zend certification

Marc

Well-known member
I have now been programming bits with PHP for the past couple of month, and to be honest Im enjoying in more and more as I get into it. So have decided that I want to go down the road of doing this for a living eventually. Now I have a long way to go before I can not only get a job doing it, but match my current developers salary, however I'm a big believer in if you want to do something then you can do it.

So my question is, for those of you that do this for a job already. Is it worth studying to attain the zend engineers certification? I understand there is nothing that says you can do the job like experience, however I want to know if it holds any weight with employers?
 
I have now been programming bits with PHP for the past couple of month, and to be honest Im enjoying in more and more as I get into it. So have decided that I want to go down the road of doing this for a living eventually. Now I have a long way to go before I can not only get a job doing it, but match my current developers salary, however I'm a big believer in if you want to do something then you can do it.

So my question is, for those of you that do this for a job already. Is it worth studying to attain the zend engineers certification? I understand there is nothing that says you can do the job like experience, however I want to know if it holds any weight with employers?
Most certifications mean absolutely nothing.
 
Most certifications mean absolutely nothing.

Depends on the employer.

I have 12 years experience in IT Services (From pc troubleshooting to network installations) and don't hold a single qualification to my name, yet nobody seems to care (nobody asks). However I am self employed. I have hired people with qualifications in the past who could spend an hour fixing a PC going through the "correct procedures" when common sence tells you what it is and it would be a 5 minute fix.

I would hire someone with common sence and experience over someone waving a qualification around anyday.
 
Employers and interviewers like to see such certifications. I've recently done the Zend certification, PHP 5.3 (damn thing went up in price), and whilst it won't help me in the long run, I just did it as a personal thing.

However, take into consideration what Slavik said.
 
Employers and interviewers like to see such certifications. I've recently done the Zend certification, PHP 5.3 (damn thing went up in price), and whilst it won't help me in the long run, I just did it as a personal thing.

However, take into consideration what Slavik said.

Do you feel you learnt anything from studying from it? Im kinda wondering whether it would be a worthwhile exercise if only for something to guide me through learning things correctly.
 
Employers and interviewers like to see such certifications. I've recently done the Zend certification, PHP 5.3 (damn thing went up in price), and whilst it won't help me in the long run, I just did it as a personal thing.

However, take into consideration what Slavik said.
As someone who does most of the interviewing and training of interns for my work I can tell you this is completely and utterly false.

Certifications generally are bunk as most people are capable of passing them. Just because you can pass a certification doesn't mean you're qualified to work in the field it falls under. Within the past week I've cut ~10 potential interns from our program because they were clearly under qualified, even though they had about 4 different certifications.

More often than not, just like many things that go into resumes, it is only useful as filler but anyone knowledgeable will know to take it with a grain of salt.

Certifications = equivalent of 'social, eloquent public speaker' so on and so forth.
 
Do you feel you learnt anything from studying from it? Im kinda wondering whether it would be a worthwhile exercise if only for something to guide me through learning things correctly.

Yes - it's actually changed the way I write PHP, to a somewhat more elegant approach - but, I also know what not to do, and how things interact with each other.
 
As someone who does most of the interviewing and training of interns for my work I can tell you this is completely and utterly false.

Certifications generally are bunk as most people are capable of passing them. Just because you can pass a certification doesn't mean you're qualified to work in the field it falls under. Within the past week I've cut ~10 potential interns from our program because they were clearly under qualified, even though they had about 4 different certifications.

More often than not, just like many things that go into resumes, it is only useful as filler but anyone knowledgeable will know to take it with a grain of salt.

Certifications = equivalent of 'social, eloquent public speaker' so on and so forth.

Maybe it's only me who likes to see them... well.. I'd like to think that the person I may potentially employ has put some time aside to study for this and paid for it.

I never said that qualifications = certifications; that is a whole different story.
 
Maybe it's only me who likes to see them... well.. I'd like to think that the person I may potentially employ has put some time aside to study for this and paid for it.

I never said that qualifications = certifications; that is a whole different story.

You probably do not have much experience with freshly graduated people or someone who is self-taught then. More often than not they try to sell themselves off with certifications or something along the lines of: good communication skills, being a team player or a problem solver.

These are almost always red flags for someone who has worked professionally in any field as they're commonly used by people with little to no experience (Which isn't a bad thing, and generally is a catch 22 because to be experienced you need to have a job). The issue is that they're trying to sell themselves with what everyone else does and aren't presenting themselves in a way to show that they are actually qualified.

And the reason why I brought up qualification originally is that most of the people I have met who think certifications will actually mean something assume because they have them that they are qualified. Getting certified is about as easy as studying for a test, and most of those certifications will mean absolutely in a real life situation.
 
It's really more of a balancing act when it comes to considering a person's certifications. For the professional services company I work for, we are using a scoring system to bring people to interviews. We get hundreds of applications/CV's per month and because not everyone uses the same CV format, it's sometimes difficult to weed out the trash from the gold.

