Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 34: Do Certifications Help and How Can I Avoid Avoidance?

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Do certifications help me? How can I solve an avoidance problem?

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 34 of the Soft Skills Engineering podcast. I am Jameson Dance. And I am Dave Smith. And this episode is sponsored by DevMountain. We'll hear more from them later. Also, Soft Skills Engineering, if you are not aware, is a show where we take questions on all the non-technical aspects of being a software developer and we attempt to answer them. We take them and we do not give them back in exchange for answers. we harvest knowledge from them like squeezing out an orange that's why you feel sticky every time you're done with this we've got just a juicy one right here do you want to read it oh the metaphor okay yes so this comes from listener joe e he says do

certifications help me how much do certifications help in the job search in performance or compensation what kinds are best in development am i then a specialist or can i still generalize certification time well i think joe is just about to get certified in certification yeah that's the best i could come up with do you have a joke certification because i don't think i might have to revoke it so we both had a pretty quick knee-jerk reaction to this question and i want to explore it a little bit because i think i'm right as always right if i think a thing obviously it's right but i wonder if there's some bias in our from from just our background and the industries we've worked into and tell me if i'm summarizing your reaction incorrectly but

it was a pretty negative reaction to the idea of certification and how much it helps and and the value of it even right that is correctly summarized it seems as though maybe you have a certification in summarization got it from never mind i'm gonna stop that joke there joke dead uh why do you think that is uh why do i think that certifications are not generally desirable in our industry yeah well so before we go into this too far we should say that jameson and i both identified several exceptions to this rule but uh for the jobs that we've had and the co-workers that we've had and all the experience that we bring which is like a little bit just so much it's a wellspring of experience um we have never seen a certification benefit

an engineer including in the hiring phase right like you see you're looking at a resume you see a certification you go like oh this will this pushes this person over the edge from not an interview to interview not in my experience not when i hire people in my experience it's often gone the other way even where the the presence of many certifications on a resume is kind of a red flag because uh to me it gives the appearance that they didn't actually do anything in their job so they kind of reached out for these external crutches that all you do is you just pay money and um you get a piece of paper back that says you gotta take a test and stuff right i mean it's yeah they're not like totally trivial all right well again my inexperience i have no idea i've

never attempted to get one some of them are really involved i'll tell you that um and and we should probably point out some of the exceptions to this rule right now but like first of all if you're going into like an it position maybe a server admin or like a help desk position or you know something like maybe doing it infrastructure for a large corporation i actually think certifications are very valuable in that field um there was a red hat certification for a long time that i think was pretty prominent and really valuable for people who did that like cisco certified network engineer or something like that um and it's like very task specific or very job function specific but as a software engineer i think a lot of new developers come into the industry and they think

what what can i do to get a leg up how can i become a better engineer and they like go for these certifications which actually don't help you become a better developer right they just teach you a tool you know and i don't know that that's that's my opinion that's been my experience with them yeah it's it's really tempting on both the employer i i can see the appeal on both the employer and the employee side where the employer wants to know like how can i know if someone is good or not how can i know if it's worth hiring them and the employee wants to prove like i am worth hiring and the idea that there's this magic test that you take that if you pass you will prove i think that's kind of not very true for software development because it's so involved there are so

many different layers there's so many different skill sets that i have a hard time believing there's one certification that can prove that someone is a good developer yeah yeah the institutions that certify people usually they charge money for them right and so there's this weird incentive where like they want you to give them their money so they want you to get the certification so well i gotta push back on that one a little bit because i think you know universities higher education are in the same they have the same conflict of interest right yeah and yeah but it's it's four years long so so suddenly it doesn't count yeah good point good point no i was thinking the same thing while i was saying it but it just feels different where it's that short of

of an experience yeah when i first started programming i was in my programming class my first programming class in college and it was java but i was interested in the in the web and so i was googling a bunch of stuff and like how can i work on web stuff how can i prove that i know it and i stumbled across w3 schools which if you're a web developer you're you're groaning now they're kind of this um famously spammy resource for a lot of like dom apis and all kinds of all kinds of like web development api stuff and they're pretty good at seo they're so good at seo they've gotten a lot better at actual content recently too they used to be pretty um horrible and now they're just okay and kind of like spammy but they also make money by selling

