Certification Magazine - November 2007 - (Page 16)

VIRTUAL VILLAGE Like a Lead Balloon DANIEL MARGOLIS In every industry, there are products or ideas that are massively hyped before release and then fail to live up to that original promise — for whatever reason, they just fall flat. They can’t all be blockbusters. For every “Transformers,” there’s a “Redline.” For every “The Simpsons Movie,” there’s a “Code Name: The Cleaner.” The same holds true in IT — whenever a new product or idea emerges, there tends to be varying amounts of buzz around it. Whether advertising departments or end-users generate this buzz depends on the viability, appeal and actual usefulness of the product or idea in question. But in each case, when the product or idea launches, the market overall and end-users individually are given the chance to see whether it’s all it was cracked up to be. Often, it’s not, and our CertMag.com discussion forums recently saw a post satirizing such duds. In a thread titled “Biggest IT Farts?” regular contributor Masterssullivan wrote, “What do you guys think the biggest IT ‘farts’ have been this year? And by ‘farts,’ I mean ideas that were hyped up a lot and heavily promoted but ended up just being hot air that stunk.” Another forum contributor, cpattersonv1, responded, singling out Vista and iPhone. “I’d say Vista for one. It’s really hard to believe that they would launch such a hardware-demanding OS and state that they’re dropping XP shortly after the first SP is released. It makes it hard to keep up when you have to get budgets for software and hardware upgrades, not to mention the learning curve every time some interface designer decides to ‘redesign’ an OS by moving control panels and functions around. “From what I’ve read, iPhones seem to cause a lot of trouble with Wi-Fi networks in public areas like universities. It stands to reason, if they’re anything like my PDA, they’ll lose and gain their wireless signals at random. They’re pricey and don’t integrate with enterprise-level applications like Outlook or Domino either. Just nice for show? Maybe. They’re definitely not going to hurt the BlackBerry market anytime soon, unless Apple comes out with an enterpriselevel server for them.” General Discussion ElsewhereonourCertMag. com forums, discussion board regulars and newbies engaged in a spirited debate over the balance between certification and experience in building an IT career. In a thread titled “Running Hard on the Certification Treadmill,” regular forum contributor Wayne Anderson writes, “My nutshell summary of my outlook on certification: Experience trumps certification. Certification provides a ‘trust mark’ of the initial representation of a set of skills to a client or employer or, in some limited cases, provides HR a validated mark of trust that an existing employee holds a specific set of required or desired skills.” Another CertMag.com regular, wagnerk, responded: “I believe certification should go hand in hand with professional certification. That’s why I try to encourage people with no IT experience to do lower-level certs rather than jump on the MCSE bandwagon, but that’s just my two cents. Someone could have 10 years’ IT experience but of just doing toner changes, password changes and logging calls versus someone who has five years’ experience in server administration. Certification should be there to assist in validating that candidate’s skill level.” New member kieranm added: “Well said on both counts. My take is this: Imagine a graph moving left to right, with two lines, one representing certification, the other representing experience. In terms of importance and relevance, the cert line will start high and trend downward, and the experience line will start low and trend upward. “Certs are a foot in the door and, in many cases, are really table stakes these days (think CCNA for a networking job). They are a good supplement for little to no experience. They will never be a bad thing, but 16 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE November 2007 http://CertMag.com http://CertMag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - November 2007

Certification Magazine - November 2007 Contents Editor's Letter Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Certification Outside Technology Inside Certification The Webmaster: Online Everyman Interface Time Tips: How to Fit Certification into Your Schedule Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - November 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.