Ask HN: How important it is to have certificates? For example AWS, Azure, etc.?

Depends on where you’re at in your career.

If you’re a junior with little or no real-world experience, certificates can fill in gaps in your resume. We can’t always get the experience we want or need right away, so courses and certificates are one way to fill they gap and provide some proof.

If you’re 10 years deep into a career and trying to change into something cloud-related without prior experience, getting a certificate or two might help you open up more job opportunities. It probably won’t get you lead jobs, but it can help keep your resume from being disqualified before the tech screen.

On the other hand, if you’ve already got years of experience doing cloud work in the real world, getting certificates probably isn’t going to help much. Good real world experience is better than certificates.

There are exceptions: Some old school companies rely heavily on credentials over all else, so collecting credentials and certificates can be a way to get into these companies and get ahead. It’s less common at modern, reasonable tech companies though.

IT/Security - important

Devops - less so important

Coding/programming - useless, just have example code like a github portfolio with your work instead.