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What certifications do you need to become a software engineer
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In this video I'm going to be talking about the different types of certifications. I'm also going to talk about which ones are valuable and which ones are not valuable
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And then I'm going to share my thoughts on certifications in general
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The first type of certifications that you can get are by taking online courses
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These courses might be ones that are posted on Udemy or on LinkedIn Learning
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or Pluralsight or a whole bunch of different other sites out there
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And these courses can provide a lot of useful information and a lot of value
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I've taken several courses that have been really good and have really helped me develop my skills over the years
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But the certifications and certificates that come from these kind of programs
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really aren't going to be that helpful in that they aren't recognized industry certifications
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Basically they are certifications of completion and their value may be helpful in some situations
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where if you're getting a reimbursement from your company in order to take the course
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they may want to see that certificate of completion. The next kind of certification you can get is by going to a boot camp
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Not all boot camps are created equal. It's a gold rush out there and there's a lot of boot camps that are popping up
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and some of them charge a lot of money for very little useful information
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or just a poor quality education. And then there are others that provide an outstanding education
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and great structured way to get started in different areas of programming
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So depending on which ones you go with, if you go with a high quality boot camp
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that can actually be helpful and in that situation I think that the certification can really help you with getting your first job
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because it's proof of some form of experience. Now beyond that once you already are in the industry and have more experience
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I think that that certification will hold less and less value as your experience becomes more and more important on your resume
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for proving your abilities and what you're able to accomplish. But definitely getting that first job it can help
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Similar to that are tech schools and there are tech schools that offer really short programs
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and really long programs and there's a ton of these for-profit tech schools out there
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And similar to boot camps, really the value is going to depend on the quality of the program
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If you go to a really crappy tech school then a certificate is going to be worthless
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when compared to something that at least is recognized as a program
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that provides a good solid rigorous training. And like with a boot camp, the certs that you get from these programs
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are really going to be geared towards helping you get your first job
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They aren't going to really carry the same weight as a computer science degree down the road in your career
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but they definitely can help with getting your foot in the door. There are also certifications you can get for specific programming languages
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and for frameworks that are built on top of those in which you go and actually take administered tests and then you receive your certification
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And I'm not talking about like the Udemy courses. We already talked about that kind of stuff
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I'm talking about a more like formal official type certification process. And while that's great in preparing for these
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you will be having to deep dive into the nuances of a programming language
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From a practical standpoint, I really don't think that the effort that you put in to get
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these certifications is generally rewarded to match the amount of time that you've put in
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to getting to that point. I just don't really see too many people putting those on their resumes
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and in some cases it can actually be a stigma if you have like tons and tons of certifications
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but not a lot of actual experience to back it up because it can look like you're just trying to
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utilize certs in order to push your career and make up for your actual lack of experience
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And the thing to keep in mind for these kind of certification tests
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is that they are hit and miss. There's a ton of different options out there
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and a lot of them come from programs that have names that make them sound very much legit
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There's a lot of scammy ones just trying to take money that just aren't even recognized
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There are some solid legit ones out there. You know, for example, if you're going into AWS stuff
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there are some out there that will really help you in the DevOps side of the IT industry
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but the certifications don't guarantee that you're actually a good engineer. And for that reason, there are a lot of hiring managers that really aren't going to care about
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your certs. There are some particular small niches inside of software where the certs will carry more weight than others
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but in general, the amount of time that you put into getting certs just isn't going to be worth it
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You're going to be much better off spending that time actually building things and developing
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practical experience that you can showcase to prove that you have experience in your domain
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And it's important to remember that the best certs teach you how to smash the like button
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for the YouTube algorithm. Okay, so they don't. But you can become a successful programmer even if you don't have certs
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because that value of a cert is largely going to help you in the very beginning of your career
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but quickly everything shifts over to your experience as being the most important thing
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in your career. And now that you have an idea of how certifications affect your career
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you should watch this video on how to grow your career fast as a software engineer
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And I'll see you in the next one. Lates
