Quitting The Day Job

Education Vs. Certification

Over the past several years, I’ve been internally debating the question of how best to advance my so called career.  Sure, the best option is to make a lot of money on the internet and retire (not true, best option is to win the Lotto), but in reality, while I wait for the virtual internet dollars to appear, how should i best go about professionally improving myself.

Most of my co-workers would say “Take a bath” or “Get some new clothes”, but I’ve been debating which would be best for me:  Education or Certification.  Each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Education

There is nothing worse, in the professional I.T. field than listening to some guy or reading a letter to a editor in a professional magazine that starts out with something like “I’ve been working as a programmer ever since Basic Version 1.0″.  Yawn.  Who cares?  All that shows is that you are old.  But if you were to say “I have a Computer Science degree”, no one will question you about it.  No one will ask what kinds of vacuum tubes you used or how many hours it took to divide 1,000,000 by 3.14.  Education has it’s benefits:

Advantages

• Major advantage stated above.  No one questions your qualifications with a degree.  Whether you got your degree 1 year ago or 20, doesn’t matter.  So adding on an additional degree to enhance your professional career can only be beneficial.
• In many cases, your employer will foot the bill.  Most of this will come as a $5000 to $20,000 raise during the time you are getting your degree.  It might even pay off after your graduation, with a real raise.

Disadvantages

• Time, especially if you are married or have children.  Time is already a precious commodity in this era.  You will have to carve up your time to study, attend classes (online or off-line), and adjust schedules accordingly.
• In the case of employers paying for education, you will most likely have to pick an area that they want you to be educated in.  You are unlikely to find this wide open so you can change careers.  They wouldn’t like that.  They want you to enhance your current job/career.  So if you an accountant, expect some kind of Accounting degree, not a Biology degree.

Certification

Certification proves one thing.  You took a test or series of tests and passed.  That’s it.  It doesn’t prove that you actually know the material or can practically apply it.  It absolutely does not mean that you have real world experience in the field.  I personally knew certified instructors who didn’t know the material at all. They just studied it for a few days, took the tests and came out with the certification to train people.

Advantages

• It can be a relatively short process to study and take the exam.
• For a short while, potential employers (or current ones) may view you more favorably than your other non-certified co-workers (I’m not saying this is right or wrong, I’m just saying in my experience especially, I have been ignored by bosses in favor of “certified” individuals.  Let’s ignore the fact that they were wrong.  The perception was they were experts due to their certification.)

Disadvantages

• As time and technology advance, your certifications can quickly become outdated.  Does anyone care if you are Microsoft Frontpage 98 certified anymore?  I think not.
• Perception of your bosses that your certification means you are an instant expert in the field.  So you very well may be assigned items that you are theoretically familiar with, but not so practically.

Conclusion

Basically it boils down to, certifications are nice for the short run.  Some you can get relatively cheaply and quickly, but your ultimate payback will come from extending your education.  No one will question your MBA, they might question your capabilities with Word for Windows 3.0.