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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?

#291

Post by ElemenoPicuares »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #241
ElemenoPicuares wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you in principle, but it's difficult to draw the line when the hiring process needs to be practical. We can't interview everyone and perfect recall isn't necessary. My experience from dozens of interviews has been that many certifications are a rather strong negative signal, at least for our standard software/data engineering roles. I'm sure there are many exceptions to this, but I'll happily miss out on…

I hear you and have been in your shoes. Hiring is hard, and the steps to hire people ethically are pretty nebulous, which makes it much harder. Especially when the outcome would be the same in many cases, it does seem awfully impractical.

But that's the problem with bias in general, though— It's always a matter of practicality. It's been some time since most discrimination deliberately stymied people with a background or makeup the dominant culture considered objectionable. These days it hides in the subconscious mechanisms governing the purportedly rational generalizations we rely on when lacking time and resources to properly investigate something.

I don't think it's anybody's fault— it's a bug in our brains and we can't control that. I do think we're ethically obligated to push back when practical requirements compel us to make those generalizations. If we expect police to do it when someone may or may not be pulling a gun out of their pocket, we should certainly expect ourselves to do it when we've got a queue of resumes to process.

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

#292

Post by ElemenoPicuares »

bawolff wrote: post #203
ElemenoPicuares wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Once you’ve got them, even if you’re more established, it would be crazy to leave them off of your resume, right? Not necccesarily. Depending on the cert and field it may make sense to. The goal of getting the cert should be to learn skills. If you've done that, the piece of paper doesn't matter. > Not only could you be bypassing people passionate enough to work their way into the field through pretty adverse circu…

If you've got a few certs and two jobs under your belt that you got because of those certs, how would anyone imagine that those certs would prevent them from getting jobs? For people with traditional industry on-ramping, it might seem intuitive that someone would want to hide these certs from people for their lack of prestige. To others, hiding your only officially-recognized qualifications seems absolutely ridiculous.

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

#293

Post by t_mann »

scubbo wrote: post #138
weinzierl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. Fit trumps quantity and quality any time. I'm not OP, but I also have quite a bouquet of certifications. Why? Mostly because I love to learn and I also love to work towards goals. Also most certifications[1] are not that hard once you've figured out how to deal with scenario based multiple choice questions. It's a low effort way to focus my learning. When it comes to hiring - and as someone who sat at both…

> When it comes to hiring [...] any certificate outside of what is expected in your industry does more harm than good Huh - this is surprising to hear. I would have thought that random extra certifications would act as indicators that a) you're a naturally focused and capable person (rather than just cosplaying one for salary), and b) you have interests outside of work (so will be a more well-rounded and pleasant per…

Being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive, that should be obvious. Having lots of unrelated certificates signals the latter. If it's the case for you, only mention what's relevant for the job or what actually reflects your personality (so if you're a serious scuba diver, by all means mention it under 'Interests'; but if you got a certificate on vacation 5 years ago and have haven't done any diving since, just don't).

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

#294

Post by FunnyBadger »

For rapidly changing technology industries, certificates merely indicate what technologies are no longer leading edge, and literally that they are trailing edge.

You can't and thus don't do certifications for anything that leading edge and high margin because there is no time. It takes time to normalize and formalize a technology enough to even make certification possible.

So you need to decide:

1. What your skill levels are actually are,

2. What you comfort with actual leading edge tech is

3. Which of the two is best for you

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

#296

Post by robcohen »

t_mann wrote: post #266
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…

CFA and CPA are not really comparable (even though they're both 'finance'). A CPA charter is closer to a JD degree / bar exam in that it is the necessary entry requirement for a legally defined profession (with quite steady demand). A CFA is more like a Master's in that it can help you get an interview for financial analyst jobs, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to work as one. But it can help a great deal,…

Well I’m a serious guy.

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

#297

Post by joeax »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #49

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…

That's funny, because I've always felt the opposite when evaluating candidates. If a candidate comes in saying certs are "trash" and "pointless" it usually looks less favorable. It signals an unwilling to learn and/or strive for continuous improvement. Certs are not the end all/be all but they help round our your knowledge and open your eyes to things you never knew.

As far as side-projects and open source contributions, this is a two way street. When I look at side projects, I look for how well you are utilizing best practices in your code. If it's a sloppy, poorly documented mess it doesn't look favorably for you. If you use your side projects as a marketing tool they should be well-polished.

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

#298

Post by ThunderSizzle »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #237
magicalhippo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or get a masters degree in cosmology so you can put "Master of the Universe" on your CV.

This only makes sense if your pronouns are He/Man.

TIL women can't be masters of anything?

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

#300

Post by njharman »

pmoriarty wrote: post #108

The bigger and more bureaucratic a company is, the more certs tend to matter. Lack of experience and achievements also make certs stand out more, because you've got not much else to show for yourself. Sometimes certs can be a red flag.. depending on the cert. For example, someone with a whole bunch of Windows certs applying for a job dealing only with Linux? That's a bit of a red flag. Doesn't mean they won't get the…

> The bigger and more bureaucratic a company is, the more certs tend to matter.

This is the key point.

Certs aren't good/bad, or helpful/harmful in of themselves. They matter/or not depending on what type of employment(if any) you are trying for for.

For instance, I never want to work in bureaucracies or places levels/layers/management complexity that they must fall back on certifications, skill checklists, and the like. So, I never pursued any form of certification. Not even a university diploma.

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