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I find the obsession with certificates interesting. One of my past school used to hand them out like candies. It costs like a dollar for 10 and made everyone ha

I find the obsession with certificates interesting. One of my past school used to hand them out like candies. It costs like a dollar for 10 and made everyone happy. Same with trophies and medals. After some questioning and feedback from a lot of people indirectly, I concluded that it's one of the best investment any school can make. It results in lot of good PR, recognition, talks, feel good, etc. It's useful to target and engineer certain behaviors in students. Many of them conflate their value and status with those papers. You can make money by holding competition to handout these and charge for chairs, food and other stuff. Many students won't talk about certificates and medals with their classmates because they will be aware of how easy it is to get one but they will boast about it to kids from other schools and their parents. Ha, better conversion rate if someone is looking to transfer their kid to a better school. I don't understand how not enough schools are doing this and still cheap out on $100 total spend every month at best.

dheera 6y ago
That's interesting because I've always found someone being "certified" for e.g. Microsoft something is a huge turnoff for hiring.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 6y ago
  Agreed -- and an especially big turnoff is a "cert collector", most of which have done the absolute minimum required to get each of them, i.e. mostly rote memorisation. It's a very Quantity over Quality mindset.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    On the plus side, at least you know they knew it at some point in time.
- wy35 6y ago
  On the flip side, knowing someone is AWS certified tells me they at least know their way around the console.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  In my experience it’s a turn off for HN types of commenters, but out in the “real world” it’s a big deal. My current employer has a goal of X% of all consultants must be cloud certified and bringing these certificates to pre-sales meetings with clients helps a lot.
- qchris 6y ago
  I largely agreee, with the exception of CAD design certificates for Solidworks, etc. I don't even have one, but everyone I've met who has are actually functionally better at CAD than those without, so I acknowledge it.

dheera 6y ago

That's interesting because I've always found someone being "certified" for e.g. Microsoft something is a huge turnoff for hiring.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 6y ago
Agreed -- and an especially big turnoff is a "cert collector", most of which have done the absolute minimum required to get each of them, i.e. mostly rote memorisation. It's a very Quantity over Quality mindset.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  On the plus side, at least you know they knew it at some point in time.
wy35 6y ago
On the flip side, knowing someone is AWS certified tells me they at least know their way around the console.
wodenokoto 6y ago
In my experience it’s a turn off for HN types of commenters, but out in the “real world” it’s a big deal. My current employer has a goal of X% of all consultants must be cloud certified and bringing these certificates to pre-sales meetings with clients helps a lot.
qchris 6y ago
I largely agreee, with the exception of CAD design certificates for Solidworks, etc. I don't even have one, but everyone I've met who has are actually functionally better at CAD than those without, so I acknowledge it.