So the hot new topic is all about Snowflake and Snowflake examination. So I decided to dive deep into the certification to see if it's worth the hassle.

**What is Snowflake ❄️?**

Snowflake is a last generation cloud data warehouse, using one of the top three cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. They offer you $400 free credits (with no credit card required) to play with their web app for one month. Compute, and storage layers are separated. A virtual warehouse can automatically start and process your queries and shut down by itself after 5 or 10 minutes. You mostly pay for the time consumed by these compute resources.

And What is the Snowflake certification?

Snowflake’s SnowPro Core Certification exam was just released a few months back (late 2019). The 2 hours, 100 questions exam tests an individual’s foundational and advance knowledge of Snowflake in both the implementation and migration, covering all topics within the Snowflake documentation.

How Expensive 💸 is the Certification?

For AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, the basic and associate exam price was usually around $100-$150 US. For AWS, pass one exam, and the next one is offered at half price: $150 associate exams will actually cost you just $75. For Azure, one beta exam (they used to be free) costs just $20.

I already felt the $175 US for the SnowPro Core Certification exam a bit pricey, especially compared to the better-known competitors like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon. The new edition of the “advanced” certification will now lower the value of the Core exam, which, however, stayed at the same price. New exams are not only offered for $375 US each, but you must pass TWO exams per advanced certification: a whopping $550 US, to prove you know their product, and this is only if you pass both these exams the first time.

Do people know what “SnowPro” Is?

AWS Certified Solutions Architect or Google Cloud Certified Cloud Engineer send potential customers or employers a clear message:

1.Your accreditation comes from a reputed well-known company: AWS (Amazon) or Google ☁️.

2.The product is a top cloud platform: Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud.

3.Your expertise has been tested in some easily recognized professional areas: solution architecture or engineering.

What message sends a “SnowPro Core Certified” entry in your ad or resume? And why Snow-Pro in the first place?! I admit, Snowflake Certification may ring a different bell lately, as some young hyper-sensitive people are sometimes called “snowflakes.” And I doubt you would like something like this in your resume. But the title should tell people what this was about. SnowPro may sound “cool,” but few people would guess what it is

Is There Enough Complexity to Justify Two Expensive Exams?

As a product, Snowflake is a great data warehouse. I love the way you create complex multi-cluster virtual warehouses with a simple graphical web interface. Its simplicity is, in fact, one of the main marketing signals for the company. And, as a data engineer or data scientist, it’s easier to configure and use than Google’s BigTable or Amazon’s Redshift.

One online article about the Snowflake certification talks about preparing for the exam in just three days. Yes, it is possible. Reading the online documentation doesn’t take so long. Internal details are not exposed, and you don’t have to know about them. And the learning path for the new SnowPro Architect exam basically recommends the same articles. Of course, you can always find deeper ways to learn about any software platform, but they may have forced the note here with this additional complexity.

With the core exam alone, I was already wondering how many data scientists would need a data engineer's additional services when most of them may choose this product, especially because they can easily configure it themselves.

Conclusion

You can go ahead and take up the exam if your employer needs you to take it up. It. Else does not give the proper ROI as it claims. Since it's not widely known, employers won't look for this certification, but also, if they want someone certified, they would fast track your application. So, in the end, it comes to how experienced you are in the field; if you are a newcomer, you may want to look into it. Else you can definitely skip this one.