what cirtificates company expect for architect job ?

[ali haider]

Originally posted by Sadanand Murthy:


If any company hires an architect based solely on certifications, then that company's software systems/apps will be a dismal failure if that person doesn't have actual work experience. And this work experience is not just taking someone else's design and coding a component. Architecting solutions requires a lot more than just the desire to learn new technology. I've interviewed candidates who have listed their titles as Architect, Application Architect, Tech. Lead etc with years of experience (according to their resumes). Most of such candidates have failed miserably in the interviews. Even for the role of a sr. developer. Many of such candidates that I've interviewed didn't have the java/j2ee technical skills/knowledge commensurate with the years of work experience in java/j2ee.

I personally will not care a whit for the certifications, especially if I'm interviewing the candidate for a lead/architet position.

HWat sort of experience in terms of number of years in the industry and in terms of number of years as a senior developer/architect does it normally take for a person to be recognized as a competent architect, ready for some challenging position.
Thanks for reading,
Abhi

[Jack Saraf]

I think to be an architect is as much a matter of Art as it is a matter of Science. Aided with common sense will make a better recipe.

Architecting Solutions & Applications is also evolving very rapidly and its obbjectives are beginning to cristalize nowadays... With approaches like RMODP & Zachman's... & with increasing popularity of UML, MDA & MOF.. the whole domain is getting split into Platform Indepedent Architecting and Platform Specific Architecting... May be you woulkd like to see yourself as a UML Architect or Java Architect or even .Net Architect.

OMG Certifications are surely the direction to go if you are one of the believers in the OMG's UML-MDA-MOF approach.

A few basic readings will surely give you a better perspective. Two I would lie to mention are :
1. Software Architecture in Practice - Len Bass et al.
2. Architecting with RM-ODP - Janis Puttman.

Happy Architecting...

[ankur rathi]

I think this cirtifications are if not enough then atleast first step towards getting the post of software architect , when you have less experience :

1] SCJP
2] SCJD
3] SCWCD
4] SCBCD ( not sure about this )
5] SCEA
6] ICED ( IBM 486 OOAD with UML , IBM 484 WSAD , IBM 287 ( don't know ) )

What you all think ??
Any other you want to add in list or remove ...

Thanks .

[Svend Rost]

Originally posted by rathi ji:
I think this cirtifications are if not enough then atleast first step towards getting the post of software architect , when you have less experience :

1] SCJP
2] SCJD
3] SCWCD
4] SCBCD ( not sure about this )
5] SCEA
6] ICED ( IBM 486 OOAD with UML , IBM 484 WSAD , IBM 287 ( don't know ) )

What you all think ??
Any other you want to add in list or remove ...

Thanks .

I don't hope, that anyone will hire a person based on his certifications
only. As people has stated in the previous posts, certifications doesn't
qualify you as an architect.

/Svend

[Don Stadler]

I'm kinda on both sides of this debate. No certifications won't get you a job as an architect. But you need to know as much as you can know - particularly about how important systems work. And SCWCD and SCBCD will teach you a lot about client side and server side fundamentals. To that you need to add product-specific knowledge and lots of other things - Struts for one.

So I regard certs as a plus but not enough by themselves.....

[Paul Sturrock]

The company I currently work for (and, in fact all the previous companies I've worked for(4)) see certification as a slight bonus, not a necessity. They all have used extensive technical interviewing and extended CVs (which detail previous projects) as their primary source for candidate suitability. This, in addition to a probabtion period, seems to be the prefered way in my experience. Personally, I think this is a safer way of doing it - relying on certification only means you run the risk of employing someone who is a rubbish architect, but very good at passing exams.

[ali haider]

Well certifications are not the key to getting an architect's job, but I guess clearing them will ensure you cover up a lot of the fundamentals that you might have normally not encountered during your work experience. So, I guess starting with certs might not be a bad idea as it will give you a nice overview and then you can during your work experience build on those concepts by actual code. Finally what I feel will make a good architect is some one who can get hands down to actual coding (not theory), is good at retaining multiple parameters in the mind and can analyze large complicated sytems well. What do you guys say...

[Paul Sturrock]

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
I've been an architect without a single certification. I don't think certifications make you an architect, but rather knowledge and experience.

--Mark

I'll second that experience. The only certification I have was gained at my previous employer (where I was an Senior Developer), and gained specifically to qualify for some partnering agreements we had with other technology companines, not for any other potential benefit certification might give. If it weren't for these dependencies, the staff would be largely uncerificated (though undoubtably very experienced).

