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

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 parliamentarian from the National Association of Parliamentarians. I'm interested in corporate governance and learning Roberts Rules of Order definitely helps.

I'm also a certified farmer (yeah its a thing), I have 5 sailing certs, 3 scuba certs, Wilderness Emergency Medical Responder cert, working on my pilots license, getting my real estate sales license, ham radio operator general class, almost done with my CDL, there's lots more I'd have to check my notes on.

I do want to get a Kubernetes cert done this year. Long term I want to knock out my CPA/CFA exams, but those are a huge commitment so we will see if it pans out.

Most of this response hasn't answered your question at all, because certs really are mostly useless. Still fun to collect.

I'd imagine financial certs would be the most useful (CFA in particular).

If anyone knows any other fun certs let me know.

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 artificial tests that require memorization and exist largely as a revenue stream for certification providers.

MCSE really helped me.

In the late 90s, 98 I think, I worked for an internet startup that didn’t end up being huge. We were on Novell and a bit if solaris and had just launched a product that used windows nt and server side activex.

I was a college dropout web dev/web master making $50k. They had a hard time hiring devs who knew nt and could design and automate server farms. I learned on the job and did an ok job running it. But they wouldn’t promote me because I was really young and didn’t have a degree.

I went to a Microsoft conference and would buy a study book each day and take the test there. I did 3 exams during the conference and took the other three when I got home and with all 6 certs got my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (with a stamp of bill gates’ signature).

They gave me a raise to $60k (and the college grads went from 50-55). I then got $70k six months later and $80k six months after that as I was the “certified person.”

I always thought it was funny that I did the same job before and after the certs. The Networking cert was really useful and I still remember how to do subnets and dns and dhcp and stuff.

As a hiring manager, I treat AWS certification (professional especially) as relatively a good heuristic. It does not replace hands-on experience of course, but it has good correlation with good hands-on ability.

Another one that will catch my eye is any Kubernetes certification.

Both are great additions to experience, the certification itself has much less value standalone, but it might be the edge that will help someone get that entry level job.

(These are common for DevOps engineers, but a SWE with the above will have an edge in my book)

I'm, going to echo a bit of whats in the comments to robcohen's post but the single most productive cert I hold is my pilots license. I do not fly for a living, Im a software engineer (mostly). I hold other certs, some technical, others non technical both work related and non work related by a sizable margin my PPL is the the most productive:

Back story: when I started working for my self my first client was a pilot, he encouraged me to get my PPL or at least do a demo flight. I did an intro flight and was instantly hooked. 3 years later I had a PPL, Instrument Rating, High Performance and Complex checkouts. One of the best experiences I have ever had, I was fresh out of college, had a few bucks in my pocket and not many obligations. Anyway heres why its been great:

- I have found there are basically three types of people that bum around private airports where general aviation ops occur. 1) people successful enough to afford to fly private jets or charters when they need 2) people successful enough to OWN their own plane. 3) People who are liable to become types 1 and 2. In general pilots are a nice bunch and a talkative bunch. Ive met some really great people (read business connections) just by lurking around the airport. That first client I had, had lots of similar buddies who were pilots that I got to meet etc. etc. By far the most productive business networking I have EVER done occurred near an aircraft.

- Flying keeps you sharp in all aspects and it WILL change the way you look at things. It keeps you sharp on doing paperwork, sharp on staying current on a topic, sharp on thinking ahead of things, sharp on staying in at least some sort of decent physical shape. I have built a lot of productive habits in my life to ensure I can fly.

- It hones your decision making skills, a lot....

- It re-shapes how you view getting around and enabling your business/work. Both pre and post pandemic life. Meeting with client within 500 miles, Im not dealing with trains or regional jets, im coming and going as I need. This has enabled same day travel, taking meetings i normally wouldn't have and being able to generally buy time back.

- Putting my PPL on my resume has been the best talking point, stand out item, liner note I have ever had.

- Its just good fun.

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 job, though.. it's just one factor in the hiring decision.

Sometimes for really laid back companies, any kind of formal signaling like this could be a turn-off. It's like coming in to a company wearing a suit when everyone else is wearing shorts.

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 may have a legitimate reason, but it is still a red flag and you may need to clear yourself.

Second and just as obvious is a degree. Not so important if you have experience (though some large companies care), but a degree may be the key to a good first job that may launch the rest of your career.

