Does Certification Matter Anymore?

So What? has a good article on wether certification matters anymore. In it he covers on some good points inregards to wether certification matters or not. If you follow the article and also follow the links to the other articles on ComputerWorld.com (Certifiably Concerned and Study) you'll find some interesting trends.

According to the study, it seems that certified IT professionals are not getting the pay raises that are given to others in the same career path. Jeff brings out some good points in his blog regarding what really matters to companies after someone has been hired. His closing sentence says it all, "Certification has its place, but experience and drive trump certification every time." Granted it takes experience and drive to pass a certification exam, but the more important issue is what benefits does the company see after they've hired you.

The items to remember are that certification matters when you are interviewing for a position and you have the certification and the other person doesn't everything else being equal. If experience comes into play then experience will trump certification every time. Either way, after you've been hired you still have to produce.

These articles are still good to pay attention to and keep in the back of your mind when you are working and asking yourself if you'll get a bonus or a pay raise when they start handing these things out.

Wop Wop Wop I made it to the Internet

Programming Jobs Losing Luster in US

Linux News carries an article about how the image of a programmer is losing it's luster. The title is misleading in that programming jobs are not going away, just the image of someone sitting in their cubicle all day only writing code is going away. Companies will always be on the look out for someone who can write inovative solutions will always be in demand.

Having said that, the days of a programmer sitting in his cubicle writing only code are going away. Programmers need to get out and find other ways of helping an organization. I believe having experience with open source projects where people look for ways to integrate and develop projects that someone might need is important. The skill to take a program and adapt it to what soemone needs will be an important skill going forward.

This reminds me of one of the manufacturing differences that many people believe exist between America and Japan. During the 70's, 80's & early 90's people looked at America and saw a great potential to develop and do the raw research to develop innovations. After that there was very little support in moving that idea towards what consumers want, much like Henry Ford's belief that you can have your model T in any color as long as it was Black
Japan on the other hand built a reputation on adapting and modifying ideas to what consumers wanted. Taking the transistor and making watches, producing TV's etc. We've come along way since then in that America has picked up the ability to adapt ideas and products to what best suits the situation.

This ability to develop and adapt programs to what best suits a situation is one area I think will be in demand in the coming years.

IT workers can get the gravy

CNET News.com carries a quick note pointing out that 41% of IT workers are eligible to earn bonuses. Interesting little piece of information. The only other group that has a higher percentage of people eligible to earn bonuses are accounting and finance workers.

Study: IT job market may be looking up

CNET News.com reports on a survey by the Robert Half Technology group. Their last quote is the one I'm currently most interested in "Help desk/end-user support is the specialization experiencing the strongest growth among U.S. companies."

The location of the most activity seems to be in the New England States, but the overall tide of activity seems to be bringing everyone higher.

Another story that CNET News carried focused on IT salaries being generally flat. The actual survey was conducted by Janco Associates. It looks like salaries are lagging behind the job market which is normal. In any job recovery market companies increase salaries based on how difficult it is to hire new talent or to keep new talent. When there is an abundance of people looking for a few jobs salaries fall. This has been the general state within the IT sphere for the past several years. When there is a strong demand for people and few people filling those jobs salaries rise.

New LPIC forum

Lincert.com has started a new forum focused on LPI certification. It looks like the moderator from the old LPI Forums was moved over here. Unfortunately it looks like the original site was hacked into and all of the content was destroyed. Another forum to watch would be the linuxquestions.org site.

It's a shame the original material was destroyed, there was some good posts on there. Either way the site is trying to rebuild from scratch, hopefully the site admins will learn how to do backups to save the material.

Linux Adoption Stalls, Study Says

CRN is carrying an article concerning the slow down in the number of firms who are looking at adding Linux servers into their environment. From what the article states it appears that the majority of firms who are looking to switch from Unix to something else have already switched over to Linux and the only one left are the stragglers.

It also looks like Windows has used this transition period to try and push themselves into the corporate environment. During the course of the next year or two it becomes interesting if corporations will migrate from Windows to Linux or the other way around. It appears that Windows is the one who is more afraid of losing new users than the other way around.

Red Hat Summit Day 3: Fedora is free

NewsForge covers the last day of the Red Hat Summit. Overall there seems to be a good responce coming from the people who covered the summit. The biggest news coming out today is Red Hat creating the Fedora Project to seperate Red Hat and Fedora. This news is also coverd on C|Net news.com, eWeek.com, InfoWorld.com, and InformationWeek. This will allow Red Hat to focus on the business side of the industry. The hobbiests who use Red Hat will be left to fend for themselves. It will be interesting how much support Red Hat ultimately gives to Fedora.

Red Hat Summit Day 2: Good collaboration and more

NewsForge covers Day 2 of the Red Hat Summit.

Two Enterprises Share Linux Success Stories

eWeek.com covers the Red Hat summit and two enterprises who have made the switch form Unix to Linux - KeyWest Bank and Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co.

One of the key stumbling blocks within the organization has been executives who've seen open source as a college project and not an enterprise solution. Instead of relying on their own IT department, executives seem comforted in the idea of relying on a vendor to support their applications and any problems that come up.

For KeyWest they have made a complete transistion from Unix to Linux in just two years time. One of the more important issues that helped in the transistion was in WebSphere & Oracle being made available on Linux. I know Oracle has worked hard to make itself portable on Linux and has worked with Red Hat engineers to ensure Oracle is adaptable with Linux. There are a number of articles on Oracle's site concerning Linux and specific configurations.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Red Hat Summit today.

Red Hat to train Linux Architects in Singapore

Computerworld Singapore comes out with an article on how Red Hat is looking to help train IT professionals in Singapore. Red Hat will be running a number of certification courses in conjunction with each other.

As Peter Childers, vice president of Global Learning Services at Red Hat, states the company is focused primarily on firms transitioning from a Unix to Linux environment, Red Hat’s “sweet spot”. Childers added, “we’re also seeing more and more people coming in with a Windows-only background, the MCSE and Novell-certified professionals.”

I have wondered in the past what Red Hat was going to do to make an internation presence of itself and now it is show that in a major way.

Study: Tech worker confidence drops in May

CNET News.com is covering the results from Hudson's monthly gauge of IT workers' confidence. There seems to be a small increase in what some IT workers will feel may be job cuts in their company along with a decrease in what some feel will be additional hiring in their company.

I know I will be hired on by one of the firms I'm working for next week. Actually I'll be making a bit more than what i had expected, but for me it is more important for me to keep the work schedule that I'm on then the actual pay. I'm giving up a little on the pay side in order to keep 2 jobs. I know it's a balancing act to keep both jobs but the money is worth it in the long run.

I still think in the long run there is an upswing in IT hiring, but like any trend hiring will never go in one direction. The overall trend is still for an increase in hiring and a decrease in cut backs.

Red Hat Summit Day 1: You are here

NewsForge has a recap of the first day of the Red Hat Summit. Red Hat also provides a summary of one of their presentations on their web site.

It will be interesting to see what else happens in New Orleans.

Cats Video

Thought this was funny. If you go up a couple of levels on the site you can also see a couple of polish guys fighting too.