grad school / openbsd / editors

Ben Pfaff pfaffben@msu.edu
12 Mar 2001 12:43:21 -0500


This is not directed at anyone on the list.

I have met too many A+-, MCSE-, and CN[AE]-certified clueless
fucks to have respect for those certifications.  They are
worthless without experience.  And a *variety* of experience at
that: there are lots of people out there claiming "10 years" of
experience when it's actually just 6 months of experience,
repeated 20 times.

Certifications in general just indicate that you're certified.
They don't mean that you can be trusted with a networked toaster,
let alone anything valuable.  This is one reason that I have
refused to get any certifications.  Funny, it's never stopped me
from getting good jobs.

There may be some meaningful certifications[1], but they're hard
to get (duh) and therefore hardly anyone has them.  Someone with
one of those certs I'd definitely respect.

[1] For instance, I'm told that in one of the Cisco exams they
put you in a big room stuffed with network hardware b0rken in
various subtle ways and just tell you "fix it."  Supposedly the
record time-to-completion is something like 8 hours.)

-- 
"How could this be a problem in a country 
 where we have Intel and Microsoft?"
--Al Gore on Y2K