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.
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.
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)
Might the above be generalized into "The best use of certificates is to reduce uncertainty, for the hirer"?
I.e. A SWE with a SWE cert says nothing, because you'd expect them to know it. But a SWE with a DevOps cert says something, versus just claiming knowledge.
My impression is that every cert seller markets as though the world believed "You dont know it, unless you're certified in it."
My impression is that the world actually believes "You can be certified in something without knowing it."
So at best, from an applicant / employee's perspective, certificates are a slightly stronger suggestion that you might know the thing you claim to know.
Which is a useless reinforcement for something for which you already have demonstrated experience via work history.
But might be useful for something for which you do not.
Wow interesting. I got the security specialist one (work wanted me to and they agreed to pay for it). It was almost entirely memorizing what amazon product name corresponds to what generic name. And a bit about ACLs. I was left feeling it had basically nothing to do with my job or relavent skills.
Not at all, I would never reject someone for lack of any formal paper (degree, certificate), but if I have more resumes than time to phone screen them all, an AWS / Kubernetes certification is definitely a tie breaker for otherwise two similar candidates.
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.
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.
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.
Outside of money I have never seen a logical explanation for why we has a society have not created a purely experienced based "degree", something that if you have say 6 years experience in a field of Computer Science, and can demonstrate either with testing or work product the same level of knowledge one would gain from a 4 year degree program just issue the degree.
Even with money, let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test, prove my experience, and bam I now have a degree...
Do the same for masters, make it 8-10 years experience
What would be the actual value of a 'degree' here as opposed to just the work experience? This sounds as much a reason to just ignore the idea of degrees as being uniquely meaningful which is...probably fine. But, degrees and work experience are not (or should not) be the same thing.
Why? The stated purpose of a degree is to educate a person in field of study, the culmination of which is a piece of paper that is suppose to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
Work experience can convey that same level of knowledge, thus the purpose of an experience based degree would be to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
Work experience can be difficult to evaluate, especially since most companies have no incentive to cooperate with the degree granting institution. In addition to the process consuming company resources, there may be sensitive business knowledge they don't want revealed. There's also the issue of turnover making knowledge of an employee's experience with the company very limited. Same for human memory decay or simply others in the company not knowing what the person was doing, even if it was valuable.
While I can agree with that, I fail to see how this does not also apply to collegiate based education.
Having interviewed several recent graduates the level of knowledge shown is not on par with what I would expect, it seems from my personal experience that college is more of an attendance standard than educational standards, what years ago we would call diploma mills, pay the fee, attend the class, get the degree, seems to the wider state of the "higher" education system today
This to me simply means we're failing with educational standards. Which, well, we probably are. At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
There's merit to the idea of awarding a college degree if you can pass all the assessment, without necessarily taking the classes, but that's a different thing again. Ideally, college should be about introducing theory and reasoning which gives a solid understanding of the field in a highly focused manner that an employer almost certainly won't provide. I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Another comment in this thread seems to have hit on one of the problems, Universities are focused not on vocational education, which is the reason most people attend university , and what most employers expect when they demand a degree from their employee's. Instead universities are focused on "academic qualification" which may have limited to no real world vocational value .
>At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
I 100% agree with this, I know a few "experienced" people that are not really experienced, which is why I did not simply state that one should automatically attain this experienced based degree simply on chronological paid experience but rather experience + something else
Someone bought up WGU's method of crediting some life experience, that is a good start but I don't think WGU's program goes far enough but it is on the right path, and I which more institutions would start doing more things like them.
>I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Again I agree here, some fields may lend themselves to an actual degree program, Doctors for example. I think my ideal society would be less than 30% of jobs requiring a post secondary education degree, the vast majority of employment should be encompassed by regular primary / secondary (k-12) education, and maybe direct vocational training (paid by employers)
Instead we pushed the narrative the most jobs need post secondary education or to be successful one must get a degree.
Allowing for experienced based degree's , IMO would start to open other avenues and maybe start a shift in human resources to start looking at other things that just a check mark for "has degree" true or false
Of course the extreme cost of education, and the debt crisis is also doing that slowly
A software engineering degree is an academic degree, not a vocational certificate.
Look at this syllabus for a 4-year degree in software engineering. [0] It's broadly similar to what we'd expect of a computer science degree. Topics include:
• Computer architecture
• Compilers
• Computer graphics
• Cryptography
• Deep learning
• Software verification
The average self-taught web developer has a working knowledge of none of these fields.
First I never said anything about web development...
That said then there is a clear disconnect between employment, and degree's
Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
That is the the point of my comment, often time people feel required to spend 10's or 100's of thousands on a degree for the sole purpose of attaining employment as a software developer.
If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
You said software development. Self-taught software developers are very often web developers.
> Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
Suppose you're right that employers place undue emphasis on academic achievement compared to on-the-job software development experience. This would not be addressed by handing out honorary degrees wholesale.
> If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
If it lets them start a software development career, it's not a waste.
Also, again, a degree in computer science is not a vocational course like a coding boot camp, it's an academic qualification. The goal is to impart a basic knowledge of a scientific field.
In my experience software engineering degrees tend to be essentially computer science degrees but with a slightly different emphasis. Of course, both are more applicable to software development than, say, a degree in biology.
Some degrees have limited non-academic application, such as philosophy, and some have non-academic application but with only very few jobs available, such as forensics. If I recall correctly, computer science and software engineering are among the top degree topics measured by average financial payoff.
Well there needs to be some kind of sea change, and my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements.
most people are entering university for vocational reasons, not academic achievement. The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
The push by universities to extract as much (often tax payer funded) money pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education seems to if not the core, pretty close to the core of the problem we face with on this topic.
The idea of experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
> my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements
Again, it's no solution. Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees.
> The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
Plenty of people study philosophy, despite having little direct applicability outside academia. That's not to say they're wasting their time and money.
> pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education
Do you mean to say there's a shortage of institutions that offer vocational training?
I'm confident you're right that they get less government funding.
> experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Vocational degrees exist, awarded by institutions which are not universities, but if I understand correctly they generally have little traction. This might not be true of every country though.
>>Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees
I disgree, it is purely a checkbox for many organizations, a way to filter out people. Provided the degree is accredited it would resolve the primary issue I have with the current state of employment requirements
>>Plenty of people study philosophy
that was not my comment or statement, I am sure there are "plenty" but for more than 20 years now High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities themselves has been telling students that path to vocational success is via the university system, and a 4 year degree program. Are you attempting to deny this reality?
>>Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Then High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities need to stop selling the idea of vocational achievement via 4 year Academic study.
At some point perception becomes reality, and decades of selling Academia as de facto vocational study to the masses, has cut out and reduced actual vocational programs almost entirely from the educational landscape to the point that most K-12 schools do not even have vocational programs, it is General Education or College Prep, those are the 2 tracks, with Extreme pressure on students to go for the College Prep track.
Certainly not in any standardized way. The variance between what someone does in one software development job vs another is just too high to be a good signal of any particular knowledge.
The "univers" in university means something. A university degree is about more than just the knowledge gained in one's major. It's a signal that the person has had exposure to the breadth of human knowledge. It might be a millimeter deep but the breadth gives them context in which to operate in society. None of that means this knowledge can't be acquired individually, just like having a particular major doesn't preclude someone who didn't attend university from gaining that knowledge on their own. It's simply a signal that this particular bundle of knowledge has been seen and at least understood at a surface level. In theory that should allow those evaluating the candidate to skip over testing competency and knowledge in these areas outside of the job's focus but still relevant to functioning in society.
