Live vanaf Laracon EU 2026 spreken we met Steve McDougall over de officiële Laravel Certification.
Steve werkt aan het certificeringsinitiatief en helpt mee aan examens, trainingsmateriaal en intensieve trainingen. In deze aflevering legt hij uit waarom certificering waardevol kan zijn voor ontwikkelaars die hun Laravel-kennis willen toetsen en voor werkgevers die sneller vertrouwen willen krijgen in het niveau van kandidaten.
All right. >> Welcome to the Dutch [music] Foundation podcast. This one is for you. >> Specially made for us from 2026. >> It's cool. >> Yeah, sounds nice. Yeah, >> I like that. >> So, welcome. What's your name? >> I am Steve McDougall, but most people know me as just Steve King. >> All right. You can speak a little bit closer so we can hear you even more. Even better. Your name was Steve. Sorry. >> Yep. Uh Steve McDougall. Um but most people know me as just Steve King. >> All right. >> Um I took my wife's name when I got married. >> McDougall. >> Cool. >> Originally I was Steve King. >> Um and I didn't want to give up my GitHub handle or Twitter handle when I got married. >> Yeah. >> Everything else I was fine with. Just just not the other bits. [laughter] >> All right. Cool. So um you're uh here at the conference but not only to see the talk, right? >> Yes, I am here with certificates.dev. >> Yeah. >> And the certification for Laravel organization. >> All right. >> So um the certificates for it's easier to explain almost backwards. >> Yeah. >> Well, let's do that then. >> Yeah. The certification for Laravel organization is a community effort.
There's about 20 to 30 of us across the community. >> Yeah. >> Who work on the uh the examination questions and defining what we might call a senior question or junior question or a mid-level question and that sort, >> right? Yeah. And up until recently, we've been running on a kind of a homebuilt platform that we had which um allowed you to do multiple choice questions to go through and get your certification and it was all verifiable through the blockchain which is pretty cool. >> Um but we always wanted to take it further. So we've joined forces with certificates.dev dev because that allows us to do a full proctoring service so that we can make sure people aren't cheating, they're not using AI throughout the certification, but also we can run code challenges as well. >> So part of the examination is a actual code challenge where an IDE opens up, you get the the Laravel VS Code extension loaded in. It's almost as if you were at your own desk writing code, >> but you're in an examination. So, >> oh that's cool stuff. >> Yeah, it's really really cool what they built. Um, and it really Jasper was super excited about it.
Yeah. >> Um, so yeah, I I >> joined basically to help create the certification and to go through the exam board and help that that way. And then Jasper said that he needs someone on the certificates.dev dev side to help kind of interface between the community and the business aspect and take all of the kind of the questions and stuff that we we've sourced and created and turn them into training materials and boot camps. So vid creating videos, writing content, that sort of stuff. >> Yeah. >> So that's where I come in. >> All right, cool. So what's what's your exact role then here in >> uh so I am the they call me the Laravel content owner. So, >> all right. So, you're here at the right place then. >> I am here at the [laughter] right place. Yeah. I mean, I've been in the Laravel community since, you know, 4.3. >> Uh, cool. That's a long way. >> I've worked for various companies using Laravel, various Laravel partners. Um, and I've been in the Dev Rail space for the last 3 years or so. >> Yeah. um mostly doing API stuff and I've always kind of always come back to education with everything that I've done and the certification is just a great way for me to be able to help the community in my eyes.
All right. Okay. Cool. So the people that are listening are mostly uh programmers themselves or business owners with >> programmers um with them in their team. >> Um and these certificates they they they have a value. >> Yeah. >> Can you please explain a little bit a bit why people should be doing this stuff? >> Yeah, exactly. Uh so I'll explain it in two different ways. one way from the developers from the programmers themselves and then the other from the employer perspective. So as a developer um knowing where you are on your career is hard right we've all been there we've been a developer for 2 years 3 years are we junior are we mid-level how far away are we from senior and certification almost it gives you that it gives you that knowledge that okay I can pass the senior exam so therefore I am a senior and as AI is becoming more and more part of the workflow of a developer. >> Mhm. >> The way that I've been describing it is that your dayto-day work is with your editor, with your AI agent, and that's your your car, your your vehicle, and the certification is almost like your driver's license at that point, proving that >> you are capable of driving that vehicle.
