07/20/2010

For fun I’m reading the “barter” section of Craigslist, and found someone offering web programming skills in exchange for “something interesting”. What caught my eye was part of his list of qualifications:

I have expert level certification in HTML, XHTML, CSS 1,2 and 3, PHP, and MySQL.

Wow! Expert level certification! I’ve been doing web programming for over a decade now, and I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as certification in any of these technologies. If there is, someone’s running a sweet scam giving them out.

Hmm. Maybe that should be a side business… I could offer certifications in writing HTML code. Heck, when we interview candidates for positions at Zing we throw a couple of tricky questions at them– and those questions cover exactly what this guy’s “certification” does. I could just reuse my interview question sheet, charge a hundred bucks, and print out a nice PDF certificate suitable for framing. Sweet!