November 13, 2019 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Micro Credentials
November 13, 2019 at 8:48 am
While it is still possible to have a career that stays within the Microsoft technology stack not even Microsoft are 100% Microsoft anymore.
To my mind vendor certification makes sense when you buy into a monolith. There are synergies and patterns that makes knowledge in one area relevant to another. Where as vendor specific certification programs would appear to be in decline I am seeing a rise in AWS and Google certification schemes.
I see a number of vendors with "University" sites, whether these are pay sites or free. To get people to adopt technology outside of the mainstream open-source vendors need a robust education resource. Some of these are of quality at least as good as the material that was offered on £1,500 five day training courses. Then you have the rise of sites like Pluralsight providing high quality material at a fraction of the cost of vendor courses.
Ultimately it boils down to one of the principles in the Agile Manifesto. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
November 13, 2019 at 2:03 pm
If you decide that you need to study a technology, I think that it would probably be worthwhile to go ahead and get certified in it. I recently took the Microsoft Querying SQL Server certification, mainly just to demonstrate to my coworkers that it could be done. DBA certifications are more useful for job advancement, I think, not so much for developer certifications. The new Microsoft Azure certifications look useful to me, and might be a good option for someone wanting to move up. I advise caution about extremely narrow certifications, which might canalize your career into a specialty that might be hard to escape.
November 13, 2019 at 2:40 pm
I think experience is more valuable than education but it is also much harder to get. Comment for the interviewing process: "Don't tell me what you know. Tell me what you have done".
On the serious side, just last evening I identified and pointed out to a current software developer a data conversion issue that came up for me caused by a very bad design decision made by Intuit in their Quicken product that was their response to the Y2K hassle many of us went through. Now 19 years later, Intuit's bad decision causes a current developer to have historical dates change to future dates during a conversion process he has created for Intuit's data. Education may prepare one for handling technical issues, but experience prepares one for logical solutions to those issues.
It is unfortunate that our current educational institutions may be trying harder to teach students WHAT to think instead of HOW to think.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
November 13, 2019 at 4:10 pm
Good points, Steve. So many thoughts. I have a 4 year degree from a university in Arizona. Without that, I would never have gotten to where I am today. But that was a different time, different criteria. You had to have a 4 year degree before you could enter the door.
There are places I know of and have had personal experience with, that absolutely insist upon a 4 year degree or higher, and a high GPA as well. For too many years I tried desperately to get into Sandia National Laboratory (SNL). Finally I realized that SNL will not let you through the door unless you have a GPA that is 3.9 or above. It doesn't matter if you got your degree 100 years ago. It doesn't matter if you made major contributions to Linux/Windows/some-open-source-project. If your GPA isn't 3.9 or above, then their attitude is GET OUT THE DOOR NOW!!!!! I happened to work my way through college. Mommy and Daddy didn't help me with anything while I was in college. And I didn't want to go into debt to get through school, so consequently my GPA is a B-. No where near good enough for SNL. I've known people with a 3.95 GPA get into SNL who were literally worthless at their job, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was the GPA.
I have completed getting a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD). At one point, prior to Satya Nadella, I think a MCSD would have been a valuable certificate to get. Now I'd rather focus upon aspects of it, rather than the whole thing.
I know a lot of people who aren't interested in learning anything new. Since where they work they have no real competition, they don't need to learn anything new. These same people are only interested in doing exactly what they've done before. They're really pissed when they have to do anything different. I used to try arguing with them trying to help them see how learning something new is good for their careers. I have given up doing that because there's no way they'll ever change their minds.
Rod
November 13, 2019 at 4:33 pm
Rod, about Sandia, there are some entities that are culturally oriented to credentials. I work in healthcare which can't help but be credential oriented because of doctors. About learning new technologies: contributors to this forum tend to have long tenures in IT. But we are outliers. None of the people that I started in IT with are still programming. Inability to learn new technologies is the norm. People that can shift to newer technologies are the unusual ones. For example, when our industry shifted to TCP/IP, a ton of people left the industry and a lot of companies went out of business because they couldn't make the transition. Same with the shift from 32 to 64 bit microprocessors, same with the shift to event driven programming. In the context of this discussion, I guess my point would be this: if you have no interest in achieving a skill level that would enable you to get a certification, you might should consider changing careers. In my experience, most people are going to have to change careers anyway.
November 13, 2019 at 5:24 pm
My third oldest son has earned a 4-year degree but never has done his official internship, so doesn't have the actual official document. He did work for a period in IT at SNL, but wanted to get back to his Colorado digs, so left there. And his study was not even in IT but in Outdoor Recreational Management. Go figure that one out. Two other sons also are in IT positions, one with a degree and one without.
I also have a 4-year degree and was near completing a Masters in Sociology, but spent 42 years in IT, getting my start even though I had only even seen a computer once before I started my first development job. Again, go figure.
Fourth son has only taken a few technical classes with no degree, but owns and operates a very successful HVAC company employing about a dozen technicians.
So, as I have pointed out before, education is only one building block that needs a firm foundation in thinking skills. Are they innate? I can't say. Being the theological evolutionist that I am, I tend to favor that they are largely learned. I do believe that, as our Constitution declares, 'All men are created equal'. But from there on, it's up to YOU.
My wife has a degree in English, but instead started, operated, and sold a successful computer graphic design business, again because an astute manager recognized that she had an ability to be creative with technology.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
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