[aklug] Re: IT certifications

There are some good points in here from Szechuan, among the apparent
frustration with a straw man.

I'm pretty sure there was some NDA I agreed to, but I can say that a major
vendor is in the process of changing how their certification process has
historically been done. It is a MUCH better format than multiple choice and
I believe it will bring more value to their certifications as time goes on.
It will make brain dumps serve as training and less as free answer keys.

Kris Laubenstein

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 11:06:30 2016