randomly on who happens to interpret the CV
You can't just bolt on other theoretical negative factors to change the usefulness of the analysis itself. This conversation is not about bad or irrelevant certificates— it's about certificates in general.
The candidate included them on their resume for you to evaluate, so evaluate them. Nobody's arguing that candidates with only free LinkedIn certs and nothing else should be given equal consideration to those with formal education.
The question is whether or not people with any certificates can ethically be dismissed out-of-hand because they list certificates on their resume. The answer is still no.
> Once you’ve got them, even if you’re more established, it would be crazy to leave them off of your resume, right?
Not necccesarily. Depending on the cert and field it may make sense to.
The goal of getting the cert should be to learn skills. If you've done that, the piece of paper doesn't matter.
> Not only could you be bypassing people passionate enough to work their way into the field through pretty adverse circumstances, you could be inadvertently reducing the diversity of your workforce in doing so
The people with all the certs still got interviewed where i worked last, it was just a consistent pattern that they bombed the interview, usually very badly on very basic questions.
If you've got a few certs and two jobs under your belt that you got because of those certs, how would anyone imagine that those certs would prevent them from getting jobs? For people with traditional industry on-ramping, it might seem intuitive that someone would want to hide these certs from people for their lack of prestige. To others, hiding your only officially-recognized qualifications seems absolutely ridiculous.
Are you sure those were verified? It used to shock me that people who put on cv “5 years” of programming experience in language X could not write switch statement in it, not anymore. Certifications like CKA can be verified online, cvs should include verification link; CKA/CKAD expires after 3 years, CKS after 2 years so it’s physically impossible to have too many of certificates like this.
I think how many certs and how up-center in your cv you put them matters.
E.g. if I'm hiring for a junior dev and get some self-taught person having done a couple of relevant online courses and so far managed to get a tech support role looking to become a programmer I'm often interested in talking to them.
On the other hand, I have seen cv's from senior enterprise/government engineers, 10 pages long, plastered all over with certs, titles, abbreviations, version numbers, iso standards, etc. and I have absolutely no idea what they actually did or achieved in their prior jobs even when googling a dozen terms. They might be great in the context they are working in, but they are from experience not a great fit for the context I'm hiring for.
The problem you describe is a resume design problem rather than a cert problem. Would you know what they could do if they merely left the certs off of the resume? I’d guess not.
It sounds like you were looking at a federal resume which are differently structured and much, much longer than private sector resumes. Candidates appreciate feedback letting them know: “Thanks for applying but I can’t suss out what you can actually do based on what you sent. Feel free to reapply with a more concise, descriptive resume.”
If they’ve worked in the federal government that long, they might just not realize how inappropriate their resume is for private sector jobs even if they’re qualified. If they can’t course correct and describe their skills in common business language, that’s a good enough indicator of their ability to adapt to the position, I’d say.
> Once you’ve got them, even if you’re more established, it would be crazy to leave them off of your resume, right?
Recruiters and hiring managers go through so many resumes, the last thing you want is to have someone looking for a programmer to read about your basket weaving skills.
My strategy has always been to tailor the bulk of the resume to the job I'm applying for. Bring everything else up during the interview if there's natural time to do so, because that's where they want to see who you are.
> Contributing to open source projects, having side projects, et al are pursuits of leisure.
This is an old anti-pattern: tests that sound like they're about competence, but they're actually about "culture fit."
Example: Speaking at conferences. This sounds like social proof you know something about the industry, and have communication skills to boot. In many cases it actually means you are good at networking, have leisure time available to attend conferences, and get invited back to speak at more conferences because you're likeable and contribute to the conference's social scene.
In my own case, I have spoken and even keynoted multiple conferences. But I don't think speaking at conferences means much when hiring, unless I'm hiring an evangelist or community manager. If I'm hiring a programmer, I want to know whether they can program, nit whether they can talk about programming.
Anyways, I support your thesis that some (or even many) single-metric gatekeeping strategies that don't measure the actual skill required by the job are bad, and I suggest that many of them test for culture, not competence.
Yes. I do think it’s important to point out that folks using these “in my experience, people like this tend to be bad” type of hiring metrics probably aren’t deliberately discriminating and often change their approach after realizing it’s problematic. Obviously grown adults are accountable for their own actions, but not training, supporting, or monitoring folks making hiring decisions is more of an institutional failure than a personal failure.
Completley agree with you. My reply was way too harsh/emotional. There are many companies that offer skill based pre-interview tests, tossing out resumes based on qualifications is not just silly but a liability and a sign of incompetence. The worst hiring managers are reductionists that act on instincts and prejudice.
> Once you’ve got them, even if you’re more established, it would be crazy to leave them off of your resume, right?
For sure include them if they are relevant to the role or show real commitment to a topic. If you see a string of disperate certs though it's easy to assume the applicant doesn't know what they want to do.
Not saying I would discount someone on this alone but it would raise questions for the interview if they were otherwise qualified.
And that's totally fine. We all have our own heuristics for determining what we like in a candidate, but we need to be very, very critical of those measures and make sure they aren't masking other less justifiable gut instinct decisions. Bias is generally subconscious— If it really was as cut-and-dried as we like to think, then it wouldn't be a gut feeling metric at all— we'd be able to back up our reasoning with hard facts. As rational as they might seem, 'gut feeling' criteria almost universally favor people we're comfortable with rather than the most qualified candidate. That's a real problem for folks who aren't part of the dominant culture of the industry: Millenial to Gen-X straight white and asian guys.
If a qualified candidate only having certificate credentials merely prompts further investigation, then great. However, it's quite often the tipping point between round-filing a good candidate and calling another one in for an interview. While it might seem innocuous on a micro level, on a macro level this affects big swaths of the population.
In the 2005 Study Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9873/w9873...), they responded to 1300 job ads with 5000 equally-weighted resumes with randomly assigned names which were either stereotypically white, like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, or stereotypically black, like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. Resumes with white sounding names were 50% more likely to receive a callback. Fifty percent! The likelihood of 1300 randomly chosen job ads being run by the KKK is pretty low. Most, if not all of them were probably letting "gut instinct" criteria swing their judgement.
If you had a video game where the sole task was getting a job, one race having a built-in buff where the callback was 50% greater without being balanced somewhere else would be insanely unfair. Not only is it not balanced, but we're literally only talking about these folks names— never mind their appearance, manner of speaking, cultural references, etc.
We all like to think of ourselves as good people but that's not enough to stop this. We need to deliberately interrogate our MO, here.
I wouldn't dismiss certs that fast as from my experience hiring for technical roles, it's a wash. I've had people with more certs than braincells, and people with certs that I loved and wanted on my team immediately.
It at least gave me something to talk about more directly because I can have some expectation on tech they've worked with.
I personally don't chase certs for myself because I don't see the point, but I find them as fairly okay talking points on a CV. And it's hard to argue any interview unfairness since the cert should imply certain levels of familiarity with a technology.
Edit: I do need to add that the cert concern was a real thing in our company but after some analysis, we sadly found some biases from the interviewers as they only considered certs for certain candidates to be a negative signal. I put a stop to that fast reminding people of candidates from more western countries with gobs of certs, and they legit didn't know their ass from their head, much less how to do anything besides press the button the manual said to press.
To this point, occasionally you'll come across candidates who have obtained certs in part because that is the way they were trained to learn in their specific personal & cultural context - but the reason why they chose to learn so much in the first place? It might be indicative of a true, passionate, focus-seeking curiosity that would make them a fantastic team member. And perhaps they hadn't had the opportunity to work in a place that treats learning and growth as a holistic part of the job. These people can become culture carriers in a tremendously positive way.
It's part of the reason I try to make "cover paragraphs" (not necessarily full cover letters) an important part of every application - it's important to give people the opportunity to let their passion shine through at the earliest parts of a process.
I get what you're saying and I think this is true for a lot of people, but hear me out.
I actually rarely read too deeply into the CV except as a source for some talking points. I have a phenomenal recruitment team so I rarely need to "guess" on a candidate from a CV (truly, they are exceptional and they really get what my team is looking for and our candidates love them also cause the recruiters took a lot of time to learn enough to talk competently about our tech scope) If my recruiters pass me a candidate, the candidate is at least good enough to bullshit fairly competently.
We structure our interviews to be very conversational -- the same points are always hit and we have a loose grading structure, but mostly the goal is to get the candidates to talk about problems and explain their thoughts really well. I do feel bad, because I can tell some put a ton of effort into their CV, but I rarely pay that much attention to it besides ctrl+f for some subjects I want to talk about or looking for a few keywords outside of our core competencies just to see how they talk about these edge cases.
Passion is good, but for me, passion shines through during the interview and the conversation and how they love to talk about what they work on. Even with the most nervous candidates, we've taken a lot of time to practice just being approachable and interested, which helps even the shyest candidates really open up. I know I had one candidate pretty recently where they were quite shy (and also interviewing in a second language, not their primary so lots of stress there). It took a little bit, but by the end of the interview, they were blushing red with pride and smiling uncontrollably with how proud of themselves they were for answering really tough questions and scenarios we had for them. (and they knocked it out of the park for a DevOps position, I don't think I've been so happy with a candidate in awhile)
I wish we got this for every candidate; their passion gets tapped and just suddenly I see someone gushing about their favorite topic.
> Your time is better spent working on side projects, contributing to open source, writing a blog, etc. I.e. do real-world stuff
Just FYI that at some companies, collecting certificates is indeed real world stuff. Some companies use it for marketing (“we have the most certifications in the industry”) and some need to to satisfy vendor partner requirements (“AWS Premier Partners are required to have X number of certificates”). It doesn’t seem fair to penalize a candidate just because they did what their company asked for.
Sure, but my question would be, are you, as the resume writer, more proud of the cert you got via your work or of the work you did at work? I've done cert stuff before as part of my job, but it never rose to the level of being relevant to put on my resume over other things I did.
My rule is always to only put something on my resume if I could talk for 2-3 minutes about it in a way that makes me look good/useful. Most of my certs, the only real thing I could say is "I spent 10-30 hours watching videos and then took a test well." I wouldn't really want to work for a company that valued those skills vs. me explaining how I applied the things I learned from the cert.
