Is it just me, or do *most* IT certification lose their usefulness mid career and later. That is, your work experience IS your proof credibility, the certs add little to no value do to being overshadowed by your actual accomplishments. In general, does the data support this hypothesis?
#askfedi #itcareers #it #linux #windows #bsd #macos #networking #cybersecurity #tech
30 years as a technology hiring manager. Would like to believe I have a little bit of a rep for sourcing high-performance teams.
Tech leadership roles for the last 20 years, senior roles for the last 10.
Career coach/mentor for the last 10 years.
No advanced degrees, a lot of early-career certs, generally in networks, infrastructue, and cyber.
Later certs were usually business and HR-focused.
With that experience, both from a personal career arc, as well as who I have generally hired into my teams, I would say your observation is mostly correct, with a few caveats.
Certs and/or Post-secondary degrees absolutely help early in a Tech career, as it establishes at least a foundational understanding of the tech vertical you are pursuing
BUT... ask many senior tech leaders, and they will express concerns about the "mill" mentaility that exists in a lot of cert and education programs
A lot folks are coming out of tech schools and liberal arts universities able to answer the questions on paper, but unable to creatively resolve issues
So you do indeed find that in the better-run tech orgs (at least IMHO), experience begins to get weighted more, especially after about 5 years.
There are some exceptions.
Despite the fact that I was CIO of a College for several years, I don't actually have BS or MS (long story and would not be easily duplicatable).
Even with that track record and 30+ years of experience there are orgs that would not even consider me for a CIO/CTO/CISO position because of that.
Used to bother me, certainly not anymore.
And even though certs and degrees are not my top "want" when hiring anyone above say, a journeyman level, if someone is getting the occasional credentials in a "fresh" area of study, it does show me they are curious and not generally stagnating.
@profoundlynerdy /7 /end
So, yeah, it does become less of a thing over time...
