Re: Certification Available +Pronounce - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

If certifications are seen in a bad-light, I believe it's directly because people sell-out their principles, or just plain set-out to make cash.

Now, if a pgsql certification was set-up, justified and qualified by a peer-reviewed examining process - rooted - in the quality/pride
principle that seems to be pgsql, I can't see how it would damage pgsql.

This might be a mad-idea, but if you can build an open-source DBMS,  why can't you build a certification by the same process?: open-source collaboration for its inception, elaboration, construction and deployment?
David Fetter wrote:

On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 11:23:00PM -0700, Chris Travers wrote:
 

As some one who holds many certifications (in order of value: MCSA,
MCSE, Inet+, A+, Server+, Network+, LPIC-2), I feel inclined to
chime in here...   

The more, the merrier :)
 

For the record, I passed the LPIC-2 and Server+ exams during their
beta testing stage.  At the end of the email I will share my
thoughts about PostgreSQL certification, but the rest is
certification experience in general.   

I am not aware of any area where the opinions are "mixed" on
certifications, except in the sense that incompetent HR people like
them and the people who have to work with (or worse yet, deal with
the result from) certified incompetents do not.
     

This is a big point.  When I worked at Microsoft, I was required to
pass a certain number of Microsoft certifications per year.  I
passed the other ones to keep myself balanced and sane because I
didn't want to be trapped working with Windows the rest of my
life.....   

This is precisely where we *dis*agree.  Although I have met several
competent people who hold certifications, my experience is that in
the overwhelming majority of cases, a certificate tells you that
the person is *not* competent.
     

With all due respect, it depends on the certification.  There can be
well designed certifications, but these usually have a hands-on lab
component.  I passed the IIS4 (and entirely based on my Apache and
IIS 5 experience, no less) exam without cracking a book and was
rather amused to see it rated as one of the hardest exams in the NT4
series.  I suppose this is because it was the only exam that
Microsoft designed that was ever worth anything.   

In what ways was it "worth something?"  To me, that your relevant
experience and lack of rote learning got you through the test where
cracking open their book did not would be a good sign. :)
 

Similarly the LPIC-1 exams were really good.  They were *really*
difficult (but with a low passing score).  But they really tested
one's sense of fluency with the command line among other things.  I
*learned* a lot taking these exams.   

That's sounding like a criterion, too.
 

But this is the problem:  People often see certifications as a quick
and easy substitute for learning the technology.  Of course, in the
long run, learning the technology is far less effort than bumbling
around a system you think you know how to use but don't really
understand how it works, but this is not the rational most people
have, both those who want to be technicians and those who want to
hire technicians but don't know what they do.

Finally almost all certifications end at the "technician" level.  It
is very hard to test someone's deep understanding of a technology
without resorting to formuleic questions which are easily memorized.   

I don't know that anything *cheap* can test this deep understanding at
all, even to the level of a vague guess.  Writing a specification and
a rationale for same given incomplete requirements and a few
hard-to-schedule people would be one way, but it's not cheap to
arrange nor to assess.
 

As far as I am concerned the only "certified engineers" are those
with college degrees in engineering disciplines (including CS).   

And even among them, there is a distressing percentage who either
spent so much time on Proprietary Product(TM) that they have no idea
what the underlying principles are, or on the other end, there are the
math-turbatory cowboys (they're always boys, however old they are) who
imagine that they can (and should) derive the entire thing from the
principles of set theory, but can't in fact code their way out of a
wet paper bag.

A good certification must protect people from both ends of this.
 

To call someone a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is like
saying that someone holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering from a
Non-Accredited University (and just paid his $50 to get the
diploma).  To test this point, I had considered trying to see if I
could pass the VB MCSD certifications without actually learning any
real VB....   

I have this awful feeling that you passed.
 

The reason why I don't tout my certifications is simply that I know
my material reasonably well and I don't want to be associated with
those MCSE's who cannot figure out how to fix Microsoft Word when it
opens minimized.....   

And that's *just* the kind of certification that could do PostgreSQL a
lot of harm without doing it any good as a tradeoff.
 

- experience is allways the telling-point someones ability; but
when you hear that some one is CISCO certified proffessional, or
Sun Certified Java programmer, or Red Hat Certified Engineer for
example - a certain air of respect carries with these titles.       

What air of respect?  Among people competent to make hiring
decisions, such a certificate conveys an air of disrespect.
     

Knowing what I know about the RHCE program, I would probably see it
as a positive step.  But again, all you know you are getting is
someone you hope will be a decent technician *not* a certified
engineer.   

I know that this sounds corny, but I'd rather get somebody with that
elusive quality called common sense and a liberal arts degree.
They're likely to be able to do something that's hard to test, namely
use their imagination on a really novel situation.
 

I am not denying the possibility of a certification that really
means something, but that would mean that at a minimum:

1.  There would be a significant, checkable prior work requirement
for taking the certification exam, and

     

This is the real problem (chicken-or-egg).  Furthermore the
definitions of work in this case would prove problematic.  Where
exactly one draws a line here is pretty tough.   

Too tough to be worth pursuing?  I'm thinking that an employer's
signed recommendation would be one way.
 

2.  Some large percentage of those who take the exam fail it and
would not immediately get another chance to re-take it.
     

No problem here.  But what do you do when vendor training is often
offered as a part of the certification problem (like the RHCE)?   

Frankly, that is a conflict of interest, and should disqualify the
certification.  It is simply too hard to avoid "teaching to the test."
 

3.  The exam would involve quite complicated hands-on use cases and
would not contain any questions whose correct answer was a quote     

>from the documents.   

This is one of the things I have liked about the RHCE documentations
is that it emphasizes hands-on work.   

:)
 

These criteria are anathema to the profit motive, which is why, to my
knowlege, no such certification currently exists.
     

Aside from criteria 1, it is more an issue of degree than substance.   

Is it?
 

Now for PostgreSQL certification.  A *real* PostgreSQL certification 
project would be extremely difficult and runs up against at least the 
following issues:

1)  There is a lot of bad information out there about database design   

True.
 

2)  Unlike Oracle, administering the basic server is not that 
complicated.  I.e. the barrier to being a technician is pretty low.   

Also true.  However, having a candidate be able to describe, or maybe
even demonstrate, how they'd find the answer to a question that
involves reference material would be instructive.  I've been known to
ask people questions like, "what do you think of chapter 5 of book
foo" and eliminate them as a candidate if they have a detailed opinion
without consulting the book.  It tells me that they are much more
likely lacking imagination and bad at setting priorities than that
they have an eidetic memory.
 

3)  Very few programmers want to know how to use an RDBMS properly
(part of why MySQL is so popular).   

One perennial complaint is that programmers have a tendency to test
things with one row.  Perhaps an exercise on putting together what the
person presumes to be representative sample data sets including what
assumptions were made could be a part of this.
 

So you are stuck.   

I think each of these things presents an opportunity :)
 

Most vendor-sponsored certification programs are marketing programs
in disguise "Look at the Cool Stuff(tm) you can do with our
software."  In the case of the MCP exams, they often fail miserably.
In other words, they teach on features rather than substance which
is *why* you get people working well above their ability simply
because they have a certification (they didn't realize it but they
were being trained to sell the software rather than use it).  Do we
really want that image for PostgreSQL?   

I'm pretty sure my opinion on this is clear ;)
 

If I wanted to recommend existing certifications for someone who
wanted to get a cert that would help him be a safe DBA, I would
suggest that he/she start with the Server+, and then take the LPI
track.  As for database design, that is another matter.  Study,
Study, Study.  No certification required.   

:)

Cheers,
D