Where to go for certifications?
Posted by SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 18 comments
Hi everyone,
I wish to expand my coding skills and get some certifications for my resume. The job market is rough, and I am unemployed. Besides submitting a slew of applications, I was hoping to keep my skills relevant, expand into machine learning, and build up on other languages. A friend recommend CodeAcademy, but I wish to also seek help from the community: Where can I go to learn new programming languages and recieve certifications?
Thank you all for your help,
HoneyAlgae
Humble_Warthog9711@reddit
Certifications have zero value in swe. If I saw a swe resume with a bunch of certs listed, i'd probably even consider it a negative.
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
No. But I am in a totally different field (Genetics; Computational Biology). That's probably why lol
Humble_Warthog9711@reddit
What's your highest degree earned or working on?
I would 1000% go with the field switcher angle than the cert angle. Computer bio would give you a good reason to want to switch swe.
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
My highest degree is PhD. I feel a tad ashamed, not mastering out. Positive note: plenty of time to teach myself remotely, using the computer I built. But it's still been a struggle, getting an entry role in any kind of industry sector rn. I think the biggest issue: being too academic. Or not having exact machine learning experience. I do supervised learning (multivariate mixed models), not unsupervised learning.
Humble_Warthog9711@reddit
How many apps have you sent out?
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
Around 300. 5mo. Just 4 interviews. I felt so close those few times too.
I tailor & write everything, mainly by myself. Hence why my numbers are might be on the lower side. There is small AI-assistance to make sure I am hitting key words, fyi. The way AI agents write... Like coding, it may give me long-winded outputs I'm not fond of. So I less rely on it.
Humble_Warthog9711@reddit
That's not a bad interview to app ratio at all. Better than most EL candidates.
You should be able to get something eventually
PoMoAnachro@reddit
Programming certifications don't have much value for most hirers - folks are looking for a B.Sc. in Computer Science or something equivilient.
If you already have a post-secondary degree, certs that aren't programming related have some value (like from cloud vendors) but I don't think anyone really thinks programming certs prove very much. That being said, if you want to take the courses and think they're good value for what you'd spend on them go for it to keep improving, just don't expect anyone to care about the piece of paper.
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
Thanks, I understand. Sadly, I have a graduate degree but not in computer science. Know 3 coding languages and have Github projects (most of them completed with product to show). Though, despite everything, it's not appearing to be enough :'( --- Thanks again for commenting, I appreciate it.
thenowayhome@reddit
A person who has no experience working full time as a dev has a steep hill. Certs do not impress in this case. School projects do not impress unless you have something you can shop and support that changes the status quo by solving a real problem.
What makes you more employable than someone who has sat for a CS degree and worked developer internships? The labor market is tough for those individuals.
Actors have to roughly go to >900 auditions to be selected one job. How much is a slew of job applications? Some CS undergrads have applied to 500-1000 jobs by their last semester.
How do you want generate revenue or save money by being a dev? What industry?
tl;dr;
What does "know 3 coding languages" mean? HTML5/CSS3/ECMAScript 2024 don't count as three. If you "know 3 coding languages" then sit for an undergrad java or c++ 101 and earn some easy credits. Some municipal entry-level jobs require >= 24 units in IT and a GPA of 2.0 but why would a recruiter select your resume before someone who is enrolled in a CS degree? How do you know what you don't know? Pick one of those languages you think you know and dive deep and discover what you don't know. Use that language to solve problems in genetics and computational biology. Honestly, it's highly doubtful you know 3 languages well enough to work in a production team as a SME dev in each of those languages. Pick one and work on becoming a SME in that language. Let your new job dictate what new languages to learn.
There are complaints at FAANG about people with CS grad degrees who have been recently hired because they are good at leet code but can't produce work as a production level dev. What makes you more employable than those folks? As someone with no experience, how committed to doing the entry-level shit work for more experienced workers are you?
Does everyone you know and went to school with know you want to be a dev? Have you discussed this at length with your grad advisor?
Have you read Sussman's SICP for funsies? Have you read Knuth's Art of Computing? Have you read Lehman's or Rosen's discrete math books? What books on combinatorics do you recommend? Use the one language of the three that you claim to know that you picked earlier and use it to explain and demonstrate the aforementioned books.
Have you built Linux From Scratch (LFS)? How can you use the one language picked to make that more efficient for genetics and computational biology?
What challenges in LAN, WAN, or VM networking for genetics and computational biology can you use computer science to solve?
How do you use the cloud for genetics and computational biology? What challenges can you solve with the one language you picked to dive deep on?
What github projects in genetics/computational biology by others do you contribute to? How long have you been contributing to others' projects? Who do you carry water for?
How long have your github projects been iterating? How many versions and on what time cycle? How many people regularly contribute to your projects? Are these github projects currently iterating or are they on hiatus? Are you working on iOS or Android apps? How are you writing programs that make your life easier? What are your personal problems that are you using computer science to solve? Do you have capacity to produce whiteboard explanations about the challenges faced on github projects. Have you thought about a youtube channel of a portfolio of your whiteboard explanations?
