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Why Certifications Are Necessary (Even If Aggravating To Earn)
Nerval's Lobster writes: Whether or not certifications have value is a back-and-forth argument that's been going on since before Novell launched its CNE program in the 1990s. Developer David Bolton recently incited some discussion of his own when he wrote an article for Dice in which he claimed that certifications aren't worth the time and money. But there's a lot of evidence that certifications can add as much as 16 percent to a tech professional's base pay; in addition a lot of tech companies use resume-screening software that weeds out any resumes that don't feature certain acronyms. There's also the argument that the cost, difficulty, and annoyance of earning a certification is actually the best reason to go through it, especially if you're looking for a job; it broadcasts that you're serious enough about the technology to invest a serious chunk of your life in it. But others might not agree with that assessment, arguing that all a certification proves is that you're good at taking tests, not necessarily knowing a technology inside and out.
More Dice clickbait. Fuck off samzenpus.
First off.. saw first link and thought "wow, at least dice isn't putting campaign ID's in their URLs any more".. but then the third link has one. Never change dice.. never change.
Secondly, this is a tired old discussion that aside from a few who insist on actually arguing it, seems to have resolved to a consensus of:
- If the employers you want to work for care about certificates, get them.
- If your employer wants you to get certificates, get them (they'll probably pay for it).
- If the employers you want to work for don't care about them, don't get them (I don't think anyone feels you actually learn something by getting certs).
The area I live in, certificates are mostly worthless, so I have very few. I once worked at a place where the big projects was from a client who insisted everyone who worked on the project have a bunch, so I got a few now expired ones through that. Maybe having certs going in would be a factor in ones favour if applying for that job at that time, but I doubt it. They were viewed much like "mandatory compliance training" stuff is, something everyone just went and wasted an afternoon on at some point because you had to.
But I don't discount that in some areas having a list of acronyms on your resume is required or at least helpful, so if you live in such an area, go nuts.
Either way, you should know what local employers in the area you want to work expect if you are planning to you know, have a career and such...
EVERY cert test I've ever taken tests not knowledge of the subject/product, but the ability to do rote memorization of the training materials, even if it's wrong. It's all a moneymaking scam.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
There should be a certification in the use of the English language. Like, maybe a high school diploma or something like that.
... and then something else about the process might aggravate (make worse) the bad experience. Sure, it's fairly obvious that the headline writer is trying to say something other than that a bad thing was aggravated by something else ... but, can we at least, when editing the headlines, at least try to throw the darts at a group of words that actually make some contextual sense? This is right up there with the "certifications are ten times less useful" style phrasing. Just EDIT like you mean it, editors. Please? Why dumb things down when you don't have to? None of these words are on sale. It's not more profitable for Dice to hold off on using seemingly more expensive words like "irritating."
Getting a certification may indeed be annoying, or irritating, or bothersome, or troubling, or tiring
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I dropped out of college after my junior year while purusing a non-IT related major, and in the past decade, I went from a part-time employee to the director of a medium size IT department. Perhaps I'll hit a wall eventually, but so far, certifications have meant less than my ability to actually do the job people want.
Does that count?
Some certs have value in the training and experience requirements that come with them.
Some certs add prestige to a resume or company masthead.
Some certs equal a bump in pay.
Some certs do other things that may benefit either the person getting the cert or the company that employs them.
And some certs do none of these, are a complete waste of time, and only add value to the instructor's, governing body's and test facility's bank accounts.
And when it comes down to it, the only person that can make that determination is the person looking at the cert.
--
All blanket statements are wrong.
They are not really worthless. They get you in the door and past HR, as "CCIE ID #12345" is a lot better on a resume than "Cisco fabric experience". Similar with RHCE ID "111-1111" as opposed to "I know Linux". From there, you now have access to the tech people, which without the certs, you wouldn't even been allowed near them.
There are also jobs that require certs on the job. I worked at one place that had auditors that did spot checks, and one's certs lapsed, the IT person would be fired on the spot and escorted off the premises for something along the lines of "failure to maintain proper training for the equipment used."
No, certs don't substitute for experience, but a cert gets you in the door, far more than "gee, I learn quick."
Well that speaks volume on one of the certified programmers that I've hired who didn't even know what an array was.
We recently published on this site an opinion piece whose author was dismissing the usefulness of certifications.
We wanted to reassure our advertisers that the author's opinion was strictly his own, and not reflecting Dice's opinion in any way.
We at Dice are convinced that the certifications offered by our advertisers are indeed useful and even necessary.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
It broadcasts that you think (rightly or wrongly) that getting that certification will give you access to more/better jobs. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever you think about the technology. I am sure there are some MCSEs out there who think that MS is great, but I am also sure that many other MCSEs couldn't care less about MS and its technology, as long as the certification helps them put food on the table.
