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Red Hat Certification Program For Education
Frank Caviggia writes "The Inquirer has a story up about Red Hat providing educational institutions with the ability to certify students as Red Hat Certified Technicians (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineers (RCHE) how this will relate to Microsoft's MSCE program. You can find the story here. Red Hat has more information on the program here."
They want to create a certification comparable to the MSCE? Gee... then we'll have have all these people with just a RHCT or RCHE admining linux boxes, and we'll have as many problems (DDOS zombies, etc.) as with the MCSEs admining windows boxes.
Certifications will help, but then people will think that that certification is _all_ that is needed to admin a linux box.
Will this turn into the same repetetive cash cow that the MCSE is? Will certified engineers have to get a new certification on every new release of the kernel? what about major releases?
I hope they realize that one of the major flaws with microsoft's certification is the necessity to get re-certified when a poorly-done ripoff of the previous operating system is released.
--My other sig is a ferrari.
Now all the wagon jumping paper tigers that swamped the IT world can move to Linux.
A large part of the state of job opportunities in the tech sector are the 5000 absolutely unqualified applicants for every job.
Pointy haired bosses don't know a good coder from a hole in the ground, so they hire the janitor-cum-MCP with the $20,000 salary expectation.
There are a few places left that look for someone who can do the job, and do it well, and don't give a hoot about alphabet soup and buzzwords in the resume.. I'm fortunate enough to have found one of them.
I should probably get back to work, I've wasted too much time here today.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This is a brilliant move on the part of Red Hat.
Certification serves two main purposes.
First, it invests technical pros in your product. If a person has worked for weeks or months to learn the arcana necessary to support Red Hat, what arethey going to suggest when management comes to them asking for an OS recommendation? This invested loyalty is a good part of what keeps MS shops MS shops.
Second, certification is a warm fuzzy that lets potential corporate adopters know that there will be talent for them to draw on. IT might be expensive now, but the cost will drop as geeks get run through the Cert mill.
This will end up being a Martha Stewart sized Good Thing.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
It means that there will now be a flood of "Paper RHCEs" just as was the case with the MCSEs. But there will be a big difference.
The difference will be that few Slashdotters will ridicule the RHCEs as they have done the MCSEs. And, the Slashdotters that do ridicule them will be classified as jealous of the certification, since they do not have one. Then they will be modded down to minus one, much as I suspect this post will be.
That universities learn from the free software movement that knowledge is something that they can generate. I dont see whatsoever any value in giving any kind of certification to a student that is not involved in important admin tasks in a real datacenter. Come on, she'll go into the cert, finish it. Oh cool its friday! Go to a rave and kill most the synaptic connections given by the cert in the first two hours. With some luck (and here is the upside), our very hypothetical geek will get laid and on and on and on until they finish their degree....
Certs provide no value to kids in school. Abstract math, the study of algorithms, the understanding of the engeneering process behinf organizations like IETF, W3C do provide it....quit loosing time colleges, educate ppl. Certs are for lame professionals that lost the next wave (which is most of us, at some point anyway).
NO SIG
You guys can bash certifications left and right, but to a new graduate desperately looking for a job, they can prove useful. The job market is so bad at the moment that recent college graduates applying for entry-level positions are competing with people that have decades of experience. If having "RHCT" or "RCHE" on your resume can help, it's worth investing a couple of hundred bucks into it.
Certification has pluses and minuses for employees and employers alike, the real winners turn out to be the Cerifying organization. So, why not? Let's start "Billy The Mountain's Certified Information Technology Professional" program. "What, you say you're not BTMCITP? Gedowwdahea!"
Step 1. We'll charge $400 a pop, with a $50 annual maint. fee
Step 2. ????
Step 3. Marvel at how it's just like were printing our own money.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I thought engineering was something you had to go to college for, not some 'school' in a strip mall that does computer 'certs'.
Theres an interesting comaprison between the benfefits that Red Hat perceives that can be gained through taking their course and Microsofts idea of the benefits you get for its MCSE.
Its an interesting contrast of philosophys, Red Hat stresses its IT benefits, whereas Microsoft seems to stress the special offers that come free with the course.
Apparently you get a free badge with the Microsoft cereal, I think I know which one I'm going to be buying.
A person with a BSCS may be able to program a 2000 line program, but give them a problem to fix on a 200,000 program and they are dead.
All a degree or certification does is state that the person has taken course work and exams that show they they knew some knowledge at some point. It is not an end-all-be-all determination of skill. It is only one aspect to look at when determining a persons ability.
Fight Spammers!
There was a time when being an MCP/MSCE *actually* was worthwhile. Before every fly-by-night tech education company realized they could make a buck off the courseware and flooded the market with paper-cert toting meta-geeks. I see this as a good thing. Anything that RH does to expand awareness of its products ultimately helps the whole OSS & FSF idealogies through a trickle down effect.
Certification serves two main purposes.
First, it invests technical pros in your product. If a person has worked for weeks or months to learn the arcana necessary to support Red Hat, what arethey going to suggest when management comes to them asking for an OS recommendation? This invested loyalty is a good part of what keeps MS shops MS shops.
Great, instead of recommending Red Hat because they honestly believe it's the best answer, they'll be pimping it to protect their paychecks.
"Sure enough, boss! Red Hat's the best solution for our embedded OS. Works great on toasters. And it's the most secure and stable too! Let's use it for all mission critical systems. And it's great for new users and long time linux geeks. You betcha, boss!"
Is it because you love linux or because you hate Microsoft that you've decided the ends justify the means?
I'm reminded of a Russian(?) aphorism: "Choose your enemies well, because you'll become them."
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Certifications like the CompTIA certs do not carry much value to techies, but may mean alot to that HR rep.
If you don't have the right alphabet soup at the top of your resume, that HR person may very well throw away your resume, even if you have years of experience.
That said, I don't have a certification, and I still don't have a job after looking since November. I'm looking into getting a RHCE and CompTIA to help me get past the HR level.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I agree that this is all that a certification should be worth as they exist now, but I think that a certification *should* mean more. There are two things that make a certification more valid, in my eyes:
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Well, I'll cover some ground already mentioned and say that for someone coming out of high-school or college and in need of a Systems job, either MCSE or RHCE could be just what the doctor ordered. I think I heard $3200 overall for becoming an RHCE (If you get it on your first try, that is). Sure, it's a little steep, but it's probably one of the best investments towards your future you could make.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!