| I generally agree with you on your points, but I'll share an anecdote. I once had a friend ask me about getting a certificate in an unrelated field from one of those ultra for-profit schools they advertise during the day on TV. I told her it was basically worthless and that places that cared about that cert and those schools probably weren't worth working at. Long story short, she went ahead and got the cert from the money mill, got a job at a place that cared about it, and despite my personal distaste for it all, she ended up loving the job and is very happy there a decade later. So...YMMV. So I think it's hard to categorically say the OP will hate those places when in fact they might find them perfectly suitable. Some people just really like the kind of work those places do and are perfectly happy having a handful of 3-5 letter certification acronyms after their name on their business card. As the question of whether they're worth the paper they're printed on and if those companies that care about those things are worth the air that comes out of their central heating, I have to say I personally agree with you. They probably aren't helping humanity or the security field any and I keep far far away myself. But to your other point, the security field is tremendously huge and honestly a lot of it is paperwork pushing certification, compliance and accreditation stuff. |