Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...
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@Obsolesce said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@Dashrender said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@Obsolesce said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
SME means you are the expert. Needing a cert means you are struggling to show basic competence. Those are the opposite ends of the spectrum.
I see SME's in the Microsoft spaces with backing certs all over. In fact, I don't see any Microsoft SME's that are not obtaining the relevant Microsoft certs.
If I work with something, and I've very good at it, I will go get the cert... first, it's easy, second, it's usually free, third, it shows on paper you know enough to pass the cert, which if you have taken the exam, would know it's saying a lot... i have seen first hand! It's great to see how you are doing by taking the certs.
Microsoft certs are the ones most famous for being worthless though.
Not for me, definitely not for me. Without them, I'd not have gotten as far, that is for sure.
The problem here, for you AND for me, is that we will never know how far we'd have gotten without them.
Had I kept them on my resume, would I have gotten offers that I did not otherwise? I don't think so, but I can't tell you for certain. That would be impossible.
In your case, you don't know how far you'd have gotten if you would have spent more time learning other skills or not worrying about the useless bits of the certs and instead applied yourself to learning something more useful or just looking harder for a job... the cost of lost opportunity. Yes, the opportunities that you actually got were because of the certs that you actually had. But you'll never know which jobs you missed out on because of them.
Whatever jobs / careers we end up with are always the result of whatever choices we made. But we can never know how far we'd have gone if we had done something differently. But I can tell you that people with and without certs both get to the top of the game. Certs can help, but they can also do nothing.
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@Obsolesce said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
I also like to use certification paths as like a syllabus to learn technologies I'm very interested in. Like a way to help steer my career in the direction I want to take it. That has been working out well lately.
I agree, and I talk about this a lot. I think certs are an excellent way to know what is good to study. So much so, that I recommend nearly everyone do the cert paths, but only most people to actually get the certs. I regularly recommend doing all of the learning for a cert but not bothering to get the cert itself.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
I regularly recommend doing all of the learning for a cert but not bothering to get the cert itself.
Why go through all the effort and get nothing tangible to show for it. It's a huge mistake IMO.
Most people you give advice to are on the junior level or mid level and are making under $150k a year. As @Dashrender mentioned if nothing else its a great way to pass HR filters and get your foot into a phone interview. Then thats where you show your actual experience.
You can tell when someone cheats getting certs within a few minutes of asking them questions, so of course its got no value for those people. When you are certified in a bunch of different areas and can talk like a SME on those areas it does show you are knowledgeable and practical.
If you spend $2k over let's say 5 certs, it will surely get you more than $2k return income on a yearly (repeating basis).
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Why go through all the effort and get nothing tangible to show for it. It's a huge mistake IMO.
Because effort to knowledge. Often the cert has zero value for someone, but costs a lot of money. Why spend money if there is no return on it (no ROI?)
Just to have the paper for yourself? Okay, but put a dollar sign on that.
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Most people you give advice to are on the junior level or mid level and are making under $150k a year.
true, but my goal is to show them how to break out of that. Often the ideas that get tossed around are based on the thinking that that's the cap and that that is all that there is. Often I would suspect that they are stuck there because of mindsets such as thinking that certs are the answer to show value, but once you are into that range, that really isn't the case much anymore.
I'm not espousing avoiding certs. My point all along is that the idea that certs are worth so much later in your career isn't really true on any scale.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Most people you give advice to are on the junior level or mid level and are making under $150k a year.
true, but my goal is to show them how to break out of that. Often the ideas that get tossed around are based on the thinking that that's the cap and that that is all that there is. Often I would suspect that they are stuck there because of mindsets such as thinking that certs are the answer to show value, but once you are into that range, that really isn't the case much anymore.
I'm not espousing avoiding certs. My point all along is that the idea that certs are worth so much later in your career isn't really true on any scale.
I can see what you are saying about once you have 15-20 years experience it doesnt matter and I agree with that. I will hit 15 years in another year, but it definitely helped me in my first 14 years.
I have talked about this with people before, the less experience you have the harder it is to stick out and having competencies in multiple areas is important and gives you an advantage to getting into the interview.
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
If you spend $2k over let's say 5 certs, it will surely get you more than $2k return income on a yearly (repeating basis).
This is where I don't agree. On average I'd estimate that you'd lose money doing this versus either just investing the money (worst case) and/or using the money and time to focus on your career rather than a cert which is at best a proxy to your career.
