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What's the Point of IT Certifications?
erica_ann asks: "Fact: You can have the knowledge without having to pay to be Certified when it
comes to computers. Another fact: Just because you have the certification does not mean you actually
know the material as well as someone who is not certified. You might just be good at taking tests.
So what is the point of getting IT Certifications? To have a piece of paper?"
"I have had this conversation with many friends and co workers. One thing I like
out of all the conversations is getting more than just one point of view. I know
my standpoint on it. I
rambled on it for quite a while. But, what I would like to ask of everyone on Slashdot, is what is your opinion? Do you have certifications? Was it worth getting certified? How do employers, employees and management feel about them? Do you pay for them? Does the company pay for them? Is it worth being certified if you do not get a pay raise for it? What certifications bring more
than others? Are specialized more employable than general certifications?
I think many people would benefit from hearing more than one side of the controversy. Maybe it will encourage more employers to reward for certifications. Maybe it will help the next person attain the career he or she wants. Is there such thing as being TOO certified for a job?
Or is the whole idea of getting alphabet soup behind your name just certifiably insane?"
I think many people would benefit from hearing more than one side of the controversy. Maybe it will encourage more employers to reward for certifications. Maybe it will help the next person attain the career he or she wants. Is there such thing as being TOO certified for a job?
Or is the whole idea of getting alphabet soup behind your name just certifiably insane?"
To get past the HR Trolls!
The only way to pass them is to point shiny Certifications into their beedy little eyes!
This
Most IT managers are dimwitted when it comes to qualifications. Keep in mind that HR recruiters, who are usually even more retarded than IT managers, screen resumes before the IT manager sees them. Certs are a good way to back up what your resume says and get yourself into the 'to be interviewed' pile.
I just left a site where the guy with the most certs was probably the worst technical person in a team of ~10. I wouldnt trust him to swap tapes in the library, nevermind have root...
I agree about the last statement. As part of a class I was taking in high school, we took the A+ certification, and CompTIA (the company behind it) screwed up my name, and treated me like NStar (an abysmal power company) does when I tried to fix it: poorly written demands for additional verification that I couldn't provide ("please fax a copy of your driver's license" but I had neither a driver's license nor a fax machine) and not even sending me the certification with the right name on it (that would cost me another $15, so I didn't bother).
Now, for a high school student, I think that the certification makes sense, because most people will just disregard any teenager as uneducated and inexperienced. The inexperience is, of course, still an issue, but with a certification, a teenager can prove that he's actually got the know-how to do the job, and there's a lot less of a risk in hiring him.
Good certifications require more than simply passing a multiple-choice test. For example, Cisco CCIEs must pass timed lab tests requiring specific goals be accomplished.
Good certifications also require continuing education to stay certified. Other certifications, security ones in particular, require someone (already certified) to sponsor you.
Unfortunately, there are very few *good* certifications.
Getting a degree might not mean you know anything, but it can demonstrate that you're dedicated and dependable, which are important qualifications in the work place. A certification is typically a lot easier to get, so they don't hold the same weight, but that makes them a good way of showing potential employers that you're staying current with changing technologies.
Obviously there are other methods of demonstrating your worth to a potential employer, certs are just part of the 'ol resume toolkit.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
The people who usually bitch about certifications are the ones who have met a person who is an MSCE and is an idiot. They think: "this guy doesn't even know X, how can he be an MSCE? That MSCE thing is a joke!" Usually people have this attitude because they have no idea what a certain certificationa actually certifies. Really, before you bitch, find out what tests the person had to pass. Chances are you imputing more value to the certification than is deserved! I used to get a lot of crap from a certain subset of "know it alls" when they learned that I am MCDBA certified (Microsoft Certified Database Administrator). They just assumed based on the name that it says I can write a few SQL queries and create a few tables. A really common bitch I heard was "it's not anything I don't know from writing my own CMS with PHP and MYSQL". A very typical, but wrong, view. The certification tells my boss that I have a specific subset of database administration knowledge. The implication is that the non-certified employees "could just learn it if they need it", which is probably true to a degree. The point is, for the specific job, it required performance tuning a huge database running against a clustered SQL Server backend. "Learning on the job" was not acceptable risk for management.
Illegal? I can't tell from your email address if you are outside the US, but it certainly is not illegal in the US.
You can decide to not hire a person for any number of reasons. There are some laws preventing hiring discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, and the like.... but certification is certainly not on that list.
