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Petrus | 6 Jun 2012 22:17
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Request for advice

Hello,
I'm currently planning on taking the BSD Association certification, as 
described here.  (http://www.bsdcertification.org/)

Although I am primarily doing so for personal, rather than economic 
reasons, I did want to ask whether or not it possibly *would* add to a 
resume, in the opinions of people here.  As much as I've loved using 
FreeBSD myself, I've been looking for trend and market share numbers on 
the Web recently, and what I've found has been fairly depressing; the 
indication usually seems to be a gradual, long term decline of the three 
major BSDs, with virtually all UNIX market share moving in the direction 
of Debian Linux.  With that said, I've also noticed that FreeBSD is 
still visible on Netcraft's list of the most reliable ISPs.

I consider this tragic, because after close to 15 years of at least 
intermittent use of both systems, I have developed a belief that FreeBSD 
is vastly technically superior to any form of Linux that I have used, 
including Debian.

So I wanted to ask; how possible is it still, to become gainfully 
employed as a BSD administrator?  Once I have the BSD certification, 
will it be necessary to concede to reality, and also seek certification 
in Linux as well?  I have long considered that idea, but the problem is 
that Linux training generally costs a minimum of $2,000, and I do not 
have that type of money available.
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Dag-Erling Smørgrav | 7 Jun 2012 11:07
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Re: Request for advice

Petrus <petrus4 <at> tpg.com.au> writes:
> Although I am primarily doing so for personal, rather than economic
> reasons, I did want to ask whether or not it possibly *would* add to a
> resume, in the opinions of people here.

What you should ask yourself instead is "can it possibly hurt?"

> So I wanted to ask; how possible is it still, to become gainfully
> employed as a BSD administrator?  Once I have the BSD certification,
> will it be necessary to concede to reality, and also seek
> certification in Linux as well?

It is undoubtedly much easier to get a Linux job than a BSD job, unless
you are willing to relocate to where the BSD jobs are.

> I have long considered that idea, but the problem is that Linux
> training generally costs a minimum of $2,000, and I do not have that
> type of money available.

I got LPIC-1 without any training, after only a few months of using
Linux.  There is a lot of overlap with FreeBSD and other Unices.  The
exam itself costs $173 at any Pearson VUE location.

The BSDA exam costs $75 and is usually given at F/OSS conferences and
user group meetings.

DES
--

-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des <at> des.no
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Dru Lavigne | 11 Jun 2012 21:33
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Re: Request for advice

> Hello,
> I'm currently planning on taking the BSD Association
> certification, as described here.  (http://www.bsdcertification.org/)
> 
> Although I am primarily doing so for personal, rather than
> economic reasons, I did want to ask whether or not it
> possibly *would* add to a resume, in the opinions of people
> here.  As much as I've loved using FreeBSD myself, I've
> been looking for trend and market share numbers on the Web
> recently, and what I've found has been fairly depressing;
> the indication usually seems to be a gradual, long term
> decline of the three major BSDs, with virtually all UNIX
> market share moving in the direction of Debian Linux. 
> With that said, I've also noticed that FreeBSD is still
> visible on Netcraft's list of the most reliable ISPs.
> 
> I consider this tragic, because after close to 15 years of
> at least intermittent use of both systems, I have developed
> a belief that FreeBSD is vastly technically superior to any
> form of Linux that I have used, including Debian.
> 
> So I wanted to ask; how possible is it still, to become
> gainfully employed as a BSD administrator?  Once I have
> the BSD certification, will it be necessary to concede to
> reality, and also seek certification in Linux as well? 
> I have long considered that idea, but the problem is that
> Linux training generally costs a minimum of $2,000, and I do
> not have that type of money available.

Disclaimer: I'm the current chair of the BSD certification group (BSDCG).
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Super Bisquit | 12 Jun 2012 04:37
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Re: Request for advice

I'm curious. When will the examination cover other architectures such
as POWER/PowerPC, SPARC, and ARM?
Having an exam for such architectures would get the BSDs recognition
as a reliable system with the Power group. Support for ARM in the exam
could increase the use of the BSDs in embedded devices; and, the same
is also true for certain Power architectures.

I am aware that the standard architecture being used is i386 and
amd64. I am also aware that development is taking place on the
architectures mentioned.

On 6/11/12, Dru Lavigne <dru.lavigne <at> att.net> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I'm currently planning on taking the BSD Association
>> certification, as described here.  (http://www.bsdcertification.org/)
>>
>> Although I am primarily doing so for personal, rather than
>> economic reasons, I did want to ask whether or not it
>> possibly *would* add to a resume, in the opinions of people
>> here.  As much as I've loved using FreeBSD myself, I've
>> been looking for trend and market share numbers on the Web
>> recently, and what I've found has been fairly depressing;
>> the indication usually seems to be a gradual, long term
>> decline of the three major BSDs, with virtually all UNIX
>> market share moving in the direction of Debian Linux.
>> With that said, I've also noticed that FreeBSD is still
>> visible on Netcraft's list of the most reliable ISPs.
>>
>> I consider this tragic, because after close to 15 years of
>> at least intermittent use of both systems, I have developed
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Jakub Lach | 12 Jun 2012 09:58
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Re: Request for advice

1. I believe that exam is architecture-neutral.
2. I fail to see specific administrative skills needed 
for ARM (especially*), PowerPC and SPARC.

