[Techtalk] Redhat certification of value?

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 11:05:42PM -0800, Val Henson wrote:
> I don't think much of certifications - too easily gamed.  For all that
> people complain about bachelor's degrees as certification, it's
> difficult to get through a 4-year program at a bricks-and-mortar
> university without learning something.  It's relatively easy to cram
> your way through a certification of any sort (and yes, I know that
> RHCE involves a free-form "solve this mysterious problem with this
> system" test, but I hear it's not usually very hard).

I have a lot more respect for the RHCE than I do for most certifications,
particularly because of the hands-on troubleshooting and setup components.

Sure, they're not terribly hard -- but it's still _something_. Red Hat says
that about 40% of people fail the certification test, and most
interestingly, that 75% of the people who fail scored 85 or higher on the
multiple-choice component *. 

I also think the RHCE can be really valuable as a confidence-builder. Sure,
I know I'm smart, but I'm also not very humble, so it's nice to be
independently verified. :)

Personally, were I evaluating someone for hire, I would put some weight
behind a RHCE or other test-based certification. But I'd put the most weight
on visible participation in open source projects _outside_ of work -- even
small ones.


* <http://www.redhat.com/training/rhce/rhce_faq.html#statistics> 

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>