Friday 19 Sep 2003
Self-selection and intimidation
Today I took my “Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform” exam.
I passed with a 75% grade. (52% or higher is considered “Passing”.) I don’t really care that much about the number — getting the certificate is all that really matters in the end, and I’m happy with what I’ve learned over the last couple of months — but I was slightly disappointed in the grade. I’d expected something in the 80’s and thought I could have gotten in the 90’s if I’d have spent a little more time on studying some of the areas that I did most poorly in. Or, say, if I’d actually implemented even a tiny project in Java rather than just reading a book about it.
I didn’t think much of it, though, until I visited a discussion forum where people discuss their experiences with the various Java certification exams. There, it seemed like nearly everyone was getting scores in at least the upper 80’s, with at least half getting scores in the 90’s. The number of those who had scored in the 60’s or 70’s was only slightly larger than that of the paltry few who had failed the exam. Anything below 80 was in a distinct minority. This seemed odd. I had thought this was one of the most well-respected certifications around.
Fortunately, I’ve pretty well learned the lesson of self-selecting sample sets by now. But sometimes it still takes me a few minutes to realize when I’m looking at one; especially, I’ve begun noticing, if the topic is something that I have an emotional investment in.
So it didn’t take long (though still longer than it should have; people are terrible judges of these types of situations) for the “I’m a total hack.” feeling to be replaced with a more rational view of the situation: test-takers who are particularly proud of their scores post them; those that aren’t, don’t.
Later on I came across a posting from someone seeking validation on their mid-70’s score on the same exam.
“It’s not a very good score, is it?”, he asked. The “(so love me, please)” was left implicit.
A reply from a very well-respected author and trainer in the Java community said that a “huge percentage” of people who attempt the Programmer certification exam fail it and that a mid-70’s score likely gives one a ranking in the top 20%.
My point is that it’s often very easy in a media-saturated environment to be intimidated by any new endeavor. Among a small group of peers, on many topics it’s deceptively easy to be an “expert” with even a small amount of knowledge, but the exact inverse of this is also true. On the vast Internet, nearly any search criteria you can think to feed Google will return thousands of pages, some by the top experts in the world on that topic. This is the downside of the oft-proclaimed goodness of having the greatest minds on any topic “right there in the room with you” — it can be frustratingly discouraging. The same phenomenon that I experienced today can make it seem like everyone in the world is politically savvy, scientifically and technically brilliant, fantastically creative, impeccably well read and Ivy League educated. Not to mention, good looking.
Of course, many fall into the trap of mistaking themselves for experts because of their strongly-held, strongly-voiced opinion. But that’s a topic for another day.