When we (the authors) first started our professional journey in the cloud, our learning process started by just “doing things”. The more real-world problems you solve and the more challenges you master, the more experience you get. Now, this should not surprise anyone and can be applied to basically every skill.

However, over time we met the world of certifications. You prepare for an exam, ace it while being watched by some random remote proctor that you never even see once and afterwards, you receive this nice digital badge from world-known organizations.

At first, we as young juniors were blown away: “My skill can be approved by Microsoft/Google/Amazon/the CNCF? I need this now and I gotta catch ‘em all!”

This feeling might resonate with many of you. You would automatically think that these exams must be super difficult but at the same time extremely rewarding as you would broaden and improve your knowledge and finally receive a badge that will certainly make you stand out across other people on the market.

But then, we stumbled across LinkedIn. Once you grow your network a little bit, you will always have some certification posts in your feed, usually related to someone passing one or some super special offer or discount code for reduced prices of and certification bundles. The feeling of being special for having certifications slowly starts to fade away and once you dive deeper, you will find “certification hunters” or posts with people posing with their AWS Golden Jacket.

A meme about tech certifications on LinkedIn

A few years have gone by since then and we were able to obtain some of the mentioned certifications. Our view on these has certainly changed over time and we wanted to share our thoughts about the evolution and the value of tech/IT certifications in this article. We will focus on tech/cloud certifications, as this is the space we work in.

Recent developments in the certification “game”

Quite recently, the Golden Kubestronaut program was introduced by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). For all the people who do not live in the CNCF/Cloud space: it’s a title that is given to you once you complete all CNCF certifications centered around various specific tools in the cloud native development space and the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator certification that obviously tests your Linux proficiency. Currently, we are speaking of 14 (in words: fourteen) certifications in total. The “fun” part: if at any point a new CNCF certification is published and you are not a Golden Kubestronaut yet, you will need to pass the new certification as well. It’s possible that at some point, one might need to pass 20 certifications to get the Golden Kubestronaut title (sidenote: over the last years the CNCF published quite a few new certifications, so who knows when new ones will arrive).

Another aspect is the price. “Good” examples are the CNCF Kubernetes certifications. If you want to become a “normal” Kubestronaut, you must pass all 5 Kubernetes certifications. You can buy them as a bundle for $1645. If you added up the normal price of each certification, you would pay a grand total of $1835.

Also, are certifications actually that hard to pass? There are of course certifications out there that are designed for beginners, e.g. when you want to get to know a new cloud provider or a specific topic. But then again, how valuable are certifications like this? Additionally, why should Google/Microsoft/Amazon make the exams super hard in the first place? Wouldn’t it be beneficial for them if there’s a lot of people working with their solutions and getting their skill/knowledge approved?

One additional aspect that many might also find frustrating is that most of the time, each and every certification must be renewed after a few years. This is especially annoying when it comes to renewing beginner “certifications” while already having an active expert “certification”. Examples here are the Associate Cloud Engineer and the Professional Cloud Architect certifications by Google. Both are similar in terms of questions and overall topics, and it’s commonly considered that the Cloud Architect is the expert version of the Associate Engineer. Now you could think that once you pass the Cloud Architect certification you should automatically be granted the Associate Engineer badge. Unfortunately, both need to be passed and renewed separately.

As a last point, the number of certifications has increased significantly as well. The hype around AI has led to new AI Engineer certifications (looking at you, AWS AI Practitioner). And the CNCF also has “good” examples once again: new certification exams dropped for various Kubernetes-related tools (e.g. Istio, Prometheus, ArgoCD etc.). This also creates an interesting thought in regards of the Golden Kubestronaut: the CNCF landscape includes a lot of tools and solutions which basically means “unlimited” resources for new certifications.

Navigating the forest of certifications

Speaking of the sheer number of available certifications, how do you know which of them to tackle? Well, granted that you’re not one of those “certification hunters”, the answer is pretty simple in general: just do the ones that fit your job and your interests. But then again, how do you know which companies and organizations provide valuable and well-known certifications so I can flex on my peers?

A meme about finding the best tech certifications

In the cloud space, the most prominent and well-known ones belong to the three major public cloud providers (Google, Microsoft, Amazon). Additionally, the CNCF certifications are a staple in your certification deck (for some reason I had to think of Yu-Gi-Oh here). To spice up your collection, it’s worth having a look at certifications that are not provided by a company/software vendor or tied to a specific tool. There are organizations specialized in offering tool-agnostic learning resources and certification exams. Good examples are the cybersecurity certifications by SANS.

All in all, it depends on what you want to achieve with your collection. For the ones that want to look good for recruiters it might look different than for the ones that do certifications only to deepen their knowledge or learn completely new topics. This also heavily influences which certifications one sees as “valuable”.

What’s the deal with certifications anyway?

Certifications play a significant role across various business domains, from internal talent management to the recruitment of new engineers. The size of a company often influences the importance of certifications (yes, size matters). If you're considering joining a smaller startup, certifications might be less crucial. However, for bigger companies, they can be a real asset especially during the hiring.

Hiring New Engineers

When it comes to hiring new engineers, certifications matter to recruiters because they provide tangible evidence of a candidate's skills. Recruiters often aren't technical experts themselves; their primary task is to sift through a vast pool of candidates on platforms like LinkedIn. Certifications and specific technology keywords serve as essential filters to identify the most suitable profiles under otherwise hard to differentiate candidates – at least in the eyes of non-technical people.

