
Google announces new Career Certificates and 100k scholarships - pithymaxim
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/grow-with-google/digital-jobs-program-help-americas-economic-recovery/
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rshnotsecure
Google has tried to do this before and gotten good press with as far as I can
tell close to 0 results [1].

Their last program was basically just "office hours" on how to use Google
Analytics in libraries across beset former rust belt cities.

They did have a consistent office hours for their one pilot program in New
York that people could also call into, but it was mostly college kids who were
brilliant, talented, and going to get a job anyway the couple of times I
shadowed.

The saddest part was probably their previous partnering with Goodwill. 0
people were hired from this partnership. This was back in 2017 when it was
hard to know, but that organization is under significant litigation now for
practices such as paying sub minimum wage (sub $1) to mentally disabled
employees, paying board members well in excess of 6 figures, etc.

I say this as someone who considers GCP their favorite cloud and consistently
recommends it to customers where security is a priority.

[1] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/technology/google-job-
tra...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/technology/google-job-training-
initiative.html)

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aamoscodes
I believe you, but is there a source for the “0 people were hired” claim?
It’ll be interesting to have as these programs become more popular.

~~~
rshnotsecure
That is a fair question. My answer is in the absence of evidence, or even any
claim that Google specifically makes that X got hired because of Y Google
Program and now works at Z.

I worked with two good reporters to look into this. There is no documentation
one can find at [https://grow.google/partners/](https://grow.google/partners/)
or at [https://google.org](https://google.org). Those websites lead to perhaps
200 significant links, and we scoured every PDF on the sites. Also we checked
LinkedIn for those who had the IT Support certs. Nothing.

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alfiedotwtf
Yuk...

I’ve dealt with a lot of developers who basically collect certifications but
sadly can’t even code a print statement. Compare this to people who I’ve
worked with without a university degree and just studied on their own from
books and tutorials who are superstars.

My money is on Google Certificates being gamed just like all other cert
programs.

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ThrustCode
Why do you think it is that certs attract those kind of people?

It makes little sense from a career perspective to go though those
certification training schemes without truly developing the competency they
are aimed at promoting and also it serves to give certs a bad reputation even
for people who pursue them in good faith.

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psds2
Not everybody is concerned about their career, some people are focused on
providing a better life for their family. From that perspective brain dumping
a certification feels like it has potential for high reward with minimal
effort.

Brain dumping is the process of memorizing the answer bank for a test. There
are many sites for these kind of certification exams that provide brain dumps
or answer keys to study.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
They end up being gamed, just like Google interview questions :

Q: How many golf balls fit in a school bus? A: Because the man holes are
round!

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hysan
I like the initiative as I think it can make for a positive push, but I have
my misgivings as well. It feels like a push into the bootcamp space and with
it, I immediately wonder about accreditation in the legal education sense.

\- How will schools view these certificates?

\- Do they count as credits in any form?

\- Is this just Google’s play into the certificate space like Oracle, etc?

I wonder because of this line:

> ... at Google we will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent
> of a four-year degree for related roles.

This is coming not long after Google says that they don’t care about degrees
anymore in their hiring process. A positive take on this statement would be
that they are trying to signal to the rest of the industry that there are
other ways for people to prove their skill other than university degrees. A
negative reading is that Google is now simply moving towards using their own
testing system as a signal for candidate screening.

As with many large companies, it’s hard to understand their motives underneath
all of the PR.

~~~
tylerhou
Google already has their own testing system -- it's called the interview
process.

This a move which aims to expand the pool of candidates, especially those from
non-traditional backgrounds. There are a lot of smart people who weren't able
to go to university. If Google limited its talent pool to just those who have
graduated from four year universities, they would miss many candidates
(including me!).

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uluyol
> ... we will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent of a
> four-year degree for related roles.

For me the key question is this: what's will Google's job acceptance rate be
for Career Certificates vs Bachelor's degrees? If they can get it to 1/4 the
rate for a university education, then it seems like it has some value.
Otherwise, this is all just a scam.

Good on them for the other things though.

~~~
Traubenfuchs
I HIGHLY doubt Google has any interest in hiring someone with a Google career
certificate. Instead they will keep sieving the top performers of top
universities.

It's all for publicity, improving their image, making those career certificate
holders more likely pick Google products (for the companies they will work
for)...

~~~
tylerhou
> I HIGHLY doubt Google has any interest in hiring someone with a Google
> career certificate. Instead they will keep sieving the top performers of top
> universities.

This is patently untrue; there are many internal pushes to hire from people
without degrees; recruiters make a concerted effort to reach out to students
at underrepresented universities (including historically black universities).

I myself work at Google. I don't have a degree, and barely completed any
college.

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aledalgrande
Google is becoming IBM

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commandlinefan
No, Microsoft became IBM and now Google is becoming Microsoft.

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lihaciudaniel
So who is Apple then

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TACIXAT
I know someone I'd like to send this to. Did anyone see an application link? I
didn't see anything about applying for the scholarship in the article.

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ForHackernews
Sounds like AMP for careers?

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kgraves
This is superb, having these career certificates would definitely make it
easier to make "hire/no hire" decisions in the hiring process.

This is welcomed.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
This is why I hate certifications.. I’d rather people actually talk to
candidates rather than bin applications because of pieces of paper

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HenryKissinger
This is great, as long as these certificates are valued by employers, since
finding a job requiring these skills is all that matters in the end.