Are another example of such tests. If only the existing citizens when reaching adulthood where forced to make the test also...
Well, what the fuck did you expect to have happen when you hired a certified scuba diving instructor as a programmer? The guy knows how to use diving equipment and how to safely perform dives. He isn't a computer programming expert, and his certification doesn't claim that he is! You, as the hiring manager, need to make sure that the certification that the candidate has is relevant to the work at hand. The candidate and certification aren't to blame when you make dumbass hiring decisions. Maybe if you had some HR certifications you would've done a better job!
I've worked with, hired, and fired a lot of people in my time. Certifications have gotten to where everyone has them and are used to weed out candidates when the application pool is too large. That's about it unless we are talking higher level systems certs. Almost every single individual I've fired over the years had a lot of certs but little practical or usable knowledge.
Certs are good for weeding out the people who can't even learn well enough to obtain one. For people who are really good, or decently good and really experienced in the area to which the cert applies, they're a waste of time. The number of people who think that they are really good often exceeds the number of people who others think are really good, so it's usually beneficial to be patient with people who don't know you well enough to tell the difference.
First off, they aren't necessary.
Second, just because they can add upto 16% doesn't mean they will add 16% or even 1%.
Generic statements about certifications are worth less than the paper the cert is printed on.
Sounds like marketing..
snake oil,
Certification programs get you exposure. the Cert it self proves that you have been professionaly xposed, but does not necessarily measure your compotency in the area of study..
if all you want to do is fix toilets for the rest of your life and nothong else. YES Certs are for you.
If you want to stay marketable, self reliant, resilient, profitable, and happy then CERTS are not for you..
Certs are for professionals whom what to stay static in their carerrs, or untill the tech becomes de-funkt then they got and cert in something else, and fulfilling the prophecy again..
it seems that cert'd people are very stiff, focused, and not adapted at thinking outside of the box..(not necessarily a bad thing)
people whom are not, are usually more dynamic, well versed in their env. and definately are able to think outside the box due to the EXPERIENCE gained by not cert'ing..
Cert'ing pigeon holes you and can falsely identify you as someone not in demand..
If you are a newbie or fresh from college, get a cert.
If you have 20+ years experience, Certs don't matter. Unless you have a clueless HR drone, then you dont want to work for the place.
If they discount your "15 years senior network administrator for AT&T" and want to see a entry level cert, then you really really dont want to work there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Certification tends to become a problem because it drives the education rather than testing the skills.
you guys are dreaming. the more certs you have, particularly in your specialization, the more appealing you are compared to a typical noob who doesn't get them. the more you'll get paid. noone said that was fair or right, but that's the reality.
the only people who don't see the value in them are those who don't have the skills/experience or sufficient free time and disposable money to throw away necessary to acquire them.
TFTFY.
Don't certify developers. Certify IT workers.
The best demonstration of developer quality is their portfolio of code and a 4 year university degree from a suitable full-time schooling program.
Who's discussing the topic? Before you started talking about it, everyone was complaining about how dice is using /. to funnel clicks their way without adding any meaningful content.
If you don't mind, could we get back to dice bashing? It's more informative, insightful and entertaining than reheating the topic for the 5th time in the past 14 days.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
AFAICT, certs measure knowledge. Successful real-world experience, IMO, both implies and trumps knowledge alone. Both have their place though. For instance, I'd think that a person who has yet to gain that level experience can at least demonstrate, through a certification, at least the ability to memorize things, and that is a useful skill in any area related to technology. Depending on the quality of the cert, a good one can arguably demonstrate a great deal more, possibly including a certain level of problem-solving ability. I've been able to make a reasonably good living without any certifications whatsoever, but, living in a relatively small city, I've also had my opportunities somewhat limited by this (plus lacking a degree, the bigger problem in general). For me, they were not necessary, strictly speaking, but they might have been useful. I might have been able to use them to advance into a more value-added role such as design, architecture, or lifecycle management, rather than being a coder (albeit a good one, and with some aptitude for those other areas) for most of my career.
Nonaggression works!
Forget about developer certifications. I have worked with some very problematic engineers but that was in a team, the worse the engineers could do is slow the project down. But managers on the other-hand can destroy a company and employee's lives (overtime and lack of sleep isn't very healthy). Before we bother with developer certification, lets certify that managers know basic things about software, the extreme damage that military-style management has on software projects, how optimistic schedules derail even the best engineers, etc...
Of course any actual management certification will be on B.S. stuff and not anything that actually matters. Eh, a little like developer certification after all.
Not the paper someone may have used to print them, or in the storage cost used to store the e-mail stating that someone pretending to be you passed the exam.
Sorry but certifications are just a money pit for the people taking them, and an additional income source for the companies offering them.
For the years I was working in the tech industry, I was steadily employed (I'm on a disability retirement now.)
