Working for a company in the past I was always bitching about how diploma’s and certification don’t say a whole lot about a person’s capabilities. Of course I HAD to say that, since I dropped out of school and never actually finished my education.. but still. I’d seen too many so-called high level guys paraded in as the next salvation to a project, when all they would know how to do was repeat the tricks they had learned without actually understanding the reasoning behind it. “Why don’t we add another layer of abstraction…” Uhuh. I have always found that encountering a problem creates the mental space needed for understanding the solution.
But after starting Future500 in 2006 I immediately realized that you could sum up – to someone who doesn’t have a clue about the code anyway, like say… clients – the “years of experience” speech in just two words:
I’m certified.
Well, ok so technically that’s three words. But still better than the whole “I’ve been doing PHP since before they added the second ‘P’.. honestly!” bit. So I abandoned my belief and got PHP4 certified… (I guess the next step would have been to buy a suit to impress the management… another thing I said I would never do)
Nowadays I am somewhat more nuanced about such things.
- I wear a shirt with a collar over a pair of upper-segment jeans instead of my regular T’s & levi’s…
- I think there are certain things best left unmentioned during conversations with clients, as long as the level of service is not lowered.
- And yes, I think it’s a good thing to be certified in your area of expertise.
I have installed a company policy that all coding employees must get certified – so yesterday Jasper went for the PHP5 exam – and passed! And, to show him I’m not all talk, I went along and passed my PHP5 exam as well..
Congratulations Jasper!
Hello,
What is involved in the PHP certification process? How much does it cost? Is it available in Ireland?
Kind regards,
Paul Winter.
Hi Paul,
PHP certification is passing an exam, set up by Zend (“the PHP company”). Once you pass the exam, you are registered as certified and that’s it. Whatever benefit you gain from certification is up to you. It’s mainly a bit of proof that you have a certain level of expertise, whoever you’re proving it to (customers, boss, yourself… *grin*).
These exams are conducted in specialized centers all over the world, basically you schedule a location and a time and once you arrive they start the exam and keep a big-brother eye on you to make sure you didn’t bring your google enabled wrist watch with you to look up some answers. They have no idea what the tests contain.
You can find the costs here http://www.zend.com/en/services/certification/ – as you can see there are several types of certification and packages available. They provide online training as well, but I’ve never felt the need to spend that kind of money on something I can read for myself in a book. What did help was the training exams, because they give you a good feel of how the exams are conducted and the style of questioning you’ll have to deal with.
If you go for it: Good luck!