I was attracted to this article because it shows which how much IT salaries differ according to certifications people had. Interesting reading.
http://www.nxtbook.com/fx/books/mediatec...tion-1204/
But I couldn't help noticing the cool reading software! Page turning effect, looks just like a magazine, and some graphics are animated too! How cool is that?!?!
As a self-styled Ubergeek
I've always been rather leery of IT certifications... especially since Novell started handing out CNE's in Cracker-Jack boxes. From my understanding, some of the higher-end certs are still worthy (Cisco, et al), but Microsoft certs have always been something of a joke - they don't prove anything other than someone's ability to regurgitate the answers Microsoft is looking for.
I once interviewed for an IT support job - the manager liked my qualifications and was ready to hire me right away, and didn't seem bothered at all by my lack of MS certs, but when offering me a starting salary, let drop that "once you get your MCSE you'll be *WORTH* (emphasis mine) x-amount more."
That bugged me. It's fine if I CAN MAKE more by having the certs, but to say I'm "worth" more with it??
I proceeded to work in an environment where most of the MCSEs in the room, I could tech under the table. Not to say they were all stupidl some were really good techs who just happened to have their MCSEs. Many, however, were riding mainly on those MCSEs as "proof" of their abilities, and that proof often was full of holes when it came under the harsh light of reality.
Examples: one MSCE-in-training who was with us on his course practicum, couldn't swap out a floppy drive in a very generic PC. Another full-fledged MCSE was having network problems he couldn't figure out, because of a misconfiguration in his TCP/IP setup - the certs training taught him what checkboxes to tick in which wizards in setting up a "typical" network, but nothing of how TCP/IP actually *works*, which left his troubleshooting skills severely stunted.
That's funny, the article didn't have my certifications and pay levels in there:
Certified PHP Mutilator: $0
Certified HTML Mangler: $0
Certified MySQL Killer: $0
Certified CSS Scrambler: $0
True true, regarding the certifications vs experience, Soundy. Paper can only take you so far - the rest (and perhaps most valuable bit) comes from on the job experience.