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We Want YOU to be Involved in the Node.js Engineer Certification #3

Closed hackygolucky closed 8 years ago

hackygolucky commented 8 years ago

We Want YOU to be Involved in the Node.js Engineer Certification

Image

Do you want to help define the scope of what we're testing a Node Engineer to be competent in for the Node.js Certification? Awesome!

What’s the commitment?

We’ll do 6 workshop sessions (2-3 hours per session) with a distributed team of awesome folks.

The team will work with a psychometrician/facilitator who will lead the group along with the education community manager to establish the tasks within each domain a Node.js Certification candidate would be expected to perform after having worked approximately 1 year of professional full-time work as a Node.js Engineer.

Doesn’t sound like your cup of tea right now, but want to know what else is out there? Never fear! We will need other committee volunteers: Item Writers and Cert Advisory Board volunteers, but this is a little further out. We’ll file issues for these too, but feel free to express interest and get in contact with more info.

Items we will tackle in this working group:

Please mention in a comment for this or reach out at tracyhinds@linuxfoundation.org

piranna commented 8 years ago

How will be earned the certificate, presential test or online? They would be free to whoever want to do it, or paid and endorsed by some institution? There will be a public register of who have achieved the certification?

Maybe dumb questions, but I think they are important ones... Here at Spain is really difficult to get some certifications because they are presential and not only they are usually really expensive (>300€ the LPI-1 and LPI-2 if you don't have a sponsor, just for some basic Linux administration tasks?!? Are you kidding me?!?!) but also you need to go to USA to do the exams... :-/

tristanls commented 8 years ago

This proposal a priori assumes that there should be such a thing as a Node.js Engineer Certification. Was there a discussion of whether this should be done in the first place in some other forum? Does there exist a problem of finding qualified Node.js engineers who, when engaged to do some work, will not be independently checked for competency?

kristianjaeger commented 8 years ago

Thanks for the update, @hackygolucky !!

piranna commented 8 years ago

Does there exist a problem of finding qualified Node.js engineers who, when engaged to do some work, will not be independently checked for competency?

At least here at Spain is really difficult to find good jobs as a Node.js developer, since "it's javascript" they demand you to do low profile frontend tasks (DOM, styling and so). In one place I was going to be contracted as Node.js expert and in reality it was not used at all, it was a pure frontend position where just by a chance it was used npm as a dependencies manager... ¬¬

Yes, here at Spain the "full-stack position" is the norm, not the exception, both for job offers and for job demands, and it doesn't matter how it's composed that "full-stack" in neither case. I hope a certificate would help to fix that situation by being easy to achieve, so it would show who have real interest and knowledges on Node.js and who just "know javascript".

Nullpo commented 8 years ago

Here in Argentina there is a slow change in the developer profiles. There are more job opportunities to be a Node.Js backend developer. But currently that profile isn't "standarized", like in other platforms like java. I think that this certification is a great step! :).

MylesBorins commented 8 years ago

count me in

williamkapke commented 8 years ago

This sounds great! Count me in too!

edwardboyle commented 8 years ago

This is regional even in the US, if you are in California or other tech hub this is probably not required as you are job hopping and have a packed resume, but in other small areas of the US it becomes more relevant. I am a former C# .NET developer who has moved to Node.

I feel certification is an awesome idea. My biggest fear with certification test is that they become highly commercialized in that it leads to expensive boot camps, or even expressive tests. If this certification cannot be handled online with online testing and a small fee, rethink it.

Bootcamps are going to come from it for certain, those that exists will tout a guarantee to pass the test. That is the nature of capitalism and that is fine.

I just want to make sure we are not creating a huge commercial entity around Node

  1. Know your stuff
  2. Pay small fee.
  3. Take Test
  4. Get Certified.

Certification is not easy; it means something = Job.

piranna commented 8 years ago

I feel certification is an awesome idea. My biggest fear with certification test is that they become highly commercialized in that it leads to expensive boot camps, or even expressive tests. If this certification cannot be handled online with online testing and a small fee, rethink it.

+1000

Know your stuff Pay small fee. Take Test Get Certified.

Or pay nothing at all to get the certificate, if possible...

rsp commented 8 years ago

@tristanls There already have been a Node certification provided by StrongLoop - SCND, the StrongLoop Certified Node Developer - but they discontinued it after being bought by IBM. There have been info on their website for quite some time that "The Node.js Foundation is currently developing Node.js certification in partnership with The Linux Foundation", now pointing to this repo.