The only certificate I ever got was a low-level Oracle 7 DBA cert. Not one employer ever asked about that cert. Instead, they had their DBAs asking me *questions* to see what I knew. And because I'd worked with some sharp people and had good lunch-room discussions with them, I knew *far* more than that certificate course ever taught me.
My experience with "training courses" is that they run you through the same material you can get by downloading the user manuals and playing with the product. Unless you're talking something like a Cisco box that you can't just download, you're far better off using the internet for training materials, *learning* your stuff, and being able to *answer questions* during the interview process.
If you think even the most bone-headed of employers is going to take your word for it that a certification means you "know your stuff", you're off in fantasy land.
Worse, claiming a certificate means that you're going to be *grilled* on that subject if they're hiring you for it, so you'd damned well *better* know your stuff. Taking a certificate course for the sake of being "employable" is as bone-headed as renovating a house in order to sell it -- you *never* get back the money you spent on renovations, and you *never* earn as much more money as you spent on the course.
Certificate courses are all about one thing and one thing only: a revenue stream for whoever is doing the training.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
But why would I waste time getting certs when I could actually spend time doing the things the certs can cover? Who would you rather hire, someone who has a piece of paper saying they can do something, or someone who has actually done it?
I can see certification backed training being used as a prerequisite to move within a company, either laterally or for promotions. It makes sense to ensure that an employee has a certain base knowledge prior to moving into a new position. Studying for and passing a certification test accomplishes that. (Note: I am saying base knowledge, further training may be required.)
Using certifications for hiring is pure nonsense. There are too many unknowns when hiring a person, and how seriously they took the certification process is certainly one of them. How well they retain information that they may have acquired over a short period of time is another factor that cannot be tested. Whether they are able to acquire new skills and troubleshoot new situations is certainly a huge consideration that is difficult to test. That is all stuff that you actually need to know in order to know if the certification has value. That is all stuff you can assess with employees who are moving within the company, yet cannot adequately assess with people who are coming into the company.
I wonder - is he related to Michael Bolton from "Office Space"?
1. worked with a CCNA who couldn't configure VLANs on a Cisco switch.
2. worked with multiple MCSE's who were computer illiterate.
The matter is settled. Paper don't mean shit to anyone outside the PHB's hiring you. That alphabet soup you have on your business card isn't fooling your peers.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
5) Self-proclaimed experts, especially those who claim to be "self-taught" or "autodidacts", typically will be inferior to those with some sort of certification, even if these people without certifications think and claim otherwise.
You clearly have a problem with really intelligent people.
Not necessarily profitable to the applicant though.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We have to keep in mind that this is a generalisation. If you have a technical mind and experience, you'll probably know how all the pieces fit together instinctively. Where the certification provides an advantage is in some situations you are talking to a person with experience with that product, they can give you some insights they have earned through experience, and that increases the value of a certificate for a person who is beginning to learn about information systems.
At the end of the day, they're information systems. With marketing you can tip the intangible assets side of the balance sheet and look like an 'enterprise', but that then leads to the argument of morals and morality, for which Harvard made the decision 20+ years ago that morals arent worth teaching.
Which is what I would rather debate. If closed minded thinking rules the business world, then why be a slave and give up? Whenever I go for job interviews I make a point to explain the difference between a over-night certified person vs a technically minded person who loves IT. Which one would you hire if you were a slave trader... I mean, 21st century 'entrepenure'?
I think this is a topic of those obsessed with their own divine right to everybody elses money understand that free people still exist, and there are more 'free' people in IT than their other pet investments. Thusly they want IT to be simple - be a single skilled slave, like those in California who are 'too old' to code.
Certifications are only necessary for people who don't know what the fuck they're doing and need a piece of paper to try to convince people otherwise.
Either you know how to do the work or not. The piece of paper is there for you to wipe your ass on.
Also I'm gonna boil Nerval's lobster this evening. Just because.
This is interesting but I'd like to see some proof of it.
The programming language certifications are especially meaningless, but most of them have no value. CISSP might be the best, since you need signatures from current certified people, at least in theory putting people's reputation on the line. It also requires continuing education but that is easily manipulated.
Crap like the Java certs are 100% worthless. So many people with those certs completely misunderstand basic concepts of Java, such as Java is pass by value, always. That value is either a memory address(pointer) for objects or is the actual value of the primitive.
Pass by reference is not possible in Java, it is an artifact of mutable objects, yet these supposedly knowledgeable people don't know this.
Certifications only have value if you are apply to a company with no ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, so they use certifications to fake it. Who the fuck would want to work for a company like that?
Thing is, for every success story like yours, there's plenty of technically inclined people who at best make it to a help desk position.
