The IT Certs That No Longer Pay Extra 267
snydeq writes "Overall employment in tech is improving, but the certs you could once count on for a job or extra pay are losing their value, InfoWorld reports. 'Businesses no longer value what are increasingly considered standard skills, and instead are putting their money both into a new set of emerging specialties and into hybrid technology/business roles.'"
Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless (Score:4, Informative)
Both require hands-on lab demonstrations of skill. (Is RedHat doing that now, too?)
Back when I got my RHCT they certainly required it, and I cannot imagine that they stopped.
Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.redhat.com/training/certifications/rhce/ [redhat.com]
http://www.redhat.com/training/certifications/expertise/ [redhat.com]
Re:Hybrid Programmer-BusinessAnalyst Roles (Score:5, Informative)
Just like how business graduates leveraged fast talking with dick wagging! And look at those guys.
They get million dollar bonuses while the companies they pilot crashland into the ground and investors feel the synergy of being gang-raped and immolated.
FTFY
Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless (Score:5, Informative)
I'm like you, most certs hold little value, show me what you've done and what you learned from it, that's the only thing that really matters. I kind of feel bad for freshly minted grads that went to a school without a coop program, they've paid all that money but are all but worthless unless a company is willing to invest at least a year in training them which costs about double their salary when you consider benefits plus the time of the people doing the training.
Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless (Score:5, Informative)
Correct, the RHCT/RHCSA and RHCE certs do require a hands-on lab exam. I've done both of those--actually, all three since the RHEL5 to RHEL6 update happened between when I got my RHCT and RHCE, I had to take the RHCSA for RHEL6 before I could take the RHCE.
(wow, I don't usually type that many initialisms in one sentence...)
Re:Good, Because Certs Are Worthless (Score:2, Informative)
I changed my interview style after that. I ask a bunch of simple nitty-gritty tech question now, no matter how impressive the candidate sounds. You would be surprised how often someone whose resume looks stellar can't answer multiple simple questions - like what is a /24, a tcp reset packet, port used by http, etc.
This oh yes this! Interviewing for programmer positions, I've seen gorgeous resumes by people with Masters in CompSci at reputable colleges and universities, with "accomplishments" like writing SQL language lexical parsers, who could not write even an approximation of a SQL query or even write a simple string replace function. (how do you get to lexical parsing without being able to manipulate strings?)
You use flex.
Sure, if you asked me out of the blue for string manipulation routines with a view to writing a lexical parser/analyser I might have some difficulty producing such a thing without a few hours of experimentation first (mostly to determine the regex capabilities of the language being used to implement the new language), but that's 'cos I almost always use flex to turn input source-code into tokens. It's just that much easier.
Your post provides evidence of a very common pattern I've noticed - some of the people interviewing those M-grads (with the gorgeous CV's filled with accomplishments) are in no way competent to evaluate them. You just pointed out a case where the interviewee might just possibly have a better solution than yours for implementing a new language, and yet you also show that you never spotted that he had.
This may seem a bit provocative, but this is very consistently the case with graduates from India. Having interviewed so many such people, so often having such beautiful resumes, you'd think I could have at least found a single one with enough programming expertise that I could hire, but that's so far not yet been the case.
I really feel for these guys, because they've obviously spent lots of time/money doing something, and whatever it is that they're doing, it's not helping them much.
Hire me.
Disclaimer: I am Indian, although I've never been to India, and speak no Indian languages. I also don't have that many certs or degrees.
Re:Dev Certs are Not Worthwhile (Score:5, Informative)
I've got over a decade in IT, but no certs. The only jobs I've gotten so far have been through friends, because they know I can do the job; They've spoken to me, I've helped them out. Now all I need to do is convince HR of the fact, and to do that I need a shitty cert which means precisely dick all to the guy actually interviewing you.
I hate it.
Re:RHCE requires a hard hands on lab. Only 5% pass (Score:4, Informative)
Seonded, and it still is the case in 2011. I'd done the RHCT on RHEL 5 under my own steam and my company paid for me and a handful of others to do the RHCSA/RHCE on RHCE 6. I would have done the same course as you and sat both exams on the Friday, RHCSA in the morning and RHCE in the afternoon. I passed both and at least 4 of my collegues did as well (although one used to work for Redhat as a trainer so it was a bit of a given), however we have several perfectly/very good sysadmins who failed.
It's not a gimme and requires actual hands-on expiriece, the course is crammed with around an average of 40-60 pages of material a day.
Re:Easily answered (Score:5, Informative)
Most major tech centers (India, UK, Germany, and many other European countries) have visa requirements that are at least as strict as the US.
I'm a non-German citizen living and working in Germany for the last five years. To move over here, I just needed a letter from the company saying they wanted to hire me. I took that to the German embassy where I was living (Australia) who provided me with a work visa. Once that ran out, I just turned up at the appropriate govt dept, gave them evidence I am still working and they renewed it. No fuss, no big questions, all very easy and straightforward.
Right now, our company is going through the same procedure to hire a friend of mine from back in Australia and bring him over here. Doesn't seem to be any more difficult for him now than it was for me then.
From what I've heard about the US, it's significantly more difficult and complex (although I don't have any first hand experience); so I'm not really sure I'd agree with your statement.
Re:RHCE requires a hard hands on lab. Only 5% pass (Score:5, Informative)
I couldn't agree more. I used to think that the RHCE was a joke, and anyone could get one, but after taking the exam last year, I definitely respect anyone that passes it. I've been using Linux for 15+ years, and I found it very challenging. I struggled with a few of the things I don't do on a day-to-day basis, but having years of experience I was able to work through them.