In article <cq0pt8$94n$1@bent.twistedbits.net>, dakota@billpitz.com (Bill Pitz)
writes:
>
> Nor is it any good if you have no experience in applying that knowledge.
> Since you can get an MCSE cert with basically no hands-on experience
> by studying for the test, it doesn't help much in the real world.
>
> I have no certs (though I can pass most of the practice exams for cisco,
> mcse, etc.) to speak of, and yet I'm the one people are calling on to
> fix messes. I don't have anything against anyone in particular, and I
> do know people with various certifications that really do know what they
> are doing, but just having a certification doesn't mean *anything*
> anymore. Sometimes I discover how much my clients have paid to have
> other work done and it's absolutely insane for what they received.
>
> -Bill
No doubt, I do admit though, at one time I too put a lot of stock in obtaining
my certifications, but have since slacked off on trying to obtain them. That’s
why my MCSE is in NT 4 and not 2k/2k3 even though I feel I wouldn’t have a
problem passing the tests if I were so inclined to take them. I would just have
to force myself to use the Microsoft logic instead of real world logic. And
like Bill, I seem to be the “go to” guy when others have issues. Almost every
site/project I’ve worked on, I’ve acted as a pseudo smoke jumper, putting out
the fires either unresolved or caused by others. And it shows by the response
I get from many of the sites I’ve worked on. I was a contractor at Pfizer for
over 5 years, through 3 different consulting firms and I still get weekly calls
for positions down there. However, when I lived in Hartford it was only a
55-mile commute, one way, to get there. Half of which were back roads, because
the Rt.11 highway project has been stalled since the late 60’s and just ends in
the middle of nowhere. Now that Ingrid and I live in West Hartland, I added
another 35 miles of back roads to get to Hartford as we are directly opposite
of Groton in relation to Hartford. I have to drive 20+ miles just to get to a
highway that doesn’t even head in that direction. I frequently joke about how
my town is so rural we don’t have a convenience store, we have a general store,
with the Post Office in the back, the diner near the front and a fire truck
with the lighted “Dominos Delivers” sign parked out side. Hopefully my house
doesn’t catch fire during the dinner rush, as I don’t think they’ll be here in
less than 30 minutes.
However, things have worked themselves out for me job wise as on the 11th hour,
the company has given me another contract. Wow, 1 year at that, that’s rare as
they normally do contracts short term. I am now a “Distributed Compliance
Administrator” working on the “Virtual Server Administration” team. I can’t go
into detail on a public forum on how the VSA tool works because of
“Intellectual Property” issues, but in a nutshell, it’s centralized server
administration. The VSA tool runs on each Intel\Unix server and reports back to
a database, information about the server’s state. Anti-virus & patching
management, OSR & security compliance, attack detection and a number of other
things are reported. Using the Administration console, I can quickly identify
servers out of compliance and via remote tools, correct identified issues. Not
for one client site, but for all of the sites, for four different clients.
I’ll be administering servers for ING, DOW, Honeywell and the State of
California. It’s actually pretty slick though the tool itself is still in late
stages of development and there are still many processes that need to be worked
out. But, it looks pretty cool and I believe I will be able to work from home 1
or 2 days a week once we get rolling.
Walt
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jan 01 2005 - 11:48:09 EST