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I'm a working software developer and I have no degree, only a hell of a passion for coding and the ability to learn on my own.

It's possible. There are plenty of places who will be looking for cheap junior software devs. The work won't be terribly interesting, but they're excellent places to jump start a career.

A recruiting agency like Volt is an easy place to start. You don't pay them a dime. I recommend grabbing some certifications – with a lack of experience or degree, anything can help get your foot in the door to an in-person interview. Even ones from Brainbench will help, and they're pretty cheap.

Unless you want a job with Google or Microsoft, get out there and get working. Do anything, cut deals, get to building pcs and servers. Then, once you get some knowledge, get some MCSE tests at http://www.vue.com/ . For Linux certs, hit the http://www.brainbench.com/ site, unless you want to pay for some of the higher end certs like RHCE or LPI. Brainbench is fairly cheap, and got me my current job five years ago, where I now make 40k/yr, which is decent for where I live. I have a friend who works an hour south of me, and makes 70k/yr and doesn't have a degree.

You have to get out there. A BS in CS is nice, but your really not going to make that much more having a degree. Its all in what you know, not what classes you took.

I agree and this is the exact same reasoning that led me to the certifications I have now. As far as cost, I guess it all depends on your priorities. While spending a couple of hundred bucks on a piece of paper may sound bad, when compared to taking college courses, it isn't unreasonable.

Back in my younger days, I accumulated a CD collection of between four - five hundred CDs (not to mention all the concerts I went to). True, a lot of used and discounted CDs, but still a fair amount of money invested. I have made up my mind that if I managed to waste all the money I wasted on music over the years, I can spend a couple of hundred bucks once or twice a year and not feel guilty about it. So what I have been doing is setting goals for things I want to learn, learning it, and getting a certificate to prove that I learned it.

Jay Banks
FCC GROL
NARTE certified Technician (Jr) (www.narte.org)
Brainbench certified Telecommunications Specialist
Brainbench certified Network Support Specialist
HAM Tech License (KE5FAL)
(Next: Network+, which isn't as easy as it used to be.)

see: http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=55843 98

It took me 4 months to get my alma mater to update their computer system to reflect that I had graduated 7 years previously. Of course, the fact they had sent me a diploma didn't seem to be a factor, but lots of employers want a transcript, and it didn't show up there. Of course, they didn't keep paper records that long, so all they had t go on was one field in a computer system.

In the end, after threatening to bring in lawyers, and having to get the curriculum committee to meet and decide I had passed, the dean finally apologized -- for having 'incorrectly given me a diploma'.

Besides, all that certificates prove is that you're willing to waste the time and money to get a piece of paper ... even if it's 4+ years and many thousands of dollars. (in the case of Brainbench, however, my company paid for me to take the tests, but I'd have to shell out for the paper to show I passed them, which can add up, if you do well at tests.)

I'll agree that someone with cognative learning skills is always a good thing -- but sometimes you can't take the risk of them learning on the job... or not learning, as the case may be.

Although, based on the people I know who are OCPs, I'd probably take someone who's a generalist over certified Oracle.

But here's where we get to the real problems -- what is the person tasked with doing? Not knowing the correct commands, and having to look up everything when they don't work as expected can slow you down significantly. We're not talking 10-20% loss of effectiveness... we're talking down to 10-20% of total effectiveness. That means we're on par with replacing someone who touch types with someone who does the old hunt-and-peck.

Would you want a really good general doctor performing open heart surgery on you? How about if I told you that they're about 50% as efficient as the specialist that you could have in their place? Do you really want him learning on you? Is it okay if he keeps going back and checking a reference book while you're split open on a table? (and before you complain that this is an unrealistic example -- there are plenty of computer systems that can result in fatalities if someone screws up).

I'm not going to say that generalists don't have their place -- they do. If nothing else, they're not so focused on one thing, that they can help to track down what's gone wrong, so they can then go to the specialist for the knowledge they need.

