Your Certificate Means Nothing

I need to get something off my chest.

Open LinkedIn right now. Scroll for thirty seconds. I guarantee you’ll see at least one of these posts:

“Excited to share that I just achieved Knight rank on LeetCode!”

“Proud to announce I’m now AWS Certified Solutions Architect!”

“Finally hit Guardian on LeetCode after months of hard work!”

And my personal favorite: A screenshot of five different cloud certifications stacked like trophies.

Cool. Good for you. But here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: None of this means anything anymore.

The LeetCode Cheating Epidemic

Let me hit you with some numbers.

LeetCode themselves reported that roughly 15% of contest participants get caught cheating. Caught. Not the total number cheating. Just the ones dumb enough to get detected.

The estimated total? Around 50%. Half the people in every single contest are cheating in some form. That means roughly 35% are getting away with it completely.

Think about that. Every contest. Half the participants. Cheating.

And it gets worse.

Two years ago, hitting Knight rank on LeetCode meant something. You needed around 1800 rating. That was genuinely hard. You had to be good. I was grinding DSA daily back then and sitting at around 1450. Knight felt far away. It was a real achievement.

Fast forward to today. Some survey found that 80% of active users became Knight in the past two years. Eighty percent. The top 25% rank. In two years.

You think 80% of people suddenly got that much better at algorithms? No. They got better at cheating. ChatGPT happened. Solution sharing groups happened. Screen sharing with friends happened.

So when someone posts their shiny Knight badge on LinkedIn, what are they really showing? That they can copy solutions fast? That they’re in the right Discord server?

The badge is worthless. The rating is meaningless. The whole system is broken.

The Certification Industrial Complex

Now let’s talk about the other LinkedIn plague: cloud certifications.

AWS Certified. Azure Certified. Google Cloud Certified. People collect these things like Pokemon cards.

I get it. I really do. I was the same in my first year of college. I thought certificates were the key. I thought more papers meant more opportunities. I chased them like they would magically open doors.

They didn’t.

Here’s what actually happens when you have an AWS certification:

A recruiter glances at it for half a second. Maybe. Then they ask you to actually build something. And that’s where it falls apart. Because passing a multiple choice exam about cloud services is completely different from actually using cloud services.

I’ve interviewed people with three or four cloud certifications who couldn’t deploy a basic application. Couldn’t explain how they’d structure a simple backend. Couldn’t debug a straightforward issue.

The certificate said they knew AWS. Reality said otherwise.

Why We Chase Paper

I think I understand why people do this. The job market is brutal. Everyone is looking for an edge. And certificates feel like progress. They’re tangible. You study, you pass, you get a badge. It feels productive.

But it’s a trap.

Companies figured out years ago that certifications don’t predict job performance. They’re just checkboxes. Nice to have, but not decisive. What actually matters is: Can you build things? Can you solve problems? Can you learn quickly when thrown into something new?

No exam tests for that.

What Actually Matters

Here’s what I’ve learned after years of building things, failing at startups, and working with actually talented engineers:

Skills beat credentials. Every single time.

The developer who built three side projects knows more than the one with five certifications. The person who contributed to open source understands real codebases better than someone who memorized exam answers. The engineer who debugged production issues at 2 AM has experience no course can teach.

You want to stand out? Build something. Ship it. Break it. Fix it. Do that ten times. That portfolio will open more doors than any badge.

I’m not saying don’t learn. Learning is everything. But there’s a difference between learning and collecting certificates. One builds skills. The other builds a LinkedIn profile.

The Uncomfortable Reality

Here’s what nobody posting their achievements wants to hear:

Your Knight rank probably involved cheating. Or you competed against people who were cheating. Either way, the ranking system is compromised beyond repair.

Your cloud certification means you can pass a test. Not that you can architect a system.

Your LinkedIn post about these achievements is mostly for your own validation. Hiring managers scroll past it. The people who matter aren’t impressed.

I know this sounds harsh. It’s supposed to. Because I wasted time on this too. I chased the wrong things. I thought the paper mattered more than the practice.

It took me years to understand: Nobody cares what you’re certified in. They care what you can do.

So What Should You Do?

Stop optimizing for badges. Start optimizing for ability.

If you want to get better at algorithms, practice them. But don’t grind LeetCode contests hoping for a rating that means nothing. Solve problems until you actually understand them. Depth beats breadth.

If you want to learn cloud, build something on it. Deploy a real project. Hit real problems. That’s worth more than any exam.

If you want to impress employers, show them what you’ve made. A GitHub with actual projects beats a resume full of certifications.

The game has changed. The old signals are broken. Adapt or keep collecting meaningless badges.

Your choice.