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

I have no problem with other people having certificates, although no DBA I know has one. I myself have no chance of passing the exam. Most DBAs I know won't pass either. Nor are they interested in having one.

In the real battle field, experience is the key. But the problem is not every hiring manager knows or sees this.

There are many schools that train complete layman to pass DBA exams. They only charge $4,500 or so. There are even guaranteed class for $2K more.

Each session is 4 months. Believe me, most of the students have no database experience at all. Some students have never heard of Unix others do not know that Unix is case sensitive. Most could not use vi. But the courses are completely trimmed for the sole purpose of certificate. They have 2 months of basic training followed by repeated drills of exam samples. It teaches nothing about real life experience.

I know one such school's instructor. He said back a year ago when economy was strong, people actually walked out and got offer from dot coms for over $75K/year plus a bonanza of stocks. Most of these hiring managers have zero knowledge about Oracle, they do not know how to qualify a candidate. So the only thing they can do is qualify from the visible paper.

The school teaches student how to write professional resumes. They throw in all the buzz words so it will be picked up by auto scan. Now, added with some fake experiences or "projects" on top of bold prints of certificate, their resumes actually can fool a lot of small and inexperienced hirers.

How do these people survive their job ? I don't know. But maybe these companies never know how messed up their database is.

The school offers these students emergency help after graduation. Maybe they charge them, hey, but if I were such a student, this is money well spent.

This oddity has quiet down thanks to dot com slump. But like it or not, when it booms again, don't be surprised if your burger flipper neighbor suddenly becomes a well paid DBA with a shining certificate. Received on Wed Jan 30 2002 - 18:16:20 CST