I’ve been in FinTech for 20 years. Two businesses I started. Worked with 40 of the top 200 Investment firms. The number one cert I’ve seen BY FAR a) making the most profound impact on work and b) helping the most to increase your probability of always having a great position, is a CFA.
Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
111–120 of 434 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#112The 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…
I work for a fairly hige tech company and it’s pretty bureaucratic (although I suspect not nearly as much as some others) and certifications (other than academic degrees and such) still carry the same sort of negative connotation here the other answer implies.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#113Amateur 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?
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#114This 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…
> Your time is better spent working on side projects, contributing to open source, writing a blog, etc. I.e. do real-world stuff
Just FYI that at some companies, collecting certificates is indeed real world stuff. Some companies use it for marketing (“we have the most certifications in the industry”) and some need to to satisfy vendor partner requirements (“AWS Premier Partners are required to have X number of certificates”). It doesn’t seem fair to penalize a candidate just because they did what their company asked for.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#115Certs have done nothing for me personally, but they have helped me walk into jobs. Employers do not need to validate your skills when someone else has done it for you. CCNA/CCNP were dirt easy exams (for me) but everyone wanted to see it just to validate if you could grasp networking concepts. MCSE (and whatever it was renamed to) to validate windows knowledge. Vmware, hashicorp, k8s certs etc all raise your worth. A lot of larger organizations like the structured approach that you come away with.
I say, if you know the underlying concepts, go and take the certifications. Doubly so if your company will pay for them. It's just free resume fodder.
TL;DR: DO IT.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#116This 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…
as someone in Devops/SRE I hold the same thinking as you. Whenever I see an interview come in loaded with certs, I automatically think they just know how to take tests and study for them.
It's almost 100% that they fail the interview because they don't know how to put the learning into real world solutions.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#117This 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 have also seen this. A large number of certs on a resume (more than 4) is the most consistent negative signal i have seen. I assume part of the reason is that certs are expensive and not well respected, so the only reason you would get them is if you had no other options.
Is this recent? I held every cert under the sun in the 2000s and companies GOBBLED ME UP. In the early 2010s I could walk into companies by simply having a VCP cert. I'm sure if I held a K8s or some hashicorp cert, or AWS or Azure certs I would be pulled into any org hiring today. And I put all of my certs on my resume (that I can fit with most recent first).
I should also clarify, I only put certs that matter (why put an Azure cert on a resume submission to an AWS shop) and certs that are recent (I have 20 years on my resume, why would i put my CCNA on there). I think a large number of irrelevant certs would be a negative signal. I think a large number of relevant certs AND job history to back them up would be a super strong signal.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#118A friend if mine took many certs for fun.
He said, the AWS ones were pretty good. They weren't too easy, you have to train a few weeks to get them and you would actually learn something of practical use in everyday work. Also, they're actually in demand.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#119Lack of a Masters pretty much ended my ability to teach some intro programming courses according to the accreditation board. So, the answer to the question in reverse. Damn shame given some future plans, but experience isn't the equivalent.
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 preclude someone who didn't attend university from gaining that knowledge on their own. It's simply a signal that this particular bundle of knowledge has been seen and at least understood at a surface level. In theory that should allow those evaluating the candidate to skip over testing competency and knowledge in these areas outside of the job's focus but still relevant to functioning in society.
Many schools will give credit for life experience, some through testing, some through interviews and reviews of one's professional work. IIRC, Western Governors University is one of the leaders in this practice.
Re: Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
#120I don't have a single cert of any type and have never needed them. My last role was at the Senior Staff level and I'm currently interviewing for a Principal position. I've found certs are mostly asked for by either very unusual jobs or bottom of the barrel employers that don't trust their own people. I'm not really looking for either of those things so I find I don't need certs.
They're a nice bonus, I used to dismiss them until my friends and I all worked at jobs where they would pay for the certification if you passed plus a bonus of $500. We would come together on Fridays and whoever had passed the most certs that week would get free drinks. I held sooooo many certifications in the 2000s and I got job requests every day. I went to more high level certs (like VCP and AWS architect) in the last decade and the recruiters haven't slowed down. And I'm pretty sure having a CISSP will walk you into any security position today. Don't discount certs as they are a cheap form of networking.
It's like going to college. You don't need it, but its a nice bump above others in the resume stack at some orgs