I have never felt the need for any technical certification, not personally, the few I needed were paid by my employer for a specific mission, and done during work hours. Didn't get much use after that. Since I am not an English speaker, I probably could want something like a decent TOEIC score if I wanted to work in a large company in an English speaking country, but I am net even sure.

I 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.

Certs and the studying associated with certs has always been the biggest unlock in my career. The MCSE gave me a 50% salary uplift in the early 2000’s and the Cisco CCNA/CCNP gave me an invaluable networking background in the mid aughts. Recently, the AWS certs have given me an opportunity to pivot from management back into the technical realm and given me the confidence and framework to think about IT problems in a whole different way (traditional IT vs Cloud native) Throughout my life I’ve always done better by investing in myself and my learning, and certs have always been a huge part of that. My investments, stocks, startups, etc. have always been hit or miss, but my skills and the opportunities they have opened have been huge unlocks. Certs are a structured way to achieve those unlocks and represent them in the professional world. For all the cynicism one hears about certs, my experience has been the exact opposite, I’d do them all over again - I’ve learned a ton and had a rewarding career.

Amateur 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'm generally not a big fan of security certs, especially for mid career or later (and a lot of people I know got involved well before certificates were a thing; they might have gotten certificates early on had they entered the industry later). However, DOD (8570/8140), some specific regulations, and some specific clients sometimes require them. I also dropped out of both high school and MIT undergraduate so having at least some cert is sometimes helpful for forms.

Assuming you have the experience and a reasonable level of knowledge, CISA and CISM are pretty easy to maintain. CISSP is arguably worth it too but I let mine lapse due to annoying renewal requirements and some politics in the org.

Having one or more of these can be really handy -- sometimes you have a client who requires it (perhaps because they've copied someone else's requirements), sometimes there is a project you're tangentially aware of with an audit requirement, etc.

Technically they're nothing special. The Offensive Security stuff is probably the best for technical knowledge in their domain.

(I also do a bunch of med, shooting, driving, armorer, etc. classes; it's especially interesting seeing how adult education/instructional design/etc. work in those areas, independent of the actual subject areas taught. "Training" vs. "education" in a lot of cases, etc.)

Non-tech - Toastmasters - I think it is called 'Competent Toastmaster' it is the first set. Consists of doing 10 speeches. Significantly improve your ability to talk in public and to do presentations.

I am CTO of a startup (and use to be freelance dev). I once did the Introduction into Machine Learning course on Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning).

Although I would agree with most opinions here that that does not make me into a data scientist by any meanse, I do really like that I have a good "helicopter view" of ML. This is still super benificial in my role today, as I know which kind of statistical models apply to certain kind of problems. This enables me to find the right people for the right solution with much more ease.

AWS solution arch professional cert. A one eyed monkey could pass but it legitimately got me a lot of contract work as it’s a lazy tick box as most people only bothered with the associate level one.

Genuinely though certs don’t really add value just get you through people who don’t know anything about it and are doing recruitment.

Personal story time. Back in 2005 I came to the US for the first time through the Work and Travel program. I was working as a lifeguard and had a lot of free time while nobody was in the pool. I decided to take a Zend Certified Engineer certification - back then it was PHP 4 - thinking it might help me get a CS internship in the US next summer. I passed it and 3 months later Zend offered me to take a PHP 5 certification for free. I was already back in my home country and of course I agreed. After passing the exam it turned out I was #8 overall and #1 in my country to pass it. I put it on my resume.

6 months later I found a job and moved to Boston. After working at that company for a few months me and my boss went out for drinks and I asked him why he decided to hire me. He said that my certification was basically a deal-maker. He thought it was a sign that I was at the top of my profession. I thought it was funny, but, hey, it worked.

Super fast forward - a few years later I Fat FIREd at the age of 33 and I'm absolutely sure that the initial certification set a certain chain of reaction that led to it. So even though I think in most cases the certifications are absolutely useless, I'm absolutely sure that when you have to stand out from the crowd, especially at the junior level - they are super useful.

Fair or not, if someone has flooded their email signature with certs, my expectations lower.

The Andrew Ng certification on Coursera for Machine Learning give me all the skills I needed to start my own ML projects. It is excellent.

There's quite a few comments already about the dubious worth of certificates but that's an assumption pretty clearly implied in the OP.

It would be useful to focus on the question as intended otherwise we are just going to see the same "certificates meh" noise that most of us already know.

Early in my career I stacked up certs. I’d usually get ones that were relevant to projects I was working on. I’d find sometimes (again earlier in my career) that I needed a combination of structured learning to complement concepts in large projects I was working on at the time.

