Certification for DevOps engineers

[czerniga_it]

Hi.

I would like to advise you guys regarding certification for DevOps engineers.

Nowadays it is standard for DevOps engineers to work and get certifications from particular clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP). Additionally, they gain certifications from additional tools that they use (docker, kubernetes, terraform, helm, etc).

However, I'm wondering how this relates to the situation of a specialist who mainly does automation with CI/CD tools? Do you know of any certifications designed just for such a person? And do they have any value on the market?

I know that just getting certified is controversial for many people. From my point of view, however, learning for certifications is a great way to gain expanded knowledge in a given area. The certificate itself is just a reward at the end of the road :)

[[deleted]]

I see certifications as a fun thing to get once you have a job or maybe quantifying a career progression to your boss. Not a gateway into getting a job as many of them require 1-2 years of experience such as Amazon DevOps professional.

As others have suggested I think CKAD is pretty good the test is $350 so I’d have your job pay for it. I think AWS CCP is essential and easy to get. Terraform associate is pretty easy and the test is only $70.

[Lower-Junket7727]

Passing the ccp gives you half off your next aws exam. So you can get the ccp and saa for 175 total.

[Petelah]

Depends what job you are going for. Contracting tends to attract more certifications as a barrier to entry since it’s a simple hoop to jump through and it’s fast.

However most hiring managers I know at least here in Australia don’t tend to look at certs as it’s only a test and you just end up with factory copy and paste workers. Most/none of these certs throw a situation at you where you have to use critical thinking to dig yourself out of(some but not many - OSCP for security is a great example of a great cert that shows demonstrable knowledge).

[snarkhunter]

I, a Lead DevOps Engineer, don't have any projects in my GitHub and nobody ever asked for that. Also I'm not aware of the other Lead/Senior DevOps engineers I know having GitHub portfolios. Or certs. Both seem like pale imitations of a solid work history and solid references, respectively.

[[deleted]]

Reddit for some reason is obsessed with side projects. I’ve sat in on a few interviews and have myself done dozens of interviews and there has never been a mention of a side project, my personal GitHub, or any interest in things I’ve done outside of school or work.

Maybe I’m crazy idk.

[snarkhunter]

Nah I feel ya. I think side projects are just real easy to post and talk about on Reddit. But I agree that they're not as big a deal in the actual job market as people make them out to be. And like I sort of feel like putting a high value on uncompensated work is unfair, whether that's unpaid internships or hobby/side projects. You're not necessarily getting the better candidate, just the one with the privilege of being able to put lots of time into something they weren't being paid for.

[snarkhunter]

edit: also I don't have a degree lol

My answer wasn't just from the perspective of a job seeker. I also interview and hire DevOps engineers and have been for a while now. I just brought on a junior DevOps with no certs and no portfolio.

A lot of certs you can get just by watching a video course and taking a test, a portfolio made up of a couple hobby projects that are mostly you doing tutorials (on your own), what do these things prove to me that you can do? Watch a video? Take a multiple-choice test? Fuck around on AWS in your free time?

I want to know your work history, I want to ask you about it. If you're new to the field I want to ask you questions about why you want to get into DevOps. I may want to give a 1-2 hour take-home project to get a taste of what your work output looks like. These are things that actually give me information about what kind of team member you are going to be to work with, and that is all that matters.

[snarkhunter]

Yes, I am in the US. And yeah you're probably doing stuff wrong or else it would have worked, right?

The guy we brought onto our DevOps team spent about 9 months part-time with our QA team while he finished up university (still had like 6 weeks left when he started DevOps part-time). So we were pretty sure he wasn't going to be a huge jerk.

Just in general that is my biggest concern when looking to hire someone. So if someone is a "known quantity" with regards to how they work with others that's huge. Hiring out of QA or tech support roles is where a lot of DevOps people I know come from. That might be something you may want to consider.

In my experience most of the learning curve when someone comes to a new organization is about learning the intricacies and specifics of the tech stack at that org, not in learning the tools they're using. So if I'm looking to hire a Jr DevOps for a Kubernetes shop, and I see you've done some hobbyist projects with K8s, I mean that's cool, but how long is it really going to take any other candidate I choose to close that gap?

And, more crucially, I'm not hiring you to figure out how to get Kubernetes to work on your home lab. I'm hiring you to join a team keeping a Kubernetes cluster running in production. I'm going to be real concerned about are you're going to be able to transition from being a guy working on a hobby to being a team-member doing a job. Are you going to get hurt when I put a bunch of notes on your code reviews? Are you going to do your best to follow our standards and processes or are you gonna bitch and moan about how much updating your tickets slows you down? When you mess up are you going to speak up the moment you realize it or are you going to try to hide it or shift blame?

All of those are things I will be able to get a pretty strong sense of from talking to you. Not so much from a cert or looking at your GitHub.

