A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-07-28 04:56:53 - Graham EllisIt's part of my job to keep my eyes and ears open for emerging technologies and market trends; although I've been running PHP courses for the best part of 5 years, I still need to keep on my toes, update my notes, listen to what people are doing / developing / saying / asking. I watch independent forums to get a flavour for what the community is thinking, and the subject of PHP / Zend certification came up. It seems that no-one there has it, and they don't consider it a priority to be going out and getting it either. Here's what I followed up with ...
It seems a long time ago now that we were invited to join Zend's PHP certification scheme - the invitiation came a few months before the scheme was actually announced - and considered carefully, then politely but firmly declined. It's a path that I had been down and see before with Sun Microsystems and Solaris training, Toplog (as was) and FrameMaker training ... and although I'm reluctant to say that I would never sign up to any of these schemes, I think it's highly unlikely
[rant]
Most certification schemes offer the rookie trainee some peace of mind that the course has at least the backing of a company that's part of the establishment and should know what it's doing. They offer the training company the ability to start courses in a new subject that they really don't know very well and haven't got the notes to present ... and if the training company's lucky, they may get passed sales leads too. They offer the certifying organisation a revenue stream (since they charge the training company for each trainee) and a route through which they can get at newcomers to the technology to sell their products / ways to them. Sound like a "win / win"? Not quite ....
Although the trainee should receive a course to a known agenda, that course will potentially have been dumbed down to fit worldwide requirements - it will be consistent to the lowest common denominator. Potentially, the course will be longer than required and will include material that further the certifier's other interests, such as sessions on their purchaseble hardware or software products. The course tutor won't have had any part in writing the notes, and may not even be too familiar with the subject (I've heard some horrendous stories). And the trainee or his employee will pay a higher daily rate than strictly necessary for this as the certifying organisation will want its a day for each student (or whatever the current amount is).
The trainee's employer, who is probably the person paying for the course, will get a trained employee ... who has a piece of paper he can take around to other prospective employees. In other words, he's paying to loosen his hold on his staff. And he's paying for a course that must be presented as the certifying organisation requires, so it can only be tailored to cover the specialist topics that the employer wants on a special authorisation, case by case basis.
If the training company's well established and already able to provide customers with the training they need at a sensible price and to suit local (country) conditions, a certification scheme removes these abilities to meet their clients needs and at an extra cost. It may bring them extra leads so that they can increas there class sizes (not good for the trainee), and it may save them the need to write material and update their notes in the future.
The certification company is laughing all the way to the bank.
[/rant]
OK - I'm not a great fan. Please take the above comments as being general and not necessarily all applying to the PHP scheme. I can assure you that I took a long and hard look at the scheme in the very early days and decided against offering it. And I remain comfortable with my decision.
I'm not Zend certified myself - I put the money I would have invested in getting the qualification towards a Medditeranean cruise ... during which I spent a day and a half listening to Rasmus Lerdorf, author of PHP, talking about it ....
See link for more on Well House Consultant's stand on certification and individual course descriptions for our comments on the schemes for certain technologies. You can also link to our Technology for PHP, PHP Programming and Object Orientation in PHP public, uncertified, course descriptions. On these courses, we take a maximum of 7 trainees. Each course is tailored to the requirements of the UK market and presented appropriately for the particular group of trainees we get each time.