[aklug] Re: IT certifications

Szechuan,

What certs are you taking that you think aren't worth anything?

On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Szechuan Death <sdeath@sdeath.net> wrote:

> On 9/5/16 2:41 PM, JP wrote:
>
> > In my experience, certifications are worth exactly the paper they are
> printed
> > on. The best technicians I have worked with have NO certifications
> beyond an A+,
> > if even that.
>
> I will say - that *was* me, up until relatively recently. I've since
> decided to start pursuing certifications, mostly on someone else's dime.
> It hasn't worked out too badly for me, but it has reinforced my
> perception of the exercise as fundamentally useless except for the
> purpose of Jedi-mind-tricking the HR gauntlet.
>
> > This is not to say there are not good techs with certifications,
> > again this is just my experience. Everyone I personally know who is in
> the
> > position of hiring techs (admittedly small cross-section) is looking for
> > experience, and they tend to quiz people on stuff that will never be in
> > certification paths... real-life tips and tricks that people with
> experience
> > have learned on their own or added to their mental toolkit from others'
> > training.
>
> But as others have noted - that pipeline is governed by a gatekeeper
> that you don't necessarily see.
>
> If you're a small shop, sure, you can sift through resumes yourself,
> have a nice talk, and in five minutes determine whether or not someone
> is full of shit. Anywhere in a larger organization, those candidates
> are run through automated filters designed to cull 99% of the
> applicants. And they have no criteria to do that with *other* than
> certifications, including "college degrees".
>
> Yeah, that's a fucked world to exist in. However, it *is* the world we
> exist in.
>
> > These same people will put a resume with a dozen certs and no
> > experience at the very bottom... favoring even lack of experience over
> the
> > combination of lack of experience plus lots of certs. If my best friend
> or
> > relative were to ask me the same question that is exactly what I would
> tell them.
> >
> > Again, I hope this doesn't offend anyone, many have worked hard for
> their certs
> > and education, and they have a right to satisfaction in their
> accomplishments.
>
> Certs are mostly bullshit. There is a saying of which I am fond, and
> which applies quite well:
>
> "The greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer."
>
> A cunningly-phrased "gotcha" question - easily 50% of all cert exam
> questions I've seen - is not a good diagnostic of anything, other than
> one's ability to either guess well or memorize a braindump. I'd say
> that roughly 50% of questions I've seen on certification tests have
> absolutely nothing to do with either the platform they are claiming to
> test competence on, or the certification preps and classes that are sold
> to prepare you for certifications. I'm pretty good with
> speaka-da-English, and parsing some of these questions is like trying to
> phrase a wish made to an evil genie in such a way that one doesn't wind
> up in mortal peril by getting *exactly* what one asked for.
>
> There have been, in the recent past, efforts to de-bullshit
> certifications. There was a website some time back, I forget the name,
> but it was set up quite interestingly. Instead of questions, you were
> given a list of testable tasks. "Set up an Apache webserver answering
> on address X." "Configure authentication to permit access with this
> user and password." "Set up the host-based firewall to allow ports X,
> Y, and Z through." There was a time limit, and no other restrictions.
>
> You had one hour to work through a set of something like 17 tasks inside
> a Linux VM spun up specifically for that purpose. When you were done,
> it was automatically graded - because all the tasks you accomplished
> could be tested via script. Does it respond on port 80? Do you get the
> right string in the page? Welp, tick that box, you nailed it. These
> don't penalize you for not having memorized all the intricacies of the
> Apache config format, say, which is 99% of the "multiple-choice test"
> certification problem. Like I give a fuck what the *exact* phrasing of
> the Cisco command is. I hit ? at the prompt, and it gives me
> autocomplete options for what I've already typed. *THAT'S WHAT I'D DO
> ANYWAY TO PUZZLE THROUGH IT*. There is exactly *zero* benefit to having
> memorized the format of those commands, except as a curiosity, like
> learning all the declensions of Ancient Chaldean.
>
> Sadly, they moved from the "certification" part of this space into the
> "employer testing" part, i.e. you can no longer just take a test and say
> "I know my shit!"; now, the employer sends you to them and does
> contracted testing to validate that you know your shit. So you're stuck
> back in the pipeline, where your resume is, statistically, screened out
> due to lack of certs before it ever sees human eyes.
>
> The better employers roll their own, too. I've had 90-minute tests
> administered over email. "Yeah, you can use whatever reference you want
> to. But if you don't know how to do it - if you aren't smart enough to
> figure it out quickly - no amount of cheating will help you. The time
> starts now. Go."
>
> > My suggestion would be to take a technology path you are interested in,
> and
> > learn it inside out in whatever method of learning that works best for
> you. Put
> > this tech into practice in a lab or for your family's business if it is
> > suitable, something like this.
>
> This is a wonderful - and wonderfully idiotic - theory.
>
> I encourage you to go price the hardware needed to get practical
> experience on some of these platforms. Want to build your home NetApp
> lab? Well, you're not doing *that* on burger-flipper wages, unless
> you've inherited a substantial amount of wealth, or want to roll the
> dice on living a normal life and lifespan with only one kidney. Yes,
> you can eBay it. Yes, it is still expensive, and prohibitively so.
> This, therefore, is a "chicken-and-egg" problem - until you get a job
> that renders you capable of affording it, you can't get the "home lab"
> experience, and until you have the practical "home lab" experience (OR
> WORK EXPERIENCE THAT YOU HAVE SOMEHOW MANAGED TO OBTAIN), you can't get
> a job doing it. Unless you are relying on the kindness of strangers,
> unless you have these skills, you are *fucked* when it comes to
> competing in the marketplace, unless you can produce a cert that
> indicates you are at least familiar with some of the vendor concepts.
> This is why people game this particular system. It is a Red Queen Race.
>
> Yeah, you can fuck around in your home Linux lab. So can every other
> mouthbreathing luser with a pulse, particularly these days. That
> doesn't differentiate you in any materially important way from them, and
> everybody who plays this game knows it. Sadly, the HR folks know it
> too, even if they don't know anything *else*.
>
> > I would never condone learning stuff on a
> > client's network, I see it all the time and I am constantly taking over
> work
> > from someone's first stab at a walkthrough for something... and then
> dealing
> > with the long-term hassles.
>
> If this is true, you haven't learned very much from the experience,
> then, given the next two paragraphs.
>
> > However, if you have learned a proven tech that you
> > think will give your client a boost, and you are convinced you can
> support it,
> > and you are up-front with the client the newness to you that the tech
> represents
> > and they are willing to accept the risk and you are willing to give them
> a break
> > on your labor... this is a fantastic way to expand your experience. If
> you find
> > a specific path is something you really want to focus on, then work on
> that
> > cert... but not other unrelated ones just for the sake of having them.
> >
> > I am sure those with a proper education will better answer your original
> > question. I admit I went a bit off-topic because this is something I
> feel people
> > getting into the IT industry would like to know, and Linux users make
> the best
> > tinkerers, and tinkerers make some of the best techs.
>
> No, "tinkerers" make some of the biggest clusterfucks you ever did see.
> After they've remediated their Nth CF, and actually learned something
> from the experience, they *may* make a halfway-decent sysadmin. I
> believe that's what you meant to say.
>
> --
> "certifiable!"
> -SD
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Received on Wed Sep 7 10:55:38 2016