RE: Examination results before...

[Benjy Feen <benjy@feen.com>]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, DL Hilton wrote:
> I have just made a promise to myself, to wit:
> >From now on, when someone asks me to give them advice or help solve a
> technical problem, I'm going to ask what Certificates they possess.  If they
> have one related to whatever it is they are asking me about - F*** 'em -
> they probably get paid more than this 25 year industry veteran anyway.

This isn't  so much a response as a variation on a theme.


My Unix certification rant: When I worked for a certain company that made
_I_ncredibly _B_ig _M_achines, we were encouraged to get certified, and
people often hung the test scores, not the certificates, on the wall, out
of pride.  It was there that I learned to value certification as a form of
continuing education.  Me, I learned what I know about Unix by spending
most of what I earned at my student job on every O'Reilly I could find. I
even owned the Curses O'Reilly, for god's sake. And then I'd make love to
those books. It was really disturbing to get into the big world and find
out that only one of my coworkers (hi Greg) read tech references on his
own time.  But when my teammates went for a cert, they'd hit the books,
and the result was that they'd gain in knowledge they'd never had sought
out for its own sake.  Point being that if someone gets a certification,
it's at least arguable that they're _trying_, and if they seek to obtain
the knowledge of a more experienced admin, so much the better. Course,
it's probably wise to be wary of people who feel the need to make
gratuitous references to their certifications (or college degrees, for
that matter).  I don't blame anyone for getting sick of paper tigers,
though;  I worked with a fully pedigreed MCSE who was unable to set the
system clock on his servers.

Regarding NT certifications:  It's unfortunate, but not everyone in the
extended family of systems administration is a big geek.  NT does not
attract big geeks.  Big geeks like cool tech and nifty puzzles to solve.
NT is not cool tech, and among the many, many things NT is, it is not,
never has been, and will likely never be nifty.  My experience is that NT
admins tend to be bright folks who decided to bootstrap themselves into a
computer career. For people who are looking for a career but don't yet
have a Clue, certification is a well-paved 8-lane highway with a brightly
lit on-ramp. This highway doesn't lead directly to a Clue, but there's an
unmarked access road if you know where to look. Most of the time, the
wayward novice just needs a friendly shove off the road.  And of course,
lots of people never get a Clue and believe that the highway is all there
is.  Luckily, these folks are driving around in bright orange Dodge
Challengers [license: GOTMCSE] with glasspack exhausts and are easy to
spot and avoid.

--
Benjy Feen | benjy@monkeybagel.com | http://www.monkeybagel.com
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