Re: looking for some feedback about Certification

Stephan K舂per wrote:
> Patrick Hurley wrote:
>> On 11/10/06, Gustav Paul <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> pat eyler wrote:
>>> >  1) Is Ruby ready for/in need of a certification program?
>>
>> With the growing size of the Ruby community (and demand for Ruby
>> programmers) there will undoubtedly be programs of this sort. Of
>> course having said that, I personally consider certifications programs
>> (especially for programming languages) one of the worst hiring metrics
>> available. If you want to find a good programmer, looking for a
>> language specific certificate is a terrible mistake.
>
> Well, I second that. And here's why: I always thought that nearly 
> everywhere in the world (outside the very notable exception of 
> Germany, and less notable probably a few other countries) you're not 
> evaluated by certificates, school (and university) reports and paper 
> work like that, but your actual proficiency and professionalism. As 
> in: "Real World" work you have done, or at least interviews which 
> aren't superficial but go down to a real technical level.

Lack of certification in many instances means there will not be an 
interview. Some people whine about that fact. I say that if there *is* a 
Ruby or Rails certificate, it must be as comprehensive as the Microsoft, 
Cisco or Red Hat certifications.
> I had one single interview like that - and I have to say that this was 
> the best one I had. Ever. (As it was back in the mediaeval times, and 
> thus we discussed about the blessings and the dangers of mutiple 
> inheritance, the C++ STL, and runtime vs. compile-time polymorphism.)
How did that work out for you and for the employer? What were the 
business results?


> Anyway, I think certificates certify that you're capable of getting 
> the certificate. While most don't say much about your problem solving 
> abilities, endurance, patience, abstract thinking and whatever else 
> may be important in the job at hand.
For some definition of "most", this could be true. In the case of 
Microsoft, Cisco and Red Hat, in my opinion it is emphatically *not* 
true -- the certificate is an excellent indicator of the certified 
person's abilities to produce consistent business results in the area 
covered.

But since we're talking about development (Ruby/Rails) rather than 
system administration positions, let's narrow this down to the Microsoft 
MCSD exams. I haven't browsed the Microsoft criteria and course list 
recently, but I work with people who have these certificates and believe 
they have value.

Finally, let's talk about a typical hiring cycle in a medium to large 
development project. First of all, when the project begins, most of the 
people on it will already be employed in the company and be known 
quantities. It's rare that people will need to be hired from outside, 
and every effort will be made to limit the number of outside hires required.

But let's assume that the project management has justified the new 
hires. There will be a job posting. Let's say it's a Microsoft project, 
and let's say they are using Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2005, 
ASP.NET, IIS and C# -- the whole Windows stack, analogous to, say, 
Linux/Apache-Mongrel/MySQL-PostgreSQL/Ruby-Rails. I would *insist* that 
*every* new hire be certified in the technology that the position would 
use. No certificate -- no interview. That would most likely get me at 
least five qualified applicants for each position.

Now in the interview process, I want to know what *you* did that you got 
*paid* for. I don't want to debate my choice of SQL Server 2005 vs. your 
preference for PostgreSQL. I don't want to hear you whine about C# and 
having to declare variables. I don't want to hear about all the fun 
stuff you did with Linux on your Athlon Thunderbird nights and weekends. 
I short, I want to know if you can carry out assignments and deliver 
business results.

So by my analogy, were I starting a medium to large Rails project -- to 
make things easy, let's assume I'm using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and 
Oracle, for which I can hire vendor-certified folks. I'm going to plead 
ignorance on the Apache front -- I don't know if there are Apache 
certifications. There sure as hell ought to be -- it's a complicated 
beast with lots of options. :) What would I want from a Ruby/Rails 
certified new hire?

Same thing as I want for an ASP.NET/C# certified person. I want to know 
you can carry out assignments and deliver business results. At a 
minimum, I'd want you to have down cold everything in the Pickaxe book, 
everything in AWDR, and everything in "Ruby for Rails".