I got a question recently from someone who purchased my Learn AWS By Using It course. They purchased the course a few months ago and used it to hel...
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Certifikations has always seemed off to me.
Being mostly self taught, picking things up as I need them, the only real use I have ever seen for certifications have been the really nice badge one can put on their resume.
It certainly helps as a contractor, personally I can’t count how many times I’ve had to convince hiring managers that I am in fact an expert at x thing I’ve been doing for y years.
Certification kinda shuts down that conversation rather easily.
Certifications to me, as someone who has hired people for DevOps and SRE positions, aren't what I consider experience pieces. Honestly I'm more likely to go with the candidate who learn on their own, because it demonstrates that this person is adaptable and able to continually learn on their own. Also someone who has hands on experience is more equipped to make architectural decisions and contribute more to planning than just implementation, these people are more likely to work independently. Of course if you have a certification and experience that's the same, but overall the certification does nothing in the way of convincing me you're a capable and well equipped engineer. It's pretty meaningless to me. If you're starting out in the field, work on some side projects, I'd rather see those. Blog about your experiences, that's another great way to show interest, ability to learn and adapt, and at least some level of actual experience. To me getting something done means more than getting someone to say you learned something.
The process of getting the certification brings a lot of new knowledge in about AWS services, but it doesn't really alter anything that Im doing.
It's more the perception of recruiment/HR that you have a certain skill level that they're looking for. In that sense it helps to bolster your CV and I've gotten my Professional Architect certification for those two reasons (CV and knowledge).
I'm also happy to report that this certification actually means something. I've done certifications for SAP which are just mindless remembering facts that does little to nothing for learning. With AWS that's definitely not the case, the Professional Architect exam is pretty hard. It's 2 hours of reading comprehension, quick knowledge and analysis to pass it, it felt like a marathon running session after I was done.
Great perspective Rolf! I second the usefulness piece as well. There are a lot of certifications out there that don't benefit you in the long run or are just superficial.
^ Anybody here ever sit the MCSE for Server 2008? The "brain dump" problem got so bad that even tech recruiters I knew started to see it as borderline worthless. A shame too, because if you actually studied and passed the exam legit, you accrued a hell of a lot of knowledge on the Server 2008 ecosystem.
A lot of it depends on your long term goals and your career patch. Any Joe Blow that enjoys AWS can self teach themselves and be just as knowledgeable as somehow who gets the official Cert. The difference takes shape if you want to work for AWS or work for a company parallel to AWS that you need to show your proficiency in.
At my old job I never would have taken an official Cert because it would have had a limited impact on my career. Now that I work for a company that is an AWS partner, taking Certs adds to my credibility.
Yeah, for me the big thing is giving structure to my learning. It allows me to know what to learn next, and clearly see holes in what I know.
I think also as you say it's nice to be able to put a stamp on your knowledge. It can be infuriating to not be taken seriously for a skill that you've been honing for years, but for whatever reason others don't listen to you or are dismissive. So it can be a great tool for that since not many people can argue with it.
A lot of people have beef with certs, but of course if you pass the test for the sake of passing the test that's kinda pointless, and you'll soon get called out as a fraud, but if you actually get hands on and use the course as a framework for learning, you're golden.
I might check out your course sometime soon Kyle! It sounds interesting!
Thank you for the excellent thoughts Lou. I think you really hit on something with using certifications and studying for them as a framework.
Feel free to let me know if you have questions on my course.
I manage the AWS Certified Discord in case you're looking to ask questions. It's quite an active group. We just passed 600+ users and it growing daily.
Also, I have full free courses on Youtube, if anyone is looking to get started on their AWS Certification journey:
Certifications don't mean anything.
They HELP. For sure. But, just because you have a certification, does not mean that you're automatically the type of asset a company is looking for. Sometimes it comes down to attitude and qualities, maybe even relentlessness.
Convincing people is the art of persuasion... having a certification to shut down the persuasion process can open the door to the certified... but often times, readily using the basis of being certified to 'trust' an individual results in things like "$1T of identity theft/cyber criminal activities occurred in 2019", as stated by the guy that runs Microsoft (CEO Satya Nadella @ Microsoft Ignite 11/4/2019).
I don't know about you... but it sure seems like 'certifications' need to be vetted just as much as anyone who does not have certifications. When you're certified and you know someone will automatically hire you... well, it could result in hiring a trojan horse.
It's not that certifications aren't helpful, they are. But to who ...?
My work with AWS didn't start until I began my job at a startup that wanted to move from a legacy PHP app to serverless via API Gateway and Lambda. I was brought on as "the back end guy" who knew systems architecture and some light DevOps. Fast-forward 6 months and I'm "the guy" for managing and deploying our API via the serverless framework, writing Lambda functions that replace the MVC model on our PHP app, and seem to have to pick up a new AWS technology "on-the-fly" every week.
That being said, if you aren't basically given the keys and told to "go nuts" like I was (our company is 17 people, I'm Engineer #2 if you don't count the CTO and all of engineering is 5) knowing what to learn next or focus on can be a real challenge. Especially is you're learning it mostly for that lateral move.
I guess my point is, certs provide a great way to add structure and, most importantly, a goal to your learning. But I would say they usually hold little value if you don't intend to immediately use what you've learned.