NI begins to eat its own certification dog food

When a company "eats its own dog food", it means that they use the products that they produce (for more on the phrase, see here). I'm going to extend that definition a bit to cover companies that follow the policies that they enforce on others. NI has recently begun to eat its own dog food on the certification issue.

I heard it mentioned by a number of NI employees at NI Week '08 that they were now eligible, even encouraged, to pursue certification in NI products. This is a reversal of NI's previous policy. Previously, NI employees were barred from pursuing certification. Lifting this ban is a welcome change, but I am still puzzled about why the ban was instituted in the first place.

During the Q&A that followed my talk at NI Week an audience member presented a list of things they disliked about certification. I responded with some suggestions for improving the certification process, one of which was that NI "eat its own dog food". An NI employee in the audience replied that they were now eligible to take the certification tests. When I asked him why they weren't allowed to take them before, his answer was that NI was concerned that the value of certification would be "cheapened" by having a so many NI people on the list. He suggested that certification would be more valuable if the numbers were kept artificially low by keeping NI employees off the list.

That answer didn't satisfy me then, and it doesn't satisfy me now. There are a number of problems with it:

• The value of a certification is only indirectly impacted by the number of people who hold it. The direct value of a certification in any field is determined by the value of the skills it represents, and on the organization that issues the certification. College diplomas are a good example. The worth of a diploma depends on your field of study and where you studied it. The economic value of the certification will be directly affected by the number of people who hold it, but that should not be NI's concern. NI should be concerned with making certification represent a meaningful skill set.
• NI employees teach many of the classes recommended as preparation for certification. They also grade the CLD and CLA exams. This means that all CLD and CLA certifications are granted by people who are not certified themselves. Can you imagine a medical certification board populated by non-certified medical practitioners? A bar association populated by non-certified lawyers?

That answer also displays some arrogance, or at least "out-of-touchness" on NI's part. My guess is that even though NI employees are now eligible to take the exams, we won't see a flood of NI certifications in the near future. The reason for this is simple: NI is not in the business of application engineering and system integration. NI's application engineers are typically new hires, mostly recent college graduates. NI puts them in application engineering for two years as a way of teaching them about NI products. They do phone support, teach classes, etc. It is a sink-or-swim, trial-by-fire approach that is probably very effective at bringing people up-to-speed quickly. The problem, though, is that after the two years are up they are expected to find a more permanent position elsewhere in the company. That means that the bulk of NI's most experienced application engineers have at most two years of LabVIEW programming experience, and that during those two years they have probably worked on only small-scale programming projects.

I would expect that with this kind of background we will see a large number of NI employees get the CLAD certification. Indeed, if an experienced NI application engineer can't pass the CLAD exam then they are probably in the wrong line of work and should seek a position elsewhere in NI as soon as possible. But is it reasonable to expect that the typical NI application engineer would easily pass the CLD or the CLA exam? I'm sure that many will pass these exams but to expect a flood of certifications at those levels is unrealistic.

So, am I off base or on target? If there are any NI employees out there who can shed more light on this policy and its recent change I would love hearing from you.