Using certifications to level up your development career

Building a career as a software developer can be valuable, but can be a competitive field to break into, especially in 2024 when over 130,000 layoffs have occurred at tech companies already. While not all 130,000 may have been software engineers, they have not been immune from the cuts.

One way developers can set themselves up for better opportunities is to pursue certifications for skills that are relevant to their career. A certification offers an opportunity for developers to show others that they have a particular skill; It’s one thing to list Kubernetes as a core competency on their resume, and another to say they’ve passed the certification exam for one of the CNCF’s Kubernetes certifications.  

“People are really happy by taking a certification, because it is the validation of some knowledge,” said  Christophe Sauthier, head of CNCF certifications and trainings, in a recent episode of our What the Dev? podcast. “It is something that we feel is really important because anybody can say that they know something, but proving that usually makes a real difference.”

A 2023 CompTIA report found that 80% of US HR professionals surveyed relied on technical certifications during the hiring process. Sauthier said the CNCF has conducted a survey looking into the impact of certifications as well, and has also seen that people who obtain them generally benefit. 

“More than half the people who answered the survey said that taking some training or certification helped them get a new job,” said Sauthier. “It is a way for people to be more recognized for what they know, and also to usually get better pay. And when I say a lot of people get better pay, it was about one third of the people who answered our survey who said that they had a higher pay because of taking training or certifications.”

Another survey from CompTIA in 2022 showed that IT professionals that obtained a new certification saw an average $13,000 increase in salary. 

How to select a certification

In order to see these benefits, it’s important for anyone pursuing a certification to think about which one will best suit their needs, because they come in all shapes and sizes.

Sauthier says he recommends starting with an entry-level certification first, as this can enable someone to get used to what it means to take a certification. 

Then, it might make sense to move onto more advanced certifications. For instance, the CNCF’s Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) certification is “quite tough”, he said. However, its difficulty is what appeals to people.  

“People are really attracted by it because it really proves something,” he said. “You need to actually solve real problems to be able to pass it. So we give you an environment and we tell you, ‘okay, there is this issue,’ or ‘please implement that,’ and we are then evaluating what you did.”

Sauthier did note that difficulty alone shouldn’t be a deciding factor. “When I’m looking at the various certifications, I am more interested in looking at something which is widely adopted and which is not opinionated,” he said. Having it not be opinionated, or not tied to a specific vendor, will ensure that the skills are more easily transferable. 

“Many vendors from our community are building their bricks on top of the great project we have within the CNCF, but the certifications we are designing are targeting those bricks so you will be able to reuse that knowledge on the various products that have been created by the vendors,” he said.

He went on to explain how this informs the CNCF’s process of certification development. He said that each question is approved by at least two people, which ensures that there is wide agreement. 

“That is something that is really important so that you are sure when you’re taking a certification from us that the knowledge that you will validate is something that you will be able to use with many vendors and many products over our whole community,” he said. “That’s really something important for us. We don’t want you to be vendor locked with the knowledge you have when you take one of a certification. So that’s really the most important thing for me, and not the difficulty of the certification itself.”

The CNCF recently took its certification program a step further by introducing Kubestronaut, an achievement people can get for completing all five of its Kubernetes certifications. Currently, there are 788 Kubestronauts, who get added benefits like a private Slack channel, coupons for other CNCF certifications, and a discount on CNCF events, like KubeCon. 

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