 are the new MetaApp developer certificates worth it? That is gonna be the topic of today's video and we're gonna be going over an overview of the course, talking about how long it takes to complete the certificate, the cost, the demand, the salary, the production value of the course, the course's chances of landing you a job, the value of the certificate itself, the pros and cons of the certificate and then at the end I'm gonna give my opinion on whether or not it's worth it. So I'm basically gonna answer just about every possible question that you could have about these courses and certificates and if I'm not able to answer it myself if you comment down below, there's a good chance that either myself or somebody in the community will be able to respond to you. So it looks like our good friend Zuck has been hard at work creating these certificates in order to compete with his biggest rival, which is Google and if you didn't know, these big tech companies are extremely competitive with each other, right? So they're always trying to get some sort of competitive advantage over the other company and one of the biggest things they do to get a competitive advantage is they try to hire and train the best possible talent. This is the reason why they pay people so well. They have all these ridiculous perks and benefits like you get free massages, free lunches, et cetera. And so what these big companies found is there were certain skills that just about nobody had. Colleges were not doing a good job teaching these things and so they decided to create their own certificate programs in order to fill the gaps and tell people exactly the skills they needed from the workforce. So there were two professional certificate programs that just came out. I was contacted. They asked me to do a review of them and so that's what I'm here doing today. So let's go ahead, jump right into it and let's talk about these two certificates. So what exactly is the MetaApp certificate program? Well, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has released two different courses in the last week. One of them is the Android course and the other one is the iOS course. Both of these courses focus on app development. One of them obviously focuses on app development for Android phones. The other one focuses on app development for iPhones. And these courses are phenomenal ways to get skills in these fields that companies like Meta actually need, right? This is Meta's way of telling you, hey, we need people who are skilled in these categories. And it's obviously much more affordable to do this than to get a college degree. So by the end of the program, you should be able to create your own apps that run on either iOS or Android systems. So there are really three situations where you would wanna consider taking one of these certifications. The first one is to get your first entry-level job. The second one is to either get a raise or switch positions in your current job. And the third one would be for you to transition to a completely different career. And these professional certificates have been getting insanely good reviews. I've gotten so many comments on my channel from people who are extremely happy with their experiences taking the Google certs as well as the Meta certs. And the best time to take these certifications before they get saturated is right now because right when they come out is when they're going to be the hottest. All right, so these companies are very competitive with each other. They're constantly trying to scalp each other's talent. Facebook has been on an absolute rampage over the last few years trying to scalp talent from the other companies. And getting these certifications really set you apart. And I'm gonna explain exactly why that is in this video. So the Meta iOS Developer Professional Certificate says you can launch your career as an iOS developer, build job ready skills for an in-demand career and earn credential from Meta. No degree or prior experience is required to get started. And then the Meta Android Developer Professional Certificate says launch your career as an Android app developer, build job ready skills for an in-demand career and earn credential from Meta. No degree or prior experience required to get started. Now keep in mind this is a shareable certificate so you can post this on your LinkedIn and in many cases people are actually found through LinkedIn, more on that later. It's also a 100% online course and it's flexible so you can basically take it anytime you want. And it is a beginner level course so you don't have to have any prior experience or education in order to start it. So what exactly are these professional certificates? Well, they are gonna help you to build the skills to get job ready so they're teaching you the skills but much more importantly is the second part which is they are gonna help you do hands-on projects. And this is something that I see a lot of courses out there really miss the mark on because the truth is if they just try to teach you information and you're not doing projects and actually applying that information, you really are not gonna learn much for one and for two you're not gonna have anything to show for it. So doing projects, getting actual work experience is incredibly important and I'm glad to see that they actually do that. And then on top of that you are going to earn a career credential. So what's really important here, the thing that really moves the needle in my opinion is the fact that hiring managers and business owners respect and recognize this certificate. When they see this certificate on a resume, it really does move the needle. And in fact, many people actually find people through the certificate so they'll search whatever certificate it is on LinkedIn and that's how they find the person. In many cases the person hasn't even completed the cert yet. And by the way, I will be putting the links to the certificates in the description as well as the pinned comment down below. Full disclosure, I am a Coursera affiliate but with that being said, I was making videos about Coursera before they were