The question is not whether there should be a Node certification program because there already have been and I'm sure there will be in the future, but whether it should be coordinated by the community with the help of the Node.js Foundation and The Linux Foundation (which I think it should), or should it be left to someone else like in the past.

tristanls commented 8 years ago

@rsp I disagree that StrongLoop (a for profit entity) having had a certification closes the question whether certifications for Node.js are a good idea. The context is quite different.

I do agree that the current context is whether Node.js Foundation should create a certification program. I do agree that the current context for my question is whether Node.js Foundation should create a certification program.

The roadmap link https://github.com/nodejs/education/blob/master/ROADMAP.md#certification is helpful, and sheds light on one of my questions, which was "was this discussed and decided somewhere else already?".

What were the reasons for StrongLoop discontinuing the certification? After all, IBM certifies all the things http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/index_unit_an.shtml

hackygolucky commented 8 years ago

@piranna No dumb questions here! Just possibly tangential or off-topic ones. Yours, however, are great. The roadmap for the cert can be found here https://github.com/nodejs/education/blob/master/ROADMAP.md

This might give some clarity. Apologies for not linking that above.

How will be earned the certificate, presential test or online? They would be free to whoever want to do it, or paid and endorsed by some institution? There will be a public register of who have achieved the certification?

The exam will be online, in-browser, and proctored by a third party examiner to ensure no cheating. We are trying to make it absolutely as affordable as possible, as it is supposed to be for anyone(not just someone from a large company employer who is happy to pay for it). We haven't discussed a public register for those who pass. Those sorts of details are being ironed out by the Education Advisory Group and working groups such as this one!

Early discussions(but not solidified yet due to potential technical/regulatory constraints) are that the first release of the exam will be offered in English and Chinese.

The aim for this exam is

a Node.js Certification candidate would be expected to perform after having worked approximately 1 year of professional full-time work as a Node.js Engineer.

samt commented 8 years ago

I am very interested in this - count me in.

hackygolucky commented 8 years ago

@tristanls

This proposal a priori assumes that there should be such a thing as a Node.js Engineer Certification. Was there a discussion of whether this should be done in the first place in some other forum? Does there exist a problem of finding qualified Node.js engineers who, when engaged to do some work, will not be independently checked for competency?

Spot on for that assumption! When I came on as the Education Community Manager for Node, I approached this with the same skepticism. There was no point in moving forward with this if our users(people learning/knowing/hiring-for Node.js) didn't need it. I've talked to a lot of folks online and many more at Node Live events(Paris, Beijing, London, Chicago as I was unable to attend Bengalore) as we've been making our rounds. Members of the Education Advisory Group have been helpful in questioning the premises as well. So many discussions, combined with the survey results from the winter of 2015, led us to believe that the cert was worth moving forward on. Large companies want it, but individual devs want it too. Being able to separate oneself from the pack a bit via a competency exam is something we aren't used to in Node, but there are lots of folks from other languages who are moving over to Node and would like to see it happen(as @edwardboyle mentioned above, thanks!)

Thanks for your responses to some of these threads, it's been helpful!

@rsp

The question is not whether there should be a Node certification program because there already have been and I'm sure there will be in the future, but whether it should be coordinated by the community with the help of the Node.js Foundation and The Linux Foundation (which I think it should), or should it be left to someone else like in the past.

Another excellent point, which I've hoped to cover to a certain extent. The certification is not meant to stomp on any of the awesome vendors in the Node.js education space. There are lots of good trainings that are available, and we're looking to provide an affordable exam that complements them. I've talked with a number of our vendors and continue to work with them to make sure we are helping grow a really great platform of education in the Node.js ecosystem. The foundation very much wants to own that responsibility as little of that as humanly possible. :)

mubblemanish commented 8 years ago

Count me in :)

misshula commented 8 years ago

I'd love to be involved and/or help out wherever possible.

hackygolucky commented 8 years ago

@mubblemanish do you have an email to contact you at? Feel free to email me to connect.

piranna commented 8 years ago

@piranna No dumb questions here! Just possibly tangential or off-topic ones. Yours, however, are great.

Thank you ^^

The exam will be online, in-browser, and proctored by a third party examiner to ensure no cheating. We are trying to make it absolutely as affordable as possible, as it is supposed to be for anyone(not just someone from a large company employer who is happy to pay for it).

That's good :-)

We haven't discussed a public register for those who pass

Having it would be great, so you can point others to show your expertise.

Early discussions(but not solidified yet due to potential technical/regulatory constraints) are that the first release of the exam will be offered in English and Chinese.

Make sense, it's fine for me.

The aim for this exam is

a Node.js Certification candidate would be expected to perform after having worked approximately 1 year of professional full-time work as a Node.js Engineer.

