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Ask Slashdot: Best Certifications To Get?
Hardhead_7 writes "Our recent discussion about how much your degree is worth got me thinking. I've been working in the IT field for several years now, but I don't have anything to my name other than an A+ certificate and vendor specific training (e.g., Dell certified). Now I'm looking to move up in the IT field, and I want some stuff on my resume to demonstrate to future employers that I know what I'm doing, enough that I can get in the door for an interview. So my question to Slashdot is this: What certifications are the most valuable and sought-after? What will impress potential employers and be most likely to help land a decent job for someone who doesn't have a degree, but knows how to troubleshoot and can do a bit of programming if needed?"
Probably depends a lot on where you are.
Around here, certifications mean very little. Employers are generally more concerned about the kind of work you've done at previous jobs. A few good references who will tell people how awesome you are and an impressive list of "my duties included" does you more good than a sheet full of "ABC+ Pro Certified" here.
That said, I've talked to friends elsewhere that have related the exact opposite.
I'd say ask around your local area. No point in getting a plate full of certifications if they mean nothing to the employers in your area.
Experience does. Build something, or contribute to an Open Source project.
The first thing I look for is contributions to open source software projects. But, we do open source related IT services. And it's rare to find.
Get a CCNA if you want to make money. MCSE is a total joke nowadays.
As stated in prior conversations, certifications are meaningless in IT. They don't impress anyone. It is a matter of what you have actually done or not done. Most employers will have you do various things to make sure you know your stuff (those that don't might be impressed by certs, but they are screwed up companies) before they hire you. I wouldn't waste your time or money on them. It is more important to learn your craft and get experience.
My girlfriend is Double D cert' and I just pay her to sit at home.
She doesn't even have a college education, I would be amazed if she even has a GED.
Soon as I find out where she got the DD's I'll let you know.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2000-08-31/
Cert what you know. Whatever you do, get a cert in it. Don't be afraid to get a "vendor specific" cert. After all, CCIE is nothing more than just a vendor specific cert. Since you don't have a degree, having some certs to throw around help people believe in your abilities, even if the cert doesn't do anything other than reflect knowledge and skills you already have.
Learn to love Alaska
I could tell you all kinds of six-figure positions get shot out of something like a CISSP certification, but if you absolutely despise doing work in the Security field, then I must advise against it.
Even in IT, no matter what you choose to do, always remember to look for something that gives you some form of reward or personal satisfaction beyond the monetary factor.
Took me quite a few years to finally realize that personal satisfaction and overall happiness are much more important, not only to balance out work and life, but also to enable me to perform my job to the best of my ability.
Around my (admittedly small-er) shop we don't count certification for anything. If we want a programmer we ask for an example code and talk with the applicant. If we want a web page developer we ask for an example web-page and talk with the applicant. The key begin: "we talk with the applicant". After a dozen years of doing this i can assure you there is *no* correlation between who we hired and whether they were "certified" by any private interest. I'm sure this isn't true for larger companies (YMMV etc), but if i were you, i'd get the foundations from a college degree, develop a "portfolio" on your own, and save your certification money.
Some people look for experience and hands-on expertise and HR people look for words in a search list. I don't think I have ever been hired easily by going through HR filters but begged to work for companies who know what my resume actually means. Techs know other techs. And, frankly, I am equally skeptical of people who go out chasing every certification they can until their resume looks like a NASCAR racer.
Actually, my wide range of experience leads people to ask me the same question(s) asked of people with a multitude of certs: "do you REALLY know all that stuff?" My answer is "I've been doing this a very long time and I don't put anything down there I can't prove. There's still LOTS I don't know, but I doubt there's much I can't pick up in a very short time." And that's the reality of it. Can you do it all? Is it "easy" for you? If it's not easy for you, then specialize and at least get really good in your speciality. But don't just go getting some labels if it's not in your nature to actually be able to do what you claim -- if you're not truly inclined in that area, you're not just disappointing your employer, you're harming the whole of IT out here by lowering everyone's expectations.
Heh... someone above says "degree... seriously... degree!" Really? If you want to get into management, yes... get a degree... a BUSINESS DEGREE. Getting a degree in computer science or programming is... uh... a huge waste of time and money. I have been through some of that and I know what people come out of those mills. They can teach and test a lot of things, but they never seem to be able to insert that "spark" every good programmer has. That spark comes from somewhere else. And if we are talking about a degree in anything else computer and networking related? Take courses in various technologies, not a whole degree. Degrees in IT are useless.
Cisco, Microsoft, and even Red Hat certs are worth getting if you're heading towards sysadmin or networking jobs. I'm looking to get my A+, Network+, CCNA, CCNP, and eventually CCIE, in that order. Probably get a Microsoft cert somewhere along the lines. "If you're in the networking field, and you've got a CCIE, nothing else matters. Your chances of getting the job triple, at least, the second the employer sees that on your resume," is what I've been hearing from every senior network tech I've talked to in the past few years.
Well played, sir. It's been a while since I've been Goatse'd
STCE = Slashdot Troll CErtification. I just passed through 8000 of victims (and that is just on last link I have beeing using for about 2~3 months. I have around 2000 victims on older links).
You receive a #. They can check with the vendors to verify, just like a person can check a general contractors # with the state
It's received through participating in open source project(s). A few things look as good as this; just link to your github or the most notorious bugs you've squashed from your resume and you'll be noticed. Plus you might even make good friends with like minded people and or get a call to work for a company developing a solution on top of your favourite open source project!
On a side note, why would you bother with an A+ or Network+ and just not focus on getting your NA and then the others?
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
SSL -- All others are pointless. They prove nothing.
A Cert in Common Sense will mean more to a good employer than a fancy piece of paper stating you are good at taking a test, of course demonstrating that you have common sense and experience in the field in which they need you will greatly depend on your references, there was a time that an A+ cert would get you in the door to almost anywhere with a good salary, but post .com tech industry there are fewer and fewer certs that aren't already saturated in the job pool, but a lot of those people have little to no real experience. Cisco certs are always good to have, but rightly difficult to obtain the higher tier you are shooting for, IIRC dell has a program where you can get help in getting certs that will help expand your knowledge base as long as they can utilize the skill set you wish to learn.
______ Eagles may fly but monkeys don't get sucked into jet engines.
HR expects a Bachelor's degree even for the office help, admin assistant, secretary, etc. It's the new high school diploma, since high school diplomas have been rendered useless by local control and selfishness. (a town has an incentive to pass every student in the local school system)
His only hope is to avoid HR.
I won't hire anyone who puts things like "certifications" on their resume. I want to know what you REALLY know and what you've REALLY done. If the shop you're thinking of working for is actually looking for certification, you probably don't want to work there. (Or conversely, perhaps you're not the kind of employee our kind of shop is looking for. :) )
When I'm hiring, we often look for developers of the software we use.
