Is it the listing of certifications that is inversely correlated with the career progress of the employee? Or is it because listing a certification is strongly correlated to having one, with this being what is truly inversely correlated with career progress? And, if so, in what direction is the cause-effect?
Maybe the tendency to list certifications is correlated to certain personality or attitude that is less likely to progress. Or maybe it is accumulating certifications that is correlated to this. In that case, by not listing them, the candidate will succeed in hiding this fact from potential employers, which may help him or her.
However, what if it is not progressing in one's career that makes one more likely to list (or accumulate) certifications in an effort to compensate? And in that case, all else being equal, maybe the would-be certification-lister would be even worse off were they not to list it!
For a silly analogy, I'm betting that, among users of dating apps, total time spent on them is inversely proportional to the probability of being in a long-term relationship at some point in a given timeframe. However, that does not necessarily mean that using them for long has any causal effect on reducing one's chances.
An average business certainly won't have the same recruiting pipeline as Google, to say the least.
(also - job churn, and/or they may be slightly less autodidactic)
Go look at all of Carmack's certifications, or Torvalds, etc.
There's a gulf of difference between somebody that gets a cert to validate/enhance their knowledge and somebody that does so to get a piece of paper. The amount of people that fall into the latter category seems to dwarf those in the former as an industry has been built around prepping under-experienced people for these certifications in the hopes of advancing their career.
This is all to say that the sentiment expressed in this article is unfortunately largely correct. I've since let all of mine lapse because the employers I now work for value demonstrable technical acumen over something that somebody likely bulldozed their way through four years ago and requires $200 annually to renew.
Many networking engineers need a Cisco cert to get started. Same with a lot of security analysts.
If you’re working in Defense you’ll need to get a cert(s) at some point.
Way back being Microsoft certified was all the rage. I was catering at the time near a Microsoft training office and they were a very good customer. The rooms didn’t have a single seat and people were flying in to take them. This was 15 years ago.
But that's circular. Career progress is not necessarily correlated with actual performance. The latter is really hard to separate from politics. It is possible to have a stellar career while being a mediocre performer if you know how to work the system and have a bit of good luck. Likewise, it's possible to be an outstanding performer and have a mediocre or even non-existent career if you don't happen to be in the right place at the right time, or if you rub the wrong person the wrong way.
I think there's a whole bunch of control variables to worry about before we could take anything meaningful from that data.
They have a custom way of doing everything, so certifications for the outside world don’t necessarily apply.
Also, unless such findings are shared in a structured manner (in the form of a research paper or something) then it feels like just a cool story, and I’d be inclined to call bs.
To add my personal anecdotal point of view, getting industry specific certifications (red hat rhcsa, for example) has made me a profoundly better professional, because I had to go over a number of topics and study them thoroughly, way over what the average tutorial covers.
What's so hilarious to me in the big picture is how Google and AI in general realize they only make interesting news when they use finished products or concepts because their systems are evolutionally stupid and still can't make a decent song like a child at a piano.
I've been on the other side of an interview a few times and I can tell you, I will ask more specific and technical questions if you list a technical cert. I have a few certs but mostly to show my range of skills.
See, interviewers look at one thing I did on a past job or a few things I did because they need to be done and their takeaway is "this guy is more into such and such tech but we need someone who knows something else" but I list the certs to allow them to grill me and find out I actually know that shit.
Now, I have seen lazy-ass managers even on HN that blindly associate having certs with not having skills and to be honestI want nothing to do with such people or orgs that tolerate blatantly lazy managers who can't even delegate technical interviews to their subordinates but instead use gut feelings like this to make decisions. A person spends thousands of dollars on certs and their impression is that person is lame but someone half-starts a bunch of things and is a smooth talker and that's their man.
So, yeah, I guess it helps filter out bad employers just like it helps filter out bad employees. If you refuse to interview someone because they actually have a cert, yeah, that shit needs to be illegal.
This is what you mean right?:
Coursera LinkedIn Triplebyte Microsoft Amazon Web Services (AWS) Oracle Udacity Udemy HackerRank Cisco
Are you trying to say you can tell what industry the cert is for based on that alone? Microsoft? Cisco? Haha, Udemy????
Career progress means that Principal Engineers don't have certs -- does that add any value to determine whether certs have value? I'd say Principal Engineers are typically the ones designing the courses and have no use for displaying their qualifications.
The employer is paying a higher price, for no real benefit.
As an example, I've helped IT staff prepare for certification on email systems and have over 5 years of direct experience specializing in that area. They received their certifications no issues, but they paid the high priced business class which included the test. I paid for just the test when I went to test, and I was failed. It wasn't a matter of not knowing the material, there were structural issues that appeared intentional, and there is no incentive to fix those issues. When I say structural, I'm talking about system's theory properties such as determinism not being present (a property any valid test should have).
In fact measures that normal businesses enact to maintain accountability to avoid lawsuits that every business has, they've removed because they are legally shielded with no real due process. They'll string you along for 3 months before giving you a credit, when you can prove they misrepresented many things, and that they made many errors that directly impacted the outcome, while refusing to make right (i.e. you may be limited by the number of times you can test, and errors on their part, by policy, won't be adjusted).
They have such legal protection that you either pay the toll, or you don't get a temporary qualification to work. Its sad, but this interference in employer-employee relations for profit at your expense is common, and unavoidable due to monopoly/oligopoly and lack of oversight.
If I were a CTO involved in hiring, knowing what I know, I would not hire based on certifications. It only shows that you either have persistence or paid more money upfront, nothing more. The marketing being pushed for certifications towards business is fraudulent in many cases, and is not representative of skills.
You need the full picture, that is people not making the cut to exclude this pattern.
Food for thought: So are degrees.
I can see why one would disagree with this if they read "So is an education" so I think it's worth pointing out the difference. Degrees are the thing that are corrupted by Goodhart's law (consider the increase in cost of college tuition; people are so eager to spend more because they're trying to hit a target) and an education can only be faked as well as an individual can bullshit.
Guys who spend a lot on self-promotion are tryhards. The really strong workers don't need to promote because their work history speaks for itself.
We can all make arbitrary heuristics. And we do.