Why Certifications Are Necessary (Even If Aggravating To Earn) 213
Nerval's Lobster writes: Whether or not certifications have value is a back-and-forth argument that's been going on since before Novell launched its CNE program in the 1990s. Developer David Bolton recently incited some discussion of his own when he wrote an article for Dice in which he claimed that certifications aren't worth the time and money. But there's a lot of evidence that certifications can add as much as 16 percent to a tech professional's base pay; in addition a lot of tech companies use resume-screening software that weeds out any resumes that don't feature certain acronyms. There's also the argument that the cost, difficulty, and annoyance of earning a certification is actually the best reason to go through it, especially if you're looking for a job; it broadcasts that you're serious enough about the technology to invest a serious chunk of your life in it. But others might not agree with that assessment, arguing that all a certification proves is that you're good at taking tests, not necessarily knowing a technology inside and out.
Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
First off.. saw first link and thought "wow, at least dice isn't putting campaign ID's in their URLs any more".. but then the third link has one. Never change dice.. never change.
Secondly, this is a tired old discussion that aside from a few who insist on actually arguing it, seems to have resolved to a consensus of:
- If the employers you want to work for care about certificates, get them.
- If your employer wants you to get certificates, get them (they'll probably pay for it).
- If the employers you want to work for don't care about them, don't get them (I don't think anyone feels you actually learn something by getting certs).
The area I live in, certificates are mostly worthless, so I have very few. I once worked at a place where the big projects was from a client who insisted everyone who worked on the project have a bunch, so I got a few now expired ones through that. Maybe having certs going in would be a factor in ones favour if applying for that job at that time, but I doubt it. They were viewed much like "mandatory compliance training" stuff is, something everyone just went and wasted an afternoon on at some point because you had to.
But I don't discount that in some areas having a list of acronyms on your resume is required or at least helpful, so if you live in such an area, go nuts.
Either way, you should know what local employers in the area you want to work expect if you are planning to you know, have a career and such...
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
However for some tech jobs, if you have certificates listed on your resume then this will lower your chances of getting a job. Listing certificates is a signal that you haven't updated the resume since you were an entry level grunt. Outside of IT you will almost never see certificates except in technician jobs. The point of these certificates most of the time is not even training to be competent in some field, but for their marketing use (ie, all those certificate holders will promote Microsoft solutions to the end of their days).
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I think they are actually rather important for SE jobs. SE's need to know lots of product details without needing to know much of the stuff that only comes from sweating through the particular problems of an admin job.
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Which just goes to show you, you should treat your future boss as if you were already working for them, which means doing what they want.
They're worthless. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe. Maybe not.
In my experience the tests "test" you on your knowledge of how the VENDOR would like you to "solve" a "problem".
I haven't seen any test were there is something objectively "wrong" about any of the questions or answers.
But I have seen a lot of questions and answers that are phrased somewhat inaccurately for someone with more experience than just the vendor's training materials.
So if you know the subject, a quick read of the vendor's materials should tell you where the "tricky" areas are. But
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Realistically, IT needs to do like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC tradespeople: They need licensing across the board with a vendor independent group doing the licensing.
Certs in plumbing would be like a PVC company having tests to see how good a plumber is at gluing their pipes together. Does it matter in plumbing overall, such as selecting the rise and tilt of pipes so poop runs downhill? Nope.
Similar if certs were similar for electricians. Square D could make certs for their circuit breakers and box
Re:They're worthless. (Score:5, Insightful)
For that to work you need actual hard rules that everyone can agree on.
Sure, electricians and plumbers disagree around the edges (ask a plumber about sharkbite if you want to lose a few hours of your life) but there's a huge chunk that's accepted practice for good, demonstrable and easily definable reasons.
Software is still the wild west, and we're still figuring out how to do it properly.
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>> IT needs to do like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC tradespeople: They need licensing across the board with a vendor independent group doing the licensing.
This exists in the IT security field (SANS, ISC2, COMPTIA, etc.) and in some IT niches like managed file transfer ( http://cftpcert.com/ [cftpcert.com] ).
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There's good reasons for licensing, like the fact that people can get electrocuted or have their house burn down if wiring is done incorrectly, blow their house up in a natural gas explosion, etc.