ever even paying me to do it. They did ask me to review these certificates and give my honest opinion which is exactly what I am doing today. So if you wanna help the channel out you can click those links down in the description and if you choose to buy it, I will get a small commission from that. So the next question is how long does it take to complete? Well, they say that it takes approximately eight months to complete at seven hours per week. And that is true for both certificates but what's a little bit weird is when you look up the Meta iOS developer certificate through their internal linking meaning you use their internal search function, it actually says the professional certificate takes one to three months. And that seems to be much more in line with what my subscribers have reported to me. Typically a lot of these professional certificates are able to be done in sometimes even less than a month but somewhere between one to three months. So for the IT certificate, for instance, they said it would take about six months but a lot of different people have told me it takes them like one to two months. Some people even get it done in less than a month. So my honest opinion on this is if you really go hard on these certs it'll probably take you between one to three months and if you do it part time really leisurely it's probably gonna take you between three to five months. But with that being said, that is a heck of a lot less than a degree which takes 5.1 years on average. And it's a lot less than a coding bootcamp which a good one is gonna be at least nine months. And a lot of the time they say that, you know, they typically take around 18 months to get you a job. So for instance, this full stack development bootcamp from Career Foundry says it takes about 10 months. And this Java development program from MeritAmerica.org says it takes around 30 weeks, which is around seven months. So in terms of how long it takes it doesn't take nearly as long as a lot of the other options. Next we're gonna be talking about the cost of the certificate. Now I've gone over a lot on this channel about how much a college degree costs. Typically it's gonna cost you between $80,000 to $100,000. Some people graduate with a lot more than that in debt. I've also talked about how much bootcamps costs. So depending on the type of bootcamp you go to they're typically gonna be anywhere from $7,000 to $30,000. Now what I personally recommend for people who sign up for Coursera is to just sign up for what's known as Coursera Plus. With Coursera Plus you get unlimited access to over 7,000 different courses, including these ones. And Coursera Plus costs around $59 a month. And if you buy the yearly version it's $399 which is about $34 a month, right? So worst case scenario in terms of the time let's say it takes you the full five months. You buy Coursera Plus membership that's $59 a month. You multiply that by five months that's $295. That's still pretty good. You really can't beat the value there. So in terms of the price there is really nothing else on the market that compares in terms of the value that it gives the fact that it actually gets people jobs in some cases and it's only $59 a month or $34 a month if you just sign up for the yearly one. That is absolutely phenomenal. Next let's talk about the demand. And anybody who's watched this channel knows that demand is incredibly important. Because the demand basically dictates everything else, right? If there's a high demand for a skill set and there's not that many people that have the skill set companies are going to be forced to pay you better, treat you better, just all kinds of other things, give you better benefits, et cetera. So when you look at the demand for software developers according to BLS they are growing at 22% which is much faster than average. And when you look at the demand for all technology related careers it's 13% which is much faster than average as well. And when you type in software development at the entry level on LinkedIn you're gonna see 429,000 results. And if you look up the most valuable skills that you can possibly get, well what do you know there's a lot of software related skills on there like software engineering, net programming skills, software deployment, application development, web services skills, software development, et cetera, et cetera. And on my private college degree ranking list the most valuable degree you can possibly get is a computer science degree. It has an otherworldly demand score of 154 out of 100. It basically broke the scale so it's like 154 out of 100. Now this is not an easy skill to learn. That's the thing about software development. Yes, there's a ton of demand but it's not like past years where you could basically learn a little bit of jargon here and there, get the coffee with the right person, get a little bit of an N, network a little bit and get yourself a job and then you just learn on the job. You actually do have to know the skills necessary to become a software developer. But that's why we have these great programs like Coursera where they not only teach you the skills but they give you a lot of other things that are gonna help you to get that job as well. Next on the list we're gonna be talking about salary. So according to BLS software developers make about $110,000 a year. Technology careers in general make about $97,000 a year. Over a lifetime people who go into computer and math related skills make the second most behind engineering skills at $3.1 million a year. Keep in mind that was over the last 40 years, over the next 40 years it could be that computer and math related skills actually surpass engineering. And if you look at levels.fyi, people report absolutely bananas salaries on there. And levels.fyi is basically a way for you to anonymously report what your salary is at different companies and at different skill levels. And I've mentioned this before but one subreddit I love to follow is the FIRE subreddit that stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. And most of the people in that subreddit tend to work in technology, right? Technology