I understand the basic reasoning behind certification, but anyone can lie about their qualifications or experience -- you have to be prepared for it in any interview as well, and such lies shouldn't fool a decent Tech. In fact some Employment Agency staff are rumoured to recommend you do so on your CV just to get the interview.
And I have no doubt that I've far more to learn than I'm ever going to be able to in this life-time, but I think the thing that stings the most is the idea that the certification means much more than 'Yes, I swallowed the book(s), and managed to understand and remember enough to pass'. The important part is the *learning* and the quality of it, and then the application it, which implies solidifying the knowledge => experience.
Unfortunately, the only way you can determine the quality of knowledge is by checking it yourself. Expecting certification to short-circuit this check is simply foolish. I think many employers are too happy to skip through the truly difficult but absolutely vital interview process, instead of learning how to do it properly.
However, it seems to me that many years of experience implies a certain strength of interest that follows through to a deeper understanding, something that a 4-week cram/4-hour exam can't replace.
And the nice thing about experience is it's a great deal more difficult to fake convincingly, at least in a technical interview, as the person should be able to give examples from their own life, explain the choices they made, etc.
But anyway, I think the real trick is to understand that certification is nowhere near the silver-bullet or magic-wand that employers wish it was; just another tool in the arsenal that may or may not be appropriate to the job in hand. And whether it's liked or not, it still probably has as much chance of getting you the job as not.
And as to why I haven't certified myself -- besides a great lack of faith in certifications of most kinds? Time is never in plentiful enough supply currently (and latterly) and I really don't think I have anywhere near good enough a memory (nor nearly enough arrogance) to walk in and do the exam without studying the books and HowTos all over again -- though I have got an old LPI Cram-Exam book somewhere as I was curious about what they thought a Certifiable Linux Person should know about.
"Time" is probably the same excuse that many employers would give, and perhaps neither excuse is good enough.
NB: I knew of someone who got their Novell CNA while making his living as a Taxi driver... Probably has his CNE by now... He may be truly fantastic at it, but I believe he'd never owned a computer, and still didn't while he was studying...
I'm personally pretty sick of 'certification'. After using Linux for about 7-8 years -- blood, sweat and tears, sometimes -- it annoys me that unless I have an RHCE or LPI cert, the hard-earned experience counts for almost nothing.
In one of my former jobs in NZ, whenever we interviewed Tertiary Education graduates, they would automatically lose (several) marks for having a Computer Science (etc) degree, because we knew it would be about 6-12 months re-training before they'd learnt to do the job in a practical, useful way, as opposed to the 'ideal world' theoretical way. The only benefit I saw in most training was to fill-in gaps in your knowledge, and link it all together. The rest was up to you in the first place.
In the UK, Computer Science degrees are highly valued by HR people, but thanfully I think the blinkers are coming off, and HR is starting to understand the value of experience above book-learning.
I'm a generalist. I've been a Microsoftie, Netware Engineer, Unix and Linux specialist, LDAP/NDS guy, I've worked hard on email, I program in Perl and Ruby, a little in C, C++, Java, adminstered the Backup Tapes, written an SMS Server system... There's no way I know everything there is to know about computers, and there's no way I could do any job going, but I'm always keen to learn more, and I'm always prepared to give my best shot. The trick seems to be that every employer wants someone who mostly fits the bill, but might easily fill in a few gaps for other jobs, so they don't need to hire/train someone else -- money, money, money. And it's a big bonus if you get to try new stuff. On top of this, it seems training and experience has become second to strong people skills. The CV might get you the interview, but the interview will get you the job, and your social skills will help also you progress. There are lots of people out there with skills which will fit any job, more or less -- only experience in the specific job will help you fit better -- but there seem to be fewer people who are prepared to put the social/psychological effort into the people they work with and for. I know I'm not explaining myself all that wonderfully, but I do know that these skills have benefitted me at least as much as my knowledge and abilities in computers, and they seem to be neglected more often than not. And I don't mean the rubbish 'team-building' courses. They always seem to be more destructive than constructive, in my experience, unless the team forced to go on them already has some sort of good dynamic to build on.