The downside to licensing from an economic perspective is that often gets misused as means to create a cartel and restrict entry to the field. I think it's no coincidence that the licensed trades' unions are still pretty strong in an era of declining union power. I just heard a podcast where economists complaine
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You are quite correct. Many years ago I saw a practice "A+" test this as the very first question:
Which one or more of the following are both input and output devices:
A: Floppy drive
B: Keyboard
C: Mouse
D: Monitor
It told me I was wrong for picking A and B because keyboards are input only. It seems they didn't think someone doing helpdesk should know the three little lights on the keyboard are important diagnostic output.
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While those lights on keyboards are technically outputs, they're only indicators and you won't be outputting actual data with them. Not with standard hardware anyway.
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Yes the LEDs are under the computer's control. But that still doesn't make those LEDs "output devices" in the general sense of the word. You won't be storing or sending data to another standard device via those LEDs.
Now, if the option would have been the classic printer port, I would have agreed with you because while it was designed as an output port, it still had input lines and standard devices were made to use it as an input/output port (such as scanners, ZIP drives, etc) and people even hacked SNES gam
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So, by your definition a monitor is not an output device, because "in the general sense of the word, you won't be storing or sending data to another standard device" with it. OK, whatever.
Um, you're deliberately misreading his post. He was talking about the keyboard. The screen at one point was a pure output device where data is stored for the viewer, however brief. That being said, even when the test was written there were monitors with light pens that could be used as input devices, much like touch screens today.
As for keyboards, indicator lights are not considered output as they have nothing to do with reading data, they are purely an indicator function, much like a power light. If yo
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Those LEDs are pure status LEDs and have no other means than to tell you how the next input will be interpreted by the computer. They are meaningless without input from the keyboard, and are only considered in the context of input.
Otherways you would also have to consider a monitor an input device because it tells the graphics card what the possible and the optimal settings are. But here again, those information is solely used in context with the output of the grap
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Hum, perhaps you might read the relevant manual page "man setleds"
Then perhaps you might read the following web page
http://martybugs.net/electroni... [martybugs.net]
In short you are just 100% plain wrong in your assertion. You could easily use three flashing LED's to indicate all sorts of error codes.
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Yes the LEDs are under the computer's control. But that still doesn't make those LEDs "output devices" in the general sense of the word.
A modern keyboard is both an input and output device. At a high level its primary function is to input things into the computer; however, the USB HID communications are bi-directional communications, there is both Input and Output. The computer can set the state of LEDs and some other features of the keyboard.
In some cases, the computer can upgrade the firmware on
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Yes the LEDs are under the computer's control. But that still doesn't make those LEDs "output devices" in the general sense of the word.
A modern keyboard is both an input and output device. At a high level its primary function is to input things into the computer; however, the USB HID communications are bi-directional communications, there is both Input and Output.
The computer can set the state of LEDs and some other features of the keyboard.
In some cases, the computer can upgrade the firmware on the Keyboard which definitely requires sending output.
Yes, but each of these functions have nothing to do with reading or viewing data, they are all about changing the properties of the device itself (i.e. firmware, indicators, etc.) If this was the definition then anything with a power indicator and power button would be considered an I/O device. But that's not how we define an Output device. An I/O device is all about data, which has nothing to do with the device state.
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By that logic, a monitor also isn't an output device, unless you're using it to program a Timex Datalink [wikipedia.org].
Re: They're worthless. (Score:2)
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Other comments have already taken you to task for your somewhat pedantic objection to keyboards as output. If the motherboard is functioning but merely locked up by software, sending input by pressing caps lock provides output from the computer in the form of the little light going on and off. Yes, that qualifies as output. Especially in the context of what an A+ hardware tech certification ought to be testing. Furthermore, output on the monitor is the state of bits in RAM or registers. Output on the keyboa
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What about keyboards that don't have indicators? One of Dell's most popular Bluetooth keyboards in years past (Y-RAQ-DEL2) has none, for instance.
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Which is another lesson you have to learn. Doing what you're told and complying with official documents is often just as, if not more, important than actually knowing how to do your job.
Compliance with authority, like it or not, is a valuable job skill.
