On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 02:09:37PM +0900, Austin Z. wrote:
Ultimately, the problem is one of wishes and horses. It may differ in
the rest of the world, but certificates in the U.S. and Canada are
essentially worthless, and it’s greedy vendors’ fault in large part.
Sorry.
I tend to agree, to some extent at least. I’m surprised, though, that
you didn’t address the matter of how a CS degree is characterized here.
Computer Science degrees are not supposed to indicate a basic ability to
program – computer science as a field is something else entirely. It
is
as though everyone expects a CS degree to be the definitive programming
certification. Of course, because that’s how it is treated in the job
market, schools have started chasing that in how they structure their CS
degree programs, with the end result that they end up being about as
worthless as vendor-driven certifications. Oh, sure, they make you
look good, but they don’t make you actually good, at least judging
by
the results I’ve seen.
It seems most CS degree programs are just (really long, really
expensive)
Java certification courses, these days.
Still, it reinforces my point: your certificate is going to have value
because of who is mentoring you during the process. NOT because it’s a
piece of paper. I’d still feel more comfortable hiring someone with a
visible reputation of open source contributions. It’s not the piece of
paper (the certification) that has value; it’s the process. If that
process changes, the value evaporates.
Spot-on, I think, with the exception that it’s not reputation that makes
the mentor – though certain types of reputation are strong indicators.
good processes and programs, but those speak to the quality of the
programs, not the pieces of paper you get from them.
It’s important to separate the certification from the instruction. A
certification is only as useful to the person pursuing it as it is
useful
for getting a job – and it is only useful to employers who know better
than to care about a certification (in that they have a competitive
advantage over those employers who take a certification as some kind of
magical indicator of ability). Certifications are also, oddly enough,
useful to instructors in that it provides them with a built-in marketing
tool: if they advertise their programs as certification training
programs, they’re more likely to get students clamoring at their doors,
assuming the certs in question are in any demand.
Look past the presence (or absence) of any association with
certifications, and choose your instructional programs with care, if you
actually want to learn. If you already know the material, you don’t
need
a program – just brush up on the “official” answers, and go take the
cert, if that’s important to career progression.
Sadly, degrees are much the same – but there’s probably less than one
hundredth of one percent of employers out there that realize this. I
learned a lot in college – but mostly in two specific ways:
-
pursuing knowledge on my own time
-
sticking with a good instructor for future classes, even if they’re
outside my chosen degree program
The end result is that I didn’t learn all that much from the classes I
needed for the degrees I pursued, even when I was getting As on
everything. Learning is something you do, not something you receive.
If people are willing to pay for something, being as