>> On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:39:05 -0400, "Bruce T. Harvey" >> <[email protected]> said:
> My two cents: If they person doesn't hold a IBM Certified Advanced > Deployment Professional - IBM Service Management Tivoli Storage > Management Solutions V2 certification, then I'd want them to be at > least a Deployment Professional in TSM and have performed the > archtecting of at least one or two successful TSM-based > implementations. Or have implemented many successful TSM-based > solutions of varying complexity. I'm going to come down hard on the other side of the 'certification' question. I think an 'architect' needs to have implemented a lot of varying server configs. She needs to be able to effectively communicate to skilled sysadmins the tradeoffs of various config decisions. She needs to be able to calmly support her design calls against hostile internal competition. I think that certs are possibly a timesaver for decisionmaking by technically unskilled executives. However, they are a red herring far more than they communicate skill. I say this having been certified for v3, v4, v5 TSM: this is not sour grapes. Precisely because they are easy to measure, certs are targets for the clueless; squeak by, and you're done. The cert tests are laughable manual-regurgitation exercises; and the manuals are sometimes wrong. Sometimes ludicrously so. If we alternately stipulate good certs do you ever check the certifying authority? Maybe they're lying. HR won't check. ... All of this means to me that certs are neither necessary, nor sufficient, to establish anything relevant to doing the job. So I'd say don't put it in unless your chain demands it: instead require that applicants be prepared to discuss different server config design decisions they've made over the years. The candidate you want will be delighted to show off thought processes and evolution. - Allen S. Rout