Many schools will give credit for life experience, some through testing, some through interviews and reviews of one's professional work. IIRC, Western Governors University is one of the leaders in this practice.
> A university degree is about more than just the knowledge gained in one's major. It's a signal that the person has had exposure to the breadth of human knowledge. It might be a millimeter deep but the breadth gives them context in which to operate in society.
This may be true of the USA, but not universally. Here in the UK we don't have the concept of a major at all. An undergraduate student typically only takes modules pertaining to their chosen field, and perhaps a small number of more general modules on, say, study skills and writing.
> if you have say 6 years experience in a field of Computer Science
Such as what? An industry research position in computer science? Sounds very unlikely, but I suppose possible.
Middle-of-the-road software development experience is not the equivalent of a degree in computer science, or software engineering, or anything else.
(Interestingly, the University of Cambridge may award you a PhD if you're a Cambridge graduate who has made a PhD-level research contribution to an academic field. [0])
If you have work experience, put it on your resumé.
> let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test
What test? The full suite of coursework assignments and written exams for every module in a 3 or 4 year taught degree course?
> Do the same for masters, make it 8-10 years experience
10 years experience of what? For a degree in what?
You could have a long and successful web-dev career with almost zero knowledge of computer science.
> Even with money, let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test, prove my experience, and bam I now have a degree...
The system you're proposing sounds ripe for abuse; wouldn't universities get the most money by lowering standards? You can get an honorary or extra muros doctorate if you make a significant contribution to the field, but explicitly tying it to a fee doesn't seem like a great plan.
>>wouldn't universities get the most money by lowering standards?
You making the case that they have not done exactly that? That they do not attempt to get as many students through, and put pressure on professors to pass students for the purpose of getting as much tuition as possible?
Given the statics, and the looming student loan debt crisis I am pretty sure the evidence is to the contrary of your statement
Yes, it's currently difficult to sell a degree because you have to fake the whole shebang. There are some institutions that do exactly what you propose, but market forces leave only the ones with zero standards standing. They are called "diploma mills," they have existed for a very long time, and accreditation bodies stripped them of official status long ago.
There are plenty of places that let you test out of individual classes, but testing out of a full degree for a five figure fee is one gigantic perverse incentive.
Instead they have just added attendance requirements to the old school "diploma mill" situation, so now instead of just paying a fee, you have to pay a fee and waste a bunch of time to still not learn anything, and dont have to prove you learned anything
When I worked in infosec, most of my coworkers collected certs like eggs on Easter. Perhaps that's because it is still a very new field and it's only been in the past few years that more than a handful of schools have started offering relevant degrees. It's worth noting that my local high school and middle school now both offer information security classes, with the high school going as far as making it a separate academy within the school. Maybe certs will diminish in importance as the traditional education system adapts to offer more training in this area.
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).
It's not. Fit trumps quantity and quality any time.
I'm not OP, but I also have quite a bouquet of certifications. Why? Mostly because I love to learn and I also love to work towards goals. Also most certifications[1] are not that hard once you've figured out how to deal with scenario based multiple choice questions. It's a low effort way to focus my learning.
When it comes to hiring - and as someone who sat at both sides of the table - any certificate outside of what is expected in your industry does more harm than good.
> When it comes to hiring [...] any certificate outside of what is expected in your industry does more harm than good
Huh - this is surprising to hear. I would have thought that random extra certifications would act as indicators that a) you're a naturally focused and capable person (rather than just cosplaying one for salary), and b) you have interests outside of work (so will be a more well-rounded and pleasant person to work around). Can you elaborate on the ways in which you find non-standard certifications to be harmful?
I cannot reply for that person, but to me a certification would mean that you know a given subject, so I could ask more in-depth questions and expect better answers than the average candidate. Sometimes this is the case (and if so then getting a certification is not harmful in my opinion), but often it just gives you a very high level, very passing understanding of the subject so candidates just end up being judged against a higher bar without the tools/skills to match it.
I agree with you and would be excited to see a resume like what some of these cert masters could present.
However, I understand that some people shut down when they see a lot of extraneous detail. Think of it like reading a news article. You'd get confused if you started reading "Ferry sinks, injuring 11" and halfway through it starts talking about cricket, then a fire, then congress, then...
Right, that's fair. If I saw a resumé that included, say, references to SCUBA diving and motorcycling, I'd see them as indications of a Real Actual Human behind the professional façade, with whom I could probably have an interesting conversation. If the list of extracurricular interests sprawled over half a page, I'd get fatigued.
Being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive, that should be obvious. Having lots of unrelated certificates signals the latter. If it's the case for you, only mention what's relevant for the job or what actually reflects your personality (so if you're a serious scuba diver, by all means mention it under 'Interests'; but if you got a certificate on vacation 5 years ago and have haven't done any diving since, just don't).
>Being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive, that should be obvious.
If I had a hiring manager say this to me in an interview, I would not want to work for that manager. Random interests outside of work have zero influence on a candidate's ability to perform a job well. I enjoy working with coworkers who live fulfilling lives outside their 9-5, but outside of illegal activity, I wouldn't let their outside life influence my decision to hire them. If they find value in playing video games every hour outside work, that's fine. If they want to obtain random certs and skills, that's fine too.
I'm also in the process of getting my private pilot's license. Do you expect me to start flying in the middle of the day instead of working? If anything, being able to focus on a target goal that can take 6+ months to accomplish indicate focus and drive more than a lack of it.
The SCUBA diving example mentioned is an interesting life experience for someone to have, and doesn't deserve someone gatekeeping whether or not the individual is "serious" about their hobbies or experiences.
Well, I was playing devil's advocate to some extent there, I am 'guilty' of lots of seemingly random interests too (in several cases with certifications that took years to acquire), and even multiple academic degrees in 'hard' subjects. It's just that I don't necessarily put all of it on my CV (the hobbies, the degrees I feel I have to list, even though less would probably be more there too), especially if it's been a while since I last practiced them.
The scuba example was on purpose, because if you list credentials for things that you aren't actually proficient in, it shows something else about your attitude towards being honest about your skills (which can be crucial in technical roles). At one of my old employers, my later boss warned me that the last interview round with a very senior guy was mostly a formality, as long as I'd been honest on my CV. He liked to grill people a bit about their inner workings and their journey, and he'd famously once rejected the team's top choice because the guy had claimed to be fluent in a particular (natural) language on his CV, and then turned out to be anything but (that language was of course in no way needed for the job). In situations like that you feel vindicated if you've had a think about whether old credentials that you acquired a long time ago realistically still belong on your CV. Skills that you don't practice can be lost, regardless of what some paper says.
But if you are serious about them, then by all means put your hobbies on your CV. It can lead to great conversations sometimes, and it's also a form of honesty. And yeah, sometimes people will read things into it that are beyond your control (if you're a pilot, those will mostly be positive, if you do MMA, they may be more mixed, but I'd argue you should mention it regardless).
I'm glad this conversation played out productively and respectfully - another reason why I enjoy this site.
For what it's worth, I initially misunderstood your statement that "being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive" in the same way that the other commenter did, as implying that someone with a life outside of work cannot be a good employee. I see now that you were stressing the "_lots of random_" part of the statement (that is - if you have 20 different "passions" in a month, you cannot truly be said to be focused on any of them) - in this case, I agree!
> a very senior guy [...] famously once rejected the team's top choice because the guy had claimed to be fluent in a particular (natural) language on his CV, and then turned out to be anything but...