Is this recent? I held every cert under the sun in the 2000s and companies GOBBLED ME UP. In the early 2010s I could walk into companies by simply having a VCP cert. I'm sure if I held a K8s or some hashicorp cert, or AWS or Azure certs I would be pulled into any org hiring today. And I put all of my certs on my resume (that I can fit with most recent first).
I should also clarify, I only put certs that matter (why put an Azure cert on a resume submission to an AWS shop) and certs that are recent (I have 20 years on my resume, why would i put my CCNA on there). I think a large number of irrelevant certs would be a negative signal. I think a large number of relevant certs AND job history to back them up would be a super strong signal.
I remember many years ago, Google internally knew that one of the only signals obtainable from CVs was the negative signal from number of certs. I don't think this knowledge was actually used for anything, it was just a correlation, but yeah it's sort of an open secret in the business that the sort of people who get lots of certifications do very badly when asked to demonstrate actual technical skills.
It's a response to large number of people who know very little and want to compensate with memorizing stuff and passing certificates without deeper understanding of what they're doing.
It's kind of a stupid response, especially considering that the same people would most likely view 10+ certs on your CV as a positive if your name is western-sounding...
Idk, i haven't been in the industry long enough to compare. Also, i work in security (in north america and not gov), maybe other areas are more pro-cert.
I also disagree with your first comment. Large amounts of difficult certs have never been a negative signal and I’ve been doing this for like 20 years.
Especially in cyber security where a wide breadth of various knowledge is needed, certs can really help show who has the ”full-stack” so to speak.
That being said, 20+ CompTIA cents isn’t going to move the needle for me.
Actually cyber security is one area where a lot of certs are a strong negative signal. They basically broadcast course-taking and cert-chasing over real world experience. If you have an OSCP cert I will treat that as a potentially good signal, but if your CV includes CISSP I will walk in to an interview with low expectations and if it has CEH or similar wastes of time the recruiting lead would have known to filter the CV out so that I do not even see it. This if for FAANG environments though, so maybe if you are aiming for a corporate cube farm in a smaller market other certs will be useful. Just not with me.
As a Red Team manager with both the OSCP and CISSP, in my opinion neither is worthless but they are oversold and they aren't really comparable.
The CISSP is a risk management cert that's sometimes oversold as an infosec cert. It's been quite useful to me in dealing with the (Fortune 1000 mostly) bureaucracies that take Red Team and pen test findings and turn them into remediations or risk acceptances.
The OSCP is a technical cert that's oversold in a different way: because the test is fairly difficult, lots of people assume it's an advanced cert. It's a beginner cert (and Offensive Security has several more you can take after it). What it does prove is that you probably have the right mindset to be a penetration tester (which is not necessarily the same mindset you need for Red Teaming, i.e., unannounced adversarial simulation).
tl;dr: I don't think any cert is bad as long as everybody understands what it's for. But I'm one of those people who collects them (at employer expense) as a way to structure my learning, and then never renews them.
I'm enough of a domain expert in certain niches that I've participated in creating certification exams. The reason it can develop into a negative signal: the question banks are rapidly exhausted by the exam dump industry, and for even some esoteric exams 90%+ of the question bank with exactly correct answers are generated within a year of the exam's introduction.
With the popular exams, it is mind-numbingly fast. Think days to weeks. Crowdsourcing / MTurking the question banks is depressingly effective if you sweated over nearly a thousand question bank items for a few months with a few other expensive experts.
Labs in the exams are a way to blunt this, but I think the exam dump industry has probably come up with a way to defeat labs as well by now, because the labs run a fixed set of scenarios with variations in parameters but not the general gist. It's better, but still hackable.
What I've come up with requires discipline by a team documenting the issues they've fixed in the past, but it is so far 100% foolproof. Pick a random relatively self-contained issue your team fixed in the past; this is the most critical step governing the quality of this technique's results. Reproduce the issue in a scratch environment.
Sit down the candidate in front of a workstation set up to their preferences you gathered in advance, with all the tooling they prefer, simplifying your superfluous environment specifics where possible (like logging them into various accounts ahead of time). Set their expectations ahead of time that they will be team / pair troubleshooting for half an hour, that you aren't evaluating whether they find the root cause or not, you're evaluating how well they work with others troubleshooting an issue in some system/language/etc. they claim they are a domain expert in. Dive in.
Without fail, the ones who exam dumped their way to a certification will thrash about. Hard. Most common is they will not know where to even start, deer-in-the-headlights. Even telling the candidate straight out where to start, by using your 20/20 hindsight and artificially picking a starting point 1-2 steps away from the root cause still does not unlock them; jumping to a known good starting point is useful for the experienced candidates who freeze under interview pressure, as they usually unfreeze when given such a big head start from your IRL issue that you ran into for the first time.
You can often get a good gauge of how much and how deeply the candidate worked with the stack they claim competency in by how they navigate around, ask questions, probe for error messages, etc.
I'm interested in an informed discussion of a comparison of the merits of the differing tech certs, not so much talking about scuba, finance, or truck driving.
How does the quality and value of, say, CompTIA, Cisco, AWS, OSCP, K8s, Linux+ and other certs compare with each other?
> do real-world stuff instead of wasting time on artificial tests that require memorization
Interesting, since the majority of tech interviews (from what I’ve gathered) rely on artificial tests that require memorization.
I’m not disagreeing, I also think real world experience is infinitely more valuable. But it seems like certs could actually be an indicator that a candidate would perform quite well in LC style interviews.
It's a bit glib to say that even the most leetcode interviews "require memorization". It's certainly possible to do most of them from "memorized" first principles of how various bits of CS components work instead of brute-force memorizing, and in general even when I do code problems on interviews, I mostly try to use them to either demonstrate that or determine that the candidate actually understands WHY you would do things that way.
Certs on the other hand are often just pure memorization. There's not really any way to "infer" which AWS service name matches to which service function. You either know the name of the API call or you don't. It doesn't provide much signal that you actually know how to apply that information to anything practical.
Even at their worst, most crappy whiteboard code interviews are still literally testing if you can literally write functional code, which is closer to what you do on the job than memorizing the Cisco books.
>Your time is better spent working on side projects
This seems like a shaky assumption. Keep in mind that many companies, like mine, sponsor or even mandate the certification process. Meaning the justification, time, and costs didn't come from the candidate you're dismissing.
as someone in Devops/SRE I hold the same thinking as you. Whenever I see an interview come in loaded with certs, I automatically think they just know how to take tests and study for them.
It's almost 100% that they fail the interview because they don't know how to put the learning into real world solutions.
My past company had a huge pile of credits for certs because they valued them and I figured “I’ve been working with AWS; why not?” I didn’t study or prepare at all and went in using only the hands-on knowledge I picked up over my career.
I came out with all the associate certs, the AWS solutions architect pro, and their network specialty.
As a hiring manager I find certs to be a neutral indicator: you at least have to know the material to get them, but plenty of people learn the material hands-on, not from books.
Also, sometimes companies will force employees to get certified for many reasons. My own company was recently looking to renew their Gold Partnership with Microsoft and so they were looking for victims to get Microsoft certified, because, apparently, that's the requirement for partnership.
As for why companies need such partnership: it speaks well to managerial types, therefore helps win contracts.
This is also my experience. However, I would say something like Amazon's certifications may be useful if your company has gone all-in on AWS. Amazon (and GCP and Azure) have such a huge variety of offerings, and it's something that Amazon is asserting this person is at least familiar with what these things are and how they fit together, and the trade-offs. On-the-job study is, in general, not going to be good enough to get a comprehensive understanding like that, and a cert course makes a lot of sense.
I suppose if there was a reasonably trusted organization that could give the same cert for "front-end javascript", that would be good too, since there would be great value in surveying at least the major features of the current js landscape. (Probably not practical given the breadth and depth and dynamism of the space, plus the ambiguity of selection. And also, not sure what org would or could do this!)
then you should specify this in your job requirements so that people can remove them from their resume when applying.
the candidate should not be penalised for trying to tick boxes that other people have set up.
I got rejected from positions because I had a masters in computer science instead of an ECDL certificate. So I swallowed my pride and went and got one. Now, I'd agree with you that as an actual computer scientist, mentioning ECDL on my resume is embarrasing. But there you go, some HR departments have weird automated checklists, so I leave it in. I'd hate to then apply to someone like you who'd reject me because I had the nerve to list my ECDL certificate on my resume. It's a lose lose situation for everyone involved.
That's funny, because I've always felt the opposite when evaluating candidates. If a candidate comes in saying certs are "trash" and "pointless" it usually looks less favorable. It signals an unwilling to learn and/or strive for continuous improvement. Certs are not the end all/be all but they help round our your knowledge and open your eyes to things you never knew.
As far as side-projects and open source contributions, this is a two way street. When I look at side projects, I look for how well you are utilizing best practices in your code. If it's a sloppy, poorly documented mess it doesn't look favorably for you. If you use your side projects as a marketing tool they should be well-polished.
> If a candidate comes in saying certs are "trash" and "pointless" it usually looks less favorable. It signals an unwilling to learn and/or strive for continuous improvement.
Or it signals that the candidate would rather learn hands-on than take useless multiple choice tests.
Your frustration is at least understandable, but personal attacks because you disagree with someone's hiring process are not appropriate, not helpful, and just going to make it even harder for you to get hired if anyone in a decision making role sees them.
I'll also echo what others have said, in that certs are commonly used by people trying to compensate for a lack of actual skills. That's not always true, but it is often enough that the correlation is bound to stick in people's minds even if they don't explicitly exclude applicants because of it. If you do have both a lot of certs _and_ solid skills and experience, then kudos -- but you may want to consider tailoring resumes and other materials to the jobs you apply to based on their applicability and expected reception. (That's generally good advice for anything, but particularly for things like this that could have both positive or negative connotations in different circumstances.)
You misunderstand, I have no problem getting hired but I know how hard it was to even get a call at first because of jerks like the person I was commenting to. I normally would agree that a personal attack isn't warranted but what they said is worthy of one. They are affecting people's lives based on bullshit correlations and instinct? And they work in tech? Really, my remarks should be taken as a response to their demonstrated character not their hiring process. Correlation is not causation, anyone near a technical field should know that. If 90% of applicants are shitty then of course most of them that get screen based on resume to begin with will have certs. It is one thing to say "I don't care about certs" this person is saying "I disqualify people if they have certs" does he do that with degrees too? Plenty of crappy degrees folks in any field! How shall I respond to a person punishing people for working hard and trying to demonstrate their knowledge? Deciding peoples livelihood based in his or her laziness to pick up a phone and ask questions?