Wanting to be a good singer... being "musically inclined... doesn't mean that you aren't tone deaf, and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
There's a heck of a lot of difference between being "technically inclined" and actually having technical ability.
What a load of shit.
HR likes them because it offloads responsibility.
The best programmers in the world don't have certifications, the mediocre ones do.
I work as a business consultant on various IT projects. Certifications are required in my line of work.
They give points in application process when big firms and the public sector contracts us to do real projects. Even so much, that one certificate is equal to two years of work experience or more.
They have no effect on me doing my job and are all about memorizing stupid details on things I will never use. I would be more than happy if our clients would see them as a money making scam, that they really are. But such is life.
Hate 'em all you like, but silly IT managers who hire sub-contractors don't know any better.
I wonder if those posting about certs being all route memorization have their CCIE? Or RHCE?
Actually I wonder if they have any certs at all, since the route memorization claim is bullshit.
I must admit, a lot of the multiple guess cert questions do not really test your ability.
But could certs be better implemented, and thereby more worthwhile?
If you want a certification, buy one.
There are plenty of people who will, for $100, take the certification tests for you. The certifying "authorities" never ask for a state issued picture ID to prove you are who you say you are -- and in fact, most modern certification testing and issuing happens online. You can pretty much get a certification in nearly everything.
Even in the case of a them checking IDs, you can have the test taker be a person who "perpetually fails at these tests", and swap test sheets/booklets with them by way of writing down each others names on the materials in question, after getting in to take the test under their own name. That's how people fake the LCAT and MCAT tests to get higher scores so they can get into Ivy League colleges.
You can pretty much have as many certifications as you want.
Same is true of drivers licence, or a licence to practice law, or medicine, no?
Is it fair to say the CPA is bullshit because once you have been a CPA for 20 years, the experience counts more than the credential?
In some fields, like health care, job specializations are extremely well defined. The credentials for doing those jobs are also very well defined.
You can look at somebody's credentials, and answer: yes or no; whether that person is technically qualified to be an R.N., or a phlebotomist, or whatever.
IT, by contrast, has always been pure slop. The credentials to do a job are arbitrary. What one employer considered a valid credential, another considers to be a negative. Practically no jobs in IT have hard requirements - except for security clearances.
Every employers was five years experience in each item of their list of technologies - and every employer has a different list.
Maybe if the jobs were better defined, then the credentials for those jobs could be better defined?
^This is actually the final test of the SlashdotTrollCert(TM).
I actually suspect that only those who do not hold certifications attempt to water down the significance. In consulting field, I have seen the way customers look at you when they see your certifications. I'm personally not a fan of vendor certifications such as CCNP. But certifications such as CRISC, PMP and others greatly separate a techie consultant from a management consultant.
From my experience, I learn more from studying for CRISC in six months than I ever learn at any job. On job training has its limits in understanding industry standards and methodologies to truly drive projects. Certifications have greatly enhanced my earning power beyond anything I could have imagined when I started out in security years ago.
I have interviewed 100's of RHCE's who could not tell me how to set the minimum password length, how to change the permissions on a file, and none of them could tell me how to set run levels at boot.
I was surprised that they even passes the RHCE without knowing it.
Let's say you claim 20 years of experience as a systems administrator.
What does that mean? Is your experience in Windows, Solaris, HP/UX, Linux, or what? Also, how much of each? Do you know Perl? Oracle? Cisco?
How does an employer know that your experience is with Solaris and not HP/UX? I suppose the employer could test you, but isn't that what a certification is all about?
I think it's very fair to say that standardized cert tests are far more objective than interview tech questions. I have been tech interviewed by some real bozos in my time. People who said I was wrong, when I was right. People who ask questions far more ridiculous than I would be asked on the crappiest cert exam.
That depends on the quality of the certificate. For example, when Sun ran Java certifications it mattered. Oracle... you actually lose brain cells and skill when taking them.
I'll stop working on certifications when employers cease putting them on the job postings as a requirement for getting hired.
A lot of folks dismiss certifications as completely useless. While they don't gauge competency in any given field, they do at least show you've enough interest in the subject matter to jump through the hoops to attain the certification in the first place. I'm doing them because my company quit training their workforce about a decade ago. My hope is that the certifications give me other options when my company finally goes full blown stupid and implodes because the entire workforce is incapable of doing the work beyond following a flow chart.
From a Cisco point of view, it would be easy to see where a certified candidate might not be strong in all areas due to lack of exposure post certification. If your employer doesn't do BGP, IPV6 or MPLS, where does that leave you a couple of years after you test ?
Everyone seems to want a candidate with a bazillion years of experience under their belt, but it's unlikely you'll get to work at that level without a certification first . . . so you gotta start somewhere.