Wow - an extreme, but defensible, position! Integrity is important.
Wow, that is quite a collection. What kind of work do you do?
One thing I am wondering is how much these certificates cost. For example, quickly glancing through your OSCP link says the minimum is $1499, it is not cheap!
Thank you for mentioning NAP, I didn't know this was a thing (I suspect most people don't)
Fun certs - I did this last year https://www.pearsonpte.com/ and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unlike many tech certs, to pass language exams one has to really know the language. This exam is 100% computerized, so we don't have to deal with biases of examiners, which is what happened to me with IELTS.
I've thought about it, but teaching is such a long commitment. I almost signed up to be a teacher at my local community college in CS, but I just don't want to commit my schedule to something like that.
https://www.nmra.org/education/achievement-program offers 11 levels of certification for people like us who have a profound need for external validation. My certification list overlaps with yours about 60% but Certified Parliamentarian is next level, my hat is off to you
Aviation - private pilot airplane single engine land; instrument rating airplane; complex, high performance, and tailwheel endorsements; part 107 remote pilot; DC flight restricted zone; instrument ground instructor (this might be a good one for you, just take the FOI and then AGI or IGI written tests and visit your local FSDO to get the cert issued). Considering getting my commercial, multiengine, and CFI certs
Maritime - master 100 tons inland / mate near coastal plus a bunch of random crap the USCG throws on there if you get those (need to renew these this year); American Sailing Association 101, 103, 104
Scuba - just the useful ones here cause I have a whole wallet memorializing money flushed down the drain: rescue diver, ice diver, solo diver, drysuit, open circuit advanced nitrox/deco procedures, 45m helitrox closed circuit rebreather w/deco, certified Poseidon regulator+rebreather repair technician (though the big thing I learned was just to send my gear to pros working with this stuff every day). Currently my big focus is training up to take the 60m normoxic trimix rebreather course in the fall
Radio - general class ham (failed the extra by like two questions, in my defense I had only studied for general), restricted radiotelephone operator (literally just a cash payment, needed this once for a flight I had planned to Canada)
Other - authorized to perform marriages, motorcycle endorsement on driver's license, certified analytics professional (took the test on a whim and passed, it's since lapsed but I might see if they'll let me re-up it), notary public (lapsed), have thought about doing PMP since I'd be good to go on experience reqs
I started an EMT course a while back but I dropped out after realizing I was never going to be able to remain at all proficient. I'm like this with my aviation instrument rating as well, I keep legally current with it but I am pretty cautious about relying on proficiency since I'm not flying multiple times a week
Probably some others I'm forgetting but these are the big ones! I remain really impressed with your list, you've come up with some good ones...will have to think on whether I need to pursue some of them myself :-)
Also, just to clarify my verbiage on the ground instructor bit, not at all saying that you couldn't do all the other aviation ones too (and you should, they were all a blast to get) and more...just that ground instructor is one you should specifically look into because it is relatively little-known, is straightforward and cheap to get for people like us who clearly find tests easy, and offers a fair amount of practical benefits (advanced ground instructor can teach ground for ANY part 61 rating, also you don't have to retake FOI if you ever go for CFI...flight schools in my area will absolutely hire someone on a ground instructor cert alone). No intent meant to cast any aspersions or to minimize any accomplishments!
Good call on PPL. It's a lot of fun and opens up alot more cert opportunities (mountain rating, float planes, IFR, multi engine, CPL, etc) so you will be in heaven.
I can see this being the case just for the fact that certs are usually paired a structured curriculum for learning a new skill. This takes a huge mental burden off and decreases time wasted in deadend exploration.
My work requires me to take certifications and keep them renewed.
What I appreciate from certifications is actually taking a well-made test. (Instead of a carelessly made normal school or university test.)
For well made certification tests, the question writing process is interesting and a whole specialization by itself. Each question is beta tested. And metrics are collected as to how a question is correlated or predicts that someone will pass the test. Tests should avoid mixing question pairs that hint the answer of another question. And writing multiple choice answers in which the answer is not possible to guess. Also writing questions so they are well written and easily understood. So that the question measures knowing or not knowing the topic, rather than affecting the test taker due to unclear wording.
Honestly, I enjoy learning but I don't like having nothing to show for it.
Unstructured learning like going to a library and picking out a random book drives me nuts, I quickly feel overwhelmed.
A cert at least gives me some goal to shoot for -- where I can prove some basic competency in the subject by virtue of having the cert.
I need something to "show" for my efforts. Project-based learning can work for me as well, but it takes extra work to figure it out for a given skill. I'm learning photography and I have a goal of doing 1 portrait session per week for a few months. That kind of thing helps me feel like I'm making measurable progress.
As far as I know, CPA in most states requires 150 hours of college credit, of which many must be in accounting. My CPA friends largely joined the big four firm on the strength of their CPA, spent a little time in audit, then promptly switched to consulting. What you get from that certification is the ability to sign corporate audits, own an accounting firm, and the right to prepare and defend tax returns. Unless you are preparing for a second career in accounting, CPA seems like a lot to bite off, but good on you! I don’t envy you all the cost accounting headaches and audit rules.
CFA requires that you have work experience making investment decisions and can get references to that effect, but in all it would be easier than CPA.
Can confirm, plus there’s a 1 year requirement to work in the industry to get the certification after passing the test, and a continuing education requirement to maintain it. I studied accounting and passed the test, but immediately started working in tech so technically I’m not certified. The test was a beast and took about a year and a half to pass all 4 parts, and if you don’t pass all 4 within a window of time the old ones expire.
The National Association of Rocketry which supports model rocketry clubs and such has a tiered certification for High Power Rocketry (HPR) which is where you get into building very large models and packing your own motors. These certifications involve the usual written exam, but you also have to design a rocket in your target class- and get the design reviewed, and then build it- and get the build reviewed for safety, and then fly it. Since it's more than a book -> test certification and involves an actual hands-on engineering project, I'd consider it a fun one.
Commercial driver and pilot could maybe be better described as licenses. Those have recurring medical requirements, and CDL holders can be picked for drug testing at any time. Strangely most of the flight docs are ignoring the FAA disqualification item of taking a medicine within two years of it being released. At this point, most commercial and military pilots should be grounded for taking the new virus shots. The two year requirement is reasonable to protect flying public from things not found in rushed medical studies, like heart attacks.
MSHA part 48, or others, is useful to be allowed to be unattended on a mine site. The scope and size of some mines, and the operations and equipment, are something to experience. Of course, the mine owner must want you to be there.
I hadn't seen that. That explicitly grounds the pilot for 48 hours after procedure. It does not appear to change the requirements for the yearly flight Dr. recertification regarding new medicines.
Can personally recommend a Part 107 cert for flying drones. Particularly since you mention your pilots license. It's nice to fly and not worry someone is going to say you're posting might be commercial - because that's ok with the cert. The FAA card is actually pretty nice, and whipping it out can stop some (though not all) of the folks who want to complain about any drone they see.
A co-worker once told me he had two of three certifications for fireworks. I forget what they were exactly, maybe one for manufacturing, one for transportation, and one for operations.
I believe these can vary by state in the US but there’s some ATF requirements as well. ‘Operations’ are called ’exhibitor license’ and there are two of them. I’m getting my assistant exhibitors license now, which is the entry point. Once I have demonstrated sufficient proficiency, a lead exhibitor will sign off on my application to become a lead exhibitor. This will likely take a few years.
