False credentials...
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
Daniel - Stuff like this has been happening for as long as credentials have been around. During my 8 years in Mgt. (aka Hell), I have seen everything from people claiming to hold degrees from colleges they never attended to working for companies that either (1) never existed or (2) they never actually worked for; have even had developers hand me "code examples" they claimed as their own, not even knowing enough about development to have removed the comments with the "real" author's name from the printout (no, I'm not kidding). It's really up to each employer to check into a person's background; since many people cannot be trusted. As far as getting certs ... well, that's up to you. If you think it would benefit you as a developer and help you better market yourself, then "yes". If you're seeking a job at a company that wants developers to have certification, then "yes" ... you have to weigh the costs verse the benefits you'll gain from spending the time, money and effort. Are you going to really make $10k more per year with certification? Those are the REAL questions and answers I would be asking ... Just my two cents. D.
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
For some jobs, they seem to be required, however I've never applied for a job, or even seen one I am interested in, that requires certificates. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
As Douglas said, this is not new... I even hired some "false specialists" before: once, some important customer was desperate and asked us as a favor to do a small maintenance on a piece of Perl code, even knowing that we couldn’t differentiate garbage from Perl code. So, I found this guy, who basically said on the interview that he was the greatest Perl genius on whole world. As we didn’t have time and Perl knowledge enough to assess him we decided to take the risk. After a few days, no progress on the maintenance and even without knowing Perl, I know that the job shouldn’t take more than a week (basically read/process/write a few text files on some specified formats). A few more days and I decided to sit with him to understand what was blocking him. Then, I saw this book on his table... It seems that he took more than 24 hours to learn Perl... Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. -- Bruce Schneier By the way, dog_spawn isn't a nickname - it is my name with an underscore instead of a space. -- dog_spawn
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
Have a certification does not guarantee that you know the material. Not having a certification does not guarantee that you don't know the material. Confusing, ain't it! You're going to know what you know, regardless of what certifications you hold. The whole premise behind them is not to gain more knowledge, but to aid in the prospective company's selection process. Analogies are everywhere. When you go get your car worked on, do you opt for a mechanic that is ASE certified, or the guy across the street that is top-notch but has no certification? If the former and he does a lousy job, what do you think of his certification? If the latter and he does a great job, should he then bother with a certification?
Five birds are sitting on a fence. Three of them decide to fly off. How many are left?
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
Man. If that guys level of knowledge is an indicator of the certifications then I would say "Don't bother" :)
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
Hi Daniel, I think claiming to have these certifications is completely unethical. As to their worth, I personally couldn't care less if someone I were to hire has them or not. What I want to see is are three things: 1. good design skills 2. good work habits (commenting, instrumentation, debugging skills, version control, etc) 3. ability to solve problems. I think MCSD et al gives you exposure to canned solutions for simple problems, not the real world problems, custom interfaces, performance bottlenecks, and other issues. On the one hand, that's valuable as a part of a good foundation. On the other hand, if you don't know how to search for solutions for problems that are outside of the MS solution domain, your MS... training is useless, IMHO. Marc Latest AAL Article My blog Join my forum!
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Hey everyone, So, I am on my way to being an MCSD and MCDBA and I see stuff like this. link to post Is it worth getting these certifications? Do clients actually check to see if you have them? I think claiming to have them when you don't even if it is in a friendly setting and as subtly as placing them after your name is just plain wrong. Take Care, Daniel
Hi Daniel, I used to (in a previous job) have to hire network technicians quite regularly. I *always* made a point of asking for their certification number and calling to check up on it. But the main point is that I really didn't care if they had it or not because 9 times out of 10 the paper certification was so meaningless it might as well be toilet paper. Either a person can do the job or they can't. Anyone can get a certification if they are good at memorization and writing tests but few of them will be good at the actual work without some experience under their belts. I was more interested in what they have done. If it was an entry level position, I basically expected nothing but interest and good basic skills as a human being at being able to communicate, likeable etc. For any qualified positions we *always* had tests for them to do. Bottom line is if a place is hiring based solely on your paper qualifications and not on what you can actually *do* or can show to have done, it's very likely a place you will not want to work at for any extended period of time.
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