My current job doesn't even require a CCNA, but I went ahead and obtained it because . . . well. . . . I'm SICK of my job and I don't want to do it for the rest of my damn life. I'm studying for the CCNP for the same reasons. The odds of my getting to configure anything in my company at the CCNP level are pretty much zero, so I'm learning it in the hope I'll eventually get to leave this god-forsaken place and start doing something interesting again.
However, even if / when I achieve the next certification, I'm still currently doing a job that doesn't allow me to put to use anything I've learned. Over time, I'll forget a lot of it. But the only chance I have at landing a better job is through the certifications. It's certainly not going to be the twenty years experience in an obscure / highly specialized technology that no one outside of a telecom has ever heard of.
The first fact is that this guy is technically correct. HR departments go all weak in the knees for certification. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some certification farm out there crapping out certifications in cmake.
But this completely misses the point as to the actual value a certification actually has when it comes to the reality of programming or maintaining/implementing systems. Most of us will agree that the value here is low to potentially negative. A wonderful personal example was that years ago my company asked me to become MSDN certified in something. In order to regurgitate the correct answers for the test I memorized all kinds of crap. But some of it was actually quite helpful. There were some bits about NT boot configs that suddenly made sense.
But the flaw was that I was already very good at working with NT servers. If I were in some stripmall comp collage studying this as my first exposure to computer stuff then it would have meant nothing and yet with some good studying I would have been "certified" to administer NT servers.
But where this really breaks down is when you get a shop that is completely filled with people from a certain company's certifications. I have met companies that say "We are a MSDN shop." Full stop. They won't even consider any other technology.
But my happy moment was years ago when our head of IT who had "over $20,000 worth of Novell certifications there on that wall" was installing a Novell server on his brand new shiny Dell powerhouse. But it wouldn't install. So he gets Dell tech support on the phone and ends up with their top tier who said, "We don't support that old Novell stuff anymore. If it runs on any of our machines it is luck not design. But I know for a fact that it won't run on that machine you have there." Now with this IT guy the whole development staff had long been trying to get Novell out of the building but the IT head swore by it and had a thousand defences as to why it was the best. But the day Dell said No was the day we were able to leverage that into finally getting Novell out of the building.
I have similar stories with other certifications.
So while I don't doubt that they can often increase the individual's salary and I don't doubt that the process of an existing capable user would potentially be enhanced by certification. I do suggest that the damage that is done by certifications being turned into religious scrolls could be enormous to companies that suddenly are "locked in" to a certain technology and not only stop considering alternatives but actively consider alternatives to be heresy.
If your salary is increased by 16% because you have some IT certificate then the job you are doing is a waste of time and we'll all be better off when it is offshored somewhere cheaper still.
only thing that's settled is that you're a retard
I have a few certs and they do one thing... It makes people who don't know me but see my .sig know I've been there done that. I have a BS EE, MS CS (both 20+ yro), CISSP, and PMP (probably expired by now) amongst others (I was a consultant for a spell). The CISSP lets non-nerds know I know "something" about InfoSec and they will play along when I'm digging into an issue. I also hire. While not a req., it shows a candidate is serious - I'll at least talk to them and figure out if they know the difference between UDP & TCP 53. -T
Go learn what you are actually doing rather than learning how to tick a box on a goddamn test. Learn what NP-hard and NP-complete mean so you don't go around trying to solve intractable problems. Software development is NOT a trade you can learn by going to some trade school and getting certificates. It is a profession and, some would say, a science. Go take a few classes in Computer Science and learn how to really do it.
Certifications are JUST a way for companies to make money. That is all. It is a way for them to extract money from the developers who learn the skills to deal with their software.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
As a 20-year veteran SysAdmin/DevOps/BlueCollarITJanitor I find that certs are useful when they are used as a fundamental building block for building basic knowledge in a specific vendor's way of implementing their technical solution.
As an example, I cut my teeth on MCSE NT 4.0 (could have taken NT 3.51 certs at the time but stupidly skilled those to jump ahead) as a late teenager but the structured organization of the learning materials with the courses and books taught me Microsoft's ideologies and reasons for implementing and using their OS and their BackOffice (...BackOrifice at the time, kek) products and how that specific vendor wanted their stuff configured and working together. For example, the Network Essentials (aka. TCP/IP) test was useful in understanding how Microsoft implemented IPv4 in their OS and how the features of DNS, DHCP, WINS, Routing, etc. were done and could be used to build a good foundation for the network infrastructure correctly.
Now I find that after reading or skimming through some vendor's product instructions and finger-fucking the product's GUI/CLI/API to get it to do what I want it to do I'd like to find the time to sit down and read the actual vendor provided training materials to learn the product from the vendor's idealistic perspective, but alas I can't seem to find/make the self-motivation to go through the study and cert process since this day and age I just go and poke my fingers into some other product's innards to see all the gooey insides such as their APIs and database schema. One of these days I tell myself I'll go back and update my MCSE certs to whatever the new one is... any year now and get those Cisco, VMware, F5, whatever certs... For now it's finger-fucking my keyboard in PowerShell to get at the API of the next victim... err, solution.