This led to more responsibility and more pay but it took a lot of my own time. As I’m senior in my career now I sometimes wonder if it was worth it as a trade off for all of the certifications I earned.

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.

Cisco certified network associate (CCNA). As a developer with roots in networking, being able to troubleshoot the network — even as little as understanding the 3-way TCP hand shake to identify whether even a socket has been established — helps you isolate fairly quickly whether it's your app, the server, or some intermediate device that's causing headaches.

Depends where you want to work. If you're looking to get into consulting, specifically related to vendors then it's a guarantee to win. Most vendors will require their authorised resellers/consultants to have a certain amount of certified staff. AWS comes to mind as the most obvious, but I'm sure this is the case with other cloud vendors.

For a "normal" business that is more of a customer to vendors, nah not really. Your experience is worth far more than your certifications. The only place it might get you somewhere is Government, although expectations are low there so you can get away with associate-level certifications and seem amazing.

I found the training course for the CPWA to be really useful. I refer back to it frequently to help guide my company’s strategy for web accessibility.

https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/s/certified-profess...

Never. I had a number of top certificates in the past, nobody ever asked about it even if they were very relevant to the jobs I had. The only ones ever useful were the Cisco network certifications that were required for some jobs, but even these became almost irelevant in the past 10 years.

I see these days lots of certifications on LinkedIn. For the people that I know well, it is a mystery how they get it because it is usually the weakest in the team that gets certified, while the best people never do it.

Not really! but collecting them was fun:

https://www.credly.com/users/balamurali-pandranki/badges https://www.credential.net/cdcfc3a1-b8c6-4b79-8efb-120b61927...

CEH is missing in there.

It was fun but none gives a F as long as you get things done.

I acquired several AWS certs early in my career. The understanding of AWS I developed through studying has helped me significantly in developing products at startups. I would highly recommend getting the networking specialization; it’s the hardest but perhaps the most important when it comes to understanding one of the most complex aspects of AWS.

I don't think certifications will make a significant difference from the HR point of view (maybe in Enterprise) but one thing I observe in my network is that some people really benefit from certifications purely because it boosts their self-confidence or help them get over a nagging case of impostor syndrome.

I find that these people feel lost when you tell them they'd be better off just being curious and learning by doing the thing itself. They tend to find comfort in systems like the belt system in martial arts. So, if you feel this way- it might be worthwhile to pick up a few certifications just for yourself.

For a career in security:

https://pauljerimy.com/security-certification-roadmap/

My friend got something called “Board Certification” in the medical field and apparently is quite a big deal. Another friend got something similar in the legal field and apparently isn’t particularly useful.

In tech the more prominently someone posts these certifications, the bigger the red flag. Someone just got a CISSP for some reason, perhaps as part of a job, and it’s at the bottom of the CV? Sure ok. Someone puts “PMP” in their signature line next to their name? Flashing red flag.

Lack 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.

I don't want to list a specific cert since the name of holders is public but GIAC certs (and SANS training) have been the most useful to me. They are very expensive and most people need a company to sponsor them as a result and also some in the industry complain about how them for one reason or the other but personally it isn't so much in terms of memorizing random facts or gaining some very deep insight but being exposed to very technical material and practical and current industry practices and knowledge. I think a lot of the critique is due to wrong expectations. You're not gonna become a threat intel expert or malware analyst because you took a sans/giac cert but it would be similar to taking a post-grad university course on the subject. They are also very vendor neutral and open source friendly. Their instructors are well recognized and accomplished in their respective fields.

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've met a lot of certified people who didn't know anything beyond the questions they crammed for to pass a test. When I see a cert on a resume, it makes me want to challenge it. Of course, there is a ton of nuance to these interactions, so I'm speaking very generally here.

No cert is a substitute for real practical experience. If you are trying to get a job and you don't have experience, then I can see how a cert might be nice to put on a resume. As a hiring manager, it doesn't make you more attractive to me to hire. The four years of experience doing a thing does. For tech stuff, I'd rather you have a home network with the thing and valuable time using it then the cert for the thing. The time spent pulling your hair out getting the thing running at home is a better use of the time then studying for the cert test.

However, I do put value in a liberal arts education. I don't even really care what that education is in. I feel people that come out of a four year program tend to think differently/more critically, on average.

Short answer, then: Get a liberal arts education. Get hands on experience. Skip the certs.

