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Linux Certification Roundup
jdean writes: "I thought I'd take a minute and toot my own horn and mention my
article on the O'Reilly Network which gives a roundup of the various Linux certifications currently available. It's part of my series on Linux certification."
There is indeed a seemingly endless mass of computer-savvy people who fight the idea of certification. But to what end? There is a valid fear of losing a job to someone who is certified through a particular company.
.com's either), there are many large corporations who value a certificate, to choose more selectively who they will expense jobs and money upon.
However, this is a result of the IT industry becoming a main-stream business. There is NO feasible way to get a job in as a lawyer without passing a bar exam. Nor to become a doctor without enduring medical school. However, it was once not like this. Doctor's needed no certification to operate when there were no standard medical boards and such.
But times change. Now, computers and the industry surrounding them have become such a large part of international business that there has to be some way to separate those applying for the jobs out there.
Granted, it may seem unfair to those computer user who have been here "since the beginning" - whatever the beginning is for this industry. But, as I've said before, times change. There are, every 3-4 months, a new crop of CS, IT, Comp. Eng, etc degree-holding workers, who want money. Who want jobs. And there aren't necessarily enough to go around.
What is a business to do? Certification allows businesses (not just "upstart die-in-three-months
There is a worry about certification allowing people with little-to-no experience to work in areas where they are not necessarily trained to work. Certification is not a guarantee of mastery of a system, and no one knows everything about a particular OS, hardware, software package, etc anyway. There are people who get hired everyday, who have worked for years in a field, who find out on the first day on a new job they don't know as much as they thought they did.
Certification is not out to push aside the knowledgable users and administrators of computer networks. It is not a ploy to allow new-workers into a workplace, while throwing the old ones out. It is merely a way to provide businesses more criteria in hiring. Almost all businesses that I know of will gladly pay for a certification course for their employees. If there is such a worry about certification-holding newbies coming in and destroying a precious way-of-life, get certifified yourself!
Thanks for reading this to the end. Advance apologies for my lack of conciseness and lucidity, at times.
wesley
Case in point. A few months ago, I was job hunting. A headhunter called me up about a certain position. I had all the quals. . .but their HR droid shot me down, because I wasn't an MCSE.
Oddly enough, in my new position, we work with that company. And they've borrowed me numerous times to fix what their wet-behind-the-ears, just-got-my-MCSE PFY couldn't do, or botched. Needless to say, it has been a source of many billable hours to my current employer. And all because Company "X"'s HR droid decided that a shiny, new MCSE certification trumped years of experience in the field. . . .
I was intimately involved in the initial design of the RHCE (which started back in 1997). Red Hat asked for (and received) extensive community input into the design of the program via a public mailing list. Many of the criticisms of IT certification that are occurring in this discussion were very thoroughly explored in that forum.
Red Hat required a certification program to handle two related needs
1) Red Hat needed to know that its partners had sufficient technical expertise to deliver Red Hat Linux to our mutual customers. This is an essentail part of our QA process and our ability to deliver on our promise of quality to our customers.
2) Companies wishing to deploy Red Hat Linux needed to know that there were high level qualified Linux people who could perform on the job - ie who had the skills and knowledge at a detailed level AND who had shown their ability to produce quality solutions to problems under pressure.
Resulting directly from the discussions, Red Hat decided that its certification program had to require more than passing a multiple choice exam. We finally settled on a performance based (ie hands on) examination as this is the only real way to test for on the job performance.
The hands on examination lasts most of a full day and is very tough. You get a 'broken' system and have to find out what is wrong - and fix it, then we break it again and you get to fix it again, and so on.
Because of this performance based examination, the RHCE is in no way comparable to almost all other IT certification programs (the exception being the Cisco program which is also performance based). Neither the MSCE nor the CNE have performance based examinations.
The content and level of knowledge of the RHCE was also determined through the community discussion process. The archives of this discussion are extensive and detailed - for example, including discussion of the level of detailed sendmail config knowledge we should require.
I would agree that much IT certification is of very limited value. It was for this specific reason that Red Hat, with the benefit of extensive community involvement, decided to design the RHCE the way it did.
I hope this helps to clarify some of the discussion that is occurring here.
>Before MCSEs existed certifications were quite difficult to obtain, requiring a lot of study, coupled with hands-on practical
>experience to back-up the study.
