Ya. I agree.
I too know one such a guy. I dont think he is certified though. He is a big guy in a small co (not mine). Hes got multiple degrees. Hes written a few articles and a book and knows stuff. But he is still not my role model.
The path to success are many.
Certifications should open doors.
Then there are the less travelled tracks which lead to greater sucess:-
Writing a book.
Creating a project like say- Craig McClanahan or building a tool like James Holmes.
These are paths that sound to me more exciting, quicker and more direct success (think about it!).
So I guess these are the options to most guys.
I dont know how u guys have been able to do so many certifications. Amirthalingam Prasanna he's at the verge of having [(SCJP 1.4,SCDJWS(Awaiting results),MCSD,MSCD.NET ]=4 certificates. I mean jobs can be so demanding. But its good that he has been able to squeeze out some time for this.
I dont know man, I find it very difficult finding time to do my preparation for the SCJP itself. Already I have exceeded my planned time. I am at the middle of these
http://www.danchisholm.net/ mock tests. I was relatively free these days and so I could do some studying and so on.
Overall I agree with
Will they make you the next Bill Gates? Hopefuly not!
Disagree with
But at least it is a great way of learnig things and that should be good enough reason to get certified, everything else aside.
Learning things on the job is easier than getting certified. BUT it seems to me( because of this SCJP study) that doing SCJP gets you familiar with all sorts of things u would not have gotten into otherwise. and some of those things are pretty interesting and a techie guy would like to know such stuff.
how do you proof you know something
there are ways but I guess getting certified is the best way.
So lets keep our spirits up.
This probably was an unfair posting.
We should get there wherever we want hopefully in a few years.
But I agree certification can give proofs of competence to some extent.
Collecting certificates (so many as you want to), if I had so many I would feel let down if I could not become a CTO or something close to that.
I just wish someone would say yes he has made it big because of the multiple certifications.
[ June 20, 2004: Message edited by: Swamy Nathan ]