Certifications are not worth the paper they get printed on. You don't
need to be an assembler programmer to be a sysprog.
Doug Fuerst
------ Original Message ------
From "Farley, Peter" <[email protected]>
To [email protected]
Date 2/7/2026 18:35:06 PM
Subject Re: Trade Union
+1
Ditto for application programmers IMHO, though the certification tests would be
different.
There was a time In my younger days that I was against trade unions in general and in
particular against "professional" unions, but my views have changed
dramatically since then.
Life is a hard teacher.
Peter
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Brian Westerman
Sent: Saturday, February 7, 2026 4:54 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Trade Union?
This is just my 2 cents worth so hopefully no one will be outraged by my
comments, but
why would anyone be excluded from certification? I know electricians that have
been
doing electrical work that I would not trust to change a light bulb. But the
ones that have
been certified tend to be a completely different (and better) class. I have
known, and
still do, many "Systems Programmers" that have over 25 years of "experience"
that don't
have what I would consider basic systems programming skills. In a gathering of
systems
programmers, if you ask how many know assembler well enough to write an exit,
not
many hands will go up. If you ask how many have actually installed z/OS with
z/OSMF
or Serverpac, you would likely get the same result. You might ask if it is
fair to be
excluded just because you don't yet know assembler or have had the "chance" to
install
z/OS but if you want to have a certification, then you have to establish the
minimum
requirements and guarantee that everyone who obtains that certification meets
them.
If you establish a standard that you could create a certification for, then
allowing those
that should easily be able to pass the certification out of even taking the
"test" is silly.
It would cheapen the meaning of being "certified". There should be
requirements to
maintain the certification as well. Just because you learned how to do
something 27
years ago doesn't mean you can do it now, nor that you can do it well enough to
demand a premium price to be paid to perform that work.
Brian
On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 14:45:19 -0600, Steve Beaver <[email protected]> wrote:
How many of the US Consultants would be open to creating at trade union
With the specific proviso that everyone with over 25 years' experience
Would be excluded from getting certified but could go get certifications
Steve Beaver
--
This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee
and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader
of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of
the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this
communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication
in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any
attachments from your system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
