Just to note that most certifying organizations are registered as "non profit" but that does not mean these organizations "certify for free" and it also does not mean that "a lot of money is not involved".

In fact, in most of these "certifying organizations" many people make a lot of money, especially the employees who have their salaries paid and their travel expenses paid.

I stand strongly by my experience that competent IT people with a lot of relevant hand-on experience do not need to be "certified" and that the major of people who are "certified" do so because they do not have years of the relevant hands-on, real work experience.

In fact, I personally know many "certified people" and almost none of them, to my knowledge, have deep, tangible on-the-job expertise with the systems they are certified for.

Again, I think it is great to learn, study, research and have continuing education; but my direct experience with CISSP was that the entire process was set up to favor their business ecosystem and there was a bias against any expertise that did not fit their business ecosystem model. The fact that ISC2 is a registered non-profit organization does not distract from the facts of how their business model works and how they are bias toward their favorite partners (like certain magazines, certain training schools in their ecosystem, etc.).

Honestly, I am glad I sat for the CISSP and it was good to have insider knowledge into how these organizations operate after becoming a CISSP. I am glad I did it; but not for the reasons one might think! I am glad I experienced how corrupt certification organizations can be and how unskilled (lack of true operational experience) most of their members are!

In closing, let's say you wanted to be a great Unity 3D gaming programmer. Well, you could take 100s of hours of Unity 3D classes and you could learn game programming in C# and how to work in the Unity IDE . You could get lots of certs, but still be a poor game developer.

On the other hand, another person goes out and learns Unity 3D and does not get certified and writes and develops a great Unity 3D application / game which is well known.

Who are you going to hire if looking for a developer?

Of course, you want the second one, the one who actually writes great gaming apps; but the problem is that the good ones often work for themselves. So, you look around, as an employer, and you cannot find a great game programmer to work for you (that you can afford to pay), so you go for the next choice, maybe hire someone with a cert, who at least has passed a series of tests!

So, it is easy to see that the "cert game" is a substitution for true capability and experience; so why not just go roll up your sleeves and develop apps and get hands on IT experience in the areas you are interested it?

After all, it would be better to create and operate a successful web site versus to be "certified" as a web developer; and likewise it is better to have been a sys admin for critical commercial systems (with real day to day IT security issues) versus being certified in IT security!

We are all sure that Steve Jobs was not "certified" in design; and I am sure that Mark Z. was not certified in creating matching algorithms for a "Facebook", LOL

Greatness does not come from certifications. Success comes from having a dream or a vision and the passion and energy to make that dream happen against all odds. This always means learning new skills.

You do not need permission from anyone, or even financial resources, to learn IT, programming, or to develop software apps. However, you do need permission and financial resource to be "certified"; so it should be obvious that the process of "certification" primary benefits the certifying organization, in most cases.