The specialists need to have a general background in their subject area, before they build up to the specialization. In the case of anyone who manages an application, be it a database, web server, or whatever, you know that you start by analyzing the problem -- look for things that have changed; look for bottlenecks (poor cache performance, memory paging, competing processes, physical reads and writes, etc) ... blah, blah, blah ... But they might not know enough to be able to fix the problem ... just narrow down where it is. The good folks, in any field, have a realistic view of what their skills are, and they know when they need to get outside help.

so um... based on my competancy tests, could you even guess my speciality?

My company (a small consulting firm in the northeast) has applicants take Brainbench tests on topics relevant to the position for which they are applying. When they instituted the testing, they asked the current employees to take the tests to establish a baseline. Applicants are also given a single essay question to see how they can apply their knowledge against scenarios we have faced. We don't rely solely on the tests, though. If someone aces them but comes off as a total asshole in the person-to-person interview, they're out.

The company is now considering giving DISC personality tests as well, to better ensure that new people will mesh well with the existing team. We all took them already to see how accurate they were, and the results were pretty dead on.

Making links in random words in your post does not help readers find information any quicker when there's no discernable pattern in what they're for

Can't they just go to the /. subscription model? Many of the sites I've used for years because they were free are now charging: BrainBench, Mind-It, and others. At least I know /. won't stoop that low.

The problem is when most "expert" groups discuss this topic, they typically look for a test they could get perfect in, based on the fault assumption that their perfect mastery of C++ must result in a perfect score.

Not really. (You can go and look at the threads concerned using Google Groups if you want to see the real attitudes exhibited.) The problem is that certification programs produced thus far have been laughable. Take Brainbench, for example. I went along and got a top-in-my-country score in C++ the first time I tried. OK, I'm a better than average C++ programmer, but there were people on the standards committee who define the language further down than me. That might be because at least four or five of the questions they asked had no correct answer available, and that was a multiple choice test! If testing specialists can't get that right, what hope do they have of meaningfully assessing any testee-produced code?

It's not just Brainbench, though. Take a look at an average Software Engineering course at universities these days. American ones seem to be particularly bad right now, with many uni's following fashionable languages and techniques regardless of any technical merit. My own university, a well-regarded one in the UK, still seems to think that software engineering should be based on the waterfall model, if you listened ot their lecturer. (It wasn't quite that bad -- alternatives were at least discussed -- but you get the point.)

By the way, as for just taking true/false or multi-guess questions based on the contents of The C++ Programming Language, you won't get much meaningful information out of that. Like many old exams, all it tests if memory ability, with no real gauge of understanding. A few simple questions at the start of an interview might set the broad level of discussion for the remainder, but nobody smart recruits based on them alone, and it's notoriously difficult to set useful questions even then.

I don't see any real progress being made in the area of software engineering accreditation until there is an independent body, run by software engineers for software engineers, wherein the body of experience and expertise is sufficient to give any assessments they make some reasonable credibility. Right now, most software engineers don't even belong to any sort of union, and only a few belong to any other professional body, in my experience. Compare that with most other engineering disciplines, and you see both how far we have to go, and perhaps the direction for the first few steps.

First of all, when you're an interviewee, sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're talking to an HR Drone/PHB or someone who actually knows what they're talking about. I find myself reluctant to go into full-geek mode on an interview because most people at a given company don't really understand what geeks are all about.

Second, where the hell are the job postings from all of you!? I've been trying to find a job for a while, but my lack of "professional experience" is keeping me from getting my foot in the door. I'm reading these questions and saying, "yeah, why would I memorize all the flags for grep when I've got a man page to look at? Isn't it more important to know WHAT and WHY?" Which seems to be a common theme here, but not one I'm seeming to find "out in the world."

A true story...a placement agency I was working with had me take a Solaris test at BrainBench. Keep in mind that I had never touched Solaris before. However, the tests let you use not only your related knowledge, but any online/print resources available. I passed the test easily, and I THOUGHT that this would speak kind of highly of my abilities, but no, that whole HR drone mentality again.

Easy. Tell them to take an on-the-spot BrainBench certification for Linux Systems Administration.. If they score 3.00 or higher, hire them. Anything less and they're probably clueless.

