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The trouble is that a PE certification proves: 1) You managed to make it through an engineering degree program 2) You practiced as an engineer for 4 years or so 3) You can test well. (Which, given that you got a degree, is likely.) I know people who meet all these requirements, and are actively bad as engineers. One of them had his PE certification. None of the half dozen products he had a key engineering role in during the time I knew him ever shipped. If you want other engineers to take these certifications seriously, you need to not give 'em to guys like this. More importantly, you need to find a way to give the certification to the really good engineers out there. As long as you have tens of thousands of guys out there who are better engineers than the PE's I have met, I'm going to hire based on skill, certification be damned. For that matter, I'll hire based on skill regardless. Certifications are perhaps handy filters for people in HR who don't know enough engineering to filter in other ways. If you hire based on certifications (or degrees) blindly, you'll be sinking your own ship. I've known too many PhD's who were useless for anything outside academia. (That bitterness you hear is the echo of the sound of me cleaning up after a couple of them over and over again until management FINALLY realized they were the problem.) On the other hand, one of the best engineers I know fought her way up from being a tech with an associate's degree. I do know a couple of PE's who are good engineers, but the best engineers I've known have not been. * Drew Van Zandt Artisan's Asylum Craft Lead, Electronics & Robotics Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld) Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D. Masquerade aVST *
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