these certificates and they have like an html certificate and a javascript certificate and i think it's like 100 bucks or something you take some tests you pay them and if you pass it'll say like w3 schools certified html developer or something like that and i thought at the time that that would be like my ticket to gainful employment um for 95 yeah i didn't know anything golden ticket i couldn't do anything but i i thought like i need some way to get my foot in the door um and then i was a poor college student so i couldn't afford the cost so i didn't actually do it but it appealed to me then and looking back like there's no way that would have actually helped me and if there was an employer that that would have helped me get a

job at it wouldn't have been a very good employer well i've got two candidates here they look identical except one has a w3 schools html this man passed the hollowed html w3 schools test they don't just take anybody at that institution do you know what their admittance rate is it's astronomically low so this is probably a good time to introduce that we're rolling out a new soft skills certification uh all you have to do is tell five friends about it and you get the certificate and if you don't you get haunted by the spooky soft skills ghost um i wonder if some of the okay i have heard back in the day in like the early 2000s um actually i think it was before the dot-com

bubble burst so even before that i heard someone mention that they got a certificate of some kind and it granted them an automatic raise and they worked at some giant tech company that was pretty bureaucratic but it was just like get this thing get this money that's it i think they were more of a sysadmin type though so that goes back to your earlier point yeah yeah but yeah i think there's this connotation of like kind of very large corporations that aren't necessarily known as being super tech savvy that's what i think of when i think of these certificates uh yes your biases are showing james they are showing and i've never worked at a company like this i've never gotten a certificate right i'm i'm making stuff up but i challenge you to go get one this week go

go spend the money and get an html certificate that's called new journalism it's where you embed yourself in the topic and you just write about yourself um so i'll do that expose yep the other i wonder if there's some influence from more traditional engineering disciplines too right aren't there tests you have to pass to be like a mechanical engineer or a civil engineer things like that those are i think those are called professional certification programs and they're actually administered by like a professional industry organization for the discipline and and there's this thing called a professional engineer and my mechanical engineering friends have done that and they have the certificate and it's like legit yeah it's like it's like the bar

for lawyers except for engineers yeah and and that's why you really can't call software developers engineers well you can call them whatever you want but you can but you might be wrong if you use certain words like engineer but i wonder if there's some of that influence from these more traditional engineering disciplines where this idea of there's this thing that you pass that proves you are one of us and because software engineering has so much more fuzziness to it you know there's so much more like craft and art and opinion and nuance and and maybe there is to all these other fields too and i don't know but i think i think you're i think you're right but i think it has a lot sorry i guess what i'm trying to say is i'm glad that nothing like that exists

like the de facto standard you pass this and you're a professional software developer and the reason i'm glad is because that thing would have to be revised every six months you know i mean physics doesn't change that often so mechanical engineers can take their certification um and like it turns out the gravitational constant is still the gravitational constant you know 20 years later but in software development it's like what are they going to test you on you know what technology are they going to test you on that's actually going to be around in a few years i think you're right in that the cutting edge tech changes so often, but I think it's even the other problem where there's some things you learn about being a good software developer that you can't just

learn in a certificate program. Like it takes a long time, a lot of experience. I mean, the lesson of building a good abstraction, you kind of only learn how to do that for most people. I feel like once you've built a lot of really bad abstractions or worked with a lot of really bad abstractions. and i don't know how you can just tell people like build good abstractions and tell them in more detail but there's some stuff you just feel after a while so it's it's both that there's all this fast moving um quickly obsolete knowledge and also there's this long like it's like we haven't figured out how to teach that in a systemic way yet yeah you just kind of learn it even over time learn how to do it yeah yeah i mean like things that were best practices

