I smell "Catch-22": certs are useless, don't get them first; but there's no other way to prove to an employer that you know something...other than getting a job which requires that you prove what you know, except you can't without a cert which is useless to get the job you need to prove you can do something...

I mean, the only alternative is to occasionally take two years off every decade and re-take an A.A.S. in IT (guess what I'm doing...).

Personally, I'd think that any "hands-on" cert is still worth something. This would include Cisco and RHCE/RHCT. There at least you can point to a cert and say "I had to demonstrate real-world knowledge to get it, not just write down answers on a test." Granted, Cisco is probably an employer-sends-you-to-it cert, at about $1500 to take the whole thing, but you can still get that RHCE/RHCT cert for less than $300.

--- Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org wrote:

I've been watching the certification saga, both Linux and otherwise, for a while now.

Certification is something you do within a position, not as a qualification for a new position, not as a ticket to the next job.

I think that's where it remains, and when someone asks "what's a good certification to go for?", I say "Whatever your employer will send you to". If you don't have the qualifications to get the job without the cert, if the prospective employer isn't convinced that certification is a formality, for you, and isn't willing to pay for it, I think it's a bad gamble.

Get the job first, then worry about the certification.

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