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Serious question, seems like the general sentiment certs are a negative signal (which I don’t agree with but everyone to their own) but where do degrees sit? If certs are a waste of time and people should spend their time “working on something real instead”, wouldn’t this also apply to degrees?
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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 tes…
The "univers" in university means something. A university degree is about more than just the knowledge gained in one's major. It's a signal that the person has had exposure to the breadth of human knowledge. It might be a millimeter deep but the breadth gives them context in which to operate in society. None of that means this knowledge can't be acquired individually, just like having a particular major doesn't precl…
This may be true of the USA, but not universally. Here in the UK we don't have the concept of a major at all. An undergraduate student typically only takes modules pertaining to their chosen field, and perhaps a small number of more general modules on, say, study skills and writing.
Amateur radio license. The experience is more relevant to my job than any corporate training I've ever done. Note that "experience" means "everything I've done with the license since getting the license". Don't fall into the "achievement" trap: reading a book so you can pass a multiple choice test teaches you precisely nothing, unless you go out and start to apply the rote memorization.
I am trying to learn about radio (and the electric and magnetic fields in general), and I'm following the Great Scott Gadgets' "Software Defined Radio with HackRF" video series. I'm also thinking about getting an amateur radio license. What else could you recommend?
If you are in the US, ARRL sells books that teach to the specifics of the US tests. I used those but found them rather unsatisfying. There are other books which focus on experiments (see Hands-On Radio Experiments) and others on theory.
The ARRL Handbook is also useful. It's updated annually, but you won't miss too much if you save a few dollars by getting an older edition.
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.
From VMware to Cisco to all the other 25+ certs, wasn’t worth it, but learned a lot so maybe worth it?
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 a…
This seems like a shaky assumption. Keep in mind that many companies, like mine, sponsor or even mandate the certification process. Meaning the justification, time, and costs didn't come from the candidate you're dismissing.
Certainly from Google was valued quite high by clients.
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 a…
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…
> certified parliamentarian Is the specific parliament you want to work in?
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just out of interest, what do you do with the offensive security knowledge?
I used to be a pentester, so it was pretty applicable... Pentesting really requires "full stack" systems knowledge, from networking, to OS, to API analysis, malware analysis, binary reverse engineering. OSCP is an applied cert, so it really forces you to be able to leverage knowledge in a practical way. However my favorite benefit of offsec is really being able to see things from an attacker's perspective. This has b…