You don't really need certifications: A Short Story
Here I come with a rant about something that has become a somewhat unnecessary practice on getting jobs in IT. As a disclaimer, this is a personal opinion and I'm open to discussion, so take it with a grain of salt.
Before working
I was a student that always strived to get the highest score. If I do an analysis of myself since elementary school until the last year of high school, I really liked to show off that I was the best by getting the highest grades. Where I live, the highest score was generally a 100, or a 10 in some cases. Seeing this on a certain perspective, it might feel so rewarding and beautiful to see that your score on something was composed of three digits instead of two, which would be something small and an indicator of failure on something (or everything).
But getting to the point, I wasn't really showing that I learned stuff, I was just competing against my classmates on who has the best score in the room. For my parents, it was an indicator of success. If you got less than a 100, one of the main complaints would be "where did you fail?" or "were you still the highest?". If it was lower than 90, then it would get harsher, like "you need to study more". The "threshold" of approving a course is of 70, so I still had a pretty good grade, but for them, and even other parents with their kids, less than 90 would be something bad. And it was part of my mindset. Less than 90 would give you the huge punishment of my life at the time: Not being able to use the computer for a week, which would mean no World of Warcraft or whatever I was playing at the time.
On the two years before college, I went into a high quality high school, considered one of the best in the country. I went there by personal decision, but with the obvious goal of showing up who would one of the best students in the country. I had my bad grades on the first exams (a 30 on a physics exam was the most painful), but I was able to recover my grades on that semester (getting a 100 on the last exam, which was majestic). I graduated with what is called "honor bachelor", which is passing the national exams we do at last year of high school with grades above 90 on all topics. I got a medal (I don't have it anymore) and a certificate (useful for nothing now), and it was beautiful. Then college came.
College was that punch that knocks you to the ground on the first blow, letting you know that you aren't anything huge, one of the same. Although the whole experience of that high school did help me (at least on the math and writing courses I had), my first semester consisted on two related courses of programming with a professor adept on the "academical terrorism" ideology (torture your students psychologically and only stay with the best), making me ditch the course in the middle. Ah, and that professor dictated his own rules: If you leave the course and tells him through email that you are not coming, he would give you a 65. If not, even if you did homework and such, you would get a 0. Guess who didn't send an email?
Having two 0's on your grades was simply a bummer, but it was what taught me to be humble with grades, and to really try to learn, because that bad experience was a mix of being too cocky and thinking that I was superior. Still, I wouldn't say I learned a lot on the rest of my college life because there were topics that I really disliked or really haven't had a proper teacher that really taught the topic and was just collecting the paycheck (looking at you Algorithms Design). In the end, I only had one course with less than 70, one with a 75 and the rest was between 80 and 100. That helped me in getting scholarships, hence getting my semesters paid, helping my parents in not spending much money besides what I needed monthly. I didn't work because my parents didn't want me to do it (bad decision) and wanted me to graduate quickly. So, I spent 4 and a half years, which is a "good indicator" for an Engineering student.
Working (and the good experience of certifications)
I was pretty worried about all the "threats" I received prior to my first experience working. "Working is way different than college", or "nothing you learn on college will be useful on real life" were the most menacing and I really thought I was an academic guy (I wanted to be a teacher) and wouldn't have a good experience on my internship. In the end, it was completely different, I enjoyed the experience and loved the idea of going to work every day. I lived more than 50km away from my workplace at the time and I still enjoyed going there, because I felt useful and learned a lot of stuff (Plus, I was getting paid). And well, what I learned in college did help me in performing a more cleaner job, something easy to document for future reference (ex-coworkers still tell me this, which makes me slightly blush). So take that.
I didn't go with any certificates at the time because living far away consumed a lot of time. Besides, I had a small part-time job that was paying in dollars, which is a valuable currency and relatively expensive to get here. But seeing coworkers getting certificated, plus my workplace motivating people to get certified in the cloud was my motivation to go back into studying. After moving to a place closer to my workplace, I started getting prepared for my first certification, AWS Cloud Practitioner. I wanted to go with the Solutions Architect Associate first, but it was too expensive and didn't want to lose it. I was nervous, but passed the exam without problems.
Few months later, I decided to get into the Solutions Architect Associate. This time I felt confident: Spent on a yearly platform subscription (Linux Academy) and the guy who did the course (Adrian Cantrill, which now has his own platform) is one of the best. I felt that I learned a lot after watching all of the videos, and felt that I really was able to handle almost any kind of situation related to designing on AWS. Did the exam and got a very nice score.
On the same month, I got an email from GIAC that I was chosen to do the beta exam for a certification they wanted to make available in a few months, and for free. Spent my time studying on the bus and also passed it. Finally, I started practicing for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator, even without any prior experience with Kubernetes. I had my sweat for that certification, and I was really worried on getting a good grade or at least passing it. But even if I didn't pass, I would feel proud of learning a lot about how to handle it. In the end, I just missed two 2-point questions, but got a nice grade.