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I understand the basic reasoning behind certification, but anyone can lie about their qualifications or experience -- you have to be prepared for it in any interview as well, and such lies shouldn't fool a decent Tech. In fact some Employment Agency staff are rumoured to recommend you do so on your CV just to get the interview.
And I have no doubt that I've far more to learn than I'm ever going to be able to in this life-time, but I think the thing that stings the most is the idea that the certification means much more than 'Yes, I swallowed the book(s), and managed to understand and remember enough to pass'. The important part is the *learning* and the quality of it, and then the application it, which implies solidifying the knowledge => experience.
Unfortunately, the only way you can determine the quality of knowledge is by checking it yourself. Expecting certification to short-circuit this check is simply foolish.
I think many employers are too happy to skip through the truly difficult but absolutely vital interview process, instead of learning how to do it properly.
However, it seems to me that many years of experience implies a certain strength of interest that follows through to a deeper understanding, something that a 4-week cram/4-hour exam can't replace.
And the nice thing about experience is it's a great deal more difficult to fake convincingly, at least in a technical interview, as the person should be able to give examples from their own life, explain the choices they made, etc.
But anyway, I think the real trick is to understand that certification is nowhere near the silver-bullet or magic-wand that employers wish it was; just another tool in the arsenal that may or may not be appropriate to the job in hand. And whether it's liked or not, it still probably has as much chance of getting you the job as not.
And as to why I haven't certified myself -- besides a great lack of faith in certifications of most kinds?
Time is never in plentiful enough supply currently (and latterly) and I really don't think I have anywhere near good enough a memory (nor nearly enough arrogance) to walk in and do the exam without studying the books and HowTos all over again -- though I have got an old LPI Cram-Exam book somewhere as I was curious about what they thought a Certifiable Linux Person should know about.
"Time" is probably the same excuse that many employers would give, and perhaps neither excuse is good enough.
NB: I knew of someone who got their Novell CNA while making his living as a Taxi driver... Probably has his CNE by now... He may be truly fantastic at it, but I believe he'd never owned a computer, and still didn't while he was studying...
I'm personally pretty sick of 'certification'. After using Linux for about 7-8 years -- blood, sweat and tears, sometimes -- it annoys me that unless I have an RHCE or LPI cert, the hard-earned experience counts for almost nothing.
In one of my former jobs in NZ, whenever we interviewed Tertiary Education graduates, they would automatically lose (several) marks for having a Computer Science (etc) degree, because we knew it would be about 6-12 months re-training before they'd learnt to do the job in a practical, useful way, as opposed to the 'ideal world' theoretical way. The only benefit I saw in most training was to fill-in gaps in your knowledge, and link it all together. The rest was up to you in the first place.
In the UK, Computer Science degrees are highly valued by HR people, but thanfully I think the blinkers are coming off, and HR is starting to understand the value of experience above book-learning.
I'm a generalist. I've been a Microsoftie, Netware Engineer, Unix and Linux specialist, LDAP/NDS guy, I've worked hard on email, I program in Perl and Ruby, a little in C, C++, Java, adminstered the Backup Tapes, written an SMS Server system... There's no way I know everything there is to know about computers, and there's no way I could do any job going, but I'm always keen to learn more, and I'm always prepared to give my best shot. The trick seems to be that every employer wants someone who mostly fits the bill, but might easily fill in a few gaps for other jobs, so they don't need to hire/train someone else -- money, money, money. And it's a big bonus if you get to try new stuff.
On top of this, it seems training and experience has become second to strong people skills. The CV might get you the interview, but the interview will get you the job, and your social skills will help also you progress. There are lots of people out there with skills which will fit any job, more or less -- only experience in the specific job will help you fit better -- but there seem to be fewer people who are prepared to put the social/psychological effort into the people they work with and for.
I know I'm not explaining myself all that wonderfully, but I do know that these skills have benefitted me at least as much as my knowledge and abilities in computers, and they seem to be neglected more often than not. And I don't mean the rubbish 'team-building' courses. They always seem to be more destructive than constructive, in my experience, unless the team forced to go on them already has some sort of good dynamic to build on.