Vendor Neutral vs Specific Certifications

I'll be completely blunt, I think vendor neutral certifications in regards of take away aren't very helpful from my experiences.

I've sat the RMP, PMP, CAPM, ITIL X 3, Project +, A+ etc..... And never felt I really gained a whole lot from them. Not once to be honest..... Except for some dialog/terms.

Now from a technical perspective, working through some MS certifications, mostly database, some passed and some failed I always felt I've gotten a lot of those certifications. In fact my latest database certification while working on the MS stack was EXTREMELY helpful, some of the coding and strategies I learned from my studies helped me stand out above the rest. In fact to quantify that, think 30% pay bump..... Not even related to the paper, just the knowledge gain from it.

Never once have I felt that a vendor neutral certification has done that for me.

This isn't about value and resumes, just overall knowledge and take away. I'm sure some will differ, but I can't believe a process / vendor neutral certification would supercede a strong technical one......

Just saying.

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

DatabaseHead

cyberguypr wrote: »

Iris, on behalf of DBHead and in the spirit of saving time, I want to tell you that you are wrong

How can she be wrong when she never answered the question?

I'd be curious to see if she thinks her vendor specific certifications helped more than the vendor neutral or vice versa. And before I get the political response both.... I'm asking which has helped more in her opinion or anyone else for that matter......

SteveLavoie wrote: »

my only answer.. PITA

Why reply if you aren't going to answer the question?

cyberguypr

Was that a question?

DatabaseHead

cyberguypr wrote: »

Was that a question?

cyberguypr wrote: »

We're going in circles here. I'll just wait for the trained minions to chime in.

Hint - They have arrived....

cyberguypr

I'm out. Off to watch I, Robot. "My logic is undeniable..."

Iristheangel

Considering I have beginner vendor neutral certs and expert level vendor specific and I work at the company that provides said expert level certifications, that's a bit of a silly question. But if it's any indication, I plan on going after offensive security and SANS certs once I'm done with my ccie security. But I doubt you care because you don't want an intellectual conversation about the merits of both. You want to be right.

@cyber I know I'm always wrong. Somehow I will live.

DatabaseHead

Upset, hardly....

You are the ones upset, blasting me with negative rep. Talk about thinned skinned....

BlackBeret

I'm probably on the wrong forum for this, but I'll give both sides a common enemy. Certifications are just pieces of paper. They're supposed to prove a baseline of knowledge. If you study specifically just to pass the certification you're a) doing it wrong. b) limiting what you learn to what's on the test.

If you're purposefully limiting your learning to just the test questions, you'll feel like you're learning more from the vendor specific certifications because their test questions tend to be very specific, ie "Which utility and exact switches do you run to accomplish x,y,z under a,b circumstances." A vendor neutral certification would have to ask something along the lines of "What utility can be used to accomplish X?" or "Under b circumstance, why would you use utility F".

The thing is, once you understand the what and why, you look up or learn to do it on any system, regardless of vendor. I know the guy with the vendor specific cert can accomplish the task with that one tool, but if he doesn't understand the why behind it, he may not be able to do the same with another tool.

Ultimately, what you learn and get out of it is up to you, know what's written on a test or the name of the company on the certification.

As a side note, the HP ArcSight course can't touch the SANS Sec 503 course, in technical knowledge. They're both training on intrusion analysis. The pass rate where I work for RHCSA is higher than Linux+ and I personally felt Linux+ was more difficult due to the technical knowledge needing to be translated to multiple systems, vs. a single distro.

Iristheangel

DatabaseHead wrote: »

Did you actually read the post before replying?

The point of the thread, from a learning perspective technical > process. If you disagree with that, EG CISSP > CCIE I am okay with that, but I never once said they weren't valuable.

This was a strawman and you know it. Especially since I never mentioned CISSP. I would say that CCIE and certain SANS or OS certs are certainly comparable in their own domains.

I like what BlackBeret said. Having paper certs or just learning enough to just answer the questions isnt useful. It's the knowledge behind it that is the most useful. If your certs are actually certifying your knowledge, that's where they are the most useful in your career.

My original comment pointing out certs like Offensive Security and SANS certs was to make a point that there are extremely technical and valuable industry-recognized vendor neutral certs so saying one is always better than the other is throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are no absolutes. In the same way we discussed in a recent thread that a CS degree wasn't always a silver bullet for all, the same can be said about vendor vs non-vendor certs. The best answer is that it depends. There are expert level vendor neutral certs out there that blow away a ton of vendor certs in terms of technical ability but as one pointed out earlier in this thread, vendor certs tend to teach you how to use a tool and non-vendor certs will tell you when/why to use a tool and sometimes walk you thru open source tools which are comparable to vendor tools.

