Artemii Kropachev Opinion on certification

Red Hat Certification is fantastic but certificates by themselves don't make you an
expert

I've got a fantastic comment from @Olimp Bockowski related to certification and
want to start a new discussion separately and make it available for everyone. The
simple idea of the comment that certification doesn't allow you to know the product
deeply. I absolutely agree!

Thank you Olimp for the great idea to start a new topic.

Olimp's comment is shown below.

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Don’t you think that you hit diminishing effect? Don’t get me wrong, RHCA X or XX
is impressing but I see you are smart + have a great potential to become even
better. What I am thinking of is going towards fields like: kernel internals, C, Go
etc. Some time ago I realized that I rely on someone’s doc or someone’s training
content and when I hit some tough issues then some great Software ( and
Maintenance) Engineers are able to fix everything and thanks to certs I can only
understand what they are talking about :] that’s why I’ ve put recently A LOT of
efforts for above topic, I try to read the opensource code, find things by myself
and eventually I’ve faced the real challenge that very often overwhelms me and
makes me helpless.

In fact, I am writing this comment to see what are your toughs and arguments. Maybe
we can’t know many products (what is huge advantage on the market) and
simultaneously expect to know them in great depth.

And at the end: congratulation level XX sounds incredibly :)

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here is my personal opinion (I just copied/pasted it from separate thread)

This is a great comment! thank you! it is not possible to be expert in everything

and certification doesn't solve this issues. The goal of certification can be
different. For example, for Juniors in India, it is only one way to have a good job
and earn some money. That's why their certification comes first without relevant
experience. Certification itself doesn't make you an expert and it must be appended
by RELEVANT experience. Most of the people I know start their certification only
once they are experts on the area. Also I would like to highlight that tasks solved
by Systems Architects, Solutions Architects and Engineers are different. Engineer
responsibility is to know product deeply. For example, in additional to operate LVM
using standard utilities he/she must understand how it is dependent on Device
Mapper and how to to low level troubleshooting; they need to know most of kernel
parameters which can affect performance (like swappines, disk elevators). Systems
Architects operate on higher level than Engineers. They still need to be expert in
an area BUT they mostly work on design and component integration. Solutions
architects operate on more high level than Systems Architects.o I just want to say,
that being better is different for different positions. Architects must grow widely
and cover multiple areas to be able to work on design level, Engineers - deeply in
the technology area(s). Anyway it is a nice topic to talk about.

Return back to Red Hat Certification and Education programs. They are great! I will
tell you way:) this is just my personal opinion and I would like to have you
comments.
For juniors it is a way to have some guidelines to learn new technologies. Usually
for junior system administrator it is difficult to determine the way to grow. Red
Hat shows that way in required technologies available on market. It is possible to
learn something forever (like Linux learning process can lasts 100years) but it
doesn't make sense. Exam objectives allow to cover minimal requirements and start
learning more amazing stuff.

For technology area experts it is a way to avoid unwanted questions during

interviews. For example, if employer expects skills in OpenShift, OpenShift
certification (like EX280/EX288) say that this guy has some knowledge. Instead of
stupid and theoretical questions like "what is Docker container" , employer will
focus on the problems and cases.

For high level architects (solutions architects), Sometimes architects do a lot of

paper work and start forgetting technologies and CLI. Exam preparation will allow
to refresh knowledge and try to do something by hand not using other
peoples/specialists. it is a lot of FUN!:)

For systems architects it is a way to quickly cover new areas and then if they are
interesting, start focusing on them.

For developers, sometimes i wanted my developers to know more outside of

programming languages/tools/methodologies. I wanted them to know something about
low level technologies. If they have basic Linux system administration skills, It
could make my life easier. So, for developers Red Hat Certification and Education
program gives a way to learn something boring for them:) but extremely useful.

And now about myself. I started my carrier as a developer (Perl, Delphi, C/C++,
PHP), I held positions like Developer, Engineer, QA, Systems Architect, Task
Coordinator, Solutions Architect, Department manager, Business development manager.
I enjoyed most of them except department manager:) My work is my hobby and I like
doing that stuff. I wake up with a dream to do something amazing like new pipeline
automation, new ansible role, new IPTV service functionality, idea what to write in
our books. Red Hat Certification gives me a lot of fun and I really enjoy doing
that kind of activities. I work every day with most of the technologies where I am
certified in except Jboss-products. I learn JBoss to be better, not to be expert in
JBoss but to have a basic understanding and to be able to use it in my designs and
solutions.