[Anselm Paulinus]

Certification alone does not make one an architect; at the same time it does not harm to have one. Personally, I believe it could hasten it for you. For those who claim they ain't certified yet find their selves in that position; the basic fact is they do not know what they lack; yes, they get the job done with what they know but could perform better with the knowledge they get from certification. it is just like a good developer with out a certification; He does not know what he lacks or all the language provides because he does not know such exist. so my advice to you is go on and obtain one if that is your goal; I believe it will help on the long run.

[Frank Sikuluzu]

Originally posted by Kashif Riaz:


A Ph.d proves that you like to learn, but do little or nothing. Its used as a safety net for people who are afraid to go straight into employment.

So you think James Gosling like to do little or nothing ? Talking about "afraid to go stright into employment", I think he and some other PhD fellows created the java jobs for us.

It is a terrible joke for those people who have not earned a PhD degree to comment on people with PhD degrees. Trust me, MOST of them like to do things more than you like.

[Homer Phillips]

When you are doing something nobody has ever done before, how do you get experience at it?

If you have experience at doing things never done before does it count towards other things never done before? Is the ability to do things undone unique to every new task. If so, in this year of his aniversary, why did Einstein solve several previously unsolved and disparate problems?
[ April 19, 2005: Message edited by: Homer Phillips ]

[steve francisco]

Originally posted by Homer Phillips:
When you are doing something nobody has ever done before, how do you get experience at it?

If you have experience at doing things never done before does it count towards other things never done before? Is the ability to do things undone unique to every new task. If so, in this year of his aniversary, why did Einstein solve several previously unsolved and disparate problems?

[ April 19, 2005: Message edited by: Homer Phillips ]

We are talking about different things. Einstein(s) are genius people and of course they don't need any experience in that field (who had ?). They built the field, and then people come in, just like us, we are just occupying a small tiny room (called J2EE) of the huge palace. Then we start judging ordinary people with experience. This sort of makes sense because we are all ordinary people. If you are exceptional, of course you don't fall in this group, and I suggest you don't mistreat yourself by being a J2EE programmer, it will kill your genius creativity.

[Jeroen Wenting]

Architects without experience in the trenches are disasters.
I've worked with enough of them, sadly.

They don't know what works, only what looks good on paper.
They tend to come up with theoretically beautiful systems that are impossible to implement in a reasonable amount of time and then are useless because of the apalling performance imparted by a far too rigid and theoretical design (multi tier systems in which each tier is itself a multitier system, things like that).

In the extreme I encountered a system that had been architectured in the extreme by such theorists.
Communications was greatly split up in over a dozen tiers, all heavily protected with security systems to prevent abuse.
As a result a single request to the mainframe took over a minute to complete. The architect had never envisioned that because he'd never worked in the real world.
He went on to blame the failure of the system not on the inherent flaws in his architecture but on the way it was implemented (which was according to his architecture...).

[ali haider]

Originally posted by steve francisco:


We are talking about different things. Einstein(s) are genius people and of course they don't need any experience in that field (who had ?). They built the field, and then people come in, just like us, we are just occupying a small tiny room (called J2EE) of the huge palace. Then we start judging ordinary people with experience. This sort of makes sense because we are all ordinary people. If you are exceptional, of course you don't fall in this group, and I suggest you don't mistreat yourself by being a J2EE programmer, it will kill your genius creativity.

What should he do instead then.....?
A honest query. No pun intended.

Thansk,
Abhi

[K Riaz]

Originally posted by Frank Sikuluzu:


So you think James Gosling like to do little or nothing ? Talking about "afraid to go stright into employment", I think he and some other PhD fellows created the java jobs for us.

It is a terrible joke for those people who have not earned a PhD degree to comment on people with PhD degrees. Trust me, MOST of them like to do things more than you like.

James Gosling is in a minority of people who has successfully gone on to better things after completing a Ph.D. Some are geniuses (e.g. John Nash). Most are glorified researchers who do it for the title. They are intelligent in that they will tell you smart things, but left wanting in the real-world (once an academic, always an academic). Even Joel Spolsky agrees in his blog. Who better to comment than someone who has worked for Microsoft, studied at Yale, launched a successful software company, written various books, won numerous awards and turned recruiting into an art?

Originally posted by Frank Sikuluzu:

Trust me, MOST of them like to do things more than you like.

Your point? I like to do things that they don't like too.