Contributors to PostgreSQL, Solr, and Rails are especially welcome.
Perhaps if we used DB2 or SQLServer, developers who worked on those might be of interest. But not too much because even with their knowledge, it'd be pretty hard for them to license the source to make use of their knowledge; and we couldn't code-review their contributions anyway to see if they really know what they're talking about.
The issue with certifications from IT companies is that there are very few standards which regulate them. Essentially, all they mean is that you turned up and probably passed a test. If you have not used this knowledge since then the certificate is as good a useless. If you have that degree from a reputable school then that already speaks to your ability. Now you have to be convincing of the specific skills.
Generalizations are impossible. There are so many areas of IT which require skills that you will never acquire in a classroom that the only way to see if a candidate is worth their salt is an interview. Here we come to your point of actually reaching the interview stage. The US is a country which largely works on a "who you know" basis. Networking is very important here. This differs in other countries. As someone who regularly reviews resumes for candidates I am shocked by the poor quality of the literacy in the resume and also the incorrect use of technical names, abbreviations and acronyms (and people who have no idea what this last word actually means). You can judge a great deal about the candidate from their resume. Do not try to use terms with which you are not 100% familiar. It is incredible the number of resumes from candidates who will incorrectly use terms because they are not proficient and try to over fill the skill section.
Hopefully, if you are looking to move to an organization worth moving to, they will have good staff at the interview. If the position is looking for a particular proficiency and you don't have it then of course you are at a disadvantage. But an employer will consider paying less for someone who is bright, hard working and thinks the right way.
Specific skill sets can be easily acquired in most circumstances. General skills can take a lifetime to acquire.
Have your resume edited by someone else. Please. Then find someone who can deliver it to the right person. This is your best chance of getting an interview.
Hmm. Even I have one of those certs. Doesnt get me as many jobs, though.
Attitude and effort.
If you have both, you can learn anything we need you to know.
If you want me to hire you, then you will be asked to do the following:
1. Demonstrate effort. Any relevant cert will do, a body of completed work will help -- even home projects etc.
2. Demonstrate attitude. Be on time for your interview, be interested and even excited about working for us. Fake this convincingly if you must, but if you do, you'll be expected to fake it continuously for the duration of your probationary period. (not as easy as it sounds).
3. End the recession so I have money to hire you.
Certifications are only important if you want to claim you have knowledge of an area but have absolutely no other way of showing that you know it.
If you do have the experience, you give good examples of what you have done which require that knowledge. Simply listing a certification equates to, "Though I haven't done anything to show it, if I was given that task, there is a CHANCE that I could accomplish it." Obviously if you're coming in with no experience, some indication that you can handle the job is helpful. However, going out of your way to get additional hands-on experience will make the potential employer more comfortable than just saying if you had done so, you would have been successful.
You then havn't been looking at the more prominent certs then. My Solaris 10 System Administrator certification has a website where I can request that Oracle (the certificating body) send verification of my certifications to someone (for jobs/contracts/interviews etc).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
If you're a programmer, programming language certifications mean very little. After all, you're a programmer. IF however, you don't always want to be a programmer and want to find a way to parlay yourself into a more management related position then something like a Project Management certification (PMP) could do quiet well. Other certs that show a certain level of expertise or specialty can be effective too, but only if you're trying to branch out. Getting certified in something like Backtrack for security and penetration testing can go a long way towards making you a more well rounded option.
Likewise, if you've worked your way into programming but don't have a degree, the certifications can go a long way towards adding credibility when resumes are being sifted through.
If you get certifications for something you already do or should very naturally pick up in your normal course of employment though, it's not going to stand out that much. If you've been a java programmer for 10 years and have every java certification under the Sun (see what I did there?) it's not going to be much different on paper than just saying you've been a java programmer for 10 years. You have 10 years of java programming experience and Backtrack or PMP certification though...all of a sudden you stand out a little more.
Similarly, if you have spent most of your career as a Python programmer and then got certified for Perl, Ruby, and PHP...not that big of a deal. You get a major Java or .NET certification though...that's fairly different environment and the certification goes a long way towards validating your ability in that area especially if you haven't previously had a job yet to back it up. It's help to transition from one to another because, unless somebody is desperate to hire "a programmer" if you don't have the job experience with the language you telling them how quickly "you can pick it up" isn't going to do you any good.
Nobody wants to pay you while you learn to do what they hired you to do, only to see you start demanding raises as soon as you get good at it (not that that ever happens...just sayin).
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
It's far more impressive to be the guy that certifies people than the guy who gets a cert.
And that way you can give yourself all the coolest sounding ones.
And if you can convince a few people to buy your cert, it'll not only make you money, but give your certification body even more prestige; because everyone who buys your cert will be hyping it as "really valuable" on /., etc.
Toss the certs & the 'job' out the door, start your own business. Ask me again in 2 years & I'll let you know if it works.
I'll never forget a temp job I got 5 or 6 years ago. I had maybe 6 mos experience and a 2 year CCNA course on my resume (I had not completed CCNA at that point) Got a call from a HR lady who really needed people, like, right now for a temp job in DC. She was reluctant though because she said she wasn't sure that I had enough experience to do the job. (luckily I'm a decent talker, and they really needed people.) The job was to do, and I'm not exagerating, unpack Dell monitors and hook them into the power supply / PC. No checking the computer, new monitor, blue port, move on. I can't complain, the job paid good and it wasn't really hard work. I was one of those "certs are useless" people until that day.
What kind of job do you want?
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
You are filtering out good people.
I put them on my resume. Mainly because it wont hurt and it keeps HR and the headhunters happy. Does that mean I am a jackass that doesn't know anything because I got them, regardless if I owned my own I.T. business as a contractor? That is like saying you do not need a computer science degree to write simple scripting code, therefore every Unix admin who has a CS degree must somehow be incompetent.
Most competent I.T. folks put them on their resume. If they do not then I assume they do not love their job or their previously employer did not give them the tools they needed to succeed. I view it as incompetence. Not because they need that MCSE or CISCO cert but because they agreed that it was not needed and ok to be under certified or the candidate refuses to better themselves.
You can learn a lot with certain certifications that you never know about. Windows 2008 for example has many new features that I had no clue about, explained by a MCSE trainer. It can help if you are already competent.
http://saveie6.com/
What will impress potential employers and be most likely to help land a decent job for someone who doesn't have a degree, but knows how to troubleshoot and can do a bit of programming if needed?"
I remember this place many years ago.. The choice you have now is which direction to go that will make you happy..is it money or is it self fulfillment.. it is not what certs to get my friend..good luck.
...if you are working for consultancy or reseller, which works as a partner. Typically, as the number of certified people a company has, the higher their partner status goes and that means, if nothing else, discounts => employer gets a better margin on the stuff they resell.