Depends on the stage of your career.

Back in the early 2000s when I was fresh out of university I did the Sun Certified Java Developer course. It made me stand out of the vast number of other graduates looking to get into the industry. I landed an awesome job straight away.

My advice would be to get 1 or 2 meaningful ones if you really want them. Avoid littering your resume with a bunch of certificates, since that adds a negative bias I find.

Red Hat, Linux Foundation (k8s mostly), AWS certifications will generally be a positive signal for me (engineering manager, interviewing about 50 people a year, seeing many more CVs).

I've personally gotten a couple and thought they provided good structure to the learning and so I also advise them to engineers we hire if they want to learn k8s and don't know where to start.

I got my CCIE and then went to work in software where no one gave a shit, but since then I've moved back to more networking-centric roles and it's definitely paying dividends. That said, Cisco ain't what they used to be and I don't think I'd encourage anyone to start their CCIE journey today.

Yes, I work in the Salesforce space and have a bunch of Salesforce certifications including certified technical architect (actually hard to get and rare) and Salesforce certs definitely have value in the job market if you are applying to Salesforce-related positions.

Generally, there are two ways I look at certs.

Skills Development: Having a test to pass is a great extrinsic motivator to go out and learn and have some assessment and external validation that you did learn XYZ. It also removes decision paralysis around what to learn and forces you to focus on a specific topic.

Career benefit: This is 100% dependent on the companies and roles you are applying for. Within the "enterprise" space and large companies certs are generally more valued but it's best to work backwards from the type of companies and roles you want to apply for and see what they are looking for.

I have been on 40+ courses/training over the span of about 15 years but ever did any exams or certifications. I feel that I DID NOT LOSE ANYTHING not having them. If you like to take exams then you may do it - but if you are about to pay for them from your money then I am not so sure its worth it.

My profile is generally BSD/UNIX/Linux sysadmin with some addons needed in between like storage/virtualization or high availability clusters.

If I got asked why I get to the trainings but did not get certifications I reply that I went for these trainings for learning and knowledge (and eventually things I needed to ask a teacher directly about them) and that was my main interest in them - I do not need a 'proof' that I 'got it and understood it' at the classroom.

Maybe certification is more needed in other areas ...

Regards.

first aid certification totally worth it. The fact I know how to provide CPR and first aid opened some surprising opportunities (e.g. attending C level company tours that opened doors) and provided me with experiences when volunteering in an ambulance which is also a surprisingly good network.

IP6 certification! https://ipv6.he.net/certification/

Education, job experience, provable skill set.

Software development and certificates seems like it's not a perfect fit.

If it were for an industry that is heavily regulated, certificates make a lot of sense.

They're like small exams in highly domain-specific knowledge.

Having ISO/IEC 27001, for example, for legal/compliance reasons.

Perhaps not what you mean by “certification,” but any candidates who passed electrical engineering or physics are at the top of my list for hiring.

Haven’t done any myself but when I hire people I generally treat them as a net positive for people early in their career because it gives them exposure to concepts that are relevant, but for more senior people it wouldn’t matter at our company.

This is very tangential, but in case it resonates with anyone else.

I was curious to discover recently that to try and bridge the gap between what we should arguably be doing to tackle Climate Change and what we are doing, a group has come up with the term Inner Development Goals to describe a set of abilities that might help with this transition. https://www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org/

Curious if anyone else has come across this, expecially as I've done courses on Sensemaking, Counselling/Coaching, Critical/Systems Thinking and the Shadow (Jung) as mostly just life skills, but interesting to see them grouped together as potentially helpful generally, even if most of them would have to be studied in some depth to turn them into jobs.

The Why (from the homepage):

In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals gave us a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. The 17 goals cover a wide range of issues that involve people with different needs, values, and convictions. There is a vision of what needs to happen, but progress along this vision has so far been disappointing. We lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. Fortunately, modern research shows that the inner abilities we now all need can be developed. This was the starting point for the 'Inner Development Goals' initiative.

There is no singular "get this proof and you'll be better off for it". You can get a cert that says you are the best at a thing in the world but without any applied experience it'll be hard to be valuable. The same goes for having a lot of experience 'doing stuff' but no common vocabulary or standards making collaboration really hard.

If you have long-term experience and a base 'proof' of knowing how to work together, you have a solid foundation and everything else is just time and putting in the work (unless you want to get into some old boys network which isn't based on skills but on some form of heritage, be it family or a specific institute to attend).

