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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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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.
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.
who's the clown letting the noob work on a live 5tb database?
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.
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Because IW employees are probably paid to submit them and editors post them?
Part of being driven is networking and getting solutions using all resources available to you.
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
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.
Which, loosely translated, means "I don't know either, but if you look hard enough you might find something, but it's probably not going to be one of the countries you'd be willing to move to".
Very true. Most major tech centers (India, UK, Germany, and many other European countries) have visa requirements that are at least as strict as the US. And many of the up-and-coming tech countries (like China) pay so little compared to Western standards (unless you work for a foreign company, which isn't really relevant then) that you probably wouldn't want to move there for the job anyway.
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.
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
Most major tech centers (India, UK, Germany, and many other European countries) have visa requirements that are at least as strict as the US.
I'm a non-German citizen living and working in Germany for the last five years. To move over here, I just needed a letter from the company saying they wanted to hire me. I took that to the German embassy where I was living (Australia) who provided me with a work visa. Once that ran out, I just turned up at the appropriate govt dept, gave them evidence I am still working and they renewed it. No fuss, no big questions, all very easy and straightforward.
Right now, our company is going through the same procedure to hire a friend of mine from back in Australia and bring him over here. Doesn't seem to be any more difficult for him now than it was for me then.
From what I've heard about the US, it's significantly more difficult and complex (although I don't have any first hand experience); so I'm not really sure I'd agree with your statement.
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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.