A meme about deciding between different tech certs

While certifications can give you an edge in the initial screening process, they don't guarantee an interview. The effectiveness of certifications depends heavily on the company's screening procedures. Generally, the larger the company and the more applicants for a role, the more beneficial certifications become as unique differentiators. Nevertheless, companies are becoming more and more aware that just having such a badge doesn’t necessarily mean that you are an expert, and they need to filter candidates with other methods. (Even if the certifications have “Expert” in the title).

Internal Talent Management

In large corporations, certifications are often also part of broader learning initiatives, which may include courses on platforms like Udemy. These programs aim to support internal employees in developing skills within their area of expertise or expanding into new areas. However, certifications can sometimes become a key performance indicator (KPI), which might inadvertently harm the employees they are intended to support. This is partly due to a lack of understanding about how certifications work. Many certifications can be completed without practical experience, such as some cloud certifications. In contrast, certifications like those for Kubernetes often require solving real-world scenarios, providing more meaningful skill validation. While certifications can be beneficial for internal employees, they should not become the sole focus of talent management strategies. Especially, using certifications as KPI will inevitably lead to a culture, where employees optimize for the KPI instead of perusing meaningful or interesting certifications.

In summary, certifications are valuable for both hiring and internal talent management, but their role should be balanced to ensure they support, rather than overshadow, the development of practical skills.

The actual reason to get certified

When considering certifications, the most crucial perspective is often overlooked - your own. As the individual preparing for, learning, and taking the test, your personal goals and motivations are paramount. Certifications are most effective when viewed as milestones in your professional journey, rather than end goals in themselves as it is like the KPI topic from the last paragraph.

Starting your IT career

As we already described in the beginning, our view on certificates changed over time, which probably relates also to the real-world experiences we got. At the beginning certifications are not only perceived as more valuable by the junior engineers, they actually are. Especially, looking at folks who do not have a computer science degree or are switching jobs coming from an unrelated field, even one cert can make a difference. Don’t get us wrong, by no means will it be a level playing field with experienced people during the hiring process, but it increases the chance of not being filtered out early. It shows the recruiter that you are willing to dig into topics in the IT field and it sets somewhat of an expectation and knowledge baseline even for the technical counterparts in the hiring process. In the end a certification needs way less time than a CS degree but if you know what you're applying for it can yield the same return during the hiring.

Aligning Certifications with Personal Goals

It's essential to pursue certifications that align with your career aspirations and interests. Forcing yourself to obtain a certification you don't genuinely want, or need can be counterproductive and will just harm your psychic in the long run. Instead, use certifications as tools to:

1. Deepen your knowledge in a specific area
2. Build expertise in a new field
3. Motivate yourself to learn and grow professionally

However, it's crucial to maintain realistic expectations. While certifications can be valuable, they shouldn't be your sole focus for professional development. Working and shipping actual products, websites, automation or infrastructure is often at least as helpful in your personal development as the 5th or 10th badge. Again, think about combining the theoretical part from a certification and the hands-on part from a project.

Evaluating the Value Proposition

With the multitude of certifications available today, each carrying its own price tag, it's important to carefully evaluate the value proposition of each certification. Consider factors such as:

• Relevance to your current role or desired career path
• Industry recognition and demand (rarity)
• Potential for salary increase or job opportunities
• Personal interest in the subject matter

Additionally, even when certifications are offered for free by employers, the time investment required is a significant factor to consider. More advanced or comprehensive certifications often demand many hours of study and preparation. Before committing to a certification, assess:

• The time required for preparation
• How it fits into your current work-life balance
• The long-term benefits versus the short-term time investment

A meme about studying for a tech certification

By carefully considering these factors, you can make informed decisions about which certifications to pursue, ensuring that your efforts align with your personal and professional goals. Also, it may make sense to talk with colleagues or other people in the field as this helps you understand which topics and hence certifications are up and coming and which are slowly dying out. Looking at the recent developments in AI as well, one might wonder why any of it even makes sense as AI usually seems to be pretty decent at exams like questions referencing official documentation.

Final comments

Even though there’s a bunch of aspects in the certification world that are questionable (the “certification hunters”, new certifications left and right, the prices), they are still a valuable source to broaden your knowledge, learn new things and get your skills approved.

However, everybody has met people throughout their professional careers that do their job as good as them (or even better) without having multiple certifications in the specific field. It’s unfortunate that recruiters/HR often skim CVs for certifications and use them as THE indicator to measure someone’s skill.

Doing certifications for yourself and not for others is probably best for you and your sanity. We have learned this over the last years and would see this as general advice for all juniors out there or in general people that are thinking about getting certified.

Maybe with everything that happens in the AI space it will impact the certification “game”, but we’ll just see what happens to the certification landscape in the future. In the end, certifications will always be part of the tech industry and are here to stay, just like the usual posts with discount codes and bundles for certifications in your LinkedIn feed.

What is your opinion about this topic? Do you agree with us, or do you see things differently and think that we’re just writing nonsense? Which experiences did you have in the certification world? We’re happy to read your feedback!

Cheers and until next time,

Felix and Rene