# BSD Certification



## Lamia (Jun 20, 2022)

How can people in the Pacific register for the BSD exam 702 -
https://www.lpi.org/our-certifications/exam-702-objectives ? Back then, it was possible for folks in North America to register and write exam in their region. Today, I cannot find a voucher for it on the LPI regardless of region.
There is a 40% on LPI exams for this month and I was looking forward to the BSD being included but no luck. What is the status of the exam? Out of Beta - https://www.lpi.org/articles/linux-professional-institute-releases-bsd-specialist-certification ?


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## Lamia (Jun 23, 2022)

jimyang said:


> Hello, Im searching the same info, did you find any new tips?


No new tips yet.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 24, 2022)

Certification is great. It makes a lot of money for certification companies for things that are meaningless to anyone else.

EDIT: 
To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.


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## Lamia (Jun 24, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Certification is great. It makes a lot of money for certification companies for things that are meaningless to anyone else.


You are correct Sir. It further creates an employment criterion by (big) businesses and governments for industry and IT-service jobs, respectively. 

There is no huge business case and use of *BSD systems with the exception of a few, such as Darwin@Apple, *Sense@Netgate/?. 

It will be nice to create a poll/survey seeking the various certifications earned by the members of this community and their current day-to-day jobs or means of livelihood.

Persons wanting something close to *BSD certification may look at Solaris and so on.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 24, 2022)

Lamia That would be an equal waste of time. To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.


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## Lamia (Jun 24, 2022)

I 


drhowarddrfine said:


> Lamia That would be an equal waste of time. To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.


I cannot agree more. Thanks to the *BSD communities for their position with the LPI.


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## PMc (Jun 24, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Certification is great. It makes a lot of money for certification companies for things that are meaningless to anyone else.
> 
> EDIT:
> To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.


Yepp. 
But it's an old scheme. I don'r remember where I read it - maybe Tom Sawyer. No idea. It's about the very unwelcome task of painting the garden fence afresh. In the end it is achieved to turn things around essentially, and the whole bunch of neighbourhood kids is standing in queue willing to _pay_ for the allowance to paint a piece of the garden-fence.

In the last century that same scheme was usually deployed in the esterism market of pseudo-psychology self-help: there so-called "gurus" would make copious amounts of money basically by telling people that they are stupid and the guru is the only way out.

In capitalism, the rule is, something wouldn't exist if there weren't a demand. And demands can be created. The term is "mediated desire".

And there is a skill in this. To me it doesn't seem interesting to have some skill that is shown by a certification. Instead I would rather ask, what is this skill that makes one able to rip off other people - and to do it in a fashion that is fully respected, even by authorities?


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## sidetone (Jun 25, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Certification is great. It makes a lot of money for certification companies for things that are meaningless to anyone else.
> 
> EDIT:
> To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.





drhowarddrfine said:


> To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.


To be clear, can you write that again? I'm kidding


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## unitrunker (Jun 25, 2022)

Years ago - before LPI - you could buy the study materials for $40 USD. 






						New BSDA Study DVD (Spring / Summer 2016) is out — bsdcg
					

The BSDCG is happy to announce the release of the latest BSD Associate Study DVD, available immediately from the Store.




					www.bsdcertification.org
				




Has anyone ever received a BSD certification from LPI?

I would rather see the FreeBSD Foundation offer something. Proceeds would go to the general fund.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 25, 2022)

PMc said:


> But it's an old scheme. I don'r remember where I read it - maybe Tom Sawyer.


Yep. And you can visit that fence in Hannibal, Missouri--a two hour drive north of me.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 25, 2022)

unitrunker said:


> Has anyone ever received a BSD certification from LPI?


Has anyone ever received a BSD certification? Or any kind of certification? And did anyone care?


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## _martin (Jun 25, 2022)

Oh, that scam. This is a big pain in the six for international companies as certain part of the world really loves them. You ain't engineer enough if you don't throw three or four certification exams below your name/signature (and no, you can't put your master/PhD degree there as that could offend somebody).

L2/L3 management that overlooks different world regions (EMEA/Americas/..) then pushes on lower management to make numbers .. .. green. Nothing like wasting a week or your life attending certification training.

While there might be some trainings/certifications out there that make sense the only ones that I respected were ones from Cisco. Even that may have changed as it's been 15 years since I did CCNP;  thats's eternity in IT world.


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## recluce (Jul 5, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Certification is great. It makes a lot of money for certification companies for things that are meaningless to anyone else.
> 
> EDIT:
> To be clear, I believe the only point of certification, in most cases, is to make certification companies a lot of money.


You are entitled to your opinion, even though it is complete rubish in my view. Certifications are a career and marketing tool. They help you to get in the door to interview for desirable jobs or freelancing roles. They also help to negotiate better salaries / hourly rates. They do not, however, indicate qualification...

Btw, some of the more important certification organizations, such as ISACA or (isc)² are non-profit organizations.

That being said, the most important IT certifications are vendor and OS agnostic.


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## PMc (Jul 5, 2022)

recluce said:


> You are entitled to your opinion, even though it is complete rubish in my view. Certifications are a career and marketing tool. They help you to get in the door to interview for desirable jobs or freelancing roles. They also help to negotiate better salaries / hourly rates. They do not, however, indicate qualification...