Sorry, while I'm not a true old-timer in this business, before all of the horror stories about MCSEs, there was constant bitching about ``paper CNAs" -- people who read the NetWare manuals, passed the tests, but could not tell an Ethernet card from a Token ring card to save their lives.
The paper CNAs of yore had something of an excuse, though: in the late 1980's/early 1990, very few people had hands-on experinece creating or maintaining a LAN. Nowadays, any person with a modicum of motivation can build a LAN at home for the cost of a computer upgrade.
With computers available for under US$1000, & the MS software of your choice available for less than another $1000, there is really no excuse for paper MCSEs: if you can't spend that kind of money & time learning the software (but can spend those two on an MSCE bootcamp & test), you have no justification to be paid to fix or upgrade other people's computers.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
what salary premium could be put on one of these certifications?
That is, I make X units/year. With certification C, I can expect to pull in X+Y. The premium on C is then Y.
Rate the certs according to Y and your talking my language.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Everyone bitches because "certifications" mean nothing. I don't believe that's quite true; a certification means nothing if you check out the braindumps, memorize the questions and particular answers, and pass by the skin of your teeth. It can mean you DO have the basic experience necessary to perform a job if you learn your stuff and pass with real knowledge using real experience.
I have several certifications. I have them because I wasn't getting respect in my particular field while looking for a job. (Yep, partially Microsoft, but also partially Solaris.) I have yet to score below 95% on a certification test. My biggest beef with the cert tests is that they're entry to mid level; they don't cover complex things. (For some really tough questions, see brainbench at http://www.brainbench.com.)
Anyway, Linux, CompTIA, Novell, or Sun, all cert tests are limited by what they can offer for a reasonable price. Cisco is about the only test that isn't abused yet, and I've started hearing commercials for "CCNA Boot Camps" (do me a favor; don't do a boot camp and come configure my router, okay?). However, the CCIE certification, a prize still, is done in a lab environment. Of course, the CCIE lab is over $1k last time I checked. There's a big diff between $100 and $1000. Everyone else is multiple choice or fill in the blank. (Although Microsoft's emulator tests are actually getting pretty good.) Just like the SAT or ACT, you've got a 20% chance of getting most questions right just by guessing.
Oh well.. you either recognize a cert for what it is, or you don't. Most of the employers I've been interviewing with recently ARE ASKING LIVE TECH QUESTIONS, despite the certs. The cert gets you in the door, the live tech makes sure you do know your stuff.
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
Slackware is work (This spoken by a Slackware fan)
The point of Debian is to be secure the point of RedHat is to be "IT compatable" (if you will) to get Linux smushed in those companys who use Windows becouse Microsoft sent them a pamptlet telling them to.
Far to many companys have a clueless manager in charg of the technology. He runs on buzzwords not on real technology. RedHat is simply trying to push the Linux buzzword into those managers brains so they can sell product in Microsofts domain.
It's not good becouse this is the house Microsoft built.. It's a sad state of affares where people who normally wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a computer are in charg of the tech department.
This is the RedHat nitch.. makes sence that RedHat wants to own the idiots. The rest of us want to exterminate same.
But exterminating them isn't a good idea...
So let RedHat be bizzord complient...
We should be hiring collage students who learnned Unix not MSCE who learnned nothing at all...
But for now certen ITs are looking for MSCEs when they should look for PHDs
I don't actually exist.
I write and teach so I keep up with the current certifications.
I've taken the Sair exams (at LinuxWorld) and the LPI 101 and 102 beta exams. I thought I'd post my thoughts in case anyone was curious.
The Sair exams are not that good. They ask questions that are NOT important in the real world. Things such as "Who wrote this piece of software?". Well..I know I never have had to type the author's name in to get something to work. I also didn't care for their ethics exam. There should not be questions about who can view someones email on a technical exam. This is up to the company you work for and the laws in your area or country.
The LPI exams were MUCH better. They were more hands on with a number of "type in the command to do this and this, include all options". All of their questions were right on with things people actually do, and need to know. I'm anxious to see their other two levels.
I haven't done the RHCE yet but I will soon. I love to see lab exams. I got my MCSE about 6 years ago, long before study guides and transcender tests. That was also before Microsoft dumbed down the tests. MANY good MCSE's have asked Microsoft for a serious lab exam for YEARS and they haven't done it. They desperately need it.