You, DB, might not personally have benefited from vendor neutral certs as much but you only need to skip and hop over to the security forums on here to see that it's not the same for all folks.

EANx

DatabaseHead wrote: »

@EANx, the PMP is a summarized version of management classes in a management MA or MBA program. Risk, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Project etc..... If you have an MBA the PMP is extremely redundant......

<snip>

This isn't attributed to the RMP or PMP, but experience and my MBA.

<snip>

Again not trying to discredit your findings, but from my vantage point it wasn't really that helpful....

Well, of course you didn't find it useful. But two things. First, an MBA is itself vendor-neutral training. Second, telling someone to go get a Master's Degree when all they want is training in project management principles is overkill.

It does seem like you're looking for an echo chamber here.

DatabaseHead

EANx wrote: »

Well, of course you didn't find it useful. But two things. First, an MBA is itself vendor-neutral training. Second, telling someone to go get a Master's Degree when all they want is training in project management principles is overkill.

It does seem like you're looking for an echo chamber here.

I find it bizarre that someone with years of engineering would magically understand project management from taking the PMP. I would assume if you were an engineer for a long period of time you would understand the inner workings of project management, since most likely you would be working on all sorts of projects most likely with a PM or a lead maybe even being a lead of some of those projects.

I'm also curious how you would of accrued the years of experience 5 years with degree 7 without.... And find the scope / charter management part eye opening.... I would think with your documented experience per the PMI guidelines these would be automatic.

Unless you were strictly BAU and Operations....

DatabaseHead

@ Iris and Black

No argument here on the knowledge component > the paper.....

That is a fact as far as I am concerned.

EANx

That's 3 and 5, not 5 & 7. And participating in a project is far different from managing it. You get bits and pieces as an engineer but the management mindset is very different. Engineers don't care about budget, ordering, personnel, etc. Which project and program managers have to. It was a multi-year mental attitude change for me. The PMP wasn't a silver bullet, but it did gel a lot of concepts.

DatabaseHead

EANx wrote: »

That's 3 and 5, not 5 & 7. And participating in a project is far different from managing it. You get bits and pieces as an engineer but the management mindset is very different. Engineers don't care about budget, ordering, personnel, etc. Which project and program managers have to. It was a multi-year mental attitude change for me. The PMP wasn't a silver bullet, but it did gel a lot of concepts.

So you obtained project management experience working as an engineer? How did you get the 3 - 5 years worth of experience, if you weren't actively involved in managing projects?

The whole point of the PMP is to validate your skills as a PM, the CAPM is more aligned with someone who is relatively inexperienced in the PM space...... Which from your description sounds like where you were at.

Sounds like you got the PMP to off set your lack of experience as a PM.

I'm confused how that all worked out....

According to PMI you need 4,500 hours of leading or directing projects. 7,500 without a degree.

EANx

The requirement isn't "managing", it's "directing and leading". And Isn't the point of studying for a certification to gain knowledge? You make it sound like you're only supposed to take an exam if you can pass without studying.

DatabaseHead

I hadn't known how to press for a good person to monitor the project. When not just the first draft but 2nd and third drafts at a charter and scope were sloppy, I knew the "PM" had to go. Had I not had that training, I would have accepted sloppy docs and not realized it was troubled until well into the project.

Actually leading has a larger scope of responsibility which furthers my point....

And the fact you hang onto the PMI code so dearly indicates you are more of junior PM than a seasoned one....

The quote above is something I would expect a junior coordinator to write, not a seasoned PM. Sorry if it comes of rude, but you sound over embellished......

EANx

Everyone is entitled to be rude and wrong, like you have been several times. I have no need to defend my career, nor attack others to make myself feel better.

DatabaseHead

EANx wrote: »

Everyone is entitled to be rude and wrong, like you have been several times. I have no need to defend my career, nor attack others to make myself feel better.

I had a 750k project that I know would have gone sideways if I hadn't known how to press for a good person to monitor the project. When not just the first draft but 2nd and third drafts at a charter and scope were sloppy, I knew the "PM" had to go. Had I not had that training, I would have accepted sloppy docs and not realized it was troubled until well into the project.

This isn't how a PM would talk..... This sounds like a junior project coordinator xEAN......

Any person who went through a real project would know the difference between a piece of crap Charter, SOW, RFP and a nicely crafted document with or without PMI.

Unreal....

EANx

DatabaseHead wrote: »

Unreal....

Finally, something we agree on.

Iristheangel

I'm just going to place this here...

echo chamber.jpg

Ertaz

I’m doing an MCSE because I can’t find anything at SANS that toots my horn.

8EA56FDA-9DC5-4B31-BDFB-CBE0A6D4CC9A.jpg