There is a separate certification for anything involving open flames. Including things like Dave Chapelle using a lighter to light a cigarette.
Storage, transport and manufacturing certs are independent of these and and all involve the ATF in the US (starting with Form 54). It’s actually pretty complex trying to figure out alone, I had to get plugged into the local pyrotechnics guild for them to lay it out for me.
My number one tip for anybody interested in this would be to contact the Pyrotechnics Guild International any locate in-state guilds that can take you under their wing and help you along the way. There are two in my state and they’ve both been remarkably receptive and helpful.
Fyi, you are then a "professional driver" even in a normal car driving to the grocery. If you get a ticket, many states will instantly double the fine because as a pro, "you know better". Plus there's the medical aspect and other bullshit.
Unless you're going to actually use it, dont get it. Learn to drive an 18 speed with air brakes etc, sure. Just dont get the actual cdl.
to add to this, if you dont actually use your SCUBA or first responder or pilot skills on a regular basis, those certs are worthless at best, and dangerous at worst.
This is true, but I do try to keep the training up. I'm certainly not doing it every weekend, but I train a minimum of 3-4 times per year for W-EMR. Scuba, honestly so long as you do it once or twice a year you're fine, it's really not terribly hard.
i have an open water cert and dive 4-6 times a year. it's fine for just myself, but if you have a higher level cert like rescue, then you may be asked or expected to assist others in emergencies.
thankfully, most places are very careful not to take cert cards from unfamiliar faces at face value.
I thank that is a crappy attitude. If I am on a dive and there is a lost diver or some other incident in the area, I want to have the skills to be able to help.
I would note that "asked or expected" is different than "required", so there really is no downside to doing a rescue diver class or a divemaster program. In fact, I highly recommend it and it was a lot of fun.
There is a negative, though, and I have experienced it diving. Diving is often a razor thin or no margin business, and selling cert courses can be easy money. Few scuba schools will fail students who are not up to snuff, because they might have to issue a refund or endure bad reviews. Some of these certifications will give incompetent divers a false sense of ability, and in an emergency situation, rather than staying out of the way, they create another problem.
The solution to that would seem to be recommending that people choose dive schools that take their Job seriously and don't pass people who haven't mastered the skills. Recommending against getting training is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If you have no experience, just a cert, then you should stay out of the way with those with experience and help as requested.
However, with many dive accidents, you don't have the luxury of waiting for a more experienced diver and having that training will give you a better chance of saving your buddy's life.
The people should definitely get the training, but probably without the cert. The cert for certain things, like rescue in particular, should probably be validated by an external agency that isn't the school
On the flip side, if you have never tried to rescue an unconscious diver and have to do it for the first time without any training, you are not going to have the luxury of making all the mistakes you will make in the rescue class.
While a cert is no substitute for experience, if you are going to gain that experience, it is much better to have a cert than not.
I don't have wilderness first responder but I do have wilderness first aid and keep it more or less up to date.
I wouldn't try something complicated like a traction splint unless there was really no other option and possibly even then--not sure they even teach it in WFA any longer. But, for the most part having a weekend class to refresh a lot of first aid isn't a bad thing even if you don't practice it all the time, may have forgotten some of the details, and maybe your splints aren't the world's greatest. But so long as you're cognizant of your limitations having some even somewhat stale first aid training is probably better than having none.
[Of course, if you act like your 10 year old WFR or W-EMT cert means you're qualified to charge in and take over because you're "certified" that of course can be an issue.]
Most of the wilderness FA certs have a 3-year expiration. IDK if this was always true, but it's definitely a thing now.
If you're using your certification to qualify for a professional or volunteer position, then they usually defer to the expiry period set by the issuer of the certification.
In my experience, basically nobody gets any first aid practice, in between re-certifications. And these are perishable skills, so I wouldn't trust in the ability of most people to execute anything complex after even a year has gone by... But that has to be balanced against the cost of re-training. WMR is usually an 80-hour course (IIRC) and re-certs more like 30-40? That's an absurd time investment for most working people.
Yeah... I'm trying to work out how to fit it in, later this year. I have a 40hr cert that's expiring, later this year, but the stuff I'm really interested in doing requires the full 80hr WFR.
I hope that more of these courses can evolve into a hybrid online model, where you can use distance learning to spread some of the coursework out, ahead of time.
For recreational scuba this is misleading. The cert is proof of going through training at some point, which differentiates you from someone who has never been breathing under water, cleared your mask and reg, and knows basic buoyancy control. These skills are not intuitive so the main thing is exposure, which the cert proves to a large extent.
Dive shops with more advanced dives ask for total and recent experience as well, and sometimes require you to do a refresher or dive with them once before they take you on the advanced dives (deep, night, high current, overhead obstacles etc). The OW cert is a big contributing factor, but it's not the only data point.
That said most other recreational certs are useless and just a money grab, even including advanced, imo. Shops generally rate OW+30 recent dives higher than OW+AOW, and rightly so.
If you had a four year degree you used to be able to sit for the Realestate Broker's Exam. That ended a few years ago with yearly lobbing by brokers.
Now the easiest white collar profession (8 courses that are easy) require we work for a broker for years. Usually a broker who got their licence without becoming a salesperson first.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill because he wanted competition.
If you don't intend working in finance, but rather want that knowledge for your own investing, it's possible to just follow the CFA books on your own. AFAIK, level 3 is useless for the non-professional that won't be managing a portfolio worth millions.
I had started learning level 1, but realized I'm kind of wasting my time allocating much brain juice to it before growing my income/net worth.
That's true, but I'd still like to give it a shot. It's a massive commitment as you know, so we'll see if it pans out. If I do it I'll probably be committing to 2 hours per day for the next three years.
I got irritated with the size of a quote for my heat pump repair, so I got an HVAC certification and did the repair myself. A little time, $300 worth of equipment from Amazon and it is still running great after several years. I needed the HVAC certification to buy the refrigerant. Saved several thousand dollars.
You can do it without the cert, it's just the recyclers usually won't take your reclaimed refrigerant.
I'd feel worse about it, but generally the HVAC companies in an area are extremely predatory and only quote out new systems when a simple repair would suffice.
I got the cert 10 years ago (EPA 608, not automotive EPA 609). 60 minutes of studying two different study packets I found online. Found a local test-giver, and called them up to schedule the test.
I watched a lot of videos made by technicians and did a lot of reading. It doesn't take too long to study enough to get the basic certification, but that is not the whole story. I have done lots of electronic prototyping and test system creation, copper plumbing, etc., so I felt comfortable with tools and electro-mechanical systems. If your entire career has been behind a keyboard, you have a lot more than an hour of studying ahead of you.
I was going to add the EPA 608 as well. Not only does it allow you to buy/use refrigerant, but it usually counts for warranties for HVAC equipment. Mini-splits and things like that usually want a 'certified technician' to do the install (or at least the refrigerant work), and your EPA number qualifies you. My state doesn't even have the concept of an HVAC licensed contractor, only the EPA cert applies.
Note: the EPA 608 has multiple levels. For mini splits under about 2 tons, you might be able to get by with just your EPA 608 core and Type 1 (small appliances, <5lb of refrigerant) Type 1 + core can be done online, open-book, and costs $25. Nobody should install a mini split without it!
Sadly I simply am not capable of learning languages.
I've tried, really hard. I did 4 years of french, 2 years of spanish, 4 semesters of Arabic, 2 semesters of german, 1 Berlitz tutor session for 3 months in Russian and 3 months of tutoring in Farsi. Most of my grades were AWFUL and I barely qualified for anything. I really tried, but I just don't have the medium/long term memory for language. It also doesn't help that I live in the US.
