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Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

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Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#11

Post by Traubenfuchs »

uluyol wrote: post #7

> ... we will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles. For me the key question is this: what's will Google's job acceptance rate be for Career Certificates vs Bachelor's degrees? If they can get it to 1/4 the rate for a university education, then it seems like it has some value. Otherwise, this is all just a scam. Good on them for the other things though.

I HIGHLY doubt Google has any interest in hiring someone with a Google career certificate. Instead they will keep sieving the top performers of top universities.

It's all for publicity, improving their image, making those career certificate holders more likely pick Google products (for the companies they will work for)...

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#12

Post by ThrustCode »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #4

Yuk... I’ve dealt with a lot of developers who basically collect certifications but sadly can’t even code a print statement. Compare this to people who I’ve worked with without a university degree and just studied on their own from books and tutorials who are superstars. My money is on Google Certificates being gamed just like all other cert programs.

Why do you think it is that certs attract those kind of people?

It makes little sense from a career perspective to go though those certification training schemes without truly developing the competency they are aimed at promoting and also it serves to give certs a bad reputation even for people who pursue them in good faith.

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#13

Post by sieabahlpark »

hysan wrote: post #6

I like the initiative as I think it can make for a positive push, but I have my misgivings as well. It feels like a push into the bootcamp space and with it, I immediately wonder about accreditation in the legal education sense. - How will schools view these certificates? - Do they count as credits in any form? - Is this just Google’s play into the certificate space like Oracle, etc? I wonder because of this line: >…

To me it just seems like Google is trying to not have to pay to train their new employees but have people opt to be trained for free. I could see potentially making people pay for "advanced" training to be able to work at Google.

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#14

Post by tylerhou »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #4

Yuk... I’ve dealt with a lot of developers who basically collect certifications but sadly can’t even code a print statement. Compare this to people who I’ve worked with without a university degree and just studied on their own from books and tutorials who are superstars. My money is on Google Certificates being gamed just like all other cert programs.

As the article states, the certificates are not for dev roles.

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#15

Post by tylerhou »

hysan wrote: post #6

I like the initiative as I think it can make for a positive push, but I have my misgivings as well. It feels like a push into the bootcamp space and with it, I immediately wonder about accreditation in the legal education sense. - How will schools view these certificates? - Do they count as credits in any form? - Is this just Google’s play into the certificate space like Oracle, etc? I wonder because of this line: >…

Google already has their own testing system -- it's called the interview process.

This a move which aims to expand the pool of candidates, especially those from non-traditional backgrounds. There are a lot of smart people who weren't able to go to university. If Google limited its talent pool to just those who have graduated from four year universities, they would miss many candidates (including me!).

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#16

Post by psds2 »

ThrustCode wrote: post #12
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #4

Yuk... I’ve dealt with a lot of developers who basically collect certifications but sadly can’t even code a print statement. Compare this to people who I’ve worked with without a university degree and just studied on their own from books and tutorials who are superstars. My money is on Google Certificates being gamed just like all other cert programs.

Why do you think it is that certs attract those kind of people? It makes little sense from a career perspective to go though those certification training schemes without truly developing the competency they are aimed at promoting and also it serves to give certs a bad reputation even for people who pursue them in good faith.

Not everybody is concerned about their career, some people are focused on providing a better life for their family. From that perspective brain dumping a certification feels like it has potential for high reward with minimal effort.

Brain dumping is the process of memorizing the answer bank for a test. There are many sites for these kind of certification exams that provide brain dumps or answer keys to study.

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#18

Post by aamoscodes »

rshnotsecure wrote: post #10

Google has tried to do this before and gotten good press with as far as I can tell close to 0 results [1]. Their last program was basically just "office hours" on how to use Google Analytics in libraries across beset former rust belt cities. They did have a consistent office hours for their one pilot program in New York that people could also call into, but it was mostly college kids who were brilliant, talented, and…

I believe you, but is there a source for the “0 people were hired” claim? It’ll be interesting to have as these programs become more popular.

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#19

Post by alfiedotwtf »

psds2 wrote: post #16
ThrustCode wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it is that certs attract those kind of people? It makes little sense from a career perspective to go though those certification training schemes without truly developing the competency they are aimed at promoting and also it serves to give certs a bad reputation even for people who pursue them in good faith.

Not everybody is concerned about their career, some people are focused on providing a better life for their family. From that perspective brain dumping a certification feels like it has potential for high reward with minimal effort. Brain dumping is the process of memorizing the answer bank for a test. There are many sites for these kind of certification exams that provide brain dumps or answer keys to study.

They end up being gamed, just like Google interview questions :

Q: How many golf balls fit in a school bus? A: Because the man holes are round!

Re: Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships

#20

Post by rshnotsecure »

aamoscodes wrote: post #18
rshnotsecure wrote: post #10

Google has tried to do this before and gotten good press with as far as I can tell close to 0 results [1]. Their last program was basically just "office hours" on how to use Google Analytics in libraries across beset former rust belt cities. They did have a consistent office hours for their one pilot program in New York that people could also call into, but it was mostly college kids who were brilliant, talented, and…

I believe you, but is there a source for the “0 people were hired” claim? It’ll be interesting to have as these programs become more popular.

That is a fair question. My answer is in the absence of evidence, or even any claim that Google specifically makes that X got hired because of Y Google Program and now works at Z.

I worked with two good reporters to look into this. There is no documentation one can find at https://grow.google/partners/ or at https://google.org. Those websites lead to perhaps 200 significant links, and we scoured every PDF on the sites. Also we checked LinkedIn for those who had the IT Support certs. Nothing.

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