as an industry is probably the best industry that you can possibly work in. And software developer is one of the best careers that you can get in tech. So when it comes to salary, absolutely amazing. One of the best careers that you can go into. Next we're gonna be talking about the production value. Now this is gonna be the hardest one to speak on because let's be honest, this course is completely new. And it was made by the employees of Meta, right? So the people who actually filmed the course and created the course were employees of Meta. These are people who were on the front lines learning these skills and implementing them on a day-to-day basis. So this isn't a curriculum developed by somebody who was a software developer 10 years ago but then they started a boot camp and they haven't worked in the industry in forever. This is a curriculum developed by people who are currently in the front lines in the trenches using the skills that are really valuable on the open market right now. And this is important because these types of skills rapidly change. Five years ago, you know, even three to four years ago the languages and the frameworks that were really popular are kind of changing. There's languages that are really getting popular right now that weren't popular three to four years ago and vice versa, right? So this is something you really have to stay on top of. Now that being said, not all of the courses are released. They're kind of dripping them out. I believe they're gonna be dripping them for the next two to two and a half months or so. But the first course that was released for the iOS developer professional certificate got a 4.7 star rating so far. So it's looking really, really good. And the second course that was released which is version control also got a 4.7 star rating. Now in terms of what you're actually going to learn it looks really solid. So for instance, gain the skills required for an entry level career as an iOS developer, learn how to create applications for iOS systems and how to manage the lifecycle of a mobile app, learn programming fundamentals, how to create a user interface and best practices for designing the UI, create a portfolio with projects that show your ability to publish, deploy and maintain iOS apps as well as cross-platform apps using React Native. So yeah, React very, very valuable programming language to learn right now. They teach you that, Swift, UI, UX design, React, JavaScript, iOS app development, application development, mobile development, Linux, web development, bash, GitHub and version control. And then if you're interested in the ones for the Android app development course I'll put those up on the screen right now. Here's what you'll learn and then here's the skills that you're gonna gain. So I do love that they're teaching React for both of the courses. React is kind of like that hidden gem right now, like everybody needs it, everybody wants it, not that many people are talking about it. All right, so next I'm gonna be talking about this certificate's chances of landing you a job. Because learning information is great, being able to learn a skill set is great but at the end of the day you're probably gonna learn 80% of what you really need to know by actually doing things. And that involves on the job training. So getting a job, getting an internship or getting some type of freelance work is incredibly important. So what exactly are your chances of this certificate helping you to land that job? Well, besides the information that it teaches you which like I said, it's important but it's kind of not that important at the same time because there's a lot of different resources out there to learn information. There are four main pieces of value that I wanna talk about here. So the first one is the applied learning projects. I'm super happy to see that they focus on actual projects, hands-on projects that are gonna teach you these skills because not only is it a way for you to sort of get work experience but it's also a way for you to showcase things that you've actually built. The second piece of value is the certificate prestige. These certificates are recognized and respected by hiring managers. There's a lot of certs out there that people don't care about. It's basically a waste of time for you to put them on your resume. This does not fall under that category. In fact, I have been having students tell me that hiring managers and companies are reaching out to them before they even finish the courses. So they just put that they're currently taking the course on LinkedIn which I highly recommend you do if you do decide to take this course and recruiters and companies are actually reaching out to them. The third piece of value is that it gives you access to an exclusive job board. And this is a job search platform with 200 plus employers who have committed to sourcing talent through Meta's certificate programs. So that's pretty freaking awesome. You have access to a job board that only people who have the certificate have access to. And then the fourth piece of value is that it's designed to actually get you a job. It's not just educational or informational. And this is kind of one of the problems that I have with a lot of courses on Udemy and stuff like that. Like don't get me wrong, Udemy courses are great but a lot of them are not designed to get you a job. So a lot of the instructors on Udemy for instance will be people who are very experienced and they'll try to teach you everything that they know. And that is a terrible, terrible mistake. Now you might be asking me, Shane, why is it a terrible mistake that they try to teach me everything that they know? When you are a newbie, if you try to learn everything you will end up learning nothing. The key is to learn exactly what you need to know to get that first entry level job or that first work experience. And then while you're working supplement that by learning more. So the best courses out there, the courses that actually get people results are the ones that teach people exactly what they need to know and nothing more. And then beyond that they focus on getting the person a job, getting them work experience. So realistically what are your chances of this certificate getting you a job? It's hard to say. But if the certificate even gives you a puncher's chance of getting a job. I mean it's $59 a month, $34 a month if you pay for the year. When you compare that to boot camps which you know have dubious statistics as well as college which is getting less and less valuable every single year, this is an incredible value. And according to a survey I found on indeed.com people who took the Google IT certification program which is very similar, it's a professional certificate. 