Do Programming Certifications Still Matter? (infoworld.com) 101
With programmers in high demand, InfoWorld asks if it's really worthwhile for software developers to pursue certifications? "Based on input from those in the field, company executives, and recruiters, the answer is a resounding yes,"
"The primary benefit of certifications is to verify your skill sets," says Archie Payne, president of the recruiting firm CalTek Staffing... Certifications can be used to "reinforce the experience on your resume or demonstrate competencies beyond what you've done in the workplace in a prior role." Certifications show that you are committed to your field, invested in career growth, and connected to the broader technology landscape, Payne says. "Obtaining certification indicates that you are interested in learning new skills and continuing your learning throughout your career," he says...
In cases where multiple candidates are equally qualified, having a relevant certification can give one candidate an edge over others, says Aleksa Krstic, CTO at Localizely, a provider of a cloud-based translation platform. "When it comes to certifications in general, when we see a junior to mid-level developer armed with programming certifications, it's a big green light for our hiring team," says MichaÅ Kierul, who is CEO of software company INTechHouse.
"It's not just about the knowledge they have gained," Kierul says. "It speaks volumes about their passion, their drive to excel, and their commitment to continuous learning outside their regular work domain. It underscores a key trait we highly value: the desire to grow, learn, and elevate oneself in the world of technology."
In cases where multiple candidates are equally qualified, having a relevant certification can give one candidate an edge over others, says Aleksa Krstic, CTO at Localizely, a provider of a cloud-based translation platform. "When it comes to certifications in general, when we see a junior to mid-level developer armed with programming certifications, it's a big green light for our hiring team," says MichaÅ Kierul, who is CEO of software company INTechHouse.
"It's not just about the knowledge they have gained," Kierul says. "It speaks volumes about their passion, their drive to excel, and their commitment to continuous learning outside their regular work domain. It underscores a key trait we highly value: the desire to grow, learn, and elevate oneself in the world of technology."
A foot in the door (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't have a portfolio of projects to point to and you're looking for that first job... yes, certs matter. If you have 'self-taught' on your resume and some paperwork to back up his claims, you're not going to beat them.
Once you've held a job, finished a project successfully, and you're moving on for reasons other than being fired? Suddenly certifications matter a lot less.
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Ugh.
" If you have 'self-taught' on your resume and someone else has some paperwork to back up his claims"
Re: A foot in the door (Score:4, Informative)
I was entirely self taught and didn't have any programming related certs whatsoever when I got my first programming job. No CS degree or anything like that either. All I really pointed to were some minor PRs I did on GitHub and some answers I posted to stackexchange.
Re: A foot in the door (Score:4, Interesting)
I was entirely self taught and didn't have any programming related certs whatsoever when I got my first programming job.
When I first started my career what I did and have was irrelevant to absolutely any discussion we are having now. Unless you are currently working in your first job (your UID is low enough to suggest otherwise) the only conclusion we can draw is that the world, industry, and recruitment processes are no longer the same and your experience isn't relevant.
Please don't give new people in industry your outdated advice.
Re: A foot in the door (Score:2)
My first programming job is my current one, which I've had for just over a year. I'd only been doing any programming at all for two-ish years prior.
My UID has all of about zero relevance.
Re: A foot in the door (Score:2)
Oh and no, it didn't come with a pay cut either. Actually my pay nearly tripled from what was already pretty close to six digits.
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Re: A foot in the door (Score:2)
I started this job just over a year ago.
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Yep, in the early 1990s, and any decade before. I could program a microprocessor to make an LED blink, and also design and build the circuitry - that meant instant hire anywhere! These days, it's not enough to have a project to show, but you need to carry out a whole slick marketing campaign to get a job.
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There's also the wonderful fact that when you do your own projects, you're not paying someone to certify you learned something. And you probably ARE learning something new too.
The only thing I'd add to that is that generally a history of collaborative work is better than solo... so pairing up with a like-minded person not only provides you with something for your portfolio, it also provides you with a peer reference. If you can find a way to market your product (a game, for instance, can be published) the
Re:A foot in the door (Score:4, Informative)
Certifications to me felt like a drawback if i see them on a resume. They make no sense. It's pay-for-paper, the classes often come with indoctrination into a product line, no real quality I've seen from those with certifications except for lacking knowledge in anything not in the class.
The only benefit I could see, is someone changing professions later in life who isn't able to go back to school. But for someone junior - go to frigging school, even if it's junior college. For someone who did this later, then you can tell that they have some real job experience even if it's not coding, and that's a bonus. Just don't aim for the bottom, and certificates are sort of like aiming for the bottom; the least effort possible to try to convince someone to hire you instead of one of the millions of offshore rote programmers who are cheaper.