If you get some fundaments for compsci at any college and then work for 5 years going from application administration to system administration to cloud native development you'll have the same solid impression as starting at the helpdesk, getting an AWS cert and working your way up from junior AWS engineer to medior AWS engineer.

Keep in mind that none of this gets you FAANG level work because they get a large enough pool of applicants where they can just filter anyone who doesn't have a combination of high grades and university or lots of experience in a highly specialised field.

Besides that, like others wrote: "advertising" what certs you have collected is like advertising what Pokemon you collected.

I interview lots of people for my current and previous employers. I primarily look at public git repos, carefully reading their code. Bonus points for continuous education (Coursera, eDx, etc.). Ultimately though success is also strongly driven by being good at getting along with people, having a habit of carefully reading coworker’s emails and documents, and writing skills. Work is a mixed bag.

I would definitely list online classes and certifications on your resume, right below where you list your public git repos.

I have a bachelor of arts in history, most of a bachelor of commerce and the CPA designation.

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.

Getting certifications on a technology you want to work with will help companies hiring those positions find you and increase your odds vs a candidate that doesn't have them.

If you want something that will tangibly raise your prospects - look into clearances instead of certifications. These will open you up to a segment of the market that has less competition. I have a few colleagues that got two levels of clearance during university and they were immediately hired upon graduation.

I do a lot of hiring and I dont particularly value them, except for near entry level jobs. Certifications rarely test real skills or indicate the ability to actually do a job. For low seniority roles they indicate dedication at least.

Where they are useful is as a structured learning syllabus for entry level knowledge of a topic. If you know nothing about a topic but want to get into it, starting with a cert is a way to get the vocabulary and build a base to actually learn it from.

For testers I found that ISTQB is really valuable. The lack of graduate programs for this field + the fact that's not easy to get make it even more important.

Years ago after our DBA was let go and I took on a significant portion of their responsibilities, my job told me I needed to get MySQL certified. The sign up page for the course they wanted me to take at the time only worked in IE and I only had Macs at home and in the office. I never got around to installing a VM just to sign up. I’m still doing the same job like 8 years later so I’m guessing it really wasn’t that important.

FINRA Series 57, not only because I learned a whole lot or because it’s useful outside of my industry (derivatives trading development) but because it was a regulatory requirement of employment :-). But seriously, I did learn a lot about the wider finance world outside of the little bubble I sit in. It was also quite hard, it covered a wide range of topics that I had no prior knowledge of.

Not sure if it's what you mean but graduating from a good uni seems to make a difference to people. I went to Cambridge and people always treat you a bit different when you say. Though it's more having gone than what you studied. Even if you are too late for undergrad you can always potentially do a masters at some high ranking place.

Certs were mildly useful 10 years ago in launching my career. After the first job no one cared, I’d imagine a boot camp does the same now.

There is a category of company/role that really just needs some basic proof point that you know what your doing.

My first job was auditing user permissions, and refactoring Perl/bash scripts. There was a department of 9 people who provisioned a server once every 1-3 months using a mix of proprietary and open source software, they were also responsible for the operations of the legacy financial service the company offered.

I got the job, because it was boring, contract to hire, and probably a career dead end, had a brutal on all schedule, a penchant for firing people over mistakes, low paid, and made you wear a suit to work. It didn’t hurt that I memorized the answers to 100 Linux admin questions.

I left after a year and a half for a much better tech job at a startup, and transitioned to a standard engineer position within the year.

I recently spent the $700 to become a Certified ScrumMaster. This is within the past month, so any evaluation on how much it has helped my career is premature, but being that I've found myself to be the accidental ScrumMaster at work, taking the course to learn what the role is supposed to be seemed worthwhile. It has given me some credibility with management that I didn't have before, although the long term effects are as of yet unknown. It was an interesting two day class and a 50 question multiple choice exam. I had the privilege of taking the course with Chet Hendrickson, one of the originators of Extreme Programming (XP) and a contributor to some of the books written on Agile. I think the knowledge was worth acquiring and I actually enjoyed the course, which is more often not the case.

Honestly I do not do certs to help my career.

I find product / vendor based certification helps me round out my knowledge of a product better than just execution of a given task I need done at the time. This has helped me understand more of the capabilities of the what I wanted to learn

IMO this is more were the value of certs come in.

So for example I would not get a AWS Cert to get a Job in Cloud Administration, I would start training learning the cert to understand AWS, the cert is then just the final step of the learning process, the reward if you will.