On second thought maybe my words were too harsh for HN. I just don't know a polite way of responding to this. And on the other end of the spectrum there is another ass that says you are shy of one cert, 10 is not enough. We need a guy with this particular cert. or they use this shit to mask their prejudice and find a way to keep people out that aren't part of their country club.
It is categorically unfair and the intent is at best based on laziness. If people are getting certs then why is hiring manager not smart enough to ask challenging practical questions and measure their thinking process? And then they brag about it.
No, I think if your response to getting called out on making personal attacks is to double down on it, I understand quite well, but don't think we'll ever see eye to eye. I wish you the best.
Likewise. My harshness was inappropriate but a personal attack in response to a person punishing people unjustly and bragging about it is warranted. I was not responding to a technical argument but to the intent of the person. Like you called me out I was calling the original commenter out on their treatment of others.
I consider side projects to be absolutely meaningless predictors of anything. A cert is a poor substitute for experience but it's a signal of someone willing to learn and grow through diligence. Side projects are usually just arbitrary in value. In the very rare case that someone has a real blockbuster side project with a lot of users I'd be concerned about how much time they'd spend on it. Getting a PR approved on a mainstream project would be impressive though.
We work on side projects because we __like__ it. Seeing side projects through the lense of "value" is naive in my opinion. Yes, obviously if the side project has actual users than that's a plus. But companies like seeing side projects because it __does__ show that the candidate really likes what they do for a living. Now whether the company is purposefully using that to expect people to work 60 hours a week is a different discussion. And while I'll probably ruffle some feathers by saying this, I'll say it; software is a sport. Very much like a sport, if you stop doing it then you'll get fat and lose your touch. People that work on side projects are constantly honing their craft and because of that they tend to be the best athletes.
If I owned a baseball team, I sure as hell want the best. And in my humble opinion, the best are usually __always__ working on getting better at the game. AKA working on side projects ;)
EDIT:Just want to clarify; it is WRONG of a company to expect people to work 60 hours a week. Just so we are in the same page. I am NOT condoning that.
Just to clarify myself also, I don't expect people to dedicate their personal hours to work. We have a standard work week of 35 hours at my company and we generally stick to that. I'm talking about people I have worked with that had successfully side projects that were earning them money and that they most definitely worked on during business hours and were basically just double-dipping.
Value doesn't need to be monetary. Just having fun is something valuable. I'm saying that 99% of the "side projects" I see are junior devs who think they can't apply for a job without a bunch of things on GitHub.
In the late 90s, 98 I think, I worked for an internet startup that didn’t end up being huge. We were on Novell and a bit if solaris and had just launched a product that used windows nt and server side activex.
I was a college dropout web dev/web master making $50k. They had a hard time hiring devs who knew nt and could design and automate server farms. I learned on the job and did an ok job running it. But they wouldn’t promote me because I was really young and didn’t have a degree.
I went to a Microsoft conference and would buy a study book each day and take the test there. I did 3 exams during the conference and took the other three when I got home and with all 6 certs got my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (with a stamp of bill gates’ signature).
They gave me a raise to $60k (and the college grads went from 50-55). I then got $70k six months later and $80k six months after that as I was the “certified person.”
I always thought it was funny that I did the same job before and after the certs. The Networking cert was really useful and I still remember how to do subnets and dns and dhcp and stuff.
> I always thought it was funny that I did the same job before and after the certs.
It’s often more advantageous for the company to have people with certs (it was with MCSE and such in the 90s anyway) - more MCSE etc on staff meant it was possible for the company to attain higher partnership levels with Microsoft which often meant more lucrative contracts and so on.
So while you may have been doing the same job as before, just by having the getting the certs you added more value to the business.
This didn’t apply to my company as we were just a product company and didn’t have any relationships with Microsoft (or Novell or Sun) other than buying their licenses.
I later worked for consulting companies where these certs came in handy for the reason you describe.
As a hiring manager, I treat AWS certification (professional especially) as relatively a good heuristic. It does not replace hands-on experience of course, but it has good correlation with good hands-on ability.
Another one that will catch my eye is any Kubernetes certification.
Both are great additions to experience, the certification itself has much less value standalone, but it might be the edge that will help someone get that entry level job.
(These are common for DevOps engineers, but a SWE with the above will have an edge in my book)
Might the above be generalized into "The best use of certificates is to reduce uncertainty, for the hirer"?
I.e. A SWE with a SWE cert says nothing, because you'd expect them to know it. But a SWE with a DevOps cert says something, versus just claiming knowledge.
My impression is that every cert seller markets as though the world believed "You dont know it, unless you're certified in it."
My impression is that the world actually believes "You can be certified in something without knowing it."
So at best, from an applicant / employee's perspective, certificates are a slightly stronger suggestion that you might know the thing you claim to know.
Which is a useless reinforcement for something for which you already have demonstrated experience via work history.
But might be useful for something for which you do not.
Wow interesting. I got the security specialist one (work wanted me to and they agreed to pay for it). It was almost entirely memorizing what amazon product name corresponds to what generic name. And a bit about ACLs. I was left feeling it had basically nothing to do with my job or relavent skills.
Not at all, I would never reject someone for lack of any formal paper (degree, certificate), but if I have more resumes than time to phone screen them all, an AWS / Kubernetes certification is definitely a tie breaker for otherwise two similar candidates.
I'm, going to echo a bit of whats in the comments to robcohen's post but the single most productive cert I hold is my pilots license. I do not fly for a living, Im a software engineer (mostly). I hold other certs, some technical, others non technical both work related and non work related by a sizable margin my PPL is the the most productive:
Back story: when I started working for my self my first client was a pilot, he encouraged me to get my PPL or at least do a demo flight. I did an intro flight and was instantly hooked. 3 years later I had a PPL, Instrument Rating, High Performance and Complex checkouts. One of the best experiences I have ever had, I was fresh out of college, had a few bucks in my pocket and not many obligations. Anyway heres why its been great:
- I have found there are basically three types of people that bum around private airports where general aviation ops occur. 1) people successful enough to afford to fly private jets or charters when they need 2) people successful enough to OWN their own plane. 3) People who are liable to become types 1 and 2. In general pilots are a nice bunch and a talkative bunch. Ive met some really great people (read business connections) just by lurking around the airport. That first client I had, had lots of similar buddies who were pilots that I got to meet etc. etc. By far the most productive business networking I have EVER done occurred near an aircraft.
- Flying keeps you sharp in all aspects and it WILL change the way you look at things. It keeps you sharp on doing paperwork, sharp on staying current on a topic, sharp on thinking ahead of things, sharp on staying in at least some sort of decent physical shape. I have built a lot of productive habits in my life to ensure I can fly.
- It hones your decision making skills, a lot....
- It re-shapes how you view getting around and enabling your business/work. Both pre and post pandemic life. Meeting with client within 500 miles, Im not dealing with trains or regional jets, im coming and going as I need. This has enabled same day travel, taking meetings i normally wouldn't have and being able to generally buy time back.
- Putting my PPL on my resume has been the best talking point, stand out item, liner note I have ever had.
This is interesting, because a lot of it is similar to what I've long said about having an amateur radio license.
I list it on my resume as "Holder of FCC-issued radio operator license under Part 97, Extra class". For muggles, it's the beginning that sounds impressive. For other hams, it's the end.
And every. single. interviewer. has brought it up and asked about it. In technical roles, often one of the interviewers is also a ham or at least fairly aware of it. That's a natural branch to talk about side projects and hands-on competencies, which can otherwise be hard to introduce.
It requires some study, nothing to the level of a PPL, but most folks can't walk in off the street and get anything higher than a Tech license. General-class usually takes concerted study, and Extra is basically a thimble-full of college physics and a whole whack of practical electronics and RF safety.
Radio is mysterious to a lot of people. Heck, a lot of people don't even think of wifi and GPS and walkie-talkies and WDET as being the same thing. Being both competent with the tech itself, and facile with explaining it, makes one instantly valuable in a great many settings.
The privileges granted with a license are insane. I sometimes use the analogy that: Imagine everyone walks everywhere, or you can buy a little e-scooter that's speed limited to 2 miles per hour. All the fasteners are welded and it's illegal to modify your scooter. That's FRS, wifi, etc. Pay a fee and you can get licensed for GMRS, which is a 10mph scooter, but it's still welded shut because there's no technical competency required for that license. Or, demonstrate technical competency on the ham exam, and you get a license that allows you to drive a supercar at 1500mph, and you're allowed and encouraged to modify anything you like or build it from scratch if that's your thing, and they when you self-certify its roadworthiness, they just take your word for it because you hold that license and you probably know how to tune it and not hurt people and stuff. It's utterly bonkers.
Sadly the community around amateur radio is nowhere near as elite as you make out general aviation to be; there's substantial overlap with the wannabe-cop cosplayers, and I find the most interesting hams tend to not spend a lot of time at ham gatherings. There are some magnificent technical fora, to be sure, but they are the exception.
Getting PPE sounds like good fun; but once you got it what were some cool things you've been able to do without being a type (1) or (2) private airport person?
I don't own a plane or fly in 135 charters, I'm a member of a flight club that owns a few planes. As a member I effectively rent the planes from the club at a very reasonable rate with a small fixed monthly cost for things like storage etc. The planes are not used for primary training and are only available to club members. They are very well equipped IFR capable aircraft that are very well maintained. The club is small enough that its pretty easy to get a plane when you want/need one. With that in mind here are some cool things the club has aloud me to do.
1) I have moved a few times since I got my PPL and some of my friends have as well. At this point I have fairly close friends all up and down the eastern seaboard. The plane has aloud me to see them regularly without very much complex planning and often for lunch or breakfast when it would otherwise need to be for the whole weekend. Just yesterday I flew down south a bit to meet a buddy for breakfast that I otherwise would not have been able to drive to do do such a thing. This has been a really nice aspect of flying.
2) We have some family that lives close but not super close (7ish hour drive). The plane has aloud us to be part of their new borns life in a tangible way. Similar to seeing friends that I otherwise couldn't
3) The plane has expanded my weekend trip options. We have explored islands, gone to further cities and seem more than we would in a car. There are just north of 16,000 airfields in the US and only a small chunk of them service commercial traffic. I can get my little plane into pretty much all of them and land super close to lots of interesting places.