I'm in a similar boat. I absorbed German really easily, but when I moved on to picking up another language, my brain constantly switched between the two, even during an intensive study course that was basically several hours a day exclusively in one. I tried beating my brain into the right shape, but no amount of effort made me anything but embarrassing in anything other than my native tongue.
FWIW, I felt the same way. Studied French for years, through middle school, high school and college, and never gained any real degree of fluency. Then I moved to Japan and took language classes for 4 hours a day for a year. It worked.
There were people who still raced around me -- I'm not gifted at languages, by any means -- but for the first time in my life I'm actually modestly capable in a second language. I continue to study now, and it's still accumulating, however slowly.
After this experience, I believe that most people can learn a second language, but they don't because the barriers to entry are insanely high. If you really want to learn a language to a conversational level of fluency, you either have to be truly gifted (5% of people) have to want it so much that you'll immerse yourself in it 24/7 (the rest of us).
> I did 4 years of french, 2 years of spanish, 4 semesters of Arabic, 2 semesters of german, 1 Berlitz tutor session for 3 months in Russian and 3 months of tutoring in Farsi
It took me about 3 months of daily immersion in Japanese life (plus the 4 hours of daily school, of course) just to get to a point where my ears could hear words reliably. If you translate this to coursework...it's got to be 1+ years of college-level study.
I used to be a pentester, so it was pretty applicable...
Pentesting really requires "full stack" systems knowledge, from networking, to OS, to API analysis, malware analysis, binary reverse engineering. OSCP is an applied cert, so it really forces you to be able to leverage knowledge in a practical way.
However my favorite benefit of offsec is really being able to see things from an attacker's perspective. This has been super valuable in many situations and I've found I'm many times the only person in the room with an awareness of an adversarial mindset.
It does make risk analysis more interesting. It surprises me how people will think only of the positive or accidental case, leaving adversarial ones off the table (and risk mitigation)
I'm thinking about getting into pen-testing and eventually getting an OSCP. Would you mind offering a few words about why you left the pen-testing field? Also, do you have a CEH or do you recommend bypassing it in favor of the OSCP?
CEH is literally useless, I used to have it because I did DoD. That’s the only reason to do it.
I got out of pentesting because no one follows your recommendations. I could give 40 recommendations after doing a pentest, come back a year later and none of them would have been implemented.
People don’t care about security—-it’s why everything is broken and it’s getting worse.
I moved into Distributed Ledger Technology because I think it could help solve security issues people face daily in a way where they cannot mess up. That’s the idea anyway.
I warmly recommend the UML certifications. They test whether you know UML syntax rules by heart, not whether you can model software decently. It's absolutely useless, great fun!
I perked up recently when I learned that one can now become an accredited investor via a Series 7, Series 65, or Series 82 license, bypassing the income/net worth requirements[0].
Unfortunately, the Series 65 is the only one that you can do without working for a financial company. Moreover, you need to not only pass the exam but we registered with the state and pay an anual fee. I believe.
I'd imagine financial certs would be the most useful (CFA in particular).
I’m similar to you - have a ton of certifications and I’m an insanely good test taker.
Several years ago I signed up for the Level 1 CFA exam in late August to take it on December 5th. So I had a little over 3 months to study for it.
My first inclination that I made a horrible mistake was when one of my portfolio manager coworkers said to me, “I got my bachelor’s in finance, got my master’s in economics, studied for that test for 6 months, failed it and gave up. It’s just too hard.”
350 hours of studying later, I was the only one from my company that passed Level 1 that year. 33% pass rate.
I’m in software engineering. It has provided no discernible career benefit even though I work at an investment bank.
I’m happy that I proved I could do it but the CFA program is not a certification to collect on a whim. It’s literally a 3+ year commitment and you will come close to killing yourself studying.
Pilot license is great because it gets you into thinking about how we make data driven decisions under pressure. And actual flying solo after you get your license helps because you do a kind of self analysis every time you screw up - even the minor stuff. There’s a lot of study and focus on human factors which is the primary cause of accidents. So it’s great to build self awareness.
Congrats on your OSCP - I run a cybersec biz and some of my colleagues have that cert and I’m always impressed when I hear someone has it. I’m a CISSP but I think an OSCP is more practical.
Ham radio extra which is elec eng focused rather than just rules of the airwaves is a good one. (I’m callsign WT1J)
In our biz I really appreciate it when folks have a Network+ or Security+ or a Linux admin cert because you can’t argue with the value of knowing networking fundamentals and the Linux command line. In fact knowledge of Linux command line is my leading indicator of competency for a QA role we have open. I look at answers to this question first every time. Next thing I look at is SQL knowledge- because I think both of these are strong predictors of deeper technical capability.
Certs are underrated IMHO because most of them provide practical knowledge that is immediately applicable in a work setting or other pastime. They give you real skills.
Lastly AWS certs are also super practical and very valuable IMO.
Au contraire, AWS has a stable of foundational services that have not moved in a long time and a worthwhile knowing, no matter what service-du-jour gets rolled out. Not a moving target at all.
At least you don't have to pay for renewals of Microsoft role-based certifications. "You can renew your Microsoft Certifications by simply passing a free, unproctored, online renewal assessment on Microsoft Learn, instead of retaking exams. The assessments measure the skills you need to remain up to date in your job role. They’re shorter than the original exams because they focus only on the latest technology changes." [1]
I genuinely did not know this, thanks for the info. Unproctored? Wow, either the exam material must be insanely difficult or they just don't care. Interesting.
AWS is also proprietary which I failed to point out - but it’s so widely used and has such great market share that it’s not a bad life skill at this point.
CFA and CPA are not really comparable (even though they're both 'finance'). A CPA charter is closer to a JD degree / bar exam in that it is the necessary entry requirement for a legally defined profession (with quite steady demand). A CFA is more like a Master's in that it can help you get an interview for financial analyst jobs, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to work as one. But it can help a great deal, that's true, especially when you're transitioning.
Also, those are some pretty serious things to do as a hobby.
In some states, carrying lockpicks is presumptive guilt unless you're a locksmith, but I never figured out whether that's a certification or just a business license or what.
Also very interested in this one. I do some casual locksport but would love to be able to legitimately carry tools and help out friends and colleagues.
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.
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.
They're a nice bonus, I used to dismiss them until my friends and I all worked at jobs where they would pay for the certification if you passed plus a bonus of $500. We would come together on Fridays and whoever had passed the most certs that week would get free drinks. I held sooooo many certifications in the 2000s and I got job requests every day. I went to more high level certs (like VCP and AWS architect) in the last decade and the recruiters haven't slowed down. And I'm pretty sure having a CISSP will walk you into any security position today. Don't discount certs as they are a cheap form of networking.
It's like going to college. You don't need it, but its a nice bump above others in the resume stack at some orgs
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.
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.
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.
My experience is once you've got your foot in the door at a company nobody is interested in your university background. Perhaps it's different if you have a higher qualification like a doctorate.
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.
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
Yeah. This. I don’t hire people based off AWS certs, but I encourage my people to get them for the learning. I’d say the general AWS knowledge I’ve gotten from even the most basic AWS certs have legitimately helped my career because now I know how the services fit together.
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.
Same with the resumes. It's ok to have a section and list a few certificates, but quite regularly I see people put logos of some certificate programs on top of the resume, next to their name. It doesn't make a good impression.