Search for any project management job on Dice, Monster, SimplyHired, etc. The first ten matches will all say PMP certification required, or at least a plus. Doesn't matter whether or not you learn anything preparing for it; you won't make it to the interview without that PMP.
Well that speaks volume on one of the certified programmers that I've hired who didn't even know what an array was.
Isn't that the thingy that has something to do with antennas?
Om, nomnomnom...
The author of this article would do best to avoid such amateur, misleading titles to his articles if he/she wants to be taken seriously in the technical realm.
Given that his post was basically the complete anti-thesis of reality, what's the bet that the AC was Nerval's Lobster or whoever trying to troll the discussion back on topic by posting inflamatory nonsense?
Dice posts story trying to pretend certifications matter, presumably because some certification peddler has paid them to do so. Everyone posts about Dice posting shill articles, with a few posts about how Dice's story is bollocks, then an AC posts a post claiming certifications matter in an inflamatory way.
I think this AC is a case of Dice agreeing with Dice.
nt
Indeed.
The best credentials are whatever your potential future boss damn well SAYS they are.
Are crap.
Every moment you spend on a exam memorizing crap that is already obsolete is worthless. The only reason to subjugate information in this way is to restrict access to opportunity and to fund a demoralizing education system which produces NO results.
Kiss my backside, I will not pay one red penny to a education system or certification system.
Leave the internet ALONE and let the information be available for people access freely.
Let people organize technology and efforts around those principles specified in the GPL.
Define a individuals self worth by what he or she contributes.
Shun degrees and certifications ALWAYS.
You do our young people a big service to their future and release them from this ridiculous restriction and judgement calls on that future with the current system we have that produces SLAVES, not indiiduals who are educated.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
At this point in my life I feel that I can state that a certificate really is *nearly* useless. The only benefit is to "sweeten" the deal for your future (possibly current) employer.
I no longer bother to keep certs up to date. I do keep up to date on my job and any technologies that are relevant to make my workplace more efficient and effective. The new interview line has become "Yes, I have had that certificate but I am a year out of date. If you would like, I will re-certify for this position". No employer has requested this (besides one MSP that wanted to say that *all* of their tech's were XXXX certified.... they paid for the re-cert and life was good for both of us... As much as it can be at an MSP).
These certifications can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to keep in date depending on what you are certifying in (anything from a typical a+ to company specific technologies useless anywhere else). Many companies are willing to spend the money to keep their people certified. In those cases I will happily complete the cert and move on with life. It is often not useful in the every day tasks for the job.
If you are looking for a job. Interviewers are looking for people willing to learn on their own. Not a laundry list of certifications or degrees. From what I have seen, a huge list of degrees and/or certs is often seen as a bad thing.
My experiences come from years in both the private, public, and academic sectors.
You want to get into the industry? Find something you really have fun with about it.. Then do that a lot. You will learn all of the skills you need to be desirable in the field and will convince someone else that they should pay you to do it for them.
Last Note. I don't care what certs you have if I am interviewing you. I am looking for one thing. Im going to ask a question, there is no real answer. The only thing I want to hear is "Some people can talk about something in a way that you know they actually lived it". Others... "Talk about something like they have only read about it". Its a hard line but it means a lot in an interview.
Okay Nerval or whichever Dice employee you are you're just embarrassing yourself and your company now, please, just stop.
Certainly in the development world, no one who actually has these roles you're theorising about gives the slightest shit about certifications. I can say this with absolute certainty because I've made it right to the top in a large and successful company without needing any and similarly when I'm hiring I pay exactly zero attention to certifications because they do not in any way tell you anything about the competency of the candidate.
You see the issue is that anyone can get these certifications, so your theory of who can and can't get them is meaningless, even junior devs can get them if they can be arsed, but ultimately they're just not worth the money. They have exactly zero impact on employability (and some even have negative impact).
So keep theorising all you want, those of us who actually work in the field and have worked our way to the top will keep laughing at how wrong you are and how desperate your shilling is. Even if I genuinely wasn't capable of getting these certifications, I frankly wouldn't care, because it's had no impact whatsoever in my ability to grow my career, hence even if you were right (which you're not) so fucking what? It's still meaningless, they still don't matter, not having them still hasn't dragged my pay down at all because I'm already getting paid as much as a developer can get paid, and I still enjoy my job regardless. There isn't any other metric that matters that these certifications could improve even if they did somehow matter as you're desperately trying to claim.
Really, it sounds like you're the bitter one simply because you blew all your money on certifications and have no actual skills so the only person you could find to employ you was Dice. I guess it must suck being in a dead end Dice job, but at least you have your pointless and irrelevant bits of paper to flap around right?
