Where's the Horse?

by Tina Darmohray
<[email protected]>

Tina Darmohray, editor of SAGE News & Features, is a consultant in the area of Internet firewalls and network connections and frequently gives tutorials on those subjects. She was a founding member of SAGE.

Those of you who know me well enough to know what I waste money on know that I've been sponsoring (as my husband refers to it) horses for as long as I've been financially able. I think horses are great, and I like just about everything to do with them: brushing, feeding, showing, and of course, riding. As far as basic transportation is concerned, I think riding a horse out along the trails is a fantastic way to get around. Of course, it's not really practical to use horses as transportation in our society, but I'd be all for it if it were put to a vote. Sadly, I can't say I feel the same way about certification of system administrators; at least not as I've seen it approached so far.

The certification debate has been going on for longer than I'd like to remember. The handful of people involved in originally organizing SAGE can attest that even then it was one of the polarizing topics we discussed. Those for certification asserted it would benefit system administrators and the system-administration profession. Those opposed had a fundamental concern that certification might actually hurt the status of the profession. Since "advancing system administration as a profession" is at the core of the SAGE mission, it's not hard to understand why a topic that produces exactly opposing opinions about whether it will help or hurt that goal is still so hotly debated. In close to a decade I have seen no change surrounding the certification issue, including the arguments for and against, and the lack of consensus among those in the profession.

Despite the status quo nonconsensus, the guild is pursuing certification through a certification committee, advisory council, and professionals in the field of certification program and test development. Given that, it's imperative that the resulting SAGE certification help the lot of system administration rather than hurt it. The key to doing so is for certification to convey, without exception, that system administration is a profession. Anything else is a giant step backward and will only undermine the good work that's already been done.

The reason that promoting professionalism is the core issue in certification, and in everything that SAGE pursues, is the historical job misclassification that system administrators are trying to overcome to improve their careers. Remember that, until recently, "system administrator" was not a job title in many organizations; they had either operators (technicians who babysat mainframes) or computer programmers (degreed professionals who cut code). Those who found themselves misclassified as operators typically received less respect and less pay, while those misclassified as programmers received poor reviews because they didn't produce as much code as their programming peers. The goal of SAGE was to unite system administrators in an effort to classify system administrators correctly as degreed computer professionals that didn't cut code for a living, and to provide a credible platform from which to launch that effort.

System administration is not the first profession to struggle with professional nomenclature. Historically, when new technology creates new jobs, the traditional professional trappings, such as job classifications, degrees, organizations, and certifications, lag behind. System administration is no different. Since the demand for the work exists, you find individuals qualifying for the positions through a variety of degree-equivalent, and on-the-job-training, experience. Over time, formal education catches up, and the community of professionals has a more homogeneous, and formal, educational background. The problem for system administrators has been that during this transition many were misclassified as technicians, which hurt the overall status of system administration as a profession. Luckily, the formation of SAGE and the publication of the SAGE Job Descriptions booklet have helped with the lack-of-formal-job-classifications aspect.

It seems that the next logical step at this crossroads for system administration would be outlining and creating avenues for formal education. As a profession we need to provide the educational support, curriculum requirements, course outlines, textbooks, etc., to ensure that degrees in our field (or majors with an emphasis on system administration) are available. The recently published Educating and Training System Administrators SAGE booklet is a good start down this path, but now SAGE needs to insure that those good ideas are put in place so that formal system-administration courses and degrees are available. Indeed, these educational credentials are really the first "certification" that is needed and the vehicle for any others that would follow.

After formal educational guidelines, certification may also be desirable. For instance, engineers have had this kind of "certification" in place for years, in the form of "Professional Engineer." Out of curiosity, I called the California State Board for Professional Engineers, and here's what I found out:

A degree is not required to be a Professional Engineer; however, every PE needs to pass the Engineer-in-Training (EIT) exam (the baseline test of the "fundamentals of engineering," roughly equivalent to three years of college engineering education/three years of engineering work experience). Once you pass the EIT, you can take the PE test for a particular branch of engineering. (I asked about nuclear engineering, since that's what my father is in.) For that exam you must submit an application, including transcripts and references, demonstrating that you have six years of applicable education/experience. The application runs through three levels of "verification" (i.e., it's not the honor system). If your application checks out, you get to take the exam to be a Professional Nuclear Engineer. If you pass, you are one!

I'm anxious to hear what the "professionals in the field of certification, program, and test development" who are working with the SAGE certification subcommittee and advisory council suggest. I'm hoping that they follow the model of Professional Engineers, positioning certification as an affirmation of experience, rather than a shortcut to bypass education and training. I suppose, like horses, education and training are my vehicles of choice for advancing our profession, and creating certification prior to developing the educational infrastructure sure feels like putting the cart before that horse.