I worked with someone who was a certified yoga instructor and uninronically had it on her business cards and email signature.
She was a tech consultant. After I looked up “CYT” I think that made me not think positively of her. I mean it’s good that someone is proud of their accomplishment, but such a weird thing to announce to the world.
I know nothing about yoga instruction, but I have a qualification that might be parallel and acquiring it certainly required a lot of dedication and practice. I guess I'd say ask why it's on the resume instead of assuming; you might hear something interesting.
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.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 346 ms ] threadThis 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.
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.
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.e. A SWE with a SWE cert says nothing, because you'd expect them to know it. But a SWE with a DevOps cert says something, versus just claiming knowledge.
My impression is that the world actually believes "You can be certified in something without knowing it."
So at best, from an applicant / employee's perspective, certificates are a slightly stronger suggestion that you might know the thing you claim to know.
Which is a useless reinforcement for something for which you already have demonstrated experience via work history.
But might be useful for something for which you do not.
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.
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.
Even with money, let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test, prove my experience, and bam I now have a degree...
Do the same for masters, make it 8-10 years experience
Work experience can convey that same level of knowledge, thus the purpose of an experience based degree would be to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
Having interviewed several recent graduates the level of knowledge shown is not on par with what I would expect, it seems from my personal experience that college is more of an attendance standard than educational standards, what years ago we would call diploma mills, pay the fee, attend the class, get the degree, seems to the wider state of the "higher" education system today
There's merit to the idea of awarding a college degree if you can pass all the assessment, without necessarily taking the classes, but that's a different thing again. Ideally, college should be about introducing theory and reasoning which gives a solid understanding of the field in a highly focused manner that an employer almost certainly won't provide. I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
>At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
I 100% agree with this, I know a few "experienced" people that are not really experienced, which is why I did not simply state that one should automatically attain this experienced based degree simply on chronological paid experience but rather experience + something else
Someone bought up WGU's method of crediting some life experience, that is a good start but I don't think WGU's program goes far enough but it is on the right path, and I which more institutions would start doing more things like them.
>I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Again I agree here, some fields may lend themselves to an actual degree program, Doctors for example. I think my ideal society would be less than 30% of jobs requiring a post secondary education degree, the vast majority of employment should be encompassed by regular primary / secondary (k-12) education, and maybe direct vocational training (paid by employers)
Instead we pushed the narrative the most jobs need post secondary education or to be successful one must get a degree.
Allowing for experienced based degree's , IMO would start to open other avenues and maybe start a shift in human resources to start looking at other things that just a check mark for "has degree" true or false
Of course the extreme cost of education, and the debt crisis is also doing that slowly
What kind of work experience would give you the breadth and depth of knowledge of someone with a degree in maths or physics?
Having a career in software development does not demonstrate a degree-level knowledge of any academic field.
Look at this syllabus for a 4-year degree in software engineering. [0] It's broadly similar to what we'd expect of a computer science degree. Topics include:
• Computer architecture
• Compilers
• Computer graphics
• Cryptography
• Deep learning
• Software verification
The average self-taught web developer has a working knowledge of none of these fields.
[0] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/computing-depart...
That said then there is a clear disconnect between employment, and degree's
Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
That is the the point of my comment, often time people feel required to spend 10's or 100's of thousands on a degree for the sole purpose of attaining employment as a software developer.
If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
You said software development. Self-taught software developers are very often web developers.
> Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
Suppose you're right that employers place undue emphasis on academic achievement compared to on-the-job software development experience. This would not be addressed by handing out honorary degrees wholesale.
> If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
If it lets them start a software development career, it's not a waste.
Also, again, a degree in computer science is not a vocational course like a coding boot camp, it's an academic qualification. The goal is to impart a basic knowledge of a scientific field.
In my experience software engineering degrees tend to be essentially computer science degrees but with a slightly different emphasis. Of course, both are more applicable to software development than, say, a degree in biology.
Some degrees have limited non-academic application, such as philosophy, and some have non-academic application but with only very few jobs available, such as forensics. If I recall correctly, computer science and software engineering are among the top degree topics measured by average financial payoff.
most people are entering university for vocational reasons, not academic achievement. The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
The push by universities to extract as much (often tax payer funded) money pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education seems to if not the core, pretty close to the core of the problem we face with on this topic.
The idea of experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
Again, it's no solution. Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees.
> The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
Plenty of people study philosophy, despite having little direct applicability outside academia. That's not to say they're wasting their time and money.
> pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education
Do you mean to say there's a shortage of institutions that offer vocational training?
I'm confident you're right that they get less government funding.
> experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Vocational degrees exist, awarded by institutions which are not universities, but if I understand correctly they generally have little traction. This might not be true of every country though.
I disgree, it is purely a checkbox for many organizations, a way to filter out people. Provided the degree is accredited it would resolve the primary issue I have with the current state of employment requirements
>>Plenty of people study philosophy
that was not my comment or statement, I am sure there are "plenty" but for more than 20 years now High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities themselves has been telling students that path to vocational success is via the university system, and a 4 year degree program. Are you attempting to deny this reality?
>>Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Then High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities need to stop selling the idea of vocational achievement via 4 year Academic study.
At some point perception becomes reality, and decades of selling Academia as de facto vocational study to the masses, has cut out and reduced actual vocational programs almost entirely from the educational landscape to the point that most K-12 schools do not even have vocational programs, it is General Education or College Prep, those are the 2 tracks, with Extreme pressure on students to go for the College Prep track.
Many schools will give credit for life experience, some through testing, some through interviews and reviews of one's professional work. IIRC, Western Governors University is one of the leaders in this practice.
This may be true of the USA, but not universally. Here in the UK we don't have the concept of a major at all. An undergraduate student typically only takes modules pertaining to their chosen field, and perhaps a small number of more general modules on, say, study skills and writing.
Such as what? An industry research position in computer science? Sounds very unlikely, but I suppose possible.
Middle-of-the-road software development experience is not the equivalent of a degree in computer science, or software engineering, or anything else.
(Interestingly, the University of Cambridge may award you a PhD if you're a Cambridge graduate who has made a PhD-level research contribution to an academic field. [0])
If you have work experience, put it on your resumé.
> let me pay $10-20,000 , take a test
What test? The full suite of coursework assignments and written exams for every module in a 3 or 4 year taught degree course?
> Do the same for masters, make it 8-10 years experience
10 years experience of what? For a degree in what?
You could have a long and successful web-dev career with almost zero knowledge of computer science.
[0] https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/your-course/examinat...
The system you're proposing sounds ripe for abuse; wouldn't universities get the most money by lowering standards? You can get an honorary or extra muros doctorate if you make a significant contribution to the field, but explicitly tying it to a fee doesn't seem like a great plan.
You making the case that they have not done exactly that? That they do not attempt to get as many students through, and put pressure on professors to pass students for the purpose of getting as much tuition as possible?
Given the statics, and the looming student loan debt crisis I am pretty sure the evidence is to the contrary of your statement
There are plenty of places that let you test out of individual classes, but testing out of a full degree for a five figure fee is one gigantic perverse incentive.
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.
I'm not OP, but I also have quite a bouquet of certifications. Why? Mostly because I love to learn and I also love to work towards goals. Also most certifications[1] are not that hard once you've figured out how to deal with scenario based multiple choice questions. It's a low effort way to focus my learning.
When it comes to hiring - and as someone who sat at both sides of the table - any certificate outside of what is expected in your industry does more harm than good.