How could this be evaluated? I have 2.5 years of open source professional full-time expertise as Node.js expert here at GitHub (yay! :-D ) and at least 2 more years in man-hours thanks to my side projects including NodeOS, but a lot of people is forced to work on closed source projects under NDAs... How would it be possible for that people to show they are Node.js experts too? Maybe periodic contributions to free software projects on public repos would account too?

webwolf2112 commented 8 years ago

I am very excited about the prospect of this. There are not any highly credible certifications for developers currently that I know of. Certifications are a way to set apart the people who really want to show that they believe in continuing education because lets face it being an developer is really all about learning. I can't wait for this certification to be tangible.

gareth-ellis commented 8 years ago

I'm interested in getting involved in this too :)

deenarang commented 8 years ago

Please count me in.

juanigallo commented 8 years ago

If this is online, please count me in !

Thanks

Eein commented 8 years ago

Opinions incoming:

I'm really not a huge fan of the approx. 1 year work requirement to take this.

If this type of thing takes off (which they tend to), it would be a requirement for people looking for quality jobs in node.js.

If one year work experience is required it will prevent bright minds from being hired and compared to people who do have the certification. This includes a lot of bright people all over github who are really trying to push their limits and get into the field.

I don't dismiss certifications, and I think it's a great idea.

Just my two cents, good luck!

piranna commented 8 years ago

If one year work experience is required it will prevent bright minds from being hired and compared to people who do have the certification. This includes a lot of bright people all over github who are really trying to push their limits and get into the field.

That's why I've proposed to use instead commits on free software projects on public software repositories like GitHub and so.

cdnadmin commented 8 years ago

Hi, @hackygolucky per email conversation....would like to help. :-)

boneskull commented 8 years ago

I'm surprised there isn't more opposition to this effort, so maybe I have an unpopular opinion.

A certification, as proposed, would disqualify those individuals without the means to pay. This seems at odds with a culture of inclusion.

Conversely, providing the test for free would be a burden on the foundation, proctors, etc., if the examination was nontrivial to score, which it should be.

Am I completely off-base here?

Despite comments by @hackygolucky about speaking with developers, it's still unclear to me what problem(s) a certification program solves. The cynic in me suspects this effort is largely driven by the interests of corporate sponsors--just to be honest--so I'm hoping for some evidence to the contrary.

stephenhuh commented 8 years ago

Please count me in!

lawrencekgrant commented 8 years ago

I am also interested in this. I'm in!

StevenDStanton commented 8 years ago

@boneskull I think your slightly off-base.

Professional Certifications are used for professional developers who want to demonstrate their expertise. Its really no different from the Linux Foundation Introduction to Linux Course and Certification.

When your in that category of professional development people and organizations expect you to be able to afford certification. I believe that is the expectation here.

You also have to be realistic. You cannot expect people to do all of it for you for free. You need to consider what it costs to provide certifications.

Someone has to come up with a set of requirements They then need to develop video, audio, and text based material for that (If they offer training materials)

They then need to have servers set up for people to take the exams on. This may even include advanced set ups with IDE's right in the browser people use to write their code. Then they need to maintain the database of people certified and so those certifications can be validated

It is not cheap or easy to develop and maintain all of that. It is unrealistic to think that they will offer certifications completely free.

I say slightly off base because I do not feel certifications should be expensive. The Introduction to Linux course for example I think is 100 dollars. Pretty much any professional working in the field can afford that.

You can use Node.js without being certified, you can even get jobs developing using Node.js without being certified

However, in regards to you not understanding why it is needed, certification can help you stand out. This is especially important for Independent Consultants who need a way to show employers who may not be tech savvy, and who may not understand backend code you have written, at all that they know their stuff.

100% of the work I do is proprietary in nature. I cannot show professional projects to clients. I am also not a front end developer so I have no pretty websites set up to demonstrate what my code does.

What I do have is tons of back end code I have written to integrate client databases with phone systems and other API's. Getting someone to understand it, or show them how it works even by having them call a phone number and use the phone tree in cool ways can be a pain to do.

Showing them a certification shows them you know what your doing.

kidandcat commented 8 years ago

I'm in! I am from Spain, Malaga, and I have been contacted several times for NodeJS developer positions, but yes, they all were foreign companies

cortezcristian commented 8 years ago

I did a lot of candidate interviews / consulting for companies and give NodeJS trainings in Argentina at National University since 2014 and NODE.JS + EXPRESS + MONGODB at Polo Tecnologico. Count on me! I'm very interested! I developed a lot of training material and also convinced an Argentinian University (UNR) to support my students emitting a NodeJS certificate. I know is hard, but I realize it's time for an official certification to emerge for this new technologies.

boneskull commented 8 years ago

When your in that category of professional development people and organizations expect you to be able to afford certification.