4) Ive been able to leverage interesting one day opportunities: Is there a once in a decade eclipse coming, best viewing spot is 600 miles, lets take the plane for the day. Is there an airshow somewhere lets fly in and check it out. Ferries booked to Nantucket for the weekend, take the plane. Want to get some chowder the vineyard for lunch, take the plane. Wedding in the Hamptons, traffic looking like its gonna be 6 hours to get there, take the plane. Buddies bachelor part is far and you need to get there friday potentially stuck in hours of beach traffic, take the plane (and pick up some friends along the way!)<- all things Ive done.
Before anyone jumps to "its super expensive to do those things" the fact is, in a reasonable GA plane its about the same cost as driving +fees for dealing with cars these days. My plane gets the gas milage of an SUV and most airports charge less than $20 a day for ramp parking, free if you buy some fuel typically. Some cities have silly $2 mandatory parking fees or what ever but if your careful about picking which small airport you go to in a city you can usually fly in for VERY cheap or free if you buy gas and you generally need to buy gas anyway... With tolls and gas prices the way they are its usually not much of a price difference to take the plane even after rental costs are figured in.
all the points you list about flying, I believe was the norm in the pre-ww2 world.. I think we lost something because our system is so resilient and comfortable, you fear nothing really
The bigger and more bureaucratic a company is, the more certs tend to matter.
Lack of experience and achievements also make certs stand out more, because you've got not much else to show for yourself.
Sometimes certs can be a red flag.. depending on the cert. For example, someone with a whole bunch of Windows certs applying for a job dealing only with Linux? That's a bit of a red flag. Doesn't mean they won't get the job, though.. it's just one factor in the hiring decision.
Sometimes for really laid back companies, any kind of formal signaling like this could be a turn-off. It's like coming in to a company wearing a suit when everyone else is wearing shorts.
> The bigger and more bureaucratic a company is, the more certs tend to matter.
This is the key point.
Certs aren't good/bad, or helpful/harmful in of themselves. They matter/or not depending on what type of employment(if any) you are trying for for.
For instance, I never want to work in bureaucracies or places levels/layers/management complexity that they must fall back on certifications, skill checklists, and the like. So, I never pursued any form of certification. Not even a university diploma.
I work for a fairly hige tech company and it’s pretty bureaucratic (although I suspect not nearly as much as some others) and certifications (other than academic degrees and such) still carry the same sort of negative connotation here the other answer implies.
Maybe it sounds obvious, but if you don't have a license, you are crippling yourself.
Even if you don't have a car, not having a license means you don't even have the option of renting one. Also, is is so "obvious" that if an employer notices that you don't have it, he will wonder why. Are you too stupid to drive? Crippled in some way? Economic problems? Have some criminal history? Alcoholic? You may have a legitimate reason, but it is still a red flag and you may need to clear yourself.
Second and just as obvious is a degree. Not so important if you have experience (though some large companies care), but a degree may be the key to a good first job that may launch the rest of your career.
I have never felt the need for any technical certification, not personally, the few I needed were paid by my employer for a specific mission, and done during work hours. Didn't get much use after that. Since I am not an English speaker, I probably could want something like a decent TOEIC score if I wanted to work in a large company in an English speaking country, but I am net even sure.
I don't know about other industries, but driver's licenses have never come up at all in tech. Treating it as a red flag is obviously facile, but, honestly, no worse than nonsense I have seen in tech hiring... but it's just not something that comes up.
College degrees can definitely matter, unfortunately, but they're not strictly required. I've seen teams and managers who were pretty snobbish about which university somebody went to—to the point where not having a degree would have been better than going to an unknown or poorly regarded school. It's an absurd idea and, thankfully, seems to be getting less common in tech, but I saw some of it first-hand. (From what I've heard, it's still a real problem in law where a bunch of firms in the US are virtually T14 or bust.)
This is probably the dumbest answer in this entire thread. Firstly, unless the role requires driving for some reason, anti-discrimination laws in many countries will make discrimination based on lack of a license illegal. Secondly, as someone with impaired vision who cannot get a drivers license, it's morally wrong, and your enumeration of associations someone might jump to are pretty fucking offensive.
Also, WRT TOEIC, while you might need something like that for visa/immigration purposes, i've never heard of a company looking at a piece of paper rather than just conducting the interview in English.
> Are you too stupid to drive? Crippled in some way? Economic problems? Have some criminal history? Alcoholic?
I recently got my driver’s license, first one, at an age far far above the norm for America, even if you factor in New York.
In a long and so far pretty successful career in tech, this has come up exactly once in a professional context, and it was my fault because I was asking about the lack of public transit options during an interview. CEO asked “why don’t you just get a license?”
My colleagues usually find out sooner or later that I don’t (didn’t) drive, because I’m very social. Most people are fascinated by the possibility. At the very least it’s a conversation starter.
I regret not getting the license sooner, but the kind of ignorant and malicious questions listed above have never, ever featured in my unusually long pre-DL experience.
Same boat. I also recently got my 1st license, relatively late. I will miss being able to break the ice by bringing up my learner's permits across multiple US states.
Don't think I've ever had any employers asking if I have a driving license (in the UK) unless driving was required for the role.
And the same for degrees, this seems to be very US centric IME. Not having a degree hasn't stopped me getting jobs in top salary brackets based purely on my experience, hell I even have a very odd work history and didn't move into tech till my 30's.
Same for certs, requirements for certs in job ads definitely seem to be a US thing. And for me if I'm reviewing CVs I see certs as a mild redflag as I've come across far, far to many people who have certs but couldn't work their way out of a soggy paper bag.
I am 38, have a PhD in EE, but no drivers license. I am not disabled or stupid. I have a successful career and no one ever enquired about it. I live a mid size city with ample public transportation; if anything having a car is the suboptimal/stupid choice. Your assumptions are ridiculous.
It's an American thing. You're expected to drive from 16 on. Public transport is generally inferior to other developed countries, and carries an abhorrent level of cultural baggage. Being told someone rides the bus is seen as an insult (!) over most of the country.
Up until very recently, the big costs of running a car - 'gas', insurance, the car itself - were relatively cheaper in America than nearly anywhere else. Maybe now that Merkins are paying more for petrol their culture will adapt. However, cynicism would suggest a more Mad Max destination for us. We'll pry the guzzoline from their bullet-ridden bodies.
Yes. I grew up in a fairly small town. If you wanted to get anywhere you basically needed to drive. Even today there is little public transportation in that area and only between a few key places. Once I got my driver’s license I was expected to drive me and my younger sister to high school. But with responsibilities come privileges as I had use of a car for going out with friends, dating, getting to jobs, etc. For much of the geographic US it’s really the only practical form of transportation. That said my wife has managed to get by all her life without having a driver’s license so it can be done and employers never ask about it unless it’s actually needed for a job.
Thank you for your application. We have decided to pursue other candidates due to our recruiter getting "low key cripple vibes" from you. Don't take it personally though, and good luck in the future.
I don't have a single cert of any type and have never needed them. My last role was at the Senior Staff level and I'm currently interviewing for a Principal position. I've found certs are mostly asked for by either very unusual jobs or bottom of the barrel employers that don't trust their own people. I'm not really looking for either of those things so I find I don't need certs.
They're a nice bonus, I used to dismiss them until my friends and I all worked at jobs where they would pay for the certification if you passed plus a bonus of $500. We would come together on Fridays and whoever had passed the most certs that week would get free drinks. I held sooooo many certifications in the 2000s and I got job requests every day. I went to more high level certs (like VCP and AWS architect) in the last decade and the recruiters haven't slowed down. And I'm pretty sure having a CISSP will walk you into any security position today. Don't discount certs as they are a cheap form of networking.
It's like going to college. You don't need it, but its a nice bump above others in the resume stack at some orgs
Certs and the studying associated with certs has always been the biggest unlock in my career. The MCSE gave me a 50% salary uplift in the early 2000’s and the Cisco CCNA/CCNP gave me an invaluable networking background in the mid aughts. Recently, the AWS certs have given me an opportunity to pivot from management back into the technical realm and given me the confidence and framework to think about IT problems in a whole different way (traditional IT vs Cloud native) Throughout my life I’ve always done better by investing in myself and my learning, and certs have always been a huge part of that. My investments, stocks, startups, etc. have always been hit or miss, but my skills and the opportunities they have opened have been huge unlocks. Certs are a structured way to achieve those unlocks and represent them in the professional world. For all the cynicism one hears about certs, my experience has been the exact opposite, I’d do them all over again - I’ve learned a ton and had a rewarding career.
Amateur radio license. The experience is more relevant to my job than any corporate training I've ever done.
Note that "experience" means "everything I've done with the license since getting the license". Don't fall into the "achievement" trap: reading a book so you can pass a multiple choice test teaches you precisely nothing, unless you go out and start to apply the rote memorization.
I am trying to learn about radio (and the electric and magnetic fields in general), and I'm following the Great Scott Gadgets' "Software Defined Radio with HackRF" video series. I'm also thinking about getting an amateur radio license. What else could you recommend?
arrl.org and rsgb.org, the US and UK amateur radio organizations, sell a variety of books you might find helpful.
If you are in the US, ARRL sells books that teach to the specifics of the US tests. I used those but found them rather unsatisfying. There are other books which focus on experiments (see Hands-On Radio Experiments) and others on theory.
The ARRL Handbook is also useful. It's updated annually, but you won't miss too much if you save a few dollars by getting an older edition.
I'm generally not a big fan of security certs, especially for mid career or later (and a lot of people I know got involved well before certificates were a thing; they might have gotten certificates early on had they entered the industry later). However, DOD (8570/8140), some specific regulations, and some specific clients sometimes require them. I also dropped out of both high school and MIT undergraduate so having at least some cert is sometimes helpful for forms.
Assuming you have the experience and a reasonable level of knowledge, CISA and CISM are pretty easy to maintain. CISSP is arguably worth it too but I let mine lapse due to annoying renewal requirements and some politics in the org.
Having one or more of these can be really handy -- sometimes you have a client who requires it (perhaps because they've copied someone else's requirements), sometimes there is a project you're tangentially aware of with an audit requirement, etc.
Technically they're nothing special. The Offensive Security stuff is probably the best for technical knowledge in their domain.
