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Why Certifications Are Necessary (Even If Aggravating To Earn)

Posted by samzenpus on from the eat-your-broccoli dept.

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.

37 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:Meh by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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).

    2. Re:Meh by skids · · Score: 2

      I think they are actually rather important for SE jobs. SE's need to know lots of product details without needing to know much of the stuff that only comes from sweating through the particular problems of an admin job.

      --
      Someone had to do it.
  2. They're worthless. by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:They're worthless. by magarity · · Score: 2

      You are quite correct. Many years ago I saw a practice "A+" test this as the very first question:
      Which one or more of the following are both input and output devices:
      A: Floppy drive
      B: Keyboard
      C: Mouse
      D: Monitor
      It told me I was wrong for picking A and B because keyboards are input only. It seems they didn't think someone doing helpdesk should know the three little lights on the keyboard are important diagnostic output.

    2. Re:They're worthless. by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      It's a marketing tool. If you sell Solution X, then everyone who gets your certificate will promote Solution X when there's a choice. Because that is where their skills are and it's just basic job security to promote what you know instead of what you don't know. The money paid for the certificate course is peanuts compared to the ongoing revenue from a team of undercover agents promoting your product to their employers.

    3. Re:They're worthless. by mlts · · Score: 2

      Realistically, IT needs to do like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC tradespeople: They need licensing across the board with a vendor independent group doing the licensing.

      Certs in plumbing would be like a PVC company having tests to see how good a plumber is at gluing their pipes together. Does it matter in plumbing overall, such as selecting the rise and tilt of pipes so poop runs downhill? Nope.

      Similar if certs were similar for electricians. Square D could make certs for their circuit breakers and boxes, but does that mean an electrician knows not to run 440 three-phase through a set of nipple clamps? Nope.

    4. Re:They're worthless. by Anrego · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For that to work you need actual hard rules that everyone can agree on.

      Sure, electricians and plumbers disagree around the edges (ask a plumber about sharkbite if you want to lose a few hours of your life) but there's a huge chunk that's accepted practice for good, demonstrable and easily definable reasons.

      Software is still the wild west, and we're still figuring out how to do it properly.

    5. Re:They're worthless. by magarity · · Score: 2

      Other comments have already taken you to task for your somewhat pedantic objection to keyboards as output. If the motherboard is functioning but merely locked up by software, sending input by pressing caps lock provides output from the computer in the form of the little light going on and off. Yes, that qualifies as output. Especially in the context of what an A+ hardware tech certification ought to be testing. Furthermore, output on the monitor is the state of bits in RAM or registers. Output on the keyboard is the state of bits in the register in the keyboard controller. By any reasonable definition, these are both data and both output.

    6. Re:They're worthless. by shugah · · Score: 2

      Memorization allows you to recall information and reproduce a process or methodology without really understanding what you are doing. Learning allows you to understand the concepts and generalize and apply them to new or different situations. Our entire education system is increasingly tilted towards memorization and achievement testing. This approach is efficient to a point, but will produce students / employees who are basically functional and even productive within a certain field, but lack critical thinking and the fundamental knowledge to solve complex problems. They may also be over confident and unable to recognize when they have overreached or are presented with a problem that goes beyond their training.

      I do consulting work in health care. I have a BASc an MBA and 30 years of experience. I've worked with people with technical certifications who were quite brilliant and able to understand and work and contribute at a very high level in a complex, multi-vendor environment, and others who, due to their training could not get past a certain way of looking at a problem. I've also been required by clients to work with a certified PMP even though I have successfully managed many large and complex projects or have a project manager in mind who is much more suited for the job.

      In the end, I wouldn't hire or reject a candidate because of a certification or lack thereof.

      --
      If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
    7. Re:They're worthless. by swb · · Score: 2

      There's good reasons for licensing, like the fact that people can get electrocuted or have their house burn down if wiring is done incorrectly, blow their house up in a natural gas explosion, etc.

      The downside to licensing from an economic perspective is that often gets misused as means to create a cartel and restrict entry to the field. I think it's no coincidence that the licensed trades' unions are still pretty strong in an era of declining union power. I just heard a podcast where economists complained about the over-extension of licensing and certification, even citing NYC licensing fortune tellers (I think the follow-on joke is that if you can predict your license number, you don't have to take the certification exam).

      If IT licensing had been a requirement starting in 1995, I seriously doubt we'd be enjoying nearly the level of overall economic benefits from the Internet that we do now because restrictions on who could do what work. I think you can make a reasonable argument that IT deployment overall benefitted from flexibility in who could do the work. Some firms got burned by incompetent technologists but mostly firms benefitted in terms of flexibility in who could do the work.

      I think some people might argue that security has suffered due to underskilled IT workers, yet ironically, security is one area with a ton of serious certifications yet we still have security problems in organizations which presumably would have incentives to hire certified workers.

  3. Re:Oh look by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Conspiracy theories aside, I don't get why the hell Nerval's Lobster doesn't just have an editor account. I'd really like to know what the relationship there is.

    Obviously he (or she?) works for dice, everything he's ever submitted is a link to dice and the URLs have campaign IDs in them to track the success of their shitposting. Do they treat this as if it was submitted like any other article, requiring it to get upvoted in the firehose, or is it just automatically accepted by whatever editor happens to see it first?

    Either way, pretty unclassy.

  4. You know what else is 'aggravating?' by ScentCone · · Score: 2

    There should be a certification in the use of the English language. Like, maybe a high school diploma or something like that.

    Getting a certification may indeed be annoying, or irritating, or bothersome, or troubling, or tiring ... 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."

