Hasty Treat - Certifications? Government Specified JavaScript Skills?

Welcome to syntax, and this Monday, hasty treat. We're gonna be talking all about certifications, and we're gonna be talking about not the type of certification that you'd find in the lock symbol in the URL bar. We're gonna be talking about certifications for completing training, completing some sort of test that shows that you are certified in x, y, and z skill. My name is Scott Olinsky. I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado. And with me JS always is the Wes Bos. Hey.

Hey, Wes.

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Alright. Certificates

Yeah. Of the non SSL type. Let's talk about them. Yeah. We're we're talking about, like like, skill certificates, web development certificates. And this just sort of came about because, we first we got 1 question in the potluck that was Node. JS. The OpenJS Foundation offers a couple $100. You can get a Node JS certificate.

And then we got another someone tweeted this link at me, which, we'll put the link in the show notes. It's a it's a good blog post. It's called imposter syndrome, how to display on the front end. It's just a blog post about this person's sort of journey in in front end development and learning from all these different online resources. And and one part of that was, like, we're battling with imposter syndrome. I'm just gonna read the Yarn. JS is so how do you, as a front end developer, figure out what a specific team is made up, and how can you contribute the most? The proper definition of a skill set is the answer to both questions.

The problem is that there are no set of degrees or certifications, in the front end world that are universally known and accepted as proof of skill in different areas. This also fuels that pesky imposter syndrome. So that's it's kinda interesting coming from the the other, not necessarily a hiring point of view, but it's coming from someone who's learning. And the question is, like, how do I know if I have the skills that are enough for a job? And then later on, the blog post that goes on to say, I will end with a plea towards educators out there, specifically tagged me JS well as a few others in it.

Perhaps even to the organizations who create these open source frameworks, please agree on a format that will let us show off our skills. Backenders get official computer science degrees from Microsoft, Amazon, etcetera. Front ends get YouTube courses certified on the honor system. There is more than enough information, craftsmanship, and variety to warrant a full university front end degrees, official reactor angular certificate, a solidified job titles with defined skill sets attached to them. Let's display front end. Okay. So that was that was kinda interesting to say. Someone saying, like, look. I, as someone who's learning, like, we need to standardize this stuff so you know if you're good enough. Like, if you wanna be a lawyer, you have to pass the bar exam. If you wanna be an engineer who builds who builds buildings, you need to, have specific certifications.

Even if you you want to install a fireplace in somebody's house Yeah. You need to have at least in Canada, we have this Wes wet certified, which is wood energy transfer technology, something like that.

It's funny because Courtney and I just had this conversation the the, I think it was, like, 2 nights ago Wes somebody was saying it was, like, one of those new shows on Netflix where they were doing home stuff. And the 1 guy JS like, yeah. I moved the electrical box or whatever. And I was like, if I moved an electrical box in my house, I would never sleep at night because I would be afraid that the house would burn down. I mean, those certifications, whether or not I'm not, like, asking to see an electrician's certification when they're gonna do this thing or if they were to move an electrical Bos, but just the fact that that certification exists, in my mind, takes that out of a space of being, like, trust from Node trustworthy to trustworthy. And it's so funny to to to see this in a totally different context in our industry.

Yeah. Totally.

The thing about standards is as soon as you make a standard, people will sort of go around that and make their own. That's that's the hilarious x kcd, cartoon, where as soon as you come up with a standard now congratulations. You have 2 battling Sanity different ones. And, I personally think the the reality of this is that, especially in in tech and and front end development in general JS that this stuff moves way faster than any standard could probably track on. So, like, the reason we had jQuery is because, like, we had standards in web development. It just wasn't good enough, so people went around that and made their own libraries for that. The reason why TypeScript is much preferred, in some some cases over regular JavaScript is because people say, like, we need more out of the standard. We need, we need a little bit more. We have universities, and this is probably the best example of all JS there's lots of universities that offer web development certifications out there. And in most cases, they are deemed as sort of a joke or they're super behind. And everybody has stories about learning from a a university where it just wasn't good enough. So in my opinion, I I'll love to get your thoughts on this, is that programming and front end development and and I actually asked on Twitter, so we'll go into some specific tech in just a second. But I think in web development in general, it's far too broad. There's so many different areas. It's far it moves far too fast to try to fit us into a box of a certification.

And and reality is is that I think being a web developer, the proof is in the pudding. It's if you are a good developer, you'll be able to show that through projects that you've done, through past work, through through all kinds of stuff like that. You Node it's it's easy to tell show somebody if you're a good developer or if you have the skill sets that are needed JS you'd literally just show them the stuff that you've been working on and your skills, and that should speak for itself.

Yeah. And, I mean, I think you you really nailed it. I think the the biggest one can you imagine, like, a browser API certification Wes, like, you know, whatever Chrome version 57, comes out and completely invalidates the one thing you just learned because all of a sudden, the midi API is no longer available, and you spent all this time learning of this this this thing.

