Re: Oracle 9i DBA jobs

Lenceman - In the U.S. this job market is so bad right now (in general - I couldn't really say about Oracle in particular) that certs mean virtually nothing.
A friend of mine was laid off from Unisys coming up on a year ago. He has been extremely productive in the interim, using his time off to take test after test and earn cert after cert... Including a couple of security related credentials (Checkpoint, CISSP), as well as some O/S (unix AND Microsoft).
He has also gone to MANY interviews. None seem too impressed with the certifications he has achieved and he has been hit with many technical questions on interviews. In short, the certs *used* to be highly valued. These days potential employers can be extremely picky and don't regard them as highly as they may have a year ago. I believe they see it as more of a challenge to see if you really know your stuff. What's the point of all this?

The point is, go for your cert - but don't expect it to get your foot in the door like it may have last year.
You may just have to prove to an interviewer that you know the stuff that your certification says you do.

Blaine

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"Lenceman" <lenceman_at_aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020612023459.11781.00000463_at_mb-mf.aol.com...


> I've been a network engineer for over the last five years doing everyting

from


> Netware, NT, 2000, HP-UX, OpenView, and Cisco to name a few.  I was going

for


> the CCIE but after finishing up the CCNP and CCDP tracks I've decided to

give


> routers a rest for now and see how much I like working with Oracle.

>

> I have a few questions.

>

> 1.  I'm going to be pushing into the Oracle 9i OCP track.  Once I finish

this


> track asuming that i know what I'm doing what does the job market look

like for


> 9i.

>

> 2.  Once I finish the 9i OCP what is the value of compleating and learing

> Oracle Developer 6i track.

>

> 3.  What do you think of the new OCM lab?  Will it be hard and rewarding

like


> the CCIE?

>

> 4.  Will Linux replace Solaris and the # 1 Oracle Platform?

>

> 5.  Will MS SQL 2000 trick the Oracle faithfull and start to take control

by


> the time SQL Server 10 comes out?  (SQL 2000 is version 8.)

>

> Thanks

>