Mike <mik...@colossus.bilow.com> writes:
>
> A friend of mine is looking for a career change and asks what sort of
> vendor independent certifications (that is, not another college degree)
> would help them get in the door in programming, web design, or system
> administration? She is not mainly asking about actual education, but
> rather how to prove knowledge in such a way that would convince
> prospective employers.
I can only really speak for the programming prospect, but I will say...:
How do you prove that you can do things? *Show it*:
Build a portfolio. Of real work. And public discourse.
In programming, this means: start contributing to FOSS projects
if you haven't already; and put the contributions that you *have* made
onto your CV. I tell my prospective employers, "Google me"--and to
take a look at ohloh. They'll find production-quality code that I've written,
projects that I've built from the ground up, as well as contributions
that I've made to other people's projects (both large and small
contributions, to both large and small projects). They'll see
real code written in the dozen languages that I'd otherwise
just be claiming I knew. They'll see my patch-submission procedures;
they'll see my patch-review/-acceptance/-rejection procedures.
They can read through the mailing-list archives and see how I interact
with my teammates and my users, and they'll get to see my decision-making
process in action.
They'll see all of the things that are *really important* to consider
when hiring someone, and that they wish they could see for other candidates.
The importance of a public portfolio seems to go right over most programmers'
heads, for some reason--so most people just show up with claims about
what they can do; but if you have a solid history of FOSS contributions,
then you can be the one to show up with *proof*.
Paul Lutus said this in his recent Reddit interview:
Q: Can you talk about how you wound up working for a NASA contractor
without any "credentials"?
A: I read that a NASA subcontrator wanted someone to design high-
efficiency power supplies for the Space Shuttle. So I wrote up
a decent design and showed up. There were maybe 20 candidates
at the office, all equipped with advanced degrees. But I didn't
have a degree, I had a design. They hired me on the spot
and sent all the degree holders away.
True story.
Also: make yourself famous. If you have a Debian or Ubuntu machine,
my name is probably already on it somewhere in /usr/share/doc or
/usr/share/man; you're probably already running my code. Having
your name precede you is worth something.
--
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."
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