ah, good discussion, logbook vs exams, lets carry on...
These are 2 different paradigms,
>From the employee POV:
exams -
places the onus and work on the examiners, in coming u with
fresh questions,
and if practical exams, how to come up with exam scenarios.
In terms of practice and practical expertise, 'students' apply
it within a short period -
during the exam. And the knowledge may be 'given back' after its
over. Do they
develop the discipline and the habits of 'best practices'? Probably not.
With orgs. like LPI, RHCE, etc... its easy, we just depend on
them, but what
if their syllabus doesnt quite fit, or locally we require
emphasis on different
things? (well, maybe that's why LPI's community approach is better...)
logbooks -
requires the 'student'/employee to do have the diligence and
discipline to do
their work, consistently, throughout the period where the
logbook is maintained.
Yes it requires a great deal of effort and initiative as Red1 says.
This enforces a discipline and hopefully, best practices.
>From the employers POV
exams -
Its easy, and 'well understood' if he/she has a cert, it must be good,
Just tick the check-box. Then its up to the technical 'boss'
to interview the
candidate. If the boss is like Dilbert's, then he won't know
what questions
to ask, the candidate gets hired because his score is higher.
log book -
sure the tech 'boss' interviewing the candidate needs know his
stuff, otherwise
as Red1 says, he can't review it! Maybe they should have a
technical boss that really
knows his tech, (not just play golf with the board of
directors... but that's
another story)
In the 'exam' case, the candidate is off to work; sets up a server or
joins a programming team. then depending on bad luck, or whether
Jupiter is aligned with Saturn, or more likely he was lucky in the
exam and has no real skill, the server gets compromised/hacked/owned
or his code has a bug that is difficult to trace... in either case it
ends up costing the employer...
Not that this cannot happen with the log book case, but the 'boss'
will have a better assessment of the candidate's skill and probably
not put him on a critical job.
If you are a employer, owner of a company, which would you hire, the
guy with the fancy exam results, or the guy that has a well-documented
log book?
How many of us here in this list who have a technical background
cannot assess a log-book?
And if the guy that interviewed you, and who's probably gonna be your
boss, cannot understand your log book, do you want to work for him?
Hey maybe my POV is too radical, but my paranoia is driven by the fact
that Malaysians are very good at doing well in exams, and yet fail to
pick up good skill sets (hence "qualified but incompetent" ~ thanks to
ghodmode for this statement). I feel they really lack practical
hands-on skills, and SysAdmin, Programming, etc... are hands-on
skills.
And lastly, I'd like to pick on Red1 comments:
> Few hardly upkeep their log books. And hardly anyone to review of them.
Isn't this a fault of the organisation itself? You mean that there are
no senior persons with the knowledge to review the trainees, or they
were not bothered? And if its new technology, ain't the foreign
consultants suppose to do that?
So I think here, its not the fault of the log book system, but rather
the failure of the personel and management of HR.
> Log books are also quite subjective requiring good counterpart reviewers to
> read
> what is written and provide a measurable benchmark to it. Professional exams
> are a quick way to say if you got the minimal skillsets.
Yes the emphasis is on MINIMAL SKILLSETS. Logbooks, I think are better if we
want to look beyond minimal skillsets! (e.g. airline pilots)
> Last year, i did some HR development consulting for some local military
> equipment crew which was trained by a foreign superpower.
What, some military crew don't have their own personel that have
enough skills to review trainees logbooks, and that organisation is
only looking for 'minimal skillsets' and not further? I fear for our
safety!, the next Excocet missle they test fire may land in somebody's
backyard! ;-)
Ah, we always wanna take the easier way out.... sigh!
On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 11:01 PM, red1 <r...@red1.org> wrote:
> Last year, i did some HR development consulting for some local military
> equipment crew which was trained by a foreign superpower.
> Their no.1 requirement:
> Transfer of know how via log book kept by local counterpart, when learning
> from expartriate engineer.
> Their No.1 issue:
> Few hardly upkeep their log books. And hardly anyone to review of them.
> My no.1 recommendation:
> Institute examination standards and independent drill tests.
>
> IMHO, log books is a very hi-effort, hi-initiative endeavour. It is highly
> relevant in high risk careers such as aircraft crew, but for on the ground
> desktop BigMac munchers, a well generated test regime such as done by SCJP
> (Java) and CCNA (Cisco) should suffice. In fact CCNA test questions are
> experienced based where without experience you would fail. Log books are
> also quite subjective requiring good counterpart reviewers to read what is
> written and provide a measurable benchmark to it. Professional exams are a
> quick way to say if you got the minimal skillsets.
>
> On 4/2/11 1:09 AM, Boh Yap wrote:
>>
>> hi all,
>>
>> to widen this discussion....
>>
>> Personally, I'm against certification as the SOLE means of selection,
>> maybe its because of our over emphasis of A's in exams, that produced
>> 'qualified' but incompetent personnel. Also perhaps of the many MCSE's
>> out there, who are trained to click buttons... and setup servers with
>> security holes.
>>
>> On the other hand, i can understand employers and HR departments
>> needs, at least in using certification as the 1st level filtering
>> process.
>>
>> However a knowledgeable interviewer will very quickly sort out how
>> much the interviewee knows about Linux or programming. Both of these
>> are practical skills, and experience counts, especially when they have
>> encountered problems, solved them ad learnt from it. Unfortunately,
>> for organizations that are going into FLOSS for the first time, may
>> not have the expertise to conduct interviews for FLOSS personal.
>>
>> Perhaps we can borrow some techniques form another hands-on skilled
>> based profession, airline pilots. Pilots are required to keep a log
>> book, especially during their 'training' period, where they record the
>> no. hours flown, the routes that they flew and problems that they may
>> have encountered. Perhaps Linux sysadmins should do the same, keep a
>> log of the servers they setup, distro, disk partitions& file system
>> setup, software installed, backup systems used etc... If Linux
>> professional were to do this, then its very easy for a prospective
>> employer to asses his capabilities.
>>
>
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