Certifications may be useless to people with experience, but not to a young person trying to get a head-start in the field. I'm 17 and just got my CCNA, and without it there would be no way for me to get experience (where I live) on anything dealing with a network (unless you count at home). Everyone seems to get upset about certifications because they have experience and they see people who get certifications who have no experience and are getting paid more than them (it does happen doesn't it?). Why not just get a certification yourself if you have the know-how?
Nowadays almost anyone can become certified by spending enough money, without even once touching the system that they are certified in
Not everywhere.
Take a look at the RHCE exams - they're 66% practical.
Debugging non-working systems, installing a system that provides certain services, hardening security on that box...
There's no way you can manage it without having used Linux.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
As for purchasing software for self-training, you don't even need to spend $1000 on the software. MS are now producing Windows2000 training kits, which contain study guides for the 4 mandatory exams and a 120-day copy of Windows2000 Server. I saw a copy last week for less than 130UKP.
When I get paid this month I'll pick up a copy.
Unfortunatly for me a cerification is very neccessary. I have been using Linux for a very long time and have helped a couple of charitable organizations setup Linux based networks as well as my own somewhat complex home network. I am also a Computer Technician in the Windows World, with several years of front line support experiance. My employer is starting to use Linux internally and has posted various jobs for which I have applied. The problem I run into is my resume goes to HR first who reviews it for appropriate skill sets and trainability, and then I get an email which states I have no formal education in this field nor a certification to prove real world skills and my resume will not be forwarded to the hiring manager and they ended up hiring some schmuck with an MCSE and on his first day of work I have to go down and show him how to start X.
So what to do ? I have dropped a $1500 on formal training, to learn things I already know, $200 more for an LPI Level I certification, which I passed very easily and I have even went so far as to take the BrainBench certifications. Next time I get an email like that, I walk.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Bowie:
Slashdot is not the place to continually advertise your website. Please respect common courtesy: Slashdot is a news/rumour site, not your personal playpen.
I think what I was trying to say was "fuck off and die."
Excerpt from Microsoft MCLE Core Requirements Training Kit:
The idea of certification is that it provides a guaranteed level of competance in a certain area, is a nice one and all that, but it's hardly one that has a place in the modern computing industry. Like all training and courses, it merely provides an illusion of competance which can lull employers in a false sense of security - no "certified professional" is worth anything without the real-world experiance that comes from being on the job.
In many ways, having a certificate is like being part of a trade union - it provides a group which seeks to push its own members foward regardless of whether they're the right people for the job. And like trade unions, this attitude is the downfall of a capitalist economy based on the cut and thrust of a free market, including a free market for employment.
I'd rather hire someone willing to learn than some wet behind the ears fool with a Red Hat certificate who thinks they've already learnt everything.
While I agree that RHCE may have people trapped in the redhat sandbox unable to cope with non redhat distros, this certainly is not the case for LPI or GNU Sair. GNU Sair has levels of certification as does LPI and they are vendor neutral. The GNU Sair seems to be a bit more in depth certification of the two. I highly doubt you'll see paper MLCE's like you see paper MCSE's. The *nix learning curve scares those types of people away. People who learn linux do some for the love of the OS, not because they saw a "make $50k now" add in the paper. In addition, the MLCE is GNU Sair's top level. The lowest level, LCA, is more difficult to attain than an MCSE. By the time someone is LPIC-3 or MLCE, they'll know their shit.
I've also seen sample questions from these exams which range from easy to difficult. Some of the questions depend on your actually having experience to be able to answer the questions. I don't believe the linux exams are heading down the MCSE highway. We won't see exams retired every two years - I mean *nix doesn't change THAT much! Plus, this gives linux guru's credibility in the "eyes" of companies. In the end, we know, that experience is the best teacher, not a piece of paper. However, this piece of paper is going to take more work to earn than the MCSE. I guarantee it!
Nowadays almost anyone can become certified by spending enough money, without even once touching the system that they are certified in. Some others even have Open-Book examinations. The consequences are often disasterous. I've met some MCSEs, who've obtained them through work (or as post service training for those leaving the British Armed Forces), and one in particular was so utterly clueless I wouldn't trust him with a pocket calculator.
Things seem to be getting better, though. The Windows 2000 MSCE appears to be more difficult than the previous offering, although I've not looked at the syllabus in detail.
Come on, man. As if the troll problem on Slashdot isn't bad enough without somebody posting something on the main page about tooting their own horn.
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