When a certification may actually be useful
Tags: certification, aws
Published: 2024-03-24 14:51:19

_This is a copy of an old post on my private blog from July 2023._

TL;DR: Do it when you lack experience but still want to move things forward. It may be the simplest and fastest way to start.

Every now and then, I read another post about how useless certifications are. You would only lose your time and money. Experience is the only thing that matters; no certification can replace it.

One thing I wouldn't argue with is that certification cannot (and will not) replace experience. Getting our hands dirty gives us something that certification cannot, namely a pragmatic approach to using a tool, language, or aaS solution. It also allows us to truly understand how things work (maybe even why they work the way they do).

You may now think - that was the whole point, right? You need experience and not certifications.

That's only one part of the story.

Let me start with how we used AWS services at one of the companies I worked for. We wanted to move to the cloud ASAP but didn't have anyone onboard who would be familiar enough with it (or at all) to help us with that transition. This is not an uncommon thing to happen. We want to use a new language, framework, tool, or an aaS solution. We have no experience in that area, but all signs on heaven and earth tell us this is the way to go. So, what do we do when no one in the company can help with such a transition? We took help from an outside agency. They did things and went. This leaves us with AWS services, which we have no idea about. Now, it was our turn to take over and start doing things. But what if we still have no experience?

The answer for me was certification. Yes, it did not replace the experience we gathered and would keep gathering. But it gave me a broad overview of what we were dealing with and what was where and for. I did both the Solutions Architect Associate and the Certified Developer Associate.

Suddenly, things got clearer. I could easily understand what we were looking at and point the team in the right direction. Even though it was still a long and tedious process when we were all learning by doing, at least we got a feeling of whether this was going in the right direction. More often than not, I got the "aha moment" when we started to discuss how to use a service or which one we could potentially use (or what service was actually doing and why).

These are exactly the things we can use certifications for. For those "aha moments," for seeing the bigger picture and knowing something is out there. If we don't have such a certificate AND experience, all that is left is:

- Googling things. It can work, but we never know if we are heading in the right direction. Someone may have written something that is suitable in our context.
- "Just make it work," and hope we will get a chance to reiterate the solution should we learn we did it wrong (we probably won't get that change anyway).
- Hire someone who knows and can gradually help the team level up. This is surely a reasonable thing to do, but definitely not the easiest or fastest.

In my opinion, only the last is a viable one. Provided we have the time and resources to hire such a person (and we all know how easy it is these days to find a good developer, right?). A certification is a great alternative here. It does not require so much time and resources to do. What it does, though, is enable the team to speak easily about related topics and search for solutions. It is easier in an environment where we all know at least something than in one where we know nothing and blindly try things out.