I agree with @Josh fully, On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 6:53 AM, Josh Handley < josh@bridgeinternationalacademies.com> wrote:
After having spent a pretty significant part of the last year and half recruiting software engineers here in Nairobi it seems to me that on average Kenyan developers already have five or ten time times the number of certifications that developers in the US do. At the same time, based on my technical evaluations of the candidates I've seen, software engineering talent seems to be inversely related to the number of certifications. It has gotten to the point where I count certifications against the candidate when I look at their CV.
In my opinion, top developers have a real passion for coding; enough that they spend a lot of their spare time coding or thinking about coding. These are folks that would code even if they weren't paid for it - they do it because they enjoy coding and solving challenging technical problems.
I think that the best thing this board can do is allow those seeking certifications to work on actual problems over a period of time with qualified software engineers on real projects in their preferred languages / frameworks / tool sets. Then the more experienced guys can give their assessment(s) of the candidates attached to them on different criteria as part of getting the certifications. The main idea is to let the prospective applicants put their coding skills to practice. This in my opinion is absolutely essential in not only programming but any other field where one is willing to gain mastery. Martin. A passionate coder would rather spend his/her free time doing extra coding
for their employer, working on their own cool side project or contributing to an open source project than taking an exam.
I'm not sure if the interest in certifications here is because local employers put a high value on them but my experience in the US is that most top tech employers don't. On the contrary I've seen job ads from Google that explicitly ask for engineers who have contributed to open source projects but I've never seen one ask for certification. For entry level software engineers, it is all about the university program attended. If you graduated from MIT, Stanford or Carnegie Mellon with decent marks you can walk into just about any entry level position at any tech company. The people who get certifications in the US are those that don't have a degree at all. I would be surprised to hear that any Carnegie Mellon CS grads are out getting certifications. Rather than having Carnegie Mellon focusing on this certification program why not have them open up a campus in Nairobi like they are doing in Kigali? As a hiring manager, someone with a degree from Carnegie Mellon Nairobi would jump right to the top of the list over the folks with 20 different certifications.
Josh
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