Man, you're right. I mean, the stuff changes way too fast to to have any sort of valid certification.

As somebody who has a hard enough time keeping up the, like, versions in video courses. Right? Can you imagine just exactly how difficult keeping up whatever the expected knowledge of a certification would be in our in our industry right now in terms of front end stuff, I feel like that would be an exhausting full time position because of all the new stuff that is changing constantly.

Yeah. I I largely agree with you that a certification that you got on React 15 is gonna be toast by the time React 16 comes out. I Wes that's the the standard fare. Right? But at the same regard, I I I think this stuff just just changes way too quickly right now.

Yeah. I asked this on Twitter, and I got lots of of really good replies. The one thing where people said they are valid is with specific vendors. So and this it kinda went outside web development and more into sysadmin and ops. So a lot of people said, yeah. If you wanna if you wanna hire someone that's good with all the Amazon products or Google Cloud or IBM certified or Kubernetes.

Yeah. All that stuff. Then in that case, yeah, that's a very specific tech.

In a lot of cases, like Amazon will have a list of of people that have their cert. And if somebody comes to them and say, hey. We need we need to work with serverless functions or whatever or we need to be able to scale up, then they can say, yeah. Go to these people that have those specific certifications. So I think that's probably the pnpm area in our industry where they may make sense to have a certification.

Yeah. Because when I was looking to, like, go way better at AWS stuff, that was something that I noticed pretty heavily in that in that scene more so than other scenes Wes, like, you're looking to get good at AWS. All of the courses that exist for getting good at AWS do so with the premise that you are going to be able to master a certification at the end. So, like, we will teach you to be able to pass this a w x y I forget what it's called, the whatever x, y, and z AWS certification.

If you take this course, we will set you up to be able to pass that exam. And to me, it's such a funny world because last time I did something like that was when I was, getting certified in skis, ski bindings, Scott not actual code. I had just stood well these tests with the the premise that I was going to pass this ski bindings test so that I I would not hurt little kids when they went out on the mountain.

And so

I have my CPR certification. That's something that I would not want to YouTube and say, oh, yeah. Nah. I got it. So what what else we got here? I just let's just go through some of the replies to the Wes, because I I tweeted out, question for folks who are hiring. Do certifications mean anything to you? Overwhelmingly, the replies Wes, it doesn't hurt. You're like, I'm if I'm hiring and I see it on the resume, it doesn't hurt you, but I much rather see what you've actually built. I'd much rather see past projects, past employers you've worked for.

So one really good reply was from Richard Davey. No. It's not a sausage, which I thought was funny because experience So, like, that gets you in the door, a couple good projects in your thing. After that is a 100% personality and aptitude. I thought that was that was really interesting because,

obviously, in some cases, you if you're brand new to this, you can't you don't have 5 years experience somewhere else. Next one says, nope. E g, the Java certification exam has the most obtuse code you can imagine. I know people who passed it without have a written Java code by studying the sample questions and answers.

This one I thought was really interesting, from my buddy, Arly McBlane. He says depends on the CERDAC Yarn pages. So in in Canada I don't know. It might be in the States as Wes. Basically, like, selling used cars online.

We hired a lot of devs that straight from HackerU, which is a boot camp I used to teach at, And that meant a lot to us, mostly because Heather Payne, she was on podcast, does such a great job of screening. Every grad I met from there not only had skills, but was winsome and really wanted to make stuff. So that's kinda interesting as well JS that, like, specific schools or boot camps or something might be a bit of a honey Node because, like, I know Wes Heather came on the podcast, a honey hole of good developers because they're already prescreened. Like, I I think that Heather said only, like, what, 10% of the people that apply make it in, so they're already doing the filtering for you. Plus, then you know, like, the content there. So in that case, yeah, it it probably would be a a good thing if if you are an employer and you know where to where to go get these good grads.

It's a honey elf.

This is so glad that made its appearance back in the show. Nope. Okay. Here's the here's the last one here. Nope. Just like a number of years of experience, they do not guarantee expertise.

I think that's a great point. I I know a lot of Scott maybe not a lot. I've known a lot of developers in my past who'd be the the webmaster who never moved their skills beyond modifying HTML files in Dreamweaver.

And just because they've been doing it for 20 years does not mean that they know how to build a modern site. So, yeah, just like just like number of years experience, right, a certification can be passed or failed. I'm maybe prime example of this, not not certification wise, but, like, I am not good at exams. So, like, for me to pass an exam, it like, I feel like I don't learn things if I'm studying for an exam. I feel like I am learning how to pass the exam.

