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The IT Certs That No Longer Pay Extra
snydeq writes "Overall employment in tech is improving, but the certs you could once count on for a job or extra pay are losing their value, InfoWorld reports. 'Businesses no longer value what are increasingly considered standard skills, and instead are putting their money both into a new set of emerging specialties and into hybrid technology/business roles.'"
I think that the ability to succeed in a hybridized programmer-businessanalyst role depends on how complex the business and its processes are, as well as how complex its IT platforms are. If you're a more simpler company with simpler business processes and simpler platforms, then it's doable. But if you're in a complicated business environment with complex IT infrastructure, then creating these hybridized roles is asking for trouble.
There are really own two certs I respect: Cisco's CCIE and Oracle's OCM. Both require hands-on lab demonstrations of skill. (Is RedHat doing that now, too?)
All other certs are undervalued by dumps. Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco - you name it, all you need to do is buy or torrent the questions online, memorize the answers, and go in and take the test. Literally, anyone with zero knowledge of the material can do this. It's laughable.
When I've been involved in hiring, I've never really paid attention to someone's certs. I'd certainly hire someone with several years of hands-on experience in a technology who wasn't certified over someone with no experience who was.
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Of making $150 seem to be over
I can't speak to networking/DBA certs, but I will say that in my experience hiring developers, programming certificates are relatively useless.
In fact, when I read a resume, I am happy to see no certificates. The developers who highlight certificates on their resumes seem to be able to parrot back technical specs, but not to think dynamically about programming problems and that is what I am more interested in.
No certificate will replace writing code on a whiteboard.
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Hay guyz, computers are easy now, let's hire more middle managers who know Excel!
Not that most "certifications" weren't always only slightly above the "fraud" level -- they are given to people who passed crash course in some vendor's product use, and do not indicate any ability to do anything useful (or even safe) in practice.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The only really good certs are the CISCO ones. Microsoft ones are good, but only to get your foot in the door. Are there any other certs worthwhile?
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Certs matter don't let this post fool you for a minute. Most of those hiring out there want everything now they don't understand it takes time hands on time to hone skills. Since they don't know the technology themselves they rely on certs as a measure of competency (their competency). Its a business and it worth a lot of money. Its not going away. It does have some value i might admit to discard altogether is ignorant. As mentioned in above posts demonstration of hands on cert understanding is impressive, but again it does not guarantee you a job just you paid more for your cert.
Lets face it who you know is probably worth more than your cert.
really?certified wireless network administrator? some pud to reset the router every once in a while and add new apple iToys plug computers whenever douche #43 cant eat lunch between two vending machines is in demand?
Take the following statement: ""Pure-play [tech] jobs are on the decline," concurs Bill Reynolds, a partner at Foote. Where once the majority of tech jobs were in technology companies, now many organizations whose business is not directly related to tech have many openings that require different skills, he says."
Bullshit. People actually working for tech companies have ALWAYS been far fewer than those that run the technology in customer IT departments. This is not some new startling trend. If you want a career in IT with high potential (as opposed to the tech industry) business skills have always been a valuable accompaniment to tech skills; the business-blind sysadmin geek has never been up for the higher reaches of IT, and never will be. Again, not a new trend that this sage wise man is now cluing us in on.
Certs don't really matter now, especially at the big companies. Server+ which the article mentioned adds in raid, and some really poor facilities info, but really A+ is more worth it for those who actually want to learn something (having obtained both certs myself.) The HP certs are honestly worthless too, 90% of them are open book. Maybe they should matter though, lately my management has been hiring a bunch of cert less people, who I quite honestly think should not be touching anything. Just yesterday one of the new hires (certless) made a big screwup on a db host and killed the data on it (5tb worth of data, thank goodness for a working backup system.)
Is VCP still considered "worth it"? Considering upgrading from 3.5 to 5 once I finish my masters..
http://www.infoworld.com/print/185555
Why do we have infoworld articles so often? The site only seems to link to itself (except for ads).