It sounds obviously, $2K of certs will pay for themselves. But for the average person, this doesn't actually happen once they are past the entry level. Yes, when you are still getting your foot in the door this is going to be true almost always. But once you are established in your field, certs are really only going to be widely helpful in moving to an adjacent field.
Remember that there is a cost of lost opportunity in getting certs. They take time and money. And while they are unlikely to result in truly zero benefit, there is a lot of lost benefits that you can't measure and that people normally forget about.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Why go through all the effort and get nothing tangible to show for it. It's a huge mistake IMO.
Because effort to knowledge. Often the cert has zero value for someone, but costs a lot of money. Why spend money if there is no return on it (no ROI?)
Just to have the paper for yourself? Okay, but put a dollar sign on that.
Yes I think you can put a $$ number on certifications. Some definitely mean guaranteed value.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
If you spend $2k over let's say 5 certs, it will surely get you more than $2k return income on a yearly (repeating basis).
This is where I don't agree. On average I'd estimate that you'd lose money doing this versus either just investing the money (worst case) and/or using the money and time to focus on your career rather than a cert which is at best a proxy to your career.
It sounds obviously, $2K of certs will pay for themselves. But for the average person, this doesn't actually happen once they are past the entry level. Yes, when you are still getting your foot in the door this is going to be true almost always. But once you are established in your field, certs are really only going to be widely helpful in moving to an adjacent field.
Remember that there is a cost of lost opportunity in getting certs. They take time and money. And while they are unlikely to result in truly zero benefit, there is a lot of lost benefits that you can't measure and that people normally forget about.
That is opposite what I have seen and this may because I am working in newer specialized fields such Security and Cloud but certs are damn near required for almost any Engineering / Architect position.
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
I have talked about this with people before, the less experience you have the harder it is to stick out and having competencies in multiple areas is important and gives you an advantage to getting into the interview.
Absolutely. But without certs you can stick out much sooner. The more you get certs, actually, the harder I feel it is to stick out. Because everyone has certs and that's about it. Certs are a tough way to stick out. University is impossible to stick out. Not that they are bad, they just aren't a sticking out kind of thing. Every junior tech with zero networking experience or knowledge has a Cisco cert, for example. Dime a dozen.
But take that time, teach yourself unique or special or advanced skills, use the money to get equipment or experience, volunteer... there are great ways to use the time and money that really, really make you stand out.
Again, talking mid career, not first jobs. Like 3-5 years in. In my personal example, I got my first jobs without certs at all. But I used certs to at least attempt the next leap. But by my sixth year in IT, they were useless to me. I wasn't at $150K, but I was to the point where experience and skills were all that hiring managers cared about. The people with the certs weren't getting considered over me because of their certs.
For me, certs might have helped me in a two year window from year three to year five of my IT career. Before that I had none at all, after that they weren't considered valuable because I wasn't entry level enough any longer.
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
If you spend $2k over let's say 5 certs, it will surely get you more than $2k return income on a yearly (repeating basis).
This is where I don't agree. On average I'd estimate that you'd lose money doing this versus either just investing the money (worst case) and/or using the money and time to focus on your career rather than a cert which is at best a proxy to your career.
It sounds obviously, $2K of certs will pay for themselves. But for the average person, this doesn't actually happen once they are past the entry level. Yes, when you are still getting your foot in the door this is going to be true almost always. But once you are established in your field, certs are really only going to be widely helpful in moving to an adjacent field.
Remember that there is a cost of lost opportunity in getting certs. They take time and money. And while they are unlikely to result in truly zero benefit, there is a lot of lost benefits that you can't measure and that people normally forget about.
That is opposite what I have seen and this may because I am working in newer specialized fields such Security and Cloud but certs are damn near required for almost any Engineering / Architect position.
If you have certs, you'll end up in shops with certs. From my own experience, the security heads on Wall St. were all uncertified. They hired people with certs, but the easiest way into those positions was just being in IT, being security minded, and taking an interest in that area of the field.
Those fields are specifically ones I had mentioned above as having cert benefits right now because of a hiring binge. But I'm guessing just like it ended in other IT areas like Windows, Networking, and Linux once people realized that the cert process was a train wreck, that it will end in the "buzz" fields, too. It's a common pattern.
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@scottalanmiller what's an established level to you? Is it based on experience and/or salary?
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Yes I think you can put a $$ number on certifications. Some definitely mean guaranteed value.