five to ten years ago are considered anti-patterns now yeah um and so that i don't know it kind of dovetails with your comment but uh yeah it's just crazy so maybe that's it it's like experience is the only certification and if you work at a company where there are a lot of people with certificates or you yourself have them and you're just like these guys are so wrong about this I would love to hear about it. Cause again, I am speaking from my experience of only working for, I've, I've never worked for a company with more than like a hundred people, right? I've only worked at these smaller companies and they're mostly all tech startups. And it's a very, um, it's a certain kind of culture and there's, there are lots of other kinds of cultures and development. so i admit i'm speaking from in from ignorance uh but especially if you're looking to get a job at a tech startup um i would say a certificate would actively harm your chances as a software developer it wouldn't like destroy your chances but i agree it would definitely hurt so the last thing i want

to say on this topic is if you're new to the industry beware of predatory certifications people who just want to take your money and give you a certificate that actually doesn't help yep just be super careful be sure to check it out and don't just ask the the certification vendor you know whether it's helpful be sure to ask other people in the industry yep yeah there are a lot of ways to spend money and not get much out of it oh there's one other area that i've seen certifications become helpful um in infosec which is a short way of saying information security uh an infosec engineer requires very specific training and i've seen some certification programs that actually look really good and i've known people who've gotten

them that look really like they've really benefited from them so i know less than nothing about that so i will take your word for it you mean you'll take my facts yes and accept them i fact approved all right question answered question answered all right it's sponsor time soft skills engineering is sponsored by dev mountain a boot camp with campuses in salt lake city and provo utah they do ios web development and ux ui courses they have full-time and part-time courses can range from 12 to 16 weeks they actually offer free housing as well if you are taking their full-time course which can make it a lot easier to commit to um to make the commitment to attend the course last week we met barbara leo who graduated from dev mountain a while ago here she talks a little

bit about how dev mountain prepared her to deal with a constant change in technology that is definitely something i think that dev mountain is really good at is you definitely feel comfortable being uncomfortable and not necessarily understanding everything and kind of getting like being okay with that um and then you can kind of approach that because that's kind of like everything like everyone always talks about javascript fatigue and oh there's this new thing to learn and how am I going to learn it and for me coming out of boot camp it's just like oh well no worries like I'll do what I can and like figure out the rest as I go and it's and it's okay if you struggle maybe you take a little bit longer than everyone else but that's fine

maybe you get it faster and that's fine too so I think it's a it's a good definitely a good skill to have that confidence and your ability to figure out new things is so valuable as a software a developer, and that's something that DevMountain can provide. If you are interested in breaking into the technology space or switching careers or even picking up new skills if you're a developer but want to learn about web development or iOS or UX and UI, check out DevMountain. You can go to devmountain.com and see all the information there. All right, back to the show. Do you want to read the next question, Dave? Sure. This one comes from a listener named Wally, and Wally writes how do i solve an avoidance problem he says really enjoying the podcast so far i've been

listening since episode one i finally have a question for you what do you do when you're struggling with motivation to get a particular task done sometimes i'll be working on a project and things will go go okay for a bit but then there will come times when whenever i sit at the keyboard to do the next part that needs to be done and something in my brain starts screaming get away from the keyboard and i will do practically anything else to avoid the work thoughts nope yeah i'm gonna avoid this question no thoughts i'm gonna go do something else for a while do you want to handle this one james so i totally suffer from this it'll sometimes take me calendar weeks to do a task that in actual time working on it takes an hour or two

some of it is procrastination but it feels a little bit different from just procrastination too in that procrastination well does it feel different from procrastination is it like you have other things you want to do instead that you can justify as being just as valuable i'm gonna ask google clicky clicky clack keyboard click says they're the same thing google what are the two things procrastination and what avoidance oh okay interesting so this is one of those problems where when i first read the problem i thought yeah that's not one i have that's not a problem i deal with and then i love how you admit that and then we're talking through it and i'm like

oh yeah i have this problem too this is why you haven't cleaned your gutters in like years that's not a problem i have i don't have dirty gutters so help me i have this problem what do you i have it too i'm i'm right there with you listener so what can we do here's what we do you get yourself a little shock collar you ever had one of those like that you put on pets to keep them from going out out of your yard yeah and every time your computer senses that you're off task it just gives you a little shock and then the problem is you have to let your computer figure out if you're off task or not and that's actually a really hard problem and then you avoid that problem you can't even start

