I recently passed the CKA, Certified Kubernetes Administrator certification. This was my first experience performing a hands-on exam. I would like to share some of my thoughts regarding certifications.
Certifications
It’s well-known people learn in different ways, some people are more creative than others, therefore these people can come up with examples that help their learning process.
There are some of the benefits I see with a guided learning process;
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You get a table of content, what is relevant to the topic. This is important, sometimes you may feel lost on what direction to go, a well-defined scope helps me to focus on the most important subjects.
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Let’s be clear, not all certifications demonstrate you are competent at a certain skill. However, this tells me a few things about that person, such as you have commitment to start/end something, you are curious and a self-learner, shows me that person wants to improve. In the end, there is more behind a certification than just the technical aspect.
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I really like hands-on certifications, you need to learn the skill more than just memorizing answers, for instance with computer based exams. On the other hand, this reuqires more time and practice. Don’t get me wrong, test based certifications I think are good approach when you want to learn the basics on certain matter. Gives you a high-level overview about a new skill.
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Most of the hands-on certifications out there allow you to look at their documentation during the exam. Even after passing the exam, this encouraged me to always use the official documentation as a first option.
Kubernetes
In my last project at Algolia, I helped the Shopify team to move their application into Kubernetes. If you create a new Shopify store, and decide to use Algolia as your search engine, all that used to be a monolothic application, I helped the team to move it into Kubernetes.
I didn’t want to forget all the things I learn during that project, so I decided to get certified. From my personal experience I learn more preparing the certification than during the project. I understand know how all the pieces work together and gives me a better understanding of the underlaying technologies.
I want to be clear, this does not make me a Kubernetes expert, but I look back and I know much more that when I started. This is about continous learning and self-improvement.