IT Certification Less Important Now? 459
lpq writes "IT certifications, popular after the dot-com bust, seem to be hurting careers now according to this article in the current Eweek.com issue. Guess employers are getting hip to the idea that those who don't have experience or can't "do", get certified..."
slashdot summary is just plain wrong (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing in the article stating IT certifications are hurting careers. To summarize the real article:
I personally think certification is bullhockey, but I don't necessarily hold that someone has a certification against them. Doing so (subtracting value for certification) would be akin to disrespecting someone for having a college degree, and that doesn't make sense.
So, if you have certs, it isn't going to hurt you. What will hurt you is not having skills companies are looking for (unfortunately, the article is really a little thin on what those skills are. The article does list some very broad categories that are "growing" (whatever that means): Applications Development/Programming Languages, Project Management, Training, Webmaster and Security).
Bottom line, as it probably should be, you're going to get evaluated and paid for performance, not pieces of paper.
Someone tell this to HR. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: IT Certs (Score:2, Informative)
It is absolutely disgusting to say the least that in some areas qualified people are turned down for jobs because they lack a piece of paper
I sold my soul to Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Within six months, I was our company's first SQL Server admin. A year after that, I was the sole developer on the newly formed Web Services team. Long-term, the certifications were a very wise investment.
Still, the bottom-line is that people were most impressed by my performance. Being able to study and pass ten different tests probably reflects on my sometimes insane degree of focus, rather than full comprehension. I barely passed my NT certification and only now fully understand the wacky security model.
A+ certification looks bad, imo.. (Score:4, Informative)
Then I looked at the requirements.. It's a joke. To be certified in A+, you're basically acting like the sole set of computing solutions is the Windows platform. The example tests had questions that seem to attempt to lock you into the idea that only Microsoft products exist and all computer hardware is used to run Microsoft software. So, I decided not to waste my money to get certified.
It looks to me that if someone is willing to waste their time to get A+, the lowliest of certifications, that they probably are not worth much for their time. I think about 80% of the average Slashdot readers could pass the A+ exam no problem just by taking the exam. So, imo, the certification doesn't say much other than you waste your time.
I mean.. if someone put 'passed driver's license test' on his resume, wouldn't that maybe make you think he was 'special?' A+ is the 'special' persons' computer certification. It says, 'even though Bob doesn't look like he can function like a normal Internet user, he actually can because he's A+ certified.'
Re:write on your resume (Score:5, Informative)
My current position as a *nix SysAdmin required that I take a long written (as in - paper and pencil) test on some rather complex questions involving Solaris, BSD, and Linux (e.g. - "write a script that will cancel all mail messages in a courier queue that is more than X days old and report/mail the results to all current admins"). Once I was hired, I discovered that most other people who wanted the job and wrote "UNIX" in their resumes would apparently come up against a brick wall rather hard if they didn't have the experience behind the ink.
But then, you can find out in five minutes at a shell prompt whether or not someone really knows *nix, as opposed to a GUI environment where a candidate can guess-and-click their way to success.
Certs and degrees (Score:1, Informative)
Guess employers are getting hip to the idea that those who don't' have experience or can't "do", get certified..."
Me, I would take a cup of ambition before certs as the I/T - Tech business is one where you will continue to learn some 30 - 40 years. Part of the job is to be able to contiunally learn and then being able to use what you learn. And companies can't afford to totally train a person up, the person wanting/needing this training needs to get with it and drive most of it from $50 books. And then practice it. An often undervalued trait when being interviewed.
As tech info and Mom's home made cookies have one thing in common, they go stale fast. They may even type cast you which can prevent you from moving forward. "Hey, we can't take our only CNE and move them to Window's" ring a bell? Could happen to a MSCE doing a UNIX/Linux cert.
Another hint, don't waste your neurons on fads like NET. NET2 and NEW NET and what comes next. Study the core stuff like RPC and sockets. Stick to the basics and the standards. I learned C 25 years ago now and still use it today. Moving to C++ was easy as it was to Java. I didn't go through too many fads and learned this early with Basic/Pascal/Prolog. Pick your language carefully as it takes time to become "proficient" and "professional".
So the above merits some truth.
Re:slashdot summary is just plain wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention, MCDST is brand new. It's the like easy-cheezy Microsoft cert. The consulting place I used to work wanted me to get a cert every year, but they didn't care which one, and they paid... so... whatever.
The Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician cert is exactly that. It's what you'd want the kid behind the counter at the local pee-cee store to have before he works on your next door neighbor's computer. Like, how Windows XP Home works; how email works; how Office works. That stuff.
The bonus to the MCDST is that if you're going for your MCSA (refresher: MCP -> MCSA -> MCSE, in order of knowledge and number of tests), you can substitute the Desktop Cert (which is 2 tests) for the "elective" test. The MCSA is Windows XP Pro, Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2003 Server Network Infrastructure, and an elective. The 2 Desktop tests are easier than the options you're given for electives (SUS Server, etc).
And yes, an MCSA / MCSE is still worth something. People say you can just glance at a book and pass it, but the thing takes 9 tests, some of which are so anal that you do actually have to study, and it helps to have seen it in practice. How many people do you actually know with an up to date MCSE? I know 1. I'm sure on slashdot a lot of people actually have one, or work with a lot of people that have one, but when someone says "Oh, MCSE is a breeze, 10 minutes of studying and I could take it", take them up on it, offer to pay the $100 if they can pass "Exam 70-294: Planning, Implementing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Infrastructure" or "Exam 70-285: Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003". I bet you 95 out of 100 can't do it without studying.
On the other hand, I am glad I'm back to being a Linux admin, where things make sense.
~W
Re:slashdot summary is just plain wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Skills (Score:3, Informative)
Re:write on your resume (Score:3, Informative)
to an extent; but what if someone spent 5 years as a sendmail admin, and 4 years after that as a postfix admin? Sure, someone who spent 3 months working with courier might know exactly where the mail queue is off the top of their head, and how to use courier commands to purge it, etc, but I'd rather have the person who "knows more about mail".
That question isn't testing "knowledge of running a mail server", it's testing "Knowledge of specific courier things, and scripting prowess".
Spelling flame (Score:1, Informative)
Ahem,
Have you ever head of a fellow called Stephen Bourne [wikipedia.org]? There's a thing called the "Bourne shell" named after him.
Re:write on your resume (Score:3, Informative)
Bash now comes with Solaris. Not just 10, but recent disk sets of 8 include it as well.
Re:write on your resume (Score:2, Informative)
doing awk, cut inside a perl program is not the best thing to do, even when doing things quick and dirty.
Your script has a major flaw. It assumes that the home of user $user is "/home/$user" and this is not always so. My root user has home
proper way to get the homes would be:
while(my @u = getpwent){
my ($user, $id, $home) = @u[0,1,7];
if($id>=1000){
#do something
}
}
This has the huge advantage of not using bash, awk, cut to get the usernames
gets the right home directory
less memory intensive since if you had a machine with lots of users you'd be reading all of the data into memory and this one processes it one at a time.
Works with NIS (or should at least, not 100% sure)
Have a look for
perldoc -f getpwent
man getpwent
Of course in practice you would only iterate through some users of a defined group.
A little less trivial but easily doable.