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."

Comments

Fake "engineer" certs should not be legal

[Rex Code]

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.

Re:Fake "engineer" certs should not be legal

[BeerMilkshake]

Of course, if IT became a Profession (like engineering, medicine, law, real-estate, accounting,...) then there would be a regulating body with real power to stop people from practicing when they do not have the necessary credentials.

Such a body would also help educational institutions in preparing their curricula and would promote ethical practice.

A Profession of IT would also elevate the standard of practice and protect our careers a little better than the current 'wild west' system.

Re:Fake "engineer" certs should not be legal

[Graelin]

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.

That's funny, I get the same feeling when I hear people claim that their 4 year degree makes them an engineer. Last I checked you need to know the math and also be able to apply it. (It's that last part that university cannot teach.)

Re:Fake "engineer" certs should not be legal

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The problem, IMO, is that people want the word "engineer" to mean all sorts of things it shouldn't. My job title is Software Engineer -- but it shouldn't be; it should be Programmer, or Developer, because IMO what I do isn't engineering at all. (What I really do, when you get right down to it, is applied math.) To me, the crucial distinction is, or ought to be, that an engineer makes actual physical objects, whether those objects are airplanes (AE), buildings (CE), cars (ME), or circuits (EE). The expansion of "engineering" into things that have no physical existence, such as software, goes hand-in-hand with other abuses of the language such as calling widgets on a Web page "technologies." I'll barely buy "network engineer," since a large part of setting up a network is determining its physical layout. But people who maintain networks others have set up aren't engineers; they're mechanics.

Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great. Another reason for non-engineers to call themselves engineers.

Re:Novell had a Linux track years ago

[iggymanz]

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.

Re:Good for them

[muonman]

Its a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

Its an even poorer craftsman who cant tell a good tool from a bad one.

How long does it last?

[iamsure]

The Novell page doesnt seem to reference how long the cert is good for - even in the faq..

Anyone know?

This is not new

[voideng]

Novell mentioned it was comming in '02 and announced it at Brain Share '03.

Certifications are overrated

[Robber Baron]

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!

Re:Certifications are overrated

[gr8fulnded]

I suppose it depends where you work. I could care less about fancy titles myself, but like you said, it gives HR the warm and fuzzies. However, dollars give me the warm an fuzzies and for whatever reason, the gov't loves to pay for certs (I'm a gov't contractor).

Yeah, I'm solaris 8 certed. Woopdeefuckingdoo. I was bored and the testing center was there. For $300 out of my pocket (reimbursed by my company), I can make an extra 5k a year. You do the math.

Re:Good for them

[brsmith4]

I think most *nix people, like myself, are turned off to MS not simply because their servers are less stable or more bug prone, god knows that *nix admins have to run patches a lot too. I think my biggest gripe has to be the cumbersome nature of admining a box with a UI that was really designed for a user-friendly home machine. Compared to linux or solaris, where I can admin a hundred boxes by typing in one command (of course, after I set everything up to do that), its a bitch to admin multiple windows machines. On linux desktops, if i want to set up printers, i simply copy over the cups config files to the new machine. 1 second, done. Windows, you must go through a myriad of printer configuration screens, esp. if your printer is on an lpd server. I could ghost a windows image and burn it in to each machine, preserving settings, but that is as well, time consuming. I could copy out the registry settings and reimport them at install, but its still easier to scp/rcp files and be done with it. Now a good MCSE is a master at his/her craft and I admire his/her patience (hehe) and his/her ability to navigate and troubleshoot a poorly documented and closed source system. However, I do agree with the parent/parent/parent/.. that the MCSE test is quite lacking. Real-world scenarios in a lab and not on a A-B-C-D answer sheet would make the MCSE test more worthy of the money that you put into it.

Re:Good for them

[tzanger]

Its also quite easy for people to make fun of things they dont understand; I love how people always say MS stuff is simplistic, until they need to fix it. Then they just say its poorly designed. Maybe if they spent time trying to understand how the OS or application does things, instead of complaining about it, they could fix it.

Actually that's not my problem with Windows. My problem is that it's too complex, too convoluted, and simply lacks the tools to properly diagnose and repair. Sure you can buy third party tools to make up for some of these deficiencies but I'd rather use Linux. The configuration for pretty much everything is plain text and documented freely instead of hidden behind a single-point-of-failure binary registry and anonymous GID identifiers. The system internals are all public and I can access any part of it I need without gagging NDAs and/or paying for the privilege and finally -- I am not tied to one megacorp with a penchant for monopolistic practises and stifling innovation. I have enough problems with running a business that I don't need to compound the issue by welcoming the vampire into my house.

Basically my beef with Windows and my desire to use Linux stems from the simple fact that when something does go wrong, I can fix it far easier and without paying for the privilege. And in those cases when Microsoft is either unwilling or unable to fix something, I can always hire a programmer to fix it for me.

I'm proud to be lazy!

[WolfVenge]

The adjective lazy means, according to Merriam-Webster Online: disinclined to activity or exertion

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:

1. the person who enjoys running from fire to fire and is demonstrably active at all times
2. The person who works diligently to prevent those fires from occurring in the first place.

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.