Apr 30
Dan Moore asked What use is certification?.
They are not implicitly bad, however I am not a huge fan of them as they exist right now.
- The programmer exam tests your memory skills (reminds me of some of the standard exams back home in England ;)
- The architects exam is better, in that it is more portfolio based. You build a real enterprise application, and gain experience doing so. The only problem with it is that you have to do the UML, and follow the blueprints ;)
- I have never used the fact that I am certified, and noone has ever cared
A few people have told me that they want to get certified as a way to push them up the stack, and to help against outsourcing. For these people, you have to realise that there are a lot of developers in India, eastern europe, asia that are certified, and going to be certified.
To fight that war you need to think about what skills are needed for work RIGHT HERE. Maybe learn some high risk / high reward skills. Again, if you really want the certification… knock yourself out…. but in my experience the currency is less that 1 rupee.
April 30th, 2004 at 10:17 am
I respect your comments.
I am just talking about my experience…. and noone has ever asked me if I am certified.
I can understand that others have had different experiences (as you obvious have).
I do worry about the phrase:
“The company I work for would never hire someone who is not certified, so obviously, somebody cares.”
I think that is very harsh. Some of the best developers I know don’t have certification. I think it is foolish to have hard and fast rules like this. If James Gosling came in would you kick him our as he is not certified? :)
Cheers,
Dion
April 30th, 2004 at 12:46 pm
There are a couple of different issues raised here.
1. Are certs good for the programmer? I think they are–they can help lead to depth and breadth of knowledge on a topic, as I mentioned in the original post. And for some of us, external goals provide that little extra incentive to learn new stuff.
2. Are certs a help for job hunters and employers? Well, I’ve heard from at least one hiring manager that, while not crucial, they do help a resume stand out. They’re no guarentee of expertise, for sure, but they do indicate (as CS degrees do) a certain base level of understanding.
3. Are certs a panacea for job hunters? Nope. Just as there are competent programmers without certification, there are incompetent programmers with certification. (Though it boggles my mind to think of someone who can pass the SCJP without at least a modicum of understanding of Java and OO concepts.)
4. Dion brings up the point that: “skills are needed for work RIGHT HERE” are more important than certifications, since anyone anywhere can get the SCJP or other certs. That’s true enough. But it’s a bit of a straw man, in that Dion’s statement applies to any technical skills–the aforementioned “skills that are needed for work RIGHT HERE” are business and communication skills, not Java (or perl or lisp or SQL or…) expertise.
April 30th, 2004 at 2:50 pm
Although you are correct in that some skills are not technical themselves (communication etc), there ARE technical decisions to be made.
If you are going to spend some period of time to further your career you can do several things:
a) Learn something technical
b) Learn something non-technical but useful
c) Get certified in something
This is all part of the Knowledge Portfolio. Getting the Sun certification has some value… but I think it depends on your particular portfolio. Whare are your goals? How aggressive do you want to be?
For example:
Low risk / Low reward: Learning another web based framework.
High risk / high reward: Learning AOP. It may be the next big thing and you will be ahead of the curve.
I think that Sun certifications are low risk / low reward. That DOESN’T mean they are bad.
Dion
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I agree you points “1. Are certs good for the programmer? I think they are–they can help lead to depth and breadth of knowledge on a topic, as I mentioned in the original post. And for some of us, external goals provide that little extra incentive to learn new stuff.
2. Are certs a help for job hunters and employers? Well, I’ve heard from at least one hiring manager that, while not crucial, they do help a resume stand out. They’re no guarentee of expertise, for sure, but they do indicate (as CS degrees do) a certain base level of understanding.
3. Are certs a panacea for job hunters? Nope. Just as there are competent programmers without certification, there are incompetent programmers with certification. (Though it boggles my mind to think of someone who can pass the SCJP without at least a modicum of understanding of Java and OO concepts.)
4. Dion brings up the point that: “skills are needed for work RIGHT HERE” are more important than certifications, since anyone anywhere can get the SCJP or other certs. That’s true enough. But it’s a bit of a straw man, in that Dion’s statement applies to any technical skills–the aforementioned “skills that are needed for work RIGHT HERE” are business and communication skills, not Java (or perl or lisp or SQL or…) expertise.”http://seojishu.zhan.cn.yahoo.com/
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