(I also do a bunch of med, shooting, driving, armorer, etc. classes; it's especially interesting seeing how adult education/instructional design/etc. work in those areas, independent of the actual subject areas taught. "Training" vs. "education" in a lot of cases, etc.)
> I also dropped out of both high school and MIT undergraduate
An MIT degree seems like it would actually be helpful in one's career. They seem to be pretty good in terms of engineering courses, faculty and student body. Did you skip directly to a graduate program?
No, I dropped out to do a startup, partially because I couldn't afford to pay for my tuition (I was ineligible for loans because my parents wouldn't sign/provide info, and MIT offered zero financial aid.)
Haha, I should have guessed it would be a startup. ;-) MIT offered zero financial aid? That's surprising.
I assume MIT's financial status is such that if they wanted to they could offer need-blind admissions and full financial aid packages without student loans the way many schools (e.g. almost all of the Ivy League) have. (Though I'm not sure whether they've gotten rid of parental loans, which are kind of terrible as well.)
Non-tech - Toastmasters - I think it is called 'Competent Toastmaster' it is the first set. Consists of doing 10 speeches. Significantly improve your ability to talk in public and to do presentations.
Although I would agree with most opinions here that that does not make me into a data scientist by any meanse, I do really like that I have a good "helicopter view" of ML. This is still super benificial in my role today, as I know which kind of statistical models apply to certain kind of problems. This enables me to find the right people for the right solution with much more ease.
AWS solution arch professional cert. A one eyed monkey could pass but it legitimately got me a lot of contract work as it’s a lazy tick box as most people only bothered with the associate level one.
Genuinely though certs don’t really add value just get you through people who don’t know anything about it and are doing recruitment.
Personal story time. Back in 2005 I came to the US for the first time through the Work and Travel program. I was working as a lifeguard and had a lot of free time while nobody was in the pool. I decided to take a Zend Certified Engineer certification - back then it was PHP 4 - thinking it might help me get a CS internship in the US next summer. I passed it and 3 months later Zend offered me to take a PHP 5 certification for free. I was already back in my home country and of course I agreed. After passing the exam it turned out I was #8 overall and #1 in my country to pass it. I put it on my resume.
6 months later I found a job and moved to Boston. After working at that company for a few months me and my boss went out for drinks and I asked him why he decided to hire me. He said that my certification was basically a deal-maker. He thought it was a sign that I was at the top of my profession. I thought it was funny, but, hey, it worked.
Super fast forward - a few years later I Fat FIREd at the age of 33 and I'm absolutely sure that the initial certification set a certain chain of reaction that led to it. So even though I think in most cases the certifications are absolutely useless, I'm absolutely sure that when you have to stand out from the crowd, especially at the junior level - they are super useful.
Same with the resumes. It's ok to have a section and list a few certificates, but quite regularly I see people put logos of some certificate programs on top of the resume, next to their name. It doesn't make a good impression.
I worked with someone who was a certified yoga instructor and uninronically had it on her business cards and email signature.
She was a tech consultant. After I looked up “CYT” I think that made me not think positively of her. I mean it’s good that someone is proud of their accomplishment, but such a weird thing to announce to the world.
I know nothing about yoga instruction, but I have a qualification that might be parallel and acquiring it certainly required a lot of dedication and practice. I guess I'd say ask why it's on the resume instead of assuming; you might hear something interesting.
OP is asking about certifications, which you generally get for passing a test. Coursera gives you certificates, which are a record of having taken and passed one or more courses.
There's quite a few comments already about the dubious worth of certificates but that's an assumption pretty clearly implied in the OP.
It would be useful to focus on the question as intended otherwise we are just going to see the same "certificates meh" noise that most of us already know.
Early in my career I stacked up certs. I’d usually get ones that were relevant to projects I was working on. I’d find sometimes (again earlier in my career) that I needed a combination of structured learning to complement concepts in large projects I was working on at the time.
This led to more responsibility and more pay but it took a lot of my own time. As I’m senior in my career now I sometimes wonder if it was worth it as a trade off for all of the certifications I earned.
I’ve been in FinTech for 20 years. Two businesses I started. Worked with 40 of the top 200 Investment firms. The number one cert I’ve seen BY FAR a) making the most profound impact on work and b) helping the most to increase your probability of always having a great position, is a CFA.
Cisco certified network associate (CCNA). As a developer with roots in networking, being able to troubleshoot the network — even as little as understanding the 3-way TCP hand shake to identify whether even a socket has been established — helps you isolate fairly quickly whether it's your app, the server, or some intermediate device that's causing headaches.
Depends where you want to work. If you're looking to get into consulting, specifically related to vendors then it's a guarantee to win. Most vendors will require their authorised resellers/consultants to have a certain amount of certified staff. AWS comes to mind as the most obvious, but I'm sure this is the case with other cloud vendors.
For a "normal" business that is more of a customer to vendors, nah not really. Your experience is worth far more than your certifications. The only place it might get you somewhere is Government, although expectations are low there so you can get away with associate-level certifications and seem amazing.
Never. I had a number of top certificates in the past, nobody ever asked about it even if they were very relevant to the jobs I had. The only ones ever useful were the Cisco network certifications that were required for some jobs, but even these became almost irelevant in the past 10 years.
I see these days lots of certifications on LinkedIn. For the people that I know well, it is a mystery how they get it because it is usually the weakest in the team that gets certified, while the best people never do it.
I acquired several AWS certs early in my career. The understanding of AWS I developed through studying has helped me significantly in developing products at startups. I would highly recommend getting the networking specialization; it’s the hardest but perhaps the most important when it comes to understanding one of the most complex aspects of AWS.
I don't think certifications will make a significant difference from the HR point of view (maybe in Enterprise) but one thing I observe in my network is that some people really benefit from certifications purely because it boosts their self-confidence or help them get over a nagging case of impostor syndrome.
I find that these people feel lost when you tell them they'd be better off just being curious and learning by doing the thing itself. They tend to find comfort in systems like the belt system in martial arts. So, if you feel this way- it might be worthwhile to pick up a few certifications just for yourself.
My friend got something called “Board Certification” in the medical field and apparently is quite a big deal. Another friend got something similar in the legal field and apparently isn’t particularly useful.
In tech the more prominently someone posts these certifications, the bigger the red flag. Someone just got a CISSP for some reason, perhaps as part of a job, and it’s at the bottom of the CV? Sure ok. Someone puts “PMP” in their signature line next to their name? Flashing red flag.
Lack of a Masters pretty much ended my ability to teach some intro programming courses according to the accreditation board. So, the answer to the question in reverse. Damn shame given some future plans, but experience isn't the equivalent.
Outside of money I have never seen a logical explanation for why we has a society have not created a purely experienced based "degree", something that if you have say 6 years experience in a field of Computer Science, and can demonstrate either with testing or work product the same level of knowledge one would gain from a 4 year degree program just issue the degree.
Even with money, let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test, prove my experience, and bam I now have a degree...
Do the same for masters, make it 8-10 years experience
> if you have say 6 years experience in a field of Computer Science
Such as what? An industry research position in computer science? Sounds very unlikely, but I suppose possible.
Middle-of-the-road software development experience is not the equivalent of a degree in computer science, or software engineering, or anything else.
(Interestingly, the University of Cambridge may award you a PhD if you're a Cambridge graduate who has made a PhD-level research contribution to an academic field. [0])
If you have work experience, put it on your resumé.
> let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test
What test? The full suite of coursework assignments and written exams for every module in a 3 or 4 year taught degree course?
> Do the same for masters, make it 8-10 years experience
10 years experience of what? For a degree in what?
You could have a long and successful web-dev career with almost zero knowledge of computer science.
The "univers" in university means something. A university degree is about more than just the knowledge gained in one's major. It's a signal that the person has had exposure to the breadth of human knowledge. It might be a millimeter deep but the breadth gives them context in which to operate in society. None of that means this knowledge can't be acquired individually, just like having a particular major doesn't preclude someone who didn't attend university from gaining that knowledge on their own. It's simply a signal that this particular bundle of knowledge has been seen and at least understood at a surface level. In theory that should allow those evaluating the candidate to skip over testing competency and knowledge in these areas outside of the job's focus but still relevant to functioning in society.
Many schools will give credit for life experience, some through testing, some through interviews and reviews of one's professional work. IIRC, Western Governors University is one of the leaders in this practice.
> A university degree is about more than just the knowledge gained in one's major. It's a signal that the person has had exposure to the breadth of human knowledge. It might be a millimeter deep but the breadth gives them context in which to operate in society.
This may be true of the USA, but not universally. Here in the UK we don't have the concept of a major at all. An undergraduate student typically only takes modules pertaining to their chosen field, and perhaps a small number of more general modules on, say, study skills and writing.
> Even with money, let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test, prove my experience, and bam I now have a degree...
The system you're proposing sounds ripe for abuse; wouldn't universities get the most money by lowering standards? You can get an honorary or extra muros doctorate if you make a significant contribution to the field, but explicitly tying it to a fee doesn't seem like a great plan.
>>wouldn't universities get the most money by lowering standards?
You making the case that they have not done exactly that? That they do not attempt to get as many students through, and put pressure on professors to pass students for the purpose of getting as much tuition as possible?
Given the statics, and the looming student loan debt crisis I am pretty sure the evidence is to the contrary of your statement
Yes, it's currently difficult to sell a degree because you have to fake the whole shebang. There are some institutions that do exactly what you propose, but market forces leave only the ones with zero standards standing. They are called "diploma mills," they have existed for a very long time, and accreditation bodies stripped them of official status long ago.
There are plenty of places that let you test out of individual classes, but testing out of a full degree for a five figure fee is one gigantic perverse incentive.
Instead they have just added attendance requirements to the old school "diploma mill" situation, so now instead of just paying a fee, you have to pay a fee and waste a bunch of time to still not learn anything, and dont have to prove you learned anything
What would be the actual value of a 'degree' here as opposed to just the work experience? This sounds as much a reason to just ignore the idea of degrees as being uniquely meaningful which is...probably fine. But, degrees and work experience are not (or should not) be the same thing.
Why? The stated purpose of a degree is to educate a person in field of study, the culmination of which is a piece of paper that is suppose to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
Work experience can convey that same level of knowledge, thus the purpose of an experience based degree would be to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
A software engineering degree is an academic degree, not a vocational certificate.
