Last week, I was asked by a potential business partner what I thought of certifications. I immediately clapped my hands like a giddy 3 year old at Christmas and screamed out “It depends, it depends!!!”. Ok, so maybe I didn’t really get giddy, clap my hands or scream, but in standard consultant fashion, I did say that it depends. Then I launched into a spiel about the customers we were specifically talking about who might or might not actually care about certifications and why. This made me think about certifications for developers.
Unfortunately, certifications for developers don’t mean much to other developers. If you have just one certification, people will probably look past it. But if you have a laundry list of developer certifications, other developers are going to start asking what it is that you really know. In general, I’ve found that the number of certifications a developer has is usually inversely proportional to their actual skill. Most people I talk to would agree. But why is this? There’s one simple answer.
The certification system for developers is fundamentally broken.