What country did you sit for a grad degree? How does that degree inform what your performance might be as a dev? How can you use that grad degree to elevate your problem solving as a dev? How many years have you been part of the post grad degree workforce? How well do you get along with IT at your current job? Have you sat for information interviews with IT at your current job?
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
Wowza. That's a lotta text. Feel better? The subreddit is called '/learnprogramming' - I apologize for any inconvenience.
thenowayhome@reddit
My apologies, I hoped I was replying to someone who stated they had a grad degree in genetics and computational biology who wanted to get hired as a dev. The OP's mid response/s as well as their original post suggests a person who is not that serious about getting hired. The only inconvenience is the unserious responses of the OP.
I focused on the OP getting hired because that seems like the actual goal and certs are just a way to make a person feel a certain way. Certs have zero value for people without work experience as a dev as others have stated. As we already know, the labor market supply side is huge and the hiring process is flawed and broken at scale.
Since the OP posted they were someone with a grad degree, I responded as if they were someone who could consume and process large amounts of sophisticated information. I suggested to the OP a portfolio of potential tactics to get them hired, like a litmus test. Not all of them will be best for someone but they might give a person different ways to think about getting hired besides the assumption that certs are the way.
Certs are just a way to exploit the working class and adult learners with the idea that it's a $0-500 shortcut to a role as a programmer. Those certs are for cab drivers, prep cooks, baristas, and stay-at-home mothers who just got divorced. Certs that are credible are for exploiting corporate budgets with four day $5-10k workshops followed by a day five exam. These are certs are used by sales teams as credibility points when they make pitches to justify skill level and high fees.
A cert doesn't get a person recommendations for unposted entry-level dev roles. Pushing to others' projects on github builds a person's network and demonstrates how someone can work in teams as a dev. Carrying water for people with like minded developer goals is what full professors tell ambitious CS students who want to network, get noticed, and hired. Think of it as a choose your own unofficial internship because an entry-level dev will usually be working on existing code, i.e. someone else's github. At a certain stage of experience looking at other people's projects in the wild will inform learning way more than some cert course. As the OP responded, this is /learnprogramming.
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
Golly... How much time was spent writing this one now? So pointed & seething. I mean, feel free to keep going if it makes you feel better. I think you are a pro at this. Tell me more.
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
I lightly trudged through your comment (just fyi). It came off bad in tone but I see the main message buried inside the wall of emotional text. Thanks for your input.
PoMoAnachro@reddit
I will say - if you've got a graduate degree, that's the angle to go in from. You've got a qualification that is comparatively rare on the job market, you need to be using it!
Find projects in your primary field! Start working your coding into your professional work in the field you've already invested so much time and effort into. I guarantee you, whatever your field is there are places in it that you could make your research easier with some programming knowledge and then branch off from there.
Like if you've got a research position in a university's chemistry department, for instance, and you start being "the guy" in that department to talk to about IT problems, and you keep growing your knowledge so you can solve significant software problems in your problem domain you can transition over into doing development full time eventually if that's really what you want to do.
It looks like you said in another comment you have a graduate degree in Computational Biology? Are you currently working in that field? There's a huge difference between "I want to build coding skills to make it easier to get hired as a computational biologist" and "I want to build coding skills to be able to be hired as a software developer".
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
Yes, I picked up coding during COVID & love to solve programming issues. Also updating & refactoring legacy code, parallelizing for efficiency, & mentoring labmates who don't know how to code. Not a big flex but I was an IT representative in our department for a couple years. It wasn't much but the IT people & me interacted regularly & they gave smiles when I walked in. I liked interacting with them to update the website, etc.
I am still in the biology field & hope to find a place in industry that sees the skill set. Notice that I love to learn new concepts, improve workflows, & build efficient pipelines. Right now, I am managing GB-scale datasets (ssh into HPC servers, cloud platforms) & rebuilding an organism database for my science community while unemployment. I don't mind, it keeps my mind busy. And recently, I got into website design to provide coding tutorials in multiple syntax. However, due to AI, I don't know how helpful it is. The landscape changes so quickly!
So, honestly, what brought me here: I was curious what I can do to best improve my resume. But I didn't know the sub was swe dominated. This is my fault. Surprisingly, my friend is the full stack software engineer & recommended CodeAcademy. But not for grabbing certifications. I assume he wanted to be helpful in some way, keeping my mind busy with new skills while I am battling the market.
Anyway.... I understand what you all are telling me. At least you didn't respond like someone 'shit in your cheerios' cough, cough. I'm just a harmless bioinformatician, exploring around & asking questions. Thanks for your help. I will saunter off.
bootyhole_licker69@reddit
coursera, udemy, freecodecamp, edx are fine. certs help less than solid projects on github though. pick one ml/ai path and go deep. keep coding daily. it’s just insanely hard to get hired right now
SeaHoneyAlgae@reddit (OP)
Thanks for your comment. True that (re: getting hired rn)