Re: Certification

[Henri Yandell <bayard@generationjava.com>]

On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Curt Smith wrote:

>
> > Think about the "desire to learn" part.  I would prefer to hire someone
> > who has a constant fire in their person to learn new technologies in
> > their spare time than someone that does just the 8-5 bit.
>
> Dead on.  Too bad, but gone are the days of being a C programmer day
> in and day out.  I judge the a candidate on the desire to learn
> on their own time and initiative with questions like;  what books
> have you read lately.  And by how _many_ certifications they have.

This really just shows what style of company they've worked at though.
Out of the four IT companies I've worked full-time for, only one has been
prepared to pay for certifications/training. That was the first one. And
when they were sending people out to the Java training classes, I was told
they didn't want me to go as I was on a project [in Java] and didn't need
the training.

> Some folks might be surprised there's a few more java and OO oriented
> certs besides SCJP.  :)  Personally I need the carrot to get me through
> all the books and study, so collecting certs is one of my hobbies.  ;-(
> My credit card shows alot of good books have been bought, read and
> an immediate good use put that info (more credit card hits for the
> cert tests) and more tears.

Feel like listing the certs? Also do you pay for the certs completely or
have managed to find a way to get part of it paid for by employers? On
the credit card/book thing... Try Safari [http://safari.oreilly.com]. I've
been on that a few months now, don't read as much as I'd like to from it,
but it is proving interesting.

> ....

> For example, EJB / JMS is pase, now it's UDDI, WSDL, doc. centric etc.

The usual stuff then :) After the big media show that was EJB, and the
failure of anyone to use it as it was originally sold [BMP magic], I'm
wondering what % of people are cynical about the magical sideshow that is
web services.

Hen