Hacker News Reader

Comment by beardface | Hacker News Reader

What I like about some certifications is that they're effectively a learning path. Even if you don't take the exam, after going through the curriculum, doing labs to cement the knowledge, and practiced sample exams, your knowledge of the subject improves dramatically.

Learning on the job, you learn solutions to your own problems and architectures for your own use-cases. You're not exposed to all areas so remain naive about some features. A good certification will give you a much more holistic view of the platform.

This is all through the lens of Elastic Certified Engineer and various AWS certs though, instead of software development.

View on HN

The problem I see with certifications is that a lot of them tend to have trivia questions that are easy to look up but relatively unimportant, e.g. naming restrictions on azure resources is one the comes to mind.

I'm currently following a couple of certs for the learning paths, might even take the exam for one if my employer pays for it and the time off

Not that it makes those questions worth putting on a test. but I took Microsoft's MCSA/MCSD tests last year and while some questions are "easy to look up", the tests are proctored and you're not allowed to open ANY apps during the test. You're also not allowed to have any devices within reach (which they verify via webcam).

if questions are easy to look up then i don't need to memorize thrm just to pass a test. that is the whole issue with certifications.

if the learning path would be such that you work with a system until you have enough experience that you can pass the test without having to learn for it, then that would be valuable, but the problem is that the certificate does not verify your experience. it verifies that you memorized certain facts without being able to tell how you did that.

I find the systems oriented classes like RedHat Linux admin, Network+, security+, etc are really nice. Lots of stuff in there to build skills in generally useful topics.

As for cloud stuff, haven’t really done them but I can’t say I’d bother personally. If you know the above topics well it’s easy enough to RTFM and get up to speed.

Edit: perhaps “cloud stuff” too much of a blanket term. For instance, more complex cloud stuff like Kubernetes probably worthwhile certifying in. But that’s useful in multiple cloud environments, as opposed to cloud specific things like AWS.

Again, I haven’t don’t those certs si someone else probably has better idea than me.

And people who think “cloud stuff” is just mirroring networking infrastructure on AWS/Azure is how the world ends up with “consultants” who just passed a certification, and know how to do a lift and shift and end up costing their clients more than just staying at a colo.....

Great point. I signed up for some online cooking schools and the syllabus was one of the more interesting aspects. It helped me to organize my thinking about cooking and helps me to parse recipes and cookbooks more quickly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com