[1] OSCP is the exception to the rule
Huh - this is surprising to hear. I would have thought that random extra certifications would act as indicators that a) you're a naturally focused and capable person (rather than just cosplaying one for salary), and b) you have interests outside of work (so will be a more well-rounded and pleasant person to work around). Can you elaborate on the ways in which you find non-standard certifications to be harmful?
However, I understand that some people shut down when they see a lot of extraneous detail. Think of it like reading a news article. You'd get confused if you started reading "Ferry sinks, injuring 11" and halfway through it starts talking about cricket, then a fire, then congress, then...
If I had a hiring manager say this to me in an interview, I would not want to work for that manager. Random interests outside of work have zero influence on a candidate's ability to perform a job well. I enjoy working with coworkers who live fulfilling lives outside their 9-5, but outside of illegal activity, I wouldn't let their outside life influence my decision to hire them. If they find value in playing video games every hour outside work, that's fine. If they want to obtain random certs and skills, that's fine too.
I'm also in the process of getting my private pilot's license. Do you expect me to start flying in the middle of the day instead of working? If anything, being able to focus on a target goal that can take 6+ months to accomplish indicate focus and drive more than a lack of it.
The SCUBA diving example mentioned is an interesting life experience for someone to have, and doesn't deserve someone gatekeeping whether or not the individual is "serious" about their hobbies or experiences.
The scuba example was on purpose, because if you list credentials for things that you aren't actually proficient in, it shows something else about your attitude towards being honest about your skills (which can be crucial in technical roles). At one of my old employers, my later boss warned me that the last interview round with a very senior guy was mostly a formality, as long as I'd been honest on my CV. He liked to grill people a bit about their inner workings and their journey, and he'd famously once rejected the team's top choice because the guy had claimed to be fluent in a particular (natural) language on his CV, and then turned out to be anything but (that language was of course in no way needed for the job). In situations like that you feel vindicated if you've had a think about whether old credentials that you acquired a long time ago realistically still belong on your CV. Skills that you don't practice can be lost, regardless of what some paper says.
But if you are serious about them, then by all means put your hobbies on your CV. It can lead to great conversations sometimes, and it's also a form of honesty. And yeah, sometimes people will read things into it that are beyond your control (if you're a pilot, those will mostly be positive, if you do MMA, they may be more mixed, but I'd argue you should mention it regardless).
For what it's worth, I initially misunderstood your statement that "being focused and having lots of random interests are mutually exclusive" in the same way that the other commenter did, as implying that someone with a life outside of work cannot be a good employee. I see now that you were stressing the "_lots of random_" part of the statement (that is - if you have 20 different "passions" in a month, you cannot truly be said to be focused on any of them) - in this case, I agree!
> a very senior guy [...] famously once rejected the team's top choice because the guy had claimed to be fluent in a particular (natural) language on his CV, and then turned out to be anything but...
Wow - an extreme, but defensible, position! Integrity is important.
> if you do MMA, they may be more mixed
Pun intentional? ;)
The test is administered by aicpa, but this is a helpful starting point.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/306fu3/how_stup...
Also once or twice a year you can attend a conference and rack up all your CPEs.
One thing I am wondering is how much these certificates cost. For example, quickly glancing through your OSCP link says the minimum is $1499, it is not cheap!
Thank you for mentioning NAP, I didn't know this was a thing (I suspect most people don't)
Fun certs - I did this last year https://www.pearsonpte.com/ and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unlike many tech certs, to pass language exams one has to really know the language. This exam is 100% computerized, so we don't have to deal with biases of examiners, which is what happened to me with IELTS.
Maybe someday.
Maritime - master 100 tons inland / mate near coastal plus a bunch of random crap the USCG throws on there if you get those (need to renew these this year); American Sailing Association 101, 103, 104
Scuba - just the useful ones here cause I have a whole wallet memorializing money flushed down the drain: rescue diver, ice diver, solo diver, drysuit, open circuit advanced nitrox/deco procedures, 45m helitrox closed circuit rebreather w/deco, certified Poseidon regulator+rebreather repair technician (though the big thing I learned was just to send my gear to pros working with this stuff every day). Currently my big focus is training up to take the 60m normoxic trimix rebreather course in the fall
Radio - general class ham (failed the extra by like two questions, in my defense I had only studied for general), restricted radiotelephone operator (literally just a cash payment, needed this once for a flight I had planned to Canada)
Other - authorized to perform marriages, motorcycle endorsement on driver's license, certified analytics professional (took the test on a whim and passed, it's since lapsed but I might see if they'll let me re-up it), notary public (lapsed), have thought about doing PMP since I'd be good to go on experience reqs
I started an EMT course a while back but I dropped out after realizing I was never going to be able to remain at all proficient. I'm like this with my aviation instrument rating as well, I keep legally current with it but I am pretty cautious about relying on proficiency since I'm not flying multiple times a week
Probably some others I'm forgetting but these are the big ones! I remain really impressed with your list, you've come up with some good ones...will have to think on whether I need to pursue some of them myself :-)
Is the specific parliament you want to work in?
I can see this being the case just for the fact that certs are usually paired a structured curriculum for learning a new skill. This takes a huge mental burden off and decreases time wasted in deadend exploration.
My work requires me to take certifications and keep them renewed.
What I appreciate from certifications is actually taking a well-made test. (Instead of a carelessly made normal school or university test.)
For well made certification tests, the question writing process is interesting and a whole specialization by itself. Each question is beta tested. And metrics are collected as to how a question is correlated or predicts that someone will pass the test. Tests should avoid mixing question pairs that hint the answer of another question. And writing multiple choice answers in which the answer is not possible to guess. Also writing questions so they are well written and easily understood. So that the question measures knowing or not knowing the topic, rather than affecting the test taker due to unclear wording.
I need something to "show" for my efforts. Project-based learning can work for me as well, but it takes extra work to figure it out for a given skill. I'm learning photography and I have a goal of doing 1 portrait session per week for a few months. That kind of thing helps me feel like I'm making measurable progress.
CFA requires that you have work experience making investment decisions and can get references to that effect, but in all it would be easier than CPA.
I'll knock that out then take the charter exam, if I pass then I'll consider doing part time work as an accountant for two years to get the hours.
https://www.nar.org/high-power-rocketry-certifications/
MSHA part 48, or others, is useful to be allowed to be unattended on a mine site. The scope and size of some mines, and the operations and equipment, are something to experience. Of course, the mine owner must want you to be there.
FAA explicitly allows after 48hr observation, see https://www.faa.gov/coronavirus/guidance_resources#useOfVacc...
There is a separate certification for anything involving open flames. Including things like Dave Chapelle using a lighter to light a cigarette.
Storage, transport and manufacturing certs are independent of these and and all involve the ATF in the US (starting with Form 54). It’s actually pretty complex trying to figure out alone, I had to get plugged into the local pyrotechnics guild for them to lay it out for me.
Fyi, you are then a "professional driver" even in a normal car driving to the grocery. If you get a ticket, many states will instantly double the fine because as a pro, "you know better". Plus there's the medical aspect and other bullshit.
Unless you're going to actually use it, dont get it. Learn to drive an 18 speed with air brakes etc, sure. Just dont get the actual cdl.
thankfully, most places are very careful not to take cert cards from unfamiliar faces at face value.
I would note that "asked or expected" is different than "required", so there really is no downside to doing a rescue diver class or a divemaster program. In fact, I highly recommend it and it was a lot of fun.
