Let's Talk Certifications

In just over a week, I'm going to be in Valencia, Spain, for pgConf.eu. While there, I'm planning to take the first certification to come out of the Open Alliance for PostgreSQL Education. I'm more than a little nervous because I'm not sure I'm ready. However, I've been studying and reading, watching videos, practicing my psql skills, even having an AI generate a series of practice tests for me (75/80 on the last one). I'm doing what I can to be ready. However, that's not the purpose of this editorial. I don't want to talk about this particular cert, but rather all certs.

I've got a weird relationship with certifications. In my (failing because of old age) memory, I believe I received two certifications, both of them back in the 1990s. Pretty sure I went through a Token Ring certification and a Sybase 4.2 cert. Yes, it was that long ago. And that's it. I'm coming up on 40 years working in IT and that is my entire certification history to date. It gets worse. I didn't even go to college for IT. I went to film school... and dropped out. In short, by many standard measures, I'm not qualified to do what I do. No degrees. No certifications. No actual proof that I know what I'm doing. I mean, as long as you don't count 40 years in IT. Never getting fired for incompetence (only actually got laid off one time and that was because the company was going under). 22 books with my name on them. Speaking at events, large and small, all over the world. Blogs, articles, podcasts, interviews. If you don't count any of that, I'm unqualified.

I'm sure you get by now that I'm totally doing a bit of a dig on certifications. So why am I both promoting and planning to take a certification test (and fingers crossed, pass, good gosh failing will be so embarrassing)?

Because certifications are a useful tool. Have they done anything for me and my career? Nope. Does that mean that all certifications and the people that take them are wasting their time? Hell no! Quite the opposite.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that when I look at someone's CV/resume that I look for certifications. I don't. If they're there, great. If not, OK, let's see what you claim you've done. What I am going to say is that the process of getting the certification is extremely useful. The main reason for this is because it provides a structure to your learning. Several years back, when I started learning PostgreSQL, the very first thing I did (after figuring out how to get it running) was explore restoring databases. Now, do I recommend that as a starting point for learning? Nope. Not at all. It just so happens that I wanted to simply explore Postgres. However, preparing for this certification has put me through several topics that I just hadn't explored through my slap dash learning style. An interesting one to call out is upgrades. I'd been in the habit of tossing one container and starting another, no upgrade needed. However, a fundamental fact of data management is upgrading your databases. So, I had to spend quite a bit of time learning about upgrades (article or three inbound, btw). It's that structure, that set of definitions for what a certification points out as important, that, at least to me, is the power behind a certification.

Yes, there a whole slew of other benefits as well. However, the structure that learning requires in preparation for a certification, that's hard to discount.

You'll see an article (or articles) from me discussing whether I passed or failed (and yeah, I'll be brutally honest, more fool me). I hope that you too will use the learning structures of certifications to expand your knowledge. Do you then have to take the test? Nope. I just think the structure will help you learn more, better.

Wish me luck.

Grant Fritchey

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