I have a CCIE, and if I go to a Cisco shop it pretty much means "hire me, and even if I don't do anything but stare at the wall all day you are still going to get more money out of this deal (provided you sell at least $X worth of hardware annually)". Same thing can be adapted to other high-level certs out there.
However, be careful. I've known some people who take that CCIE to mean that I don't know a damn thing on how to operate Juniper, HP, Enterasys or Siemens networking gear since I'm "specialized" in Cisco and apparently nothing else fits in my head. This goes double for any of the lower certs. So when you are portraying yourself to a potential employer be sure to somehow convey that you have generic knowledge of the subject matter as well.
So can we discount college degrees too? Sure you do not learn real world experience, but you do learn the theory and basics about a profession and it shows dedication to the employer.
MCSE' tests are hard and those who say they are easy never took them. They are adaptive, which means as soon as you make a wrong answer it keeps asking you things related to the last question. I am not saying you can walk right in and work. But, if you passed all the MCSE and CISCO exams you can tell the new employee you need x.y, and z done and they will probably know what you are talking about and can use some tools to do the job. Maybe not perfect, but enough to start an entry level career.
The question is where do you start? YOu need experience somewhere and volunteering at GeekSquad looks pretty embarasing on a resume.
http://saveie6.com/
Warning, parent link is NSFW
What I do is ask for their cert number. Most places (RedHat, IBM, etc.) will have a cert checker on their website to verify the number they hand out.
If the person can't produce the number, or the number is registered in someone else's name, then it is time to get suspicious and nudging that person's resume towards the round file.
Dont bother with certifications. Usually I would have suggested getting comptia A+ Net+ Linux+ sort of certifications. Except Comptia ended the lifetime certifications and now limit it them to 5 years. Which makes it completely worthless to get.
Which pretty much leaves only the elite certifications that like 500 people in the world have kind of thing. CSSIP, CCIE, and a couple others.
Instead experience and know-how is far better. If you are a programmer... program something that's public. If you're a cracker... get a couple 0days. If you are a network admin... go build a bunch of vms for different servers, openldap, postfix, etc etc. Put that stuff on your resume.
I won't hire anyone who puts things like "certifications" on their resume
With arbitrary filtering rules such as that you have a bright future in HR.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
H1-B, cos US grads no engineers, anymore.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Sorry if that's bad news. A degree is the most respected qualification out there. When I was going through uni, I scoffed at the mundane nature of the material they were teaching me. Joked about how I could get better value using it as toilet paper. 10 years later, it hit me like a brick. I was building 3rd normal form databases. Referential Integrity was a term I understood. I could build components with Lazy Evaluation, and I knew why I was doing it.
Getting a degree also tells prospective employers that you're a finisher. You don't just start stuff and bail when it gets scary. You don't give up on a project because parts of it are hard or unpleasant. I know some employers who don't care what degree you've got, as long as you've got one.
If you want an employer's respect, there is no quick and easy way to win it. You have to do the really hard stuff to prove that you can do the really hard stuff.
Good luck.
That is the problem. Most shops have a hiring process that cares more about the pieces of paper, forcing candidates to slap the CCIE, CNE, CCIE, BOFH, BDSM, TL;DR stuff after their names. For a HR rep, they wouldn't even stop to cross check the cert IDs they have. It just means the resume stays on the desk and actually makes it to the tech people.
Here is the Scylla and Charybdis of job hunting: The clued people will see the certs and toss the resume as someone who doesn't have experience other than taking tests. However, to get to the clued people, in most companies, one has to pass the HR droids. They ogle at the alphabet soup of letters, and go "ooo, here is our candidate", passing the resume on, while experienced candidates they look at the resume, go "well, he did run this, this, and this... but he doesn't have any paperwork, so he really hasn't maintained his career. Better off with someone with pieces of paper."
Of course, the best way to bypass that BS is to have contacts, so the hiring process consists of "Well, you got me home after I was passed out in the bushes after that party, so you are hired."
Advertising would go a lot further than a degree. Advertising will bring the jobs to you, and cost less in the process. Finding a job is just plain marketing – nothing more, nothing less.
Correct. goatse has a new home apparently.
Does this
As a developer I mostly focus on MCPD's for whatever area I'm working on. .Net or Sharepoint. I then fill in MCTS's in the gaps for technologies like SQL Server and Biztalk.
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcts.aspx
For system engineers there are specific exams too.
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcitp.aspx
PMP is also a standard cert for management. I think most consultants/programmers should take this to understand the basics of how a project is put together.
http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx
Some companies love certs, some could care less. Your best bet is to get certs that match your skills. For example, if you are a exchange guru, get an exchange cert. It's the best route for two reasons. One, it's easy to get certified w/ products you know. Two, you can actually answer the questions people are going to ask you because you have said cert on your resume. If you are interested in something, like exchange, don't get the cert to "learn about it." and have it on your resume. Even M$ tell you not to do this :D Your supposed to learn about it, get solid w/ it, then get the cert. Anyway, the only truly respected cert I can think of is the CCIE. People who have a CCIE tend to be fairly solid. Obviously this is due to the testing process. As for the rest of them, to many people cheat which destroys the value of it.
That being said back to the companies that love certs. They are typically going for a partner level tier. For example to be a gold level M$ partner you need a certain number of employees w/ X number of certs. In that case if you have a huge boat of certs you will be valuable to the company. Also in some cases, like Citrix, you need to have a certified employee to get support, or other various things, so it maybe an absolute requirement.
Most posts so far insist that certs are useless, well I would only say that you can lie about your professional experience (I have found this while interviewing people) but you can't lie about your certifications.
I really find hard to believe that in a constrained job market people are not find it useful to demonstrate they are keeping up to date with technology .
A lot of the posts above seem to be from programmers, and maybe on that field certain are non existent, but for DBAs, SysAdmins and in some areas of networking, more and more you won't get an interview if you don't have certs.
As for answering the question, it really depends what your field is. Checking jobs sites should make clear which ones are relevant to your personal circumstances.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
if you are in the neighbourhood (vancouver, bc) and want my opinion or a job then send your resume to:
jobs@myamigo.ca
spanish language not required but a definitive asset ;-)
Insane. Most people are you know.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
be an entrepreneur and become the employer everyone panders to with cert, degs and experience. while they work for you - you enjoy all your money.
i've mostly gotten interviews because i've been to a fairly well known uni, got a masters qualificaiton and i've worked in top name companies.. that said, there's other ways in -- if a company cant get the people with the 'normal' qualifications then you can get an interview if you can convince someone in the dept you can do the job.. how to convince ? depends what job you want. build up a portfolio of relevant certifications and experience in that area.. so a degree is ideal, if that's not viable, certifications, open source, maintain a network for a local charity organisation, whatever is relevant is good.. people dont want to hire potential, they want to hire someone who has gotten results close to where their current problem or pain is. So you need to talk the talk and have a number of concrete elements that demonstrate you've done it rather than thought about it
You mean, be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Not to feed the trolls, but:
It is depressing that that is the only qualification for office. And it shows on both sides of the talent pool.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Certs are probably the best signal I have for hiring. A negative signal. The certs are the one of the few things that show up in the resume keyword statistical analysis that show "not a good hire".
