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Why Certifications Are Necessary (Even If Aggravating To Earn)
Nerval's Lobster writes: Whether or not certifications have value is a back-and-forth argument that's been going on since before Novell launched its CNE program in the 1990s. Developer David Bolton recently incited some discussion of his own when he wrote an article for Dice in which he claimed that certifications aren't worth the time and money. But there's a lot of evidence that certifications can add as much as 16 percent to a tech professional's base pay; in addition a lot of tech companies use resume-screening software that weeds out any resumes that don't feature certain acronyms. There's also the argument that the cost, difficulty, and annoyance of earning a certification is actually the best reason to go through it, especially if you're looking for a job; it broadcasts that you're serious enough about the technology to invest a serious chunk of your life in it. But others might not agree with that assessment, arguing that all a certification proves is that you're good at taking tests, not necessarily knowing a technology inside and out.
First off.. saw first link and thought "wow, at least dice isn't putting campaign ID's in their URLs any more".. but then the third link has one. Never change dice.. never change.
Secondly, this is a tired old discussion that aside from a few who insist on actually arguing it, seems to have resolved to a consensus of:
- If the employers you want to work for care about certificates, get them.
- If your employer wants you to get certificates, get them (they'll probably pay for it).
- If the employers you want to work for don't care about them, don't get them (I don't think anyone feels you actually learn something by getting certs).
The area I live in, certificates are mostly worthless, so I have very few. I once worked at a place where the big projects was from a client who insisted everyone who worked on the project have a bunch, so I got a few now expired ones through that. Maybe having certs going in would be a factor in ones favour if applying for that job at that time, but I doubt it. They were viewed much like "mandatory compliance training" stuff is, something everyone just went and wasted an afternoon on at some point because you had to.
But I don't discount that in some areas having a list of acronyms on your resume is required or at least helpful, so if you live in such an area, go nuts.
Either way, you should know what local employers in the area you want to work expect if you are planning to you know, have a career and such...
Conspiracy theories aside, I don't get why the hell Nerval's Lobster doesn't just have an editor account. I'd really like to know what the relationship there is.
Obviously he (or she?) works for dice, everything he's ever submitted is a link to dice and the URLs have campaign IDs in them to track the success of their shitposting. Do they treat this as if it was submitted like any other article, requiring it to get upvoted in the firehose, or is it just automatically accepted by whatever editor happens to see it first?
Either way, pretty unclassy.
If I could go to class, take the test (pass of course) and get a job without having experience, then I would consider it. Unfortunately, certs don't matter without experience.
What I have seen is you get a job and then work for the cert while employed. And as you earn them, you get promoted. Certs seem to be a condition for advancement; not a method of getting a job.
Nerval's Lobster is the astroturfing account for Nick Kolakowski, the editor in chief of the godawful SlashBI thing. He's still listed in the FAQ as an editor, even though he's officially moved away from Slashdot and is currently churning out content for Dice's godawful news division. I brought this up before, and was assured that not only does Nick not work directly for Slashdot any more, but that they don't post everything that he submits. Considering the last time he had a story declined was over a year ago, I have my doubts.
Also, expect to see stories about certifications, what programming languages you should learn, interview skills, and other fluff pieces from now on.
I work as a business consultant on various IT projects. Certifications are required in my line of work.
They give points in application process when big firms and the public sector contracts us to do real projects. Even so much, that one certificate is equal to two years of work experience or more.
They have no effect on me doing my job and are all about memorizing stupid details on things I will never use. I would be more than happy if our clients would see them as a money making scam, that they really are. But such is life.
Hate 'em all you like, but silly IT managers who hire sub-contractors don't know any better.
Interestingly, the Dice pieces linked close like this:
Conclusion
I’m obviously not a fan of formal certification. While many jobs require one or more, lots of tech pros have forged perfectly fine careers without them. Don’t let the complicated world of certificates impede you from pursuing what you want.
and
Certifications Only Prove One Thing
Malik’s supervisor, who worked his way up through the tech-industry ranks for 20 years without ever earning a certification, asked him how a career powered by certifications compares to one built primarily on real-life experience. Malik said anyone can pass a test given enough time to prepare for it; but that being said, certifications allow you to apply and interview for a role from a position of strength.
The answer of whether or not to certify is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Take Sarin, for instance, who suggests companies look for employee traits that can be encouraged or cultivated beyond what they might learn as part of the test-taking process, even as they encourage employees to earn certifications while on the job.
What ultimately matters is if the candidate’s opinions about certifications align with those of the hiring manager. But with certification requirements not exactly going away, why not play it safe and take on the extra effort? If you guess wrong and skip getting the certification, you could lose out to the person who passed the test.
And the non-Dice article is the one that recommends some certifications.
But of course the actual content shouldn't get in the way of a good rant.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Okay Nerval or whichever Dice employee you are you're just embarrassing yourself and your company now, please, just stop.
Certainly in the development world, no one who actually has these roles you're theorising about gives the slightest shit about certifications. I can say this with absolute certainty because I've made it right to the top in a large and successful company without needing any and similarly when I'm hiring I pay exactly zero attention to certifications because they do not in any way tell you anything about the competency of the candidate.
You see the issue is that anyone can get these certifications, so your theory of who can and can't get them is meaningless, even junior devs can get them if they can be arsed, but ultimately they're just not worth the money. They have exactly zero impact on employability (and some even have negative impact).
So keep theorising all you want, those of us who actually work in the field and have worked our way to the top will keep laughing at how wrong you are and how desperate your shilling is. Even if I genuinely wasn't capable of getting these certifications, I frankly wouldn't care, because it's had no impact whatsoever in my ability to grow my career, hence even if you were right (which you're not) so fucking what? It's still meaningless, they still don't matter, not having them still hasn't dragged my pay down at all because I'm already getting paid as much as a developer can get paid, and I still enjoy my job regardless. There isn't any other metric that matters that these certifications could improve even if they did somehow matter as you're desperately trying to claim.
Really, it sounds like you're the bitter one simply because you blew all your money on certifications and have no actual skills so the only person you could find to employ you was Dice. I guess it must suck being in a dead end Dice job, but at least you have your pointless and irrelevant bits of paper to flap around right?