devops

Is the Terraform Cert Worth It?

My thoughts on why or why not to get the Hashicorp Terraform certification.

Kevin

• 2 min read

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile. I've gotten asked this a lot since moving to DevOps. I want to go ahead and say what I think doesn't actually matter but I did what I thought was the right thing to get here. So here we go...

TLDR: No

Your probably freaking out. I'll update this statement but still the simple answer is no. This is not a needed cert if your coming from a development/SRE/IT background.

I've found that most places are willing to let you grow and learn terraform. Also the general vibe (I've experienced atleast) is that "anyone can pick up terraform". It's a slight learning curve but nothing too steep. I'm opinionated though so I'll say I really don't like the HCL language so eh ya know?

What has been my experience?

Honestly I haven't written much terraform. I haven't have to, but I read it a lot. I'm now starting to try and move my manually built infra to terraform, and as I stated above I really don't like the HCL language. I read and write a lot of python during work and having to then go read HCL is frustrating. I would much rather use AWS cdk (I work mostly in AWS) or trying something like Pulumi (you can write IaC in python).

I want to end this section definitely letting you know that this cert DID help me get my foot in the door to move into Devops, BUT not as much as my years of using AWS.

What would you do different?

Honestly based off my time in devops and the current state of everything I would move directly into containers. Let me explain...everyone is trying to figure out how to move things into docker containers and/or moving to Kubenetes. I have a CKAD voucher and plan to take that test in the next month, but I should have maybe done that shortly after the terraform cert.

I'll make a short list in order of things I would learn and the certs to collect. Any cert I don't have I'll put a star next to.

  1. Docker
  2. Kubernetes
  3. CKA or CKAD*
  4. Terraform
  5. AWS cloudformation
  6. AWS cdk
  7. AWS SAA*
  8. AZ-900*
  9. Hashicorp Vault

I hope this helps you decide if the terraform cert is for you. As a reminder this is my opinion, you should always ask companies what they are looking for and/or take a good look into the job description.