How useful is having Spring Certification [closed]

Question

I have been working in Spring and now I am planning to get Certified.

Just wanted to check with all you experts if it would help as cost of the Certification is really high ?

Answer 1

I think it is the same as with all certifications in general. There are several aspects to consider.

How well do you know that technology?

If you know it already very well and are getting certified just for sake of certification, it is much less valuable. I always pursued certifications in areas where I wanted or needed to expand my knowledge. In that case a certification is great motivation to actually learn that area on pretty deep level. So even if your current employer does not recognize certifications as valuable, the main value for you is still present - you actually managed to learn some area pretty well.

Certifications recognized by employers

I think every employer has a different attitude towards certifications. For some governmental projects, there are often in many countries requirements to have certain certifications as a requirement. In private sector, that is not the case. Many people say that certifications are useless since they don´t really show whether you are competent and you know much about the topic. I agree that in many cases it does not reflect your real knowledge. However, it does reflect your diligence, your interest and it shows that you care. And that is often even more important. And even if your employer thinks certifications are useless, you learned a lot while studying for certifications and that is the main advantage.

Do you want to change employer soon?

In that case, it might help you when searching for a new job. If you don´t want to switch - will it help you in your current position? Maybe you can use it as one of your arguments to get raise, maybe it is part of your yearly KPIs to study and improve, maybe it will show your employer how dedicated you are.

Are you paying for certification yourself or is your employer paying for it?

In case your employer pays for your education, I would go for it. In case you pay it yourself, you have to be much more careful which certifications to choose, but still, in general I think it is well worth it as you will learn a lot.

Spring Certification

I attended official Spring Core Framework 3.2 Training (5.0 is already available now) last year. It was a four-day course with a certification. It was very professionally made training and I can recommend it. I think if there is a certification in java world to pursue (except for the traditional oracle java certifications), it is definitely Spring one.

Further resources

• Spring Core Framework 5.0 Official Course (incl. certification)
• Jeanne’s core spring 3 certification experiences
• Is Spring certification worth anything? - CodeRanch Forums
• My certification notes from Spring Core Training and Spring Web Training