Terraform: Quick Dive #1: Challenge solutions
21 August, 2024
Some of the most frequently asked questions I get from newbies and juniors in this field are:
- Is ${x} certification good?
- Which certifications should I get?
- Will ${x} certification get me a job?
And so on. So it seems clear to me that certifications are a big topic, and people have questions about them. The problem with these questions is that they don’t have neat, succinct yes/no answers, and like many things the answer is “it depends.”
Continued education is crucial in this field in order to progress. Because of this, some companies exist solely or partially to sell you something you can take to an employer and say “I know this!” The question then becomes, is it worth it?
In the words of the Neutral President from Futurama: All I know is my gut says maybe.
Experience Vs Knowledge
Ultimately, most certifications provide you with knowledge but not experience (there are some exceptions). Most employers are seeking experience, though a particular certification or two on top of that may be a selling point, and many will also postulate a requirement for a degree, too. So what does this mean? What should you focus on?
Therein lies the problem. I re-drafted this section a couple of times, because every time I tried to advise on a path I ended up filling it with so many caveats that it became convoluted. We all have a unique circumstance. You might be getting a tech related degree and looking to get your first job, you might be looking for a career change, you might be in a helpdesk position and looking to get out. But whatever your situation, I believe you should prioritise experience first, and then carefully consider if any certifications align with your goals, weaknesses, and budget (unless you can get your employer to pay!).
Personal context
But you should probably know a little about the person giving you this advice. Or, if you don’t care, feel free to skip the next 4 paragraphs.
I started my IT career in 2017 as a telecommunications engineer, I was in my mid-20s at the time and making a career switch. I did not (and do not) have any degree, however, this first role was an apprenticeship which I gained a qualification from. From this first role I moved into a technical support position, and then into my first sysadmin role at a small company where I was unfortunately still the helpdesk too, but now I was messing with servers! At this point in time my only qualification was still the one I had gained from my apprenticeship, and I used the experience I had gathered along the way to leverage each position.
But I was also studying my ass off. I worked in a fully on-premise Windows environment, but in my spare time I was messing with Linux VMs and learning about AWS. I gained the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification, and I was offered a new job as a cloud admin working with the AWS the next day!
…but that’s a lie of omission. See, that did happen, but the certification had nothing to do with me getting the job. I didn’t have the certification when I was interviewed so I didn’t mention it. I took the exam the day after the interview, passed, and the following day I received a call with an offer.
I’m now into my 8th year in IT and working as an SRE. I have 2 more certifications to my name. ITIL v4 Foundations, and the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator. Both of these were employer sponsored, I didn’t gain much from learning about ITIL, but the SysOps cert was a useful way to validate what I knew, and also help my company get a few extra perks from AWS by having more certified staff onboard.
Does this mean that certifications are useless?
Well, no, that’s not the direction I’m trying to lead you in either. The certifications I have may not have directly contributed to my career that much, but they weren’t useless, and my situation is not the same as yours. What I would encourage you to ask yourself is:
- What will I gain from pursuing a certain certification?
- Is this certification listed as a requirement or advantageous to have in the kind of jobs I’m looking for/would like to look for?
- Can I comfortably afford the study material and the exam cost? And if not, is the potential payoff worth the risk of failing?
- If I wasn’t getting a certificate at the end, is this subject/tool still worth learning?
- Am I okay with potentially needing to re-certify in X years, or gain another equivalent or greater certification to renew them all?
- Am I trying to run before I walk? For example, aiming to gain the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certificate is a worthy goal, but if you are just starting off in IT, you might be biting off more than you can chew.
- Will I be able to back this certification up with knowledge in an interview situation?
The final point brings me on to:
How well do you interview?
All the certifications in the world may not help you to get a job if you consistently bomb interviews. If you aren’t reinforcing the knowledge gained from your certification study with practical, hands-on tasks, it’s likely to fade. If you gained your certification by using question dumps in in the hope of getting a job, a good interviewer will sniff you out fast.
If you’re comparing your current experience of looking for work to mine, you should consider 2 things:
- I interview quite well.
- A chunk of the jobs I mentioned were pre-COVID. At the time of writing, the current market is difficult to breach for juniors due to layoffs and economic factors that discourage companies from expanding.
Is the shiny new certificate really the most glaring chink in your armour? Or might you be better served by working on your confidence in interviews, brushing up on the fundamentals of IT, and becoming more personable by working on your soft skills?
Of course, there’s nothing to stop you from doing the above and gaining a new certification. But you have to be prepared to ask yourself the hard questions as to why you might not be seeing the kind of success you expect.
The Takeaway
You may not feel like you got a solid answer from this article. But unfortunately this is a murky area. There are absolutely certifications out there that employers are looking for and will pay off for you in the long run. But there are also ones that may not benefit you in your situation, and the time/money spent on them would be better used elsewhere. Don’t get sucked into believing that a new certificate will cure what ails ya. Remind yourself that certain companies make a lot of money from certifications, and they may be selling you a solution to a problem that they have marketed to you.