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It's a marketing tool. If you sell Solution X, then everyone who gets your certificate will promote Solution X when there's a choice. Because that is where their skills are and it's just basic job security to promote what you know instead of what you don't know. The money paid for the certificate course is peanuts compared to the ongoing revenue from a team of undercover agents promoting your product to their employers.
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Yup, Cisco and Microsoft are all about this.
Give your local college a shit tonne of free network gear, heavily subsidize CCNA material/testing, totally worth it when a college basically turns their networking course into a Cisco networking course and everyone who graduates leans towards Cisco products going forward (at least initially in their career).
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EVERY cert test I've ever taken tests not knowledge of the subject/product, but the ability to do rote memorization of the training materials, even if it's wrong. It's all a moneymaking scam.
Agreed. I took a JavaScript course and they insisted that the Java reserve words were also reserve words in JS, despite that version of JS being scrapped. They went so far as to include it in the final exam. The course was also 9 years out of date.
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EVERY cert test I've ever taken tests not knowledge of the subject
Because that's not their main value.
Hiring managers don't know enough to qualify candidates. So they hire people with certifications. That way, if the employee sucks they just say, "hey, he was properly certified - blame the certifier, not me."
It's CYA, blame-shifting, etc. The ability to deflect blame is quite valuable to people who are not qualified to be in their jobs, so they're willing to pay more to such employees, because such emplo
Re: They're worthless. (Score:2)
They get your foot in the door... (Score:4, Informative)
They are not really worthless. They get you in the door and past HR, as "CCIE ID #12345" is a lot better on a resume than "Cisco fabric experience". Similar with RHCE ID "111-1111" as opposed to "I know Linux". From there, you now have access to the tech people, which without the certs, you wouldn't even been allowed near them.
There are also jobs that require certs on the job. I worked at one place that had auditors that did spot checks, and one's certs lapsed, the IT person would be fired on the spot and escorted off the premises for something along the lines of "failure to maintain proper training for the equipment used."
No, certs don't substitute for experience, but a cert gets you in the door, far more than "gee, I learn quick."
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If you're going to ignore year of experience because of some Cert number on a resume, you get what you deserve. I know plenty of people with certs who can't do shit that people with years of active experience can do blindfolded. Why? Because a Cert doesn't teach you how to think on the fly to solve incredible problems where the book says "it should be running".
Not that certs are worthless, but experience is worth more than certs in my book.
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Agreed. However the fact remains it is an HR gatekeeper which prunes down the candidate pool considerably. The guy who knows his shit *and* has a cert will get raises and promotions quite handily in such an environment, whereas the guys who simply know their shit will never have made it past the gate.
You know what else is 'aggravating?' (Score:3)
Getting a certification may indeed be annoying, or irritating, or bothersome, or troubling, or tiring
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Aggravating suggests that the frustration builds up over time
So what you're saying is that you, just like the headline writer, don't actually understand what the word means.
It seems to me that you decided to complain about something that you were unfamiliar with.
No, I complained that the word was used incorrectly, and that an editor chose to do so in a headline - the most visible place here in which to do so.
Here's the primary definition of Aggravate:
verb (used with object), aggravated, aggravating. 1. to make worse or more severe; intensify, as anything evil, disorderly, or troublesome: to aggravate a grievance; to aggravate an illness.
People with a working vocabulary have been making the distinction between an irritation and an aggravated irritation for a long time. As in, "The child scratched at the irritating wound, which aggravate
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I, the original Anonymous Coward that responded (#50149023) to your earlier post, and sorry that a later Anonymous Coward got into insulting you with pointless vulgar name calling with post #50149611.
So what you're saying is that you, just like the headline writer, don't actually understand what the word means.
So, when I look up the definition, I find this:
1. make (a problem, injury, or offense) worse or more serious.
"military action would only aggravate the situation"
2. informal
annoy or exasperate (someone), especially persistently.
"the gesture aggravated me even more"
Persistence implies "over time", like what I said. So, my usage is marked as "informal", but it is common enough that a dictionary recognizes the usage. You don't seem to even recognize the second definition.
The only person unfamiliar with this long-standing use and construction is you.
You're claiming that I'm unfamiliar with the (
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As always, "It Depends" (Score:3)
Some certs have value in the training and experience requirements that come with them.
