Re: FN-FORUM: Qualifications

date posted 21st March 2006 15:24

After a more years than I care to say my view on qualifications is;

1. Get a degree - most important. Most times it doesn't matter. People are
much ,ore interested in what I have to say, and provided I am convincing,
address what they want then I get the work. Every now and again someone asks
for a degree, and it's a door opener. You get past HR and get to talk to the
people that matter. When I have been on the other side of the fence it's
often been a turn off when talking to people with a degree - they are often
too interested in the theory of how things should be done. On the other hand
I talk to a lot of folk who pretend to know how develop software but haven't
the first clue about how to run a project or build robust maintainable code.

I am therefore much more interested in people who are genuinely interested
in how to get the job done, and take them selves off to meetings, seminars
etc to keep themselves up to date with technology and techniques.

2. Be very careful about which qualifications that you sweat blood, and
money over. I have qualifications in Project Management (very useful course
and another door opener). I have attended plenty of course such as VMS
Admin, Oracle Admin, but these are only snapshots of a particular Technology
and get stale very quickly. You have to spend a lot of time just to get the
qualification up to date for not much real gain. Technology moves on too
fast, so a qualification you get today will be seriously devalued in 12
months time.

3. I have friends who have taken the MSCD exams. The stuff they had to learn
was very MS centric and covered areas that where of very little use in every
day work. Just seemed that MS wanted to push their technology as the only
solution.

I would strongly recommend - get your degree, and get as much experience as
you can. Mix it with other developers. Take a real interest in the industry
by attending seminars etc.

Paul Durdin
Taradata Ltd
www.taradata.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Copeland" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 2:04 PM
Subject: FN-FORUM: Qualifications


>
> Hi,
>
> I want to gain some more IT qualifications, whilst I finish my degree.
> Something like a Microsoft Certified something or other, or Cisco, etc.
> I'm aiming to go into web development and have some experience, but I'd
> like
> to get a specific qualification to back it up. What are the best
> qualifications for web development and are there any that I should go for
> before getting a specific certificate?
>
> Ian
>
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