Ask HN: Is it still worth doing Red Hat certs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it still worth doing Red Hat certs?

16 pointsdextersgenius12 comments

With all of these recent developments, and even big companies like SuSE and Oracle reprimanding Red Hat, it sounds like Red Hat has become a blemish in the opensource world.

But as a Windows sysadmin who's been struggling to break into the Linux sysadmin world (due to lack of opportunities), I've seen that most companies still seem to be asking for Red Hat certs.

I know LFCA/LFCS exists but so far I haven't come across any adverts asking for these (at least, where I live).

So the question for all you peeps is, is it worth feeding the devil and doing an RHCSA/RHCE? Or is all of this just political theater blown out of proportion, and Red Hat isn't really evil but just a regular business doing business-ey things, and nothings changed in the real world?

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AFAIK the people who pay RedHat money are F500, banks, other enterprise and government, i.e, "boring" organisations that absolutely could not care less how much RedHat does or does not give back to the community.

If you are looking for employment in those sorts of places in particular I think the certs remain valuable.

I do think what IBM/RH are doing is bad for the long term health of their products. Linux distros live and die by the size and strength of their communities.

Zero-sum thinking (hey, someone else is benefiting from my efforts! That should be MINE!) betrays a lack of understanding of the kinds of network and community effects that helped make RedHat so valuable.

> Zero-sum thinking

Who would have thought that people who just buy stuff don't care about things as much as the people who built it?

This whole thing was predictable when Red Hat got sold off to IBM, and it seems to be the ever repeating cycle of American capitalism. In order for such communities to exceed the lifespans of their creators, we need foundations and non-profits to prevent hostile takeovers by VCs.

The RHCSA and RHCE certs are more to show you know Linux and Ansible, respectfully, rather than anything RedHat specifically. The reputation of RedHat as a company doesn't really matter in that regard. The certs still prove you are capable with Linux and Ansible, and since they're hands on practical exams they do a really good job of that.

It's not worth it to get certs in general. As long as you can do the work, education is far down on the list when it comes to hiring. Even recruiters will tell you that these days, "Do you want someone who can do the work, or do you want someone who can memorize a few answers for a test?"

It should be that way but in many, many companies it’s not. I would argue it’s extremely common for companies to (a) not hire unless you have specific language knowledge, even though you’re clearly the overall better candidate (b) require leet code tests (c) only hire people with degrees.

What about the insane possibility that someone who can memorize a few answers for a test can ALSO do the work?

This varies highly by where you want to work. Government and adjacent places love certs.

The vast majority of gov jobs are very low skill and effort so of course they like degrees. It's a checkbox they can fall back on to say the person is "qualified."

You're spot-on. IT in government is being a liaison to the vendor that does the actual work.

It really depends on the reason to get a specific cert

I carry a few certs for work related to the products I most heavily work with because they:

- help ensure our partner status with those vendors

- give customers the warm fuzzies that our people actually know what they are talking about (at least to some basic level)

Experience trumps certification every day of the week ... except when it does not - breaking into a new career path can be one of those times

Most certs show you know enough basic material to pass a moderately-low bar of competency (yes, some are far harder and/or indicate a relatively-high bar of competency ... but the initial Red Hat certs are not those))

I can't speak to hiring practices now (I'm retired), but back in the day, putting your certification(s) on your CV would definitely be advantageous. If the job posting says “RHCE strongly desirable”, the non-technical person screening the applications would often put any that didn't say that in a different, lower-priority pile. Now of course the person who is actually going to be your boss is definitely more interested in your job history, education, and skill set than whether your CV is buzzword-compliant.

Whether that is worth it to you, given the cost of certification, is a different matter.

It won't hurt but I don't think most places will care for it that much either. I work in gov space and we maintain some RH presence so a RHCE is regarded as nice to have but it won't have much weight after initial resume screening.

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