Re: Is Sr. DBAs afraid of not be able to pass cert exam ??

Keith Boulton doodled thusly:

>
>Most knowledge acquired more than 5 years ago is utterly irrelevant.

Sorry, but that is utter rubbish. What you are saying is that proper university-level knowledge of the principles of computing and data processing is utterly irrelevent. I suggest you run that theory by the management of most unis in just about any discipline of human knowledge. Including for example medicine. See how far you get.

You are instead defending the utter rubbish that M$ training and marketing and other parallel "teaching organizations" want us to confuse with true knowledge: the trained monkey who knows how to press the button associated with a given version of a given product. That is NOT knowledge, that is training by rote.

I am not debating if this type of training is cost efficient or not. But I will sustain that I'd rather have a knowledgeable DBA or technician taking care of my data and systems, ANY day, over a trained monkey.   

And I strongly suspect that there are quite a few people that agree with me.

>
>There is no practical difference between 4 and 10 years experience - at that
>point, the issue is the difference between candidates' understanding, talent
>and motivation.

And you don't get "understanding, motivation and talent" by "certificate training". Certainly not when the only thing said certification teaches is the location of the buttons. Instead of the principles behind their operation!

>
>I've worked with many people with 10 years experience which consisted of the
>first year repeated 10 times.

I've got news for you: computers are still von Neuman digital machines, M$ like it or not. The principles of their operation were established more than 50 years ago and have not changed ONE bit. You talk with anyone from back then with proper training and anyone with a fresh graduate training and the principles are still the same. Faster and larger for sure, but still the same.

Buttons have changed. Any monkey can understand buttons. Takes a well-trained person to understand *why* the buttons may be different and which ones need to be pressed to obtain a given result.

And guess what: you do NOT have to re-train one of these people every new release of software. How's that for TCO and value for money? Of course, you may work for a monkey-training organization. Good luck placing them, against the competition from outsourced services in 3rd-world countries...

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam Received on Wed Jan 30 2002 - 03:45:54 CST