I am working in IT and some of my colleagues are talking about getting certifications for a particular domain within our field of work. These certifications are expensive and requires time and effort. So are they worth getting?
I’m an industry professional in ICT with 40 years experience.
I’ve come to form the view that industry certification is a vendor lock-in process created solely for the purpose of generating a guaranteed income stream for that vendor.
If your employer wants to spend its money on certification, by all means go for it as a learning experience.
If you have to pay for it yourself, I’ve yet to see any evidence that they represent a return on investment of any kind in your career.
That’s not to say that learning should be abandoned, quite the opposite. In this industry, if you’re not learning, you’re going backwards.
Stay curious, read verociosly and try to figure out how stuff works and more importantly, how it breaks.
If your employer wants to spend its money on certification, by all means go for it
For real, if you haven’t already try to find every bit of employer-paid training that’s available, it’s worth looking into. My workplace has a corp Microsoft learning account that will pay for one certification test a year, and other deals with online training platforms for free classes that don’t result in “certificates” exactly, but do provided verifiable proof of completion you can post to your LinkedIn or socials. (The real benefit is the knowledge you gain of course, but it’s nice to have some acknowledgment of what you’ve learned.)
Absolutely worth it.
During your next review cycle hey boss I improved my education I’m now n-certified. I’d like to be considered for a promotion where I can better use my new skills.
Between the lines: You’re either going to give me a bump in salary or position or I’m now more marketable than I was and I may just leave.
And on the upside, if you do leave you are now worth more money.
Yeah it has helped me in my career.
I did the most difficult aws certifications but turns out it doesn’t matter - even the intro certs are seen as very valuable by hiring managers, the ones where you just learn the name of services.
Heh yeah the AWS ones are just product placement and a tiny bit of configuration soup later on.
It’s actually annoying. In aws world, only aws solutions are even mentioned. I notified only after certification that there are many valid use cases for not using Ami’s for example. Aws pretty much recommends making a new ami for every little change you make on servers, and if you have a fleet of hundreds of servers and want to change a small config on them, that means building and replacing hundreds of Ami’s.
Compare that to ansible that can quickly and in parallell make the change everywhere in seconds.
The immutable infrastructure thing sounds really good in theory but has flaws in practice. The benefits are there but at a big time/money/complexity cost.
I learned terraform and that helped. But I started in on and ansable/chef.
Expensive certifications that your employer will reimburse you for that potentially increase your earnings potential and value in the job market if you do change employers? Are those worth getting? Yes. Employer not paying you for them? Still, maybe yes. Do you really need to ask? Or are you looking for an excuse to not do the thing recommended by your mentors and that’s not giving you instant gratification and a dopamine hit (like this place does)?
I’m gonna go against the grain here and say no, especially in IT. I’m a hiring manager and I can’t tell you the number of people that are loaded with certs and only understand rote memorization and not actually practical application of topics. I prefer to see the experience and my interview questions actually get into real examples to see your thought process, instead of spitting out a list of facts.
Now, if you don’t have the experience, that can potentially offset things some, but I’ve always found experience and application are key for any of my hires.
Many managers have no clue what is even inside a cert, and gets impressed by any cert, including free ones you get for showing up (no tests).
Never pay for professional certs out of your own pocket. Your employer should be paying for it. If they are willing to pay for it without a bond (I know some companies tie you down for a specific time and if you quit before then, you have to pay it back), then go for it.
I would do a search for job listings that would be the jobs you would be applying for if you chose to leave your job or were laid off. Do the job descriptions list the certifications you are thinking about getting? If so, it might be worth pursuing, especially if you can get your current employer to pay for it.
For example, almost every project manager job lists PMP certification. If you are currently a PM and don’t have it, you might want it just in case you get laid off to improve your chances of getting a new job. Otherwise, you might be up against 10 other candidates with just as much experience, but 3 of them have a cert and you don’t even get a screening interview.
Government contracts will often require certain certifications.
Depends on the role. Certs are basically just a marginal improvement with some but not all companies automated screening of your resume.
I do lots of interviews and could not care less about certs. They are not a reliable indicator of capability or talent.
Ask your company to pay for the certs. At best you get free certs and can then leave them and make more money somewhere. At worst they say no.
Going from zero certs to getting my Sec+ landed me a better job with a new company and nearly doubled my income. (Cloud architecture engineer). Can’t speak to any other certs.
Yes! And ask your employer to pay for them.
Have you asked these colleagues what they’re hoping to gain from those certs to see why they think they’re worthwhile? Might just be people looking for a little variety in the work day if it’s something they can do on company time.
In my experience? If you are going to do the formal classes and work that lines up with a certificate, might as well do all of it and get it. It can’t hurt.
At the same time, there is no real reason a cert is better than experience. It’s more of easy proof of the date that you learned the technology, so it stuff has changed it’s easy to show you the new stuff.
This isn’t the place to ask. Go figure out if your industry cares about these certifications. I am a software engineer certified in nothing and I’ve never been asked about them. Pretty sure it’s the opposite for IT/infrastructure type roles, but again, you’re just gonna get anecdotes here and not really accurate information.
You don’t get asked for them - companies pick someone with the cert before you and you will never know. :)
In my opinion the actual cert is not worth pursuing unless you’re trying to negotiate a promotion or find a new job.
Now if your employer is willing to pay for it great. (But I stopped paying for such things out of my own pocket.)
But the knowledge is what’s valuable. You can study nearly anything in the IT field for free.
