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Are IT Certifications Meaningless?
superflippy writes "In his article Hiding Behind Certification, MIT's Michael Schrage argues that CIOs who rely too heavily on certifications as a measure of an employee or sub-contractor's abilities are wasting their companies' money."
I just graduated from a smallish high school earlier this month, and our technology program consisted of one class: ROP Computer Systems Management.
Over three years, I had about six different teachers, due to budget problems (in California). The one we had the longest started us on track for an MCSE. Just about everybody in the class got their MCP in Windows 2000 that year, and when I realized how inept a lot of my fellow classmates were, I lost faith in (at least Microsoft's) certifications.
"I can't get my e-mail."
"Why not?"
"The screen's messed up."
"How is the screen messed up?"
"It just went blank."
"Have you tried downloading another graphics driver?"
"How do you do that?"
That's a "Microsoft Certified Professional" talking. Pathetic.
If I interview a candidate for an IT position that has relied heavily on certification, and uses his or her certification repertoir as the one main reason I should hire them, I immediately get suspicioius.
That only tells me that that person needs to go through the traditional courses to learn new things and chances are he/she won't be an ingenious innovator who can improvise good solutions to non standard problems.
So far I've been right.
Every time I've decided to hire a certification trained person (regardless of college degrees) I've ended up with people unable to think outside the box.
I don't want to generalize here, but I've seen the pattern.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Some certifications require meaningful knowledge and the ability to prove it in book and lab tests. For example the CCIE certification from Cisco has some pretty tough testing.
I considered going for CCIE in the past, but at that time it was a single test that covered a huge amount of ground. I would have had to learn about DECNet, SNA, Appletalk, IPX, and others. But, it was clear at that time ('95-96) that TCP/IP was the future. So, I didn't do it. I think they now have several CCIE tests, each for different areas of specialization.
But, most of the other certifications I have seen are meaningless. My previous employer tried to send me through various certification classes. They were mind numbingly boring, and I chose not to do them.
In that job, that was no problem, because I had already proven my knowledge. But, I have seen quite a few job listings where they list those silly certifications as desirable. So, you have to rely on the interviewer to be bright enough to assess your knowledge rather than relying on the certifications.
My advice would be to go through the drudgery of the certifications if your employer is willing to pay for it. I wouldn't make it a big part of my resume or anything, but if they ask for it, you will have it.
OT: Einstein had great grades, he did manage to fail a French class once. The bad grade rumor was started by the fact that he was getting 6s and suddenly started getting 1s (might have been 6s to 1s I forget). The school system part way through Einstein's education flipped it. This is what lead to the confusion, looking at his early grades is misleading.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Do you think that someone is going to go all the way to the CCIE level, without already having a job in the field? For one, the cost alone is going to turn everyone away except those who really need it. The MCSE and CCIE are two completely different beasts that you can not compare, and the reasons for getting them are different. If however you want to talk about the CCNA to the MCP, or possibly even MCSE to CCNP then you might have a better comparison, but even then your getting them for different reasons. You can get basic Cisco certs just as easy as the MCP without having any real experience in networking, but since its the MS certs that are looked upon by most as the one to get your foot in the door, most people go for that as their first, by the time they're looking at others, they either hate their job and won't waste the money, or they've had some experience and have learned from it.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I got a job as a 'Computer Operator' at a small community bank. During that time, I did all kinds of stuff. This includes, but isn't limited to, setting up an entire Ethernet network (they were beginning migration from some sort of serial/token ring thing when I joined), along with working in operations, printing statements/checks, doing wire transfers, mopping floors, couriering, etc.
I applied for a Network Administrator position at a very large credit union. I have no certifications, only years of experience (of course long before small community bank I was messing with DOS/Win/Linux/etc).
Long story short: I got the job against 150 applicants. Why?
Why did I beat out so many of the finalists, most of whom did have certifications?
Well, the answer's obvious, isn't it? Experience beats a piece of paper every day of the week.
I'm not saying that certs are worthless, but experience weighs more on the decision, and is taken into consideration a bit more, than certs.
