[nylug-talk] career advice

[Peter C. Norton]

Pete,

Its hard to give advice on certs in the linux world.  While in more
closed vendor environments they definetely give you credability (cisco
and juniper certs guarantee you know something about their respective
equipment) I've rarely met unix admins with certs of any kind.  There
was a move towards people getting redhat certs when they were the only
linux certs, and some jobs I've seen do ask for them.  Its an open
question, however, what cert will be useful in a few years.

That may sound strange, but there is an effort to make a
vendor-neutral cert (which I think is doomed to obscurity due to lack
of marketing).  

For the sake of managing and doing things in the future, my personal
opinion is that you should run all of the applications you can, run
all of the servers you can, and test for production those that you may
want to use, and deploy those that test out OK.  You'll find that most
of the other people you meet using the same don't have certificates,
but that they're smart and lots of 'em have jobs or otherwise make
ends meet.

In the long run you may find that a certification becomes dominant and
is sought after and is good for the long haul, but I don't think
that's the case now.

-Peter

-- 
The 5 year plan:
In five years we'll make up another plan.
Or just re-use this one.