Re: Getting Certified

[Dave Ihnat <ignatz dminet com>]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 05:59:49PM -0400, Robert Adkins wrote:
> There are a great deal of good certs out there and plenty of
> places to start.

Just another $0.02, from Chicago.  I'm a consultant--Bachelor's in CS in
1977, honest job for 1 year after, then consulting continuously except for
4-5 years playing VP at a couple of companies.  I've had to interview,
interviewed for hiring, etc.--just about everything in 25 years.  (Oh,
and Unix at Bell Labs starting in '80, teaching internals there after
'81, and Linux as well from around '94 or so.)  Just so you know where
I'm coming from.

Certs--and degrees--are shortcuts to experience.  They *can* fill in areas
you don't get to fill through experience, since you rarely get the chance
to do *everything* related to a topic while fighting off the alligators.
Unfortunately, many, if not most, vendor certs are self-serving--they
don't tell about the warts, only the Corporate Line.  Microsoft certs
are notorious for this; Cisco certs are usually pretty decent.  You pays
your money and takes your chances.

Unfortunately, after the last couple of years, all certs--even the better
ones--are devalued.  Why?  Because there are a LOT of people with little
or no experience who were nevertheless flying high during the .com,
found themselves with a lot of time on their hands after it became
the .bomb--so they are taking certs.  A lot of them.  Good, and bad.

Our recruiters have been seeing more and more people with certs, but no
experience to back 'em up.  And even a very good certification, with no
experience, loses to someone with a lot of experience and the ability to
convey that experience.

Now, the large companies are doing a lot more "managed procurement"--an
evil process that usually prevents line managers from directly
interviewing applicants.  Rather, they have to submit requisitions
("reqs") to the company managing procurement, which then (usually) mangles
the job requirements, but in any case does the first triage of resume
submissions based on a keyword search.  SO, to get through the sieve, you
have to have very specific--sometimes stupidly so--experience in your
resume, and the certs will trigger some of these keyword searches.

But if, and when, you actually get to the interview phase with the REAL
managers who'll be using you, there is a LOT of skepticism about these
certs if there's nothing else real behind them.

(This whole process has gotten nastily skewed in the last 2 years--I don't
want to get into it here, but in short form, we--all in the industry,
both employees and employers--are going to be paying for the attitudes
of too many IT personnel who pushed for all it was worth during the .com
years, and now too many of the employers who are cheerfully screwing
the employees and candidates today because they can.  Trust, respect,
and professional courtesy between employee and employer are going to
take years to recover, if they ever do...)
-- 
	Dave Ihnat
	ignatz dminet com