From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-09-04T19:32:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming

On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 01:00:07PM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > 
> > Frankly, iptables is easier to learn effectively than most proprietary
> > firewalls -- and then there's stuff like IPCop, which makes things even
> > easier.
> > 
> When there are certified iptables engineers, I'll trust my business to
> them. Until then, I'm sticking with Cisco and certified Cisco engineers.
> When you post a job application for a sysadmin position, you're going to
> get at least ten times as many applicants as you need, so you can afford
> to *insist* that they be certified by Cisco, Microsoft or Red Hat as
> appropriate.

As someone with a combination of college, trade school, on-the-job, and
purely autodidactic education, with several certifications of my own, my
experience is that all certificiations really prove is A) a certain
minimum standard of test-taking competence that can be sized up within
five minutes of meeting someone anyway and B) a certain amount of money
invested in professional advancement.

. . . with the exception that some certifications require certain resume
bullet-points before one is allowed to take the certification exam in
question (CISSP comes to mind).  Considering one doesn't require a
certification to determine whether someone has such resume
bullet-points, however, that seems irrelevant.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.