Professional developer certifications

Hi everybody,

I am thinking about sitting for some certifications.

Which ones are the most recognized? Oracle?

Thank ypu

Depends on the language. Most popular languages have an internationally recognized certificate.

For Java - Oracle, for C# - Microsoft, for PHP - Zend, etc…

What matters most is what you can accomplish with the language of your choice, not the number of certifications you have.

Thank you for answering.

While I tend to agree with you that what we can do is what matters, it reassures and according to a friend of mine who is also a recruiter, it can help.

I think the answer to this depends on which country and what kind of job you’re applying for.

Some countries may put enough importance in these paper certificates, but not so much in other job markets.

I’ve given hands-on tests to people (who brought along this and that certificate, claiming they know this and that, and their portfolio) but can’t complete a 6-minute task in front of a computer, given a 30 minutes allotted time. Some of them even took an hour or more, and some just gave up and walk away from the interview.

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Think very, very carefully about getting a certification: in many [most?] cases they don’t matter at all, and in some cases can be a net negative. It does depend on the job - if a company is a Microsoft-certified partner I think there’s some kind of benefit to having devs do the certifications, possibly similar situation with Java and Oracle partners.

YMMV but unless you are working for a company that is paying for the certifications, don’t do it unless you have a very, very good reason (i.e. you know that the jobs you want to apply for will require certification (generally enterprise companies with big public sector contracts)). Possibly helps in the job sector in some countries (India maybe?).

Anyone can create certifications, so generally, they don’t mean much at all (there is no independent review body that can apply some common standard). To be very, very cynical, they could be seen as an easy way for some companies (MS, Oracle, Zend) to make extra cash by charging a large amount of money for certifications that mean very little in the real world. It also allows companies with large public sector contracts to quantify the skill of devs they employ for the benefit of financial paperwork - “We have 5 devs with level 4 MS qualifications” or whatever (even though the quantification is meaningless). Government and government contractors love certifications for the latter reason.

Edit: if you already have the knowledge and you can get the certification for free or cheap, that would likely be useful.

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It matters in the security field, but not so much in general software development. No prospective employer has ever asked about the ones I list. I wouldn’t go out of your way.

Ok, thank you all for your answers but to get back to the topic, besides Oracle, which ones are the most worth it? :grinning:

Entirely dependent on the job and what you need/want to learn, because they are for specific things. There’s no point saying “oh, this Oracle Expert certification in Java EE6 Web Services Development is good” because it has such a narrow scope: there’s no point doing it unless that’s specifically what you’re trying to use to get past recruiters. Where, geographically and sector-wise are you looking for jobs that require certification? What kind of jobs? What programming languages do you know?

I am a french man currently living in Singapore and willing to relocate in Switzerland.

My long term goal is ML engineering but I am trying to enter in the industry through web development.

I am currently learning Javascript (ES6, React, Vue, Angular, Node) and Python. I am eventually planning to learn Java afterwards for Android Development.

So you guys don’t think it is of any help to pass the HR Wall?

This is the only reason for me to pass the exam, I don’t think it will make me a better engineer…

For the typical company, no I don’t think it will help. If you are specifically targeting a position at a company that you know values certs, go for it!

BTW, if you’re passionate about ML, I’d say plunge in. I hear good things about fast.ai. Even if you’re applying for webdev jobs, being able to point to interesting ML projects that you’ve worked on is potentially a way to stand out.

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Hey, thanks for the link, mate. Looks nice! I keep it in mind for later. I am trying to keep going with my on going study plan or otherwise, I will never reach my goal. :wink: Will definitely try to put some ML stuffs in my portfolio.