Since this year has begun I’ve started my “journey” to the “Oracle Certified Master, Java EE 6 Enterprise Architect“. It’s been fun and either a lot of work to be done (not that I am doing all I’m supposed to do, but…).
Since I decided to do it some people had asked “why do you want this certification?”. Even I asked it for myself so many times… 😉
Well I don’t know if I have a really clear answer to this question as it involves a bunch of things for me, but I’ll try to organize the whole picture.
First of all, after I have attended to JavaOne LA last year I got a scary conclusion: I’ve became obsolete! I was doing good, in a nice job, doing a nice work, with a good salary but… became almost a dinosaur.
Those three awesome days were like a crowbar for my “old” mind (hey I’m not old ok…). I went to all the labs that I could and attended to every single talk that was possible without being omnipresent. I was starving for those informations that I had lost over time.
At end of the final keynote I went home guessing “what should I do now?“. I really needed to do something or my career would collapse in a short time.
Making the long story short I realized that my skills, preferences and experiences were pointing to architecture area. I have worked with it some periods of time and always had a lot of fun. So it was decided: I would do everything to become the best architect that I could be. Period.
The first problem to overcome was that I couldn’t make much progress in this area in the company where I was working. The matter was not the company, but my responsibilities there. So then the “Certification Project” has come.
What was my point? Well if I need to learn and understand a bunch of things to become what I want to become, why not starting by getting “officially” recognized? Mainly due the fact that I couldn’t develop the needed skills where I was working then.
Yeah, I know… getting a certification doesn’t mean you master those skills, but is a very good starting point. And I know it based on my on previous experience.
I’m still on the way to get the certification (my first test will be on May 31th), but I can already identify the benefits for running this run. As I said to some people, the certification is only a excuse to learn somethings that I need and to reach the point that I want.