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Greg Neilson
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Great Expectations |
| What's certification really worth these days? |
| by Greg Neilson |
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6/12/2002 -- As you might have seen from my previous columns, I'm a big believer in the value of certification. I have some myself and I'm continually encouraging my staff to keep moving on their planned certifications. However, due to the many negative comments about certification I've seen posted here and elsewhere recently, I've begun to wonder whether many people have too many expectations about its value.
A certification is a great asset. But just as the shiny new convertible depreciates the minute you drive it away, so too does your certification. Within two to four years of earning a cert, either the vendor will explicitly make it obsolete or the underlying technology has changed so much that you'll need to recertifiy to demonstrate your knowledge. Therefore, you need to be clear that once you do embark on a certification path, it won't hold its value forever and you'll need to regularly update it.
I still get e-mails from people asking about career opportunities in IT once they complete a certification program. Unfortunately these folks seem to have unrealistic expectations about the ease of entering IT, let alone the types of roles that they are qualified to perform once their certification is completed. There is no short cut to IT riches, and I'm not sure that there ever was. I don't know if it was ever true that certification alone is the ticket to earning $60-70K+, but it sure isn't the case anymore! The only way I can explain this is that, in the past, some of the really early adopters of certification had nothing but their own experience and the product manuals (if they were lucky!) to use to prepare for exams. Then, when usage of these products started booming, those folks who had extensive experience were in huge demand. In many cases they had completed the certification, but this was simply a demonstration of their theoretical knowledge -- it was their extensive practical knowledge that employers were excited about. From a distance, perhaps others got the mistaken impression that it was the certification alone that was their source of value to employers and customers, but I would have hoped that these days this myth was largely dispelled. In my work at CertCities.com's sister magazine, Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, I know that the editorial staff have tried very hard over the last few years to pass on the message in their annual salary survey results that experience is a very important factor in the salary levels reported. However, I suspect that in many cases people are too busy looking at the dollar numbers in the tables to read any of the accompanying text!
The last area of confusion is to those who appear to confuse a certification with a career. Someone who now wants to work as a DBA on say Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server needs to know that there is so much more to these roles than just the requirements of these certification programs alone. It's one thing to know all of the wonderful commands and their switches, but it's another altogether to know what you should use in a given situation. Education and certification can assist in giving us the latest theoretical knowledge, but there's no substitute for years in the field. In this case, building a career as a DBA is not the same as completing a certification in a database product.
The same is particularly true of the developer arena. Most programming exams focus on language and class library implementation/API details, yet experience in the the art of good analysis, design and testing is probably more important in a successful career as a developer than just the code itself. In other words, just because you get an MCSD, it doesn't mean you're qualified to be an application developer.
Completing a certification can be a valuable asset in your career, but it alone won't and can't take you very far. (For anyone that thinks I'm just down on certification, I also believe that the same is true of a degree -- you really need the practical experience in combination with the theoretical knowledge to be valuable to an employer.) What do you think is reasonable to expect from a certification these days? Let me know by posting your comments below. 
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Greg Neilson, MCSE+Internet, MCNE, PCLP, is a Contributing Editor for Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and a manager at a large IT services firm in Australia. He's the author of Lotus Domino Administration in a Nutshell (O'Reilly and Associates, ISBN 1-56592-717-6). You can reach him at Attn: Greg.
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More articles by Greg Neilson:
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There are 86  user Comments for “Great Expectations”
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Page 9 of 9
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| 12/10/02: Joe says: |
Hello, my name is Joe.. I was recently laid off from a sales job of 2yrs. i was selling network technologies. ihave over 3yrs sales experience in the technology industry.. i am looking to get into the msce program and get certified to go along with my sales background.. is this good idea? i have a bs degree in marketing.. please help... |
| 12/31/02: David from Atlanta says: |
Hello Fellow ITers. I have read most of the comments and this is the best characterization of the IT field I have ever seen. The artile from Greg is on point and the comments are also on point. If you don't love computers and everything that goes along with them stay away from IT. It is not a cash cow that rewards hard workers with nobility. I started out my career as an electronic tech at DEC in R&D and migrated to Associate Staff Network Engineer at a cable tv developer. I was laid off about a year ago and now I'm a computer operator. I recently completed my two year degree in CIS and hold an A+ and CCNA. I have come to realize that maybe I got in the field to get the big bucks but now I do it because I love technology. Learning is what drives me now and that is why I enjoy studying for certifications not for the big pay check that I will some day get, maybe. The bottom line is do what you love and you will never have to work a day in your life. Thanks for all of the comments, they were very real to me and true. |
| 2/28/03: k8an from London, UK says: |
I'm after some advice. I am an e-Commerce student at university and am currently doing a 1 year work placement in a non-technical role. However, my interests include IT (otherwise I wouldn't have already spent 2 years doing a degree in e-Commerce!). I go back to university in September to complete my final year. However, in a recent trip to Bangalore, India, I came across an IT college doing courses in MCSE's - what stood out was that it is much cheaper to do this course abroad than in the UK. My initial reaction to this possibility was this: When I leave university in 2004, I will have a degree in e-Commerce, 1 year's work experience although not technical and an MCSE or similar qualification. I was told the MCSE takes 4 months to complete on a part-time basis, however 2 months if taken full-time. From the time I finish my work placement in July to the time I start university again in September, I was thinking that to go abroad and do a certification would be good experience (both in terms of living abroad and gaining some kind of qualification). I would be grateful for any views on this situation. Is it worth me going out to another country and doing an MCSE so that when I graduate in 2004, I will have a few more assets to offer employers than say your average student? |