I agree with the article statement saying
"The key is to evolve your skills with the demand", its been a far road from editing the config.sys file to understanding VLAN tagging.
Also, one thing I am surprised not on there is virtualization, I think you need a broad set of skills to manage a vmware environment, on the technical side you need to know different OS's, SAN, VLANs, IO etc. Also you need to be able to manage a political minefield where everyone things they should have a high priorty, and justify budgets from different groups using those resources.
I have certificate of participation I received for my recent attendance in an "Equality at Work" seminar. Still no job offers as yet, but I expect the big bucks to start rolling in anytime soon.
real job skills / apprenticeship / trades are needed in tech as like CS a lot of certs can be passed by people who can cram but have no idea on what they are doing also some of them cover stuff that you never see in a real work place or if you do it's like why are things setup like that any ways?
CS is even worse then certs as it just covers high level stuff at least certs cover some basic stuff that you do use on the job.
Now with a trades system we can get real certs that cover real system setup's.
I had to get some Microsoft certifications to break into the IT world - yet I never bothered with my A+, Novell, additional MS certifications, etc. Instead, I picked up a few very specific certs here and there and specialized. Yeah, I'm useless outside my field, but I (was) a star within it. The only guy in the world doing what I did, in fact.
You know what? When I changed jobs, the new employer didn't see my inappropriate certs, they saw my star status within my specialty and assumed I could adapt to a new one and perform just as well... and now I'm getting new very specific certs in a slightly different area.
Nothing specific you learn in IT is going to matter in two years anyway, never mind ten, and the general stuff is amazingly applicable across moderate ranges of differing IT work.
when are we going to realize that the system's only purpose is to bend you over a bench and extract your intrinsic value for the benefit of shareholders and hedge funds?
Let's face it, anything by CompTIA and to an increasing degree at the lower certification level, Microsoft, is worthless. If it's a straight memorize, take test, do a braindump and update your resume type of exam... eventually even HR types will catch on to it and it will go from a 'preferred experience' to a 'job requirement'. Employers will continue to use certs as yardsticks to measure potential hires, especially when they can obtain 'Partner' or 'Gold' status and add a cool logo to their website by claiming to have X number of MCPs, but the real IT people who do the interviewing will see through it immediately. There are higher level certs that still hold weight... CCIE, CISSP, VCDX, some others I don't know or care about, that will continue to hold weight. Also do not forget that the US govt is continually requiring it's employees in certain positions to hold specific certs... *cough*CISSP*cough* which in a sense floods the certified ranks with those who took a mandatory class and otherwise would never have attempted the exam and artificially inflates the numbers of people certified, which in the end will de-value the cert. I generally don't look at most certs as real means of proving I know something, I look at them as a way to market myself to the HR types who will be the first to review my resume. If I can match enough acronyms to make them happy, I can get an interview with the tech people who will actually determine if I am qualified for the position. It's just a big game and geek pride thing that we, as IT types, must endure.
These types of articles are written by have never worked in IT one day of their lives. These people can't spell "I.T." And yet we are supposed to believe they are experts.
From the article:
So which skills are becoming more valuable, gaining the pay premiums IT pros seek? Certified skills that jumped by 15 percent or more included EC-Council certified security analyst, certified wireless network administrator, CompTIA Server+, and HP accredited platform specialist. (Notice how these are broader skills sets than those losing value?)
CompTIA Server+ !? Oh yeah that's just one smokin' cert right now. Why not go to a job board and take a look at how many employers are demanding that valuable certification.
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You know what I'm finding is even less valuable then a certificate? An I.T. Degree...
Err, you may want to consider getting certified in English...
In summary, the flavor of the month is different this month than last month... If you care, you've already failed.
Specialization is falling out of favor a bit... Except where it isn't...
And there's more jobs available this year than last year.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If you aren't capable of, nor driven to, research on your own to find this answer, then you don't deserve the jobs.
They want to hire people who can get things done....not people who just ask other people on the Internet to do their work for them.
