Recently, I studied a bit, took a few practice tests, and passed the exam to become an Okta Certified Professional. It’s my first certification, but certainly not my last. Here’s how I came to terms with some of the feelings that kept me from pursuing certifications in the past and some notes from my experience with the Okta certification process.

Men at work

I want to take some time to unpack my long-standing aversion to getting certifications. A part of me wants to dismiss it as simply not having prioritized it and move on, but I think that robs me of an opportunity to take a closer look at myself and my motivations. Maybe you can relate to my hangups, or maybe seeing this process can help you identify your own so you can address and move past them.

It feels cheesy to say, but my dad’s a smart guy. Before retiring, he worked at a plastic company for over 30 years (where his dad had also worked before experiencing a career-ending injury). He held a few different positions but retired with the title of Instrumentation and Electrical (I&E) Technician. I never wanted to do exactly what my dad did, but I admired a lot about who he was professionally and how he showed up for his coworkers and company.

My dad had multiple coworkers and many stories that can attest to him knowing better than anyone else how their plant site ran. He kept excellent logs, knew where all the spare parts were, and understood how nearly every system interacted. He also had the logical mindset needed to troubleshoot to find a solution in a timely manner if he didn’t know an answer off the top of his head.

Higher-ups in the organization often had more degrees or certifications, but they didn’t have the in-depth understanding of the systems my dad had. I don’t want to speak too much for him, but I think that was sometimes frustrating. Middle management, with the support of Upper Management, would propose solutions that my dad knew wouldn’t work, compelling him to explain and later prove to them why the grand plan they had cooked up wouldn’t work in real life.

Reflection and Growth

It was never his intention, but I think this childhood impression of my dad’s professional life put people into two categories for me: Those self-obsessed with status that focus on holding certifications that are not actually all that useful in the workplace and those who keep their heads down, spend their time in the trenches doing the work and truly know a subject inside and out. My dad always came across as someone in the second group, that was where I always saw myself, too.

This idea led me to have the cynical belief that certifications and higher degrees of education are only superfluous markers of achievement and never do a good job of realistically measuring someone’s depth of knowledge. After reflecting on this judgment I found within myself and just giving a certification a try, I now know this isn’t always the case. Having a certification can’t make me worse at something! These two groups I mentioned were just made up in my mind; people are more complex than that and rarely fall so neatly into categories.

A more honest viewpoint would be that no certification can give you complete knowledge in a subject area, but it can help refresh and enhance your skills. They give you clear areas to study, and when you finally get the certification, they provide solid evidence to employers that you’ve been engaged in learning more and are committed to being a lifelong learner.

Why Okta? And How did I prepare?

I feel secure in my background with IAM, but most of that background has been with Onelogin. I had spent less than a year with Okta at my most recent job, and I quickly came to see how much more advanced a product it was compared to others. It’s also extremely well-documented and feels quite polished. I hope to get the chance to work with it more in my career. I could see myself going down the IAM wormhole. Since I enjoy working with it and seeing the respect that the certification garnered, it seemed like a great one to get started with.

To prepare, I did what others suggested. I took the Free and Premier practice exams multiple times, had many multi-hour sessions going through the documentation, and signed up for a test environment to explore and get a look back under the hood again (sometimes the quickest way to answer a question was to find where it was in Okta instead of trying to find the documentation page on it).

Takeaways from the Exam

The first half of the exam was difficult, but I held up. Most of the Yes/No DOCM questions would be things I would typically search for in documentation, but that’s off-limits. Luckily I remembered enough. I can understand that knowing it without having to look it up is what makes you a great Administrator, but wow, those DOCM questions do test your knowledge.

Given my experience setting up Applications and configuring IdPs in the past, the second, live configuration, half wasn’t all that hard. I got 100% on this section the first time I took it, but I still had some lingering questions and areas in which I wasn’t 100% confident. I took it a few more times, and by the time I took the actual exam, I flew through the live configuration. I felt much more comfortable in Okta and better understood some security areas and data flows.

I loved working in a live environment. It feels like a hallmark of a good IT certification.

In closing

To finally answer the question posed in the blog post’s title – certifications show both myself and employers that I genuinely know what I say I do and let me test the waters with technologies to see where I want to go and what I want to specialize in for the future. You can get by fine without them, but why not try something new and see how it goes?

Next up, I plan on taking the Jamf 100 and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, and maybe the CCNA, too – I could stand to resharpen my Networking skills. A little down the road, I want to get deeper into modern Linux Server Administration and have read that the RHCSA is good because, similar to the Okta exam, it takes place in a live environment.

Huge thanks if you’ve read this far, I hope you have a great day!

– William