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Hello, everyone!
I’m Arseniy, CEO at Serokell.
Thank you for initiating this discussion. Although we haven’t fully publicized the certification program, there was a presentation at Zurihac, and it’s great to see that people are aware of it 
Allow me to explain what the program is, our objectives, and the goals we aim to achieve.
The world of Haskell, including its standards and development practices, is both unique and fragmented. We also highlight the problem that it’s always hard to find “typical” Haskell developer, because people do always have different experiences and, of course, ways of program designs and architectures. This can lead to issues when substituting developers, or even result in code rewriting or the adoption of alternative technologies for projects. We recognize that multiple factors contribute to this situation, but the absence of consistent development standards and benchmarks for developers is one of the concerns, especially if we talk about big and enterprise companies.
Over the past few months, we have been working on building this platform. As an experienced Haskell company, we are leveraging our expertise in development, education, and hiring to create a comprehensive testing program for Haskell developers. In addition, I have personally been teaching functional programming for the past eight years. We intend to use all of this knowledge to establish a formal, rigorous, and objective evaluation platform.
However, it’s important to note that our motivation is not driven by personal profit. The exam fees will never cover all the resources we have invested in this project. Instead, the funds generated will be utilized for maintenance and deployment support.
The primary objective of our certification program is to become the official one for Haskell. There is no sense to make several different ones – that would make all of them completely useless at the same time.
Our vision is to provide a non-commercial product adopted by Haskell Foundation. And that would offer commercial possibilities for anyone, such as developing educational courses based on the certification topics. This will also benefit the wider Haskell community. Furthermore, this initiative aims to create a pool of qualified candidates for prospective employers.
We have already engaged in discussions with HF and several Haskell companies, not only to adopt this program but also to collaborate closely, particularly in terms of incorporating enterprise experiences and best practices. We really belive and hope that we would establish a unified and robust certification program for Haskell that can benefit both developers and companies alike.
And thank you for kind words about this initiative! <3
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Thanks for explaining to us the goal and funding of the certification.
I understand the program is not yet fully publicised — maybe not complete, even —, but can you share a description/syllabus for those certification “levels” mentioned in OP? Asking for ID to check that feels unnecessary.
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Thank you for chiming in and giving first hand information.
Well, it was on Haskell Weekly, so I guess half the Haskell community had the opportunity to check it out, regardless of Zurihac 
(not that that would be somehow inappropriate for a for-profit company anyway)
Are there any plans to make public (at least periodically) the certification numbers, once they’re respectable?
For instance, if a hobbyist Haskeller wishes their workplace to experiment with Haskell, they can point out to the number of certified beginner and intermediate Haskellers to prove that a hiring pool exists.
Another pragmatic benefit might be job-searching; i.e, since the certifications will be in a database, will it be possible for Haskellers seeking work to tick off a “send me recruitment e-mails” option so that firms looking for qualified Haskellers can immediately go through Serokell (or, if things go well, the Haskell Foundation)?
We are asking for ID so that reduces chances to cheat a little bit. Also most of certification programs we know do that. The flow of ID check is going to be improved soon, now it’s not the best one 
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Of course. We want to have as much open data as possible, so people see that Haskell is alive!
“send me recruitment e-mails”
Yes, we will add this as soon as we have contracts with partners.
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You could also make ID checks optional and display them as an additional validation badge. Then people can take the exam and might later add their ID when they think it is actually necessary for an application.
I’m interested in Haskell (and other things).
@jagajaga, do you plan on providing an accompanying more or less detailed “road map” learners could follow and make sure they stay on track to hit that target?
I’ve already got a few books so having general learning resources is not a problem, but I’m wondering how I’d go about having a focused studying routine.
If obtaining a certification is an objective.
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Yes. We are slowly getting to that step.
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Just my personal $.50: as someone who interviewed/hired Haskellers in the past, a strong positive signal for me has always been when a candidate contributed to Haskell open source projects. Not everyone has the time or willingness to contribute to open source projects in their spare time, and that’s perfectly fine, of course – but in that case you need to spend a bit more time interviewing.
I would see this certification as a new, useful tool similar to open source contributions: it’s not required, but if a candidate has this, you can skip some basic questions and go straight to the more interesting ones.
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I work in IT in Germany. Here, it’s typical for managers to let employees spend time on learning only if there’s a certificate at the end of the process. The existence of a Haskell certificate means that I could get paid for improving my Haskell skills. I welcome this!
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Any particulars notwithstanding, certification has always seemed (to me!) to be mostly pointless. Any time I have encountered it, it was always about ticking pointless boxes. I am given to understand that certain certs in e.g. network equipment areas might have better foundations, but… in software dev… Everything I’ve seen was junk.
(If we’re talking Accreditation as in engineering, then yes, it obviously matter, because there are penalties, regular renewal requirements, etc.)
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Software certifications are generally worthless, unless you’re trying to tick boxes to get into a big beauracratic .NET shop or something.
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Looks like a cash grab.
I will subscribe to @Bodigrim 's opinion here:
Could we as a community have a bit more good faith in each other, unless proven otherwise? Come on, 49 € are unlikely to recoup resources spent and ongoing in the foreseeable future.
In fact, see @jagajaga 's (Serokell CEO) reply here:
The exam fees will never cover all the resources we have invested in this project.
If I may add my personal opinion: this is absolutely not a scam.
You may not have heard of them, which is reasonable, but Serokell is a legitimate company - I’ve worked with them in the past, and so have many others.
One of their team members, Vladislav Zavialov, is part of the GHC Steering Committee.
Through him, and other current and former team members, Serokell has made many appreciated contributions to GHC and the wider Haskell ecosystem - this last qualitative judgement is my personal opinion
I haven’t been involved in the Haskell community; however, I would still recommend this to any prospective or junior Haskeller.
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I would be interested in trying this, mainly from a self-assessment point of view. However, I’m put off because there’s insufficient information about preparation training (e.g. study guide) or re-take opportunities (how often, cost, etc.). There’s a short list of topics for each level, but that’s not enough to judge whether you are ready to take it, IMHO.
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Sorry about the gravedig (of a 2 month old thread), but since we already have a Serokell certification thread, maybe it’d be better to post here instead of making a new thread.
To people who’ve taken the Serokell certification, might anyone be interested in T-shirts, ties, and dress shirts? I just sent an e-mail to the Serokell certification team asking whether they’d be interested in selling paraphernalia related to Serokell certification, especially as a way to help promote Haskeller identity and awareness of Serokell certification.
Would any here (I just failed basic for treating Serokell cert as a t-shirt and lazing about) be interested in giving Serokell more money for the certification in this way?
Now I’m wondering whether that’s just money thrown out of the window, or something that will actually help me on the job market.
Generalities aside, given your public contributions to open source projects, I doubt that it will help you specifically on the job market. 
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Hello!
We do already have shop.serokell.io
Idea to make a “certification t-shirt” is great! We were already thinking to do that as a gift for everyone who has passed our exam.
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