Exactly. Um, and I think that's beun it's going to become more and more required as AI becomes more and more used. >> All right. So, okay. Okay. Okay. But what I also heard is that uh being a senior developer also means that you have some social skills, some team management skills, some other skills that's not only development specific. >> Yeah, it so vification it's it's all about the technical ability. So the way that we've designed the different levels of the certification is that at a junior level you should be able to do X Y and Zed. >> Yeah. >> By mid level you should be able to take that a little bit further. Senior even further. And then what we've broken it into four. So there's also the artisan level and the artisan level is more of that staff lead architect style where you're not just skilled in utilizing Laravel. You've got a deep understanding of how Laravel works under the hood, how the bootstrapping process works, what a service provider is, how you can customize the behavior of Laravel with the service providers and what it takes to kind of take it beyond just using Laravel.
All right. >> So that's the way that we've designed the certification so that there's sensible steps along the way. >> All right. But it's purely then based on the letter framework and it's not like >> you can be a mentor to the team kind of skills. >> Yeah, it it is it is hard skills with just with core Laravel. There's no live wire. There's there's nothing beyond just you know >> Laravel. Now that's good to know you know because then you know also where the barriers lay. >> Yeah. Exactly. I mean we could have gone all out and gone okay so this is how you do livewire or inertia but at that point >> it's not a Laravel certification at that point it's >> it's a Laravel ecosystem certification >> um so for this certification it is pure just call Laravel >> yeah clear thing >> and then obviously from the hiring manager or employer side >> um I mean I don't know if if you personally hired people before, but I've been a engineering manager for years. >> And I remember going through a hiring phase where I needed to hire five developers, for example. And that took me as an engineering manager out of action for a solid three weeks.
Interviews, technical tests, reviewing technical tasks, then calling them back through to go through the technical test to see if you know what they are doing on their technical test matches up to what they're talking to me about. And it's such a long process. Whereas if that person is certified through a rep a reputable source like uh the certification val you know me interviewing 70 people >> you know it's a lot of work >> it it yeah it take takes you out of action of what you could be doing with your team. So what what I'm thinking here is that the certification really helps hiring managers to to signpost that that person I don't have to do a technical test. But also on the other side of that is I don't don't know when the last time you um like went for a new job. Yeah, >> but I've spoken to five or six different jobs and for each job they're hiring, they've got to do a technical test. They've got to do a technical interview after the technical test and it >> here's my certificate. >> Yeah, exactly. [laughter] Here's my certificate. Let's It's almost like that VIP card of you don't need to worry about that bit. I've >> I've been verified. Yeah. Well, it's it's for both sides efficient, more efficient, but it's also >> like pulling up a perk instead of >> another one that's also uh applying you, okay, I've got this perk and for an employee side of points, you're always uh thinking about minimizing the risks of a new employee, man.
Yeah, exactly. you know, and especially AI today. You give someone a technical test, they take it home and they go, you know, you say, "Okay, give me that within a week because I want to get this process moving." And >> did they use AI? Did they write that code themselves? That's why that follow-up technical interview is always a requirement after a technical test to kind of >> see if it matches what they've done and what they're telling you. >> Um, and certification just kind of removes that hassle from a hiring perspective, >> right? but also the the hassle and the the headaches when you're employ applying for jobs, right? I mean, >> I so many people I've spoken to who've applied for jobs, they get given a technical test and then they end up with six technical tests. Each one is meant to take an hour and then they got to organize a follow-up interview and it it's a lot to ask people to do when all they want to do is try and find a job so that they can keep going with their career. So hopefully I'm hoping certification will help with that. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a normal thing I guess.