Look at this syllabus for a 4-year degree in software engineering. [0] It's broadly similar to what we'd expect of a computer science degree. Topics include:
• Computer architecture
• Compilers
• Computer graphics
• Cryptography
• Deep learning
• Software verification
The average self-taught web developer has a working knowledge of none of these fields.
First I never said anything about web development...
That said then there is a clear disconnect between employment, and degree's
Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
That is the the point of my comment, often time people feel required to spend 10's or 100's of thousands on a degree for the sole purpose of attaining employment as a software developer.
If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
You said software development. Self-taught software developers are very often web developers.
> Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
Suppose you're right that employers place undue emphasis on academic achievement compared to on-the-job software development experience. This would not be addressed by handing out honorary degrees wholesale.
> If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
If it lets them start a software development career, it's not a waste.
Also, again, a degree in computer science is not a vocational course like a coding boot camp, it's an academic qualification. The goal is to impart a basic knowledge of a scientific field.
In my experience software engineering degrees tend to be essentially computer science degrees but with a slightly different emphasis. Of course, both are more applicable to software development than, say, a degree in biology.
Some degrees have limited non-academic application, such as philosophy, and some have non-academic application but with only very few jobs available, such as forensics. If I recall correctly, computer science and software engineering are among the top degree topics measured by average financial payoff.
Well there needs to be some kind of sea change, and my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements.
most people are entering university for vocational reasons, not academic achievement. The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
The push by universities to extract as much (often tax payer funded) money pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education seems to if not the core, pretty close to the core of the problem we face with on this topic.
The idea of experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
> my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements
Again, it's no solution. Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees.
> The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
Plenty of people study philosophy, despite having little direct applicability outside academia. That's not to say they're wasting their time and money.
> pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education
Do you mean to say there's a shortage of institutions that offer vocational training?
I'm confident you're right that they get less government funding.
> experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Vocational degrees exist, awarded by institutions which are not universities, but if I understand correctly they generally have little traction. This might not be true of every country though.
>>Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees
I disgree, it is purely a checkbox for many organizations, a way to filter out people. Provided the degree is accredited it would resolve the primary issue I have with the current state of employment requirements
>>Plenty of people study philosophy
that was not my comment or statement, I am sure there are "plenty" but for more than 20 years now High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities themselves has been telling students that path to vocational success is via the university system, and a 4 year degree program. Are you attempting to deny this reality?
>>Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Then High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities need to stop selling the idea of vocational achievement via 4 year Academic study.
At some point perception becomes reality, and decades of selling Academia as de facto vocational study to the masses, has cut out and reduced actual vocational programs almost entirely from the educational landscape to the point that most K-12 schools do not even have vocational programs, it is General Education or College Prep, those are the 2 tracks, with Extreme pressure on students to go for the College Prep track.
Certainly not in any standardized way. The variance between what someone does in one software development job vs another is just too high to be a good signal of any particular knowledge.
Work experience can be difficult to evaluate, especially since most companies have no incentive to cooperate with the degree granting institution. In addition to the process consuming company resources, there may be sensitive business knowledge they don't want revealed. There's also the issue of turnover making knowledge of an employee's experience with the company very limited. Same for human memory decay or simply others in the company not knowing what the person was doing, even if it was valuable.
While I can agree with that, I fail to see how this does not also apply to collegiate based education.
Having interviewed several recent graduates the level of knowledge shown is not on par with what I would expect, it seems from my personal experience that college is more of an attendance standard than educational standards, what years ago we would call diploma mills, pay the fee, attend the class, get the degree, seems to the wider state of the "higher" education system today
This to me simply means we're failing with educational standards. Which, well, we probably are. At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
There's merit to the idea of awarding a college degree if you can pass all the assessment, without necessarily taking the classes, but that's a different thing again. Ideally, college should be about introducing theory and reasoning which gives a solid understanding of the field in a highly focused manner that an employer almost certainly won't provide. I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Another comment in this thread seems to have hit on one of the problems, Universities are focused not on vocational education, which is the reason most people attend university , and what most employers expect when they demand a degree from their employee's. Instead universities are focused on "academic qualification" which may have limited to no real world vocational value .
>At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
I 100% agree with this, I know a few "experienced" people that are not really experienced, which is why I did not simply state that one should automatically attain this experienced based degree simply on chronological paid experience but rather experience + something else
Someone bought up WGU's method of crediting some life experience, that is a good start but I don't think WGU's program goes far enough but it is on the right path, and I which more institutions would start doing more things like them.
>I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Again I agree here, some fields may lend themselves to an actual degree program, Doctors for example. I think my ideal society would be less than 30% of jobs requiring a post secondary education degree, the vast majority of employment should be encompassed by regular primary / secondary (k-12) education, and maybe direct vocational training (paid by employers)
Instead we pushed the narrative the most jobs need post secondary education or to be successful one must get a degree.
Allowing for experienced based degree's , IMO would start to open other avenues and maybe start a shift in human resources to start looking at other things that just a check mark for "has degree" true or false
Of course the extreme cost of education, and the debt crisis is also doing that slowly
I don't want to list a specific cert since the name of holders is public but GIAC certs (and SANS training) have been the most useful to me. They are very expensive and most people need a company to sponsor them as a result and also some in the industry complain about how them for one reason or the other but personally it isn't so much in terms of memorizing random facts or gaining some very deep insight but being exposed to very technical material and practical and current industry practices and knowledge. I think a lot of the critique is due to wrong expectations. You're not gonna become a threat intel expert or malware analyst because you took a sans/giac cert but it would be similar to taking a post-grad university course on the subject. They are also very vendor neutral and open source friendly. Their instructors are well recognized and accomplished in their respective fields.
Security aside, CCNA has to be the most valuable IT certification. They are cisco specific but the sheer amount of knowledge you need to understand for it and the foot-in-the-door opportunity is extremely valuable.
I've met a lot of certified people who didn't know anything beyond the questions they crammed for to pass a test. When I see a cert on a resume, it makes me want to challenge it. Of course, there is a ton of nuance to these interactions, so I'm speaking very generally here.
No cert is a substitute for real practical experience. If you are trying to get a job and you don't have experience, then I can see how a cert might be nice to put on a resume. As a hiring manager, it doesn't make you more attractive to me to hire. The four years of experience doing a thing does. For tech stuff, I'd rather you have a home network with the thing and valuable time using it then the cert for the thing. The time spent pulling your hair out getting the thing running at home is a better use of the time then studying for the cert test.
However, I do put value in a liberal arts education. I don't even really care what that education is in. I feel people that come out of a four year program tend to think differently/more critically, on average.
Short answer, then: Get a liberal arts education. Get hands on experience. Skip the certs.
Back in the early 2000s when I was fresh out of university I did the Sun Certified Java Developer course. It made me stand out of the vast number of other graduates looking to get into the industry. I landed an awesome job straight away.
My advice would be to get 1 or 2 meaningful ones if you really want them. Avoid littering your resume with a bunch of certificates, since that adds a negative bias I find.
Red Hat, Linux Foundation (k8s mostly), AWS certifications will generally be a positive signal for me (engineering manager, interviewing about 50 people a year, seeing many more CVs).
I've personally gotten a couple and thought they provided good structure to the learning and so I also advise them to engineers we hire if they want to learn k8s and don't know where to start.
I got my CCIE and then went to work in software where no one gave a shit, but since then I've moved back to more networking-centric roles and it's definitely paying dividends. That said, Cisco ain't what they used to be and I don't think I'd encourage anyone to start their CCIE journey today.
Yes, I work in the Salesforce space and have a bunch of Salesforce certifications including certified technical architect (actually hard to get and rare) and Salesforce certs definitely have value in the job market if you are applying to Salesforce-related positions.
Generally, there are two ways I look at certs.
Skills Development: Having a test to pass is a great extrinsic motivator to go out and learn and have some assessment and external validation that you did learn XYZ. It also removes decision paralysis around what to learn and forces you to focus on a specific topic.
Career benefit: This is 100% dependent on the companies and roles you are applying for. Within the "enterprise" space and large companies certs are generally more valued but it's best to work backwards from the type of companies and roles you want to apply for and see what they are looking for.
I have been on 40+ courses/training over the span of about 15 years but ever did any exams or certifications. I feel that I DID NOT LOSE ANYTHING not having them. If you like to take exams then you may do it - but if you are about to pay for them from your money then I am not so sure its worth it.
My profile is generally BSD/UNIX/Linux sysadmin with some addons needed in between like storage/virtualization or high availability clusters.
If I got asked why I get to the trainings but did not get certifications I reply that I went for these trainings for learning and knowledge (and eventually things I needed to ask a teacher directly about them) and that was my main interest in them - I do not need a 'proof' that I 'got it and understood it' at the classroom.
Maybe certification is more needed in other areas ...
first aid certification totally worth it. The fact I know how to provide CPR and first aid opened some surprising opportunities (e.g. attending C level company tours that opened doors) and provided me with experiences when volunteering in an ambulance which is also a surprisingly good network.
Haven’t done any myself but when I hire people I generally treat them as a net positive for people early in their career because it gives them exposure to concepts that are relevant, but for more senior people it wouldn’t matter at our company.
This is very tangential, but in case it resonates with anyone else.
I was curious to discover recently that to try and bridge the gap between what we should arguably be doing to tackle Climate Change and what we are doing, a group has come up with the term Inner Development Goals to describe a set of abilities that might help with this transition.
https://www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org/
Curious if anyone else has come across this, expecially as I've done courses on Sensemaking, Counselling/Coaching, Critical/Systems Thinking and the Shadow (Jung) as mostly just life skills, but interesting to see them grouped together as potentially helpful generally, even if most of them would have to be studied in some depth to turn them into jobs.
The Why (from the homepage):
In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals gave us a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. The 17 goals cover a wide range of issues that involve people with different needs, values, and convictions. There is a vision of what needs to happen, but progress along this vision has so far been disappointing. We lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. Fortunately, modern research shows that the inner abilities we now all need can be developed. This was the starting point for the 'Inner Development Goals' initiative.
There is no singular "get this proof and you'll be better off for it". You can get a cert that says you are the best at a thing in the world but without any applied experience it'll be hard to be valuable. The same goes for having a lot of experience 'doing stuff' but no common vocabulary or standards making collaboration really hard.