I feel very fortunate to have the job I do. I suffered for four and a half years as the bank lackey, and it paid off.
In one aspect, we can all thank Microsoft for this one with their MCSE mills which turned out a bunch of talentless mouse jockeys. Mind you, not ALL are talentless...but a lot I knew from the boom were.
I have a cheap, 5 dollar low end SCSI card here that proves your point.
I have a friend who spent 2 years at Computer Education Institute. or CEI for short. After graduation, she decided to build a server to put her knowledge to use. After going to the 2nd hand parts store(Gotta love Computer Renaissance(sp?)!), she came back with a mobo, RAM , videocard, low end scsi card and a few IDE drives. I mention to her, "What's with the SCSI card?" "That's an ATA controller." "No, too many pins. 10 to be exact. Plus there's the SCSI logo printed on the board. Plus the phrase, "SCSI Active Termination" is also printed on the board." "Oh. Oops." I then asked, "Wait, server? What's with the video card?" Her and her roomate gave me a blank stare before asking, "How else are you going to get video?" I reply with, "Telnet?" "What's that?"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Not always - I hire people who can do the job. I avoid certification like the plague (for the reasons mentioned above) and I recently have started being very wary about recent university graduates (in the uk) because they now seem trained to get jobs rather than do them.
I am about to be part of the procurement of a big outsourced project - and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will go to a company that has the (demonstrable) skills and not those with the best sales guys/credentials/BS
...certs are likely to be a liability. When we interview a candidate, the things we look at are practical experience, apparent knowledge, attitude and the most important factor; passion. If the person has his own network at home, or maintains her own website with custom code, or got fed up with a commercial app and wrote their own replacement, then they are likely to get hired. Nine times out of ten, those folks don't have any certs.
Based on most of our interviews (not all), we've seen that the people with certs are probably the worst candidates. They are usually arrogant pricks who think they should run the department, or they are clueless dorks who can't find the on switch. One of our tests that we give a candidate is presenting them with a PC that has it's cover off. We ask the person to identify as many components as possible. Without fail, most (again, not all) of the people with certs do miserably on this part of the interview. They can't tell you what kinds of slots are on the motherboard, or what kind of ports are on the back of the system. They can't tell you what expansion cards (if any) are in the system, or even identify the CPU. Some of them even make the egregious mistake of calling the box itself a CPU. But the people without certs usually have a pretty good idea of what a PC is made of.
Where passion is concerned, we usually ask our candidates to tell us about their pet projects at home. It's rare, but occasionally we'll find someone who is just as into computers as we (managment) are. This one guy had fourteen servers at home, including one Sun SPARC box and a DEC Alpha box. When asked to name file systems for OSes, not only did he mention Unix file systems before Windows file systems, but he actually knew VMS' file system as well. Now THAT'S passion.
Attitude will get you far, if it's right for the job you're applying for. We look for people who know computers well, but are confident enough to keep quiet about it. Hotdogging will get you nowhere, except maybe a pink slip. Claiming that you know more than you do will make you look foolish. Keeping your nose to the grindstone will get you advancement. And IF you decide to go get a certification of some kind, we'll applaude that, but don't expect to be treated any differently. Arrogance is always an unpleasant trait and is the number one reason we DON'T hire, certification or not.
We had some idiot with a ton of Microsoft certifications come in. To begin with, he completely failed the PC test. He couldn't tell if the system had ISA or PCI slots. He only knew NTFS and FAT as file systems. He still had the attitude that he could "whip this place into shape" even after flunking the PC test! He only had certs and no practical experience. This is your typical candidate with certs, especially MS certs. Needless to say, he didn't get the job. I imagine he probably conned someone else into hiring him. More than likely for some "suit" position that pretends to be a technical position.
Which leads me to one of my last points: Where I work, EVERYONE (managment included) has to be able to operate our systems. This goes all the way from our department head to the lowest grunt on the totem pole. This includes, not just Windows servers, but OpenVMS servers, Cisco network devices, Sun servers, Tru64 servers, HP-UX servers and Linux servers. No one is exempt from crawling under a desk to troubleshoot a PC problem. We maintain a network of thousands of people, millions of users and millions of items to track in inventory with only three main admins and six technicians and we do it pretty well.
