231–240 of 434 posts
I don't have certs in my 17 years career. I always believe good work ( clubbed with learning ) and subsequent recommendations or reference based on that good work helps a career. It is always about learning, never about certification. I personally don't believe in certification, but sometime it is useful to know the syllabus. You go broad and dive deep on some.
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…
Be careful about the bias in single-metric gatekeeping strategies like this. Contributing to open source projects, having side projects, et al are pursuits of leisure. Certificates are possibly the only foot in the door for folks working multiple jobs with kids, etc. and the government often pays the tuition for low income folks. Once you’ve got them, even if you’re more established, it would be crazy to leave them o…
Recruiters and hiring managers go through so many resumes, the last thing you want is to have someone looking for a programmer to read about your basket weaving skills.
My strategy has always been to tailor the bulk of the resume to the job I'm applying for. Bring everything else up during the interview if there's natural time to do so, because that's where they want to see who you are.
Security aside, CCNA has to be the most valuable IT certification. They are cisco specific but the sheer amount of knowledge you need to understand for it and the foot-in-the-door opportunity is extremely valuable.
OSCP as well as others have noted.
I was into programming and computers when I was a kid and in high school but for whatever reason I decided I didn't want to study computer science. Ended up in an arts program, which I graduated from and reached the top of my career path nearly immediately by getting a minimum wage job at a bookstore. I went back to school for accounting and became an auditor at a public accounting firm. I made it to manager, burnt out, and decided that I'd explore other options. I ended up with a consulting side gig at a startup using both my tech and accounting knowledge, and now my primary job is in finance process transformation/automation.
Looking back, it looks like my career path was tailor-made for the position I'm in now. I use all my education - arts has made me a good communicator, researcher, accounting has given me good technical and management skills. This is just the narrative fallacy at work though, I had no idea what I was doing along the way (and still don't!).
Public accounting and CPA has been fantastic at teaching me how businesses work inside and out, and is very valuable for what I do now. I don't know if I'd recommend it for everyone, but studying accounting itself is probably a good idea for anyone working in management or finance.
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…
Congrats on your OSCP - I run a cybersec biz and some of my colleagues have that cert and I’m always impressed when I hear someone has it. I’m a CISSP but I think an OSCP is more practical.
Ham radio extra which is elec eng focused rather than just rules of the airwaves is a good one. (I’m callsign WT1J)
In our biz I really appreciate it when folks have a Network+ or Security+ or a Linux admin cert because you can’t argue with the value of knowing networking fundamentals and the Linux command line. In fact knowledge of Linux command line is my leading indicator of competency for a QA role we have open. I look at answers to this question first every time. Next thing I look at is SQL knowledge- because I think both of these are strong predictors of deeper technical capability.
Certs are underrated IMHO because most of them provide practical knowledge that is immediately applicable in a work setting or other pastime. They give you real skills.
Lastly AWS certs are also super practical and very valuable IMO.
Great question OP!
Driver's license. Maybe it sounds obvious, but if you don't have a license, you are crippling yourself. Even if you don't have a car, not having a license means you don't even have the option of renting one. Also, is is so "obvious" that if an employer notices that you don't have it, he will wonder why. Are you too stupid to drive? Crippled in some way? Economic problems? Have some criminal history? Alcoholic? You ma…
College degrees can definitely matter, unfortunately, but they're not strictly required. I've seen teams and managers who were pretty snobbish about which university somebody went to—to the point where not having a degree would have been better than going to an unknown or poorly regarded school. It's an absurd idea and, thankfully, seems to be getting less common in tech, but I saw some of it first-hand. (From what I've heard, it's still a real problem in law where a bunch of firms in the US are virtually T14 or bust.)