Okay. Then maybe You can get some sense out of this, and can explain it.

Imagine, you build something, a machine or such. Twenty years later, somebody comes along, somebody you have never heard of, and offers certifications -for money-; certifications proving that you can operate the machine you built. 

Now something does not really make sense to me here. But probably You can explain it.


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## Phishfry (Jul 5, 2022)

As a person who screens mechanical new hires I can say the #1 Problem I see is bad spelling on resumes.
#2 is loaded resume with worthless paper. Lots of ex-Navy applicants have loads of paper.
Fall on their face in interview.

I look for length of employment. Can you keep a job? Don't overstate resume with menial jobs. Summarize.
Show you have work ethic. I don't care about your GED (High School Equivalency Exam) or Boys Scout Troop.


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## PMc (Jul 5, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> As a person who screens mechanical new hires I can say the #1 Problem I see is bad spelling on resumes.
> #2 is loaded resume with worthless paper. Lots of ex-Navy applicants have loads of paper.
> Fall on their face in interview.


Oh. Resumes. Well, that's another thing I never understood - job offers are all business slang, they expect some university degree and they talk a language that is, in my perception, only suitable for bullshit bingo. For me this was always an entirely different world - the world of strange people wearing suit and tie. Anyway, I was a hippie, and computerwise I came from the hobbyistic mailbox scene, then figured out about unix and internet ~1987 - and then decided I want to have that and make it going.

At some point, people started to press me quite hard to get a job. So I decided if I find any job offer where the people could actually spell u-n-i-x, then I would write a resume. I found somebody teaching me how to wear the proper clothes - that was the bizarre part, clothes seem to be a semiotic message, and people actually believe in that crap. I knew it works for fetish clothes, mail-order fancy & friends - but this here is about rational business people, and why would they believe in clothing?

Okay, end of story: I found a few appropriate offers, but didn't get any job. Then, accidentially, I came across something totally different: they didn't look for a systems adminstrator, they wanted a consultant (whatever that mignt be). But, see above, they could spell u-n-i-x correctly . So I made a fun of it. And they invited me. They talked to me, for 20 minutes. They dared to ask me if I can install unix. I answered, honestly: that, and I can also write you a new kernel device driver if you might need one. They went out, they came back after 10 minutes and gave me a contract. They wanted to pay twice as much as I had expected. It became almost four times as much over the next years, without me ever utterling a single word about money.
The next years I spent in hotels and airplanes. Nobody ever told me anything about what I should do, it was that simple: here is your customer's address, see what they need, make it going. And I just did what I had figured out and considered proper unix. (As mentioned before, unix is a religion, and so you do it like a priest would do their sacraments.)
The other guys there were basically people with a university degree. When they asked me, I said I got my education from the ChaosComputerClub (which is true), but I don't think they understood what that means. But they started to call me 'guru'. and I suppose they meant it seriously.

A couple of years onwards, an American shop bought the consulting house, They decided they need to guarantee their customers 100% skillfree services, and therefore they fired all the people with skill and kept only the business consultants.
So finally I was back where I had been before: longterm-unemployed white trash.


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## Phishfry (Jul 5, 2022)

PMc said:


> Oh. Resumes. Well, that's another thing I never understood - job offers are all business slang, they expect some university degree and they talk a language that is, in my perception, only suitable for bullshit bingo.


They are only needed in my business if you are unknown on the waterfront ship repair scene.
We are a small shrinking bunch unlike programmers.

I have a gov cert in cableways. NAVSEA.9304.1D
Was $8700 for one week training to cert. They needed to have some bodies. Cost me $380.
Nothing about my real experience. Just some papers.

If I wanted a FreeBSD type job I would include all my commits in my CV. They speak volumes of your work ethic.



PMc said:


> I said I got my education from the ChaosComputerClub (which is true), but I don't think they understood what that means.


Yea that was a gamble.


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## PMc (Jul 5, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> They are only needed in my business if you are unknown on the waterfront ship repair scene.
> We are a small shrinking bunch unlike programmers.


Uh, that gives the term 'wetware' an entirely different sense


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 5, 2022)

recluce said:


> You are entitled to your opinion, even though it is complete rubish in my view.  Certifications are a career and marketing tool. They help you to get in the door to interview for desirable jobs or freelancing roles. They also help to negotiate better salaries / hourly rates.


And in all my decades of applying for work and interviewing others, I have not once been asked about certs or felt the need for one.
Every job I ever applied for, and every candidate who applied to me, the only thing anyone cared about is, "What have you done?", and, "Show me your work."
No one ever asked for my GPA from school either. They cared that I graduated, I think, but no one ever asked for my grades. I would think that would rate far higher than any cert from some company that, I would bet, no one ever heard of no matter how popular it may be among forum users.


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## tingo (Jul 10, 2022)

A resume is needed; it is the first "filter" which to turn the horde of applicants for a new job into a smaller bunch which can be interviewed. You need to pass that test in order to get an interview.
A resume can describe work experience in addition to, or instead of, courses and certifications.
The point is: since the resume is your key to get an interview, make it interesting enough that they want to interview you.

Just my 0.02 eurocents.


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