[Gllug] Thoughts on RHCE

[Xander D Harkness]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 05:23:22PM +0100, John Southern wrote:
> W had someone in the Manchester LUG stand up and give a brief talk about how 
> he went and did the RHCE.
> The talk proved to be one of the most controversial talks as almost to a man 
> everyone said he was a traitor for taking the corporate shilling.
Cool ;-)

I paid to sit the exam myself a couple of weeks back and received the
certificate last week :-)

My reasons for sitting the exam were varied:

I have used Linux for five or six years and was a hardened M$ follower prior
to that. (I got thoroughly fed up with blue screens and so converted).

I have managed Linux and Solaris systems for a number of companies; however I
have never worked alongside anyone.  When I have needed assistance I have
often found it here on this list.  I am now looking for another job and see
many posts advertised as "Experienced Sysadmin" or similar.  I wanted to know
where I stood and how I should correctly advertise my experience.

Do I have an answer now? - NO but I am happier!
> 
> What he actually said was that he works as support and only with Red Hat. The 
> company offered to pay for some training. He decided not to look a gift horse 
> in the mouth and went and sat the exam. I think the cost is £480 plus VAT for 
> that final day.
> If you do the full course then it is four days training and one days exam for 
> £1600 plus VAT.
> They failed to sit the exam near where he was so he traveled to Guildford.
> The exam is practical based so in that way it is better than the other types 
> of exam. He said it was not particularly bias to Red Hat apart from the fact 
> that they give you a broken computer and a RH box set and you have to fix it.

The exam I thought was very well organised and thoughtfully done.  Some of
the problems I had experienced before and some not.  The course itself was
not blindly Red Hat.  The solutions to the problems were of the order "Make
it work" - without bodging and I would see it as relevant for Debian users
and others alike.  You are asked to sign a NDA which I can see the sense.  I
will say though that the problems were all real life stuff and if you can
solve day to day problems (even those that will have you chasing your tail
for an hour ;-) then I would expect a pass.

I bought a couple of the books on the RHCE which I found useful too - really
for covering areas that I had not touched on yet in my work.

The other stuff that can be found on the RH site is that there is a 90m
Multiple Choice test, about two hours of problem solving (i.e. user cannot do
such and such - fix it.  Some of these I found funny but maybe that is just
me) and then a services type paper where they ask you to set up some basic
services such as web and mail etc.

> 
> He got a registered number so potential employers can check to ensure he is 
> genuine and a piece of paper with his name on it. Quality of paper 
> certificate looed as thought it had been made in MS Paint.
I have never had an employer ask for a certificate yet from O'grade to Degree

> 
> Was it a good thing - well potentially if you need to impress that client or 
> employer and that is the thing that makes you stand out then yes it would be. 
> Are employers and clients gullible to think a piece of paper is better than 
> experience - unfortunately yes.

I agree that experience is King.  I passed this exam on my experience, I
would suggest that reading from a book is not an easy way to pass this exam.
It is very different from many of the IT exams out there in that it has the
applicants doing the type of tasks that their employer will be paying them
for for 4 out of the 6 hours.  I have also worked with people who claimed to
have had 5 years experience with HPUX and Solaris, was put in charge of the
Unix/Oracle team and was useless.

Kind regards
Xander

> 
> If enough people do the RHCE it will become the standard that corporations 
> want. The alternatives are LPI and Sair.
> 
> John
> 
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