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I would say it would depend on what the certification is. I could see things like being able to produce front ends/UIs that are ADA compliant both "in general" and with specific frameworks/tools/platforms. I can see the use of security awareness every-few-years training just to keep up with the latest greatest. I could see certifications related to doing 3rd party integrations via specific APIs whether it is payment processing, a LTI to extend a learning management system, MS Graph API stuff (heck just th
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Certifications to me felt like a drawback if i see them on a resume. They make no sense. It's pay-for-paper, the classes often come with indoctrination into a product line, no real quality I've seen from those with certifications except for lacking knowledge in anything not in the class.
The only benefit I could see, is someone changing professions later in life who isn't able to go back to school. But for someone junior - go to frigging school, even if it's junior college. For someone who did this later, then you can tell that they have some real job experience even if it's not coding, and that's a bonus. Just don't aim for the bottom, and certificates are sort of like aiming for the bottom; the least effort possible to try to convince someone to hire you instead of one of the millions of offshore rote programmers who are cheaper.
I completely agree with the pay-for-paper observation, especially if you look back to the dot.com boom in the late 90s, where any Joe Sixpack could get a certification over the weekend. However, I've worked at companies where promotions and raises were tied to getting certifications, which is worse than useless, IMHO.
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The term I have used for decades is "evidence they can do the job".
The best evidence is having actually done the job successfully. If a candidate has years of work experience they've proven they can do it. If they can show hobby projects it provides evidence, but generally not as strong.
If they don't have years of work experience as evidence, then degrees and certifications provide some amount of evidence. The candidate may not be skilled at the job, but they have enough of a background to get the certi
Certification: I know how to answer the test (Score:5, Insightful)
A certification tells me the holder is able to answer the relevant test questions. It doesn't tell me if the holder can actually apply knowledge. I've met people with lots of certifications who couldn't apply it, while others who were experts in their field without a lot of initials after their names (particularly my friend in IA. He's gotten a bunch of the certifications because he was required to, but said they didn't particularly expand his knowledge. Thus they were a burden to employment, rather than an enabler of employment.)
And in a few cases when I got curious and looked into a specific certification, it was all about "can you manage a Windows system?" and said nothing about any other environment. As a Unix/Linux/Mac OS guy, I had no desire to pay a lot of $ to learn how to administer a Windows box (and no desire to work in a Windows environment. That was probably career limiting, but I was fine with that, and in the long run it didn't hurt me at all.)
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Nothing. In my case, it was lack of interest for the material, along with lack of ROI for the letters. If I'm interviewing someone without a certification, it'll be because I want to determine if s/he can do the job. More than anything, I looked for someone who was a self-learner, rather than someone who was motivated by external pressures.
Now management or customers may impose certification requirements (that would be against my advice, if they asked, they usually did not ask.) That goes on the job adv
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He's gotten a bunch of the certifications because he was required to, but said they didn't particularly expand his knowledge. Thus they were a burden to employment, rather than an enabler of employment.)
Both those sentences can't be right. He either needed the certifications, or he didn't. He can't have both needed them and have them be a burden to employment.
The point of certification is not to expand knowledge. If your story is true, however good this programmer may have been it seems to indicate a fundamental lack of understanding of processes or purposes of things.
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They can when it's an HR requirement but doesn't serve any other purpose. I stopped counting on how many times I've been called to clean up a "certified" installation. It's a piece of paper in most cases in tech that by the time they setup the certification process the technology has moved, changed or no longer applicable.
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Both those sentences can't be right. He either needed the certifications, or he didn't.
Frankly, you're being obtuse. He knew that stuff before doing the certification prep and exam. But he still had to pay for the test. THAT is the burden to employment.
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And it's not just for programmers (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the important questions is whether they learned their job 'in the field' or had a formal training.
Even when not asking I will soon find out from their answers to other questions, those with a formal training just have a better, wider and more in-depth understanding of the technology.
Obviously this does not mean those with the formal training are always better but it is a strong indicator.
