Re: Certification

Mick Rice wrote:

> Daniel,
> This is a very negative, inflexible and unhelpful view. One of
> the most irritating and generally useless types I've come accross in
> my career have been the peculiar brand of world-weary, seen-it-all,
> done-it-all, know-it-all and had the beta version of the t-shirt
> types. I hasten to add, that you most likely don't fall into this
> category Daniel but on this point at least I strongly disagree with
> your post, and we all have to be careful :-) If someone has taken the
> time and made the effort to get the OCP, that fact at the very least
> should count for something, even if the actual technical content of
> the sylabus might not be the greatest, and I think that point is
> debatable. I have spent a good deal of time interviewing for technical
> posts for a large organisation as well as the last 10 years working in
> the industry and the sort of negative, cynical, intellectual laziness
> I've mentioned is all around. Many experienced techies develop
> attitudes that makes them a very risky proposition in terms of
> introducing them into a productive team. For anyone who believes that
> their technical experience and inate personal charm will always be
> enough to pull them through their careers, I'd suggest that they be
> careful lest they get knocked back by some intelligent, open-minded,
> hardworking and less cynical youngster, that might or might not be OCP
> ;-)

I'm just being honest. I teach the Oracle curriculum at the University of Washington and count among my clients two Fortune 500 companies. And in both of them I have been on a committee that screened applicants. What I posted is the facts. Would you like me to blow smoke in the eyes of those contemplating spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours studying for a certificate? Should I lie to them? Should I tell them it counts for something? Sorry ... not my style. The truth is that we never hired DBAs (and it is a group decision not just mine) that do not have at least two years pervious experience banging out code.

I'm not saying the OCP is worthless. But if I had two candidates in front of me. One with an OCP and another with two+ years of development experience. The OCP owner would walk out the door disappointed.

Daniel A. Morgan Received on Tue Jun 12 2001 - 14:54:16 CDT