But then again, I'm not looking to hire monkeys.
Spent 100 hours writing a new "fart" app, put it on the app store, see 10+ mio downloads, and you can use that to get to an interview.
Get a degree. Or just sell your experience the right way. And believe in your self.
Do not try to be too modest when writing the job application form. I have been sitting through many interviews where all the listed skills where actually areas of interests that the applicant thought sounded interesting, and would like to learn about. It is better the exaggerate a bit than being too modest, as long as it is within safety limits (i.e. you know enough to quickly become proficient).
A degree might help in some areas. But experience beats education for most jobs. Then you can always get something like a CISSP certification, which people has great respect for, but really is a trivial test, testing little knowledge in many areas (Non-IT folks find it hard though)
Some people had already said it, it depends on the area you are in. But if you are in Asia, especially in China, get as many degrees and certificates as possible. A lot of people, including well-known people (such as a former GM of Microsoft China), had posed as expert in certain fields by showing a piece of paper from a degree mill. You would be amazed how people attach so much importance to a piece of paper, regardless of your experiences, and regardless of your previous achievements.
ps: My password on /. has somehow been reset after I came back from a three-week absence (and I swear, I didn't do it), and I can't login with my old ID any more, an ID that I've been using since 1997 :( I never login on /. on any computer except on my Linux laptop, and I keep my password database on a usb key, attached to my keychain, which is on me all the time. Hm...
it's not always HR people being unrealistic, alot of times they are just matching candidates based on criteria they are given. I don't blame the lady, she was given the task of finding candidates with these qualifications and what the job says you do and what you actually do are commonly 2 different things (especially on temp work.) i think alot of times it's just to weed out the potential negative / lazy candidates. let's be honest, if you have xx amount of knowledge in a certain field it's pretty lazy to not get your A+, net+, CCNA, etc. all fields, not just IT have various qualifications.
Reason is I think many tech types misunderstand who and what certifications are for. They aren't for you, or your peers. I don't go showing off my certs, I don't sign my e-mails with them, or that kind of shit. They are for the managers that hire people.
While it is popular, particularly among Linux people, to hate on the MCSE, in my experience many jobs want one, and some require it. Managers like it, that is what it is for.
So that you think it is a joke may not be all that relevant.
Also I fail to see how it would be a joke and a CCNA would not. The CCNA is not a difficult cert to get. Hardest thing I had on the test was that the router simulation they use is Boson NetSim and it doesn't implement all the commands of real IOS (and I should add I still passed easily on the first try).
If you want to get a cert for yourself, just as a guided learning experience, then get whatever interests you. Hell you don't even have to take the test, you can just study the materials and learn it if you like.
However if you are getting a cert for professional advancement or to get a job, the consideration then is what management likes, in particular the management in the area you are interested in. It doesn't matter how much of a "joke" it is. The idea isn't to advance your skills, it is to have something to help your career.
What that is could change over time too. For example I have my A+. I doubt anyone would care anymore, I've been doing IT for about 12 years now and do higher level stuff. However when I got it, in 1999, I was looking to be able to get lower level tech type jobs and it mattered. In particular, going for student computer support jobs on campus, it put me ahead of most students that had no certification. It was worth getting.
These days were I to get something, I would actually probably look at the MCITP, the MCSE replacement, since Windows support is a major part of what I do. I wouldn't get it because I think it would help me be better at my job, I'd get it because it would make managers more likely to hire me for that sort of job.
Agree completely. Certification in ITIL demonstrates not only that you understand technology, but that you understand how technology works to support the goals and processes of the business.
LPI (LPIC1or 2 ) is a good one to have for Linux, for MS - MCTS for server and Win 7, a CCNA is good if you work in a Cisco shop or plan to, but don't get it just to have it. Download VirtualBox or VMWare ESXi so you can practice in a virtual environment, even after you get your certification, you will learn a lot more from problems you solve on your own, than prepping for exams. GNS3 is a good simulator for Cisco routers, not as good as the real thing, but its a start.
Stick with the entry level certs for now and don't waste your time on CompTIA certs.
outside of a degree, i got certifications in HTML, JAVASCRIPT, APACHE and PERL. the first 3 are worthless and noone cares about PERL as everything's done in JAVA now. so i'd say JAVA.
I am genuinely disappointed with the "certifications-don't matter" response from Slashdot crowd. Certifications do help; the certificate itself may not get you the job but the knowledge you gain from preparing for the cert exam will certainly benefit you.
Eight years ago when my got my RHCE, none of my employers knew what RHCE was; but the hands-on knowledge of Linux and networking, which RHCE largely covers helped me in my actual job. Even while working as a Windows sysadmin in a company, the RHCE knowledge of networking and user management helped. With the basic concepts in place, you will realize that different OS platforms, network equipments from different manufacturers etc have just different ways of doing the same thing. I know many good sysadmins who don't possess any certs, but who have the habit of learning new things beyond their job. This is where a certification helps; passing the exam is not important but studying for the exam is.
I would suggest you look for a certification (whether it is IT or programming) that has an in-depth coverage of the subject, rather than industry acceptance.
when i was employing people (some 10>15 years ago), the main criteria was experience, references, and finally a degree. most employers DON'T want to spend time / money training you or updating your theoretical degree learning to real world practicality. a good reference from a reputable employer is worth a great deal more than a 'general' degree - especially so in 'niche' it....
It's the same reason I refuse to hire anyone who graduated highschool; in fact I usually prefer people who misspell half their CV, it shows they haven't wasted their time on useless things like educating themselves and have instead focused on what's important: Experience!
I took this path (from hardware to desktop to network) many years ago and am pretty happy with it -
based on your question it doesn't sound like you're starting from square one but doing hardware work - you take that hardware work and the experience you get with the desktop software and get the Microsoft equivlant or thereabouts - then you can sell yourself to an employer as a guy who knows both, even if you only have minimial experience in the cert category
If you chose to go on to networking you'll have a much easier time with the GNS3 simulator that runs Cisco IOS - but I'd say get certified or entry in the field you want to hop up to next
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
The MS certs have a web interface where you provide what amounts to a username and password; the cert holder can change the password at will, and the username (numeric) is not the certification ID nor obviously related to the person's name. The person's name and all the person's certs (and exams) are available for review.
