Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters • Hacker News Board

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#41

Post by blsapologist42 » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

leeny wrote: post #2

Author/OP here. Just heard an interesting and relevant tidbit from someone who read the post. Apparently a while ago, Google fed resumes of employees into an ML model and correlated several metrics to the success of a specific engineer at Google. There was a lot of interesting data gathered from that but one that stood out was exactly that the number of certifications listed was inversely proportional to the engineer…

Agrees with my own experience. The more you have to proclaim your own competence, the less of it there likely is. As Shakespeare said, "the lady doth protest too much".

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#42

Post by readonthegoapp » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #13

When you plot graphs that present a 4% point difference as a visual 100% or 200% difference because your axis starts at 50 and ends at 58, I automatically don’t read what you have to say.

ha - i saw this and kind of mentally skipped over it because i was too invested in trying to figure out why this post felt so icky. but, good point. def misleading, which is, as you said, reason enough to stop reading right there.

i think the icky factor is the title. which, it might be a hate the game/player situation -- prob a prerequisite to get some attn these days -- tell people what they should/not do based on your 100% factual, non-misleading, incontovertible 'proof'.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#43

Post by remram » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

shusaku wrote: post #3

> People often suggest that interviewing.io should create a certification that our users can post on their LinkedIn profile, e.g., something like “Top 10% performer on interviewing.io” Rest of the discussion aside, “we will give you a certificate of being good at interviews” is one of the most absurd grifts I’ve heard in awhile…

Shouldn't that be a big red flag? If you are in the top of interviewees, it's a sign that maybe you interview too much (always interviewing, never hired? Or jumping ship at the first difficulty?) or at the minimum a bias to correct for (this person is good at talking, they will seem much better than they actually are).

In any case I really don't understand why you'd want that in your profile.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#44

Post by pwinnski » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

> The engineer who looks good on paper. This person will simply not list the certification on their profile – they have no reason to!

I don't think I buy this logic. I finished an online course with a good test score, and it prompted me to post the resulting certification on LinkedIn. It took 15 seconds at the moment I was happiest about the accomplishment. If we assume I'm an engineer who looks good on paper, am I going to deliberately eschew that prompt?

Is the argument that as an engineer who looks good on paper, I'm in such heavy demand that I never have a few minutes to kill on LinkedIn, in between declining and ignoring the recruiter come-ons? That logic just doesn't make sense to me.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#45

Post by newsclues » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

I went to a cyber security college program, and the new program head was turning it into a bunch of micro credentials packaged together with a diploma.

I told him I could self study and get all the credentials on my own faster and cheaper, and that removing labs from the program and changing Cisco certs for CompTIA was not a good idea from a students perspective, and I quit the program.

Dumbing things down to increase graduations rates seemed to have been the goal, and as a mature student that wanted to learn and not just get my foot in the door as a T1 Help Desk role. And we wonder why it's hard to find qualified employees in tech.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#46

Post by Chrshmmmr » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

leeny wrote: post #2

Author/OP here. Just heard an interesting and relevant tidbit from someone who read the post. Apparently a while ago, Google fed resumes of employees into an ML model and correlated several metrics to the success of a specific engineer at Google. There was a lot of interesting data gathered from that but one that stood out was exactly that the number of certifications listed was inversely proportional to the engineer…

That sounds like a shitty job at de-biasing the input data.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#47

Post by readonthegoapp » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

aynyc wrote: post #26

I've worked in finance, healthcare and defense industry, all those industries do not mark you negative for having IT related certifications. Continue education is a big thing in those industries and generally, degrees and certifications usually get reimbursed. For me, the key is to match certifications with their work. If I see OCAJP, but zero work experience in that space, or you work on-prem system only, but has AW…

pretty sure they're talking about listing certifications on your linkedin, not just having certifications.

i.e. it doesn't matter to this blog post that you either have or do not have a certification -- it only matters whether you have listed it on your linkedin.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#48

Post by wil421 » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

prpl wrote: post #5

leeny wrote: post #2

Author/OP here. Just heard an interesting and relevant tidbit from someone who read the post. Apparently a while ago, Google fed resumes of employees into an ML model and correlated several metrics to the success of a specific engineer at Google. There was a lot of interesting data gathered from that but one that stood out was exactly that the number of certifications listed was inversely proportional to the engineer…

I think that’s largely because people who get certificates often do so because they didn’t have formal (or close to formal, e.g. highly motivated dropouts) education in the field they are getting a certificate. (also - job churn, and/or they may be slightly less autodidactic)

Not even close to being true. I’m forced at times to get certifications for enterprise-y tools and software.

Many networking engineers need a Cisco cert to get started. Same with a lot of security analysts.

If you’re working in Defense you’ll need to get a cert(s) at some point.

Way back being Microsoft certified was all the rage. I was catering at the time near a Microsoft training office and they were a very good customer. The rooms didn’t have a single seat and people were flying in to take them. This was 15 years ago.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#49

Post by ben7799 » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

Where I work (we sell software) there's nobody in engineering with certifications. IT has all the certifications.

I've been working since the mid-1990s and this has almost always held true. No one building the stuff has a certification in it. The people who buy it and install it tend to have the certifications.

Over the years I've seen a fair # of hilarious exchanges where someone with a Certification in X tries to tell someone else they're wrong and then gets embarrassed when they are told the person they're arguing with is the inventor or holds the patent on X.

So many of these certifications also seem to train someone to buy products from a company. Our IT guys are always super sure we need products they got certified in, to the point it seems fishy.

My gut feeling is this article is right on the money. The smartest people with formal education are more than capable of teaching themselves this stuff. If you've got a quality degree you shouldn't need a certificate in X to implement X in your product. The certificate won't cover that anyway since no one has ever integrated it into the new product you're building anyway.

Re: Certifications create wrong incentives for engineers and recruiters

#50

Post by readonthegoapp » Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

soco wrote: post #32

prpl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s largely because people who get certificates often do so because they didn’t have formal (or close to formal, e.g. highly motivated dropouts) education in the field they are getting a certificate. (also - job churn, and/or they may be slightly less autodidactic)

Ymmv: I work in enterprise environment and certifications are often an entry criterion. There's a world outside HN.

i know a major health insurer incentivizes and almost forces IT staff to get at least the entry AWS cert. but now they'll prob tell them to list it on their linkedins so they don't get hired away.