Why certifications make me grouchy
While I support certifications, they also make me grouchy. Sometimes they make me really, really, grouchy, in fact — probably more grouchy than I have a right to be. You’ve probably heard the complaints a number of times.
For instance, there’s the problem of paper tigers, people who gain the certification but don’t have any real experience with the technology, or don’t really understand the technology. Paper tigers are bad, of course, but they’re generally easy to detect through a rigorous interview. In fact, paper tigers exist without the certification; it’s entirely possible for a solid resume to lead to a candidate that doesn’t have the skills advertised. Degree’s don’t really prove much, either, and it takes four years to get one of those (in theory), so I don’t know how much whining about this problem — as real as it is — is going to help.
Tony Li had a counter to this — he used to sit with a candidate’s resume in hand asking questions, and lining through skills he didn’t think the candidate actually had. At the end of the interview, he would hand the resume back to the candidate and say, essentially, “there, I fixed it Continue reading