Maybe, but is this ideal? I don't think so.

It is not cheap or easy to develop and maintain all of that. It is unrealistic to think that they will offer certifications completely free.

My apologies if it seemed I was suggesting the certification should be offered freely. I was trying to show how it can't be offered freely. I was also suggesting that because it can't be offered freely, it discriminates against those without the resources to pay for it (whatever it costs).

It is unrealistic to think that they will offer certifications completely free.

certification can help you stand out

...which is why there shouldn't be a barrier to becoming certified.

And so my point becomes since it can't be offered freely, it shouldn't be offered, because only those who can afford it in the first place can receive the advantage.

100% of the work I do is proprietary in nature. I cannot show professional projects to clients

I understand this concern. In fact, certification could be a help to those who cannot (for whatever reason) build an open-source "portfolio".

But I don't have any data either way--it's all speculation. Certification is clearly desired by some. Whether this is to the benefit or detriment of the community as a whole, I don't know, but I wanted to pose the question.

michaelsanford commented 8 years ago

I'd love to be a part of this, @hackygolucky 👍 🙇

sdesalas commented 8 years ago

Interested.

Done a few MS certifications and felt they were used as a way to foist irrelevant and useless tech on developers. They were around $150 a pop if memory serves. SQL was great. .NET sucked. HTML/CSS/JS was ok. Hope we can learn from these failings.

Would be great to see a proper JavaScript certification. I've been waiting for ECMA to come up with something like this but I'll be waiting til the cows come home.

How about a few surveys on what a certification should have? https://www.surveymonkey.com/

For testing centre network MS used Prometric then dropped them for Pearson Vue. Not sure why the decision was made but they both seemed ok to me. Very wide reach.

Or online even better. Partnering up with an existing online test provider would be a no-brainer. Kudos for them and low entry cost for Node foundation. I tried Codility once before a job interview and it was pretty awesome, maybe the examples were not very relevant but they definately had some good tech for online testing.

arjunkori commented 8 years ago

Its very good idea , certification is must since Node.js is new for us.Industries are looking for Node.js Ninja.Please include me i am also working as a Node.js Developer for last 1.5 years. Thanks!

piranna commented 8 years ago

I say slightly off base because I do not feel certifications should be expensive. The Introduction to Linux course for example I think is 100 dollars. Pretty much any professional working in the field can afford that.

LPI-1 & 2 cost 150€ each one, and they are somewhat basic Linux administration skills (create users and so). Maybe in USA is cheap, but here at Spain is not serious to pay 300€ (50% of the minimum wage) just to fill the preconditions to access to the Ubuntu Developer Certificate, this is a huge entry barrier.

Nodr.js certification should be free, or at least to have a really low cost so everybody could show they are Node.js rockstarts.

chiragdarji commented 8 years ago

I am interested, please count me in.

andoniarroyo commented 8 years ago

Please count me in!

jucrouzet commented 8 years ago

You can absolutely count me in (4 years XP) ! Great idea

Cein-Markey commented 8 years ago

Count me in :) @hackygolucky 👍😎

StevenDStanton commented 8 years ago

@boneskull This all depends on if you want node.js to be taken seriously by professional developers or not.

There is no reason why anyone developing professionally cannot afford the certification.

Being certified or not will not prevent someone from getting an entry level position. There are certification for PHP, Java, .NET and many other languages and people hire entry level positions without those certifications.

Once they get even an entry level position and experience working with the language there should be no barrier at all to pay for a certification.

So I am really not sure how it will confer any special advantage outside of ensuring clients know they are hiring skill professionals and not complete newbies in the language.

If we want companies to take Node.Js seriously there has to be some system to show who has that knowledge and who doesn't. We want to make sure Node.js does not get looked at like PHP. Where many businesses feel PHP is just for kids due to the low quality work that was done in it for years by some developers claiming to be professionals.

Right now Node.js may be hot and rising quickly, but if developer quality starts to slip then it will not continue. Right now it has the advantage of being something early adopters who are very passionate about new technologies are working with. The more popular it becomes the more it will be opened up to the script kiddies and people without the knowledge or passion to develop quality software with it.

there is a large difference between being able to build an open source portfolio, and getting the client to understand it. Anyone can provide source code for clients to view, that does not meant the clients will have any understanding of it. Clients understand certificatiuons

StevenDStanton commented 8 years ago

@piranna

That's why I've proposed to use instead commits on free software projects on public software repositories like GitHub and so.

