this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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So, I'm being offered to take a sysadmin certification for this particular distribution I know absolutely nothing about. They give me the "necessary info" and then I take an exam. The exam is free, but I must pass it, or else I must pay for it and then take it again. Is this a waste of time and/or money? I would like to hear your opinions. Personally it doesn't quite click with me. I'm fresh out of uni and I'm trying to learn new stuff, but idk what to do with my life anymore. thx

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Most certifications by vendors of specific products are a waste of time. Unless you're actively looking to be running Oracle's distro, it's going to be meaningless to employers. I actively go out of my way to avoid hiring people who list random and disparate certifications in their resume.

Certain general areas of study like CISSP or CCSP I may pay attention to if they've worked on large projects or production deployments because those are specific to an area of study and not a product.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I actively go out of my way to avoid hiring people who list random and disparate certifications in their resume.

Why though? If something from the list is relevant, decide how much of a positive it is. If it isn't then just skip, but why avoid?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Not the person you replied to, but I'm in agreement with them. I did tech hiring for some years for junior roles, and it was quite common to see applicants with a complete alphabet soup of certifications. More often than not, these cert-heavy applicants would show a complete lack of ability to apply that knowledge. For example they might have a network cert of some kind, yet were unable to competently answer a basic hypothetical like "what steps would you take to diagnose a network connection issue?" I suspect a lot of these applicants crammed for their many certifications, memorized known answers to typical questions, but never actually made any effort to put the knowledge to work. There's nothing inherently wrong with certifications, but from past experience I'm always wary when I see a CV that's heavy on certs but light on experience (which could be work experience or school or personal projects).

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