What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?
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As you may know, the theme of about a third of my posts is an endless battle against the job market. I have ~15 years of experience and many successful projects (though the percentage in official employment is dropping due to factors beyond my control) but it's very difficult to get past the gatekeepers for an interview. My current position also offers absolutely no training opportunities, not even cargo cult ITIL at this point, so what's even out there is a bit of a mystery.
But supposing I wanted to do new development in C# and SQL, what piece of paper should I buy to get my foot in the door? Or, if C# and SQL are not hip and agile anymore, what else should I buy a piece of paper for?
Edit: I could have just as well written this exact post in 2005 when my computer science degree was also getting me nowhere...
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@Zenith anything kubernetes or cloud seems hot in in the consultant market at least. Most of our requests for consultants have the customer wishing for such stuff. No idea about the US market though.
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@Carnage picking up an Amazon or Google practitioner cert is decent. Or, surrender to uselessness and get an Agile cert.
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Also looking for what brand piece of paper. We used to have some training through New Horizons. I took two courses that were useless...one because I already knew how to do Mickey Mouse reports and the other because they had a license problem with Microsoft that made it impossible to actually finish the workshops. For $3K, I'd like for the piece of paper to have some value so if there's a diploma mill held in higher esteem...
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@Zenith said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
diploma mill held in higher esteem...
Amazon sells Amazon certs. Google sells Google certs.
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I have no certs and non-IT diploma. Never been a problem for me.
People from C# world around here seem to be hot for MS certs - C# itself, mvc, azure, etc. I took mvc test once - questions were so stupid and non-practical that I decided to stay away from certs for good.Also, I met some people that made certification their hobby and goal in life. They were completing whole trees of MS certs, jumping to next 'track', 'path' or whatever, when there was nothing left. They firmly believed that this was the most important thing in their career, but I've never seen it really help them in any way.
So yeah, maybe some companies care about certs and diplomas, but I didn't encounter it in the wild. Years of experience in particular technologies/industry sectors seem to be the key. At least in EU.
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@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
Years of experience in particular technologies/industry
the only thing that competes with this is a very effectively presented portfolio.
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@Gribnit said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
Years of experience in particular technologies/industry
the only thing that competes with this is a very effectively presented portfolio.
I can write pretty good looking for loops. Maybe even with yield. How's that for a portfolio?
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@MrL it'll get you to the front page here
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@Gribnit said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL it'll get you to the front page here
Now that would be the first item on my CV.
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@Zenith said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
but it's very difficult to get past the gatekeepers for an interview
We recently filled two C# programmer positions that were open for three years. We would have interviewed a tree stump if it submitted a resume.
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@Jaime Somebody else on the board told me to apply for a position where they worked that had been open a long time too. I never heard back on that either.
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@Zenith said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
the gatekeepers
Consider gatekeeper structure - HR does not do anything but run companies anymore, so if you submit to a company directly, they are actually annoyed, because they jobbed that out to a recruiting firm because it improves their resumes to oversee an external firm. You need to get found by the recruiters for the company you want to work for if you want to work for a company.
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@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@Gribnit said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL it'll get you to the front page here
Now that would be the first item on my CV.
"My code has been presented on a popular programming blog several times!"
It's all about the sales pitch.
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@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
I have no certs and non-IT diploma. Never been a problem for me.
You also live in Poland. I'd never had a problem either as long as I lived in Poland. But now I live in USA and last time I was job hunting, my interview-invitations-to-applications-submitted ratio was below 1%.
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@Gąska use recruiters
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@Gribnit that's WITH recruiters.
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@Gąska stop sucking
ed. could also be that the recruiters suck or are decoys with no jobs in their pipelines, but, sticking with prior.
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@Gąska said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
I have no certs and non-IT diploma. Never been a problem for me.
You also live in Poland. I'd never had a problem either as long as I lived in Poland. But now I live in USA and last time I was job hunting, my interview-invitations-to-applications-submitted ratio was below 1%.
Physically in Poland, but I work remotely for companies in all of EU.
I don't know exactly how job market looks like strictly in Poland.Also, like Gribnit said, recruiters. And intermediaries, consultant firms, 'body shops', etc. Searching for yourself sucks big time.
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@MrL I think the main difference is that in EU, having an unpronouncable name that ends with -owski isn't as big of an obstacle as on this side of the pond.
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@Gąska I have a Martian last name. Half of BoA in Chicago is owskied already, iirc. Then again Chicago is fairly owskied in general.
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@Gąska said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL I think the main difference is that in EU, having an unpronouncable name that ends with -owski isn't as big of an obstacle as on this side of the pond.
It may even be a boon. Polish programmers have excellent opinion everywhere I go in recent years.
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@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@Gąska said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL I think the main difference is that in EU, having an unpronouncable name that ends with -owski isn't as big of an obstacle as on this side of the pond.
It may even be a boon. Polish programmers have excellent
opinionreputation everywhere I go in recent years.I assume that's what you meant.
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@topspin is it, though? the qualia of the referent of
opinionare distinct, imo, from the direct qualia ofreputation, so the provenance is clearer in prior even thoughreputationis a closer absolute mapping.I have a very similar trouble with Kafka's use of
regret, btw. Sadly I do not know the closer mapping in then-contemporary Polish usage, vs the now colloquialmiss.
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@Gąska said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL I think the main difference is that in EU, having an unpronouncable name that ends with -owski isn't as big of an obstacle as on this side of the pond.
Unless it begins with "Leb-" I think.
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@topspin said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@Gąska said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL I think the main difference is that in EU, having an unpronouncable name that ends with -owski isn't as big of an obstacle as on this side of the pond.
It may even be a boon. Polish programmers have excellent
opinionreputation everywhere I go in recent years.I assume that's what you meant.
Ah, yes, I translated from Polish directly, thought it means the same thing in English.
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@MrL Recruiters here suck. They are always trying connect on LinkedIn but usually disappear the instant I send a resume.
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@Zenith a lot of recruiters are put off by a traditional tattoo on human backskin presentation these days.
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@Gribnit said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@Zenith a lot of recruiters are put off by a traditional tattoo on human backskin presentation these days.
They get more put off after you tell them the skin came from the last recruiter who failed to get them a well-paying position in a reasonable amount of time.
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@Gribnit said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@Zenith a lot of recruiters are put off by a traditional tattoo on human backskin presentation these days.
Repeat after me. NEOPAGANISM. IS. NOT. TRADITION.
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Are certs for programming jobs even a viable thing these days? I don't know of any fellow devs with any certs. Not that it'd necessarily come up in conversation I guess.
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@Zenith said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
@MrL Recruiters here suck. They are always trying connect on LinkedIn but usually disappear the instant I send a resume.
I contacted recruiting and consulting companies directly. Some of them never got back to me, some were incompetent. But some proved to be helpful and professional.
Currently I have 4 companies calling me every 6 months, asking if I'm open for new opportunities. Or I can contact them and say 'go fetch'.
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@Gąska I have no idea where that tangent about tattoos is coming from or going.
@MrL said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
Currently I have 4 companies calling me every 6 months, asking if I'm open for new opportunities. Or I can contact them and say 'go fetch'.
Oh I have at least two dozen that I recognize but it's more like I'm on some sort of spam list than legitimate attempts to place me somewhere.
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@Zenith said in What certificate(s) will help me land a decent programming job in 2021?:
some sort of spam list
that's called LinkedIn.