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Re:And it's not just for programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily incoming fire - but I'll try and be nuanced. Not all "formal education" is created equal, and not all self-taught are lacking in understanding. I've interviewed hundreds of people for jobs, and it's actually hard to predict success from any documentation or training program. Some things are universal tho - if you have an MIT engineering degree you're more likely going to be more rounded and versed in the fundamentals than someone from a community college with A+ or something certs - but not necessarily! I have met many "masters of CS" that couldn't tell you about caching or hashing for example. And plenty of people with Java certifications that don't know about multi-threaded data safety, and sometimes not even about locking. So i guess I sort of agree with the OP, and sort of don't agree. People with certs may or may not be better candidates, but in my experience it doesn't matter if they have a cert or not as it's not a predictor.
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The good thing about formal education is that you very often must learn something you have no interest in. Self taught programmers very often take short cuts, they don't learn the uninteresting stuff. They will usually know nothing about theory. But even those with formal education often miss out - I am still baffled by the number of programmers with decades of experience who still don't know about how floating point numbers work when it's just basic number theory; I've seen scientists baffled that float
Re:And it's not just for programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
That's been my experience with autodidacts as well. They tend to place less importance on concepts they find difficult or uninteresting and lots of importance on trivial or subjecting things. While they'll readily share "their" opinions, they'll often have trouble clearly articulating why or answering follow-up questions.
To be fair, you'll see similar problems even from people with CS degrees, though for different reasons. CS programs have largely turned into 4-year programming boot camps, with very little actual CS content. It's no wonder software these days is so awful.
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Yes, I did CS back when it was a Science, more like applied maths with programming. But employers put a lot of effort into making universities turning out shovel ready employees, like it was a trade school. They already had trade schools for that.
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"How floating point numbers work" isn't number theory. It's much closer to real analysis.
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From personal experience - and different people learn better in different ways - a mix of formal and real-world is the best.
No matter how ornate the theoretical scenario, formal instruction never really captures what it's like to sit down and do a job. Without practical experience, your piece of paper is frequently worth the current newsprint recycling rates.
And no matter how hard they try, it's simply implausible that the vast majority of people will think of everything and find the optimal way to do thin
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Formal training is not the same as lot of certifications. Most certifications are very narrow and basically just a way to get week candidates to pay money to try and look better.
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I've found some of the networking certs helpful for me, they focus attention on what's needed and I genuinely learned a fair amount when I was doing them. I've let my Juniper certs lapse though, there's not much new to be learned by renewing them and clearly it's a game.
For example my certs would all have auto-renewed if I had taken another Juniper test in a different subject area. So if the info covered in those certs was OK to renew without revisiting the subjects, why is it important that they expire at
I'll let you in on a secret... (Score:2)
As someone who was a hiring manager for about a decade at a top 10 website, I never once read the education section of a resume. If you want to get a programming job, write code and put it on GitHub, if you want a good programming job submit code to notable open source software projects or start your own. Your skill level should be apparent from your code contributions, not how many certificates you have.
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Yeah, what he said.
If you are applying for a job that wants certifications back away slowly and maintain eye contact.
Go find an employer like the parent post describes.
You'll be miserable otherwise.
Re:I'll let you in on a secret... (Score:5, Funny)
Funny thing - I was just reviewing a couple hundred resumes for a web job, and not a single person did this. I did see a bunch of certifications, but invariably the people listing those had (literally) zero work experience.
The other interesting/sad thing was a very large percentage of the resumes were more or less clones of one another - lots of react, lots of node, some angular. I suspect some Indian outsourcing company must've just laid off a large number of people. Unfortunately those weren't the skills we wanted, and these people had nothing we'd actually advertised for. If they'd at least tailored their cover letters to mention some knowledge of the skills we asked for, they might've gotten a second look - but I swear they didn't bother reading past the job title before applying.
Funniest thing was the one applicant who obviously used ChatGPT to write his cover letter. He didn't even cut out the leading line, which said something like "here is a cover letter you can use when applying for a web developer job..."
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Wow you get cover letters? I haven't seen one of those in years...
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Our university's application system requires both a cover letter and a resume - both text-only. A fair number of people do seem to just copy their resume in both fields though.
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The reality of being on the hiring side is this.. The ones that can't get a job offer apply to far more jobs than the ones who can - so the person with a job to fill sees far more hopeless candidates than good candidates than the ratio of good to hopeless candidates would suggest.
A person who's been doing job X for a while and has been demonstrating competence will not need a certification to demonstrate competence. A person that's been struggling to succeed might go for a certification to improve their ski
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A lot of times Headhunter companies take "client" resumes and reformat it to meet the Headhunter standard. That's part of their "value added/branding."
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Re:I'll let you in on a secret... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm much more interested in the projects you've worked on and the level at which you can talk about them.