Here in CA, if you want to be a technician you either have to have certs OR a degree in a related field OR experience-- all three of those appear to be wildly interchangeable unless it's a bureaucratic environment where a certification ACTUALLY IS required. That, & if you want to be a technician of any sort you have to have a valid Class-C license & a car, so you're fucked if you drive a bike with a milk-crate tied to the luggage rack.
Even that one has lost its pizzazz. I paid thousands of dollars getting mine and keeping it current for years and years. I finally let it expire since it really bears zero weight anymore amongst anyone who knows it's really just a middle-management cert, and means diddly squat when it comes to actual 21st century IT security practices and requirements.
I didn't know you could even get a degree in "IT". Which department at a university would offer that?
Almost every position around here is work to hire, and that's based on reality: companies don't want to invest in sales-people for IT positions.
nuff said.
In 2000, my company flew 20 system administrators to a week-long course all day Monday to Thursday. On Friday, we had to take the exam: a four-part lab and long test (100 questions if I recall correctly). The four-part lab was hard. Everyone had one computer assigned to him. The instructor would load a disk image onto each computer. The OS was broken or mis-configured in some way. For example, it might not boot, or you couldn't logon, or it might not load a webpage. You had to figure out how it was broken and how to fix it on your own. We had no access to internet, but I think you could use the manual (not that it would help you directly).
I had studied every night for a month before the class. I studied again every night Monday through Thursday during our class. During Friday's exam, I think it took me around 30 minutes on average to fix each of the four broken OS images. By the time I finished, many of my coworkers were still on the first or second problem. When the results came back, I was the only person who passed. Our of 20 people our company paid to fly across the country and put up in a hotel, I was the only person who earned a RHCE certificate. My conclusion: I respect anyone who has it. It certainly has no resemblance to a certificate that requires only a multiple-choice exam taken at some Prometric franchise.
Hi all, in all this discussion about Cisco, RedHat and Microsoft certs no-one has yet mentioned the Java certifications; I'm talking about SCJP 6.0 (now renamed OCPJP 6, with 7 in beta), SCJD and the other certs for Java enterprise application development. Any opinions about these?
I'm skimming through an SCJP manual and - while I already know most of it - there are more than a few small details that did bite me back... but I'm still debating whether it's worth the effort to actually take the exam.
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Whenever I've thought of looking for a new job, I've found that the first filter that agencies apply is "IT Certs", more specifically Microsoft certs..
My most direct experience of this was when a recruiter rang me up saying that I was ideal for the job, had the right experience, the right skill sets, worked in the right industry etc. I do have qualifications (ie intials after my name), he asked about what there were and the converstaion went like this
Him "So, it's not an MCSE?"
Me "No, its chartered professional qualifictaion, more along the lines of a Masters degree"
Him "So not from microsoft?"
Me "No, not from microsoft"
Him "Ah, I'll get back to you"
I didn't hear anything back ...
Agencies, and I then assume HR departments ask for MCSEs etc to filter out, well everyone that doesn't have them, the assumption seemingly being that you're wasting their time if you don't.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
for stating the bloody obvious. I dont have a single certification, yet a "successful" career since 1993.
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I sort resumes into two piles: those with IT certifications and those without. Those without are evaluated first, and those candidates given priority. Those with will be considered only if the first batch doesn't yield enough strong candidates.
Why? Because anyone naive enough to think that certifications are anything other than cash cows for vendors lacks essential critical thinking skills. They're naive and easily scammed: in fact, they've put the evidence of the latter right in front of me. Such people are simply not up to the task for handling responsible security roles (which is what I hire for): the first competent phisher to come along will easily fool them.
I already have a large number of clueless users who, just like everyone else's clueless users, will find numerous creative ways to get themselves and thus the IT infrastructure into trouble. I don't need staff members who are just as bad; I need staff members who are cynical, hardened, ruthless bastards to even have fighting chance of keeping this operation modestly secure.