Some certs add prestige to a resume or company masthead.
Some certs equal a bump in pay.
Some certs do other things that may benefit either the person getting the cert or the company that employs them.
And some certs do none of these, are a complete waste of time, and only add value to the instructor's, governing body's and test facility's bank accounts.
And when it comes down to it, the only person that can make that determination is the person looking at the cert.
--
All blanket statements are wrong.
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Some Certs used to be good, but no longer are. My Novel Certs are useless. And anyone wanting me to get certified at this point better be paying me for the Certs. If my 30 years of experience (yeah, getting old) doesn't count for anything, no cert is going to fix that.
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You're expected to go on the certification treadmill, and keep getting the latest and greatest in-demand certifications so that recruiters and HR can more easily filter candidates out of job searches.
How is Cisco going to feed their families if we don't all buy new books and study aids for the new version of a certification? (or insert a different color of the broken window fallacy)
The *real* reason (Score:5, Insightful)
We recently published on this site an opinion piece whose author was dismissing the usefulness of certifications.
We wanted to reassure our advertisers that the author's opinion was strictly his own, and not reflecting Dice's opinion in any way.
We at Dice are convinced that the certifications offered by our advertisers are indeed useful and even necessary.
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Indeed. This article is a Slashvertisement.
Re:The *real* reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, the Dice pieces linked close like this:
Conclusion
I’m obviously not a fan of formal certification. While many jobs require one or more, lots of tech pros have forged perfectly fine careers without them. Don’t let the complicated world of certificates impede you from pursuing what you want.
and
Certifications Only Prove One Thing
Malik’s supervisor, who worked his way up through the tech-industry ranks for 20 years without ever earning a certification, asked him how a career powered by certifications compares to one built primarily on real-life experience. Malik said anyone can pass a test given enough time to prepare for it; but that being said, certifications allow you to apply and interview for a role from a position of strength.
The answer of whether or not to certify is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Take Sarin, for instance, who suggests companies look for employee traits that can be encouraged or cultivated beyond what they might learn as part of the test-taking process, even as they encourage employees to earn certifications while on the job.
What ultimately matters is if the candidate’s opinions about certifications align with those of the hiring manager. But with certification requirements not exactly going away, why not play it safe and take on the extra effort? If you guess wrong and skip getting the certification, you could lose out to the person who passed the test.
And the non-Dice article is the one that recommends some certifications.
But of course the actual content shouldn't get in the way of a good rant.
Certs are for noob's. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a newbie or fresh from college, get a cert.
If you have 20+ years experience, Certs don't matter. Unless you have a clueless HR drone, then you dont want to work for the place.
If they discount your "15 years senior network administrator for AT&T" and want to see a entry level cert, then you really really dont want to work there.
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The most obnoxious certs are ones that test based on such an odd collection of details rather than any real understanding that people only pass be using brain dumps to cheat. Then the company keeps ratcheting up the difficultly of obtuse and poorly written questions, people continue to pass by cheating and the vendor never realizes what a bunch of crap their program is for anyone who attempts to do them honestly. That is my definition of a worthless cert. I suspect this comes from vendors allowing non-techn
Is that true of *any* formal credential? (Score:2)
Same is true of drivers licence, or a licence to practice law, or medicine, no?
Is it fair to say the CPA is bullshit because once you have been a CPA for 20 years, the experience counts more than the credential?
Why 20+ years experience might not matter (Score:3)
Let's say you claim 20 years of experience as a systems administrator.
What does that mean? Is your experience in Windows, Solaris, HP/UX, Linux, or what? Also, how much of each? Do you know Perl? Oracle? Cisco?
How does an employer know that your experience is with Solaris and not HP/UX? I suppose the employer could test you, but isn't that what a certification is all about?
I think it's very fair to say that standardized cert tests are far more objective than interview tech questions. I have been tech interv
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If you have 20+ years experience, Certs don't matter. Unless you have a clueless HR drone, then you dont want to work for the place.
I beg to differ. It may not matter when the job market works in your favour but if it doesn't it's not a clueless HR drone that you're battling, it's computers and statistics. When a company gets 10 resumes for a job then the clueless HR drone may sit through and read them. In those situations experience can often win jobs where you don't even match the job description.
