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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?

#121

Post by tgtweak »

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.

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

#122

Post by Mountain_Skies »

phpisthebest wrote: post #77
bigDinosaur wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

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.

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

#123

Post by landemva »

tylermenezes wrote: post #102
landemva wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> At this point, most commercial and military pilots should be grounded for taking the new virus shots. FAA explicitly allows after 48hr observation, see https://www.faa.gov/coronavirus/guidance_resources#useOfVacc...

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.

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

#124

Post by BbzzbB »

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…

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.

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

#125

Post by myrloc »

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.

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

#126

Post by alexfromapex »

manfre wrote: post #17

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.

Heuristically, it kind of does. Otherwise, I guess we would need to rethink almost our entire education system.

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

#127

Post by Mountain_Skies »

hardware2win wrote: post #10

Ive heard that hard security certs are somewhat respected, but i dont have experience to confirm/deny it

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.

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

#128

Post by can16358p »

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)

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