Do I need to cert to learn it, no and sometimes I do not actually sit for the test.

I think people that just brain dump to pass the exam do themselves a disservice, that said the short answer to your question, I can not think of any cert that by virtue of just having it has advanced my career, I can say the process of getting certs which resulted in my expanded knowledge and experience has

One orbit of Saturn ago, achieving an Oracle OCP opened doors for me and let me charge big bucks during the dot-com boom.

After getting my masters in 1982 and then half defending PhD I did not do any certs. To me it is a total waste of time. When I need something I do not know I always find enough info on how to solve a problem or guess it myself. Being a former scientist this is how I was trained. The last thing I need are some bloodsuckers charging me money for their failure to produce decent docs / manuals / whatever else relevant.

Since I went on my own for the last 22 years I do not recall ever being asked for any certs anyways. I specialize in developing products from scratch with some hit an run jobs in between and clients just read references and rather long list of products I've developed. This severs me way better than any cert ever will.

Of course the situation would be totally different if I've worked in some other field.

Engineering degree or and science based degree. Learn critical thinking.

Directly IT related - Novell used to offer what they described as "practicum" exams for their SLES (Linux) offerings. These were web based and you literally did sysadmin stuff on VMs - configure users, set up a web server, SAMBA, DNS etc and then the system would mark you. Beats the crap out of memory tests like the old MCSEs and the VMWARE VCP bollocks. I recall quicky getting Apache to serve /usr/share/documentation to help me out.

Nowadays I employ people and I am not predisposed to any form of excitement about memory test type exams and qualis on CVs (Resumes). I may sit you down in front of something bloody expensive and complicated and ask you do do something with it ...

Imagine choosing between someone with a CS degree vs someone without a CS degree and think which you would prefer to do SWE work for you all else equal.

CS degree every time right?

Now imagine both candidates had the exact same career trajectory. Say 6 YOE, couple years at a FAANG recently, but the non-CS candidate was promoted there etc. which do you prefer now?

Probably the non-CS degree holder. They have proven they can do the work and advance by their self-starter mindset, skill and hustle alone without “appeals to authority”/certification.

Once people have proven they can do the job for real, certification matters less. While some industries make it a box you have to check, tech mostly doesn’t.

Dont wast your time unless you can’t get a foot in the door without a cert.

Going to go out on a limb here, but Eagle Scout.

Yeah, I know most of the people reading this can't go back and get one because you can only do it if you're a kid. And yeah, it's not really a certification, but I thought I'd put it in as something tangential.

Still, some of the best men I've worked with seem to have it more than not [0]. And when they see it on a resume, it's an instant 'eyes-light-up' effect. The people that are then hired are really good all in all. Just one okay-ish person that was an Eagle Scout out of about 15-ish that I can remember.

[0] It's been exclusively male for my career, but now women can get it too. So be on the look out for both sexes.

I picked up my RHCSA this past year, seeing the rise in inflation I wanted an advantage for merit increases. I'll let ya know in a few weeks if I did better than my peers. I work in Higher Ed so I already get paid less than industry average.

Does anyone here have any of the CITA certs from IASA?

I've been thinking of getting one of them to get taken more seriously as a software architect, but I'm concerned that it will be all about creating complexity for the sake of complexity.

The only document that really ever had a significant benefit for me was my DD-214 from the military. Being prior military helped me get my foot in the door to the tech industry. It is still helping me today in my retirement. I needed that to get "Veteran" on my drivers license and I get a 10% discount and most of the local stores.

The certifications from training classes while in tech were not useful for my career but did come in handy when a few customers required {n} percentage of people to be "certified in ..." but those were very specific and obscure use cases.

The only time I have found certs useful is for a good laugh with colleagues (I have several including MCSE).

All certs are bootcamped. Pay money...get all answers...pass the test (maybe).

I got a lot of value out of studying for them though.

Far too many people are needing a security qualification to be taken seriously by senior management.

I'm very clear when I say senior management because not everything has to have +TLS. But when your management get the speak from the "security certified" guy they stop listening to you and delegate.

With that in mind SANS. And I feel sorry for saying most of it. When your a seasoned Unix admin you shouldn't need a Windows wireshark certification about diamond team picking up your internal site traffic containing open secrets, but management thinks so...

I find similarity between certs and having a good GPA/being from a good college.

Some people go for that. I've never been that type of a guy (my grades were also low as I spent my time working on real world problems). I think it's not worth the time, given that you use that time for actually having some hands on experience in real world.