If however the market is not in the job seeker's favour and you're battling 100 other people for one position then you're not even going to
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Lying on your resume tends to get you disqualified with prejudice, and will even get you fired if you're caught after you get the job.
It's not an all bets are off situation, it's a bet that you're guaranteed to lose.
Certification is a problem in search of... (Score:2)
Certification tends to become a problem because it drives the education rather than testing the skills.
Knowledge versus experience (Score:3)
Lacking certificates never kept me unemployed (Score:2)
For the years I was working in the tech industry, I was steadily employed (I'm on a disability retirement now.)
The only certificate I ever got was a low-level Oracle 7 DBA cert. Not one employer ever asked about that cert. Instead, they had their DBAs asking me *questions* to see what I knew. And because I'd worked with some sharp people and had good lunch-room discussions with them, I knew *far* more than that certificate course ever taught me.
My experience with "training courses" is that they run
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Certs can be useful in terms of learning the jargon of your particular product. Some of the trivia you learn may even be useful in practical terms or for answering interview questions.
But no company worth working for will place any value in the associated bit of paper.
Certifications shouldn't be hiring tools ... (Score:2)
I can see certification backed training being used as a prerequisite to move within a company, either laterally or for promotions. It makes sense to ensure that an employee has a certain base knowledge prior to moving into a new position. Studying for and passing a certification test accomplishes that. (Note: I am saying base knowledge, further training may be required.)
Using certifications for hiring is pure nonsense. There are too many unknowns when hiring a person, and how seriously they took the cer
Certifications are very profitable (Score:2)
Not necessarily profitable to the applicant though.
Business Consulting (Score:4, Interesting)
They give points in application process when big firms and the public sector contracts us to do real projects. Even so much, that one certificate is equal to two years of work experience or more.
They have no effect on me doing my job and are all about memorizing stupid details on things I will never use. I would be more than happy if our clients would see them as a money making scam, that they really are. But such is life.
Hate 'em all you like, but silly IT managers who hire sub-contractors don't know any better.
What if cert exams were implemented better? (Score:2)
I wonder if those posting about certs being all route memorization have their CCIE? Or RHCE?
Actually I wonder if they have any certs at all, since the route memorization claim is bullshit.
I must admit, a lot of the multiple guess cert questions do not really test your ability.
But could certs be better implemented, and thereby more worthwhile?
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I think the big problem with certification exams is that they're almost always a product of the vendor. Vendors tend to want to push features they think are distinctive and/or give them a market edge, so they load their exams with questions that force you to study niche features seldom used. And this is above and beyond the trivia they load into the tests.
For example, VMware has a bunch of ways to control resource utilization (resource pools, etc) yet I've seen it used only once at a client site, and only
If you want a certification, buy one. (Score:2)
If you want a certification, buy one.
There are plenty of people who will, for $100, take the certification tests for you. The certifying "authorities" never ask for a state issued picture ID to prove you are who you say you are -- and in fact, most modern certification testing and issuing happens online. You can pretty much get a certification in nearly everything.
Even in the case of a them checking IDs, you can have the test taker be a person who "perpetually fails at these tests", and swap test sheets/b
Maybe if IT jobs were more standardized? (Score:2)
In some fields, like health care, job specializations are extremely well defined. The credentials for doing those jobs are also very well defined.
You can look at somebody's credentials, and answer: yes or no; whether that person is technically qualified to be an R.N., or a phlebotomist, or whatever.
IT, by contrast, has always been pure slop. The credentials to do a job are arbitrary. What one employer considered a valid credential, another considers to be a negative. Practically no jobs in IT have hard req
Tell you what . . . . (Score:2)
I'll stop working on certifications when employers cease putting them on the job postings as a requirement for getting hired.
A lot of folks dismiss certifications as completely useless. While they don't gauge competency in any given field, they do at least show you've enough interest in the subject matter to jump through the hoops to attain the certification in the first place. I'm doing them because my company quit training their workforce about a decade ago. My hope is that the certifications give me ot
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Had a recruiter try to sell me on a network engineer position over the weekend: CCNA or working on it, can configure a switch, etc. "But the pay's great!" I know better, and you know why--you can either have 10 years of experience or 1 year of experience 10 times over. If you're reached the point you've learned all you can in your current position, you're doing yourself a disservice by staying.
