RE: Certification

[<Vikrant.Verma@alltel.com>]

certifications are extremely good filtering instruments for HR. We all
will be forced to do these certification sooner or later. 

Its easy entry for new commers to cram and give the certifications. Its
also easy to see why so many qualified java certs are not even close on
being good developers. They dont have experience, they have never faced
the fire. But sooner or later there will be enough certified java
developers that will be really good and then you will be asked to prove
your worth. So why wait.

Ironically we are now commodities in the thinking market.

Be practical get one if you have time. The one of us who has most
feature would sell. 
my 0.02$
-Vikrant

-----Original Message-----
From: Curt Smith [mailto:chsmith@speakeasy.net]
Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 11:02 AM
To: Unlisted-recipients 
Cc: ajug-members@ajug.org
Subject: Re: Certification


I hear the folks who want to spend personal time studying but
don't have the time.  I know this first hand too.

JDJ is hitting it on the head too.  To be a marketable
candidate today, you really do need credible experience
and knowledge in most of the APIs comprising J2EE 1.3.

What are we to do?   It is sad, it's also a fact.  We
can complain that we don't have time, but it won't change
the above fact nor the minds of employers about the experience
levels they expect for even entry positions.

I'm sorry (honest) that my opinions may be unsettling
but might this be a useful discussion so we might reflect
on whether we need to re-adjust our carreer protection
tactics or not?

<my-opinions>

There's two ends of a spectrum of how one approaches their job in
the java market:

- laborer - the company pays for training, certs and books.  If they
   don't pay, the laborer doesn't do anything out side of 8-5.

- professional - the company is asked to pay nothing.  The
   prfessional takes responsibility of their continuing education,
   books and credible acknowledgements that they have succeeded
   in their training efforts (degrees or certs).

With so many good folks out of work, if you were hiring, which
candidate type would you want to have on your team, backing up
your reputation and project's success?

I hear some folks study after the kids go to bed or some
watch less tv...

Me,, I dream of changing careers to land scaping and working
only on sunny days and sleeping till noon when it's rainy.

:)


> Feel like listing the certs? 

Beyond SCJP the following I feel were a value to study for
and because the info is relavent are worth listing on a resume:

- SC Web Component Developer  - solid coverage of JSP and Servlets

- SC Enterrpise Architect - this cert. covers high level EJB,
and OK coverage of architecture, OO, methodology, system design
and system components and of course heavy on UML.

My tip;  the content of this cert is almost 2 yrs old, is lighter
coverage than you'd guess.   See some SCEA helps at javaranch,
yahoo groups and this site:  javadepot.com

Other vendors certs that I feel where a useful study experience:

- IBM's  OOA&D and UML

- Weblogic - Weblogic Server cert.  This was light on EJB and
   heavy on cmd line args, administration and how to run and tune
   details.  Useful actually even if you don't use WLS.  One of
   devils of EJB is the evil deployment descriptor which you
   you won't be affraid of anymore should you pass this one.

:)


Other certs that I wish I spent time on are:  Oracle DBA

I find that to be a well rounded developer / designer I also
need to be able to stop and start data bases, some tuning and
be fairly good at writing functional and performant SQL and
stored procs when the middle tier is not the highest perf.
place for business logic.  (don't believe those nuts touting
CMP-R for anything but demos and small systems that run 9-4
on M-Th.  Fridays are evil for all apps and even some demos.)

</my-opinions>

Take care, curt