About 20 years ago, I was interviewing for a job for which I was hopeless underqualified according to the job description. At the time, I didn't want a job, but Sallie Mae required proof that I was looking for one. I was working on a personal software project while living with my parents, and didn't want to have to start paying back my student loans.
I had to have six written job rejections to get my loans deferred again, so I went online and looked for jobs that required decades of experience I didn't have. I got my six rejections, so I was happy. A few days later, I got a notice from one of those companies that they wanted me to come in for an interview, and that the rejection notice was an HR mistake. So I went in and interviewed.
Above all else, the interviewers were keenly interested in the personal and Open Source software I had written. In particular, they were interested in talking about my Yahoo chat client. They asked my why I wrote it, how I wrote it, how I knew the chat protocol, etc. It was a fun interview, as I enjoyed talking about it all.
I got the job later that day.
Re: I'll let you in on a secret... (Score:2)
In my line of work, you don't get to post your code for all to see. So the few times I've needed to hire a programmer, I wrote a short paper test: here's some toy code, identify and fix the very conspicuous bugs and add this one missing feature.
The guy who got hired found the bugs and didn't quite get the new feature right but he did pretty well for thinking about it for all of 5 minutes. The guy who did not get hired looked at the conspicuous bugs and huffed that this was terrible code and a guy at half hi
They have for a long time. (Score:2)
Lazy managers use them for grading.
I think they're largely bunk. Partly, because they don't accurately show a capability for problem solving. Partly, because in the late '80s, I tried out a Novell CNE test, the gold-standard certification at the time. It marked me down, because it told me that EBCDIC as a programming language.
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This is exactly why certificates are useless. Quality isn't even a consideration. Tests and materials are designed as quickly and cheaply as possible to get ahead of the latest fad so they can maximize the number of paying customers.
There's certainly plus and minus in this (Score:2)
FYI: I've been off work for a year, as a result of having a stroke and then a large accident as a result of the first stroke resulting in at least a second stroke. Taken the last year off work to deal with my non-functional brain.
The idea of needing a programming certification to return to my job is weird, and hopelessly wrong given my current state of brain de-development, however starting a career in developing having a certification that you can develop in language a, b or d isn't a bad idea for the b
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Good luck with your recovery.
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Inverse relationship (Score:2)
As a hiring manager, if a programmer prominently displays certifications on their resume, it tells me that they are relying on being able to pass a test to prove that they know how to build software. Those candidates don't even get to a phone screen. I look for, and screen for, candidates who have been there and done that. If they say they worked on an AWS microservice application, I probe deeper by asking "why" questions, to see if they were more of a bit player or actually know what that's all about.
As a
Labels (Score:1)
A certification marks you as knowing something within a specific domain. It also marks you as being of that domain and not of some other domain.
In my world there are people with CISSP certifications. This marks you out as having some knowledge about doing security related stuff, but it also tells me that you don't roll your own crypto because you lack the skills to do that.
There are careers to be made with certifications so I'm not knocking it. It enables employment but also limits you. You are more likely
Re:Labels (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, being someone that rolls their own crypto is itself a red flag. It mean's they're an idiot. The major libraries are written by people who fully understand the math, have extensive experience in security, and have lots of eyes on them for peer review. They know how attackers will approach things and how creative they can be (for example, its possible to partially crack some algorithms if you don't carefully write both the if and else branches of the encryption to take the same number of cycles, by measuring how long it takes the algorithm to run).
Someone rolling their own is not going to have that peer reiview, and is not going to be write it correctly the first time. Anyone rolling their own crypto in unqualified to work in security, with the sole exception of people doing academic level research into new algorithms (which shouldn't be used in any production code until its been evaluated to hell and back).
Old TImey Hiring People want certs (Score:2)
Old Timey Hiring People have the best "reasons" why a cert is better. It puts the candidate first. It shows a desire to improve him/herself. It shows a passion for their "craft". That's certainly the case with tradesmen. If you need to apprentice for two years, learn to weld properly for a few years, and then be approved by a master welder, then and only then will you stand out from the other millions of people who weld great seams every day.
In a field where every day not only does the work change (thi
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Old Timey Hiring People have the best "reasons" why a cert is better. It puts the candidate first. It shows a desire to improve him/herself. It shows a passion for their "craft".
I never understood why recruiters and interviewers care about the psychology of the person they're hiring. None of them are psychologists. Especially none of the engineers are.
And the whole "shows passion" etc etc is just bollocks - they assume it shows passion, but the opposite isn't also true: just because they didn't bother with the certification doesn't mean they don't have passion etc etc.
