From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2007-12-09T02:31:37+09:00 Subject: Re: ruby certification On 12/8/07, Giles Bowkett wrote: > On 12/8/07, 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. > Certs have a bad rep in the US [...] A well-deserved bad rep. Certs prove nothing of value, and are in fact primarily used by vendors as a "stupid tax" on businesses (who think they provide value) and people (who have to satisfy those businesses). Certifications are now a MASSIVE industry catering to that stupid tax. > but the Japanese certification Matz mentions is probably totally good. I'm not convinced. I'd have to see the requirements for it. > There's nothing wrong with certs, they're just aimed at a different > kind of programmers. This statement is not true. There's *everything* wrong with certs -- and certs are very different than a university degree in terms of effort, breadth, and cost. > The question you want to hear in a job interview is "how awesome are > you?" The question certs ask is "are you at least competent?" If they actually asked "are you at least competent", I wouldn't have that much trouble. The *least* competent people that I've dealt with are "certified" -- and that's in any IT capacity. The *most* competent people are those who have a passion for what it is that they do. The problem is that certs don't even prove a minimum level of competence, just a minimum level of testability. > The hostility to certs is reasonable in that nobody likes to be asked > the second question, but it's unreasonable in that there are plenty of > jobs where that's the sane question to ask. The hostility to certs is entirely because they're worthless, not because they prove competence. They don't. They prove that people are stupid. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/ * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/ * austin@zieglers.ca