I could probably locate the file or at least use man to figure out how to set the minimum password length. It's not something I do often so I don't have it memorized. And with RH7, it's probably under loginctl. Heck, a quick search on my RH6 box and I can't find where to set the minimum password length. Probably under pam.d.
Permissions is bog simple though, I'd have a problem with someone not knowing that.
For older systems (RH6 or older) it's easy enough, /etc/inittab. I'd have to do a man on systemctl or search the net for how to do that in RH7.
And I'm currently studying for my RHCSA/RHCE exams that I'm taking next month :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
the only people who don't see the value in them are those who don't have the skills/experience or sufficient free time and disposable money to throw away necessary to acquire them.
TFTFY.
some people who don't see the value in them haven't done them so their only frame of reference is a sphincter.
TFTFY
I only drive Fords because all Holdens are crap - that's why I've never driven one. != I only drive Fords because I've driven Holdens and found they were crap.
I see everyone talking about certifications as though vendor-specific certs are all there is in the world; this is not the case.
Vendor-specific certs have limited usefulness. If you have a ton of them in different areas, they are all up to date, and you have the experience to go with them, then they can be an asset in general. But certs without experience or certs that point to much older versions of software or other products probably hurt more than help. I had certs for CheckPoint, Nokia, ISS, and a number of other products along with an MCSE back in the 90s; I list none of these on my resume. With the exception of the MCSE, they were all the incidental result of training that I got in order to help me do my job, but that training and knowledge is outdated now so it's misleading at best to infer that I'm up to speed on those products by stating the certs on my resume.
But there are also a lot of non-vendor-related certifications, especially in the cybersecurity world. These certs are more like professional certifications in other careers (like a PE, CPA, etc.) in that they require both a base level of experience and continued education in order to obtain and maintain them. The CISSP is the most commonly thought-of one, and the one that is most often called-for; many jobs are off-limits to people who don't hold one. Myself, I feel that getting the cert was nothing but a time-wasting exercise. I learned nothing in the process, gained nothing but a job qualification from it, and don't think it really assessed whether or not I knew anything that was at all useful. But the CISM, on the other hand...that was actually an eye-opener for me. It was very challenging in a manner that really made sense, and I actually had to expand my knowledge to study for it. The tests were sensible, challenging, and relevant to actual understanding of useful concepts and ideas. I really think that it's a hard cert to obtain, but one that does a good job of measuring whether or not someone can manage security from a holistic, program-based perspective in an effective manner. And that, in turn, makes me think that ISACA's other certs (like the CISA) are probably highly credible as well.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
You should "waste time" getting certs because HR exists. Certifications are like bachelors' degrees: all they do is get you past the first round of keyword matches that the C students over in HR use instead of actually looking at a candidate's experience and skill set. After that, when your resume actually is in the hiring manager's hands, certifications are completely worthless.
HR should not be involved in screening candidates for technical positions with skill sets that they don't have a prayer of understanding. Let the hiring manager see the resumes, weed them out based on actual useful information instead of keyword matches, and watch your hiring quality go up.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
All they knew on each question which 2 letters represented clearly wrong answers and were able to reason out which of the remaining two was the red herring on a sufficient number of questions to make a passing score.
As someone who's taken the CCNA and hasn't used it yet (As in I purposefully did not list it on my Resume since I'm stronger with coding, and as I came to find out I make more money now as an Analyst here than I would have as a Certified network grunt on the same level.) I can vouch that knowing everything on that test will only guarantee a near perfect score without having to use the full time to take it. My courses to prep me for the CCNA had us take the previous session's test so we could gauge where our weaknesses were and focus on those as we went through. I still passed by a significant margin with the technique listed above, and it took me only about 20 minutes longer to complete than the actual test (I had 10 minutes to spare on the practice test as opposed to more than 30 minutes left after the actual test).
Long story short: To someone who actually knows his shit Certs aren't even good enough to make toilet paper; unless you're going for worse than Soviet Grade. To someone in HR, they're good for nothing besides CYA: "But he had the cert. I'm no IT guy...but shouldn't that mean he knew his shit? It's not my fault he turned out to be a complete idiot!"
I look at my own resume and the skills I am willing to list on it, and it looks light compared to the resumes of the people that end up managing people like me. However I am leagues ahead in terms of actual skills compared to them. I list a skill if an only if I am truly competent and if I am only somewhat familiar, I will qualify the skill.
The people that end up managing people like me, list far more skills, but have far less skills. They get away with this because the job they want is one that doesn't require applying the skills they list.
I'm on the fence about certifications, since they do tend to weed out some of the people above. However for people that do intend to acquire the skills to do a job and apply them ( as labor ) the certifcation process doesn't help toward that much.
