[Linux-aus] LA Certification

[Ian]

Let me take up one of John's points and do some waffling. TL:DR
John said, "...  historically there have been certs I did not respect due
to them seemingly being awarded to any warm body regardless of whether or
not they could do the most basic things. If I don't know anything about the
cert in question, it's meaningless to me.  "
My 1 experience with a qualification back in 2000 gave me little respect
for gaining Certificates. Yeah, historical.
Our City set up a project to give folks a chance in the IT world by
providing a course to study for the MS Server 2000 qualifications. My
friend, Paul and I took to this course with relish. We had both been Linux
hackers with Linux SA and DSL for years at this time so looked at it as a
chance to gain knowledge and demonstrate our knowledge and skills.
The course was great and the lecturer was knowledgeable and approachable.
The Class asked for an opportunity to do Tutorials to practice what we were
learning. I had access to several basic machines and a community space so
Paul and I set up a Tutorial Room running most nights for those that wanted
the help. One class member didn't even have a PC and had never used Windows
so we arranged for him to borrow one of ours. The Lecturer came to one of
our sessions and could see that we both were imparting knowledge and
support to the others. He was impressed with the Tutes and our work in
class. He was satisfied that we knew our stuff.
It was time for the exam at an examination centre. Just about everybody
passed, including the guy who had never even used Windows before.
Who failed? Paul and I. The others had obtained pirated copies of the
possible questions and learned them by rote. We both wrote what we knew
from our experience and studied from our books but put it in our own words.
This was one certificate that lost all value for me because it didn't have
any way to really test for a skill other than being able to churn info back
to the question in the words and phrasing that the Examiner wanted.
As John said, "  being awarded to any warm body regardless of whether or
not they could do the most basic things."
Paul went on to work on the State Bank Mainframe system, other IT work, and
within Adelaide Uni IT Network but he never got any qualification to show
that he could do the work. I never took my knowledge any further. Several
others were able to turn their Qualification into an entry into the IT
Industry and did well.
A person with certificates but no demonstrable practical experience is
likely to bring up a red flag or two unless there are other attributes that
the interviewer is looking for.

On Wed, 5 Jul 2023 at 13:48, John Dalton via linux-aus <
linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 4, 2023 at 9:30 PM Paul Gear via linux-aus <
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote:
>
>>
>> In my experience, certs don't teach you the skills; they are merely
>> validations of your existing skills.  If you come to study for a cert
>> with no prior experience with the technology, you should learn some
>> skills as you study, but but if you're already a good problem solver,
>> they probably won't teach you much at all. As such, on a job application
>> they don't really mean that much as an indicator, either positive or
>> negative.  (It's that latter part that made me wade into this thread -
>> the idea that they might somehow be seen as a contra-indicator or
>> antipattern for a job applicant is rather troubling.)
>>
>
> I agree with what you say about learning from certs, and while I won't put
> words into anyone else's mouth I will say for myself that it's only certs
> in the *absence* of other indicators that are a slight red flag - more of a
> mildly raised eyebrow - for me. There's no doubt some bias on display there
> - historically there have been certs I did not respect due to them
> seemingly being awarded to any warm body regardless of whether or not they
> could do the most basic things. If I don't know anything about the cert in
> question, it's meaningless to me.
>
> If I see that someone has achieved a bunch of certs but has *no other
> example* of their work or efforts to be able to point to, then having a
> bunch of certs just tells me they may have wasted their time (and possibly
> money) working on the wrong things. That might not be their fault -
> different education systems/communities/cultures/etc sometimes mislead
> people (in my opinion) about what is valued by people assessing whether or
> not someone might be good at doing a job.
>
> Having them won't count against you, unless it's *all* you have. In that
> case we are probably talking about purely entry level roles, where you'll
> probably want to do your own assessment of whether someone has any basic
> troubleshooting skills, which might be as simple as a conversation.
>
> As for the original topic, my own two cents are that it's a tremendous
> amount of effort and not worth our time and resources to develop and
> maintain a certification program. Perhaps a better approach would be for us
> as a community to talk more about how folks can explore and learn, where to
> dig deeper into topics only touched on in certs, or even to go so far as to
> endorse particular certs issued by other bodies which we think are
> worthwhile.
>
> J.
>
> --
> http://johndalton.info
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrdalton
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-- 
-- Ian
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