so i think for me uh one of the best ways to solve an avoidance problem is accountability and it can't just be a fabricated made-up accountability that i know is only there to help me solve an avoidance problem you know what i mean yeah um like if i know my team is counting on me in a visible way that they will see, I am way more motivated to deliver on the thing that needs to be delivered. That's really interesting that you say that because it can be the opposite for me. If I'm avoiding a task and then it grows in importance, it's like even harder for me to make myself work on it sometimes. So does like the pressure make you avoid it more? yeah sometimes it does sometimes it is the opposite but but sometimes it definitely is that

what what if you knew that the task when finished was going to be celebrated by everyone like yay jameson did it it's going to be it's so great now all right like you underestimate how broken i am as a human being dave none of your feeble motivational tricks will work on me so i think that if you're in this situation and you have a manager who you trust to coach you this is a great time to tell them like hey i have an avoidance problem and don't say procrastination because even though google says they mean the same thing i think i think procrastination has a connotation of laziness do you agree with that jameson like when you say the word you think oh laziness no listen as a proud procrastinator i think it has a connotation of

like grit and wealth and great great beauty well that's what i think procrastinate your way to riches i i don't know i i could see that at least avoidance when i read this question i was like this is a smart person they they know these words and what these terms mean so yeah i think i i could buy that that it has a different connotation it sounds like a psychology thing instead of like a pop psychology thing yeah yeah yeah like like it's almost real yeah just kidding that's all you need is the perception of reality yeah so um i think that some people would be worried about approaching their boss with a problem like this because it again it's like well you've been lazy and i've been paying you you know and so your mind starts to race yeah with like all the possibilities like

oh you're fired oh you owe us back pay because or what's the opposite of back pay where where you've been paid but you shouldn't have been whatever that is um you know like your your mind might race with all these eventualities but the real the reality is that in my experience most managers are only too happy to help coach you through this problem and help you figure out a way that you can stay on track so i would say ask a manager to help coach you with that situation if you have a manager you can trust and you know talk to them about like sometimes just saying these things out loud will be enough to help you get through the situation so just explaining the problem to someone out loud and then hearing yourself verbalize it can help you to realize

oh i can conquer this something that has helped me is breaking tasks down into smaller and smaller chunks sometimes i'm avoiding a problem because it's too big of a chunk to accomplish it's like yeah yeah i'd say my inclination to do this waxes and wanes with i don't know there's there's some internal meter in somewhere inside of me and if the meter is low then i'll do this more i don't know quite what powers it but there are definitely times where i need to use more tricks on myself to get myself to do things and one of the tricks that works for me is breaking it down into very small very concrete tasks and just checking a lot of them off one by one you're like i've broken this development task into 15 different sub steps yep seven of those sub steps are open your editor and

the other seven are close your editor along the journey yep yeah and and i feel stupid saying it because it sounds so cliche and and dumb but it works for me helps me out i don't know that there are universal tips about this but yeah i think the the general thing of finding what helps you and well maybe even i mentioned that internal meter thing if you can identify what causes that to go up and down maybe you can avoid this problem entirely by just keeping yourself healthy in some way so that you have whatever fills that meter up oh that's interesting i'm gonna call it gumption if your gumption meter is high then you'll just do it just crank it out that would probably require some pretty serious introspection to figure out what gives you gumption yeah that feels like the

task of a lifetime but yeah yeah but a valuable one i'm glad you mentioned that because i think different people will have very different responses to this or rather different solutions to this problem even though i think many many people suffer from it um i've personally talked to two people who have worked through this problem and they both told very different stories even though the symptoms of the problem were the same the symptoms being they just didn't get a lot of work done um and they both described their solutions quite differently like one person was very task oriented like i just want i want these tasks and i want my manager to hold me accountable to getting them done and i want to feel like i need to report into my manager on a regular basis

