From owner-freebsd-advocacy Mon Jul 12 6:36:30 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (dialin2017.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B22914DBE for ; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 06:36:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mail.2.229.205.in-addr.arpa [205.229.2.19] (may be forged)) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.8.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA22993 for ; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 08:39:39 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199907121339.IAA22993@hostigos.otherwhen.com> Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.45); 12 Jul 99 08:36:12 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.45); 12 Jul 99 08:35:55 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 08:35:45 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: FreeBSD Certification...again Reply-To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com In-reply-to: <19990712182309.08163@welearn.com.au> References: <199907120742.DAA87738@freedom.cybertouch.org>; from Lanny Baron on Mon, Jul 12, 1999 at 03:42:58AM -0400 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12) Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > On Mon, Jul 12, 1999 at 03:42:58AM -0400, Lanny Baron wrote: > > I would just like to say that it irks me to death that I must spend > > $16,500.00 (canadian) to take a 23 week long immersion course to be > > "prepared" for MCSE, Oracle and A+ certification. Although the school > > (private) I am going to will touch on solaris for a whole week, many > > people I have talked to on IRC tell me I am wasting my time. Free adivice is generally worth what you pay for it. Many times advice you pay for is worth no more. And conditions change with markets and local laws. Your mileage may vary. Lots of anti-certification people are motivated by the sour-grapes syndrome... "I can't get it, therefore it must not be any good". And many people overlook what the certifications were intended to do. The training course for the granddaddy of the lot, the Novell CNE, was intended to take a person who was already a computer expert and make that person an expert with NetWare. It was not intended to make a high school dropout marketable. Nor to help a person in a mid-life crisis find a new career. This is not to say those aren't worthwhile goals, just that they aren't the goals of the training or testing programs. The testing programs were designed to insure employers that prospective employees know how to use the systems they are tested and certified upon. The employers liked the idea, and then everyone wanted certification. Jobs started requiring certification. Even jobs that really didn't need certification because it was such an easy thing to screen for when looking at resumes or cv's. Which lead in turn to quick "shake and bake" classes where in just a week or two you could learn to pass the certification tests. Even if you were a dolt. This has weakened the perceived value of the certification to many technical people and to some employers. I will point out that no training course and certification - by itself - is sufficient. Have you ever had a bad doctor? A bad lawyer? And both of them were the product of a much more rigourous educational and certification process than the computer industry does, or can, insist upon. So, is the training worth it? It depends on your goals. Are you trying to just get certified so you can get a job? Then a shake'n'bake course could be a good investment. Just don't take it too seriously once you're done. However, 23 weeks doesn't sound like a shake'n'bake course. (A note to non-USA residents.... "Shake'n'bake" is a commercial seasoning mixture. You put into a baggie with chicken or pork chops and shake. The seasoning covers the meat, which you remove and bake. Quick and easy. Almost like cooking. Many soldiers in the US Army refer to the Officer Canidate School as "shake'n'bake", a deragatory term intended to convey that in 8 weeks they don't teach enough to make an officer useful. Graduates are referred to as "another shake'n'bake".) If you want to learn what you are doing, a longer course is a good idea. A real danger in commercial courses is that it's too easy to pick up the mind set of the vendor. After Novel courses you'll know that NetWare rulez! After Microsoft courses you'll know that NT will blow away NetWare and Unix. Oracle will probably teach you that Sybase drools. And so on. Regaining one's equilibrium can take a while. A common comment in this forum with regards to FreeBSD books is that "Unix books are FreeBSD books, because FreeBSD is Unix." Cool. I believe there are courses that lead to certification as Unix administrators. Those courses should do the trick for FreeBSD as well. Mike ====================================================================== Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (work) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: I BM, You BM, They BM, We all BM for IBM. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message