Tech Certifications — are they worth the investment?

Types of certifications

Certificates on Course Completion

This is usually given for the short-term courses or workshops on successful completion.

There are pretty high-level ones if you’re just looking to learn something completely new, or very technical ones on the specific topics you’d like to improve on.

When I started to gain more interest in data science and data engineering after 4–5 years of experience as a full-stack developer, I decided to do an online course called “Python Data Science” on EDX provided by IBM.

The company had a policy on personal education that I will get reimbursed for the cost when I provide a certificate upon the course completion, so I invested some of my spare time to sit down and go through the materials and submitting assignments.

Personally this was a game changer for me (not talking about this particular course, but investing in learning something new that I’m interested in outside of work) — because I ended up transitioning into a data engineering role shortly after, which I’m really enjoying at the moment.

This is an example of the technical workshops that I considered doing:

Advanced React Training Course

Certification Exams

There is a range of certifications by the cloud providers e.g. AWS, Microsoft, GCP.

While I was still working predominantly with .NET in my job, I was working my way towards getting a MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer). I did two exams which helped me widen my knowledge, but Microsoft retired the existing certification path and introduced the new role-based certificates.

So far I have done three of such exams (have a look at my linkedin to see how these appear on my profile)

Microsoft

Exam 480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3

Exam 483: Programming in C#

Google

Professional Data Engineer Certification

Thoughts on Certification Exams

Pros

• Looks good on CV, provides a good positioning for your career / performance conversation with your manager
• Usually the company will be willing to cover the exam cost under some training budget, even for other associated costs including the prep materials if you’re lucky.
  When I took my MCP exam (programming in C#) back in 2019 (I worked at a bank at that time), the company paid for the exam and the practice questions bundle, and I was able to use an “exam leave” to take a day off to sit the exam and take a well-deserved rest afterwards.
• Helpful for my job. Usually I only learn about what we already have, and maybe research a bit about alternatives. But this high level approach of trying to learn everything is entirely different. I learned quite a lot of stuff that I could use as potential solutions for my new projects. Being able to add a few things into the armoury for the next decision making is a huge advantage.
• Confidence boost. Earning trust from your team. otherwise takes time to work with them and prove your skills

Cons

• Takes time and effort. Even if you have hands-on experience, your actual work can’t possibly cover all of the topics that appear on the exam. Also, taking an exam is just another skill that needs some practice.
• Adds pressure. I hate exam pressure, and not being able to enjoy my weekends. There is always more materials that I can read to potentially help preparing for the exam and I end up feeling guilty doing something else in my spare time.
  I was also low-key concerned about having an awkward conversation with my manager in case I failed the exam the company paid for (although my manager won’t mind it at all!)
  If you already have a lot going on in your life, having to take an exam might just add to your mental stress.
• Not a deal-breaker if you don’t have the certification in terms of hiring process or measuring performance in your job. Engineers are usually assessed by skills and experience, and having a certification is not really critical as long as you’re doing your job well.

Are you considering getting any certifications?
What certifications are you looking into?
What’s stopping you from doing it?

Feel free to share your thoughts or your experience getting a certification, whether you think it helped you or did not find useful at all 🙂