* BSDCG is not "how to build embedded system"
exam, the more- course.

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Dru Lavigne | 12 Jun 2012 19:16
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Re: Request for advice


> I'm curious. When will the
> examination cover other architectures such
> as POWER/PowerPC, SPARC, and ARM?
> Having an exam for such architectures would get the BSDs
> recognition
> as a reliable system with the Power group. Support for ARM
> in the exam
> could increase the use of the BSDs in embedded devices; and,
> the same
> is also true for certain Power architectures.
> 
> I am aware that the standard architecture being used is i386
> and
> amd64. I am also aware that development is taking place on
> the
> architectures mentioned.

The BSDA exam is for system administration, not development.

Cheers,

Dru
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Jared Barneck | 12 Jun 2012 23:15
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Re: Request for advice

> I'm curious. When will the
>> examination cover other architectures such
>> as POWER/PowerPC, SPARC, and ARM?
>> Having an exam for such architectures would get the BSDs
>> recognition
>> as a reliable system with the Power group. Support for ARM
>> in the exam
>> could increase the use of the BSDs in embedded devices; and,
>> the same
>> is also true for certain Power architectures.
>> 
I am not sure if having a certification itself brings recognition. I used to believe that, but reality
proved otherwise.  I think we need a product to bring recognition. 

I think we need to advertise FreeBSD to embedded, point-of-sale (POS), or appliance systems manufactures
and get a lot more users and business on our side first. 

Or you could start a company that uses FreeBSD on such systems and see if you can make it...

> I am aware that the standard architecture being used is i386
>> and
>> amd64. I am also aware that development is taking place on
>> the
>> architectures mentioned.
>
>
>
>
>The BSDA exam is for system administration, not development.
Out of curiosity, is there a market for a FreeBSD Developer cert? 
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David Chisnall | 13 Jun 2012 00:41
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Re: Request for advice

On 12 Jun 2012, at 22:15, Jared Barneck wrote:

> Or you could start a company that uses FreeBSD on such systems and see if you can make it...

Someone did: http://semihalf.com/

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Eitan Adler | 13 Jun 2012 00:48
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Re: Request for advice

On 12 June 2012 14:15, Jared Barneck <rhyous <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I'm curious. When will the
>>> examination cover other architectures such
>>> as POWER/PowerPC, SPARC, and ARM?
>>> Having an exam for such architectures would get the BSDs
>>> recognition
>>> as a reliable system with the Power group. Support for ARM
>>> in the exam
>>> could increase the use of the BSDs in embedded devices; and,
>>> the same
>>> is also true for certain Power architectures.
>>>
> I am not sure if having a certification itself brings recognition. I used to believe that, but reality
proved otherwise.  I think we need a product to bring recognition.

we don't just need a certificate, or a product, or any one thing. We
need an ecosystem that encourages use and contribution.

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Super Bisquit | 14 Jun 2012 18:02
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Re: Request for advice

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Dru Lavigne <dru.lavigne <at> att.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm curious. When will the
>> examination cover other architectures such
>> as POWER/PowerPC, SPARC, and ARM?
>> Having an exam for such architectures would get the BSDs
>> recognition
>> as a reliable system with the Power group. Support for ARM
>> in the exam
>> could increase the use of the BSDs in embedded devices; and,
>> the same
>> is also true for certain Power architectures.
>>
>> I am aware that the standard architecture being used is i386
>> and
>> amd64. I am also aware that development is taking place on
>> the
>> architectures mentioned.
>
>
> The BSDA exam is for system administration, not development.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dru

Such systems require that the administrator know Forth or other
commands for the boot loader. These commands are also needed for
accessing different settings prior to booting the OS.
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David Chisnall | 12 Jun 2012 09:22
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Re: Request for advice

Hi Dru,

On 11 Jun 2012, at 20:33, Dru Lavigne wrote:

> The BSDCG gets requests quite often from employers who are looking for admins with BSD skills. We refer
them to our BSDA certified linked in group as its members are all BSDA certified. There is also a linkedin
group for those interested in BSD certification which is a good resource for networking with other admins
who are interested in BSD.

Do we currently have any references to or even mentions of this on the freebsd.org web site?  And are there any
more open alternatives to LinkedIn?  It would be great if we could host job adverts for FreeBSD admins and
developers somewhere easy to find from the main site, even if it's not actually part of the site.

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Dru Lavigne | 13 Jun 2012 00:06
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Re: Request for advice

>>The BSDA exam is for system administration, not development.

>Out of curiosity, is there a market for a FreeBSD Developer cert? 

We have not done an analysis to see if there is a market. There has been interest since we started the program,
which came as a surprise to us seeing that an open source developer can prove their skills by pointing to the
code that they have contributed. Whereas, there really isn't a way for a system administrator to point to
their body of work or for someone starting in the system administration field to prove that they do indeed
possess the technical skills required for the job.

When putting together the exam, we work with employers to determine which skills are needed on the job and
use that information as the blueprint for putting together the exam's questions.

Cheers,

Dru 

   
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