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To Recertify, or Not Recertify?
"The real fun and excitement was in the engineering department, and I was told the sure way in was to get my CCNA. Well I got my Sybex book, and with the help of our small lab (two Cisco routers and a catalyst switch) I received my CCNA with a [score over 90].
Thrilled as I was, the engineering department was taking some hits, and I couldn't get in. Instead of remaining stagnant I took it on myself to get my CCDA, which I got a month later. Engineering department still going down, me still wanting to rise, I looked for something else. At about this time my company was trying to get a contract working with Nortel routers and switches. 'This is my chance!', I proclaimed.
One and a half months later I was a NNCSS (Nortel Networks Certified Support Specialist), but then contract fell through. The engineering department was taking BIG hits (as was the rest of the networking industry), but I was determined. We only had one CCNP in the company, and my goal was set. With the help of the lab, and some determination, after three months I became a CCNP and CCDP.
Did I get in the engineering department?
Nope.
Did I give up?
Nope.
I got my CCIE study guide, and was all ready to rent time at a major Cisco lab at The University of Colorado, in Boulder (I am not even sure that they have this lab anymore). A month later there were two people left in the engineering department, and then was laid off.
After six months of unemployment checks and sending resumes, I gave up and decided to go back to school and do some independent consulting for some small businesses in the Denver metro area. Now, I am again looking for a full time job, and I am dealing with the same problems that I dealt with, two years ago.
I am happy to admit that all my hands on Cisco experience have not been in a production environment. I understand that the difference between the lab and the real stuff is huge. But the certs didn't, and still don't even get my foot in the door. My resume has been critiqued by many people, and is in tip-top shape. I do have experience on Gateways (Nomadix) and many switches (SMC) and have worked on some MDU engineering projects.
Any suggestions?"
One C/S degree > many certifications, and probably cheaper over the lifetime.
This is my sig.
Other than that, no jobs means no jobs - I know quite a few people that having lost their job started builg up their accreditation portfolio to no avail. But the silverlining is that when the job market tunrs around (and it has not yet AFAIC), those with more credentials will be much better off.
Remember that expenses for education to get yourself re-employed (books, classes, certification testing, etc.) are all tax deductible.
Recently I was unemployed (given I already have a 4-yr degree and 10+ years of experience) and decided to re-up my MCSE. I spent $7000 and 2-weeks to go to one of the many MCSE bootcamps (http://www.intenseschool.com). I got a job immediately following signing up for the class and the company paid me while in class.
The kicker here is we recently went to the family CPA and he said all $7000 was tax deductible plus all the materials needed to complete any certification.
Just my $.02. Good Luck
They speak english. Yes you will see.
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I have to view certifications as neutral. While reviewing thousands of resumes in the course of screening hundreds of candidates for clients over the past three (lean) years, one trend is clear: employers are hiring for work history, not certifications. I even had one manager tell me not to bother sending him anyone with more certificates than years of experience.
People who have the work experience might better take the time they would have spent cramming for certs, and spend it in developing a really door-opening resume, full of accomplishments, as opposed to just job descriptions.
The question a hiring manager tries to answer in the first 20 seconds of viewing a resume is, "what can this person do for me," not "what were this person's job descriptions."
This is bull-shit, please point to some references. All you need to work in India, is a letter of invitation from a company and a work visa. Sure you can't come in on a tourist visa and work. But it is much easier to get a work visa in India than in the USA.
s a- guide.asp for guidelines.
http://www.indianslivingabroad.com/resources/vi
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Exchange rates move a little each time that $8k salary is paid, as well as everytime you buy a Nokia phone, or other foreign made product. In the US we have (for the past 30 or 40 years) bought significantly more than we exported, but that is only half the story, a big part of our imports are oil related. What has kept things in balance (and even driven the dollar up) is that foreigners have generally wanted to invest in our financial products (equities, Treasury and Corporate debt, physical plants) this is what economists call the capital account, and has run a surplus (roughly balancing with the current accout deficit) until very recently after the bubble popped that cut some investment, but over the past year or so, money has been moving to europe because interest rates were significantly higher. The exception to this is Asian exporting countries that wish to prolong their export growth, who have been buying financial products here (mostly Treasury debt) if they stop, the dollar will fall significantly (bringing those $25k salaries a whole lot closer to the $8k salary (in dollar terms).
Business follows things in trends, and just like railroads, the internet, Japan, and many other huge changes, there will be significant production developed there, but right now it is a bubble and it will pop eventually. The good news is that this will significantly reduce the excitemet assocated with India, the bad news is that something like 90% of the investmet in a bubble change occurs after it pops (just at a much slower rate).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
But I won't be putting this cert on my resume (I don't intend to stay here any longer than I have to), for the same reason I don't mention that I was vice president of the senior class in high school: it wouldn't impress the kinds of people I want to work for, and it would distract from my actual qualifications.
hrm. I was the guy in my tech department who ended up managing everybody. I had no college degree. I also made less money than the people who had college degrees. They were laid off first because they made too much money.
I eventually got laid off too, because I also made too much money. I went on some interviews for management jobs, and the lack of a college degree was never discussed. What was important was my work experience. Since I had relatively little real life management work experience in this market, I couldn't compete.
I did find a job recently - a friend was hiring so he brought me on board. I've been employed at 4 different companies in my career - all of my jobs were obtained through connections. Friends and co-workers. Again, my lack of degree was never an issue.
