November 29, 2009
Salaries by Popular Certifications

Through this link (Spanish), I’ve found this list of Salaries by Popular Certifications and Salaries by State, and I find it interesting.

After some little OOo processing, I’ve got a list ordered by salary:

Rank Certification Salary Base
1 ITIL Foundation Certification  $98.9k 1,328
2 CCNP - Cisco Certified Networking Professional $96.4k 386
3 RHCE - Red Hat Certified Engineer $96.2k 54
4 CCSP - Cisco Certified Security Professional $94.9k 91
5 CCDA - Cisco Certified Design Associate $94.4k 229
6 CCVP - Cisco Certified Voice Professional $94.4k 70
7 Cisco IOS Security Specialist $92.7k 36
8 MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Configuration $90.9k 54
9 CCNA Voice $89.1k 109
10 CWNA - Certified Wireless Network Administrator $88.9k 75

Data from 2009 IT Skills and Salary Report, base it’s the number of survey respondents.

I’ve put in the table just the first 10 certifications, and I want to highlight the third one: RHCE.

Besides the fact that it’s one of the less frequent certifications in the survey, I must say that the salaries in Spain are far lower than in USA (according this table).

I must confess I don’t feel with superpowers after being certified, and neither my career has been boosted (even I have more knowledge and experience after the certification).

Anyway, it’s very nice to see that an open source based certification it’s very appreciated, at least in USA (should I look for a new job out of Spain? heh).

by jjm on 8:47pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyFfDln
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Filed under: Red Hat RHCE Certification Salary Survey USA 
May 9, 2009
About my Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Experience

Because I said I was going to get certificated, since then I get a mail from time to time asking about the experience.

I can’t say details because the certification includes a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), but there are some general things I can say without being in trouble.

My current employer enrolled me in a rapid track course, aimed to people with much Linux experience, but not expert. There are pre-assessment questionnaires that help you to find out what’s your level.

I’m not sure about the questionnaires (I think the regex stuff is broken, I got 0 points), but they said I wasn’t a expert, so the right choice for me was RHCE Rapid Track Course and RHCE Exam (RH300).

It’s a five day course on RHEL 5, and includes the RHCE exam on last day. In my opinion it was the right choice for me, but may be I should be capable of passing without it.

The instructor was a friendly Argentinian guy that did a great job on training, althought some topics are treated too much simplified. OK, I understand the RH300 it’s only 5 days long.

To sum up, if you’re used to RHEL (or CentOS, by the way), RH300 could be the right choice for you. About passing the exam without doing the course, I sincerely don’t know. Are you sure you’re expert enough?

by jjm on 11:02am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZy6I3Fx
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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: RHCE Red Hat Certification RH300