[Wolves] LPI Certficiation

[Andy Smith]

Hi Simon,

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 03:15:04PM +0100, Simon Burke wrote:
> To not only try to stimulate some conversation, but because work wants me
> to look into it.

For yourself or as a hiring condition for others?

Certifications are particularly useful in a consultancy situation:
your employer has time to properly interview you, so knows your
skills, but if you are a consultant or your workplace involves
putting consultants onto jobs, then the client can be reassured by
words like "we have X number of qualified engineers on this
project."

> What are peoples opinions on the LPI Certifications?

You can't even register to take an LPI exam without giving LPI
permission to sell your data to any of their affiliates, which is
essentially anyone.

I registered for one at FOSDEM 2005 just out of interest but in the
end did not take the exam because it clashed with a more interesting
talk. Years later LPI sent me completely unrelated marketing, with
no means to unsubscribe. They then took several months to remove me
from their marketing lists with my repeated requests to be removed
eventually being responded to by the director of LPI UK, whose
excuse was that "all our subscriber lists are kept on a server in
Canada and we couldn't easily access it."

So, it is difficult for me to separate the worth of an LPI
qualification from the ineptitude of the LPI organisation itself.

However, I've interviewed people who have it and have had to do some
research of it due to that, and my take-away from that is that it
can be useful only to demonstrate the most basic familiarity with
Linux.

> My understanding is that they are at the same level as the Comptia stuff
> (i.e. you know how to turn stuff on and do the essential bits), and that
> it's not really worth it.

I would agree with this assessment of its level, while not
necessarily agreeing that it is not "worth it". For *you* it may not
be worth it. If you can demonstrate real-world experience that
eclipses it then yes, it isn't worth pursuing. For someone who can't (because
they're just beginning) it may have value.

> The other popular opinion I've came across is to
> "just get a RHCE instead".  The latter of which is a little cost
> prohibitive, especially if you are self funding yourself through the
> courses, exams etc.

I have an RHCE (expired 2009) and have interviewed a few people who
list RHCE on their CV, and I don't feel like it really has a place
in the same conversation as LPI. It is a much more thorough
qualification.

Again, you can demonstrate work experience that eclipses an RHCE but
that level of work experience is much higher than the equivalent
with an LPI. So "just get an RHCE" isn't really a sensible response
both for the reasons you state and also because they are just not at
the same level.

I do have personal experience of RHCE from both sides so I can say
that it is not something you can cram from a book over a weekend and
then do in one day, unless you already had the hands-on experience.
Even with the week long training course you can pay to have before
the exam, I don't think you would pass it unless you had decent Red
Hat knowledge going in.

The RHCE training doesn't really teach you anything other than what
subject areas the exam is going to touch. You need to know your
stuff ahead of time, so it doesn't replace on the job learning; it
just certifies it.

Anyway, obviously  in all cases the interviewer needs to test the
claimed knowledge, but listing an LPI or RHCE can at least give some
hint as to where to pitch and might make the difference between a
to-interview pile and a reject pile for CVs. The risk with LPI there
is that the person sifting the CVs themselves won't be technical
enough to have even heard of LPI.

Because of my negative experience of LPI I personally could not
recommend that anyone get involved with them. If you are a
self-starter the you should be able to do open source work and get
involved with other technical projects of your own, that you can
talk about in an interview. Hosting is cheap and also with the rise
of DevOps, much more of sysadmin involves code and virtual
resources ("Infrastructure as code"). Gone are the days when you'd
need a machine room of your own in order to demonstrate practical
skills.

At the time my employer sent me on an RHCE, my employer was a
consultancy and them being able to say, "X of our engineers hold
RHCEs" had value to them. In all the time since then I've never been
in a position where it was particularly desired, though I feel it
made some interviews a little easier.

> Plus I've never seen anywhere that has this as a requirement or even
> acknowledge it's existence. So how it's seen in the real world is another
> question itself.

I think LPI's problem in that regard is that since it isn't a very
advanced subject, any motivated person can self-start, and employers
recognise that.

Cheers,
Andy

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