Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by phpisthebest » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #9

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

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

#42

Post by itsEtai » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:29 PM UTC

I found the training course for the CPWA to be really useful. I refer back to it frequently to help guide my company’s strategy for web accessibility.

https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/s/certified-profess...

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

#43

Post by akudha » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

robcohen wrote: post #11

I collect a lot of certs for fun, but most have not been helpful. I still like to collect them anyway. 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 parliament…

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.

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

#44

Post by tboyd47 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

The Andrew Ng certification on Coursera for Machine Learning give me all the skills I needed to start my own ML projects. It is excellent.

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

#45

Post by fat_cantor » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

robcohen wrote: post #11

I collect a lot of certs for fun, but most have not been helpful. I still like to collect them anyway. 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 parliament…

no teaching certificates?

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

#46

Post by geoduck14 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

eranation wrote: post #5

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 som…

I have a couple of AWS certs. They really helped me when I went to the AWS conference and got some great swag

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

#47

Post by pilsetnieks » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

devoutsalsa wrote: post #30

robcohen wrote: post #11

I collect a lot of certs for fun, but most have not been helpful. I still like to collect them anyway. 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 parliament…

Study almond growing to become certifiably nuts.

Though almonds are technically seeds, not nuts.

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

#48

Post by paktor132 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

robcohen wrote: post #11

I collect a lot of certs for fun, but most have not been helpful. I still like to collect them anyway. 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 parliament…

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

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

#49

Post by mudrockbestgirl » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

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.

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

#50

Post by ethbr0 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

eranation wrote: post #5

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 som…

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.