NYCPHP Meetup

[Ajai Khattri]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, Urb LeJeune wrote:

>          Let my turn it around a bit. Would you go to a doctor who was
> completely self taught? I once ask a fellow faculty member, "what is
> the difference between a Public Accountant and a Certified Public
> Accountant?" His answer, "about 50K per year."

Which doesn't really mean anything in technology - even if you had some 
kind of certification it will quickly become less and less relevant. Would 
you hire someone that was certified over 10 years ago or someone with a 
lot of experience who isn't certfied?

The problem is technology changes faster than pretty much any other 
business. This is why when some of these certifications started appearing 
(like the Microsoft ones), they had to put a system in place where after a 
certain amount of time (or releases) you had to be "re-certified". My 
conclusion at the time is that certification *may* show some basic 
competency for a very narrow range of technology but ultimately is of 
little value. Probably why Ive never been certified in anything.

I should also mention that in the UK (I live here but I grew up the UK) 
the British Computer Society has a membership criteria that includes a 
degree but also requires a certain amount of job experience to qualify.
 
>          It's really semantics. You are free to define "professional" any
> way you like. Ask some non-computer friends how they would define
> professional.

You mean ask people to apply criteria in their field to another field 
which they don't understand and which they assume doesn't change very 
much? Yeah, that'll work :-)

>          Let me make a practical point. 10 years after the Financial Analysts
> Federation announced there Certified Financial Analysts (CFA) designation
> those so certified was making 56% more than their cohorts not 
> certified.

Again, that just means they've drank the Cool Aid WRT certifications. You 
can't look at technology the same way.



-- 
Aj.