If anything, some of these people need a philosophy degree, so they question what they're actually asking, an
Simple (Score:1)
I ask the interviewer the following question:
"Explain how pointers work in C. Then explain why they are necessary."
When they fail I say:
"Thanks for the coffee"
Then I get up and leave.
If you want to presume to judge my 40 years of competency as a programmer, then you better know your shit, or you're going to be interviewing an empty chair.
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I guess that might make sense for a job where the implementation language is C or C++. It wouldn't have much relevance for a job doing Ada, Python, Lisp/Scheme or other non-C family languages. But I suspect it's a surprise to many to learn that C is not the only language out there.
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Oh, one more thing: The only hard-and-fast rule I had was "Never hire a programmer/developer who knows only 1 programming language. And C/C++ counts as 1." My experience with mono-lingual programmers, particularly those who know only C, is they don't know what they don't know, about design, programming paradigms, alternate solutions to problems, etc. And in one case where I was assigned a mono-lingual programmer (when I was still on Active Duty back in 1980), first thing I did was send him to the local
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eh, C++ programmers often don't know much about C. Ask them to implement one of the STL container or implement a struct that acts like an object.
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Likewise C programmers often make horrible C++ programmers since you can basically just write C code without taking advantage of objects
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Likewise C programmers often make horrible C++ programmers since you can basically just write C code without taking advantage of objects
Indeed. "Sometimes, the elegant implementation is just a function. Not a method. Not a class. Not a framework. Just a function. -- John Carmack"
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That one I fully agree to. One-language "coders" are basically one-trick ponies. They routinely do not even see 90% of the problem and hence often mess things up.
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There is C, languages written in C, and Forth.
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Actually, it has relevance as soon as security and reliability enter the picture. For example, you can _still_ have buffer-overflows in all these languages via libraries, system-calls and run-time systems. If you do not know what a pointer is, you generally do not understand what a buffer overflow is and what it does. And hence you cannot do safe or secure coding.
Because regulatory and legal requirements _will_ raise (bad software does just do far too much economic damage, and in all other engineering field
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone I was interviewing came in with that kind of combative attitude and asked that question, I would have told them that pointers at sea are mostly about tying knots and politely end the interview.
No one is so good that they're entitled to a nasty, arrogant, attitude. If you think you are, then maybe you should ask yourself why you're looking to work for someone else.
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And fail. A job interview is not about power dynamics. It is about 1. you assessing the candidate and 2. the candidate assessing you, especially in an on-topic interview about the job skills. If you fail (2), you do not get access to the best people. Sure, the described scenario is a bit extreme, but it does in no way disqualify the person interviewed.
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Yes, an interview is an opportunity for mutual assessment. That means a lot more than just technical qualifications. Personality matters, just like organizational culture matters. If I'm hiring a developer, I need them to be able to work successfully on a team, follow established guidelines, take direction, and accept constructive criticism.
Sure, the described scenario is a bit extreme, but it does in no way disqualify the person interviewed.
A candidate behaving that way absolutely disqualifies them. In my experience, people who behave this way are corrosive. Not only are they a drag on morale and produ
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Well, most people that hire others have no clue what they are doing. You are obviously not the exception to that rule. For you it clearly is about power-dynamics. Hence you will _not_ get access to "real talent".
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If "real talent" means arrogant prima donnas with an overinflated sense of their own importance, then I'm happy to let them ... express their talents ... somewhere else. Enjoy your toxic workplace.
They never mattered (Score:2)
I have never once, in 23 years of programming heard a programmer talk about getting a cert, brag about a cert, or seen a cert hilighted on a resume. I have never known any programmer looking to get a new job or promotion talk about taking a certification class. These are things sysadmins or IT personnel used to care about (any possibly still do), but programmers never did.
There's only one cert that matters for a programmer- a degree in CS or a related field (software engineering, computer engineering, ma
A recruiter made me do an online C++ test (Score:3)
The online test results came back and said I needed to get out more. ie, I ended up scoring in the 99% percentile. I swear, on a different day, I'd have thought differently about the answers and probably only got 80-90%, since some of those questions were worded quite ambiguously.
I'll be the first to say that certifications or those interview tests mean nothing.
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Did they use a gun or a knife?
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No different from schools making you take exams. You technically don't have to take them, but considering the stakes involved, "made to" is a perfectly normal phrase to use.
So how about don't be fucking fauxtistic tosser and learn to read common sentences as normal people do, hey?
