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.'"

Comments

Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[sanman2]

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.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[Anonymous Coward]

But a hybridized role offers the possibility of leveraging the perspectives of both, creating synergistic opportunities resulting from such unique dual-paradigm exposure.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[MightyMartian]

Just like how business graduates leveraged fast talking with dick wagging! And look at those guys. They get million dollar bonuses while the companies they pilot crashland into the ground and investors feel somewhere between gang-raped and immolated.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[c0lo]

Just like how business graduates leveraged fast talking with dick wagging! And look at those guys.
They get million dollar bonuses while the companies they pilot crashland into the ground and investors feel the synergy of being gang-raped and immolated.

FTFY

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[Anonymous Coward]

which means: Instead of hiring two people good at working together to manage it, one is hired at half the pay to do double the work!

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[pooh666]

btw, this BS term, its real meaning, has been true since back in the pocket protector days. Just more of stupid infowadd trying to come up with something that sounds new out of the same old.. Ah duh I need to know about the business to program and build systems for it. YES like as it ALWAYS has been.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[Kjella]

It's the good old "jack of all trades" vs "master of one" all over again, and I call bullshit. The largest companies I've seen have had business liaisons and IT liaisons and the business divisions were trying to align their demands and the IT divisions (central + specialized) trying to align their deliveries and the idea that one person could do everything was ridiculous. It's got nothing to do with being capable, it's that time is limited and one resource can only cover so much ground while staying updated on the technology, the business needs, the organization and plans and everything else that's constantly shifting. You need specialization and communication, the latter is obviously important so you don't get "islands" that act on their own but thinking everyone should be generalists is just as flawed.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[ppanon]

Sort of. A business analyst may also be involved in business process re-engineering in conjunction with requirements analysis. The classic programmer-analyst generally stuck to gathering/documenting requirements.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[CodeBuster]

As for investors, don't invest. Problem solved.

They didn't ask us taxpayers whether or not we wanted to "invest", they just take our money and give it to worthless losers instead. So I agree with your sentiment in principle, but unfortunately things are rarely that simple here in the real world.

Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not everyone should be generalists, sure. However, IT in the past decade or two has in fact shifted towards the idea that everyone should be specialists, and that's wrong as well. Not just for small outfits where people will fill several roles out of necessity; it's true even in large corporations that can afford to retain numerous specialists. Some of those large corporations now see an increasing need for generalists who are able to keep an overview of the tech landscape as well as the business landscape. You don't just need communication between the various specialists and between it and the business, you need coordination, and for that, neither a manager nor a specialist will suffice; you'll need a generalist techie with good business knowledge as well.

Being such a generalist can be a great deal of fun (it's what I currently do), but there is a snag. Good generalists are hard to find, perhaps because so many choose to specialise. It takes a good deal of searching to fill a generalist position, or one has to tailor the role slightly to the person that one finds, which goes directly against the idea of ever increasing specialisation, and the parameterisation and compartimentalisation of IT work. As a results, generalist roles are often poorly understood and perceived to be hard to manage. The work's great and if you do it well, everyone will wonder how they ever did without having someone like you. But in my own experience it is very hard to carve out an actual career for yourself this way. For the aforementioned reasons, not because there is no need for generalists.

By the way, the trend towards ever deeper specialisation does not only exist in tech work; I see it happening in many other fields as well. And it isn't just the result of the maturation of professions; I suspect that there is another important factor: our managers and the methods used for running our companies. These days it's all management-by-the-numbers, spreadsheets and dashboards. The managers behind those dashboards love managing resources, but in general they hate managing people, and there is a difference.

Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[afabbro]

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.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[cashman73]

I thought that the only certificate that tech employers cared about was the H1B?

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

I never got this certification hate that seems to be everywhere. If you're worried about hiring someone with certs that have no knowledge, couldn't that info be sussed out during the interview? Are you unable to ask practical application questions to weed these people out?

For someone like me, certs have gotten my foot in the door in this industry, with a company where there is plenty of room for moving up from desktop support to net/sys admin work. My hiring manager mentioned my certs and my knowledge as part of his reason for hiring me, and asked me the necessary questions to have me prove myself.

But keep hating on certs, it seems to be the thing to do.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[StuartHankins]

Red Hat exams involve configuring, testing and repairing live systems.

http://www.redhat.com/training/certifications/rhce/
http://www.redhat.com/training/certifications/expertise/

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[Penguinisto]

It doesn't.

The last time I bothered was for Windows 2000, and only then because the employer at the time demanded it. Not sure if it has changed, but back then you only needed to know that according to Microsoft, only a Microsoft-based solution to any given problem was considered sufficient. This was in spite of the fact that it often didn't make sense.

I suspect things haven't changed much, and in my humble-but-professional opinion, someone with only the cert (and little-to-no experience) usually meant that they were superbly trained as marketing zombies, but were absolutely worthless as sysadmins.

(...example? Clicking "cancel" when Task Scheduler demands a password in Server 2k8 will lock out an AD account in a hurry. Neat little bug, but one of the zillions of subtle things a sysadmin would know, but an MCSA would not.)

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[afidel]

Another good one is VMWare's VCDE, it requires a written proposal and an in-person defense.

