[Linux-aus] LA Certification

[David Lay]

I do believe that IT certs should be free to take, and pay memberships when passed or desired to join said community. As Hugh stated certs are more know how over practical experiments. While these home labs or experiments etc does not reflect CPD.

Look at any roles, we all learn on the job, do we flash our certs and say we know this? Sure, but all environments are different, course materials and exams are standard, we cant learn much from it, while if we agree to put our heads together on a project that uses all our skills/resources we gain more than those course materials.

Thanks

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________________________________
From: linux-aus <linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au> on behalf of Hugh Blemings via linux-aus <linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au>
Sent: Tuesday, July 4, 2023 1:08:13 PM
To: Paul Gear <paul-linuxaus at gear.email>; linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au <linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au>
Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] LA Certification


Hiya,

On 4/7/23 12:22, Paul Gear via linux-aus wrote:
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.

That's a fair point Paul and in re-reading my original email I realise I missed a bit of nuance.

I should have made greater emphasis on the "...a bit of a warning flag..." - lots of certifications definitely wouldn't rule someone out if they also showed up well in other aspects of their resume (work experience, community contributions and whatnot)

Having visible FLOSS contributions also helps paint the picture, but again it's not a blocker either :)

Cheers,
Hugh


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