On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 07:24:04AM -0500, Matt Simmons wrote: > I think I speak for everyone in LOPSA (hopefully, at least) when I say that > the ultimate goal is to improve the state of the profession. In a little > more blunt terms, a lot of sysadmins are really rubbish at what they do, > and we'd like to fix that. > > Going beyond that, though, I don't think that we are aiming for just a > higher level of mediocrity. Ideally, we'd all be /good/ at what we do, but > instead of that unrealistic goal, people bring up discussions like this > because they're interested in the next best thing - good /enough/.
This is the thing; and I think that when I say 'certifications are stupid' I am missing the point. Yes, certifications/licencing/whatever at best only certify a slightly higher level of mediocraty. And if I'm hiring a SysAdmin? I can evaluate far better than any certification test I've ever seen. I think it's unrealistic to think you can create a certification that is better at picking good people than someone who is experienced in the field. However, this does not mean certifications are useless. SysAdmin certifications are useless to me when I hire, sure. But accounting certifications? I require accounting services, and I know so little of the field that I simply can't tell a good one from a bad one. But, I still need an accountant, so I go for one with the certification. Same goes for SysAdmin skills; I'm sure there are plenty of business owners and managers that can't tell the difference betwen a good sysadmin and a clueless one. Yeah, once they get one good sysadmin that they trust, they can use that to evaluate others, but getting that first good sysadmin (and then trusting them) is pretty difficult; that's where the certification comes in. Sure, it doesn't say much, but it does say that they passed some minimum bar. >From that point of view, some kind of certification has an important role to play in the market, but that the government doesn't need to administer the test; just someone trusted, and in this case? well, I don't know that the government would be trusted. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