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I was taking an intro programming course at university because it was a requirement, even though I already knew the content forwards and backwards. I get back the grade on my first test and missed a load of easy questions, much to my shock and horror. Still a good grade, but not the 100% I was expecting. For the next exam, I doubled down and studied all night. I went in bleary-eyed and took the exam, getting back the 100% I had wanted in the first place.
Afterwards, I realized that the questions I missed on
They never have. (Score:2)
Re: Ask me to take a programming test and I'll dec (Score:2)
Or you're not as good as you think you are. If you came across my desk, I don't give a flying fuck what you do in your spare time. I'm hiring you to solve *my* problem, and I put at least a little thought to make sure my coding test reflects the kinds of problems I need solved. If you can't be bothered to look at my test, I infer you can't be bothered to look at my specs either should I make this mistake of hiring you.
Superprogrammers Vs Warm Bodies (Score:2)
I interview a lot of people. Certs == worthless (Score:3)
Except for a handful of certifications, there is no correlation between certifications and applicable skill. Some people with certs are good, some are bad. Same for people without certs. All they generally show is that you've memorized some key points and some common applications but they're not a good indicator of how you'll perform in an environment that is not tailored to the test. They're about as useful as college diploma's... they show that you've made an effort and can apply yourself. That's it.
The certifications that do correlate a little better almost always have and oral/written exam component. You're essentially outsourcing part of your interview.
Conducting good interviews is time consuming and frustrating because a lot of people oversell themselves (can't blame them for wanting more) or just outright lie, including about the certifications they have. So you end up wasting a lot of time. But, when done right, you get a great return on your investment. Companies and hiring teams just have to put in the time, there are no shortcuts.
You're begging the question... (Score:2)
They never did.
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..and neither did "CalTech Staffing"
It's how government measures (Score:2)
It's a real shame that companies like Cisco have ruined their certification programs.
The don't at most companies that matter (Score:3)
I have taken interviews from a lot of the top tier companies and they don't really care what school you went to, your scores, or even if you graduated from college.
This will help you a lot more than certifications:
_ Get a github account
_ contribute regularly, open source projects are good, if you can get a few projects of your own too
_ if you are a developer
- go to leetcode/careercup/interviewbit and do most medium/hard interviews in your language of choice (python in most big interviews)
- there is always an easy question: invert an array, string, search
- there is always 1 question with linked lists, graphs, trees
- get familiar with o(n) algo complexity
- do lots of problems, learn to do it on a whiteboard, it;s about doing it fast with minimum mistake, practice
_ Look up behavioral interviews
- be familiar with the star format
- get familiar with the classic questions like "imagine a time you were overruled"
- get multiple examples and response with all components of star format
- practice saying responses, maybe with partner
There are a few companies that will look at certifications: (1) contractors, mostly government contractors to fulfill a role (2) staff augmenting companies.
but as a general rule, the most use I have had for certifications were for guiding learning and learning the vocabulary/process necessary to talk to stakeholders who did. They never prevented me from getting any job
IT recruiters are ignorant and lazy (Score:1)
Have certifications *ever* mattered? (Score:1)
My experience is that there are very few cases where a certification means anything. I remember called an employee in to solve a problem they were certified to do and they were little help. I remember meeting someone with a dozen or so certifications yet he could not write a "Hello world!" program to save his life.
Besides, Betteridge's Law of Headlines says the answer is No. Meaning programming certifications don't still matter. And in my view they never mattered.
Of course they do (Score:3)
Probably not (Score:1)
Of course, says HR (Score:2)
HR, which in many cases is partly or fully outsourced, and they have NO FUCKING CLUE what the hiring manager is looking for, and DON'T CARE TO LEARN.
Certs are a negative indicator (Score:2)
The more certs someone has the more likely they don't know how to do anything.
It is much better to have a project you can talk about and reference that you run, or a bunch of them.
That, and know your data structures on demand, and you're golden in any interview process I've been part of.
There is an exception, and that's where a cert is mandatory - but those are more rare than people think.
This might be different without a degree - I have an EE - but it seems generally applicable based on my experience.
Certificates == bad (Score:2)
And it will get more important (Score:2)
Currently we are doing custom engineering (coding) with no specific skill requirements in the ones doing it. In all other engineering disciplines you need at the very least a BA to do any custom engineering, technicians need not apply. Why is that? Simple: liability. Society figured out eventually, that having people without the required and proven qualifications doing engineering is excessively expensive. And then certification requirements followed and later also a respective degree requirement. The same
Big red light (Score:1)
It's just to get an interview (Score:2)