Yes and No.
I don’t pay much credence on certification as proving competence. I take them as a slightly negative signal when I am interviewing someone.
Certifications for me are partially forcing functions to make me get a broad overview of a subject matter. At the level I’m at now, my “whiteboard interviews” are not about leetCode they are about how would I architect systems, meaning I don’t need to know the details of everything but I do need to know how to talk the talk.
When it’s actually time to implement the solutions, I’m either then going through the SDK and figuring out the details or assisting other developers in coming up with a proof of concept.
Except for the Architect Associate which I studied for just to get an overview of AWS, I’ve had practical experience on most of the other areas that the certifications covered before I took them. The other three are the developer, Devops and Architect Pro.
My company is paying for them, and even though my official title is “Senior Developer”, when talking to our clients (B2B) I am the “certified AWS infrastructure architect”, so yeah it helps give customers a little bit of confidence.
On the other hand, whenever the day comes that I decide to make my next career move, it will probably be as an overpriced “implementation consultant”. I found at my last job where I was the dev lead, that locally, that’s where the money is.
Amazon Certified Partners have to have a certain number of certified employees.
Two of the three certifications I am working on next year will take me way out of my comfort zone - advanced networking and Big Data.
I will have to really study for those two and do some side projects. Unlike the first four where I could learn on the job.