After doing my fair share of interviewing and being interviewed, I have to agree with this comment. Most IT jobs aren't looking for someone who can recite information back to them, they are looking for people who have basic knowledge of the topics and are able to think on their feet, adapt, actually know how to SEARCH for the information that they don't know off the top of their head.
I tend to hire people who are passionate about their skillset rather than just competent!
http://www.gibby.net.au
What "best" means for certification would depend on your objectives, I suppose.
Here's a nonobvious alternative: get yourself certified as "not mentally competent". This may not be as difficult as you think, although canceling the certification later could be quite a challenge...
If you're certified incompetent in a civilized country, a bureaucrat will be appointed to look after your finances (at no charge to you), ensure you get every bit of welfare you might be entitled to, and defend you at public expense against fraud or serious rip-off attempts. You can still work, if you want, without greatly reducing your welfare entitlement (amazing what a certificate can do). However, you now have a license to kill/maim/etc. without fear of punishment since you are not responsible for your actions. Some places don't even remove passports or driving licenses from such people.
Frighteningly, I knew one such person in Canada. A sociopathic, psychopathic, manic-depressive, evil genius, and unrestrained by the legal impediments which would limit a sane person's actions. Acts of violence repeatedly went unpunished by the criminal system, and attempts for redress were rejected by the civil courts. The legal system was trumped by the certificate of incompetence.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
A certificate or a dozen will get you in the door. You'll need more than that to land the job - but you'll never get to the interview if you don't have the certification that's on their checkoff list. A+ is good, as are the various Microsoft certifications. But don't go spending money on these certifications unless they're ones your target employers are looking for. Once you get past these hurdles, you're going to have to impress the HR people and the manager you'd be working for with your positive attitude, your work ethic, and your willingness to kiss the boss's ass. Here's what else is important: age, your skin color, and your social network. Yes, there are anti-discrimination laws, but in the real world it makes a huge difference. If you're over 50 and non-white, give up now; you'll never find a job. Enen if you're white it's unlikely that any corporation will hire you. And if you can't make contact with the hiring manager, nothing else will matter. Make contacts in the industry you're interested in and use them to find employers that might be interested in you.
When I graduated with my CS PhD several years ago, the first job that I landed was 95K, which is a bit low in today's market.
When this crap hits the front page I know this is an 'industry' site and not where I get news from.
You see it's perfect ! It's AAA+ collateral.
You see : the number of cases brought against people is roughly proportional to the number of lawyers available ...
And the number of lawyers needed is roughly proportional to TWICE that number
You see the beauty ?
So the number of lawyers is a monotonically increasing function. You know, like house prices. Maybe we can "bundle" multiple lawyers into CDO's ? I'm sure there's money to be made there.
Pass the bar, and be assured of employment (real employment, as in a career instead of a job) for the rest of your life.
I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but, here in England, we have far more prospective lawyers (students with their degrees, conversion course where necessary, and vocational courses completed) looking for jobs than there are jobs available.
Even after securing the first job - the training contract - there are more qualified solicitors (I do not know about the situation for barristers) than there are roles available.
I've read a huge number of application forms, covering letters and CVs for friends and relations, for different levels of legal work, and, within that, there have been some great candidates - people who would make great lawyers in practice, in my opinion, but the work just is not there. On one level, of course, it just means that they are not good enough, if the assessment for "good enough" is one of whether they managed to get the job or not, but it does, perhaps, demonstrate that simply having the qualifications is insufficient, and no guarantee of employment.
I count myself very fortunate to have qualified when I did; it might not have been easy to secure a training contract back then, but it was considerably easier than it is today.
what do you think of the mass of people on this comment board saying that ceritifications are worthless?
Once upon a time, universities were for the top 5-10%.
Now, in the UK, university is for about 50% of people, not really determined by entrance qualifications since these have been corrupted by all the exam boards being sold to the publishers.
The UK is full of people with meaningless pieces of paper. Of course you're going to get lots of people who look qualified on paper.
As deblau stated, "What kind of job do you want?"
If you're applying for a Solaris & EMC shop, look no further than your Oracle Solaris certification and EMC backup/storage track. However, the certification only demonstrates that you can attend a testing centre and answer questions based upon specific scenarios or a subset of your knowledge. What you really need is experience (I know, chicken/egg,) a willingness to learn and an employer that's willing to invest in you (and not offshore your job to a heavily certified, but functionally useless graduate in Hyderabad.) YMMV.
Off course a degree is useful on finding a job. After all a degree means education which leads to knowledge. Knowledge that may other employees on the same field and maybe in higher position might not have.
But... yep there is a but here. In my opinion workers, managers and others don’t give a sheet about degrees. A man who runs a business and also has respect for him self should know that degrees DON'T count. They need experience, knowledge and skills that should distinguish you from other employees.
You surely need a degree that will get you some general knowledge about your field of work you are interested in, say a local university. After this get to work. Do something that would guarantee your worker that you know what you are going to do for this job. Guarantee him that you are not going to disappointed him. Degrees don’t do that.
//LIFE WOULD BE EASIER IF I HAD THE SOURCE CODE!
As far as adding value (and therefore commanding a better hourly rate) the "cert du jour" is arguably the PMP (Project Management Professional) from the Project Management Institute.
As the recently popularized joke goes:
Q: What does and engineer call a PMP?
A: Boss.
Of course, YMMV ...
See you space cowboy
It's worse than that. The 'everyone must go to university' mentality from government (starting with the Conservatives, exacerbated by Labour) has meant that a lot of really great vocational institutions became third-rate universities. Now, instead of offering world-class vocational qualifications, they offer worthless academic ones. And I'm not just talking about things like plumbing: one of the best aerospace engineering courses in the world used to be a heavily practical course at a polytechnic, which has since become a 'university' and now produces graduates no better than any other second or third tier university. The curriculum has changed to be more in line with an academic course, and it's lost all of the things that made it good in the first place (at least, according to people I know trying to hire engineers to design aircraft).
There's nothing wrong with 50% of the population going in to higher education, the problem is that a large chunk of them are in make-work degree schemes, where they are taught nothing of any value to them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
information is delivered on a golden spoon and you just have to absorb then regurgitate
Not my experience.
That may apply to the 1st year of some courses, but is not the definition of a B.Sc.
First of all it depends on your interests. It won't make sense to become a Sun Certified Java Programmer if you don't plan to work in the Java field in futur.
Instead of getting certificates I would consider to improve in other areas:
o make a course in negotiation in business talks etc.
o make a course in talking in front of a larger audience to be able to represent yourself better or make an interesting presentation
o learn how to make better job applications: that can include to focus with your relevant skills directly on the job you want (don't add Apache Webserver stuff to an Microsoft job) but add a good resume of your previous work. Emphasize what you did there and summarize the used tools / languages / environments etc.