Certifications of certain skill will get you points, but we also look for real-world experience [except new graduate hires] and we'll fully test that knowledge before offering a person a position. If someone applies for a position and doesn't have a certification for a particular reason, something other applicants have, then it raises a red flag. Let me be a little more clear that we specify the requirements of the job which includes having high-level certifications. Right now, we're looking for bilingual people that hold a CISA, CISM, CGEIT, CRISC, CISSP, Oracle (various 10g/11g), CCIE and/or some of the higher level MS certs. There must be current certs plus a combination of at least 5+ years of real-world experience in the target technology area. [Edit: Sorry, I need to also clarify that graduation from an accredited bachelors program is actually probably the first requirement outside of everything else mentioned here.]

To the OP, I've never met a Zend Engineer in the course of my work. Or at least, no one that has claimed to be one. (Mostly all financial services infrastructure, so it's mostly a combination of mainframe, Oracle, ASP etc.)
 
You probably do not have much experience with freshly graduated people or someone who is self-taught then. More often than not they try to sell themselves off with certifications or something along the lines of: good communication skills, being a team player or a problem solver.

These are almost always red flags for someone who has worked professionally in any field as they're commonly used by people with little to no experience (Which isn't a bad thing, and generally is a catch 22 because to be experienced you need to have a job). The issue is that they're trying to sell themselves with what everyone else does and aren't presenting themselves in a way to show that they are actually qualified.

And the reason why I brought up qualification originally is that most of the people I have met who think certifications will actually mean something assume because they have them that they are qualified. Getting certified is about as easy as studying for a test, and most of those certifications will mean absolutely in a real life situation.

No one's considered to interview if they haven't had at least 3 years real-world experience.
 
Years doesn't mean so much either. How much time have they actually spend on developing and not just minor development? How many hours have they spent in the actual development process. I'd much rather have someone who has 3 years experience, with several certifications, having seen their work log, rather than someone who's been working for 5 years, doing some sort of QA, code analysis and development.

I also said at least 3 years - this is the basic cut off line. Majority of applicants have over 5 years, yet most still fail to meet criteria.
 
Years doesn't mean so much either. How much time have they actually spend on developing and not just minor development? How many hours have they spent in the actual development process. I'd much rather have someone who has 3 years experience, with several certifications, having seen their work log, rather than someone who's been working for 5 years, doing some sort of QA, code analysis and development.

I also said at least 3 years - this is the basic cut off line. Majority of applicants have over 5 years, yet most still fail to meet criteria.
The bold part makes very little sense.

Someone who has been QA or code analysis is likely to have just as impressive a portfolio as the person who has been developing for 3 years. Someone who actually works QA/code analysis must understand what they are examining, meaning you can base their skill off of the stability of the project they worked on.

It is also unlikely all they would have done is QA and code analysis, and they are likely to have other things in their portfolio, much of which will show a wider skill set as technology changes.
 
LOL, I love these controversial subjects :)

Thankyou all for your input. I think I may study this on the merit of guiding me through learning, however go at it with the point of view that this is all it is for. At the end of the day although it may make no difference to employability I certainly cant see it being any harm being there.

Shamil, may I ask what material you used to study? Courses, specific books?
 
The bold part makes very little sense.

Someone who has been QA or code analysis is likely to have just as impressive a portfolio as the person who has been developing for 3 years. Someone who actually works QA/code analysis must understand what they are examining, meaning you can base their skill off of the stability of the project they worked on.

It is also unlikely all they would have done is QA and code analysis, and they are likely to have other things in their portfolio, much of which will show a wider skill set as technology changes.

I placed someone who did QA, from a well-known Californian company into development. I couldn't figure out what was worse - how little this person had done within a certain time-frame, or that their QA of 'code' only involved very, very simple things. They simple did not understand what was going on. It was clear that this person was an apt developer, but she just couldn't put it into practice is a continuous frame. Maybe I've just had crappy experience. :(
 
LOL, I love these controversial subjects :)

Thankyou all for your input. I think I may study this on the merit of guiding me through learning, however go at it with the point of view that this is all it is for. At the end of the day although it may make no difference to employability I certainly cant see it being any harm being there.

Shamil, may I ask what material you used to study? Courses, specific books?

Ah, it gets me going ;)

I used the Zend PHP Study guide, and the PHP Manual. However, nothing comes short of writing code yourself. The Zend PHP Cert Study guide was good, but it hasn't been updated for PHP 5.3 (namespaces etc.)
 
Ah, it gets me going ;)

I used the Zend PHP Study guide, and the PHP Manual. However, nothing comes short of writing code yourself. The Zend PHP Cert Study guide was good, but it hasn't been updated for PHP 5.3 (namespaces etc.)

Oh I will be continuing to write code as I am aware it will give me the experience I need to be able to write it proficiently, however I will be going through these. Cheers for the links Shamil
 
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