Folks, if you want a slightly formal linux certification, then look at brainbench . I know all this self-certification thing is a little tough to believe in, but some of the questions that thing asks about linux you just can't answer unless you know your stuff - you just can't look it up in a book. I even ticked the box that said "send me the certs", and d'ya know what ? They got here (UK) a couple of weeks ago. Try it (and tell 'em I sent ya!!).

you can pay "big" bucks for a cert that the vast majority of employers won't grok, or, you can go get the online freebie at brainbench. i took the unix admin one and there were actually points where it was tough!

We almost hired a very bright young programmer who hadn't gone to college. He scored VERY high on the BrainBrench.com C and C++ skills tests, and had other good credentials.

I asked him to provide some example code for me to look at, and he gave me a a short example where he had to optimize a C++ program that did a string rewrite (ie. convert character "A" into "BC", etc.) for a specified number of times. He precomputed the translation once, and gave up there, not realizing that he had taken steps toward moving from a O(N) algorithm to an O(N lg N) algorithm.

It was clear that he had never been drilled in recognizing certain algorithmic patterns, and thus his optimizations employed many language speed up tricks to make C++ faster, but largely ignored using a simple but better algorithm to improve the speed. I rewrote it to use the better algorithm (compute string replacements for levels 2, 4, 8, etc., when needed, rather than 1-N) and eliminate the repeated string copy (by rewriting front to back, then back to front, in a single buffer), and beat his "optimized" version.

In short, while he was great with language skills, particularly w/ C++, he had a lot to learn about algorithms in general, which is the kind of formalism that a university will drill you in, and which is very helpful. For the type of numerical and graphical software development we are doing, it is almost critical.

Still, we would have hired him anyway, but he decided to work elsewhere. Language skills alone made him quite valuable to many employers. But for someone who seemed as talented and bright as he was, he could really achieve much more.

There was a recent post on regarding security courses. The poster was kind enough to reply back to the list with a list of responses to his question. I've included some of that list below.. my hands hurt from typing all day, so I don't feel like typing out the rest. Maybe I will tomorrow..

http://www.isc2.org/
http://www.brainbench.com/
http://www.robertgraham.com/
http://www.r00tabega.com/
http://www.sans.org/
http://www.csc.com/
http://www.ey.com
http://www.securityfocus.com/
http://astalavista.box.sk/
http://neworder.box.sk/
http://blacksun.box.sk/tutorials.html
http://www.prosofttraining.com/

Don Head
Linux Mentor

So you're not alone! I've been out for over a month now, and sitting at home all day searching job sites just isn't fun anymore :P Plenty of job postings on services like monster.com and careers.yahoo.com, but you need to get replies for any of those things to work ;-)

I think I'm going to go wear my name on my shirt for a while (read: retail), just til I can find something a little more solid. If any employers in Maryland/DC reading this, feel free to visit http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=39513 2 :)

--

The tests are timed; you get three minutes for each question and can't stop, so make sure you have a block of uninterrupted time available.

Brainbench, formerly tekmetrics is a free site that hands out certifications on a number of computer related subjects (they were free the last time I checked, but then again they were also known as tekmetrics...). I would definately reccomend the Linux one for someone just starting out. OTOH some personal experiences from my roomate would make me reccomend *not* getting involved in proofreading their tests if they ask you to...

Looking through Brainbench's list of certifications that they offer, I noticed that they offered a Linux Administrator offering.

Are we heading for a world where certifications become like standards, there are just so many to choose from?

How worthwhile are any of these anyways?

Cheers,
Ben

Looking through Brainbench's list of certifications that they offer, I noticed that they offered a Linux Administrator offering.

Are we heading for a world where certifications become like standards, there are just so many to choose from?

How worthwhile are any of these anyways?

Cheers,
Ben

Looking through Brainbench's list of certifications that they offer, I noticed that they offered a Linux Administrator offering.

Are we heading for a world where certifications become like standards, there are just so many to choose from?

How worthwhile are any of these anyways?

Cheers,
Ben