Be careful with CCNP if you don't have experience to back it up. The assumption will be that you braindumped it.
If
I think that we can all agree on two facts... (Score:4, Insightful)
But this completely misses the point as to the actual value a certification actually has when it comes to the reality of programming or maintaining/implementing systems. Most of us will agree that the value here is low to potentially negative. A wonderful personal example was that years ago my company asked me to become MSDN certified in something. In order to regurgitate the correct answers for the test I memorized all kinds of crap. But some of it was actually quite helpful. There were some bits about NT boot configs that suddenly made sense.
But the flaw was that I was already very good at working with NT servers. If I were in some stripmall comp collage studying this as my first exposure to computer stuff then it would have meant nothing and yet with some good studying I would have been "certified" to administer NT servers.
But where this really breaks down is when you get a shop that is completely filled with people from a certain company's certifications. I have met companies that say "We are a MSDN shop." Full stop. They won't even consider any other technology.
But my happy moment was years ago when our head of IT who had "over $20,000 worth of Novell certifications there on that wall" was installing a Novell server on his brand new shiny Dell powerhouse. But it wouldn't install. So he gets Dell tech support on the phone and ends up with their top tier who said, "We don't support that old Novell stuff anymore. If it runs on any of our machines it is luck not design. But I know for a fact that it won't run on that machine you have there." Now with this IT guy the whole development staff had long been trying to get Novell out of the building but the IT head swore by it and had a thousand defences as to why it was the best. But the day Dell said No was the day we were able to leverage that into finally getting Novell out of the building.
I have similar stories with other certifications.
So while I don't doubt that they can often increase the individual's salary and I don't doubt that the process of an existing capable user would potentially be enhanced by certification. I do suggest that the damage that is done by certifications being turned into religious scrolls could be enormous to companies that suddenly are "locked in" to a certain technology and not only stop considering alternatives but actively consider alternatives to be heresy.
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Go get a real education from a real college... (Score:2)
Go learn what you are actually doing rather than learning how to tick a box on a goddamn test. Learn what NP-hard and NP-complete mean so you don't go around trying to solve intractable problems. Software development is NOT a trade you can learn by going to some trade school and getting certificates. It is a profession and, some would say, a science. Go take a few classes in Computer Science and learn how to really do it.
Certifications are JUST a way for companies to make money. That is all. It is a
Certs are useful, article annoying... (Score:2)
As a 20-year veteran SysAdmin/DevOps/BlueCollarITJanitor I find that certs are useful when they are used as a fundamental building block for building basic knowledge in a specific vendor's way of implementing their technical solution.
As an example, I cut my teeth on MCSE NT 4.0 (could have taken NT 3.51 certs at the time but stupidly skilled those to jump ahead) as a late teenager but the structured organization of the learning materials with the courses and books taught me Microsoft's ideologies and reason
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Interesting)
Conspiracy theories aside, I don't get why the hell Nerval's Lobster doesn't just have an editor account. I'd really like to know what the relationship there is.
Obviously he (or she?) works for dice, everything he's ever submitted is a link to dice and the URLs have campaign IDs in them to track the success of their shitposting. Do they treat this as if it was submitted like any other article, requiring it to get upvoted in the firehose, or is it just automatically accepted by whatever editor happens to see it first?
Either way, pretty unclassy.
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I think Nerval's Lobster doesn't have an editor account because he hasn't yet passed the certification process necessary to be hired as a /. editor.
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Interesting)
Nerval's Lobster is the astroturfing account for Nick Kolakowski, the editor in chief of the godawful SlashBI thing. He's still listed in the FAQ [slashdot.org] as an editor, even though he's officially moved away from Slashdot and is currently churning out content for Dice's godawful news division. I brought this up before, and was assured that not only does Nick not work directly for Slashdot any more, but that they don't post everything that he submits. Considering the last time he had a story declined was over a year ago [slashdot.org], I have my doubts.
Also, expect to see stories about certifications, what programming languages you should learn, interview skills, and other fluff pieces from now on.
