Earlier this month, VMware announced changes to their certification program that included – among other things – an an expiration period for the VCP cert. Many people in the community have more or less freaked out and threatened to not bother certifying in the first place. I have mostly bit my tongue, but I decided I really do want to weigh in on this topic. Here are just a few of my thoughts:
- Certification is for you. You’re not punishing anyone but yourself by not certifying. You can not go update your VCP because you’re “taking a stand” and VMware really won’t care. They’ll probably never notice.
- To be clear, the VCP exam does require some hard work (depending on your expertise). BUT, as I’ve said on Twitter, if you certify and two years down the road you are unable to certify again, that is an unfortunate lack of progress on your part.
. @h0bbel It’s like I said before – if you can’t pass another #VCP 2 years from now, you’re going the wrong direction…
— James Green (@jdgreen) March 18, 2014
- I would prefer that the VCP brand isn’t watered down. By making folks update their certification, we ensure that only people who are qualified at this point in time are certified. Let me give an example: If you’re coming in to work on my team and do vSphere 5.1/5.5 implementations, I really do not care if you were certified on 3.5. Yes, some low level components stay the same, but what do you know about SSO? SSO 5.1 is going to make you look like a fool at the client’s site and I’m going to lose business.
- Chris has a replacement award for you if you are still worked up about the changes. Click here to claim it.
If you want to read more about the policy, here is the official page. Please have a look!
In conclusion, I am very much in support of the recertification policy. I am, however, open to hearing more if you are someone who believes it is a bad move. Shout out to me on Twitter or leave a comment!