| 3/18/04: Russ from Northern Virginia says: |
I love this article......take it to heart and listen. I have been in IT since about 1999 and now I have A +, network +, MCP, MCSE, MCSA,(MCSA and MCSE with messaging) MCT, CCNA, CCA and working on my 2003 track and basically what does it do for me? It's just a ticket saying I have a good background to go from nothing more nothing less.(I am 2 classes from my BS also)and I make very good money but I have a blanket that alot don't have a security clearance!!!!!IT is hard right now and the new guys (me included)can't touch the old hardcore guys with all their knowledge. I have good experience but to try to get a job without a clearance it sooooooo hard. I pray I never lose my clearance because I don't know how things would go. As I have progressed to higher levels (I am a Senior System Admin now) the technical interviews and experience are coming into play big time, and not trying to BS your way through is key. If you don't know just say so, we all don't know things but being able to know where to go and what to do to resolve that is going to get you places. The employer doesn't even ask me about me certs at all and I do it because I love to do it not because I will get more money (because I won't). Be techically qualified, work on your interviewing skills and presentation to get in there. You are the package and you are the only one that owes yourself something, not Microsoft, not Cisco or the employer......YOU are owed nothing from anyone. I suggest that you join the reserves or national guard and get a job that requires a security clearance and with that as an aid go from there, In the Army (reserves or national guard)74B is the computer analyst job. Many Employers love military poeple because they know they will be on time, can work unsupervided. We all have to make a sacrifice, and what will be yours... mine was 14 years in the Army and 2 wars and many conflicts later I have a good job. I hope this helps out some people because being unemployed sucks and I never want to be there again. |
| 5/9/04: Dana G. Schoen from Houston TX says: |
Lest there be any doubt as to the veracity of the claims of the people who have contributed to this thread, claims that ITT defrauded them out of an education, one need only to read some of these nearly illiterate ramblings and remember the old adage “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. Simply put, one only need to look at the letters on this site, written by people who have allegedly been educated to the bachelor degree level, to see that something is terribly amiss. In case after case these letters reveal writers who cannot compose complete sentences, spell, or construct paragraphs into complete ideas. Ironically these are people who spent thousands of dollars to learn “Information Technology” yet, haven’t even mastered Windows Spell Check and Grammar Check! The letters themselves expose the fact that many of these people where taken advantage of buy a corporate wolf clad in a mortarboard and gown. There are plenty here who say “caveat’ emptor”, or “buyer beware”. In most cases this author would not argue against that point, however there are several mitigating factors that should be considered. 1 People who are attempting to enter an institution of higher learning are at a disadvantage by definition. They are, as yet, uneducated. As such they do not posses the tools to make well-informed choices. They must instead rely on their support network (family and friends) 2 They must also rely on the ethics of the “so called” school. In this case the purveyor of the goods and services has an elevated responsibility to, as a minimum, not Prey upon its victim with such vigor. 3 Lastly these students must rely on the protection of the government watchdog agency responsible for protecting the interests of the consumer and the taxpayer. In this case the Department of Education (ED) for short. Prospective students who are from families where higher education is already part of the family dichotomy, never even pass through the doors of a trade school, having already been alerted to the lack of value, they in fact, posses that “power of knowledge”. Conversely, students from families without experience in higher education have none of this “power” to draw from. Rather than exercising restraint and responsibility, ITT and companies like it, use this disadvantage that their potential victims suffer from to further line their pockets. ITT to often markets too prospective students who are the first generation in their family to consider post secondary education. They promote the idea of a “quick program, not loaded down with all that unnecessary stuff” “Stuff” meaning English grammar, literature, mathematics, physical education, civics, history, and so on. They outwardly say that the would-be student can “be finished with school and out making money before their university counterparts are even halfway into their course work”. If those things weren’t bad enough ITT muddies the waters further by hiding the facts about the students own performance form them. They have made a practice of coercing and intimidating staff into retaining students who are not mastering the subject matter. Inflating and “cherry picking” student achievements and post graduate employment of students and grade curving seem to be systemic problems. If one does not know that one is failing how can corrective action be taken? Lastly the ED has failed these students by abandoning its watchdog function. Given that there are people being taken advantage of who are at the complete mercy of a huge corporate marketing machine and that tax payer dollars on the table here, the Department of Education should have been guarding the public trough against the snouts of these corporate hogs. Instead this would-be watchdog is being wagged by the tail. That tail being these companies that call themselves institutes of learning. The result has been millions of dollars of public funds ending up in the pockets of stockholders and corporate “fat cats”. To add insult to injury ED now pursues the victims of these diploma mills for the monies they borrowed. Borrows of these funds have no hope of even paying the interest on these loans let alone the principal. This, because they simply do not posses the earning power to do so. The reason being that their training was inadequate and in fields that where “sexy” from a marketing stand point but not economically viable in the real world. As a consequence interest gets capitalized, then collection fees begin to mount and finally the loan ends up in default. What should have been a benefit to the student and by extension our country ends up being wasted. Sadly, the life-ring that ED has tossed these poor souls trying to got a grip on the dream of making a better life for them selves is made not of cork, but of cement. Thousands of these loans have gone bad, thousands more will go bad. Does all this mean that this author is saying that the only student loans that should be gran |
| 11/27/06: Arpit Shah from Ahmedabad says: |
i have done my Master of Science in Applied Mathematics. At present i am working with IT company as Marketing executive. i am interested in wireless certification. so it wil help me in my future. but i want to know about future after completing wireless certification exam. please reply me. |
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