Name any prominent software technology, and you'll find a certification program for that technology. For a fee, of course.
I am a developer. I have been my entire life. I have exactly zero degrees and certifications.
I have noticed, at least from my travels, that the bigger the education, the smaller the usefulness. This is not always true, but often is. I do not know how many people I have worked with who were completely useless despite doctorates and masters degrees. On the other hand, I have worked with many briliant self taught programmers.
I think I know why. Some people say âcomputers pays good, but I donât understand them. I should go to school.â These are also the people who do not have PCâs at home, and would never consider programming âfor fun.â There are also others who truly understan them, and think in the way necessary (and it is a different way of thinking than the general public) and write software out of a love for it, and not just because they think that it will make a nice fat paycheck.
All certificates and diplomas are leaky abstractions.
You left out my favorite one, the PMP â(Project Management Professional)â! This one means that you can make a Gantt chart in Microsoft Project, and that you have all of the skills necessary to expect that your projects will not fail, and to inform your subordinates that the project is âreally important beacuse âŚâ in order to motivate them when your schedule slips.
Of course, itâs important not to mix up certain industry designations with certifications (which Iâm sure many are wont to do). For example, a Microsoft SQL Server MVP pretty much has the cred to be on a SQL Server project of mine any day. Anyone else know of/believe in any âinstant credibilityâ designations?
I myself give designations professionally, though I donât supply my awardees with certificates. The latest one I have awarded is that of FSO (Fork Spoon Operator) for professional conduct under and below the call of duty.
Perhaps I should not respond to blogs after 4 beers.
Certifications have to be judged with a grain of salt.
I was working on the PMI (Project Management Institute) certification in the mid 90âs. Although PMI realized at that time that their Quality Management concept was outdated, certification was still performed against the outdated âBody Of Knowledgeâ.
What does the certificate say about the individual that passed during that time?
And yes - I did not get the certification (what does that say about me?).
Iâm studying right now for the CISSP that Iâm sitting for on Saturday. Why? Itâs a simple matter of not getting âlost in the shuffleâ as DeMarco put it. Will it help me with my job? Judging by the example questions in the book, thatâs a resounding no. Will it help the company I work for get more contracts approved based on the collective bios in the proposal? Maybe.
To me, a certificationâs worth is directly related to how itâs administered. I have an RHCE, and Iâm proud of that. It was a full day of real, actual, troubleshooting and configuration. Over 50% of the people in the room didnât belong there, and they didnât even finish after 6 hours. You know it was challenging. I canât say that for any of my Microsoft exams.
A good rule of thumb is:
If you come across a cert that you havenât heard of in an interview, ask the candidate how they earned it. Their response will tell you all you need to know about its credibility.
I think that just saying âcertifications are worthlessâ is a bit too broad of a generalization. Speaking as someone who has a ColdFusion Advanced certification, an A+ certification, and is working on my CCNA, I have to agree with Hartmut about taking them with a grain of salt.
The CF cert is a pretty good indicator of competency in CF. Sure, it says nothing about coding style or product lifecycle management abilities. But, if Iâm hiring someone to do some maintenance on existing CF code, then a CF cert goes a long way towards making me feel comfortable. Obviously, if I need a rockstar developer, Iâm going to look for skills far beyond just having a cert.
Conversely, having an A+ would not have any effect whatsoever on my decision to hire someone. Iâve got the cert. I know itâs completely memorization with no practical knowledge.
As for the CCNA, it would definitely influence my hiring decision. That is a tough cert to get, and by the end of it you know your stuff. Far too many web programmers donât truly understand how the web works, so when I see one with a CCNA, I know they arenât going to bug me every time their network card hangs. Sure, a CCNA isnât meant for web programming, but there are certain skills that you canât be missing if you have a CCNA, and they are all at least applicable to web programming. (Even the routing stuff.)
So ⌠yeah. They have their place. But theyâre not âGet Out Of Interview Freeâ cards, either.
Well, it depends on heavily a certification is weighed against other credentials. Does it mean more to have a 4 year comp-sci degree with a decade of real engineering experience or a certification and a few years experience? Iâd pick the degree any day over the certification.
I see the point of tech specific certifications (ala SQL Server), but would still choose the degree.
Iâm not knocking self-taught programmers, itâs just that I (from a tech managerâs point of view) weigh the degree + experience heavier than just experience.
Jeff,
what the hell is idempotent, and why should I care? do you agree with the differences between a POST and GET?
a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/methods.html"http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/methods.html/a
BTW⌠wish I had your office.
At my first company, we had a drive to get our developers certificatied not because we felt they would ensure our developers were good, but in order to get Microsoft Gold Partner status in the hope it would drive us more business. It really didnât work.
I think one of the easiest ways to determine the credibility of someoneâs certification is how much theyâre publicizing it.
Iâve seen it in e-mail addresses, âfromâ fields, signatures, Messenger display names, and anywhere else someone identifies them self.
Just based on personal experience, if I encounter someoneâs name appearing as âDavid MCSEâ my expectations are lowered immediately. The person in question may know whatâs in the book, but beyond that they seem clueless and unable (or unwilling) to even do simple Google searches to assist themselves. A quick search through the newsgroups for MCSE or similar monikers will quickly validate this. However, just to clarify, I do know that there are some exceptions and some great MCSEs out there.
