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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.
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.
This is interesting but I'd like to see some proof of it.
"(Nerval's Lobster) actually worked for us before the acquisition, writing for our standalone news site experiment. Later on he moved over to Dice and took over their news site instead.
He goes through the same submission process as everyone else, and we don't post everything he submits." source
Not everything, just 570/767 stories. All of of the current ones have at least one link back to a story on Dice. The really old ones (from 2012 or so) all link back to his own stuff at the ill-fated SlashBI
"Nerval's Lobster (nkolakowski@slashdotmedia.com, nkolakowski@geek.net) submissions start to show up. We've [slashdot.org] already [slashdot.org] established [slashdot.org] that Nerval's Lobster is Nick Kolakowski, a slashdot employee submitting paid content as user-submitted stories"source (with lots more interesting comments linked)
See also: The Slashdot FAQ which lists him as Slashdot editor, his Twitter profile which lists him as a Slashdot editor, homepage which lists him as a senior Slashdot editor, Google+ page (same), LinkedIn (same), and so on and so on.
So, yes, can we stop with the charade already?