[Linux-aus] LA Certification

[Paul Gear]

On 3/7/23 18:41, Adam Nielsen via linux-aus wrote:
>> As it happens a colleague of mine recently put the view (paraphrased
>> slightly) "If I see lots of certifications it's a bit of a warning flag
>> - why not put that time into contributing to a FOSS project they care
>> about?" a fair point I thought.
> This matches my own experience too.  I presume a lot of certifications
> focus on memorising things rather than applying knowledge, because
> people with a lot of certs often seem to struggle to come up with a
> solution for a problem.  If you tell them the solution they can usually
> implement it no problem, but you often have to hold their hand a bit
> while you're trying to work out what the solution might look like.


Speaking as someone who is FLOSS at heart but has a long list of vendor 
certs, this makes me sad.

I get vendor certs because my current and previous employer both highly 
value them, and they make them free for staff to take. Most of the ones 
I've taken (largely AWS & Azure) are little more than logic tests and as 
long as you have a general idea about the product's capabilities and are 
a competent reader and logical thinker, they aren't difficult.  So the 
amount of time I need to dedicate to gaining a certification in 
something I do every day is tiny compared to the amount of effort I 
would need to expend to make significant FLOSS contributions.  Not to 
mention that many of these vendors now have significant footprints in 
the FLOSS ecosystem, especially in the Kubernetes space.

Regards,
Paul