I'm wondering though if there's any tangible connection between the two. What has been your experience with these and similar certifications?
That said, most certifications are a negative indicator of competence. This is supported by direct experience and research studies.
At the prior 3 institutions I was CTO, we routinely screened out resumes with a laundry list of certifications before even speaking to candidates.
Note this is not about having certifications, it’s about mediocre candidates attempting to signal competence on the resume by listing a pile of cert-mill nonsense. The negative correlation is so high, when hiring at scale just toss the ones with certs (but give recruiters a list of exceptions, e.g., AWS, CNCF, etc.).
// Again, there are exceptions, and AWS first party certifications are among them.
Even the most basic Solutions Associate means I can trust that you at least know what I mean when I say 'SQS', 'KMS' and 'ECS'.
I prefer every engineer at least have foundational knowledge of AWS. We use IaC to template out everything and put 'training wheels' on our infra, meaning engineers might not spend a ton of time in AWS, the real benefit is in communication. Especially since I want engineers to feel confident to use our IaC to build solutions that scale and discuss how it could better suit the engineering teams needs, rather than just having an 'OPs team' drive application decisions.
I always ask engineers this "What do you think about the AWS documentation?" If you've had to actually parse through it yourself to learn how to get something working, that's more valuable.
Is "I only ever get things done by reading third-part AWS documentation" a valid answer in your book? :c)
I have certs because my boss asked me to get them, as they play a part in his business' ability to obtain partner status with the various cloud vendors.
It is confusing to me that this chain of events would lead you to dismiss me out of hand, or make value judgements about what type of person I am.
I think it's really hard to get started in tech, and you can of course get benefit from actually studying the technologies and tools you'll be using in your job ;-) A certification is really good if you have a very specific use case and you need someone for a narrow type of work. I almost never want to hire someone for a narrow use case though. But if I was hiring contractors to fix something very specific on only aws say, then maybe it would be useful.
Of course I'm just some random person on the internet; getting a few certs might help at the start, listing things on your resume that you worked on is much better as an aid to getting interviewed and hired.
So generally I'm looking for creative problem solvers that do open source work and learn as they go on their own. I've just seen over my career that people who play the cert game are usually on the other end of this spectrum. I'm obviously painting in broad strokes here
How I build teams has worked really well for me, but there are lots of great ways of building teams that create value which are likely very different from mine.
I don't think he's making value judgements based on the fact that you have certs, but rather based on the fact that you choose to put certs on your resume over something else, like an open source project. When people write their resumes they usually need to cut out things and include only the most important qualifications and experience for the job. So he's making the value judgement based on how you think about those certifications. They signal "this paper that anyone can get with a bunch of memorization and studying is the best I have"
I share a similar opinion. I wouldn't reject someone who put certs on their resume just based on that, but to me it's a negative signal. The same goes for people who put MOOCs on their resume.
Sometimes people don't have the pedigree or the opportunity to prove themselves in a high value position, so certs is the only thing available to signal competence.
The fact that many people (in this thread) look down on it is directly responsible for putting a glass ceiling over some people and reducing upward mobility. It's just bad judgment.
I mean it's one thing to require them to do a skill test, but to outright filter them or toss their resumes in the bin is unequivocally shitty.
I have read tons of tech books (many of them way better than certificates on the same topics). I do not list them on my Linkedin/CV.
Every member of a software team does not need to super star autodidact. In a lot of cases it would actually be counterproductive to have such a composition.
I hope hiring orgs don't run away from candidates simply because they undertook a certification. But I understand the caution - my org has had bad experiences with coursework-only MS in computer science career changers who turned out to not have any real skills and maybe not even any desire to learn any real skills.
I have been told by recruiters they can easily double most people's salary, this is for AZ-204/400 certs.
The AWS SysOps Associate exam is actually far more rigorous - questions are harder IMHO and it has a lab now so I would personally view someone holding that more favourably.
All clouds have partner programmes (mostly agency consultants) where status is partly linked to number of certified staff at different levels. For AWS specialty certs count same as professional in partner programme so for AWS partners they should just get them to do the easy AWS specialties like security instead of SAP.
I think the certs just help to get CV in front of people, they won't help much after that.
They used to be flashy, eye-catching perhaps.
Now… I would say they don't mean much.
Knowledge? Experience? NOW we're talkin.
As one other comment suggests, they help you get vendor status… but if you don't have the requisite knowledge to back up the paper, they're not worth the paper they're printed on.
You probably want to get hands-on experience and put stuff up on Github if you actually want it to make a difference.