[breakingcups]

Ugh, this has Microsoft's playbook written all over it. Introduce a certification, thus increasing the gap between developers who (had their employee) pay Microsoft and developers that didn't. Conflate a generic concept (Git in this case) with Microsoft's specific implementation (Github), muddying the difference in managers' lexicons. Attempt to set Github as a standard to reach in everyone's mind.

I mean there's a certificaiton, so it has to be something we shouldn't miss out on, right?

[DaiPlusPlus]

> Introduce a certification, thus increasing the gap between developers who (had their employee) pay Microsoft and developers that didn't.

Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?

I was still in high-school when I heard about it. I asked some SWE friends of mine who told me that they didn't take it seriously due to the wide prevalence of _brain dumps_ all over the Internet. A few said having it on your resume may actually hurt their careers or job-seeking because potential employers who were on-the-ball took a dim view of them because they were so easy to obtain, so and automatically assumed anyone who advertised the fact they had one when they already had a degree in CS and/or good industrial experience at the very least had misplaced priorities (so I guess if you have it as a single line-item on your resume in 9pt text buried at the bottom that's okay, just don't make it a heading).

What's amusing to me is that after working at Microsoft in Redmond for a few years at the start of my career as an FTE SE in DevDiv - I didn't know anyone who had such a certificate. If no-one needed one to work at Microsoft on the very tools these certificates are for, what's the point?

[dagw]

Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?

Most developers generally didn't, but certainly back in the early 2000s I heard lots of managers and other people responsible for hiring being impressed by it. To be blunt, if you where a mediocre developer with a mediocre resume, it was for a while a pretty efficient way to stand out among other mediocre developers.

Microsoft also used to offer some nice goodies and discounts to Microsoft Certified Professionals that could make it worth having, financially, if you where a freelance developer or worked for a smaller company.

[qz2]

I got an MCAD once because my employer was offering it for free. This was so they could secure a "partner" status and get a license discount.

That's mostly why people bothered with it.

It was completely no use whatsoever. In fact looking back the contents were stupid and dangerous.

[goatinaboat]

got an MCAD once because my employer was offering it for free. This was so they could secure a "partner" status and get a license discount.

Same here, but MCSE used to come with all sorts of goodies like a free TechNet subscription. That ceased long ago however.

[qz2]

Indeed. Although now I just fire up an instance in AWS for a bit if we need to play with something. But I rarely if ever touch windows now past using it as a shell for some electron apps and terminals :)

[3np]

> dangerous

Curious to hear more.

[dmitriid]

At one point they seemed to be bona fide certifications of actual high skill levels (or at least in-depth knowledge of related products). But then their value degraded, and quite rapidly.

Can't point you to dates and blog posts on this though, this all comes from my vague memories.

[kerng]

The people that have it are Microsoft consultants, incl. Microsofts internal consulting crews. They like these certs, and take as many as possible and nowadays LinkedIn shows tons of Microsoft employees (outside internal engineering) who brag about the xth number of some random cert.

But Amazon is no different.

[closeparen]

For some OEMs - access to purchasing, support, manuals, firmware images, configuration tools, etc. is gated behind "Certified Partner" programs. For an organization to be a Certified Partner at a certain tier, it must have some number of FTEs holding a specific cert.

A good certified partner won't hire you just because you have the cert, but it saves them the trouble of having to get it for you.

This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.

What exclusive materials or advantages do Microsoft "Partner" companies have thesedays? MS is very good at making available their documentation, and almost all of their modern stuff (.NET Core, etc) is developed openly on GitHub.

But other companies that aren't as engineering-driven like SAP, Oracle, yeah - I can see them doing that.

The only advantage I can think of is one of cross-promotion or referrals from Microsoft's own consulting division. (I'll admit I have no idea who MS's Consulting customers are - I thought everyone went with Accenture, IBM, Capita or Atos).

[NiceWayToDoIT]

From cool place to institution. From fun to bureaucratic depression.