No one really cares if you have a certificate in XYZ and your resume clearly shows you never worked in that area. And no one cares if you don't have that certificate if your resume shows you worked the last 10 years intensively in that field.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Get experience and a basic degree BS is good enough and can be in anything. Certs only mean you were a sucker and paid the time and money to get the worthless things.
the ONLY jobs that certs mean anything is entry level. You are not looking to "move up" to another entry level position are you?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Last I heard (a couple months ago), that was about the same situation in the mid-west of the U.S. They graduate, and years later don't have a job yet.
And those that do have work may not even be getting paid for it.
No, the average person will use a lawyer when they must, otherwise they try to do what they can first.
Everything you say is true, but I still can't quite work out who stood to benefit from it. Why did Thatcher rename all the polys? Why was NL obsessed with increasing numbers of people in "university" rather than, as you suggest, increasing skilled labour in general?
I see that it is possible to create lots of pointless degrees, pay per head, and make lots of departments happy with high in-take for programmes which comprise little useful work. But that only works after the whole system has been established. Who planned it out in the first place, and why? It is often said that it was one way of massaging unemployment figures through the '80s, like telling men in their 50s who were able to work to sign up for Invalidity Benefit. But there are so many ways of misleading the population on unemployment and it is not like hearing a number on TV is going to change the average person's voting behaviour, so I am not satisfied with that answer.
Put more bluntly: which group stood to gain financially by the decision? I could see an argument that the intention was to create a country which lacks essential skills as an excuse to both shipping entire industries abroad and opening borders, reducing labour costs. Even if you want to keep people in something to stop a Madrid where suddenly everyone sees that there really isn't a need for so many young workers at home, why would you keep them doing something which is so clearly pointless? Why not exportable skills at the very least? Would the UK not benefit from skilled emigrants sending money back home?
There's this nagging conspiracist in my head which says that recent governments have wanted the UK to fail: they're represented by increasingly mediocre individuals who are aware of how tenuous their position is and who feel threatened by their own countrymen. Thatcher was no conservative and Blair no laborista; they may each have made some short-term contributions to the country coincident with ostensible ideals but for the long term they engaged in very similar destructive behaviour.
Of course you're going to get lots of people who look qualified on paper.
I'd see a good degree (and conversion course, where applicable), with relevant subjects, presented on a well-constructed CV as very much the starting point*, rather than a determining factor. But, I agree with you - my point was rather to say that simply getting a law degree is unlikely to guarantee employment over here, and your response emphasises this.
However, the people to whom I was referring had good academics, a range of relevant work experience and came across well on paper - no stupid typos., badly-phrased paragraphs or the like. Of course, a paper-based judgment has its limitations, and, in interview phases, I'd expect to be disappointed with at least a few candidates who looked good on paper, but I was surprised that these individuals were not getting interviews, as, five years ago, I'd have expected them to have received many, based on the same CV.
* Perhaps to contradict myself, someone with a relevant / interesting but less conventional background is likely also to catch my eye. One of my personal bugbears is the lack of lawyers working in the technology / communications space who understand the technological and societal impacts, for example - yet another indication that a degree is, in itself, insufficient.
I work primarily with Linux, with networking being a second field. When I was put in the position of looking for a new job, having an RHCE was a door-opener and is part of why I have the great job I have. Today I still receive emails and phone calls because of that cert, even though I haven't been active on the headhunter sites in a while. As others have mentioned, a CCNA is also valuable. Of course, on the high end, a CCIE opens doors and pocketbooks. But it's much tougher to achieve. What you want to look for is a certification that is tough enough to get that many good people fail. In other words, you want it to be a true proof of your knowledge of that technical area. And yeah, people find all sorts of ways to pass tests without actually knowing the material well, but there are a few certs that are more respected in the IT world than others. And if you're serious about being certified in something, try first for something you're already good at and enjoy. If you're weak in networking, don't spend too much time trying for something like CCNA. On the other hand, if your passion is in networking, get that CCNA and don't stop there.
The Thatcher and New Labour governments both had social mobility as a buzzword. Everyone must be middle class. Having an academic degree was a sign of being a member of the middle class, while vocational qualifications were seen as working class. By making everyone get an academic degree, they helped push the idea that people were moving up in the world under these governments. It doesn't really require malice, just mediocre minds running the country and focussing on short-term personal gain without fully understanding (or caring about) the consequences of their actions.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate silly.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Birth. It makes everything else a lot easier to get once you've been born.
"I've been working in the IT field for several years now..."
OK, stop. No certifications. If you're good, then your experience should be enough. Certifications get you a foot in the industry door, and experience (and skill, and hard work, and competence) get you the other 99% of the way.
That said, there a small number of certifications that carry more weight than the paper their printed on. The CISSP and CCIE have long been considered difficult enough to get that only dedicated and talented professionals carry them. Don't know if that's still the case.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The problem with Certification is that in order to get it you need to Pass a rigorous test, full of knowledge questions. U.S. Education doesn't focus on tests like that so a lot of Americans who take the Certification fail not due to lack of skills but because they are unaccustomed taking tests. Other countries thrive on these tests and the students know how to study for those test and pass them easily. So if your company is open to H-1B you will get a lot more people from other countries with the Certification then without it.
Before you start dissing the U.S. Education System, Ill give an anecdotal true story, while I was in college there was a Chinese student in my Computer Science classes who always messed up the curve on the tests. Being the A in a group of B-s, however when it comes to projects he didn't understand any of the concepts taught to him, Senior year he asked me "What is the command in C to do decimal numbers". At some other point he was asking me why American Students don't read, I tried to explain to him that we prefer to learn by doing vs. just reading, we do read but we read when we find a gap in our knowledge.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I think certs do help and I prefer the big name certs like COMP-TIA because a lot of large corporations participate and sponsor them. If you want to work for a small company, then it probably does not matter as much. With most of a BSMIS complete, a Network+, and some Apple certs, I was able to get hired on with two other folks from my team that had consulted for a large bank for 4 years. I don't know the exact reason, but I was able to negotiate 20k more than my closest co-worker when we were hired. None of us had full degrees and I was the only one with any certs. COMP-TIA recommends A+, Network+, then security+ in that order. I may be back in the job market soon and it's a lot easier to grab a couple certs for things I already know then to deal with finishing my degree via a bunch of bullshit classes that cost a lot more. If you have a degree to finish, a lot of colleges will let you transfer over certs for credits, so you can sometimes do double-duty with certs. My college will give me 6 credit hours for an A+ and then I get to add A+ to my resume right away while I'm chipping away at the degree. I also recommend certs that will stand without having to take update tests- this will save you money and pain in the future. I will also say that although I had done a lot of networking prior to getting my Net+, I learned a lot in the process and it helped me stand out on our team. The info I learned directly applied to the project we we're on and it greatly elevated my status on the team. I was quickly assigned to work directly with our software vendor to design and test enhancements to fix a lot of issues that had been missed originally.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I have been working in and around Silicon Valley for several decades now, and in my experience, certificates are generally considered to be products (i.e. something to create and sell along with the technology being developed), not requirements for employment. On the other hand, if you want to be a technician for a widely used and established technology, they can useful in signalling to potential employers that you are not simply making up whatever experience you claim to have, which is apparently a big problem these days.
