> Certs help with administrative things like HR requirements, contractual obligations, audits, etc. You're pointing out things that are generally considered to

> Certs help with administrative things like HR requirements, contractual obligations, audits, etc. You're pointing out things that are generally considered to be failures in our sphere anyway. I don't think that's unrelated. HR brings us terrible candidates? Certs (currently) don't help that, and when HR over emphasizes them, we can blame the certs. (In theory, certs COULD help, but the people that get the cert instead of the experience are the problem ones, and those are the people HR brings us) Contracts are an attempt to preset agreements between two parties, and in the tech world usually one of those parties are at a disadvantage in the tech space (otherwise we'd not be making the contract). Certs are used as a means of asserting competence in the employees, but the other party has every incentive to focus on the cert instead of the competence. So when it goes bad (as it often does), we can blame the certs as not achieving the goal. Audits are likewise, trying to filter for competence (in action or in people, depending). But again, if the incentive is for the cert over the competence, it is the competence that suffers. We blame the cert (or more correctly, the emphasis on the cert). IT definitely has a bias against certs. And it's not really against the certs themselves...it's that emphasis of the certs is harmful, not helpful. So we argue against that emphasis, which sounds a lot like hating the certs. > The problem most IT people have is thinking that certs address technical issues, when in fact they address business issues. But those business issues are "how do we ensure the technical issues are addressed?" And it turns out Certs in practice do a terrible job at that.