Came across this article today - a very interesting read - he holds nothing back... http://cfed-ttf.blogspot.com/2009/10/certifications-are-evilby-john-mccash.html
I may not be agree with it. But may be i do. Because i see like 50+ adds a day on cl and specially tech related and and 95% of them do require certification as a essential cord. But that is true college degree is way important and some hr do prefer them but i disagree with that. Like if you want to get in network security non of college course will cover that part but only certs will. So what's the use specially in IT field.
It really is a great post. Certifications are a slippery slope. In my mind they are just a barrier to entry and something that HR can hold against you if you don't have one when searching for a new position or discussing compensation.
It depends on which side of the fence you are. There are really good certifications and I will give priority to certified professionals. Unlike degrees Certifications require maintenance. The issue how to make them positive and not just cash cows for the companies offering them. For example at Comverse Technologies - Comverse certified systems engineer is some one who completed training, worked for a year in professional Services deploying the comverse solutions and then additional training plus exam. Some of my certs are similar, I took exams, practical labs and period of training followed by hands on work between the trainigs. Such approach is really good because you do get trained professional and usually such certification has value. People with such type of vendor certs are in demand and do get priority. Compare to some other one that require just to take an exam well yes this is not as good.
I'm doing this one https://www.hvcc.edu/catalog/programs/bus/isc.html all online not quite the same as some of those easy MS certs the Intro to Database Management Systems is quite freaking hard actually well, not so much difficult as time consuming hours of building a bunch of erwin models then shelling to a unix server and building oracle tables and running reports
Erwin Models... Thank you for the reminder of past nightmares watching another team working on a massive database project staffed with at least 35 DBAs with 3 50-foot walls covered with the system represented using Erwin Models. That project went down in flames after 2 years of non-delivery. I think the contracting firm was paid by the diagram or possible each node within the diagram. How else to explain such a disaster? I prefer simple entity-relationship-diagrams and set notation when designing a database application.
When we hire a consulting firm we get multiple firms to compete, they all get to see the others proposed solution and slam each other really bad. I get to see the pros and cons for the project. We have a comity for vendor selection so in the end a panel of experienced professionals get to help to select a vendor. Another nice thing is how suddenly we get a surge in vendor sponsored lunches and goodies such as polo shirts etc.