If you can prove yourself in the field virtually no one would care about certs unless they are legally required to do so (e.g. You'd need a piloting license to fly an airplane (legally) even if you can perfectly fly)

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for but my M.S. was invaluable. Needed it to get into R&D roles, lots of people assumed I was smarter just for having it (it was in a specialized field).

Instructor training.

Learning to teach, forced me to learn how people learn and that was invaluable.

I have a certificate on how to teach sailing but never got a real job doing so, but the experience has applied to every job since.

My accounting qualifications helped me leave a physical trade for an office job, where I learned about ERP systems, re-discovered coding and got into a hybrid tech/finance job.

In my career I got quite some technical certifications. Any cert shows you are taking your job seriously and you are willing to learn.

The following three certs helped to show I know my field really well and these separated me from others that just say they know it. Cisco CCNA/CCNP, Linux institute LPI and Agile Alliance certified Scrum master.

Later on I used certifications to quickly pivot into a niche, sometimes when already practicing the role. Architecture (togaf) and product management.

Can anyone please share your personal experience with AWS Solutions Architect certification? I hope to complete it someday. Do you have any other suggestion?

Back in 1998 or 2000 (I don't remember the exact year), I did RHCE and IT networking certificate. It landed my first corporate gig as I was the only person who knew Linux. In addition, I was the first hire who started replacing traditional Unix servers with RHEL. So, yes, it did help me despite not having a college degree. I am very thankful to Linux and FLOSS for paying all my bills over the years.

Certification is primarily for IT consultant. Banks, insurance companies hire a lot of IT consultants through IT service providers (e.g. Tata, Accenture).

How can they tell if the IT consultants are qualified for the work? Certification is one way to ensure they at least meet the minimum requirement but this is not to say the certification implies the IT consultants have the skill sets or knowledge to do the job.

Is there any certification for which preparing for it would teach me how to recap/repair vintage personal computers from the late 70’s onward?

I was one of the top scores on the RHCE in the UK when 5.5 was current. I like to think it helped but honestly don't know if it swayed anyone.

I also scored really high in the Sun Certified System Administrator exam for Solaris 10 - i can categorically say that didn't help. Thanks Oracle & RIP Slowlaris (i jest, 10 wasn't slow, 10 was the ultimate OS, lightyears ahead of its time).

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.

I find the more a given employer cares about certifications and credentials, the less interesting and less pleasant the place is to work.

I did a bunch of the Microsoft tracks about 10 years ago, mostly in the hope they’d help me stand out in a crowded field rather than actually get me a job.

It’s impossible for me to know if they ever worked in that regard, but I imagine they probably did at a few different times (subconsciously at least) in terms of getting my resume onto the shortlist, which was the goal.

I don't have any despite studying the material for a lot of them. I hate the entire cert industry and actively discourage it. It hasn't hindered me yet with my career path. Although, I'm pretty open with employers that I don't believe in certs and will never get one. I will however study the material they produce if its worthwhile.

Certifications are certainly no substitute for experience and competence but can help you get a foot in the door if you're just starting out. I've always been moderately skeptical of security certifications (CEH, CISSP, etc) as in my experience, they are more often than not a negative indicator of competence for anything beyond junior level.

I have a PhD so I may be biased towards formal education, but I do review resume often and find certifications to be of no value, lame even. I had very poor performing colleagues with many certifications and they were very proud about it. Doesn't bode confidence at all.

When I see certifications on a resume, I see it as a negative.

Not sure if the actual certification is that important, but I’d recommend some thorough introductory course to IT service management / ITIL to everyone. It makes you way more effective in navigating more complex or bureaucratic organisations as you know a lot better what people’s perspectives and wants are.

I'm gonna second the OSCP or any Offensive Security major cert. The testing is both intense and IS the actual job, when it comes to hiring security professionals - assessors, pen testers, CSIRT / Hunt folks, etc. It verified both the technical and report writing skills, which is essential to the job.

Serious question, seems like the general sentiment certs are a negative signal (which I don’t agree with but everyone to their own) but where do degrees sit? If certs are a waste of time and people should spend their time “working on something real instead”, wouldn’t this also apply to degrees?

I did the GCP Data Engineer certificate last year. I was able to ask 25% salary raise the next month and got a job at Google as a consultant this year. Of course, everything else including my experience also mattered, but I believe the certificate played a vital role as well.

