

Ask HN: TOGAF - frostsnow

Any opinion regarding TOGAF Certification?  Currently at a "plateau" of my career (14 years in Java+Web) and am considering moving forward.  Thoughts?
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mindcrime
I don't have any specific thoughts on TOGAF Certification per-se, but my
overall thought is this: Any certification is only as valuable as some set of
potential employers find it to be. If you can identify a set of employers,
that represent organizations that you would want to work for, that value
TOGAF, then it might be worth it.

Another thought is: Despite what you might get from the HN echo-chamber, I
believe that there are _very_ few situations where a certification is going to
_hurt_ you. The question is more, "does it help enough to pay for itself?"

Do you have any certifications now? What kind of roles are you looking to move
into? I'm guessing you are thinking "architect" type roles?

Some other things to consider as ways to expand your career, depending on your
current situation and where you want to go... project management, agile
methodology type certifications? How about what used to be called SCEA (Sun
Certified Enterprise Architect)? Or, if moving into management is on the
table, how about starting to take business classes (not _necessarily_ an MBA,
but something to give you a "hook" into the business side of things) or
something along the lines of Six Sigma or Lean training / certification?

Do you want to be a CTO eventually? CIO? CEO? Something else?

Also consider the "elephant in the room" here on HN: entrepreneurship. Maybe
you could forget TOGAF and all this stuff, and jump straight to CEO by
starting your own company. Have any project ideas sitting on the back burner?
Could you identify some problems you've seen in your 14+ year career and come
up with some novel solutions?