I would have to say I am against this. I do node.js development full time and have since 2014. When I say full time I usually pull 12+ hour days 5 days a week.

The free time I have I spend working on my own projects, not other peoples projects.

I agree with the exam being intended for those with at least 1 year of work experience. However, I do not feel that work experience should need to be proven to take the exam.

Those who have the experience will stand a much better chance of passing the exam. Let people without the experience waste their money on it if they want too.

But you will eliminate people who do not spend their free time contributing to open source projects if you make commits to them a requirement to take the exam. I know most of the other programmers I know don't contribute at all to open source projects. They do their job and work on personal side projects.

joelbraga commented 8 years ago

I'm very interested in this if it can be done remotely. 👍

piranna commented 8 years ago

But you will eliminate people who do not spend their free time contributing to open source projects if you make commits to them a requirement to take the exam. I know most of the other programmers I know don't contribute at all to open source projects. They do their job and work on personal side projects.

Node.js most powerful feature is npm and its modular ecosystem. Also Node.js is Javascript, that's a scripted languaje and as so anybody can read its content, so if it's not free software at least by need it's open software, so if someone is not publishing his Node.js side projects source code at least as open source at least partially by releasing some of his side projects as independent modules or contribute to others, then definitely he doesn't merit the certification because he doesn't understand both the nature of Javascritp and the philosofy of the Node.js environment.

The more I think about it, the more I believe contributions to public source code repositories should be a must to achieve the certificate: it's easier to show to others your capabilities, they're intrinsic to Node.js development and philosophy, and most importante they show who really are interested in the technology and really like what they do up to the point of dedicate some of their spare time on it and who are here just for the paychecks.

StevenDStanton commented 8 years ago

@piranna The question then comes, are you promoting the technology, or are you promoting the philosophy?

If your promoting the technology on a professional level then it is ridiculous to force developers wanting the certification to work on open source projects for a year.

While I currently love programming and working with Node.js, I have no desire to spend my time contributing to open source projects. I have enough to do with my personal projects and my work.

I can easily steer my clients away from node.js and have them start using other technologies which take a more professional approach. I am not here to be part of a cult.

If you are promoting a philosophy/religion of node.js, your going to lose many developers who will just move on to other Technologies.

piranna commented 8 years ago

@piranna The question then comes, are you promoting the technology, or are you promoting the philosophy?

I honestly think they are both related, as I told before Javascript is interpreted, so the user/client/whatever has access to the source code, so by definition is open source. You can be able to use your own private npm repos on your personal projects and distribute all your code using NDAs and that's fine. This doesn't means you are not a good programmer or a good engineer, maybe you can also modularize really well your (private) personal projects, but doing it that way and releasing some of that modules you didn't really understood how the Node.js ecosystem work.

I'm not saying you must to contribute to the projects of other people on your spare time, you already have your own personal projects. You have them already coded, and they works for your own use case, so if they are entirelly yours and have a somewhat potential generic functionality and they are not directly related to your business model (that also show a good architecture design, showing explicitly that you are a good engineer and programmer), what's preventing you to publish them on github and npm? Having meet this preconditions, I don't find any reason to don't put them on the public...

kidandcat commented 8 years ago

I think it could have a cheap price, 50-100€ for remote and allow institutions like universities give it free.

El mié, 27 de julio de 2016 10:49, Jesús Leganés Combarro < notifications@github.com> escribió:

@piranna https://github.com/piranna The question then comes, are you promoting the technology, or are you promoting the philosophy?

I honestly think they are both related, as I told before Javascript is interpreted, so the user/client/whatever has access to the source code, so by definition is open source. You can be able to use your own private npm repos on your personal projects and distribute all your code using NDAs and that's fine. This doesn't means you are not a good programmer or a good engineer, maybe you can also modularize really well your (private) personal projects, but doing it that way and releasing some of that modules you didn't really understood how the Node.js ecosystem work.

I'm not saying you must to contribute to the projects of other people on your spare time, you already have your own personal projects. You have them already coded, and they works for your own use case, so if they are entirelly yours and have a somewhat potential generic functionality and they are not directly related to your business model (that also show a good architecture design, showing explicitly that you are a good engineer and programmer), what's preventing you to publish them on github and npm? Having meet this preconditions, I don't find any reason to don't put them on the public...

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roccomuso commented 8 years ago

Count me in ;)

M3kH commented 8 years ago

Count in me too! :-)

MichalPaszkiewicz commented 8 years ago

Count me in!