My Perspective on Certifications

After a lot of posts about certification, some people began to ask me, what is worth, what the path to take and things like that, so let's talk about that.

I will try to bring a vision as a certified developer and as an interviewer for companies, and remembering, this is MY OPINION.

One day a friend of mine said, "certifications are like zombies; you can survive against one or two, but when a lot of start to appear, it becomes an apocalypse."

Well, the idea behind this phrase is that to really become a significant difference in your curriculum, you have to have a lot, and I really agree about it. We know that from time to time some certifications become free, and a lot of people get them, so it's normal to see the real value decrease. So the one who has a lot of different certifications shows that they have a real goal.

But, let's analyze some points. As a developer, it's really nice to have the idea of something that "validates" your knowledge about it. In reality, the most common certifications are multiple choice, like the Microsoft one, and the black market of dumps (real certification questions available to buy) is so common, and the exams are not deep enough to prove something or use "tricks" to make the exam more "difficult" (like options that seem equal, but one has some typo, for example).

As an interviewer, when I see a candidate of this type, I really ask about everything regarding the certifications, to really search if they have real knowledge and experience about their title. In the worst case, I know that the person has a good memory to memorize the answers.

Certifications that are hands-on like Node.js and Kubernetes, on the other hand, are nicer. It's really difficult for someone to use a dump (not impossible, but the person's memory must be excellent), and you know that the person has the minimum knowledge necessary to make things work, so you can skip some questions in the interview process. But even these do not promote that the person has some experience or really knows the things.

So, to conclude and even explain my certifications. When the quantity or some specific certification appears on someone's CV, it's nice that it shows two main things:

1. The person cares about their career and searches for things that prove their qualities.
2. The person has the most important skill ever, the skill to sit down and study (in the worst case, memorize a lot of answers, something that is really useful actually).

So, that's it. Do not think that it is really something important for someone's CV, but it's a really "nice plus" because it shows a focus, an idea to prove that you are not stopped. But, there are a lot of ways (even better and cheaper) to show this skill. If I needed to pay for new certifications, of course, I wouldn't do that, but if more free ones appear, it is nice to increase my zombie troop!