Reason I personally like GitHub as it is meeting point for like minded people, place where you play and learn while playing, without any judgment.

Certification obstruct that process of learn-play, it is like grownups coming to playground and saying to kids, now you have to play this way, you cannot play your own way... because erm... it help us to quantify you so we can exploit you better.

I heard somewhere "century of left brain domination over right brain"...

[m12k]

Thank god most of the non-corporate software industry regards certifications as a way to pad a non-impressive resume and not something actually valuable.

[swiley]

Why is it certificates are viewed this way and degrees are not? Is it a class thing? Or are there really just no good certificates.

[barry-cotter]

Mostly a class thing but also a reflection of the fact that the exams are crammable without understanding. MCQs work that way unless you make the question back very large. A computer adaptive test could bypass this but it doesn’t feel like it assesses your knowledge the way even a test composed of short answer questions does. It’s not like anyone in the US who’s passed the bar exam holds it in particularly high esteem and for practical purposes doing that presupposes you have a JD.

[curryst]

There's a growing sentiment that degrees are the same; it's certainly not the prevailing view.

One part, in my view, is the exceptionally temporary nature of a certificate. A degree typically teaches things that are fairly static.

If you're a biologist, I would expect 90% of the things you learned in college to still be true, or mostly true, when you retire. A certificate, on the other hand, validates that you know this particular thing well, until the next version comes out. Depending on what "thing" is, and when the last version was released, it could be less than a year. So even if I accept that the certificate does mean you know this system really really well, it doesn't mean that's true for very long.

They're also an external validation of your skills, so people who aren't confident in their skills will often mention their certificate when they feel their skills are being challenged. I think this creates a bias in how we view certificate holders. I've noticed the same thing with people who have degrees from prestigious institutions. I've got a bad taste in my mouth from MIT because most of the people who went to MIT and I'm aware that they went to MIT like to bring it up when they don't feel confident. That's not to say everyone who went to MIT is like that; the rest just don't feel the need to constantly mention it, so I don't even know.

They're typically multiple choice as well, which are much easier to fake understanding on. "Which network architecture accommodates X best?" is probably going to be easier to answer than "You have a network with X servers that need Y bandwidth, etc, etc, explain what network architecture you would choose, and why."

And lastly, I think there's a certain sense of derision for certificates for things created in our lifetime. Things that came before us have a sense of tradition that gives them a sense of legitimacy. Of course your accountant needs a degree, they've always had degrees. New things don't have that, so you have to justify why a certification is necessary, and most don't meet the bar. Everyone managed to use GitHub just fine without a certification.

[908B64B197]

Honestly, what I look for when hiring is:

previous experience/internships at good companies that I know have solid engineering and/or CS/Engineering degree from a school I trust.

In my mind, bootcamps, certs and micro-degrees often signal someone was unable to enter the field due to a lack of qualifications. Most of them are pretty much rote memorization of commercial products, so fairly low value, or 'one trick ponies' where they know how to create a web app with one and only one tech stack (by copy-pasting templates!).

Really, I expect anyone with a good degree or previous experience to just be able to read git and GitHub's manuals and get it.

[m12k]

I think part of the reason is that when you choose to get a degree, you don't know any better, and it probably seems as good a way to get into the field as any (in lots of other fields, it's the only way in - e.g. bio-tech, so it's an easy assumption to make). By the time you get far enough in your career to get a certification, you're also far enough along to know that it's worthless, so it's more of a red flag to others if you choose to do so anyway.

[svrb]

> Conflate a generic concept (Git in this case) with Microsoft's specific implementation (Github)

Github has been intentionally conflating git with github for their own gain since way before Microsoft ever conceived of the notion of buying them.

A year or so before the acquisition, one of my Microsoft coworkers asked if I'd gotten approval to post our internal code on github. What I had actually done was put some of our testing code which was, for all intents and purposes, not under version control, into a git repo hosted by an internal platform.

[the-dude]

It is a way to commoditize people, and MS has been selling their certifications on 2 markets since forever :

- Employees : show your value by these certs and increase your potential wage.