If you have long-term experience and a base 'proof' of knowing how to work together, you have a solid foundation and everything else is just time and putting in the work (unless you want to get into some old boys network which isn't based on skills but on some form of heritage, be it family or a specific institute to attend).
If you get some fundaments for compsci at any college and then work for 5 years going from application administration to system administration to cloud native development you'll have the same solid impression as starting at the helpdesk, getting an AWS cert and working your way up from junior AWS engineer to medior AWS engineer.
Keep in mind that none of this gets you FAANG level work because they get a large enough pool of applicants where they can just filter anyone who doesn't have a combination of high grades and university or lots of experience in a highly specialised field.
Besides that, like others wrote: "advertising" what certs you have collected is like advertising what Pokemon you collected.
I interview lots of people for my current and previous employers. I primarily look at public git repos, carefully reading their code. Bonus points for continuous education (Coursera, eDx, etc.). Ultimately though success is also strongly driven by being good at getting along with people, having a habit of carefully reading coworker’s emails and documents, and writing skills. Work is a mixed bag.
I would definitely list online classes and certifications on your resume, right below where you list your public git repos.
I have a bachelor of arts in history, most of a bachelor of commerce and the CPA designation.
I was into programming and computers when I was a kid and in high school but for whatever reason I decided I didn't want to study computer science. Ended up in an arts program, which I graduated from and reached the top of my career path nearly immediately by getting a minimum wage job at a bookstore. I went back to school for accounting and became an auditor at a public accounting firm. I made it to manager, burnt out, and decided that I'd explore other options. I ended up with a consulting side gig at a startup using both my tech and accounting knowledge, and now my primary job is in finance process transformation/automation.
Looking back, it looks like my career path was tailor-made for the position I'm in now. I use all my education - arts has made me a good communicator, researcher, accounting has given me good technical and management skills. This is just the narrative fallacy at work though, I had no idea what I was doing along the way (and still don't!).
Public accounting and CPA has been fantastic at teaching me how businesses work inside and out, and is very valuable for what I do now. I don't know if I'd recommend it for everyone, but studying accounting itself is probably a good idea for anyone working in management or finance.
Getting certifications on a technology you want to work with will help companies hiring those positions find you and increase your odds vs a candidate that doesn't have them.
If you want something that will tangibly raise your prospects - look into clearances instead of certifications. These will open you up to a segment of the market that has less competition. I have a few colleagues that got two levels of clearance during university and they were immediately hired upon graduation.
I do a lot of hiring and I dont particularly value them, except for near entry level jobs. Certifications rarely test real skills or indicate the ability to actually do a job. For low seniority roles they indicate dedication at least.
Where they are useful is as a structured learning syllabus for entry level knowledge of a topic. If you know nothing about a topic but want to get into it, starting with a cert is a way to get the vocabulary and build a base to actually learn it from.
For testers I found that ISTQB is really valuable. The lack of graduate programs for this field + the fact that's not easy to get make it even more important.
Years ago after our DBA was let go and I took on a significant portion of their responsibilities, my job told me I needed to get MySQL certified. The sign up page for the course they wanted me to take at the time only worked in IE and I only had Macs at home and in the office. I never got around to installing a VM just to sign up. I’m still doing the same job like 8 years later so I’m guessing it really wasn’t that important.
I am in the highest non-management engineering position at a job I enjoyed that pays well. I am not looking for “progression”, I am where I want to be, full stop.
This is the dream. I had been lead developer, in charge of people at a previous job and I hated every single minute of it. Managing people sucks. I am just over here actively avoiding the Peter Principle.
FINRA Series 57, not only because I learned a whole lot or because it’s useful outside of my industry (derivatives trading development) but because it was a regulatory requirement of employment :-). But seriously, I did learn a lot about the wider finance world outside of the little bubble I sit in. It was also quite hard, it covered a wide range of topics that I had no prior knowledge of.
Not sure if it's what you mean but graduating from a good uni seems to make a difference to people. I went to Cambridge and people always treat you a bit different when you say. Though it's more having gone than what you studied. Even if you are too late for undergrad you can always potentially do a masters at some high ranking place.
My experience is once you've got your foot in the door at a company nobody is interested in your university background. Perhaps it's different if you have a higher qualification like a doctorate.
Certs were mildly useful 10 years ago in launching my career. After the first job no one cared, I’d imagine a boot camp does the same now.
There is a category of company/role that really just needs some basic proof point that you know what your doing.
My first job was auditing user permissions, and refactoring Perl/bash scripts. There was a department of 9 people who provisioned a server once every 1-3 months using a mix of proprietary and open source software, they were also responsible for the operations of the legacy financial service the company offered.
I got the job, because it was boring, contract to hire, and probably a career dead end, had a brutal on all schedule, a penchant for firing people over mistakes, low paid, and made you wear a suit to work. It didn’t hurt that I memorized the answers to 100 Linux admin questions.
I left after a year and a half for a much better tech job at a startup, and transitioned to a standard engineer position within the year.
I recently spent the $700 to become a Certified ScrumMaster. This is within the past month, so any evaluation on how much it has helped my career is premature, but being that I've found myself to be the accidental ScrumMaster at work, taking the course to learn what the role is supposed to be seemed worthwhile. It has given me some credibility with management that I didn't have before, although the long term effects are as of yet unknown. It was an interesting two day class and a 50 question multiple choice exam. I had the privilege of taking the course with Chet Hendrickson, one of the originators of Extreme Programming (XP) and a contributor to some of the books written on Agile. I think the knowledge was worth acquiring and I actually enjoyed the course, which is more often not the case.
I find product / vendor based certification helps me round out my knowledge of a product better than just execution of a given task I need done at the time. This has helped me understand more of the capabilities of the what I wanted to learn
IMO this is more were the value of certs come in.
So for example I would not get a AWS Cert to get a Job in Cloud Administration, I would start training learning the cert to understand AWS, the cert is then just the final step of the learning process, the reward if you will.
Do I need to cert to learn it, no and sometimes I do not actually sit for the test.
I think people that just brain dump to pass the exam do themselves a disservice, that said the short answer to your question, I can not think of any cert that by virtue of just having it has advanced my career, I can say the process of getting certs which resulted in my expanded knowledge and experience has
Yeah. This. I don’t hire people based off AWS certs, but I encourage my people to get them for the learning. I’d say the general AWS knowledge I’ve gotten from even the most basic AWS certs have legitimately helped my career because now I know how the services fit together.
After getting my masters in 1982 and then half defending PhD I did not do any certs. To me it is a total waste of time. When I need something I do not know I always find enough info on how to solve a problem or guess it myself. Being a former scientist this is how I was trained. The last thing I need are some bloodsuckers charging me money for their failure to produce decent docs / manuals / whatever else relevant.
Since I went on my own for the last 22 years I do not recall ever being asked for any certs anyways. I specialize in developing products from scratch with some hit an run jobs in between and clients just read references and rather long list of products I've developed. This severs me way better than any cert ever will.
Of course the situation would be totally different if I've worked in some other field.
Engineering degree or and science based degree. Learn critical thinking.
Directly IT related - Novell used to offer what they described as "practicum" exams for their SLES (Linux) offerings. These were web based and you literally did sysadmin stuff on VMs - configure users, set up a web server, SAMBA, DNS etc and then the system would mark you. Beats the crap out of memory tests like the old MCSEs and the VMWARE VCP bollocks. I recall quicky getting Apache to serve /usr/share/documentation to help me out.
Nowadays I employ people and I am not predisposed to any form of excitement about memory test type exams and qualis on CVs (Resumes). I may sit you down in front of something bloody expensive and complicated and ask you do do something with it ...
Imagine choosing between someone with a CS degree vs someone without a CS degree and think which you would prefer to do SWE work for you all else equal.
CS degree every time right?
Now imagine both candidates had the exact same career trajectory. Say 6 YOE, couple years at a FAANG recently, but the non-CS candidate was promoted there etc. which do you prefer now?
Probably the non-CS degree holder. They have proven they can do the work and advance by their self-starter mindset, skill and hustle alone without “appeals to authority”/certification.
Once people have proven they can do the job for real, certification matters less. While some industries make it a box you have to check, tech mostly doesn’t.
Dont wast your time unless you can’t get a foot in the door without a cert.
I've never heard of a CS degree being a negative in any situation outside of someone with a chip on their shoulder about college degrees in general. The person in your example with the degree would still win out in most situations.
The person with experience versus a new graduate degree holder is the actual head to head where the non degree holder has a much better chance.
So the person who has proven they can do the work and get promoted in the same career path is less valuable than the CS degree holder (who in this example, did not achieve as much over the same time period) just because they have a degree?
This has never been the case in any org promo committee or hiring committee I have been a part of (100s of candidates).
I would say in most orgs after 3 years of proven track record the degree benefit has fully depreciated. Unless the degree is an advanced degree and related directly to a niche subfield that is the job.
Not saying the degree is a negative just that its signaling factor is dwarfed by experience. n^2 vs cn
Oh interesting I misunderstood your comment. I thought “exact same career trajectory” meant the only difference was the degree. I’m not the user you replied to but I can see how
1) two people with exact same career trajectory but one has a CS degree results in the degree holder being preferred, and
2) two people, one of which has a CS degree with a less accomplished career and the other of which has been promoted/demonstrated greater accomplishments results in the non-degree holder being preferred.
Yeah, I know most of the people reading this can't go back and get one because you can only do it if you're a kid. And yeah, it's not really a certification, but I thought I'd put it in as something tangential.
Still, some of the best men I've worked with seem to have it more than not [0]. And when they see it on a resume, it's an instant 'eyes-light-up' effect. The people that are then hired are really good all in all. Just one okay-ish person that was an Eagle Scout out of about 15-ish that I can remember.
[0] It's been exclusively male for my career, but now women can get it too. So be on the look out for both sexes.
I picked up my RHCSA this past year, seeing the rise in inflation I wanted an advantage for merit increases. I'll let ya know in a few weeks if I did better than my peers. I work in Higher Ed so I already get paid less than industry average.
Does anyone here have any of the CITA certs from IASA?
I've been thinking of getting one of them to get taken more seriously as a software architect, but I'm concerned that it will be all about creating complexity for the sake of complexity.
