All about these marvelous digital pieces of paper.
I was recently asked why I have so many of these (which I suppose is better than being asked why I had so few earlier on in my career ha).
I realized that info I take to be common knowledge is probably what GRE words like "esoteric" and "niche" readily describe (and yes, I did have to look to those up at one point in my prior studies)!
So it turns out that nearly every Fortune 500 team I've been a part of has required its staff members to earn some kind of cloud certification (usually specific to the cloud technologies they're expected to master). People who've worked at JPMC, AT&T, Capital One, etc. know about the (infamous) internal Hall of (Certificate) Fame that you upload your certifications to after you've earned them.
Despite this requirement, most coworkers of mine don't actively update their LinkedIn or publicize their certifications pretty much anywhere unless they're applying for jobs.
The numbers also show this a universal trend:
~90% among professional software staff.Many folks at higher engineer levels (it goes Junior, Intermediate, Senior, Team Lead, Staff/Principal depending on the firm) earn tens or 100+:
In fact people often blog, post, or make careers about these topics fairly frequently these days.
Like most things, there are pros and cons. Already grumbly programmers are sometimes reluctant to pursue additional education, in cases of extreme Certification attainment the typical accusations of Tall Poppy Syndrome (resent of the meritocratic high-achieving), or its opposite the Ivory Tower (out of touch, too scholastic), and so on. But these criticisms also invite debate and the amount of content about these topics continues to accrue!
Companies that're hungry to cut cost and adapt new technologies increasingly lean on Certifications but I think there's a legitimate question around what the required number of Certifications ought to be (obviously, I don't want to have to add too many more to my already
50+ha).
Many technical disciplines require rigorous licensing standards (and after one obtains a certain level of formal education - which is considered to be the first of many steps):
It makes sense that "Software Engineering" would follow suit and require similar standards (part of the so-called "professionalization" of the field). Certifications from reputable instutitions are de facto licenses (or what would be in other disciplines/lines of work).
Many certifications are worth transferrable college credit or are themselves the end goal of upper level college courses. Examples:
To be clear we're talking about skill- or knowledge- based, proctored, sometimes lab- based, certifications with anti-cheating detection software that one takes through reputable testing platforms (resembling how one takes the SATs, GREs):
To be clear, they won't typically be sufficient in-of-themselves to get many non-Junior-level roles. But they may be required for higher-level roles.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) routinely publishes empirically-backed research touting the advantages of a certified workforce.
Dramatic reduction in delays and time to market, reduction in errors, improved morale and retention:
Other sources indicate they're increasingly seen as the best way to implement and validate cultures of continuous learning, globabl competitiveness, reduce skill gap, and make use of AI:
They can help improve your salary, quality of work, push your resume across the finish line, and help make you stand out (especially if everyone else is earning them):
Most large corporations are actually multi- or hybrid- cloud meaning that certain teams, subsidiaries operate on one set of cloud tools while others (potentially for jurisdictional reasons) operate on another. Having worked in finance I can say that many banks are now some combination of:
Most courses run upwards of $1000 (if you crunch the credit hour fees), bootcamps can cost $12,000 or more (for what's essentially a non-credit-bearing certification from a non-accredited institution with some exceptions including elite bootcamps with strong academic, institutional, and/or industry ties).
$150 range.