Most of the interviews I got while I was unemployed were through friends as well, folks who knew certain HR departments were hiring.
In conclusion, a degree is great when you're starting out - it shows that you are able to stick with something over a 3-4 year period and are less likely to flake out or walk out on the company. One of my recruiters was unable to send me on interviews for certain large companies because they required that candidates had college degrees - no exceptions. So a degree certainly has some value. My life would have been easier if I had one.
However, I still think connections/networking are far more important than a degree in the long run. But if you can't get the connections without getting the degree in the first place...
Please don't spread FUD.
Employment Visas are granted to those with an employment letter from an Indian company.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sorry you took offense, but this question has been troubling me for some weeks now, and I didn't get many responses to the original post, so I felt it needed a little more exposure. Now I can look over all these responses and make a more educated decision. Thanks Slashdot surfers! :)
I have never had a cert in my life. I've been gainfully employed as a systems administrator by organizations ranging from 10 people to 130,000 people for 6 years straight and have never been asked why i don't have a certification. I have, however, been told by a few supervisors that certifications mean nothing to them whatsoever. It's all about real life experience. The CS degree will likely help you only if you plan on moving up the ladder to management in a larger company. Certs... blah. Waste of money. Maybe i will get one one day. I still have to use my GI bill for something... might as well not let it go to waste and use it for something that may change the mind of someone who does not share the same views as myself.
I call bullshit.
1. The breakdown voltage of air is 30kV/cm (If I remember right - the actual number is not so important here). So if you can "see the shock", then it's not only a question of voltage, but also of distance.
2. Second, as you go to higher speeds, you have to deal with higher voltages in the circuit anyway. The voltage across an inductor is L*di/dt. So if your current is switching faster and faster, you get a bigger voltage spike you have to deal with (at least in motor control, the problem is the voltage across the FETs, which is generally swallowed by diodes which can handle kilovolts easily before they breakdown).
3. For the voltages that static causes to components, it basically has to do with the dielectric strength (see air above), since you're probably not touching any leads themselves, just the case. Since this isn't part of the circuit, I don't see how it makes a difference at all, except in the money you want to spend on a better one.
4. "30 volts of static" doesn't make any sense. I assume you meant "a smaller amount of static charge accumulation than you would think", or something to that effect, but it's indicative that you don't know what you're talking about.
But don't speak for all CS majors; this one is doing just fine.
My work history is similar. I co-op'd in 05/99, graduated in 05/00, and became a *very good* developer since then inside IBM. I had consistent raises, and was making 50% more than my starting salary and kept working hard right on through the DotBomb as my friends exhausted their unemployment; my final salary was equivalent to a ChemE with twice my work experience (I know one, we compared). My layoff was due entirely to a personal beef with my last micro-manager. I had two other managers ready to pick me back up but I decided to accept the generous severance package. I know I could get another (good) job with my skillset, and could probably even last a good 10-15 years.
But.
Let's talk about what grown-up industries do, like mechanical, civil, and chemical engineering. Student chapters exist at all the universities, *big* corporations commit lots of money not only on college recruiting but also internships, luncheons, and raising awareness. At my local school for ChemE, $20 dues in AIChE gets you access to 12 luncheons/year with some really big names. You get your money back on the first meal, actually. Then there are several national design competitions that you can get to for about $100+food (the corporate sponsors cover the hotel, dues, and most of the flight). And inside the school, there's always a strong bond between upperclass students tutoring the freshman/sophmores.
All this is for *undergraduate students* who can still drop out anytime! I've *never* seen that kind of attention devoted to the fields of software design, development, or engineering. Nor have any of my Old Skool IBM friends. Some were around doing real work on the mainframes through the 80's, others have worked with HP and Sun. (No DECers alas.)
To continue though, the grown-up industries have annual salary surveys, work satisfaction reports, employer critiques, and research opportunities galore. Computer Science has ACM (which has been *dead* on most of the campuses I've been to), a big taboo inside the industry for discussing wages, terrible overtime compensation, and hardly any big-dollar *software* research outside the games sub-industry, Los Alamos, and a handful of universities. (Hardware research is still funded, but those are Computer Engineering/Electrical Engineering degrees.)
This is what I mean by grown-up industry. If you lost your job right now, you'd be tossed into a pool of business and communications majors looking for work, and you'd really have no place to start in the well-established job search circles. Your local unemployment office might not even have a job title that matches your skills. Software architect? Software engineer? Network troubleshooter? System administrator? When you apply for a job, your technical skills would have to match *very closely* to it's listed requirements to get an interview. And I do mean CLOSE: like "JSP" instead of "JavaServer Pages" because it's a wildcard filter. And you can ask your friends for help, but between July and December no one is hiring full-time so networking won't get you far.
OTOH, if my brother (who is a ChemE) lost his job, he would have places to go. Employers routinely post their engineering positions to AIChE's site, the unemployment office would know how to place him, and if all else fails he could just apply for those government positions that require a Professional Engineering license. (Note: license, not certification: it takes five years understudy and a battery of tests to get it.)
I don't see Computer Science ever reaching this point. Which is a real shame, because there's plenty for us to do before we have Star Trek-like AI. Instead, companies are abandoning the CS major via outsourcing just at the moment they should be pushing for it to get past adolescence. We could see a university program offer students a rigorous education in creating quality production-ready code ("Software Engineering") in any lan