Re: Certification Available +Pronounce

On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 10:59:24AM -0700, Ron Mayer wrote:
> Chris Browne wrote:
> >
> > We have probably all observed scenarios where certifications were
> > essentially so much waste paper. The "Minesweeper Consultant And
> > Solitaire Expert" and such.
> >
> > We don't want a PG certification program to amount to this.
>
> In defense of the Lite certification I'd say that that's exactly
> what most companys want.

Do they? Or have they become convinced that they want this because
it's easy to quantify? I don't think that going down the road of
"what companies imagine they want, no matter how useless it is," is a
good strategy for the long run.

> When I try to hire someone with a certification as opposed to a
> BS/MS/PhD; the task I have in mind is a straightforward commodity
> task - not some kind of rocket science.

The Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert certifications *don't
even test* the ability to do the "commodity task" of which you speak.

> In the real business world there are zillions of mind-numbing tasks
> like that: "make a database to hold this list of people, etc".

Interesting you should mention this. Perhaps you find such tasks
"mind-numbing," but a lot of us here find them quite challenging,
especially when we're making one that both meets current requirements
and is easily expandable to future ones. The essential techniques are
out of DB Normalization 101, but the ability to apply those while
looking toward the future is something most people only get by
experience. In other words, with a little less 'tude about how this
task is mind-numbing in nature, it's possible to do a lot less work
and do it better and faster.

> To accomplish this, I need any commodity database (Access, Oracle,
> MySQL, and postgresql will all do fine), and someone with the basic
> skills to run it. When I post a job posting, this is what a
> certification means to me.

I don't know about you, but I don't like to hire incompetents. Apart
from the real but hard-to-quantify effects of stress and aggravation,
they simply take too much time and resources to manage.

> By having a large number of people with a "yes, I can do simple
> commodity tasks in postgresql" certification, it makes postgresql as
> likely to be used in those (surprisingly large number of) simple
> tasks that currently MCSEs do.

I'm with you on replacing them, but I'm not sure it's wise to attempt
to replace them 1:1. For some kinds of stuff, one PostgreSQL person
can replace *lots* of mindless drones.

> It also says something good about postgresql -- that it's easy
> enough that zillions of people can do it well enough to be
> certified.

I think that the barriers to entry on PostgreSQL are already pretty
low :)

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter david(at)fetter(dot)org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 510 893 6100 mobile: +1 415 235 3778

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