Having said that though, I agree with you that it is foolish to prejudice youself against someone with a certification. I personally would treat them as a non-issue.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
I know a lot of people think certification falls along the same lines as having a college degree. I disagree. Many if not most certificates are easily obtained. I've attended classes where others in the class barely attended but instead used the "trip" to vacation in the locale. Others clearly got through the week of training on sheer stamina but came away none-the-wiser.
I suppose (as I've seen in some of these posts) I could claim I'd done my due diligence by ensuring my candidates/employees were certified and point my fingers at them, or the certification bodies if they turned out to be duds.
A better way I think is the old fashioned way -- an in depth interview along subject lines germaine to the position being considered. Where I worked we used random questions from a set of questions collectively gathered from our team -- these questions were representative of the technology we used, the situations we encountered, and plans for future work. The only time we ended up with an employee of no use to ourselves was when after our screening process our selection was overridden by a PHB who felt he knew better. He didn't.
Let's forget for a a minute that that is illegal.
Illegal? I think not. I don't toss resumes if they have certs, but it is not illegal to judge and reject resumes on their face. If I get a resume that comes across as arogant, I toss it. Is that illegal? No. Hell, I tossed a resume because someone listed their hobby as pinball. It just irated me that they would put that on their resume.
Not the only shining light, I too find my CISSP certification useful.
I am a highly qualified consultant of 15+ years experience. I live and die by recruiters deciding whether or not to pass my resume on to my actual customers.
Before my certification, I had to go into great length about how my semi-directly related experience matched what the job requirements. Now I can say "oh I'm certified in that specifically and have done similar things in the past".
Admittedly it doesn't speak to whether I'm really qualified, but if it gets me past a semi-clueless recruiter to actually speak with the hiring customer/manager, then it was worth but the time and money to get it.
Just be careful that you don't have too many certifications or list any lame/negative ones and it'll help you find work.
For those already employed, it looks great on a performance review and can help the justification for position or pay rate increases.
Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
It's long been regarded as good practice, at least among employers I've encountered here in the UK, to have a simple written statement of what the company looks for during a recruitment process, including anything that will be used to automatically disqualify candidates. This is sensible anyway, since it avoids one particular interviewer's prejudices artificially affecting the process. However, it also guarantees that everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet, so if someone is rejected on grounds like this, there's a clear policy to justify it and it can't be turned around into some sort of discrimination case because the unwanted candidate also happened to be black, female, or whatever.
Screw that. If a company can't even apply its own tests of technical merit in the hiring process, and then can't fire someone crap for the same reason, your economy is doomed by your own legal system. I support, with reservations, legislation that prevents discrimination against groups who are clearly the victims of widescale prejudice that should be irrelevant to their ability to do a job. However, that is the absolute limit of how a company's hands should be tied when it comes to staff selection; requiring a company to employ someone they really don't want is unlikely to be good for either party.
(BTW, the "with reservations" above is only because I have personally encountered several cases where this legislation was abused by the supposedly disadvantaged party to force a win-win proposition at an employer's expense, and very few where it was used to seek redress after genuinely inappropriate discrimination. I certainly do not condone inappropriate discrimination where a decision is not justified on other, more objective grounds.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Just what have you been smoking? The folks I've had the misfortune of working with that were certified tended to 1) Want to completely botch customer accounts instead of do what they were certified for 2) Teach what they are certified for 3) Go watch some hoops 4) Land a job closer to family. They also tended to be left behind when the basis of what they were certified in changed the slightest bit.
It depends on which Cisco certification you're talking about. They have quite a few now. See http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/learning_car eer_certifications_and_learning_paths_home.html for details.
Your CCNA is going to be a very basic written test. If you've got a basic knowledge of networking (can you subnet?), you can probably read some documentation and pass without a problem. The CCNP is going to be harder. You've got four exams to pass, each getting pretty detailed in a specific area of routing or switching. You can still pass it through books only, but it's going to really help if you've got experience with the equipment.
The CCIE, on the other hand, is a written exam as well as a lab exam. And the pass rate for successfully completing the lab on your first attempt is pretty low. Most people who pass the lab require two or three attempts. There's fewer than 7000 active CCIEs around the world right now.
As for access to Cisco documentation, just hit http://www.cisco.com/ and look around. They have a lot available for free.
As someone who graduated from high school two years ago, I can tell you that certifications are not everything. Although I have taken two years of Cisco Networking at Carson High School, I did not take the CCNA test at the end.
Because I really wanted to with computers and I wanted to help people, I worked for a non-profit organization that recycles and refurbishes computers for the community. I did not get paid much, but I had a place to live and I was happy. A year later, a local company made a presentation to us (ComputerCorps) and wanted to use us to beta test their products.
