Re: The Informix Certified Professional Program

The Dority wrote a lot and some of it got smushed: > > I hate to burst the bubble here, but I don't think Informix's primary > business is selling consulting. There business is selling products -- > consulting is used primarily to leverage product sales. > Do you work for INFORMIX? How do you know this? > It is also sad when you hire some one who appears to be intelligent and > able to solve real world business problems and they turn out to be a > total flop while charging you $100/hr. > They found a good rate...where was this? :-) > You either know enough to pass the test or you don't. I can't believe > all the complaining about a $250 dollar fee to take the test. It > seems well worth it if it helps promote your career. > Hmmmmmm... If you have 10 people to certify, and they need 3 tests each, how much money is that Dority? Or let's say YOU paid for it, and you needed 5 tests, and next year you'll need another 3...where does this end? And how do you know if it's a good value? What do you compare it with? Do I compare that with a Sybase certification or a Oracle certification? And at what product comparison? It's kinda silly when you think about it, almost as silly as those ads where they compare benchmarks. > Its just like anything else. Want to become an airline pilot? I'm > sure even if you have all the intellegence and integrity in the world you > will need to prove your skills and get a license. As a general rule, <licensing> is reserved for occupations where the health and safety of other individuals may be compromised by the person perfoming the service for which they have a license. Hair dressers in most U.S. American states must have licenses, just as airline pilots. If you program a life support program, or hardware, you may be required to carry general liability insurance, or provide certain guarantees. You may have to be supervised by a medically licensed individual to contain the risk. Let's not confuse certification with licensing. Novell did this and look at the fine shape they're in. Example: Today I'm certified in 7.1, and next week 7.5 comes out. Now what? Do I need to get certified again? What is the measure of value here? and how long does it last? And what about the whole damn industry? What's next? > In the computer industry its difficult to know what a persons skills > are due the melting pot of technologies -- certification gives > employers some idea who they are hiring. As a manager I would stay in touch with who and WHAT I'm hiring as well. If I didn't have enough knowledge about who I was hiring, I could always call a university, or neighboring professional, or the vendor, for advice on what is a good candidate for the job. There are plenty of resources at the library too. If you get a noodlehead, even after all that, replace them, and get somebody else! On the other hand, even experienced managers sometimes hire people where no matter what the candidate knows, and what the manager knows, it's not enough. The manager is blind about the candidates' necessary experience, not asking the right questons, even after a lengthy interview. I interviewed for a project about 5 years ago where I was asked about outer joins. I had little to no experience at the time with outer joins, so I didn't qualify for the job. The hiring manager had to deal with them extensively because of the data base, and the way it was designed. I went on to another project. About a year later, I was interviewed for a different project, and outer joins never came up. I was hired, and got to work. My first day of looking at the app, and I discovered the WHOLE APPLICATION was based on outer joins! The folks who hired me didn't know enough to ask me if I had the experience. But I knew enough to dig into the manuals, and call friends for help rather quickly and learn everything I could about them. Certification might have allowed me to pass a test with a question about outer joins, but practical experience was the real answer. Until I could get some experience I was the wrong man for the job. Sometimes the only real measure of real worth in <THIS> business is practical experience. Otherwise the consulting rates would be the same "across the board" for any and all technology skills. It's SKILL, not certification that makes you worth something, employee or consultant. :-) -- \\\\|// (6 6) ==============================---o00--(_)--00o---============================ Tim Schaefer tschaefe@encore.com tschaefe@shadow.net Encore Computer Corp http://www.shadow.net/~tschaefe =============================================================================