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I once tried to hire for a MS DBA position. The certified MCDBA's could not tell me what an index was or how it would be used. I was shocked so I went and took

I once tried to hire for a MS DBA position. The certified MCDBA's could not tell me what an index was or how it would be used. I was shocked so I went and took the tests myself. There were a few questions on indexes but I could see how someone could answer those questions and forget the exam cram by the next week. We ended up hiring someone with no certs and no degree and he was fantastic at the job.

devnullmonkey 9y ago
Ah, yes... the "paper tiger". While I do have certs myself, it's only because my employer has required them. Left to my own devices, I would never bother. I've been in IT for almost 20 years and I agree that the "no cert/no degree" guys usually work out. The team lead whose feet I studied at in my first few years in IT had a high school diploma and he could run rings around the guys from Carnegie Mellon and RIT that worked with us. He was a deep diver mentally. I watched this guy drop awk, sed, bash strings a mile long, write Perl scripts without consulting a single web page. He knew iOS (Cisco), Perl, TCL/Tk, Sun, BSD, and about everything else. He could configure a HA UNIX servers and Oracle DB backends without consulting a manual. It was most impressive. He was let go because he was a team lead (middle manager). The people that replaced him--yes, people-- knew nothing in comparison.