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Just look back in his history: 0 comments, always an astroturf account, even pre-dice.
here's page 50 from his submissions which date back to May, 2012:
http://slashdot.org/users2.pl?... [slashdot.org]
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:4, Informative)
This is interesting but I'd like to see some proof of it.
"(Nerval's Lobster) actually worked for us before the acquisition, writing for our standalone news site experiment. Later on he moved over to Dice and took over their news site instead.
He goes through the same submission process as everyone else, and we don't post everything he submits." source [slashdot.org]
Not everything, just 570/767 stories. All of of the current ones have at least one link back to a story on Dice. The really old ones (from 2012 or so [slashdot.org]) all link back to his own stuff at the ill-fated SlashBI
"Nerval's Lobster (nkolakowski@slashdotmedia.com, nkolakowski@geek.net) submissions start to show up [techrights.org]. We've [slashdot.org] already [slashdot.org] established [slashdot.org] that Nerval's Lobster is Nick Kolakowski, a slashdot employee submitting paid content as user-submitted stories"source [slashdot.org] (with lots more interesting comments linked)
See also: The Slashdot FAQ [slashdot.org] which lists him as Slashdot editor, his Twitter profile [twitter.com] which lists him as a Slashdot editor, homepage [nickkolakowski.com] which lists him as a senior Slashdot editor, Google+ page [google.com] (same), LinkedIn [linkedin.com] (same), and so on and so on.
So, yes, can we stop with the charade already?
Re: Why are we even discussing this again? (Score:2, Informative)
Well that speaks volume on one of the certified programmers that I've hired who didn't even know what an array was.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well, what the fuck did you expect to have happen when you hired a certified scuba diving instructor as a programmer? The guy knows how to use diving equipment and how to safely perform dives. He isn't a computer programming expert, and his certification doesn't claim that he is! You, as the hiring manager, need to make sure that the certification that the candidate has is relevant to the work at hand. The candidate and certification aren't to blame when you make dumbass hiring decisions. Maybe if you had s
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Don't certify developers. Certify IT workers.
The best demonstration of developer quality is their portfolio of code and a 4 year university degree from a suitable full-time schooling program.
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Well that speaks volume on one of the certified programmers that I've hired who didn't even know what an array was.
Isn't that the thingy that has something to do with antennas?
Re: (Score:3)
the only people who don't see the value in them are those who don't have the skills/experience or sufficient free time and disposable money to throw away necessary to acquire them.
TFTFY.
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the only people who don't see the value in them are those who don't have the skills/experience or sufficient free time and disposable money to throw away necessary to acquire them.
TFTFY.
some people who don't see the value in them haven't done them so their only frame of reference is a sphincter.
TFTFY
I only drive Fords because all Holdens are crap - that's why I've never driven one. != I only drive Fords because I've driven Holdens and found they were crap.
Re: (Score:3)
Who's discussing the topic? Before you started talking about it, everyone was complaining about how dice is using /. to funnel clicks their way without adding any meaningful content.
If you don't mind, could we get back to dice bashing? It's more informative, insightful and entertaining than reheating the topic for the 5th time in the past 14 days.
Re: (Score:2)
Given that his post was basically the complete anti-thesis of reality, what's the bet that the AC was Nerval's Lobster or whoever trying to troll the discussion back on topic by posting inflamatory nonsense?
Dice posts story trying to pretend certifications matter, presumably because some certification peddler has paid them to do so. Everyone posts about Dice posting shill articles, with a few posts about how Dice's story is bollocks, then an AC posts a post claiming certifications matter in an inflamatory w
Re:Why are we even discussing this again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay Nerval or whichever Dice employee you are you're just embarrassing yourself and your company now, please, just stop.
Certainly in the development world, no one who actually has these roles you're theorising about gives the slightest shit about certifications. I can say this with absolute certainty because I've made it right to the top in a large and successful company without needing any and similarly when I'm hiring I pay exactly zero attention to certifications because they do not in any way tell you anything about the competency of the candidate.
You see the issue is that anyone can get these certifications, so your theory of who can and can't get them is meaningless, even junior devs can get them if they can be arsed, but ultimately they're just not worth the money. They have exactly zero impact on employability (and some even have negative impact).