After they made their presentation, they saw the utilities I wrote and the projects I've. They offered me a job as a programmer on the spot before even asking me what certifications I have. After six months, I became that company's lead programmer and network administrator. I am also a part-owner of that company.
Although certifications are nice, they do not get you the job. They may get you in the door at some places, but determination and experience are the real factors that get you the job.
-steve
Word.
I did the SCJP and it taught me alot about some nooks and crannies I never used. That may be different from an MCSE or MCSD in some regards. The SCJP has you learn a bunch about garbage collection, some nitty gritty JVM details, etc. Nothing you could not learn on your own. It is also the gateway test to the other Java exams. Some of those actually do indicate if you are a decent developer: the Sun Certified Java Developer exam requires you to develop a business type app NEARLY FROM SCRATCH (no J2EE, etc) and then they review your design as part of that process. That is alot different than just memorizing details.
But for the most part, certifications for a language do not mean you are a good developer, but if you really are good they should be like icing on the cake.
Now if you hate all people who have certifications (and ignore their resumes... like an earlier posts states), I think you might have some personal issues...
Actually, I've found that asking basic questions like that, even of the very skilled, can be very telling.
If a network guy (or, in my case, network security guy) can't tell me the difference between TCP and UDP, this will be a very short interview. (Yes, I have had people fail that question.)
People lie on resumes, and really "obvious" questions are a good first-level filter for the liers.
5. The shop is a partner of a vendor who requires a certain amount of certified people. Cisco Gold Partner, for example.
This seems like a similar idea to HAM Radio examinations. You pay a very teeny testing fee of a couple bucks and people who've received a particular level of qualification can host the tests, though a minimum of two people is required IIRC.
What I'm worried about with the current scheme is that I'll spend $7k+/semester on tuition and get my nice BS in computer science and then have to fork out another few k in redundant certifications. There are guys ive worked with that have had to do just that.
I'm all for a HAM Radio Exam style setup with some sort of self-moderated body with partial governmental/other oversight.
But the sorts of people who tend to go for MCSE also tend to be the "piece of paper entitles me" types. The glut of these types is why MCSE is a joke nowadays. But MS made their money off of the test and the "sanctioned" materials they sell.
Once during an interview I was asked "why don't you have any certs?" I responded that, perhaps it was coincidence but most of the programmers I knew with certs weren't any good and most developers who were good didn't bother with certs. The interviewer grinned and responded "oh, it's no coincidence..."
Schnapple
I'm with you that certification is bullshit. It's just something to make HR work easy, because otherwise they'd have to really find out whether someone can do a job, the horror. *gasp* Yes, I am being a bit sarcastic on this one.
However, the "Freak Squad" simply is correct. Simply restoring the standard installation from the disk image on the central server is the only way to go.
1. Most spyware opens back doors. Even if you uninstall the spyware, there can always be other malware on the machine already.
2. Hunting for spyware takes a lot of time if done properly. It takes especially long if you consider point 1 and check every nook and cranny of the system, and you have a high probability of you overlooking something tiny and obscure.
3. Restoring the system image usually is a netboot away. It takes about 5 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of your standard installation.
You cannot do a proper spyware hunt in 5 to 20 minutes and even if you could, there would still be some good chance you are left with a zombied machine. The image, on the other hand, is well known to be clean. So it's quicker and it's safe to restore from the clean image, while hunting stuff down basically is a waste of productive time.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
From Wikipedia.
"Chain of Command", a famous episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Jean-Luc Picard is tortured in a fashion similar to that of Winston Smith. Just as Smith is repeatedly shown a hand with four fingers and tortured until he will agree that he actually sees five, Picard is tortured by a Cardassian sadist and is asked to see five lights when there are only four.
If any of the existing tests exhibit this same bias, then the certs are less than useless. They would, in fact, be harmful by teaching the way things should be instead of the way things are.
my employer can bill a federal/military contact at a higher bill rate if i have certs.
They don't come to the three of you because you have no certs.
You're getting by on reputation. Be careful not to move to another part of the country. You should even be cautious about moving to another part of the company.
It's dangerous to 'climb' within a company purely by reputation, without any documentation at all. I know. I was a 'Software Engineer' without the paperwork for quite awhile. I like what I'm doing now, but it would suck if I had my ego wrapped up in the work I do.
resigned
The most popular definition of the HAM acronym is based on the three scientists who's research led to the discovery of wireless radio.
Hertz, Armstrong and Marconi.
Although, to prove it wrong would most likely require an aging HAM operator which probably predates the the early 1x1 callsign configuration (if they had a callsign at all when they started). That person might still remember how HAM got started. Till one is found, it's HAM, not ham.