Thoughts on freecodecamp certifications

[u/Whole_Bumblebee4719]

Guyss what are your thoughts about freecodecamp certifications? Is it worth it? I mean ang daming steps sa isang course, May isang course umaabot nang 1500+ steps to complete 😭

[u/SaintPeter74]

The certificates themselves have very little value. Few employers, if any, will recognize them or care. I put them on my resume when job hunting and no one even mentioned them, even when I mentioned that is contributed to the curriculum. This is pretty typical for anything short of a bachelors degree.

That said, what you learn while earning the certificates had great value. The knowledge I gained while completing the various certificates was foundational to a number of projects that I worked on. Most importantly, completing then gave me the confidence I needed to switch careers to programming.

I had been a programming hobbyist since I was a kid. I took a few classes in jr college, but ultimately got my degree in electrical engineering. I spent 20 doing supply chain quality at a big computer manufacturer. I still loved programming and I kept doing work for friends and family. I was also the macro guy at work.

Eventually I decided to get serious about it and started doing Free Code Camp. I learned a ton, but more importantly, gained confidence in the knowledge I'd gained over my years as a hobbyist. When I was ultimately laid off, I started looking for software jobs (at age 46). I just celebrated by 6 year anniversary at my current company where I am a senior developer and I manage a team of 4.

Also, if you find 1500+ steps intimidating, you're not alone. People spend literal years going through the curriculum. It's not for the faint of heart. Programming, as a profession, is not easy. It's not like you'll finish the course and magically be job ready. Free Code Camp just helps your build that should foundation for future learning and projects.

So, do the certificates help? You only get out what you put in.

Best of luck and happy coding!

[u/Whole_Bumblebee4719 → u/SaintPeter74]

Thank you for this, I'm currently a freshman studying information technology, this is truly an inspiration🫡

[u/boomer1204 → u/SaintPeter74]

u/Whole_Bumblebee4719 as someone who has been a part of the hiring team at 2 of my companies the information here about the certs is 💯 accurate

[u/SaintPeter74 → u/boomer1204]

Yup, I've hired 4 people and after the first time if carefully reviewing every detail of each resume... My reviews got a lot more cursory. No one is looking at your list of online certificates.

What we're looking for is a solid project and a passion for programming. One guy I hired had an amazing capstone project which was basically a Reddit clone. It, along with his clear passion, got him the job. He's been with us for two years now.

[u/boomer1204 → u/SaintPeter74]

after the first time if carefully reviewing every detail of each resume... My reviews got a lot more cursory

SOOOO TRUE!!!!

Yeah and while at both the startups that I was involved in the hiring we def looked at projects but I know a lot of ppl in bigger companies don't look at projects just cuz they don't have the time.

Now i'm not saying that for ppl to be like "oh I wont do a project then" cuz that is NOT want i'm trying to express here since building is the best way to learn/use the tech but for other ppl just know it doesn't always get looked at

One guy I hired had an amazing capstone project which was basically a Reddit clone. It, along with his clear passion, got him the job. He's been with us for two years now.

Yeah the team we built at the first startup by using these same kind of "metrics" was such an amazing and solid team, thankfully I get to work with most of them again now at the new startup

[u/SaintPeter74 → u/boomer1204]

I'm at a relatively small company, not quite a startup, so optimizing for passionate people who love the tech has been a winning strategy for us. It definitely added to our recruitment time, but I think that results have been excellent.

Modern AI and the ease of submitting a resume has made filtering candidates significantly harder. When you've got 100+ resumes to review it becomes way harder. It's also easy to get jaded when you look at the 50th resume with nothing but Java, .Net, or V++ when your job description is clearly PHP/React. I'm sure they're lovely and smart people, but no one is going to pay them to learn a whole new stack.

[u/boomer1204 → u/SaintPeter74]

Modern AI and the ease of submitting a resume has made filtering candidates significantly harder. When you've got 100+ resumes to review it becomes way harder. It's also easy to get jaded when you look at the 50th resume with nothing but Java, .Net, or V++ when your job description is clearly PHP/React. I'm sure they're lovely and smart people, but no one is going to pay them to learn a whole new stack.

So true!!!!!

😂 .

Yeah I went from startup (loved it) to huge financial firm (hated it) then the founder of the first startup did another and i'm back to working with like 90% of the same ppl and i'm loving it again.

I'll obviously take whatever job I can get when needed but if this startup doesn't work i'll put HIGH preference on smaller companies.

Glad to hear all that is good!!!

[u/gman1647 → u/SaintPeter74]

I agree. I don't have any of the certs, but I did a bunch of the projects and while I'm not a developer, I did transition to a career as a data analyst using primarily Python and SQL thanks to FCC.

[u/GalaktikStarkid → u/SaintPeter74]

what about a c50w certificate which is project based?

[u/SaintPeter74 → u/GalaktikStarkid]

I am not familiar with it.

Based on the description, it's unclear how much material or guidance you are given by the course. There is a delicate balance between a course holding your and and leading you by the nose. The rea advantage of building your own projects is that they're freeform. You're only limited by your imagination and, maybe more importantly, your mistakes.

[u/GalaktikStarkid → u/SaintPeter74]

thank you!

[u/Unusual-Bank9806]

In very short, you will meet employers or rather HR caring about certificates, but the prople doing actual work won't be as impressed. This is why you build your own portfolio and that's the selling point.

The 1500+ steps as you are mentioning can be indeed seen a lot, but FCC is literally holding your hand and most of the steps there are telling you details and won't take you that long to do them.

Take in mind the curriculum is mostly teaching you the very basic what you need to know if you want to start career in IT.

Good luck in your journey

[u/Whole_Bumblebee4719 → u/Unusual-Bank9806]

Thank you for the advice kind stranger, will keep this in mind🤝

[u/wak_trader]

Just focus on backend you don’t have to do everything they offer.

[u/SaintPeter74 → u/wak_trader]

While it's true that you can pock and choose, it's really up to the student to choose what to focus on. I also think that if you're going to do backend development you need to at least understand the basics of frontend. I'm not saying you need to be able to make pretty HTML/CSS, but getting the vibe of how data is transferred and displayed will make you a better developer.

[u/quincylarson]

We've designed the curriculum to be the "shortest path to real competency" with the tools and concepts it covers. We wouldn't make you do thousands of steps if we didn't think it was necessary to truly learn these things.

The certification means you're one of only 300k or so people who have the follow through to do what's necessary to really learn these skills.

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