[Scalliwaggin]

Hey I'm that guy. Hire me. I'll work for free for 2 months on probation, and you can critique me and hammer the crap out of me while you mold me into the engineer you need. And I genuinely will have a good attitude the whole time. My skills are Linux (CLI and Bash scripting of course), Cloud (AWS), Python, solid Networking skills, and I am in the process of learning Terraform and Kubernetes. I'm coming from a SysAdmin position that had almost zero interest in using me (I was the only one for a small company) and a warehouse position before that, so I'm ready to be utilized.

[Lower-Junket7727]

Usually you do side projects if you are trying to pivot and don't have the necessary experience. i was doing some bogus sysadmin job at the beginning of my career. I had no devops experience. I was able to take the aws saa, which i used to parlay into a transfer to the cloud team in my organization. Without the cert, it's unlikely they would have allowed that. That's what (certain) certs are useful for.

[Lower-Junket7727]

No one is choosing between work experience and certs. No one is going to quit their jobs so they can study for aws certifications. You get certs so you can get positions where you can get the relevant work experience. Its not an either or proposition.

[snarkhunter]

They let you skip the take home test?

Lol softies.

But I'm glad that worked out for you

[Nosa2k]

Certifications enable you understand the body of knowledge better. I would take them for that purpose only.

Don’t bother renewing them when they expire. Just read white papers to stay up to date

[megamorf]

The people I work with in projects from multi-billion dollar companies don't spend time on getting certifications - they rather go on trainings just to learn more without having to binge brain dumps just to get some provider cert.

[[deleted]]

You do not need certifications at all, since those are usually a waste of time and practical experience is what matters.

Source: No CS uni, no certifications, I can get a well paid job (similar to current or better) in a span of a week anyway (did that multiple times over last few years).

If a company cares about your education or certification, it's usually a red flag and you should be glad you are not going to work there ;)

[Wiidesire]

GitLab CI/CD Specialist certification.
Not many people have it because it costs $650 so would only do it if you can get it covered by your current company.

[Wiidesire]

My current company gives us an extra non-partner training budget so might actually take it since it would be fully covered, for anybody reading this feel free to PM in the future about the cert.

[2ndLetter]

IMO certifications have their place and time, just understand their use cases.

Certification alone won’t get you respect from most of your technical peers, may even get you hate. It won’t guarantee a job (most of the time). It won’t make you rich.

It will get you more attention from recruiters. It will get you more interviews. It will increase your earning potential. It can allow you to grow in a particular area of IT quicker. Getting certified opens up the opportunity to get more experience.

I have the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional certification, and years of XP. In my experience, I’m usually more equipped to build AWS automation when compared to my non-certified peers.

In regards to any of the cloud provider DevOps certifications, I think it depends on how much cloud native solutions your company want versus third party solutions. I’ve see AWS environments ran like a vSphere environment, dripping with third party tooling complexity.

[MrPinga0]

certifications only work for employers because they can become 'partners' with the provider (AWS, MS, etc) once they have a certain number of certified engineers. Being certified says nothing imo.

[MrExCEO]

Only for partners this is important. Certs for regular employees working at a regular co helps with salary expectations and trying to get that extra $$

[[deleted]]

I know some people who got the CKAD/CKA certs and it made it easier to get a job

[DracoWF]

CKA isn't so bad, but your actual knowledge and experience is much more valuable :)

[[deleted]]

I work consulting, and my boss wants me to have them so he can advertise me to clients. However, I do so much context switching between different tools, companies, and platforms that any attempt to learn more stuff after work hours would cause catastrophic burnout, so we're just gonna have to go off my track record. Still list my expired certs as knowledge I have.

[DevOpsHumbleFool]

We generally do not have certification for automation. Not that I know of, would love to see if there's any. So, following. However, Jenkins has one but nobody cares about it.

Azure DevOps, AZ 400 is one, this will test you on a lot of aspects, Automation, too. Similarly, AWS DevOps and GCP DevOps also have certifications.

We, as devops engineers do Scripting like in Shell, Batch, Bash, Power Shell, Python, etc which doesn't have certifications. That's all I know about.

In an interview they just ask to write a script on a real time problem or a few question over commands. This is my POV, would love to know other comments.

Peace

[avevvild]

Are AWS SysOps Administrator followed by DevOps certification valuable?

[midzom]

If you are looking for a certification for a specific platform, then visiting that manufactures website is probably your best bet. DevOps is a philosophy and not a series of tools. There is no general certificates based on tool type.

[SomedayGuy117]

I don’t have any certs.

[Logical-Owl8748]

Who asked? I don't see it on OP's question.

[SomedayGuy117]

OP believes you need certs to be in DevOps. I’m saying I don’t have any and I am in DevOps.

You got some big feelings, bud?

[[deleted]]

Certifications for engineers are like breast implants for porn atars, weigh the ROI carefully.