As someone who has spent A LOT of time getting certifications, this is a question I ask myself a lot. In the past, I was all about them, in some part because I had the time and resources to do them and less so because I thought they were the key to big career or knowledge gains. These days, I recommend to newer folks in the field to limit caring about certs and focus more on the prize (practical learning and real experience). Anyways, thought this was an interesting read.
Certifications can be a structured way to get knowledge, that is how I see them, and I tend to favor those that require practical exams vs theoretical answer choices, because I feel most of the information I got in school with theoretical exams is gone.
I view the practical certifications with higher regard because of that.
Absolutely! and I’m glad to see big-name cert vendors (i.e. SANS) adopting a more “practical” approach to their certification experience. I think this is a direct response to the watering-down effect that happened as more people obtains SANS certs and more SANS certs/courses were created. Don’t get me wrong, I still love certs and training but have wised up to what they can truly bring someones career. The letters don’t make the pro, the knowledge/XP does. So my advice is not to NOT get certs but to fixate more on what you learn. The piece of paper at the end is just a bonus =).
Yes, the cert is a way to get knowledge in a new field, and only do more about the same information if there are other certs related to the same info but on more advanced topics, else work experience will give you a lot of expertise.
Yeah the only cert I’ve ever held was LPIC-1 and it wasn’t really necessary for me to get to where I am in my career. At this point the practical experience vastly outweighs theoretical school type knowledge.
Practical cert courses have had way more of a tangible impact in my day to day when I do the course (but not the exam)
100% agree
Same here
I’m a proud collector of certs! :) I see them as a gamification of my work.
Hah! Oh man I know what you mean. Gotta catch them all am I right? I’ve collected a ridiculous amount of them at this point 😅 (https://shellsharks.com/about?about=student)
Impressive list!
That’s a lot of cool cert you have there! I currently have 3x AWS Associate certs, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, AWS Security Specialty, eJPT and an old ITIL cert i got when i first started in IT. I’m planning to do the PNPT in a couple of weeks and aiming for either Azure certs or CCSP after that.