I think you you will get a subset of those types of people who have no practical or real experiences. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just just not gonna fly. I I think the one that, to me, the one that resonated the most was basically just saying that, like, the things that are most important are aptitude and personality in addition to your Node. Because the best developers are those who can take the time to grow themselves in a project and with a project. Maybe not necessarily the types of developers who already have it all figured out at the start. Anytime I worked at any agencies or whatever, the people who were the best or who got their stuff done the most efficiently were not necessarily the most proficient

developers overall, but the types that would be willing to fully dive into projects and really understand. Those are the types of personal qualities that you're just not gonna get from whatever the results of a certificate are. I like that a lot. Node question I have for you is the initial blog post we read came from the learner's point of view. They said, like, I need some sort of, like, bar where I know that if I'm I have the skills to be hired or not.

And since we don't have some sort of check mark to say, Wes. You have passed this certification. You are now horrible by these companies.

What do you think like, how what what do you say to somebody who's in that situation? How do I know if I have the skills? Am I good enough to start go out and and job searching?

Oh, how do you know you're good enough? To me, it's just all about doing it. Every single job that I got that I was, like, really, happy in and, like, a job I grew in was a job that I maybe did not feel qualified enough to get at the jump.

So I either had to be convinced to apply to these jobs or I did so with the idea, well, if I if I get an interview, that'd be pretty cool. Then you get the job. Then you feel a little bit like, oh, crap, that I'm a little over my head. And then you work really hard, and then you grow as a developer and a human and all of those things. So, yeah, I don't know. That's a, that's a tough question for me because I've always always had sort of the mentality of apply for everything.

You know, write the cover letters, do do the work, you know, really show up and and do your best. Try to get the gig even if you feel like you're probably not good enough for it. I remember one of the 1st jobs I interviewed for was, like, some manager position at the University of Michigan, and they were just like, do you have any experience scheduling your management? Well, I'm like, nope. How hard can it be? You know, I can I can do it? Whatever. So having, it's maybe not it's just that blind confidence sometimes can really come in Sanity. But, really, it's just you have to believe in yourself that you can accomplish anything.

And you can do these things given the opportunity. So just apply for stuff that you might not feel that you have capabilities of doing, and then who Node, you could potentially grow into those roles and positions. I totally agree with you. I think we should do a show on,

these are the things you should be able to do before you you apply for a job, and it should be things like Oh, yeah. Fetch some data and display it. Make a layout. We should let's do show on that because I think that'd be we could come up with a list of, like, 20 things. Totally. And then at the after that, it's it's up to the the person who's hiring you to decide if if you have the skill sets or not. And, I think, like, your your impostor syndrome probably will come into play here, where you think you don't necessarily have it. But, honestly, like like that one tweet said, personality aptitude, you can learn the technical skill sets a lot of the times from there, and that's what people are looking for. They're like, yeah. I I don't mind investing in this person a little bit if I I really like them. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Totally. It'll hold. Yeah. Good show. Good show.

Good good show, Wes.

Can we just pat our we should have a new segment where we just pat ourselves on the back. Good show.

Wes did good. Yeah. No. That that was a that was a interesting one. I I had seen it pop up a couple times, and you often see this, like, frustration of Wes need the government to step in and standardize our skills and make it some sort of, like, thing where you have to graduate from an academy, and then you are good enough. But, unfortunately and fortunately, for, like, people like Scott and I who don't do well at at tests, and we just sorta sling Wes just go out there and start slinging code and building stuff, and it's worked out. We're able to make a living off this web development stuff.

Because, certainly, if it was up to like, I remember I I I don't know. This is totally unrelated, but, like, every Sunday night not every Sunday night, but still every couple Sunday nights, I still get a feeling of, I have no homework.

Because my entire university and high school and in grade school, I would get this, like, I hate homework. Oh, yeah. Wanna go on the computer and make stuff.

And just that feeling of, I don't need to do homework anymore. Oh Oh my god. JS the best. I spent all of

my college life, doing coding in most of my classes.

Musicology? Yeah. Just sitting in the back Node coding on stuff. And and that's just how, I always was too. It's just like I just I gotta get my homework done so that I can, you know, work on this video, I'm editing, or work on this code. And that's something that very firmly resonates with me. Beautiful. Alright. I think that's it. Thanks for tuning in. If you've got thoughts of your own, I've linked a Twitter thread, but also tweet us at syntax of m with your thoughts on their certifications.

Oh, before we go, I maybe have 1 more small point to make.

Do you know if the type of job you are applying for is going to require a certification? Because some do. Like, just because we say that certifications aren't, you know, the the bee's knees in all sorts of regards, There are some jobs specifically, like like you mentioned, AWS, Google, whatever, that will say, like, straight up, you need these certifications to be considered for this job. So just last little thing. Have that in mind.

Totally. Oh, and I should also say, like, I'm probably being a little hypocritical here because I I do offer certifications for all of my courses. And the reason why I do that is because some employers, in order to get paid back or in order to take a course or whatever, you have to actually have some sort of certification. So, like, you do sometimes have to play in that ballpark as well. I just don't see it all that often for real hiring of of jobs.

Yeah. Beautiful. Cool. Alright. That's it. That's

it. Peace. Peace.

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