I have a Master's in Public Administration but recently I obtained my certification in Data Analytics from Google. I got hired by Google less than 2 months later as a Policy Analyst and it has helped tremendously with my proficiency with spreadsheets and dashboards.

Getting my EMT cert was pretty important for getting a job as an EMT. In all seriousness the difference between getting hired for my tech jobs vs as an EMT was interesting. I’m used to the standard multi week interview process, but for EMS the only question was if I had my certs.

LPIC helped me organising my Linux/shell knowledge. It was all received by my propective employer.

I have maybe 2-3 quite old certs. I don’t really seek out certification, and I wouldn’t want to work for a company that requires them. Interview me and feel free to hand out a coding assignment and call my refs – if you still don’t believe in my competence, just don’t hire me.

The kind of company that values certifications highly is not the kind of company you want to work for.

As an employer in the cyber security domain I don't have many methods of evaluating a candidate practical knowledge. For this reason I take a look at their certifications and will generally be very happy to see an OSCP or other offensive security certifications.

A 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.

In the software development space, we tended to shy away from hiring certs, eg MCSD, etc. They proved to be a very poor substitute for experience. We had far better results in the IT space with certs like Cisco, and similar certs.

Certificates say, I've read the manual. Solving the problem is much different.

Any, which give you right to work in another country, or which lower barrier to got job in other country. Because IT is basically world specialty, mean, the more countries achievable, the higher will be your compensation.

Language certifications. Foreign universities usually ask for them. Also, it always looks good on your resume. Not to mention, language is a great way of connecting with people even if you are not of the same ethnicity

The USPTO registration exam is difficult to pass, and is helpful for starting in the patent field. Because it doesn't require updating, it isn't in itself valuable if you don't have a patents practice.

As CTO I respect a lot Cisco, PMP and UX certifications by NNGroup.

I think certifications are 100% worth it as a hiring manager. If I see someone with certifications I know that they are at least making an effort to further their knowledge.

CISSP gets me a decent amount of respect, Security+ opened the door to gov contracting.

From VMware to Cisco to all the other 25+ certs, wasn’t worth it, but learned a lot so maybe worth it?

PMP is usually required to run government contracts. CISSP or CISM is required for cyber leadership roles And any of the pro solution architect certs from AWS, Azure, GCP.

As a predominantly frontend web person, I've been wondering if an accessibility (IAAP?) certification is worth it — if anyone has any experience with that?

I passed the Red Hat Certified Engineer exam a long time ago. No job cared that I had it but I sure learned a lot studying with Michael Jang's books.

CCIE is still worth it. Cisco commands set expanded but remained compatible.

Some Microsoft certs are worth having. The rest of my certs are relics - CNE, SCSA etc…

I got a $10,000 raise and a $1,000 bonus for passing the GCP exam. All this for 3 weeks of studying in my spare time and 2 hours at a test center.

In the security field, CISSP is worth it. Many federal and private sector jobs require it, or won’t take you seriously without the credential.

The industry currently wants competitive programmers. Obviously no certification is necessary but that is the best place to spend your time.

Certs 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.

Red Hat certs will definitely be worth the time and money invested (if your employer will pay then jump at the opportunity).

The AWS ones are cheap and I genuinely learned useful skills. Not helpful on my resume but certainly don’t hurt either.

I used to work as a cloud consultant, building client applications in GCP.

Certainly from Google was valued quite high by clients.

Ive heard that hard security certs are somewhat respected, but i dont have experience to confirm/deny it

It will keep you busy during work slumps but otherwise serves no purpose (at least in FAANGs)

10-finger blind touch typing.

In certain sectors in the UK e.g. defence they absolutely love certs.

AWS certs aren't too bad. Terraform is certainly cheap and useful.

Certifications provide a structured roadmap of self studying a technology. As a hiring manager, I give them very little consideration because passing an exam doesn't mean the person actually understands the concepts.

Form observation an MBA gets you into higher paying work.

The best certification is a CV with top tier companies.

I'm still looking to use my MongoDB certification.

PRINCE2 certification certainly made me a better PM.

CCIE is the only one I've seen respected.

Data Engineer here, AWS Data Analytics

RHCSA

Helped me get my first Systems Admin job

PS: I don't have a degree

CPR training and certificate

None.

Google Cloud Architect

An undergrad Computer Science degree and drivers license is pretty much the key.

Having gone to one of the best schools in India has certainly helped me.

CCIE is still gold

red cross first aid and CPR

no

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