I'm like you, most certs hold little value, show me what you've done and what you learned from it, that's the only thing that really matters. I kind of feel bad for freshly minted grads that went to a school without a coop program, they've paid all that money but are all but worthless unless a company is willing to invest at least a year in training them which costs about double their salary when you consider benefits plus the time of the people doing the training.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[DigiShaman]

Hi. MCITP, MCSE, and MCDST here.

Microsoft certifications are about proof of concept and best practices along with familiarity of the product in question. That's it. It does not teach best business practices or optimization. It also doesn't teach advanced troubleshooting beyond looking up event logs and searching KB articles.

You took the test. There was nothing deceptive about them that should have astounded you. Perhaps your false expectations were raised too high? Not to be snarky here, but seriously. How does Microsoft differ from any other company's product certification in this regard?

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[certain death]

Well said...but you should have done it without being AC. I would have modded you up! BTW, the same goes for me. I have a CISSP-ISSAP, CCSA, JNCIE, CCIE and several other "C" credentials, I don't list them on my Resume to impress the technical folks, they simply get me past the HR guys. Once I get into the technical interview, I rely on my 20+ years of actually doing the job.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[garaged]

Redhat cert is pretty much hands on, and I can tell you that a lot of people think they have what it takes and fail on the exam at the very first steps

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[MightyMartian]

In other words, a reasonably experienced admin armed with Google and a basic knowledge of LDAP, DNS and Windows configuration is better armed for working with an Active Directory environment than someone who received a Microsoft certification.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[txsable]

Correct, the RHCT/RHCSA and RHCE certs do require a hands-on lab exam. I've done both of those--actually, all three since the RHEL5 to RHEL6 update happened between when I got my RHCT and RHCE, I had to take the RHCSA for RHEL6 before I could take the RHCE.

(wow, I don't usually type that many initialisms in one sentence...)

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[riflemann]

There are really own two certs I respect: Cisco's CCIE and Oracle's OCM. Both require hands-on lab demonstrations of skill.

As someone who has interviewed over a hundred network engineers for a major tech company, let me just say that experienced candidates with CCIEs and experienced candidates without CCIEs have about the same success rate of passing a technical interview. The only difference seems to be that those without lean towards practical real world experience, and those without lean towards book knowledge.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[mcrbids]

I changed my interview style after that. I ask a bunch of simple nitty-gritty tech question now, no matter how impressive the candidate sounds. You would be surprised how often someone whose resume looks stellar can't answer multiple simple questions - like what is a /24, a tcp reset packet, port used by http, etc.

This oh yes this! Interviewing for programmer positions, I've seen gorgeous resumes by people with Masters in CompSci at reputable colleges and universities, with "accomplishments" like writing SQL language lexical parsers, who could not write even an approximation of a SQL query or even write a simple string replace function. (how do you get to lexical parsing without being able to manipulate strings?)

This may seem a bit provocative, but this is very consistently the case with graduates from India. Having interviewed so many such people, so often having such beautiful resumes, you'd think I could have at least found a single one with enough programming expertise that I could hire, but that's so far not yet been the case.

I really feel for these guys, because they've obviously spent lots of time/money doing something, and whatever it is that they're doing, it's not helping them much.

Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless

[alittle158]

I remember leaving one exam thinking that if I ever encountered a Citrix-based environment, I'd spray it down with gasoline and set it on fire.

A very appropriate response

Dev Certs are Not Worthwhile

[kramer2718]

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.

Re:Dev Certs are Not Worthwhile

[c0lo]

In fact, when I read a resume, I am happy to see no certificates.

Me too, the reason being: I appreciate persons that value their time (i.e. better do nothing - not even gain experience - than waste the time with the certification).

Re:Dev Certs are Not Worthwhile

[L4t3r4lu5]

This is great if you're the person doing short-listingof candidates. If you have an HR dept staffed by monkeys in suits, they're checking boxes. "Doesn't have $Qualification1? Bin it. Has $Qualification2 but not $Qualification1? Bin it. Never mind that in the "Further information" section the candidate has listed 15+ years doing exactly the things listed in the job description, citing specific examples and demonstrating significant in-depth knowledge of the subjects. HR "doesn't do computers."

I've got over a decade in IT, but no certs. The only jobs I've gotten so far have been through friends, because they know I can do the job; They've spoken to me, I've helped them out. Now all I need to do is convince HR of the fact, and to do that I need a shitty cert which means precisely dick all to the guy actually interviewing you.

I hate it.

Article smells strongly of B.S.

[sirwired]

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.

No job yet, but...

[multiben]

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.

Thank God

[Baron_Yam]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Easily answered

[wickedskaman]

Part of being driven is networking and getting solutions using all resources available to you.

RHCE requires a hard hands on lab. Only 5% pass.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:RHCE requires a hard hands on lab. Only 5% pass

[philipmather]

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.

Re:Easily answered

[YttriumOxide]

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.

Re:RHCE requires a hard hands on lab. Only 5% pass

[slaughts]

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.

Re:Weighing certifications while hiring

[captbob2002]

Careful, some of us with cert may agree with you but we went out and got them in order to get past the HR weenies that throw away resumes that lack the appropriate buzzwords/acronyms.