What is it with people and certifications? I’ve been following Planet V12n for a year or more now and I swear I’ve never seen so many kids advertise how excited they are that they passed some test or gotten some certification.
Maybe I’m old and still remember the vast number of people out there with really pointless certs like MCSE and CCNA (at least older versions of them maybe they are better now). When interviewing people I purposely gave people negative marks if they had such low level certifications, I remember one candidate even advertising he had his A+ certification, I mean come on!
I haven’t looked into the details behind VMware certification I’m sure the processes taken to get the certs have some value (to VMware who cashes in), but certifications still have a seriously negative stigma with me.
I hope the world of virtualization and “cloud” isn’t in the process of being overrun with unqualified idiots much like the dot com / Y2K days were overrun with MCSEs and CCNAs. What would be even worse if it was the same unqualified idiots as before.
There’s a local shop in my neck of the woods that does VMware training, they do a good job in my opinion, costs less, and you won’t get a certification at the end (but maybe you learn enough to take the test I don’t know). My only complaint about their stuff is they are too Cisco focused on networking and too NetApp focused on storage, would be nice to see more neutral things, but I can understand they are a small shop and can only support so much. NetApp makes a good storage platform for VMware I have to admit, but Cisco is just terrible in every way.