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    1. Re:You know what else is 'aggravating?' by ScentCone · · Score: 2

      Aggravating suggests that the frustration builds up over time

      So what you're saying is that you, just like the headline writer, don't actually understand what the word means.

      It seems to me that you decided to complain about something that you were unfamiliar with.

      No, I complained that the word was used incorrectly, and that an editor chose to do so in a headline - the most visible place here in which to do so.

      Here's the primary definition of Aggravate:

      verb (used with object), aggravated, aggravating. 1. to make worse or more severe; intensify, as anything evil, disorderly, or troublesome: to aggravate a grievance; to aggravate an illness.

      People with a working vocabulary have been making the distinction between an irritation and an aggravated irritation for a long time. As in, "The child scratched at the irritating wound, which aggravated the injury."

      The only way in which it makes sense to use "aggravating" in the context of a certification test (as in the OP), is to say something like, "He was in a bad mood from his morning car accident, and the annoyance of having to take a pointless certification test aggravated his already foul disposition."

      The only person unfamiliar with this long-standing use and construction is you. Paid editors running headlines on widely read web sites, though, should be ahead of you on this - and they weren't in this case. Simple as that.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    2. Re:You know what else is 'aggravating?' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

  5. As always, "It Depends" by bobdehnhardt · · Score: 2

    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.

  6. They get your foot in the door... by mlts · · Score: 3, Informative

    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."

  7. Re: Why are we even discussing this again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well that speaks volume on one of the certified programmers that I've hired who didn't even know what an array was.

  8. The *real* reason by alexhs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:The *real* reason by arielCo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Interestingly, the Dice pieces linked close like this:

      Conclusion

      I’m obviously not a fan of formal certification. While many jobs require one or more, lots of tech pros have forged perfectly fine careers without them. Don’t let the complicated world of certificates impede you from pursuing what you want.

      and

      Certifications Only Prove One Thing

      Malik’s supervisor, who worked his way up through the tech-industry ranks for 20 years without ever earning a certification, asked him how a career powered by certifications compares to one built primarily on real-life experience. Malik said anyone can pass a test given enough time to prepare for it; but that being said, certifications allow you to apply and interview for a role from a position of strength.

      The answer of whether or not to certify is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Take Sarin, for instance, who suggests companies look for employee traits that can be encouraged or cultivated beyond what they might learn as part of the test-taking process, even as they encourage employees to earn certifications while on the job.

      What ultimately matters is if the candidate’s opinions about certifications align with those of the hiring manager. But with certification requirements not exactly going away, why not play it safe and take on the extra effort? If you guess wrong and skip getting the certification, you could lose out to the person who passed the test.

      And the non-Dice article is the one that recommends some certifications.

      But of course the actual content shouldn't get in the way of a good rant.

      --
      This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
  9. Re: Why are we even discussing this again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    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!

  10. Re:Oh look by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think Nerval's Lobster doesn't have an editor account because he hasn't yet passed the certification process necessary to be hired as a /. editor.

  11. Certs are for noob's. by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  12. Re:Why are we even discussing this again? by mysidia · · Score: 2

    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.

  13. Re:Why are we even discussing this again? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    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.
  14. Knowledge versus experience by Joey+Vegetables · · Score: 2

    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!
  15. Re:Oh look by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nerval's Lobster is the astroturfing account for Nick Kolakowski, the editor in chief of the godawful SlashBI thing. He's still listed in the FAQ as an editor, even though he's officially moved away from Slashdot and is currently churning out content for Dice's godawful news division. I brought this up before, and was assured that not only does Nick not work directly for Slashdot any more, but that they don't post everything that he submits. Considering the last time he had a story declined was over a year ago, I have my doubts.

    Also, expect to see stories about certifications, what programming languages you should learn, interview skills, and other fluff pieces from now on.

  16. Re:Why are we even discussing this again? by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 2

    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
  17. Business Consulting by hsa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  18. Re:Oh look by arielCo · · Score: 2

    Listen, kiddo, Slashdot is a Dice Holdings property and you don't expect it to publish their owners' content?

    One day I'll want to visit your fantasy world, but in this one Slashdot wouldn't have been sold to Dice if it was profitable.

    --
    This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
  19. Re:Why are we even discussing this again? by Anon-Admin · · Score: 2

    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.

  20. Why 20+ years experience might not matter by walterbyrd · · Score: 2

    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.

  21. I think that we can all agree on two facts... by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  22. Re:Mod parent up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

  23. Re:Why are we even discussing this again? by Xest · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  24. Re:Oh look by Shoten · · Score: 2

    Listen, kiddo, Slashdot is a Dice Holdings property and you don't expect it to publish their owners' content?

    One day I'll want to visit your fantasy world, but in this one Slashdot wouldn't have been sold to Dice if it was profitable.

    Actually, a lack of profitability isn't what causes a company to get bought. Quite the opposite; companies that have few tangible assets and are not profitable almost never get bought. What causes a company to get acquired is profitability along with growth or synergy potential (don't blame me for using that phrase; it's what gets bandied about) as well as a cost of acquisition that makes it seem worthwhile. So in this case, I would think the synergy potential was the main factor (being able to stump for Dice's other operations or their worldview in general) along with a reasonable cost of purchase. Nobody wants to buy a failing business unless they want some specific asset that they own, or the sum of their tangible (aka "resellable") assets is worth more than the cost of buying the whole company in the first place.

    --

    For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
  25. Certifications increase your market value by kronix2 · · Score: 2

    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.