about the task status um the other person was more uh i think i would think i'd describe it i would it was more of an emotional thing like um they felt guilt and like for not doing getting something done on time and then that guilt turned into more avoidance um which was like a vicious spiral um and then sometimes you know your manager or your peers or something they could say things that will actually make you feel more guilty whether intended or not um and so for this person it was a matter of identifying that they were not a bad person it was like a very visceral thing for them um to be able to get through it so i think that that there's going to be a lot of different solutions for a lot of different people that exact process has definitely happened to me before

that kind of spiral there's even a name for it if it gets too intense it's called catastrophizing where you say you're behind on a task and then you just start imagining all of these like branching consequences from being behind on that task that get worse and worse and worse and you you convince yourself that all these horrible things are going to happen because this one mildly bad thing is happening i think i think i do that and they all end with like and then the meteor that i created strikes the earth destroying everything but it starts with like i forgot to reply to this email that same sort of thing happens to me every time i have like a symptom of some illness and i go online and i google it and it's like oh yeah it could be the flu it could be a common headache

or it could be death, you know? Yeah, if you've got bad news, you've caught death. Well, that's all I have to offer. Good luck with this. It's a very difficult problem and you are not alone in feeling this way, I promise. Yeah, maybe I'll blab about that just to end that if you're feeling that way

where things are kind of spiraling a little bit, one really helpful, maybe the most helpful thing you can do is talk to somebody about it because holding it all inside is super unhealthy and doesn't really resolve anything. And if you talk to someone about it, it's kind of like declaring email bankruptcy. If you have 30,000 unread emails, you just delete them all. Like whatever, I would have read them if they were that important. And it's too overwhelming to deal with them. So I'm going to start over

and kind of talking to someone and helping them understand what's really going on and how you're really feeling is a it can be a step to kind of getting back on track super good oh i thought of one more thing um one person i talked to who suffered from this a lot they actually were quite they had set up a really distracting work environment for themselves you know they had like various different chat applications running um and this kind of stuff would interrupt them throughout their day and all it took was like one chat message that seemed interesting and boom they would be off in a room chatting about some cool topic and then an hour later they'd be like oh crap i just burned an hour and didn't even realize it yeah um and so i think that for some people you

can try to create a distraction free environment where you take active effort to suppress notifications and stuff because i'm telling you if i came to work every day and didn't actively suppress notifications i could literally do nothing but reply to notifications like oh just got another email better reply to that you know yep here's a chat better reply to that all day yeah i kind of did that when i worked full-time but i've i've grown much more ruthless about suppressing things now that i'm self-employed because it's my time is so much more tied to what i make oh yeah it's been pretty interesting awesome well question may be answered question kind of answered question addressed in some ways question avoided that was a good question if you

have things that you've done to help you overcome this avoidance problem i would love to hear them like i said i think everyone has different things that cause it and different solutions but it's kind of like watching someone use vim right everyone uses it in a slightly different way and everyone knows some different subset of all the arcane commands so you just learn something every time for me i do no matter how experienced the vim person is it's like oh i didn't know you could press q 15 times and then the period and then that'll like draw a little happy face on your screen so share share those tips if you've got them where can people go to share tips like that jameson oh man i don't know you go to our website of course well but you can't how are they going

to share tips on our website because on our website you can fill out a form or send us a twitter direct message that will ask us a question and you can just pretend like the question is actually your your message to us okay there you go okay i'll buy that let's just call it a work around okay yeah that's a that's an announcement we've got a shiny new form if you're uncomfortable using twitter or you just want to give us some more details then we have a form on our website to submit questions or if you like the twitters you can still use those too yep and we won't even collect your uh social security number i mean if you give it to us though we'll definitely collect it we'll put it in our collection yeah we'll hang on to it what if you lose yours then we'll have a

copy of it there you go we're just it's a public service speak yeah and and it's even available publicly as a true public service it's all on github okay i think that's the signal the worse the jugs get the the more i know that it's time to end we actually usually go on like this for about 45 minutes but we just choose to cut them off yeah it's for your own good all right we'll catch you next week thank you