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Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?

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Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?

#431

Post by scubbo »

jrumbut wrote: post #261
scubbo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 per…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?

#432

Post by scubbo »

t_mann wrote: post #369
hcazz wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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…

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.

> if you do MMA, they may be more mixed

Pun intentional? ;)

Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?

#433

Post by 0xBDB »

evgen wrote: post #324
imwillofficial wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I say all that to say “it depends on the cert”

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 th…

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.

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