I'm not saying that certs are bad, per se. But if you are going out to interview, put them on the resume, but downplay their significance and emphasize the knowledge you acquired outside of your cert studies. If you didn't learn anything outside of cert classes or books and you don't play with this stuff in your spare time, consider looking in a different field. If your primary goal is to make lots
Un-news
Many people cost themselves jobs and opportunities by the decisions they make. I'm another hiring manager. I look for chinks in the armor. If there's something that makes you look weak or have impaired judgement (like satanist and dancing shemale), then sorry, you're out.
Degrees show that you have enough drive and character to get through something. You can stick it out. They aren't perfect training vehicles that match every situation, but they show you can overcome challenges. Certs to agree show a little of the same. The hope is that with a cert you have some well rounded knowledge in something.
You might look for another job. You're worth what you're willing to settle for. That's the great thing about the US for those who want to move up. I remember when I first broke the 6 figure salary barrier many years ago. I was making far less than that. I made the phone call through a guy I had previously worked with who told my client I walked on water and set up the situation. My salary went up 50k with one phone call. Since then I've had bonuses of that amount.
The thing you have to realize is that unless you are truly excellent or bleeding edge, you are in competition with $14/hr from India. The money comes from differentiating yourself. Better money comes from not just being a programmer or whatever but being closer to the business and offering greater value by being some sort of analyst or manager that can get techies to do things that will make a difference for the business by translating biz speak to geek speak. You want to be positioned to be more than just a grunt. That's how to make money.
Good luck
Hmm.. I will be. After all this time I thought MCSE stood for Must consult someone experienced
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As an ex-instructor at CEI, its all about leading a horse to water.
First of all, 2 years at CEI is a long time which means she was screwin something up to drag it out that long.
Second, I taught on average 20-30 students per class. Of that 10% were hard core into what they were doing, had the natural talent, and will probably succeed in IT. The next 20% had the natural talent, but didn't study hard and they might do well. The next 40% studied hard but didn't have the natural talent, they might suceed but it will be a hard road for them. The last 30% were waste, they were had no talent and didn't care about the courses.
If anything CEI is better than most comp. schools in that the classes are longer (18 class days per class) and not too focused on certs(though you will get encouraged to take some).
Now for the main benefit for alot of certs is that vendors(Cisco, MS, etc.) will give the company kickbacks and benefits.
Well, I guess that depends. When you download a new program, do you -- before anything else -- pull up the source code and check to be sure that that all tree operations were written using the most efficient algorithm?
Or do start the program and see if it, you know, has all the features implemented, looks good, and does what you need it to do?
I'm guessing the latter. Which means that you don't give a shit about "good programming," as preached by computer scientists. You only care about good programs. Computer scientists don't make programs; they make textbooks and write papers about algorithms and design and clever new ways of accessing hardware. PROGRAMMERS make programs, and good programming has as much to do with computer science as good masonry has to do with civil engineering. One influences the other, but proficiency in one is not required for the other.
I would define a good programmer not as one who uses the most efficient algorithm and knows intuitively every way he will manipulate a certain piece of data, but as one who makes the most efficient use of time to create the most full featured program. If I could sit down and take as much time as I please to write a dumb utility method, I would. But generally speaking, I have a half hour. So I use the "best practices under twenty minutes" method of coding. I take the a bunch of somewhat efficient, memory wasting generic data structures I'm used to and pick the one that's closest to what I want to do. When that becomes ungainly, I swap it out.
And I guess that's why you say I am not a very good programmer. I guess to impress the slashdot crowd, I should say "fuck the schedule" and code a tiny jewel of a utility, the kind of thing that will execute without a single wasted cycle, rock solid, outlasting even the human race. But instead, I aim to get as much as I can done before the customer, you know, asks for their money back. Shitty programming: it's my religion, and it pays good too.
Hey freaks: now you're ju