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Novell's Certified Linux Engineer
AEnertia writes "Novell have been quick in moving ahead with their recent aquisition of SuSE. I was browsing their site when I found this page describing their new certification (CLE) under their certifications programs. Looks like they are positioning their well respected certification program for their newest asset."
BTW, its pretty lame dissing on MCSE's- the paper ones generally get exposed in the real world, and since there are lots of us out there who can fix most NT issues with our eyes closed, I can very much say a real MCSE is an asset to any company. Its not like there arent paper CCNAs, CNAs, etc.
But its easy to make fun of someone else, especially when they can fix things you cant; most *nix people just wave their hands and complain about Microsoft instead of actually *fixing* the Windows servers. Its a poor craftsman who blames his tools.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I went to a real engineering school to learn Computer Engineering (a 4 year EEE + CS program), and every time I see a company create a certification program that takes less than a month to become an "engineer", well... it makes me cringe. I know in other parts of the world that it's not legal to abuse terminology like that, and wish the US would adopt some similar standards. This dilutes the prestige associated with earning an actual engineering degree (really, there is some!).
I know the difference between a real engineer and a fake one, but I'm not so sure the average guy on the street understands the distinction. I also suspect people in hiring positions give a lot more weight to a certification that pretends to be an engineering degree than they really should.
Oh great. Another reason for non-engineers to call themselves engineers.
Since the only *real* purpose of a cert is to give companies "good vibes" about you or get your foot in the door, who cares what the real training is? A person has good troubleshooting & admin skills, or they don't. Other than that, if your cert is printed on absorbent paper you could wipe your ass with it. I've worked with too many people who had more certs than Seymour Cray who were dumber & more useless than a bag of rocks. Anyway, if Novell/SuSE takes off, having this cert could open door for you, and it's then served its only purpose.
The Novell page doesnt seem to reference how long the cert is good for - even in the faq..
Anyone know?
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Novell mentioned it was comming in '02 and announced it at Brain Share '03.
The only reason to have a certification is to be able to prove to someone who doesn't have a clue about computers that you might know what you're doing, ie: it's something to flash the HR lepton who has concocted a bunch of hiring "qualifications" that they themselves don't understand. I've held an MCSE for nearly 5 years now and I still have yet to be asked to produce it. I'm just glad somebody else paid for it. A certification is no replacement for the problem solving skills that only experience can teach you, but try telling that to some HR drone. That's one of the reasons I decided to go the self-employed route. For some weird reason, it's a hell of a lot easier to bid a support contract for a company than it is to get hired by them, even though you may be doing the exact same thing for more money!
You're using her as bait, Master!
The CLE program was well underway long before SuSE was acquired, the certification is to test candidates knowledge of running Novell services for linux (which is now in beta testing, and we here are a beta site). As you probably know by Netware 7.0 Novell has the intention to offer all services on either the netware kernel or linux kernel. That is what this certification is about, not SuSE, please get the facts straight.
Sort of like a physician is "just" someone who passed some exams and pays dues to the AMA every year?
I suggest that any good technically competent person is lazy, and someone I'd rather hire. Put yourself in a supervisory role for a moment. Who would you rather hire:
The second person, disliking the "fireman" syndrome so common in support departments, would have to be defined as lazy in that he/she is disinclined to work putting out fires. One can argue that the time spent in preventing the fires in the first place disqualifies the person from being called lazy. It's a shame that upper management tends to look at hard numbers, and it is much more difficult to provide a number for prevented problems, than it is to provide a number for solved problems. Upper management sees that person A solved 30 problems, person B ( the lazy one ) solved 10 problems in the same time period. However, management often does not quantify the extra work person B did to prevent those 20 problems, they just give person A great praise, and quietly replace person B for "underperforming".
Suffice it to say, I'd rather hire the lazy ones.
I'd want in my contract an exit method where if they canned me for any reason other than a breach of law that I wouldn't pay a dime. Of course that might make them disinclined to hire me, but the fact is that they can train you and then fire you if they so desire. It makes sense to require you to work there for a while, but if they can shitcan you, then it's a losing proposition.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Simply walk up to your boss and have the following conversation:
You: "I was talking to a customer and he was wondering if we have any certification to prove that we are as good as we claim to be."
Boss: "Does anyone at our company have certification?"
You: "Employee X has Cisco, and Employee Y has MSCE, but the rest of us are all uncertified."
Boss: "Hmmmm, that should be good enough."
You: "You know, a few weeks back I read about LPI certification, and a lot of our customers are showing intrest in linux as of late. I checked out the example exams and they're not that difficult. It might be handy to have that in our company as well."
Boss: "Let me think about it."
Then stay on his good side, and make regular inquiries about the certification. If all goes well, you should be able to enroll for the exam in about a week or 2.
This gives you two advantages:
" An instructor in an SQL Server class related the tale about a forklift operator who got laid off. He kept seeing job ads for "MCDBA" and asked around to find out what that meant. He didn't have the cash to actually take the courses but he bought the books and passed the exam (through luck, I guess) on the 14th attempt. He landed a job making $160K per year and kept it for six months before they realized he didn't know beans. He ended up $80K richer, though."
That's one of the things I like about OSS. You don't have to "fake it". You can go get your books and "real software", with "eBay hardware", and practice to your hearts content. Want to learn Java? No problem. Want to learn EJB? No problem. Build your own CISCO network. So is there any material out there for the person who wants to take that route to certification? Or to a career for that matter?
I hope those certs dont just become anoter set of certs you can have after 3 weeks of exam crams. They should be able to seperate the boys from the men the way CCIE does.
I think we desperately need tough Linux certs to aim for, certs which will in time be respected enough to be of greater weight than the college degrees. Right now theres no standard way for a company to look for a highly skilled linux technician who can be creative, knowledgeable and original in solving problems. They just go for students from the best universities who have taken lots of java pascal and ada courses.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky