I've been studying CompSci at a university for 2 years before I chose to drop out and actually do some applied 'hacking' in a real environment (as a company employee). I should say that the real job is sometimes more gratifying ;).

However, I too don't see how a certificate would be of much help. I've seen a few folks with certificates whose skills left their employers (or potential bosses) wish for more. For the most part skills on your certificate are hardly adequate for any job. What really does count is how good of a problem solver and how dedicated to the cause of hacking you are.

I also know too well a number of people without any formal certificate (nor a degree for that matter) who earn significate cash (therefore i assume their skills are being valued etc.) This doesn't make me very excited when I think of pursuing an academic degree. Although, I guess I might have to do that only when I get bored with my current job (as perl hacker, NO WAY! NEVER! :).

"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." -- Confession of Faith

In reply to Re: Perl Certifications and/or Professional Development by vladb
in thread Perl Certifications and/or Professional Development by jerrygarciuh

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.