All of this reminds me a lot of the so-called âexpertsâ and âanalystsâ who end up on news broadcasts giving their advice on the latest âvirusâ or other problem. The information is either completely wrong or dumbed down so much it is useless. I of course am aware of their error because this is my industry and my passion â but other topics where I am not such an expert in I have to take the word of other âexpertsâ, and in turn I question their credibility now too.
The scary thing about certifications is that some companies completely ignore experience instead of certificates.
When I first graduate from college, I had a tought time getting work so I applied at Geek Squad. I figured I spent 5 semesters as a computer/electrical engineer I was more than qualified. The manager at Best Buy looked at my resume and said âIâm sorry but youâre just not qualified. You need to be A+ certfied.â
Apparently programming robots and building my own USB devices was easier than replacing a video card or installing Windows.
As someone who is currently studing the for SQL server (2005) exam. Iâll throw in my two cents.
I work day to day as with Oracle and writing apps to talk to the DB. Iâm wanting to expand my area of knowledge into sql server. I find the cert provides a cheap and easy curriculum to follow. (That being said Iâm disgusted that the 1st level SQL server has barely any transact sql in it). If I follow the study material to learn for myself why not get the baubble to hang on the wall? Having loads of Oracle experience and a cert in hand may convince my next employer that I at lease wonât drop a table by accident.
The key to the cert is the person holding the cert. If they quit their dish-washing job, got a cert from a 3 week bootcamp and now think that they now know everything about computers âCuz I got my A+â then itâs a waste of paper.
I interview so many people whose resumes say âMS Certifiedâ, who even have logos on their resumes, and know so little. And I mean basic questions I have come to distrust people who flaunt them.
Iâve held down various technical jobs for the last decade and the only certification to my name is a GED from Missouri. Iâm 26, Iâve been working in technology since I was 16, and I got my GED at 21. That means I spent half my career working without so much as a high-school diploma. Iâm completely self-taught, and Iâve gotten to where I am today through my own knowledge.
That said, my thoughts are pretty concrete: college degrees are completely useless if youâre not going into a field that requires some level of timeless knowledge: ie - engineering, C++ programming and pirating. Those have all pretty much remained the same since they were formed from the original primordial ooze.
Certifications are mostly useless. Technology changes too quickly for any one technology to really reign supreme long enough to need to be certified. If anything, I think certifications on understanding of principles would be far more useful. Who would you rather hire:
Guy A, who has a certification for Networking Using Specific Companyâs Products
or
Guy B, who has a certification for Network Operations, Management and Administration, Those Principles That Are Key to ALL Networks.
I may be biased, because its my opinion, but Iâd rather hire guy B. Yeah, he may have to take some time to learn my particular network, but what happens if I hire guy A and what I have isnât what he knows, and isnât close enough to quickly compensate? Iâm taking a chance that heâs bright enough to segue into my system without completely taking me down and out.
Certifications merely prove that you know one specialized thing. Being able to prove you know a lot of specialized things really isnât the same as being able to prove you grok the underlying concept and can then learn any implementation.
This topic hits home with as all but two developers (including me) at my company are studying for microsoft certification. the problem i have with certs, is the same problem i have with standardized testing, your studying for a test. itâs all about memorization. most of the stuff your tested over, in asp.net at least, is stuff you will never use. And if you do use it, then youâll more than likely find your answer from google not your certification.
I actually certified myself as a RHCE (red hat certified engineer)AFTER I got my job. It was a bonus to the education I was offered from my company.
I should also mention that the test for my certification was a practical one with lots of troubleshooting and I learned a lot studying for it and by doing the test.
But I agree with you all, experience beats certifications.
I tried to hire an accountant for my companyâs finances. For some reason, I couldnât find any that didnât have certification.
I tried to hire an engineer to build me a bridge. For some reason, I couldnât find any that didnât have certification.
I tried to go to a doctor to get a checkup. For some reason, I couldnât find any that didnât have certification.
Yes, IT absolutely needs certifications. A governing body needs to hand out those certifications. The tests need to be hard.
I wouldnât trust my car to an uncertified mechanic. Why the hell should I trust my companyâs application to some IT d00d that claims he knows what theyâre doing?
Iâm tired of working with morons in the IT industry. Iâm tired of reading blog article after blog article about how 99% or whatever of IT projects fail. Iâm tired of hacks snaggling themselves into the IT industry from wherever just so that they can get a higher salary.
When I interview someone, I have to ask basic questions such as âWhatâs HTML?â. Most interviewees fail that question. Thatâs what the IT industry is riddled with. Posers. People who hang a shingle for business. How do I tell the good from the bad?
I agree, having certifications alone is worthless. It doesnât hurt having certifications, though, if only to get past the HR part of the hiring stage.
Once you have an interview with people who actually know what theyâre doing, then you show them examples.
I set little or no store by any sort of certification. Interviewing experience leads me to conclude that there is little or no correlation between candidates having a certification in such-and-such a technology and actually having the first idea about that technology when asked technical questions about it. The fact that the exams tend to be (a) multiple-choice and (b) as much focussed on tools (IDEs etc) than the actual concepts are also strong reasons to be skeptical.
Itâs real-world experience and technical nous you want, things that canât be vouchsafed by a piece of (electronic) paper.