If you have no experience, just a cert, then you should stay out of the way with those with experience and help as requested.
However, with many dive accidents, you don't have the luxury of waiting for a more experienced diver and having that training will give you a better chance of saving your buddy's life.
I think the point was that such schools get bad reviews, and look like bad choices, might get out completed by more lax schools
Apparently academia (universities) works a bit in the same way, there was a recent HN discussion
I think that people often just go with the cheapest option without doing the additional research.
not to say you shouldnt get a rescue cert, but that alone is insufficient if you have no actual and recent or long term experience.
While a cert is no substitute for experience, if you are going to gain that experience, it is much better to have a cert than not.
I wouldn't try something complicated like a traction splint unless there was really no other option and possibly even then--not sure they even teach it in WFA any longer. But, for the most part having a weekend class to refresh a lot of first aid isn't a bad thing even if you don't practice it all the time, may have forgotten some of the details, and maybe your splints aren't the world's greatest. But so long as you're cognizant of your limitations having some even somewhat stale first aid training is probably better than having none.
[Of course, if you act like your 10 year old WFR or W-EMT cert means you're qualified to charge in and take over because you're "certified" that of course can be an issue.]
If you're using your certification to qualify for a professional or volunteer position, then they usually defer to the expiry period set by the issuer of the certification.
In my experience, basically nobody gets any first aid practice, in between re-certifications. And these are perishable skills, so I wouldn't trust in the ability of most people to execute anything complex after even a year has gone by... But that has to be balanced against the cost of re-training. WMR is usually an 80-hour course (IIRC) and re-certs more like 30-40? That's an absurd time investment for most working people.
80h, that's almost one's whole summer vacation
I hope that more of these courses can evolve into a hybrid online model, where you can use distance learning to spread some of the coursework out, ahead of time.
Dive shops with more advanced dives ask for total and recent experience as well, and sometimes require you to do a refresher or dive with them once before they take you on the advanced dives (deep, night, high current, overhead obstacles etc). The OW cert is a big contributing factor, but it's not the only data point.
That said most other recreational certs are useless and just a money grab, even including advanced, imo. Shops generally rate OW+30 recent dives higher than OW+AOW, and rightly so.
Now the easiest white collar profession (8 courses that are easy) require we work for a broker for years. Usually a broker who got their licence without becoming a salesperson first.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill because he wanted competition.
Gov. Brown eventually signed it.
I had started learning level 1, but realized I'm kind of wasting my time allocating much brain juice to it before growing my income/net worth.
I'd feel worse about it, but generally the HVAC companies in an area are extremely predatory and only quote out new systems when a simple repair would suffice.
The test does not cover how to do repairs or fix HVACs. I learned that elsewhere.
Note: the EPA 608 has multiple levels. For mini splits under about 2 tons, you might be able to get by with just your EPA 608 core and Type 1 (small appliances, <5lb of refrigerant) Type 1 + core can be done online, open-book, and costs $25. Nobody should install a mini split without it!
The rats dig it.
I've tried, really hard. I did 4 years of french, 2 years of spanish, 4 semesters of Arabic, 2 semesters of german, 1 Berlitz tutor session for 3 months in Russian and 3 months of tutoring in Farsi. Most of my grades were AWFUL and I barely qualified for anything. I really tried, but I just don't have the medium/long term memory for language. It also doesn't help that I live in the US.
There were people who still raced around me -- I'm not gifted at languages, by any means -- but for the first time in my life I'm actually modestly capable in a second language. I continue to study now, and it's still accumulating, however slowly.
After this experience, I believe that most people can learn a second language, but they don't because the barriers to entry are insanely high. If you really want to learn a language to a conversational level of fluency, you either have to be truly gifted (5% of people) have to want it so much that you'll immerse yourself in it 24/7 (the rest of us).
> I did 4 years of french, 2 years of spanish, 4 semesters of Arabic, 2 semesters of german, 1 Berlitz tutor session for 3 months in Russian and 3 months of tutoring in Farsi
It took me about 3 months of daily immersion in Japanese life (plus the 4 hours of daily school, of course) just to get to a point where my ears could hear words reliably. If you translate this to coursework...it's got to be 1+ years of college-level study.
Pentesting really requires "full stack" systems knowledge, from networking, to OS, to API analysis, malware analysis, binary reverse engineering. OSCP is an applied cert, so it really forces you to be able to leverage knowledge in a practical way.
However my favorite benefit of offsec is really being able to see things from an attacker's perspective. This has been super valuable in many situations and I've found I'm many times the only person in the room with an awareness of an adversarial mindset.
I got out of pentesting because no one follows your recommendations. I could give 40 recommendations after doing a pentest, come back a year later and none of them would have been implemented.
People don’t care about security—-it’s why everything is broken and it’s getting worse.
I moved into Distributed Ledger Technology because I think it could help solve security issues people face daily in a way where they cannot mess up. That’s the idea anyway.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092815/how-b...
I’m similar to you - have a ton of certifications and I’m an insanely good test taker.
Several years ago I signed up for the Level 1 CFA exam in late August to take it on December 5th. So I had a little over 3 months to study for it.
My first inclination that I made a horrible mistake was when one of my portfolio manager coworkers said to me, “I got my bachelor’s in finance, got my master’s in economics, studied for that test for 6 months, failed it and gave up. It’s just too hard.”
350 hours of studying later, I was the only one from my company that passed Level 1 that year. 33% pass rate.
I’m in software engineering. It has provided no discernible career benefit even though I work at an investment bank.
I’m happy that I proved I could do it but the CFA program is not a certification to collect on a whim. It’s literally a 3+ year commitment and you will come close to killing yourself studying.
Congrats on your OSCP - I run a cybersec biz and some of my colleagues have that cert and I’m always impressed when I hear someone has it. I’m a CISSP but I think an OSCP is more practical.
Ham radio extra which is elec eng focused rather than just rules of the airwaves is a good one. (I’m callsign WT1J)
In our biz I really appreciate it when folks have a Network+ or Security+ or a Linux admin cert because you can’t argue with the value of knowing networking fundamentals and the Linux command line. In fact knowledge of Linux command line is my leading indicator of competency for a QA role we have open. I look at answers to this question first every time. Next thing I look at is SQL knowledge- because I think both of these are strong predictors of deeper technical capability.
Certs are underrated IMHO because most of them provide practical knowledge that is immediately applicable in a work setting or other pastime. They give you real skills.
Lastly AWS certs are also super practical and very valuable IMO.
Great question OP!
And then they roll out new services almost weekly.
Quite a moving target.
Azure is the worst offender, offering certs that expire in ONE year. No thanks.
Google certs expire after 2 years.
[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/renew-...
Also, those are some pretty serious things to do as a hobby.
In some states, carrying lockpicks is presumptive guilt unless you're a locksmith, but I never figured out whether that's a certification or just a business license or what.
Genuinely though certs don’t really add value just get you through people who don’t know anything about it and are doing recruitment.
Yep, thats the DoD for sure. They require a lot of useless certs.
It's like going to college. You don't need it, but its a nice bump above others in the resume stack at some orgs
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.
https://pauljerimy.com/security-certification-roadmap/
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
She was a tech consultant. After I looked up “CYT” I think that made me not think positively of her. I mean it’s good that someone is proud of their accomplishment, but such a weird thing to announce to the world.
There’s lots of things that require effort and people are proud of. Not everyone needs to know.
Being on the resume makes sense as lots of stuff is on there. I think it’s pretentious because it’s on business cards and email signatures.