The only document that really ever had a significant benefit for me was my DD-214 from the military. Being prior military helped me get my foot in the door to the tech industry. It is still helping me today in my retirement. I needed that to get "Veteran" on my drivers license and I get a 10% discount and most of the local stores.
The certifications from training classes while in tech were not useful for my career but did come in handy when a few customers required {n} percentage of people to be "certified in ..." but those were very specific and obscure use cases.
Far too many people are needing a security qualification to be taken seriously by senior management.
I'm very clear when I say senior management because not everything has to have +TLS. But when your management get the speak from the "security certified" guy they stop listening to you and delegate.
With that in mind SANS. And I feel sorry for saying most of it. When your a seasoned Unix admin you shouldn't need a Windows wireshark certification about diamond team picking up your internal site traffic containing open secrets, but management thinks so...
I find similarity between certs and having a good GPA/being from a good college.
Some people go for that. I've never been that type of a guy (my grades were also low as I spent my time working on real world problems). I think it's not worth the time, given that you use that time for actually having some hands on experience in real world.
If you can prove yourself in the field virtually no one would care about certs unless they are legally required to do so (e.g. You'd need a piloting license to fly an airplane (legally) even if you can perfectly fly)
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for but my M.S. was invaluable. Needed it to get into R&D roles, lots of people assumed I was smarter just for having it (it was in a specialized field).
My accounting qualifications helped me leave a physical trade for an office job, where I learned about ERP systems, re-discovered coding and got into a hybrid tech/finance job.
In my career I got quite some technical certifications. Any cert shows you are taking your job seriously and you are willing to learn.
The following three certs helped to show I know my field really well and these separated me from others that just say they know it. Cisco CCNA/CCNP, Linux institute LPI and Agile Alliance certified Scrum master.
Later on I used certifications to quickly pivot into a niche, sometimes when already practicing the role. Architecture (togaf) and product management.
Can anyone please share your personal experience with AWS Solutions Architect certification? I hope to complete it someday. Do you have any other suggestion?
Back in 1998 or 2000 (I don't remember the exact year), I did RHCE and IT networking certificate. It landed my first corporate gig as I was the only person who knew Linux. In addition, I was the first hire who started replacing traditional Unix servers with RHEL. So, yes, it did help me despite not having a college degree. I am very thankful to Linux and FLOSS for paying all my bills over the years.
Certification is primarily for IT consultant. Banks, insurance companies hire a lot of IT consultants through IT service providers (e.g. Tata, Accenture).
How can they tell if the IT consultants are qualified for the work? Certification is one way to ensure they at least meet the minimum requirement but this is not to say the certification implies the IT consultants have the skill sets or knowledge to do the job.
I was one of the top scores on the RHCE in the UK when 5.5 was current. I like to think it helped but honestly don't know if it swayed anyone.
I also scored really high in the Sun Certified System Administrator exam for Solaris 10 - i can categorically say that didn't help. Thanks Oracle & RIP Slowlaris (i jest, 10 wasn't slow, 10 was the ultimate OS, lightyears ahead of its time).
I don't have certs in my 17 years career. I always believe good work ( clubbed with learning ) and subsequent recommendations or reference based on that good work helps a career. It is always about learning, never about certification. I personally don't believe in certification, but sometime it is useful to know the syllabus. You go broad and dive deep on some.
I did a bunch of the Microsoft tracks about 10 years ago, mostly in the hope they’d help me stand out in a crowded field rather than actually get me a job.
It’s impossible for me to know if they ever worked in that regard, but I imagine they probably did at a few different times (subconsciously at least) in terms of getting my resume onto the shortlist, which was the goal.
I don't have any despite studying the material for a lot of them. I hate the entire cert industry and actively discourage it. It hasn't hindered me yet with my career path. Although, I'm pretty open with employers that I don't believe in certs and will never get one. I will however study the material they produce if its worthwhile.
Certifications are certainly no substitute for experience and competence but can help you get a foot in the door if you're just starting out. I've always been moderately skeptical of security certifications (CEH, CISSP, etc) as in my experience, they are more often than not a negative indicator of competence for anything beyond junior level.
I have a PhD so I may be biased towards formal education, but I do review resume often and find certifications to be of no value, lame even. I had very poor performing colleagues with many certifications and they were very proud about it. Doesn't bode confidence at all.
When I see certifications on a resume, I see it as a negative.
Not sure if the actual certification is that important, but I’d recommend some thorough introductory course to IT service management / ITIL to everyone. It makes you way more effective in navigating more complex or bureaucratic organisations as you know a lot better what people’s perspectives and wants are.
I'm gonna second the OSCP or any Offensive Security major cert. The testing is both intense and IS the actual job, when it comes to hiring security professionals - assessors, pen testers, CSIRT / Hunt folks, etc. It verified both the technical and report writing skills, which is essential to the job.
Serious question, seems like the general sentiment certs are a negative signal (which I don’t agree with but everyone to their own) but where do degrees sit? If certs are a waste of time and people should spend their time “working on something real instead”, wouldn’t this also apply to degrees?
I think university education or even a masters degree is valuable.
It tells that applicant is capable of at least understanding some high level concepts in terms of logic.
However, Software Engineering and Computer Science are quite different than each other.
It is normal that experience overweights a CS education for Software Engineering field.
I don’t even bother reading the degree or not part when I am hiring. It’s pretty irrelevant. I doesn’t hurt, but none of my top 5-10 hires over the last decade or so have had one. Anecdotal of course.
I did the GCP Data Engineer certificate last year. I was able to ask 25% salary raise the next month and got a job at Google as a consultant this year. Of course, everything else including my experience also mattered, but I believe the certificate played a vital role as well.
I have a Master's in Public Administration but recently I obtained my certification in Data Analytics from Google. I got hired by Google less than 2 months later as a Policy Analyst and it has helped tremendously with my proficiency with spreadsheets and dashboards.
Getting my EMT cert was pretty important for getting a job as an EMT. In all seriousness the difference between getting hired for my tech jobs vs as an EMT was interesting. I’m used to the standard multi week interview process, but for EMS the only question was if I had my certs.
Do you plan to go the paramedic route? I let my EMT lapse once I moved to CA; the scope of work was more restricted than East Coast, where many states rely on volunteer fire and EMT.
I have maybe 2-3 quite old certs. I don’t really seek out certification, and I wouldn’t want to work for a company that requires them. Interview me and feel free to hand out a coding assignment and call my refs – if you still don’t believe in my competence, just don’t hire me.
As an employer in the cyber security domain I don't have many methods of evaluating a candidate practical knowledge. For this reason I take a look at their certifications and will generally be very happy to see an OSCP or other offensive security certifications.
He said, the AWS ones were pretty good. They weren't too easy, you have to train a few weeks to get them and you would actually learn something of practical use in everyday work. Also, they're actually in demand.
In the software development space, we tended to shy away from hiring certs, eg MCSD, etc. They proved to be a very poor substitute for experience. We had far better results in the IT space with certs like Cisco, and similar certs.
Even supplemental, they give a bad vibe. They're just so unusual to see on a developer's resume, and it's easy to conflate that with the bad candidates who only have certificates on their resume.
Any, which give you right to work in another country, or which lower barrier to got job in other country. Because IT is basically world specialty, mean, the more countries achievable, the higher will be your compensation.
Language certifications. Foreign universities usually ask for them. Also, it always looks good on your resume. Not to mention, language is a great way of connecting with people even if you are not of the same ethnicity
The USPTO registration exam is difficult to pass, and is helpful for starting in the patent field. Because it doesn't require updating, it isn't in itself valuable if you don't have a patents practice.
I think certifications are 100% worth it as a hiring manager. If I see someone with certifications I know that they are at least making an effort to further their knowledge.
PMP is usually required to run government contracts.
CISSP or CISM is required for cyber leadership roles
And any of the pro solution architect certs from AWS, Azure, GCP.
As a predominantly frontend web person, I've been wondering if an accessibility (IAAP?) certification is worth it — if anyone has any experience with that?
Certs have done nothing for me personally, but they have helped me walk into jobs. Employers do not need to validate your skills when someone else has done it for you. CCNA/CCNP were dirt easy exams (for me) but everyone wanted to see it just to validate if you could grasp networking concepts. MCSE (and whatever it was renamed to) to validate windows knowledge. Vmware, hashicorp, k8s certs etc all raise your worth. A lot of larger organizations like the structured approach that you come away with.
I say, if you know the underlying concepts, go and take the certifications. Doubly so if your company will pay for them. It's just free resume fodder.
When I worked in infosec, most of my coworkers collected certs like eggs on Easter. Perhaps that's because it is still a very new field and it's only been in the past few years that more than a handful of schools have started offering relevant degrees. It's worth noting that my local high school and middle school now both offer information security classes, with the high school going as far as making it a separate academy within the school. Maybe certs will diminish in importance as the traditional education system adapts to offer more training in this area.
Certifications provide a structured roadmap of self studying a technology. As a hiring manager, I give them very little consideration because passing an exam doesn't mean the person actually understands the concepts.
For rapidly changing technology industries, certificates merely indicate what technologies are no longer leading edge, and literally that they are trailing edge.
You can't and thus don't do certifications for anything that leading edge and high margin because there is no time. It takes time to normalize and formalize a technology enough to even make certification possible.
So you need to decide:
1. What your skill levels are actually are,
2. What you comfort with actual leading edge tech is
I think OSCP was the most legitimately useful in tech https://www.offensive-security.com/pwk-oscp/
PMP has been useful to take on Project Manager roles, but really PrM roles aren't all that exciting to begin with. Still helps when you want to run your own projects.
I'm currently studying to be a certified parliamentarian from the National Association of Parliamentarians. I'm interested in corporate governance and learning Roberts Rules of Order definitely helps.
I'm also a certified farmer (yeah its a thing), I have 5 sailing certs, 3 scuba certs, Wilderness Emergency Medical Responder cert, working on my pilots license, getting my real estate sales license, ham radio operator general class, almost done with my CDL, there's lots more I'd have to check my notes on.
I do want to get a Kubernetes cert done this year. Long term I want to knock out my CPA/CFA exams, but those are a huge commitment so we will see if it pans out.
Most of this response hasn't answered your question at all, because certs really are mostly useless. Still fun to collect.
I'd imagine financial certs would be the most useful (CFA in particular).
If anyone knows any other fun certs let me know.