Look at it this way; there is no certificate you can get (apart from a good resume) for developing new technologies, so they won't mean much to companies that are developing new technologies.
between Qualified and OVERqualified!
There are a Lot of employers that are looking for Skill-sets with experience, but _not_ a certificate, as they want your Skills, but don't want to PAY what they are worth!
I have my MSCE (Win2k Track), A+, Network+, and Cisco Certification. Wound up doing Tier 1 Tech Support for (a large call center/ISP), then putting together an entire curriculum and 2 years teaching the Disabled "Introduction to Computers and the Internet" for $1/hr over my Unemployment Insurance rates...
Now I drive a Truck for a living (for the last 7.5 years).
Add in the little fact that, in order to get the certifications, you have to have all the Correct [Wrong] answers to the questions asked by the testing people. Ask anyone who actually Carries a certification: Most of the answers aren't "Real-World Applicable", but you have to regurgitate them in the correct format to get your certification, then NOT do those things to actually service your client(s), and make money!
You've got to be kidding. Do you know how many lawyers are unemployed because they think their degree guarantees them a job? No, to be a lawyer nowadays means to start your own firm -- not cheap.
Better to go to med school. Guaranteed jobs, albeit lots of up-front work. Besides, med school includes a lot of memorization -- something more in line with most IT certs than law school tests.
Computing is as much an art as it is engineering and certifications are not well compatible with creative artistry. To be perfectly blunt: the number of lines dedicated to certifications on your resume is inversely proportional to the probability I'll hire you.
I want to see what you've *done*. Work samples show me that. Word choices which reflect a depth of understanding in a given area show me that. A four-year degree shows me that. A certification shows me that you can study for a week or three and then regurgitate the vendor's line. Worse, a certification shows me that you think regurgitating the vendor line is important.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I'm a CCIE at a large company. My certification holds little value for the company and little value for me in my current job. However, the certification proves that I can work hard and learn things and recite them for a test. It means I work well under pressure and I have a quantifiable measure of that skill.
Additionally, as a few others have noted, having a CCIE frequently means that companies will consider hiring me just to get a higher partner status. It's not a bad thing to be in demand, and have some relative security due to a piece of paper. If I want to stay in networking, I'll be significantly more "hirable" than someone without a CCIE. From an employer perspective, I may not be any better (I may be worse) than the other guy, but they'll want to hire me for the other reasons.
For these reasons, I believe that a CCIE increases my net worth and marketability. Ultimately, this is what it's all about, so I consider the hours I spent getting certified as a success.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I put them on my resume. Mainly because it wont hurt and it keeps HR and the headhunters happy
The best play if you are of the mind that certifications are of minimal importance (I include myself in this group, both when applying and hiring) is to include them, but make them the very last thing on your resume, definitely page 2 of a 2-page resume.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
One of the main reasons the U.S. doesn't graduate engineers is because of H1-B visas making the cost and effort of the degree and the work worth the pay once one gets a job.
Your post demonstrates the other main reason.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Seems to me, the trick is to get experience in a field, then become a lawyer specializing in that field. Because one knows the material, one is more valuable to a firm.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Also worth noting that through the late 80s-90s there was this sense that the future was in computers and business - choosing not to go to university (or at least a college of some sort) was a sign of "dropping out".
Of course, it turned out that we still need plumbers and carpenters and electricians, so now they're making the huge money while I know tons of university-graduated IT pros working call centers.
Around here it's even worse in the medical industry - the government see-saws funding for nurse training wildly, which means we skew from "there are not enough graduates to fill all the positions" to "we don't have enough positions to give all these people jobs".
I'm a high school dropout. I have no college under my belt, and only a GED. I'm 23. I do however, have MCITP: Enterprise Administrator, CCNA, and am actively pursuing MCITP: DBA, CISSP, PMP, and RHCE. Am I cert farming? Yes. I'd openly admit it in an interview too. I've forgotten a great deal of what I learned in preparation for my CCNA, and I will likely forget a great deal more about my future certs. What-more, I payed $10,000 in 2010 for cert training, and will drop $6,500 more this year. $16.5k (half my 2010 salary) on certs that I don't yet directly use. Why would I do this? Because it exposes me to new technologies. I could learn it myself, sure; but the certification requirements and training will help me know that I've gotten everything out of it that I need. Quick example: In any 2000 functional level Active Directory domain, a NON-administrator user can add up to 10 computers to the domain by default. I have INTERVIEWED over a dozen people with experience managing domains, and nobody yet has known this. Certs are a tool. Like many other things, they are up for interpretation and can arguably mean nothing. However, if you use them to fuel your passion, and push you in new directions, it doesn't matter what a prospective employer thinks about the individual certs you have, your passion will win you the job.
But clearly you have something better to say...
To everyone suggesting experience is superior to certifications and education, I completely agree. Unfortunately third party head hunting contractors hired by Fortune 500 human resource departments do not.
Your experience, intelligence and charisma will impress the hiring manager and might even get you the job, but.. you never got to meet him/her because you got rejected by the asshole third party headhunting contractor because your resume was not bit for bit identical to the job posting, even if you're an internal candidate for Christ's sake. Back in the good ol' days you could probably convince a human resources associate that even though you don't have required certification X, experience Y makes up for this. Today, that human resources rep has been replaced by a third party contractor whose job is to thrash through the thousands of resumes and present 25 precisely qualified candidates to the hiring manager. The hiring manager will never see any "maybes" or "close enoughs" or "willing to settles".
My advice is to hand tailor your resume to the specific job posting each time you submit it. If a job requires a certification or degree, you'd better have it. If it says "or equivalent experience", I'd put an "Experience Equivalent to Certification X" section right up top on my resume and emotionally prepare myself to be bumped by the hundreds of other candidates that actually have Certification X.
If you have Certification Y and the job posting doesn't mention Certification Y as a requirement or a desirable, leave it off. If you can get through the phone interview with the headhunter and get an interview with the hiring manager, this might be a great time to bring up Certification Y, but to a third party headhunter, superfluous education/certification can only over-qualify you. While suggesting you have a certification that you do not is dishonest and immoral, I've never heard of anyone getting fired from McDonald's because they forgot to mention that they graduated magna cum laude from Princeton.
