Ben Poole posted a link to a rant on developerWorks (notes.net). The post addressed some of the same points that Nathan addressed some time back in his “Hourglass Community” post.
I think it is interesting that a post like this was posted to LDD not too long after Nathan posted about the same thing. I find it curiously interesting that the Notes/Domino platform turns more and more complicated and that the questions posted on LDD turn more and more basic… It could be that (real) developers simply get their information from other sources such as blogs and that those left in the forum really are the newbies. It could also be an indication that the platform getting increasingly complex is revealing to real problem for IBM Lotus.
How do we fix it? How do we get Notes/Domino developers to get smarter? It is really our, non-IBM’ers, job? Something to ponder over the weekend…
Mikkel, because Nathan was quoting my hourglass metaphor, I feel obligated to throw in my opinion. I spent 10 years as an IBM/Lotus Business Partner specializing in authorized Lotus education for administrators and programmers. I have found that over the years, there has been a settling of lower skilled staffing and a rising of top tier, competent professionals.
It’s a complex socio-economic puzzle, but here’s the most specific guideline that I can suggest: there just isn’t enough resources and marketing to support certification. I don’t know of any one who is an Exchange administrator that isn’t cert’d on it. I don’t know of any one on Oracle, DB2, etc. that aren’t either cert’d or working on it.
However, in the Lotus world, I think a complacency has seeped in that lulls admins, developers and managers into thinking that as long as the servers stay up, then everything is fine. I know that a "paper" certificate doesn’t amount to a guarantee, but I also know that I want my taxes processed by a CPA (or software reviewed by one).
I think it would be very helpful if IBM/Lotus would present the value of certified professionals as strongly as do their competitors.
Well I certainly get your point and since I’m, shamefully, uncertified in any software brand at this point I can attest to the fact that no customer up to this point ever has doubted my skills based on the fact that I wasn’t certified. In Notes/Domino anyways. I have had customers asking about DB2 certification but that’s it.
At this point the only area where certification makes any difference in Denmark is on the revenue percentage when reselling IBM licenses and the business partner status you can obtain. Other than that it doesn’t matter. No level of IBM approval is affixed to certification. I have never been excluded from any community or gathering due to not being certified.
I agree that it is strange but then again… With the platform getting so complex which type of certification should (good) developers have? In my mind almost any Java certification will soon matter more than a basic Notes @Formula class-type certification. Maybe the problem is that the admin stuff and developer stuff is so mixed on the Domino platform and that you need to know both to be any good. Maybe cross boundary certifications would make more sense from a product perspective but does that make it easier for customers to put a value to a developer resource?
Doesn’t it come back to the stuff you have been doing previously and the skill level required for the job. Does certification really make it easier to ascertain the right person for the job? I’m not sure.
It’s a complex question I think… 🙂
Man, I just can’t refuse the bait, can I? 🙂 Well, certification is a low bar, that’s all, but it is a measurement. And, no fair using yourself as a metric. You are not the average computer professional.
I think any technical industry that shirks at it, does so at its own peril. I’m going to use journalism as a parallel. It’s pretty easy to see if someone is a good writer and can analyze the situation. So, if I was to hire a journalist, I’d be looking at their portfolio and a little bit about their resume.
But if I’m looking for an opthomalogist, I don’t care nearly as much about what’s obvious, I need to see those diplomas and board certifications hanging on the walls.
A computer professional is more along the technical side, and so I think a technical evaluation is justifiable. Or, we could just rely on the fact that more than 2/3s of the population think they are above average.
Am I losing sleep over this topic? Nope. The reason being, you can’t fight gravity. Sooner or later, there will be compliance regulations for programmers and developers that will be accepted as the norm. We’ll look back at this era as one for the cowboy coders.