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Comment by bifrost | Hacker News Reader

Typically, no. In my experience, anyone who hires you for the cert over experience, you don't actually want to work for. Using the cert as a conversation tool will usually get you shunned by people who work on whatever you're certified in day to day.

Yes, the certs are often hard to attain, but for the most part experience trumps them all and the only thing a cert proves is that you had time to read the books and take the tests.

The one exception I make is for Cisco/Juniper certs, if you have a cert you can jump ahead in the support queue. This could potentially save you hours/days in the dealing with support and is generally worth it in terms of time for you and your employer.

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In my experience, anyone who hires you for the cert over experience

But isn't that usually a false dichotomy? That is, people don't hire just for certs, or just for experience. Certs and experience are both just part of the overall equation, with each (along with other factors) carrying different weights depending on who you're talking to.

Yes, the certs are often hard to attain, but for the most part experience trumps them all and the only thing a cert proves is that you had time to read the books and take the tests.

Couldn't you say the same thing for an undergraduate degree?

anyone who hires you for the cert over experience, you don't actually want to work for.

Why wouldn't you want to work for them?

> "Couldn't you say the same thing for an undergraduate degree?"

Absolutely. That's also why presence of an undergrad degree is, for me, not at all a signal while hiring. The only exception is if the program is particularly well known for being rigorous and having high standards.

> "Why wouldn't you want to work for them?"

Because the vast majority of tech industry certifications is all fluff and marketing, with practically no correlation with competence. I distrust employers who can't even see through that extremely thin veneer of bullshit.

Reliance on unreliable markers like this is a hallmark of heavily bureaucratic organizations, where certifications are used as a cover-your-ass mechanism: "but he was MCSE certified! How was I to know he was a complete idiot?!"

That's the antithesis of where I want to work.

I would think that certs would be useful in signaling commitment for people wanting to join that workforce.

Possible but sortof irrelevant, some of the WORST engineers I've ever hired/seen have had certs in their chosen field.

Whatever marginal value they have as a signal of commitment is swamped by their negative signaling. Top caliber talent won't usually be certified; why waste the time getting "certified" by organizations that are probably less competent than you?

Successive rounds of adverse selection produce a "certified" pool of candidates who are unwilling or unable to achieve a basic level of facility in their field on their own, which is its own negative signal.

I agree with that basically. I've spent the last 10 years kinda being a "fixer" but mostly a network engineer. I haven't had time for any certs, I'm too busy working... When I have time for certs, who knows what'll be going on.

You say you're committed, I say you're desperate.

(Not you personally)

I'm about to say negative things. I don't like saying negative things, particularly because someone could misread them as having personal animus behind them, which I don't have.

There's a particular type of college student who is not ready to work in a real job. They believe themselves incapable of working in real jobs, they signal this incapability, and employers generally hate working with them because they're needy and unprofessional. They don't thrive unless they have someone telling them "Do X then Y then Z" and then providing constant positive feedback ("100 points for X!"), which is a teacher-student relationship, not an employer-employee relationship.

Someone getting a certification is signaling a desire to continue being a student. Someone desiring to be an employee signals this desire by putting down the books and getting a job.

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