HACKER Q&A
📣 firstSpeaker

How important it is to have certificates? For example AWS, Azure, etc.?


How important it is to have certificates? For example AWS, Azure, etc.?


  👤 PragmaticPulp Accepted Answer ✓
Depends on where you’re at in your career.

If you’re a junior with little or no real-world experience, certificates can fill in gaps in your resume. We can’t always get the experience we want or need right away, so courses and certificates are one way to fill they gap and provide some proof.

If you’re 10 years deep into a career and trying to change into something cloud-related without prior experience, getting a certificate or two might help you open up more job opportunities. It probably won’t get you lead jobs, but it can help keep your resume from being disqualified before the tech screen.

On the other hand, if you’ve already got years of experience doing cloud work in the real world, getting certificates probably isn’t going to help much. Good real world experience is better than certificates.

There are exceptions: Some old school companies rely heavily on credentials over all else, so collecting credentials and certificates can be a way to get into these companies and get ahead. It’s less common at modern, reasonable tech companies though.


👤 oenetan
IT/Security - important

Devops - less so important

Coding/programming - useless, just have example code like a github portfolio with your work instead.


👤 DataJunkie
Working at a startup using those technologies would probably help more. It also depends on your motivation for the certificate. If it's to get a broader or deeper understanding of a set of technologies that you don't work with, they can be useful.

If you're using it to check off a box for HR, you may want to work on some projects that use the more major components of these offers (for AWS: EC2, S3, etc. but not all the niche components).


👤 firstSpeaker
How about PMP/PMI related certificates? Are those really being used/looked at as a value added item in someone's resume?