On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 11:25:59PM +0900, John Joyce wrote:
> Oh, come on.
> Some are against certifications as usual, but at that point what good is a 
> diploma or degree?!
> Any reasonable employer or project leader will simply view a certification 
> or diploma or degree as ONE OF MANY factors in deciding a candidates value.
[...]

Certificates, degrees, past jobs, and other things listed on a resume are
substitutes for actual knowledge about a candidate's technical suitability
for a software engineering/development job. When members of an already
strong technical team are involved in the interviewing process, they can
glean that actual knowledge and resume items are less relevant. When the
interviewers do not have the expertise to ask appropriate technical
questions and properly judge the responses, they must rely on
certifications and the other resume items instead. There is a spectrum in
between, of course. Of all the things one might list on a resume,
certifications give the least valuable information about one's technical
skills.

My perspective is that if I am not interviewed by a group of strongly
technical people, I don't want to work there. If they can't judge my
technical expertise without relying on certifications to know that I have a
certain skill set, I'm not going to enjoy working there.

On the other side of the table, when I am involved in interviewing, I look
on certifications as a strike against the candidate. The mere fact that
this person chose to list certifications on his/her resume indicates that
the candidate is willing to work somewhere that lacks a strong technical
team to judge candidates in an interview (or that he/she isn't good at
writing a resume, which still isn't good since it shows poor communication
skills but it isn't as bad in my eyes).

Note that there are environments in which certifications are appropriate.
In the Microsoft and Java technology consulting business, salespeople are
securing contracts by being able to promote the technical strengths of
their teams to people who lack technical expertise. Being able to say that
the company will dedicate a team of people, each of whom is certified in
the N technologies that will solve the problem at hand, makes a big
difference. One could argue that the same is true for an individual
freelance consultant.

Also, I think there's a big distinction between certifications and degrees.
I have an Ivy League Master's degree in Computer Science. I think that
means something. One thing it means is that I got to know something about
the landscape of both graduate and undergraduate CS programs in the country
by being exposed to papers, talks, and people from other universities in a
technical setting. If I see a job candidate with an undergraduate degree in
CS from UC Berkeley, that tells me something about what kind of education
I'd expect him/her to have had. If I see a CS degree from UDel, however,
that tells me no more than a certification since I never came across anyone
or anything from there in my academic career. Schools have reputations,
which tend to be more meaningful than rankings, and a degree from a
reputable school means a great deal more than a certification.

Back to the topic at hand, though, what are your reasons for getting a
certification?

Do you think you'll learn more that way than learning on your own? You
might, but that isn't a good reason to list it on your resume or bring it
up in an interview.

Do you think you will be able to earn more money with it than without?
Probably not.

Do you think you need it to get a job at all? Only if you aren't any good,
and the only way you can get a job is to bamboozle someone who doesn't have
th technical expertise to know any better, in which case you DO need the
certification. Alternately, if you choose to be a consultant you may find a
certification (or more than one) valuable in convincing customers that you
are the right one for the contract.

Do you think it might come in handy as a backup or safety net? Maybe, but
you're probably better off investing your time and money in learning as
much as possible rather than taking a test and paying for a piece of paper.

--Greg