Luke

And college grads just go for certs these days if their career pushes for it.

I stand somewhere in the middle. I have a college degree (B.S. in Computer Information) and no certifications. But now with my experience in the field, certs aren’t even on the horizon, unless my employer thinks I should get one…

I’m now a senior software engineer, I can code well in a heap of languages and platforms. I architect solutions, train clients, mentor junior staff, write techincial docs etc etc. Its easy. Its natural. I’m baffled by some of the idiocys “qualified” people bring to the table.

Of all the devs I’ve come into contact with over the past 7 years, the most clueless are those that are “qualified”, while the talented ones have soloed it from a teenage hobby into something professional.

I think quite often uni teachers do not have the required skill set for what is the industry norm, so perhaps this contributes. (eg, being taught VB3 when VB6 or VB.NET is current is idiotic).

We had a simple programming test, debugging and unit testing really, a form that uploaded an image and inserted text information to a SQL Server, and out of around 30 candidates, only 3 people passed it and none of them had a degree.

Having said that, I have been turned away from a few jobs in the past due to a lack of degree. But I would sooner get for a certification but the company whose technology I’m using than a degree. I did start getting one, but it was like relearning everything I sat up to 4am learning when I was 15!

However I’d agree that a natural ability is more important than paper qualifications, all other things being equal.

I think the thing that’s going unsaid here as well is that IT qualifications just aren’t that great or well formalised. I mean, if you want to be a doctor you need to go to med school. Want to be a lawyer, same deal. Want to be an “IT Consultant”? Hack HTML for a year or two, get an MCSE, get a degree, install Windows 95, whatever. It’s small wonder projects get into such a mess sometimes.

I have some certs in macromedia products, and my opinion is that certs and degree are two different things that don’t exclude one another. Like the degree the cert is only a begining it’s the real experience that’s matters.

I have a BS in CS, as well as a few certs, but right after I graduated, it took me about 6 months to land a job. The biggest complaint was my lack of experience. I worked for the university for a little over a year, and did my web development thing on the side, but when a big company is looking over hundreds of candidates, many with degrees and certs, they will undoubtedly fall back on experience and soft skills as the deciding factor.

As far as the certifications themselves, I think it’s sort of iffy to even have a programing certification. Programming in general is such an abstract endeavor that it’s very difficult to test ones aptitude with a multiple choice test. Sure you can test a candidates knowledge of syntax and language constructs, but that is just book knowledge. I don’t know many folks who have any language totally memorized. Every developer I know, both good and bad, makes extensive use of reference material. Actually, I can’t think of a single developer that I am acquainted with that has a programming-related certification.

Networking and database administration is another matter. Really anything related to hardware can benefit from certs more than software, mainly because of the deterministic nature of hardware. There are a finite number of ways to bring up an interface on a cisco router. There are a finite number of ways to back up the transaction logs on SQL Server. These (many) routine tasks are predictable for the most part, and if a company is hiring a network admin, they will need to know that the new hire can jump into a router and do what needs to be done. This type of knowledge is testable, and the results of the tests can typically be trusted. Obviously this hinges on the quality of the test itself, but that’s a whole other matter.

While there is a certain amount of overlap, I believe that when it comes to programming, a degree (heavy on theory and math, not necessarily IT) and experience are most valuable. For vendor specific tasks (routers, DBMSs, OSs), certifications and experience are most valuable.