And um but if you're an employee, what does it cost to get a certific? >> Yeah, it it varies. So we've got different levels. So obviously there's a junior, mid-level, senior, and artisan. And each one you can either take the exam only or you can go through the guided training. And then we're also planning boot camps so that people can go through the whole boot camp where we're going to teach them everything they need to know to pass the exam. >> Yeah. >> And then they get the exam at the end and then or if you're com comfortable and confident enough you can just go just give me an exam. >> All right. >> So what does the exam cost? >> So currently the junior exam costs $67 I believe. >> Oh that's >> but it also supports pricing par. So yeah, >> um >> how much it costs to your listeners, I'm not 100% sure because yeah, we we have this discount at the >> Yeah. >> PHP uh this Laravel Foundation, but yeah, I also see another a lot of logos here. So it's not only Laravel that you >> Yeah. So the certificates.dev, which is the platform which um we this is being hosted on, they do the official Vue.js.
Yeah. uh certification. They've always done it. They work with Evanu and the core team to build that certification on the platform. >> Also React and Angular, JavaScript, and Nux. >> So they've been a whole different spectrum of frameworks. >> Yeah, they they've been heavily focused on the front end because of the founders of certificates.dev where they you know where they've come from. >> Uh they were Vue.js developers. They built Vue school and view mastery and this is what they've built >> and they had a lot of people asking for Laravel certification. >> Yeah. >> Um and that's when uh the certification for Laravel organization we kind of met in the middle and we're like okay let's let's do this together because we need a better platform and you want Laravel certification. So we've joined forces to deliver it. >> Yeah. All right. Great. Well, is there something uh in this two days that you really have a highlight from that we must take away? >> Have you have you have you looked at the the talks? >> I've watched a few talks. All right. Um >> and >> what's your big biggest takeaway?
My biggest takeaway is that there are so many people using AI these days. Don't be afraid to use AI. You know, the tooling is now out there. You know, we've got Laravel Boost, the Laravel AI SDK. There's so many things out there that's going to help you. And especially if you watched the uh the Lar Taylor's talk yesterday. Yeah. with um like the Nightw Watch MCP and then Laravel cloud MCP and >> you can almost not really have to leave like your open code terminal and just go okay great so um yeah I'm going to spin up an open code I'm going to do some work it you know I got you saw a notification coming from nightw watch I saw an issue help me resolve that okay now let's deploy it and great I can go back to watching >> [laughter] >> I honestly don't do that. Honestly, no. Um, but yeah, >> it's a really interesting age to be a developer. It's not taking our jobs. >> You don't think so? Because you're a positive uh >> mind thinker about this. I guess >> what I think's happened is that junior ladder to become a junior developer, it has been raised. you got to have a little bit more skill and a little bit more um proven ability to become a junior developer nowadays. So, it's a lot harder to become a junior developer, but it's not taking your job.
What it's doing is making you work for it a little bit more. >> Yeah. >> Um >> it's another tool. It's like when came out compared to just standard text editors. It's given us another tool, another way to >> maybe our job bit more >> a little bit more of an idea. [laughter] Yeah. it. Yeah. No, it's >> Yeah, I understand. >> It's a tool we can use to be more productive. It's not going to completely replace us because I've seen some completely AI generated code and I'm quite confident that my job's not taken. >> It's going to get better, but so are we. >> Yeah. And and we are. >> Exactly. >> All right, Steve. Thank you very much. >> Thank you for having me. Really good to meet you. >> All right. Great. And we'll must do the certification ourselves as well. [music] >> Definitely. >> Yeah. >> All right. >> Thanks for listening to the Dutch Laravel [music] Foundation podcast. [music] This one is for you. broadcasting live from 2026 LAU. [music]