Ask HN: Software Engineer Certifications That Mean Something? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Software Engineer Certifications That Mean Something?

32 pointsjagtstronaut27 comments

I know my manager is going to push a cert as part of my goals again this year. Last year I did AWS Certified Solutions Architect and got a lot out of what I learned.

Criteria for "mean something" are: 1. Learning helpful things 2. Meaningful on a resume

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It's hard to say how it'll sell, but I do self-directed learning and research, and document it on Github. As a senior dev I feel like self-directed learning of what I need, and no more, is a better look.

A number of years ago I did do a certification on project management from Coursera, which is a good look. Your software related experience should speak for itself, but tangential certifications like project management look like an 'above and beyond' type of thing, IMO.

When I see an actual software certification, my thinking is that this is a person who likes checking skill boxes, but who will miss the big picture when it comes time to actually solve problems.

I'd love to see an example of how you document your learning on Github.

I can't comment on software certifications specifically, but I think most certifications have almost no lasting value.

I've done a few when my employer paid for them, and they have all had no real world value to me. I have had value from doing degrees, and online courses (e.g. Coursera) that come from good universities. They don't have the brand recognition that certs have, but the education is generally better and has more lasting value.

I can see they might be useful for someone junior trying to get past HR filters. I did know one very senior guy who was obsessed with getting every single certification known to humanity, but he was an outlier in more ways than one ;)

While not a certification, I find my Amateur Radio License to be one of my most valuable credentials besides my degrees.

1. This credential actually gives you a huge amount of privilege to use restricted radio spectra.

2. It teaches you a lot about how software, hardware, and wireless come together.

3. It's great for emergencies.

4. Opens up a lot of homebrew and DIY skill-sets for projects relating to IoT and smart devices.

I put it on my resume, though, not everyone agrees with this practice.

I will say, it's really fun to find other Hams in the industry, it makes it really easy to chit chat about a shared technical hobby.

I enjoy amateur radio too. I don't feel it's value for a software dev, especially in terms of interviews/resumes. Unless maybe you're working on radio related things.

I’m sure there are plenty of useful things to be learned from a certification program, but beyond a certain skill level, they are meaningless on a resume. Actually, at a high level role I’d view it as a negative - it reads like a lack of demonstrable skills.

> beyond a certain skill level, they are meaningless on a resume

why not create a certificate that is prestige, even for experienced developers? Maybe it would deprecate the ridiculous leetcode interview process.

The software engineer industry needs the equivalent of CFA (in finance). That means something.

Well it's not for lack of trying (e.g https://www.computer.org/education/courses) but I think there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem in that it's hard to prove to employers that your certificate means anything and it's a hard sell for engineers if they don't see it being recognized by employers. Also, I think it's probably too close to licensing which engineers overall seem to be very much against.

We had one. For a brief period of time there was an actual proper PE exam for the software engineering industry.

https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/

https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...

Very few are meaningful on a resume. The best I can think of for a SWE is RHCE. Regardless of if you get the cert/keep it updated, it's stuff you should know.

Another respectable cert track is CCNA/CCIE. That is, of course, entirely networking, but it's really interesting, and the context it provides is very useful for day to day dev work.

Those are the only two I'd put any positive signal in on a resume. The rest would be either neutral or negative (if you have a dozen different certs listed on your resume, it triggers apprehension in me).

I've been hiring for 20+ years, none of them mean anything to me. Degrees from accredited universities with good programs mean a bit, but what means the most is what you have actually done, in particular what have you shipped.

How person that was working with closed source software can show it to you?

I don't know about the certification, but the content is interesting, at least:

IEEE Professional Software Engineering Master

I haven't taken the exam, but started an online course, and it's been interesting.

Very textbook stuff, but towards a more succinct reference than lots of books about how software gets built. Not that formalism isn't important, I just haven't had a season of interest in it, particularly since it's so sparse and mostly without principles.

Does your org have teams for InfoSec? Something tangential like Offensive Security[0] certs might help portray interests beyond your core work but not too far removed either :) . Plus the certs are really really good as per people who work in InfoSec

[0] https://www.offsec.com/pricing/

In Western Europe iSAQB seems decently in-demand for more senior architecture roles if you want something stack-agnostic.

Otherwise I like the RedHat OpenShift Developer certs if you deal with their ecosystem. (i.e. EX288)

At the end of the day though, certification will never really mean the same in SWE as it means in the vendor lock-in world of cloud - and this is a very good thing.

In my line of work ServiceNow and/or MuleSoft certifications are required. Prior programming experience is implicit. These technologies are based on Java but strive for the event oriented asynchronous model of JavaScript. Familiarity with XML and a mastery of HTTP architecture is required. Streaming and sockets are not required but are helpful. I have 0 programming experience in Java and am doing just fine.

In the industry I now work in a security certification is also required. The minimum is Security+ but having CASP or CISSP is helpful.

Jobs that require certs are amazing. They are amazing just for the fact that they filter out a bunch of people who should never be there. That is a night and day difference compared to JavaScript jobs where it seems almost nobody can program and very few of those people should be writing software.

I found Andrew Ngs original machine learning course on Coursera really useful. Not sure whether it is still available. It actually forced you to work with machine learning algorithms, and you couldn't easily pass without having an understanding of how they work. That's a certificate that's useful in my opinion.

Most other Coursera (and edX) courses are quite easy to pass. Either you have multiple choice tests and several attempts to figure out the right answers, or you have peer-reviewed tasks and I always thought that the whole peer review process is quite bizarre.

If you're trying to break into a new role like Architect, PM, AWS Consultant etc. they might be helpful. But beyond the entry point they are meaningless on a resume - at least in my hiring and industry experience

For #2 -- I would suggest looking at the job descriptions of roles you might want to have or apply for, one day. Do they list certifications? If so, which ones?

I generally find a lot of certifications are pretty useless -- hard to tell if people learned anything, retained anything, or can apply anything.

A few folks here mentioned GitHub and open source projects. If you build something small/cool and demo it via an open source repo, then you prove that you can learn, code, build, and ship. Way better/cooler than a certificate IMHO.

If it's just to add one more skill to your resume, then it's obviously unnecessary, unless the company you're applying to explicitly states the need for this certificate; besides, I believe creating a software to showcase your abilities and ideas is more meaningful. It allows others to see what you have done more directly, and to see your value.

IMO the AWS certifications(and maybe other clouds equivalents) are the only certifications that mean something other than full university degrees. The software industry is not big on certifications and prefers people to prove their skills by using them.

Is there a tool-agnostic cloud certification out there? I too am feeling some pressure at work to complete some sort of cert, but I don’t want to fill my head with AWS jargon (even though that’s mainly what’s used in my current role)

Many cloud concepts are transferable to the other vendors cloud platforms. If you are using AWS, you’ll find it easiest to start with learning that.

They seem to mean SFA to developers, but IME, developers aren't screening resumes.

A friend of mine wanted to become a pentester and did a lot of his actual training on hackthebox.eu but he used the OSCP cert to show that he was serious about breaking into the industry as a junior pentester.

I love seeing IAAP accessibility certifications on engineer resumes.

Why would you try to get a cert just to have one? Seems like backwards thinking

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