Re: Certification Available +Pronounce

josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com (Josh Berkus) writes:
>> I am not aware of any area where the opinions are "mixed" on
>> certifications, except in the sense that incompetent HR people like
>> them and the people who have to work with (or worse yet, deal with the
>> result from) certified incompetents do not.
>
> PostgreSQL (and other OSS software) is being considered for
> government agencies and some companies where written certifications
> are required for consideration. No matter how you personally feel
> about the validity of certifications, there are large organizations
> which are wedded to them. PostgreSQL not having certifications
> won't change their minds; it'll just exclude PostgreSQL from
> competition.

That is an obvious reason for *need* for this.

> Of course, I also believe that certification (like other-DB
> compatibility and back-patches) is appropriate for commercial
> PostgreSQL companies and not for the project. Which is why it's
> keen that SRA has decided to offer their test in the US.

It seems to me there's room for "on the one hand" and "on the other
hand" on this matter.

-> 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.

-> There have historically been cases where certifications were
regarded as valuable, notably with Cisco, where it was in fact
really rather difficult to get the cert, and with SAP R/3, where,
for a time, there was a perceived shortage of people with R/3
skills, and it was *ludicrously expensive* to get the cert,
such that people would surely not waste money on it if they
were complete morons.

I don't think these scenarios are likely to be able to be the case
for a PG certification; there is not so grave a "perceived
shortage" of 'qualified' PG DBAs as to make any of these approaches
to making a cert 'clearly worthwhile' practical.

Hands up, anyone willing to pay $15K USD for a "PostgreSQL Partner
Academy" certification? (I have such an SAP cert on my office
wall, at home, and it did cost about that...)

I don't see much likelihood of the "ludicrously expensive/valuable"
cert emerging; there isn't the economics of consulting firms being
able to bill an extra $50K/yr due to getting people with certs.

There is, on the other hand, a regrettable risk of "Minesweeper
Certified Expert." One of the values of a PG certification scheme is
in the notion of publicity, which encourages there to be a lot of
people with the cert.

- Make it expensive, and nobody will want to pay for it

- Make it really hard to pass the test, and there won't be many people
certified, which makes the effort of building the test somewhat
futile

- Further, a really difficult test is likely to either be highly
unobjective (and hence prone to wrong results), or extremely
expensive to administer. (Head back to "Make it expensive, and ...)

Unfortunately, there is the risk of that meaning that it winds up
being both cheap and easy to get the certification, which points in
the "Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert" direction :-(.

Certifications are very difficult to do well.

Consider the political issues surrounding standardized testing in
schools; both in the US and Canada, there is a lot of controversy
surrounding "standardized tests." Parents and politicians want there
to be some form of "accountability", which has led to students
spending more and more of their year writing such tests, with a
concomitant reduction in the amount of time teachers can spend
actually teaching them. They are increasingly 'well tested,' but less
educated, because the time was spent on tests :-(.

And consider that, despite the rather fuzzy results gotten, hordes of
teachers and test designers spend enormous amounts of time preparing
and administrating those tests. How can we expect to nail down hard
and fast assertions about DBA competence in a two hour certification
test if teachers don't do nearly so well when they have students for
an entire year???

Certifications are /very/ difficult to do well...
--
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