42% said their Google IT support professional certification helped them make more money. 37% said earning their Google IT support professional certification helped them get a job. And 94% said they would recommend a family member or friend earn their Google IT support professional certification. Okay so those are phenomenal numbers because I mean let's just realize this. You might go into this and you think hey I wanna be an app developer. You take the professional certificate and you realize about halfway through I don't wanna be an app developer. So the certificate might be great, it might be perfect, it might have gotten you a job if you stuck with it but you realize that you didn't wanna do it. Now what's better going to a college and realizing two years in after you've already spent $40,000 and you're like $30,000 in debt that you don't wanna do something or going to a boot camp and you're already too far in you've already spent the $15,000 and you can't get your money back and then realizing that you don't wanna do something or taking a very affordable certificate getting halfway through it and realizing that you don't wanna do it. That is incredibly valuable to be able to do that to be able to actually try something out without investing a lot of time or money into it. And this is exactly why I really recommend getting Coursera Plus because you're gonna have access to 7,000 different courses. So if you decide you don't like something you can just try something else. Next we're gonna talk about the overall value of the course. So when you're talking about value you really have to compare them to colleges or boot camps, right? And you also have to think about it in terms of risk and reward. So in this particular case you're risking $300 max in five months of your time and the possible reward for this is learning very valuable skills, a lucrative career in probably the best industry you could possibly work in. So you're basically financially set for life. That's the reward for this. Then you can compare this to the risk of getting a college degree which is 80 to $100,000 and 5.1 years of your life. And again, the reward for that would be the same thing a lucrative career in a good industry, et cetera. And then the risk and reward of a boot camp which is $15,000 and let's say nine to 12 months of your life. So again, when you think about this from a value perspective and from a risk and reward perspective it's another no-brainer. And I mentioned this before but I think the true value of these certificates is the fact that you get to try things and find out if you like them. There's so many people that get all the way through their college degree they get into their career and then they finally realize, hey, I don't really want to do this. I mean, how many times have you heard that with like accountants or people who go into finance or nursing? But the problem is they already spent like five to six years of their life and probably $100,000 on a degree in order to figure that out. So there is an incredible amount of value to be able to try something out without having to spend or risk that much time or money. So if you take one of these entry-level certificates and you find something that you really enjoy you really like it it just ticks all the boxes for you. Congratulations, you might have just found your calling in life. So overall the value here is absolutely incredible. All right, so now let's go over the pros and cons of the certificate. So the pros here, affordable, fast, not much risk, brand recognition value, gives you access to more job opportunities and you can learn from anywhere. The cons are going to be it's new so it's relatively unknown. You know, the Google certification program is a little bit better known than the Meadow one but I mean, they're all under the same banner of Coursera and they're both professional certificates. So it's a little bit less known but I mean, the ratings are looking really good so far. Another con is that they're not very social. You're basically doing it on your own. It's also not that interactive so you do have to be somewhat self-directed. You know, so if you decide to not do the work there's not going to be a professor there emailing you like, hey, why didn't you turn in this assignment? And you're also not guaranteed a job but to be fair, you're not really guaranteed a job with college or boot camps anymore. There's so many different scandals where boot camps guaranteed people jobs and then we're not able to fulfill that. So there really is no such thing as a guarantee for a job. So overall, are the Android app development and the iOS app development courses worth it? Absolutely, these professional certificates are almost like a cheat code right now. When it comes to getting into a lot of different careers out there there's pretty much nothing out there that compares to the value. Now, are there some careers out there where you're going to need to supplement it with a little bit of extra learning outside of it? Yes, of course. But with that being said, even if the Coursera certificate program gets you 80% of the way there to getting a job that is definitely worth it for the price. And there is just so many other pros to the certificate program. So it gets two big thumbs up for me. Definitely go check it out. Again, I linked it down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. Gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video and I will see you next time.