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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.
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
However for some tech jobs, if you have certificates listed on your resume then this will lower your chances of getting a job. Listing certificates is a signal that you haven't updated the resume since you were an entry level grunt. Outside of IT you will almost never see certificates except in technician jobs. The point of these certificates most of the time is not even training to be competent in some field, but for their marketing use (ie, all those certificate holders will promote Microsoft solutions to the end of their days).
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.
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.
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.
I, the original Anonymous Coward that responded (#50149023) to your earlier post, and sorry that a later Anonymous Coward got into insulting you with pointless vulgar name calling with post #50149611.
So what you're saying is that you, just like the headline writer, don't actually understand what the word means.
So, when I look up the definition, I find this:
1. make (a problem, injury, or offense) worse or more serious.
"military action would only aggravate the situation"
2. informal
annoy or exasperate (someone), especially persistently.
"the gesture aggravated me even more"
Persistence implies "over time", like what I said. So, my usage is marked as "informal", but it is common enough that a dictionary recognizes the usage. You don't seem to even recognize the second definition.
The only person unfamiliar with this long-standing use and construction is you.
You're claiming that I'm unfamiliar with the (first) definition of the word. I am familiar with that. Furthermore, I am familiar with another way that the word has been used, which you seemed to be completely unfamiliar with. Your arguments have been made from the position that the headline writer was operating out of ignorance, and that I was. However, since we were using one of the definitions, it seems that the headline writer and I were not the ones acting out of ignorance of one of the valid definitions.