- Employers : now you can easily compare potential employees ( driving down their wage )

[tzs]

> Conflate a generic concept (Git in this case) with Microsoft's specific implementation (Github), muddying the difference in managers' lexicons. Attempt to set Github as a standard to reach in everyone's mind.

Both of those already happened years before Microsoft acquired GitHub.

[scrollaway]

I think you're seeing non-existing intent. This seems like a straightforward way to monetize their acquisition without affecting the users (with paywalls or what not). Certifications are a gold mine for enterprise.

Also, I have yet to meet people taking certifications seriously on an individual level. The sole way I've seen them used is box-checking when choosing a contractor/vendor. Anyone got a different experience?

[hawkoy]

This seems like a very narrow view. I don't know where you live but in Asian countries, people care about certificates too much. It's also often used as a way to filter poor people without directly discriminating because certification costs time and money.

[trevyn]

Serious question: In which Asian countries is it a problem to directly discriminate?

[3131s]

What type of discrimination?

In SEA I see "Male Only" on programmer jobs not that infrequently, plus very often age requirements explicitly stated for all sorts of jobs.

[BerislavLopac]

> age requirements

I'm curious: minimum or maximum?

[3131s]

Maximum, I saw a couple the other day -- 33 and 45. As a 32 year old I didn't feel too encouraged by that!

[purpleidea]

Personally I've found certifications are a good way to show you're good at passing certifications, and nothing else.

I have nothing against people who show up with their resumes filled with them, but it's not a valuable indicator in my opinion. I'd rather see what they've built. Show me some useful things on your github or blog. That I can see value in.

Obviously we're talking about software-related certs, not pilots licenses, etc...

[lta]

When recruiting, I usually take certifications as a token of the lack of skills rather than a demonstration of skills

[dheera]

Exactly. If someone wants to demonstrate that they can use Github the best way is for their personal Github to be full of well-structured projects.

[viraptor]

This gets repeated every time, but it's worth repeating: You've just discounted many skilled people working at companies which don't allow public personal projects, and people who are not interested in working on personal projects. There's a significant number of them.

[dheera]

I should rephrase -- having stuff in your Github is the best way to show you know your way around Github.

Not discounting the fact that you may have lots of other skills and nothing in your Github.

In general if someone has enough other skills and worked at companies that have a high bar, it's likely they can pick up Github fast enough even if they haven't used it that it shouldn't be a hiring concern.

Like for example, if someone is fluent in C++ or some such, I wouldn't doubt their ability to learn how to use git.

[Aeolun]

What if you have both certifications and skills?

[nuker]

> Personally I've found certifications are a good way to show you're good at passing certifications, and nothing else.

Some are good. I did AWS Solution Architect Pro, and this one was tough, one needs years of hands on to pass. Anyone with this one will get an instant plus in my book. I did not bother renewing it though, after 3yrs expired :)

[kortilla]

Being difficult != good. It can take years to prep and pass a CCIE as well but it’s not really a good indicator of being a good network engineer, despite the esoteric protocol details you have to memorize.

[nuker]

> Being difficult != good.

I did not say that. I said some are good, and named one.

[Cthulhu_]

I spent some time last year getting some "beginner" AWS certifications and those are definitely worth it; I spent a few dozen hours following online courses (A Cloud Guru is pretty good, and if you have the time you only need to subscribe for a month or so) and feel like I went from superficial knowledge (like sorta knowing what AWS, EC2, RDS etc are) to having err, certified superficial knowledge. TL;DR I know more about AWS now without actually having worked in it.

That said, I wouldn't go for any of the other certifications without actually working / having worked professionally in AWS. Or anything you can get certified for, for that matter.

I mean iirc I've got some cisco certifications as well but I and everyone else cheated on the exam and don't remember anything of it.

[lta]

We'd have to review the contenu to be sure, but my initial reaction was the same as @breakingcups. That would fit with a push against gitlab's devops strategy, amongst other things ?