
Changes to the Red Hat Certified Engineer program - BossingAround
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/announcing-evolution-red-hat-certified-engineer-program
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CraigJPerry
Hands down the best examination format I have ever taken. I have a few certs
in this area but the RHCE is an excellent model of how to examine someone's
skillset.

I wish more, maybe even most, technical certifications followed this model.

The one down side was the fact they weren't willing to give performance
feedback. I got 96.4% overall and was absolutely gutted I couldn't find out
the reason I missed (still a respectable score - I believe the average score
is a fail).

There was a section at the end with 3 different tasks and you should choose 2.
I finished pretty early so I decided to do the 3rd, i reviewed and reviewed my
work before I left that workstation, I can't see what else I did wrong. Would
love to know.

~~~
mrbill
I got mine back in the RHEL4 days, got a 97%, and yeah its bugged me for years
as I want to know what I got wrong.

Probably the "hardest", most involved, "gotta know your shit" certification
I've ever done.

I definitely felt like I'd earned it.

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mancerayder
Hm. I have mixed feelings reading this. I'm a very experienced Linux admin
that rebranded to DevOps, and I can tell you no one outside of
government/academia or slower organizations like (some legacy groups within)
banks cares about your awk and zsh skills, or even kernel internals.

They do care about coding, very very much. I get slammed with coding
challenges, sometimes even before talking to a real human, and once three
separate rounds, in interviews.

Think they care you can set up a mail server, troubleshoot IO issues, read a
tcpdump. Well the answer is they _might_. But Docker, extensive AWS and Python
or Ruby at the software engineer level? They _will_.

RIP systems administration and RHCE relevance.

Don't waste your time if you're looking for a new job, for instance. Your time
is better spent on the examples above. And soon, Kubernetes.

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aequitas
I don't know if these exams are still in the same format but I've always found
them wildly more relevant compared to other exams as they focus on practical
knowledge and problem solving skills instead of your skill to remember command
line flags or your skills in multiple choice guessing game.

~~~
reallydontask
I must admit that i've only looked at sample exams rather than actually having
taken one but I have to say that I agree with you.

I think Microsoft's exams are changing to be less of a multiple choice
guessing game but the Red Hat seem to be the gold standard for certifications.
(Speaking from a limited POV)

~~~
ratling
For now. The IBM sale made it a no brainer for us to migrate off CentOS last
year. They 'could' not mess up Red Hat but I'm not betting against IBM's track
record.

~~~
andrey_utkin
Which distro you migrated to?

~~~
ratling
Ubuntu.

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weirdtunguska
As a physicist by training that has been working as a data scientist and
believing that the data science bubble will burst sooner rather than later,
are these certifications a good path to help change course and keep myself
relevant?

~~~
couterSpell
I find certifications good for really three things:

1.) Having a structured curriculum to learn something new. All my tech skills
are self-taught, and it's useful to have a structured learning path.

2.) Validating your skills, especially when you're changing careers. I went
from working in call centers to AWS Systems Architect/Linux SysAdmin by virtue
of a couple of certs.

3.) Sometimes employers require certain certifications as a condition of
employment (or continued employment). This one can be a bit sticky, though.
Make sure those certifications make sense for the role. I can't tell you how
many job listings I see wanting CompTIA A+. Unless you're applying to work for
Geek Squad, you probably don't need an A+ cert (which asks things like 'What
is RAM'? 'What is Bluray?').

If you want to get into Linux, getting a couple of certs won't hurt. Red Hat's
certs are probably the most well-respected, but of course are centered around
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and by extension CentOS).

If you want a good cert path for Debian, go with the Linux Foundation certs.
Linux Foundation's certs are less well-known, but also practical exams.

I would avoid LPIC and CompTIA Linux+ certs (NOTE: I am Linux+ and LPIC-1
certified). They are multiple choice exams and really emphasize based on rote
memorization of command flags, which really isn't useful to be an actual Linux
SysAdmin. Then's the last time you ran into a bzip2 archive? I can't remember
the last time I did, but I still remember that tar xjf will unzip one. But, of
course, if I did run into a bzip2 in the wild, I can just as easily read the
tar man page. Thanks LPIC!

~~~
linuxftw
In the latest versions of tar, no need to specify compression type if it has a
valid extension.

~~~
couterSpell
Interesting. Then again, that shows another problem with the LPIC exams:
They're really out of date.

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technofiend
So I attended Summit the past few years and each time sat on an education
panel run by the head of Red Hat's education program. Most recently we
discussed Red Hat Learning Subscription and the relative difficulty of the Red
Hat Certified Architect track. RHCA requires the student complete certified
sysadmin, certified engineer and then 5 more courses.

In previous years RHCA required passing two gauntlet exams: Performance Tuning
and Troubleshooting. These exams are no joke and will trip up senior
sysadmins. Many RHCAs were upset that Red Hat lowered the bar by removing
those two exams and not creating equivalent exams on the other tracks which
are for development or devops concentrations instead of classic system
administration.

In my personal opinion Red Hat should have instead created multiple red hat
certified engineer certifications for each of the various concentrations which
could then feed into Red Hat certified architect certifications.

Last year the head of the education program stated he wanted redhat certified
architect to eventually be the equivalent of getting the notoriously difficult
and rigorous CCIE. As a RHEL 6 and 7 RHCE with this move I feel like they've
gone the other direction.

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ausjke
I have been interested in linux certification for a while, but I'm not a
redhat user, I use debian/ubuntu.

How does RHCE compare to LPC certification? I'm not even sure if Ubuntu has
similar certificates for testing.

~~~
couterSpell
I'm assuming you mean the LPIC certification?

LPIC certification: "Vendor neutral," meaning you need to memorize (note I
said memorize, not learn) how both Debian and RHEL do things. For example,
you'll be tested both on YUM and APT.

LPIC certifications are multiple choice, and really come down to rote
memorization of flags. You're also tested on stuff of questionable relevance,
like X11, desktop environments, and CUPS. If you're supporting Linux desktops,
that stuff is probably important. But Linux deployed mostly on servers.

RHSA: RHEL/CentOS-only, and performance based. You can use man pages during
the exam, so you can concentrate what commands do what and how to configure
things. This is opposed to LPIC, where you're more focused on obscure flags.

Ubuntu has no vendor-specific exam. If you really want to stick with
Debian/Ubuntu, go with the Linux Foundation certs. They're performance-based
and you can choose to do it on Debian.

~~~
ausjke
Thanks a lot. I was unaware of LF certs.

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rurban
They change it to "Red Hat Certified Ansible Specialist", no kidding.
Relevance going from 80% to 20%.