So keep theorising all you want, those of us who actually work in the field and have worked our way to the top will keep laughing at how wrong you are and how desperate your shilling is. Even if I genuinely wasn't capable of getting these certifications, I frankly wouldn't care, because it's had no impact whatsoever in my ability to grow my career, hence even if you were right (which you're not) so fucking what? It's still meaningless, they still don't matter, not having them still hasn't dragged my pay down at all because I'm already getting paid as much as a developer can get paid, and I still enjoy my job regardless. There isn't any other metric that matters that these certifications could improve even if they did somehow matter as you're desperately trying to claim.
Really, it sounds like you're the bitter one simply because you blew all your money on certifications and have no actual skills so the only person you could find to employ you was Dice. I guess it must suck being in a dead end Dice job, but at least you have your pointless and irrelevant bits of paper to flap around right?
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Re: (Score:3)
2. worked with multiple MCSE's who were computer illiterate.
The matter is settled. Paper don't mean shit to anyone outside the PHB's hiring you. That alphabet soup you have on your business card isn't fooling your peers.
Re: (Score:3)
I have interviewed 100's of RHCE's who could not tell me how to set the minimum password length, how to change the permissions on a file, and none of them could tell me how to set run levels at boot.
I was surprised that they even passes the RHCE without knowing it.
Re: (Score:2)
I could probably locate the file or at least use man to figure out how to set the minimum password length. It's not something I do often so I don't have it memorized. And with RH7, it's probably under loginctl. Heck, a quick search on my RH6 box and I can't find where to set the minimum password length. Probably under pam.d.
Permissions is bog simple though, I'd have a problem with someone not knowing that.
For older systems (RH6 or older) it's easy enough, /etc/inittab. I'd have to do a man on systemctl or s
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed.
The best credentials are whatever your potential future boss damn well SAYS they are.
Re: (Score:2)
More Dice clickbait. Fuck off samzenpus.
And give me my fucking scrollbar back!!! Not everyone uses trackpad scrolling (disable mine as it never behaves as it should due to lousy drivers)
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What the hell browser are you using that doesn't have a scroll bar?
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Firefox allows you to control the look of the scrollbar. It appeared to me as this thin strip about 5px wide almost the same colour as the background grey, also without any up/down arrows. I think I was in some A|B testing as it's gone now.
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I use Lynx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Listen, kiddo, Slashdot is a Dice Holdings property and you don't expect it to publish their owners' content?
One day I'll want to visit your fantasy world, but in this one Slashdot wouldn't have been sold to Dice if it was profitable.
Re: (Score:2)
Listen, sonny, you lived through that world. Slashdot once did well for itself. And given your uid, you should remember that.
"Buzzfeedification" of content is killing the net. Notice all those outbrain, taboola, and other shit all over news sites? This article is the same thing. Corporations astroturfing "advertorial" clickbait is bad for everyone -- especially on a site the is supposedly still "driven by user submissions".
So fuck any fatalistic or indignant defense of this turd masquerading as news.
Ma
Re: (Score:3)
Listen, kiddo, Slashdot is a Dice Holdings property and you don't expect it to publish their owners' content?
One day I'll want to visit your fantasy world, but in this one Slashdot wouldn't have been sold to Dice if it was profitable.
Actually, a lack of profitability isn't what causes a company to get bought. Quite the opposite; companies that have few tangible assets and are not profitable almost never get bought. What causes a company to get acquired is profitability along with growth or synergy potential (don't blame me for using that phrase; it's what gets bandied about) as well as a cost of acquisition that makes it seem worthwhile. So in this case, I would think the synergy potential was the main factor (being able to stump for
Wanting to be a good singer... (Score:2)
Thing is, for every success story like yours, there's plenty of technically inclined people who at best make it to a help desk position.
Wanting to be a good singer... being "musically inclined... doesn't mean that you aren't tone deaf, and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
There's a heck of a lot of difference between being "technically inclined" and actually having technical ability.
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You may be overqualified. You should be looking at executive positions.
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I recommend getting a Ph.D. in philosophy. It's the best thing for getting a job in any kind of science or technology related field, because philosophy is the mother of all sciences and technology is just applied science.