Certification seems to be akin to buying a commission in ye-olde royal navy. It the annoyance weeds out some riff-raff.
...
Some people won't buy a house with a pool. Some people have to have one. Some people just don't care.
No matter which way you go, there is always someone you can't sell to.
The same is true of certificates. If I see someone with a certificate laden resume, I'd probably pass on someone who is so intent on getting certified. If they had a couple, I probably wouldn't care.
If someone needs certification to learn something, I would question their ability to learn on-the-job as things come up. We are in a rapidly growing field, and I can't wait for certifications to become available, and then pay the added cost of sending someone to get one and the lost wages.
There are plenty of really smart people out there that don't need certification to learn and don't want to work for a big company. I'll let the big companies with their bureaucratic nonsense take the rest.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I'm pretty sure the matter is settled in that: Certs are for people in IT. Certs are not for developers.
You hired programmers who didn't know what an array was? You might want to consider revamping your interview process.
Just another day in Paradise
Certifications are quite stupid. I've seen companies who completely ignore "oh I see you have a degree in Computer Science", and follow that with "no certification in blah x.22.5?" If the employer is chasing certs like that, they clearly don't know any better (and you are better off not working for them, they don't know anything, and will try to lead from a position of 'I think that's how its supposed to go'"). It never fails to amaze me how --if you have a degree in business-- you are qualified to do anything, and if you don't you are qualified to do nothing. And that's how they act and treat other people. Its maddening, stupid, and a tremendous waste in people, skill, talent, resources. Its not just a waste of employees time, its a waste of company resources, a massive opportunity loss, and slows technological progress. And it happens every day, and they never learn. So run after a cert if you think it will help you. You are playing to the clowns.
I've known plenty of developers without 4 yr degrees who were better engineers that some of the code monkeys coming out of school. If someone can show they've got the experience/knowledge to do the job, I could give a shit if they have a 4 yr degree.
Just another day in Paradise
I have seen job ads with an entire laundry list of *required* certs that would cost half your annual salary to obtain and maintain.
The most egregious was a certificate for a specific piece of backup software that cost $1200 for the class (plus travel) and $500 to renew every two years. A hospital I applied to required it, plus about a dozen more vendor specific certs.
...and of the two of these, I would give greater weight to the portfolio of code, and only consider the schooling program if the body of work in the portfolio was very small.
without 4 yr degrees who were better engineers that some of the code monkeys coming out of school.
The point of requiring creds is not to give a fine-grained measure of quality, but to provide a way of filtering out Bob from Marketing/Website Design who this morning decides he wants to be hired for a C++ solution architect role with no experience, so he can see what it's like....
If they don't have an engineering education, than they are not engineers. Just really really good code monkeys who happened to meet whatever need you had at the time.
You have to vet the school, and require a transcript, check GPA and require at least 1 educational reference. Not all 4 year programs are created equal, and not everyone who completed a 4yr program performed equally well.
Just like not all CCNPs have equal knowledge; the credential is just confirming a baseline.
People saying "certs are worthless" don't understand how the market works. If you have a bunch of certs and some experience, it's much easier to get an interview than if you had the same experience with no certs. It is possible to have years of good experience under your belt alongside some relevant industry qualifications. As for the people crowing, "I've been in IT for 15 years and if they want certs screw 'em!"...are those 15 years of good experience? If you've spent most of that time as a service desk engineer or sysadmin in a small shop, your market value isn't as high as you presume it is.
The point of requiring creds is not to give a fine-grained measure of quality, but to provide a way of filtering out Bob from Marketing/Website Design who this morning decides he wants to be hired for a C++ solution architect role with no experience, so he can see what it's like....
If I finish interviewing Bob, and haven't been able to figure that out for myself, then I'm not doing a good job of interviewing.
If they don't have an engineering education, than they are not engineers.
A degree doesn't make you an engineer. I've never seen that as part of the definition. Yes, education is needed, that doesn't have to come through college.
Just another day in Paradise
Certifications are ALWAYS for technologies in their mature late stages. PCs are in their mature late stages now. This was obvious the moment certifications became a thing. Recent headlines prove it event more: Forbes: The Death of the PC Has Not Been Exaggerated. Additional the fact that what has hastened the end is mobile means the PC is today where minicomputers were in 1984. Basically the PC has become just another form of industrial equipment like any good electrician knows. Electricians have to be certified and license also - but this only because things have slowed enough that technology changes only at a pace that EVEN government can keep up with, hence one should expect in the not too distant future, state and federal governments getting into this game.
It all depends a lot on the industry one is going for. I work in an area where skill and experience is valued most and none of that can be expressed through a cert. There are certs for my type of work but getting certified will definitely not advance me in my career. The vast majority of certs are nothing but a money maker for the issuing entity. For the same reason most of these certs expire after a short time.