Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#31

Post by fetus8 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #25

I'm pretty skeptical of any IT cert after having a few really bad experiences with "AWS certified" devs. It doesn't seem to certify competence at all. We had a dev with tons of certs struggle to understand and setup a load balancer. What's the point of accreditation if there's no actual expectation or understanding of skill?

To pay the institute that issues the accreditation money to make it seem like you as an individual gained some sort of knowledge. These kinds of certs generally seem like a business model for these big companies.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#32

Post by ianai »

slumdev wrote: post #11
rootsofallevil wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think so? I know some employers do care but more to be able to claim X consultants certified in tech Y than as a guide for hiring. Capgemini are pretty big on certs but most people we hired didn't have them, just got them after they joined (This is my experience in the UK)

None of them are amazing predictors of success, only a baseline for competence. Tech consulting shops especially demonstrate a preference for people who have certs relevant to the work that they're trying to sell.

Is that true of the RHCE and other same brand certs? Seems doubtful from content.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#33

Post by mamon »

devilmoon wrote: post #15
rootsofallevil wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think so? I know some employers do care but more to be able to claim X consultants certified in tech Y than as a guide for hiring. Capgemini are pretty big on certs but most people we hired didn't have them, just got them after they joined (This is my experience in the UK)

Tech consultancies need people with certs because usually a client will say 'i want X people with Y certificate on this project or I'll go to someone else'

Also, when a company wants to call them, say, "Microsoft Silver Partner", they typically need at least X people with Microsoft certificates.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#34

Post by LeifCarrotson »

jimbokun wrote: post #19
firebird84 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I purposefully ignore certificates when looking at CVs. Once upon a time, I actually looked at them prejudicially, because the kinds of candidates I saw with certificates were generally inferior and couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. These days I just don't really give them any weight one way or another.

"because the kinds of candidates I saw with certificates were generally inferior and couldn't code their way out of a paper bag" Or in this case, because they are entry level and its their first programming job?

The third sentence of the article says "...75,000 entry-level jobs require Python proficiency." They're not expecting to hire Guido to those jobs, but someone who knows which side of the keyboard should be on top would be a good start.

Given two candidates, one who went to a training exercise and earned a certificate for it and one who has a Github page that includes a couple disgusting, hacky, buggy Python scripts (mostly consisting of snippets copied from StackOverflow) to automate some analysis that was awkward in Excel, I'd take the latter 99 times out of 100.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#35

Post by dayofthedaleks »

So the certificate here is a participation prize for consuming 120 hours of paid content on Coursera at $50 a month rather than an exam-based certification. Maybe it’s the best Python Automation seminar ever, but it feels like Zynga is trying to take over my career development.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#36

Post by lame-robot-hoax »

Does anyone want to comment their thoughts on the course contents/the syllabus for the certification?

1. Crash course on Python.

2. Using Python to interact with the operating system.

3. Introduction to Git and GitHub.

4. Troubleshooting and debugging techniques.

5. Configuration management and the cloud.

6. Automating real world tasks with Python.

To me, this actually seems like a pretty dang good syllabus.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#37

Post by ocdtrekkie »

tombert wrote: post #2

I don't mean to come off as dismissive, but as someone who has a bunch of these company-sponsored certificates, does any employer (outside of the one issuing it) care at all about these certs? I have a few from EdX, something from W3Schools, and something from RedHat that I still put on my resume for some indiscernible reason, but having asked interviewers about it after being hired, they don't appear to have been of…

A lot of IT has moved to MSPs. And MSPs care that their engineers are certified in the software or equipment their clients use. It's a selling point, because personnel are the product.

But if the job is working with Cisco network equipment and Windows PCs, a Google cert is worth less than the paper it's printed on. I don't know how many businesses would value a general "IT Support Certification" from Google, because most businesses aren't using Google's platform.

Google certs for G Suite and such tend to be worth it in the education space where Chromebooks for all have taken over.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#38

Post by zamadatix »

commandlinefan wrote: post #21
lightedman wrote: post #16

I wish CompTIA's A+ cert would get fixed. I know of a guy that has his A+, works as a computer repair tech, and doesn't know that you can plug a speaker into most motherboards to get POST Beep diagnostic codes, or how to watch a drive activity light to see if the system is indeed posting/loading and you might have an issue like a bad GPU if you get no display but still have a single "GOOD" POST beep.

I don’t have any computer repair certifications, but I wish I knew more of that sort of thing myself.

Pick up an online copy of your/a motherboard manual. Usually not that long or wordy but describes all of these features it has and has pictures/diagrams for the connectors.

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#39

Post by jammygit »

tombert wrote: post #2

I don't mean to come off as dismissive, but as someone who has a bunch of these company-sponsored certificates, does any employer (outside of the one issuing it) care at all about these certs? I have a few from EdX, something from W3Schools, and something from RedHat that I still put on my resume for some indiscernible reason, but having asked interviewers about it after being hired, they don't appear to have been of…

I have a handful of certs but I can’t remember what they are or where I stored them. I don’t put them on my resume. The courses were great

Re: Google offers certificate to help IT career growth

#40

Post by boutad »

tombert wrote: post #2

I don't mean to come off as dismissive, but as someone who has a bunch of these company-sponsored certificates, does any employer (outside of the one issuing it) care at all about these certs? I have a few from EdX, something from W3Schools, and something from RedHat that I still put on my resume for some indiscernible reason, but having asked interviewers about it after being hired, they don't appear to have been of…

According to this(https://grow.google/programs/it-support/), BofA, PNC, Intel, Hulu, Wallmart, and others care about it.
Post reply on HN