What is on Your Mind?

Hi Neo...

You and I have a lot in common...

I read your old upload about your Motorola exploits, and enjoyed it completely. Terrific read, thanks...

I part own a small company that deals in two way radio...

As for the certification part. I have no certification of any sort and I am totally an amateur at coding but I have done many kids level electronic projects coupled with matching kids level software to run these projects in various languages.

I have learnt a great deal about how systems work purely from starting from scratch and hammering at the door until it works, then, finding out why it works.

If I don't understand why then I ask.

I would prefer a licensed Amateur Radio buff as opposed to some BSc in electronics engineering to work under me as normally the Amateurs will have had hands-on experience and can just as easily work with their hands as with their heads...

Well, I can confirm that just about every certified Internet security "expert" I know does not own nor operate an IT infrastructure that is constantly under attack and just about all of those "certified people" have never been in a real-time "cyberattack" against an IT infrastructure.

I'm constantly amazed at the "industry of certification" which just cranks out "paper experts" who have little to no real time operational experience; yet they parade around as if they are some kind of "expert".

Yep, as wisecracker discovered an old post of mine from long ago, I learned HPUX on a operational assembly line of Motorola radios where the factory had to be operational or "heads would roll". My first job was to build a system to integrate all of the HP test equipment on the assembly line with the Progress database using HP RMB (Rocky Mountain Basic) HPUX system APIs into the HP test gear. I recall that HP engineers told me that no one they knew of had actually done then things I had to do (like use RMB shared memory, message queues and semaphore IPCs), so we debugged the system calls in real time.

.. and at the same time I was learning vi, rm, mv, ls -la, etc. I have many stories like this, and often think I am remiss not to write about them in our "War Stories" section; but I'm still busy coding, learning, breaking down a system (mostly all software systems) into pieces to learn how it works - building things useful.

Somedays I wake up and remind myself "our forums serve to help between 2 and 3 million visitors a month who come to look for answers (or to share knowledge and answers) .... " and it reminds of of the good work we all do here, over the years and even now and into the future.

OBTW, I have one certification, the CISSP (Computer Information Systems Security Professional) cert, but I'm letting it expire, because I have learned something over the years (after getting this cert after doing a lot of security work). Here is what I have learned:

Certification is a kind of "illusion". We get certified and we think we have "accomplished something" and then we think we are an "expert" because we have a piece of paper we paid for from some certification agency (who mades money from all this).

Then, after certification, our minds tends to think "I am accomplished"... which is like a kind of morphine to the mind. We tend to focus on the certification, others who are certified, and the entire warp and woof of certification, instead of "seeking out new technical frontiers and boldly going where we have not gone before"..... (sorry for the Star Trek music in your head right now)

Anyway, not all certs are evil; the problem is really "us'... when we get the certs, we often begin to live under some illusion we are now "experts", and a fraternity similar to a "confederacy of dunces" is created of certified people who resemble a ice cream cone which licks itself silly.

Nearly all (if not all of - that I know of) the technical people whom I admire and deeply respect are not certified, without exception - guess they were simply too busy "doing something" versus getting "certified".

Edit: My apologizes if there are any recently "certified" friends who have busy getting certified and not developing systems, writing lots of code, or volunteering in technical projects - these are only my views and not those of the forums overall, based on my experience and observations.

Humm, I guess I am in the minority here. When I am hiring junior or mid-level system administrators, I do look for certification such as RHCSA, RHCE, LPIC2 or LPIC3. Certification does not guarantee me great people or rockstar skills but it does provide me with some evidence that the job seeker has a certain body of knowledge about a specific subject.

Certification is also becoming important for companies as a line of defense against legal cases involving data breaches, etc.

Yes, I understand that and it's good to have different viewpoints; and many companies these days make the same mistake of hiring based on "certs" because they are too lazy to do the due diligence to property check credentials, references and projects of employees; so they think they have some "legal protection" from hiring "certs".

This supports my earlier point, in my view, that people and organizations often look for "short cuts" for health (as I mentioned in the context of "multivitamins" and the same is true for "certs"); however, my experience is that top tech companies (and myself as a hiring manager / director level before) do not care.

Google, for example, does not seem to care if people have certs. It was not long ago Google contacted many forum members (here) some interviewed and shared their experiences; Google did not care about "certs".. they cared about "show me your skills".. not "show me your certs".

In fact, if I was in an interview and people asked about "certs" I would politely say "thanks but this interview is over" as I would never work for a company which places an emphasis on such superficial things.

If I want evidence of "certain body of knowledge" (wearing the hat of a hiring manager) I will ask them to "show me" via the interview process, their portfolio, prior projects, social networks, references and the like. If they show me a cert, I'll just laugh (inside) personally, and I've done a lot of interviews over the years as a part of the hiring process.

However, I do understand the "multivitamin" culture of short cuts, CYA, etc; but I have talked to a lot of hiring managers over the years; and some even say "I will not hire junior or lower mid level person until they have participated in an open source type of project" like Apache2, Hadoop, or something substantial.. None look for certs, not one.

Having said that, it's always good we share different views and we certainly don't need to agree on everything, all the time; so please continue to share your ideas, pro and con, if you have strong feelings either way. After all, it's good we have different points of view and experiences to share with others.

Interesting turn.

I appreciate all the answers you all have given me and thank you for it. It gave me a lot to think about and I read other view on this subject. So I was right in asking here.

Luca