You Are Certified?! - WHY!?

noph34r said:

Education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

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Couldn't agree more.

That doesn't mean I'm against certifications. Whatever you need to do to gain the knowledge, not just another piece of paper.

ForeverNever said:

Couldn't agree more.

That doesn't mean I'm against certifications. Whatever you need to do to gain the knowledge, not just another piece of paper.

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I'm not against certifications too. But the world is full of failed academics.
My Math BS has helped me to be more open minded, but my hunger to learn makes me money.
The best C/C++ coders I know (God coders) haven't even completed college.

I appreciate the true level of intellectualism this thread is inspiring.

Since we are all people who think outside the box, I'm not surprised I've seen a lot of posts that support certification as "just a piece of paper" as really, that's what they are.

On the same token, isn't it what that piece of paper represents to those whom perceive it valuable that counts?

The consensus, it seems, is that Certification is valuable, but it's not the be all end all cure for unemployment.

An employable person must also exemplify these characteristics:

• Have a quick draw.
• Balance the fun and professional personality.
• Be a problem solver.
• Hunger to learn & grow.

Honesty/integrity can't be certified. Recommendations are more important than certification to me

I also hear google is rolling out with seo/ppc certs. That should make things interesting.

smack said:

yeah, i have. i got all the transcender prep materials about a year ago and ran through all the practice tests and study materials. i was thinking of getting a few of the certs until i saw the price of the exams.

- edit - i can't speak for the networking or other exams, but the ones for developers left me rather under whelmed.

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Props to doing your homework and not just being another BHW sheep. The Transcender questions are pretty close to the exam questions (Not exactly the same but same sort of questions). I agree if you had someone come in who had JUST done the exam, but not a "course" related to the exam, then yeah that "developer" probably wouldnt be up the task.

Your kind of right in a way, that the qualification itself doesnt speak much volume. I think its more how you got it. I go to a private computer training academy kinda thing, and they teach MCSA, MCTS etc all the usual ones. And definitely after i went for jobs to do with server administration, the school itself held a good rep. And while i held MCSA, they knew that people coming from that particular school actually knew their stuff, not just sat through a couple of practice exams and then passed.

A while back i was trying to get a job in the network administration field, and it was really tough going. People only wanted University graduates (Of which im not). And for a while there i thought, this is BS, these guys dont know shit about networks.

But its more then that i think, 4 years of university proves that you can stick with a job more then a year, It shows that you have probably built up a personality by now and a good circle of friends, probably good team skills. University more then anything, builds up your social skills. And definitely when ive been in jobs with people who are self taught etc, they are somewhat anti social, and not used to being part of the team.

I understand this perspecitve, but you must agree that in those tests you will never find a real life situation like many of us encountered on the job:

"There is a 0-day exploit on the loose and MS is avoiding to release the patch. What should you do?"

or

"Your developers invested a substantial amount of time to develop VBA macros, and with new Office this scripting environment is not supported. What should you do to avoid future problems like this one?"

pyronaut said:

Not busting your balls here, but have you sat the exams? MCSE + MCSA are nothing like memorizing definitions. For starters EVERY question within the MCSA exam is case study, So basically something like :

"You work for a microsoft.com, they have 100 workstations running XP, and 50 running windows 2000, they have a DHCP server located on such and such subnet, and then ...."

Etc. They are nothing like "Tell me what a DHCP server is" or "What does installing from PXE mean". They are really deep and thorough questions, and you most certainly have to know your stuff.

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Youre all talking about exception here, sure there are people you know who is smarter that other people you may know without certificate.

But certificate does certify that somoeone has some level of knowledge.

9 out of 10 if youre talkin about say administering a linux server, people whose been certified to administer linux server will know shit load more that people whose not.

And dont confuse certification with creativity or personality, you dont get certificate for that

dude I think certification is good as far as you have knowledge... it is just an entry pass for big companies here in India but afterward you must be knowledgeable person in your domain.

and personally I know several ppls that don't hold any certificates but they have in-depth knowledge and they are with big companies even in USA..

A chartership in engineering is pretty valuable. This is a professional qualification (5

years experience and a proven track record of solving complex engineering problems) and

its the stuff nerds are made from. All those boys at Rolls Royce, NASA, Boeing and

Lockheed probably all have CEng's. So I guess a certification like a CEng sorts the men from the boys!

pyronaut said:

Props to doing your homework and not just being another BHW sheep. The Transcender questions are pretty close to the exam questions (Not exactly the same but same sort of questions). I agree if you had someone come in who had JUST done the exam, but not a "course" related to the exam, then yeah that "developer" probably wouldnt be up the task.

