Certifications Should Help Your Career, Not Drain It The certification industry is worth billions. And a lot of that money comes from engineers making the same mistakes over and over. Here are the five most common ones — and what to do instead. Mistake 1: Starting with a Course Instead of an Assessment Most engineers default to buying a course before they know what they actually need to learn. They spend 40 hours watching videos on topics they already understand, just to get to the 10% they didn't know. The fix: Take an assessment first. If you've been using Terraform for two years, you probably know 80% of what a fundamentals exam covers. A 10-minute free assessment tells you exactly where your gaps are — then you can study just those topics. You might discover you're already ready to pass. Or you might find one specific area (state management, modules, whatever) that needs work. Either way, you save dozens of hours. Mistake 2: Picking the Wrong Certification Not all certifications are equal.…