The bad experience with a single certification
Here is where the purpose of this post comes. So, on this year, I was on another job completely unrelated to my previous work experience. At the beginning, I was enjoying what I was doing, but as time passed, it became boring, presented no challenge, and some of the stuff I was doing, I wasn't able to even automate because the higher-ups didn't want to listen and wanted to keep with their solutions. I was looking for jobs, and had the luck of having an ex-coworker that referred me for a Cloud Engineer position at a company he is working as a manager. The only thing that I was lacking, but seemed easy to get with my previous experience, was Azure knowledge. So I booked an Azure Fundamentals exam (for free) and put my effort for the exam. He even asked me to get an Azure Administrator certification, but honestly I was focused on the CKA at the time, so the condition was to ensure this was necessary to get the position, so I could reschedule the CKA and focus on the Azure exam. I got no response, and glad I didn't, so I kept working on the CKA.
Here come the problems: As we are on the COVID-19 situation, exam centers are closed, so you had to do this at home. It wouldn't be a problem as I did the CKA at home without any issues, only had to get a decent webcam and use Google Chrome (totally tolerable). For this one, you must have Windows or Mac to run their software for testing (OnVUE). This is a huge red flag for me as my personal computer has Fedora, and I don't have money nor interest in purchasing a Mac device or a Windows ISO. At least I had my work computer lent by the company, which ran Windows, but it is completely restricted of doing any changes, so probably the firewall would give issues. If I ran the system check on that computer, the software would indicate everything worked as expected. But on the day of the exam, guess what, I had issues (no connection). I got frustrated, so threw a ticket to OnVUE support to see if they could reinstate the voucher used for the exam, which they did. I rescheduled the exam for the next two months.
During these two months, I wasn't accepted on that position my ex-coworker referred me to, but I did found another job as a Cloud Engineer on a small company. The CEO was my ex-boss on the first gig, and he was looking for someone able to help him with applying the whole DevOps practices on his software development company. He trusted my capabilities and I enjoyed working with him during that time, so it was an awesome proposal (although it has some drawbacks that I might mention in another post). The whole focus is on AWS, and as a small company, at least I don't see the necessity of going to Azure or GCP.
Getting back into the Azure Fundamentals exam, I didn't study at all for this second time. I just skimmed the same exam from Linux Academy, but I had in mind that getting that certificate wouldn't help me on anything, just having something on the CV that wasn't even valuable. In the end, I did the exam and didn't pass. But I felt nothing. Like, even if I passed, I would only go into that typical LinkedIn brag about "You got a new badge" and such. But at what benefit? My current workplace wouldn't even care (we don't use Azure) and it wouldn't reflect any knowledge on the platform (and I might say I can still use Azure, because it shouldn't be that different than AWS). Also, I didn't pay for it, so it didn't hurt. Sure, it was free and a good opportunity, but honestly, is like getting free apple juice, but you don't really enjoy it or like it.
Reflexion (and the reality)
Being part of water-cooler conversation groups with professionals of the area, one idea they all agree is: Certifications are only for CVs, they might not show any real-life knowledge. And to be honest, I agree with them. I took my AWS certifications because my previous workplace was "rewarding" people getting these certifications (they only paid what I spent on the exam, the salary and the opportunities of better experiences never came), I took the GCSA because it is a too expensive certification and it would look cool (what is doing the difference is the knowledge obtained from the SANS course I took that let me get this certification) and the reason I took the CKA was because there was a combo of course+certificate on Black Friday, although I have to admit I loved the on-hands certification approach compared than consuming a book/watching slides and vomiting it on a single/multiple choice exam.
And I have to admit, part of my goal of certifying was simply trying to look as the best kid of the kind. LinkedIn (or any other social media) helps you on bragging that stuff and giving you that pleasant dosage of dopamine, just to show up that you are a "successful" person. Certifications, most of the time, are not indicators of success or knowledge, neither grades or scores. What really matters is: can you handle it in real life at any time? If you can't, don't worry, you can still learn it, it is a matter of practice.
Unfortunately, to land into a new job these days, it seems that the HR filter consists on checking what certifications you currently have. I don't really know if they really look at your experience at all. In the end, for the job opportunities I was able to get (including the transition from the internship to a full-time job), they were mostly because they know I'm a competent person on what I do and looked friendly, able to cope with the team I was going to interact with. They didn't care about my certifications. I can't do anything to change HR, but maybe, what I can do, or even you as an interviewer, is to really listen to the people that you are interviewing. You should really know the person you are going to work with, and two pages are not a good summary of that.
Finally, I can really think that I'm not the only one who did certifications with the single purpose of passing. What matters is what you learn from that, but honestly, having a certification or not might not make a difference on your professional level. How many people without a certification can really do a better task than those one certificated? I don't have the numbers, but I know people that match this description. They are still huge professionals, able to learn whatever they propose to learn, and do an awesome job, without spending hundreds or thousands on an exam that would state they really know how to do it. I can really see it, not difficult to imagine it at all.
Conclusion
Don't spend money on certifications with the purpose of having something on your CV. Only do it because you really want to learn something. If you need to demonstrate to a place that you know a topic by getting a certification, you should see it as a red flag, because this is not a good way to find talent or someone capable on knowing about the topic. Here is where the interviewing process with the technical people should evaluate your capabilities, not three lines on your CV saying you passed an exam. There might be exceptions, obviously, but the only tip I can provide to you (and even to my future self) is just learn and apply. That is what really matters.
What I would say, if you are in college or just passing high school and want to get into IT, is to get professional experience. Like I said, I didn't have any previous work experience before my professional internship, but I know people that is not even in college and are doing internships for learning. Internet is the best source to learn stuff, but a job is where what you learned will be applied, which means more learning and acquiring experience.
Tags: 2020, tech, certifications, personal, rant