Seonded, and it still is the case in 2011. I'd done the RHCT on RHEL 5 under my own steam and my company paid for me and a handful of others to do the RHCSA/RHCE on RHCE 6. I would have done the same course as you and sat both exams on the Friday, RHCSA in the morning and RHCE in the afternoon. I passed both and at least 4 of my collegues did as well (although one used to work for Redhat as a trainer so it was a bit of a given), however we have several perfectly/very good sysadmins who failed.
It's not a gimme and requires actual hands-on expiriece, the course is crammed with around an average of 40-60 pages of material a day.
Regards, Phil
If you don't get all the certs you will never get past the dumb HR filters. But if you do get the certs the experienced interviewing manager will snicker at your book-learning naivety and reject you as not hard-core enough.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
I couldn't agree more. I used to think that the RHCE was a joke, and anyone could get one, but after taking the exam last year, I definitely respect anyone that passes it. I've been using Linux for 15+ years, and I found it very challenging. I struggled with a few of the things I don't do on a day-to-day basis, but having years of experience I was able to work through them.
I work in an award-winning IT department. I'm a UNIX admin. (AIX). I will start to worry when half of the couple hundred co-workers stop asking me how to move files. For the fancy-schmancy new tech, people still don't know the basics, and some how get jobs. So keep 'em comin, all you 'Sr. Programmer Analysts'.
IT didn't get whored out as some pseudo marketing department. I could give a shit about your vertical alignment agility. I'm going to die poor.
I won't hire based on Certifications and never will. Certification courses are typically filled with the unemployed and unemployable, paid for by Unemployment Insurance. A university degree with some demonstration of engineering aptitude is the only thing that is going to get you hired with me.
1-2 years real work in IT is better then 9 years in a class room hell at max I say 2 years pure class room is the max befor real work skills and maybe some DROP IN continuing education after working for a few years.
If you want a job in IT, you don't take a CS degree. It's as simple as that and I still can't fathom why people can't get it through their bloody heads.
I am in a computer science degree at university. The goal of the degree is NOT to make you a good programmer or sysadmin or whatever. It's about making you a scientist (you know, the S after C?). Research, learning, development, touching a little of everything... so you can take a Master's degree in whichever direction you'd prefer. You're getting groomed up for R&D and academia, not working at Cisco.
If you want those kinds of skills, you should be looking at a professional degree in information technology, programming, analyst or if you're motivated, a computer engineering degree. Those are all fairly different from a CS degree because they're specifically geared towards making you work with tools and be hands-on.
I have absolutely nothing against IT or engineering, but I do have something against IT guys and engineers who complain that CS doesn't teach them IT. Do you also complain that a mathematics degree doesn't teach you about accounting?
The old way: look at a candidate, see what they can do, see what they have done, and give them a try.
The new way: do they have the cert? Oh okay, they do, hire them and ignore anyone else who does not have that cert.
The problem is that certs, as relatively narrow tests, involve a certain amount of studying and not any kind of broad knowledge, or any testing of attributes like problem-solving that are essential to this field.
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The certs noted in the article are almost all for products that aren't on the edge of technology anymore, and in one case was for a specific version of that technology. I bet the number of jobs in those areas are also shrinking a bit. The article also notes that certs for jobs that are the most "in demand" have growing salaries.
All in all, the article is crying wolf.
(Also.. for those of you who are managers and don't like certified people: Some of the certs out there require hands-on experience to be proven.. research before you reject all certifications out of hand).
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
How many of you who are working IT full time have up to date certifications? The only certs I ever got were my Novell CNA when I was in high school, and then a couple of Microsoft certifications in the Server/Workstation 2000 era.
Every time the discussion of certifications came up in interviews, I always told the truth. "I was too busy solving problems in the real world to spend what little free time I had left studying for certification tests. Look at my job history if you doubt my technical competencies."
FWIW - I'm currently the senior technical resource / manager with total operational responsibility for a SaaS environment that generates millions of dollars in revenue every quarter.
I am not sure if my experience is typical though. Do certs really help with career development, or are they just used as a filter by HR drones during the early stages of a candidate search?
Looked good on my resume! BR Probably in some braindead job re somewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XihDngZQOsM because being Microsoft A+ certified will get you ANYWHERE.