None guarantee value. There is no cert that has a guaranteed ROI for everyone, absolutely none. Some are more likely than others, some have almost no value ever, some are almost always a loss. But you definitely can't say that they all have value, there is always someone high enough in any field that even the top cert, even every cert that there is, combined won't raise their salary one penny or open a single greater door. But every cert, every single one, has costs that need to be offset by something. Cost in money and cost in time.
Even the absolute best certs out there carry a reasonable amount of career risk. Maybe not a ton, and it feels good to earn the cert, but there is still a solid potential to actually lose money. Not that money is the only factor, hence why I said to put a dollar sign on the personal satisfaction to having the paper.
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@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@scottalanmiller what's an established level to you? Is it based on experience and/or salary?
I'd say experience. If you have solid established experience, you can command the salary, if that is what matters to you. Lots of top end people take small salaries because they want other benefits. Including volunteers in many cases.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@IRJ said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Yes I think you can put a $$ number on certifications. Some definitely mean guaranteed value.
None guarantee value. There is no cert that has a guaranteed ROI for everyone, absolutely none. Some are more likely than others, some have almost no value ever, some are almost always a loss. But you definitely can't say that they all have value, there is always someone high enough in any field that even the top cert, even every cert that there is, combined won't raise their salary one penny or open a single greater door. But every cert, every single one, has costs that need to be offset by something. Cost in money and cost in time.
Even the absolute best certs out there carry a reasonable amount of career risk. Maybe not a ton, and it feels good to earn the cert, but there is still a solid potential to actually lose money. Not that money is the only factor, hence why I said to put a dollar sign on the personal satisfaction to having the paper.
It's funny, one of the coolest certs I have gotten has zero marketability value, but taught me quite a bit. ECSA was fun, but nobody has heard of it.
If you have a popular non tech cert like CISSP you are instantly insanely more valuable. CISSP probably increased my value more than any other certification, but it was not technical nor fun.
Then you have certifications like Azure which is nearly all practical (like my ECSA was) and you build out an environment in a virtual lab. Then microsoft grades your lab at the end. Obviously a test like that proves you have competency.
Finally, you have some gimme certs that require very little studying, but provide high value in employment searches like AWS CCP or CSSK. Both highly sought after, but fairly little effort to obtain. CCSK was definitely a good one even though it was not alot of material and I respect it.
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@Florida_man said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@flaxking said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
you have to work 100 hour weeks - and that doesn't let you open source your configuration as code, you have to pick your battles.
That's just a bad choice to stay in a strong economy. If you want put in 120% effort for your employer and get virtually zero out of it, that's on you and you alone.
I've been looking since they asked me to come in when I was on parental leave. The problem is that I need a remote position, and I haven't had much luck there yet.
I've been seriously thinking about my own startup.
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@Dashrender said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@flaxking said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Many of the sysadmin jobs I've been applying for want repo links. So when you have a family, and a job where sometimes you have to work 100 hour weeks - and that doesn't let you open source your configuration as code, you have to pick your battles.
And then there's the homework assignments, one job had me submit an architecture design even before I had an interview with the recruiter.
huh - did you send them an bill? That does seem unreasonable - you produced work, you should be compensated... who's to say they aren't just using you for free architecture design?
Practical homework assignments are fairly common and to me seems to be a better sign of a company than those links to coding tests where it takes forever to understand the question and that there are study guides for. I've never had a practical assignment before any interview before though.
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@flaxking said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@Florida_man said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
@flaxking said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
you have to work 100 hour weeks - and that doesn't let you open source your configuration as code, you have to pick your battles.
That's just a bad choice to stay in a strong economy. If you want put in 120% effort for your employer and get virtually zero out of it, that's on you and you alone.
I've been looking since they asked me to come in when I was on parental leave. The problem is that I need a remote position, and I haven't had much luck there yet.
I've been seriously thinking about my own startup.
Doing a startup of your own is incredibly rewarding and insanely hard.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why IT certifications are worth more than you think...:
Doing a startup of your own is incredibly rewarding and insanely hard.
...and wouldn't trade the experience for anything!
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@JasGot We took the plunge with our own May 2003. Heh, Married in 2002, the business in May 2003, kid started sometime a month or so later born on 04, and then our first house in 2004 or 05.
The catch with being self-employed is the difficulty in getting loans and mortgages. At least, up here in Canada it's a pint of blood, the first born, and signing off on the second if need be.
