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Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

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Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#11

Post by trhoad »

Bilal_io wrote: post #9
bearjaws wrote: post #6

I very positively favor engineers who took AWS certifications. Even the most basic Solutions Associate means I can trust that you at least know what I mean when I say 'SQS', 'KMS' and 'ECS'. I prefer every engineer at least have foundational knowledge of AWS. We use IaC to template out everything and put 'training wheels' on our infra, meaning engineers might not spend a ton of time in AWS, the real benefit is in com…

I know AWS is the most used cloud platform among the many out there. But wouldn't you be missing on really talented people that have only worked on Azure or Google Cloud for say 10 years? Or is it the expectation that any OPs engineer should know the fundamentals of all the big players?

I would say the skills are largely transferrable as the product offerings are analogous in many cases.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#13

Post by primax »

jpitz wrote: post #10
mountainriver wrote: post #7

Honestly if I see a cert I run the other direction. To me it speaks to the type of person, I would much rather see open source or just experience

That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors. It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

I've heard that comment once or twice but never from someone who actually has experience hiring people

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#14

Post by ensignavenger »

primax wrote: post #13
jpitz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors. It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

I've heard that comment once or twice but never from someone who actually has experience hiring people

I've been involved with some hiring, but not a lot... and I would tend to agree that I wouldn't reject a resume just for listing certs on it. If I see a resume with experience and some cert listed at the end, I would not count it against the person. Now if their resume primarily focused on how many certs they have and not on experience, I would think they are entry level at best. If I am looking for entry-level, I may still give them a shot though.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#15

Post by mudrockbestgirl »

jpitz wrote: post #10
mountainriver wrote: post #7

Honestly if I see a cert I run the other direction. To me it speaks to the type of person, I would much rather see open source or just experience

That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors. It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

> It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

I don't think he's making value judgements based on the fact that you have certs, but rather based on the fact that you choose to put certs on your resume over something else, like an open source project. When people write their resumes they usually need to cut out things and include only the most important qualifications and experience for the job. So he's making the value judgement based on how you think about those certifications. They signal "this paper that anyone can get with a bunch of memorization and studying is the best I have"

I share a similar opinion. I wouldn't reject someone who put certs on their resume just based on that, but to me it's a negative signal. The same goes for people who put MOOCs on their resume.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#16

Post by jpitz »

primax wrote: post #13
jpitz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors. It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

I've heard that comment once or twice but never from someone who actually has experience hiring people

I have experience hiring people.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#17

Post by akulbe »

I have 6 certs, earned over almost 30 years in the business.

They used to be flashy, eye-catching perhaps.

Now… I would say they don't mean much.

Knowledge? Experience? NOW we're talkin.

As one other comment suggests, they help you get vendor status… but if you don't have the requisite knowledge to back up the paper, they're not worth the paper they're printed on.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#18

Post by danwee »

jpitz wrote: post #10
mountainriver wrote: post #7

Honestly if I see a cert I run the other direction. To me it speaks to the type of person, I would much rather see open source or just experience

That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors. It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

It's not about having them, it's about putting them on your Linkedin/CV.

I have read tons of tech books (many of them way better than certificates on the same topics). I do not list them on my Linkedin/CV.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#19

Post by rnk »

primax wrote: post #13
jpitz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's frankly a fascinating response. I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors. It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.

I've heard that comment once or twice but never from someone who actually has experience hiring people

I have lots of experience hiring people. Usually the people with certificates don't have much experience actually doing work or they have narrow capability. The cliche is putting them on your resume is not an indicator of general capability. 25 years ago there were tons of people with novell netware engineer and similar things for various technologies, but it wasn't a good interview signal. I was looking for software engineers though, and even though we were on windows at the time mostly, I didn't care about certified windows developers, people with that type of cert were not usually good devs in general. I even worked on helping to write the test for sql server, and I didn't see a point to getting certified myself and I authored part of it ;-)

I think it's really hard to get started in tech, and you can of course get benefit from actually studying the technologies and tools you'll be using in your job ;-) A certification is really good if you have a very specific use case and you need someone for a narrow type of work. I almost never want to hire someone for a narrow use case though. But if I was hiring contractors to fix something very specific on only aws say, then maybe it would be useful.

Of course I'm just some random person on the internet; getting a few certs might help at the start, listing things on your resume that you worked on is much better as an aid to getting interviewed and hired.

Re: Ask HN: Cloud certifications and job prospects. Is there a real connection?

#20

Post by connor11528 »

For me getting an AWS cert before I started job hopping helped in my confidence. It cost time to learn the material but I felt more confident that I had knowledge of the cloud platform. Doing a cert also exposes you to a wider arrange of services than what you'd normally use if you were trying to build something and ship it out the door. A cert will never replace or exceed real world xp in value tho
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