If you are lucky enough to be happily employed I'd recommend taking every opportunity your employer offers to obtain education at their expense. Even if you don't need it now, having a vast portfolio of degrees and certifications will empower you to craft precisely targeted resumes in the future
If you are unemployed or looking to switch, I would hit every job posting for which I am precisely qualified first, then target jobs for which I am over-qualified at companies that will have much opportunity for advancement. If you are unemployed and under-educated/certified, target entry level positions at companies that will pay for or assist with training and education. "Does the hiring company offer education assistance?" is always a good question to ask a jack ass headhunter.
I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but, here in England, we have far more prospective lawyers (students with their degrees, conversion course where necessary, and vocational courses completed) looking for jobs than there are jobs available.
In the U.S. it's probably even worse. There are roughly twice as many law graduates every year than jobs waiting for them, and even then a lot of the jobs that are available are barely past minimum wage (it is not uncommon for entry-level lawyer to pay 35k a year, about the same as bachelor's degree-level jobs, and US students pay far, far more than they do in England for the law degree so they tend to accrue 100k+ in loans). It is probably the worst job market for lawyers in the past 100 years, and it has been exacerbated by an explosion of law schools and increasing enrollment, since law schools are one of the few academic departments that tend to turn a profit for the universities.
This. I'm a lawyer with a couple years of good experience, reported cases, multiple bar admissions, etc. and I clicked on this story because I was thinking of maybe going back to IT and have been contemplating taking the certification route. Though to be fair, most lawyers and law students are fully aware of how screwed they are right now. The funny thing is they are now starting to sue the law schools, which will be very interesting.
When I hire people, I don't look at certs at all. They're 100% meaningless. If anything, the people I've hired with certs over the years have been the worst performing employees I've had.
There's almost one exception to that - a CCNA. If someone has that, then I know they understand networking, and WAN networking is something that can cause the problems that keep me up at night. Again, I used the word "almost" in that first sentence. If the kid only has a CCNA cert, he better have a great attitude, decent experience and great references.
Maybe the career path you should be on is to get a job somewhere and try to move into management? Otherwise, trying to jump from job to job will be pretty hard - you're going to get filtered out at the HR level, or tossed aside by people like me who don't care about your silly MCSE or A+. Or, if you like networking at all, I highly recommend getting into telecom work. It's an area you can go a really long way without certs and can learn a job from the ground up. Oh, and the pay and bennies are usually great.
----- obSig
I like to see a certification that shows you have done something. Of course, you can have a degree and/or experience and never need a cert but that wasn't the question. These are the ones I look for, all others are pretty much useless.
PE (Professional Engineering) License
CCIE
TOGAF
These show me that you at least took some time to master something.
From what I hear, there are plenty of underemployed lawyers out there too. Unless you have a pedigree, there is no free ride.
I laugh at inappropriate times.
ISC(2) CISSP if you are on a Management or InfoSec track, SANS GSEC, GCIH, GCFA, GAWN would be my top choices for more technical/practical track.
My Novell CNE certainly has opened doors for me. It is framed on the wall next to my Starfleet Academy Diploma and my appointment as an Admiral in the Navy of the State of Oklahoma signed by the governor, Cowboy Pink Williams himself!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
It's also true in the US that most lawyers are very underemployed. I *do* understand, however, that if you are also skilled in technical areas (nearly ANY technical area) you have an immense advantage.
That said, I'm not sure that it's possible for a good programmer to be a good lawyer. The rules of logic are too different. It's like studying English history and Shakespeare historicals at the same time.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What does anyone expect, bust your ass getting through school, rack up tonnes of student loan debt to jump into a saturated job market to make $75K (if your lucky enough to actually get a job), or start your own landscape maintenance business, making half again more money and not have to worry about everybody with a broadband connection and willing to work for slave-wages taking your job?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Honestly, the best way to make yourself attractive to employers is to make something. It doesn't have to be particularly notable, but it should do something interesting. Nothing impresses a job interviewer more than "I made this". It is in many ways superior to "I spent 4 years getting this piece of paper." Degrees are overrated.
My understanding is the only lawyers making money in the US are bankruptcy and foreclosure specialists.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
you could sue Microsoft for a billion million dollars
http://jldrill.rubyforge.org/
Some good stuff there. Some crap. Overall I give myself a C+. As you are an anonymous coward, I don't suppose you'll ever see this. I'm not even sure why I'm responding to such a ridiculous comment. But I've always been happy to have people read and critique my code. Feel free.
...or, you could forgo the formalities and just do truly impressive work that clearly defines you as a desirable human to be taken advantage of by the highest bidder. Fill your resume with your art, rather than empty cookie-cutter hype. In a world of drones chasing degrees for the sole purpose of getting paid more, I think It's inevitable that sooner or later we'll have a backlash effect from this trend of blind hiring based purely on superficial credentials, and finally people will start paying attention to WHAT people can do, not just how much money they've thrown at their resume.
"It seems that when people become desperate they consult the gods, and when the gods become desperate they tell lies." -
if you can pass that exam, you boss will know you understand how IT works as a business process, and you won't be clueless about what the business side expects of the technical side.
http://www.itilcertification.org/
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Companies in Middle East nations are very fond of Certifications.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
wrook -- see my uid? I've been around a while. (you too, I see.)
My enjoyment of slashdot diminished years ago -- it's long since fallen off my rss feeds and daily visits. I found your comment via a link on hacker news and you sir -- you have given me a new hope for slashdot.
kudos on an insightful post.
J.J.
I'd like to offer some counterpoint. There is some truth to what you say, certainly. Fluency/competence is important in both arenas. However, quite a number of years ago (1990), I made the observation (in the context of a discussion about intellectual property and whether copyright should apply) that literature is essentially a "divergent" activity and that programming, being an engineering activity, is "convergent". That is, if assigned an English paper to write, there's a very high chance that you will be graded down if you turn in the same answer as someone else. By contrast, if assigned a piece of code to write, you will often be graded down if you turn in a different answer than someone else.
This should give you pause as you consider things like copyrights and patents, given that the engineering activity wants to guide you to both copy and independently create works similar to what others have done, while that's not true of literature, yet the same copyright property laws span both of these areas. There's something odd about that.
Anyway, independent of the IP issues, there are good reasons that we want engineers to learn to do similar things and writers to do different things. So I don't doubt that you're right that there is some overlap of skill and activity, but I wanted to point out that the skill of being a writer of literature and of being a writer of code also have some really material differences.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
It unnecessarily runs the first three lines of code before checking a condition it could just as well check right at the start. You're right that it is clear that it is modelling a state machine, but it is doing it in a way that is concerned with the fact that is a state machine, rather than a representation of something which happens to be a state machine. If I'd written that piece of code, I wouldn't love to bring it up at all. I'd blow up the source control server and deny all knowledge.