Your kind of right in a way, that the qualification itself doesnt speak much volume. I think its more how you got it. I go to a private computer training academy kinda thing, and they teach MCSA, MCTS etc all the usual ones. And definitely after i went for jobs to do with server administration, the school itself held a good rep. And while i held MCSA, they knew that people coming from that particular school actually knew their stuff, not just sat through a couple of practice exams and then passed.

A while back i was trying to get a job in the network administration field, and it was really tough going. People only wanted University graduates (Of which im not). And for a while there i thought, this is BS, these guys dont know shit about networks.

But its more then that i think, 4 years of university proves that you can stick with a job more then a year, It shows that you have probably built up a personality by now and a good circle of friends, probably good team skills. University more then anything, builds up your social skills. And definitely when ive been in jobs with people who are self taught etc, they are somewhat anti social, and not used to being part of the team.

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this is a bit of a touchy subject for me in two ways.

the first being that since i am completely self educated i am fiercely proud of what i have taught myself through research and trial & error.

the flip side to that is in many ways i am embarrassed that i never got a piece of paper to confirm it. at the time school was just out of my price range to complete and i kept with the old "i'll go back next year..." until next year never came. ha.

so from my personal experiences i always cast a rather critical eye on individuals with a stack of paper behind them.

i have nothing against those who complete schooling for IT related things, but i do expect them in many ways to be able to come in and school me on all levels, if they fail to do that then i admit i can judge them harshly for it.

this ties in to one of my tenants of interviewing as well. no matter what your knowledge level or what job you are applying for, if you tell me "i don't know, but i can sure as hell find out" that is a perfectly acceptable answer. in fact i prefer that because it shows that you are aware of a learning issue but also cognizant of how to correct it.

i guess all this rambling to say that the paper can help get you the interview, but if i'm on the other side of the interview table your attitude, drive to learn, and ability to think on your feet will get you the job.

- edit - this applies strictly to IT. i don't want a self taught doctor trying to remove my appendix, nor would i want a self taught architect attempting to build me an office building. double standard? perhaps, but i never said i wasn't a hypocrite.

Egyptian builders didn't have any certificate and they still built buildings that lasted for thousands of years.

I read in National Geographic, while flying on the plane, that in Iraq ordinary medics preformed some surgical procedures and not doctors.

I don't think that in both stated cases customers had time to wait for those with certificates

smack said:

- edit - this applies strictly to IT. i don't want a self taught doctor trying to remove my appendix, nor would i want a self taught architect attempting to build me an office building. double standard? perhaps, but i never said i wasn't a hypocrite.

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minute80 said:

Egyptian builders didn't have any certificate and they still built buildings that lasted for thousands of years.

I read in National Geographic, while flying on the plane, that in Iraq ordinary medics preformed some surgical procedures and not doctors.

I don't think that in both stated cases customers had time to wait for those with certificates

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haha. touche.

dire emergencies not withstanding, there are some professions where schooling and certifications are mandatory. however with the nature of IT and the wealth of knowledge available in books and on the interblagz curiosity and experimentation will usually fill in your knowledge nicely.

minute80 said:

I understand this perspecitve, but you must agree that in those tests you will never find a real life situation like many of us encountered on the job:

"There is a 0-day exploit on the loose and MS is avoiding to release the patch. What should you do?"

or

"Your developers invested a substantial amount of time to develop VBA macros, and with new Office this scripting environment is not supported. What should you do to avoid future problems like this one?"

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Well in 40 - 50 questions, you can never go over all the one offs. Personally i think the MCSA qualification teaches a great deal for such a broad topic. A qualification can never teach you logic thats for sure.

Last night i actually went through the Transcender tests again to take a look for MCTS. I personally think they are waaayyy to specific. The thing with the "Development" industry, is once you have some basics. You can just read the rest on MSDN or wherever and go from there. Maybe i think too much in the theoretical sense, but i believe someone should know the basis for say, inheritance, know why we use it, when its used in the .net framework etc. Same for something like delegates, so many people use delegates but dont have a clear idea of what they are and their purpose in programming.

So maybe im retracting my answer of needing the qualification, and turning towards more "You need to have done any course for that qualification". Doing the full Microsoft Course books does teach you all these things, but the exam doesnt test for it.

blackma said:

A chartership in engineering is pretty valuable. This is a professional qualification (5

years experience and a proven track record of solving complex engineering problems) and

its the stuff nerds are made from. All those boys at Rolls Royce, NASA, Boeing and

Lockheed probably all have CEng's. So I guess a certification like a CEng sorts the men from the boys!

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For some very specialized categories certification is a must. Medics, Surgeons, Aerospatial Engineers, Architects......it's impossible to be self-educated.