Maybe a time management course would be more valuable. I agree with pretty much all of what has been written above. Certifications are basically a hurdle that someone has hopped over and then returned to ground level afterwards, retaining nothing.

If you sort a lot of resumes, you will quickly notice a correlation between lack of skill or knowledge and the presence of certifications. I can't recall seeing any certified resumes ever make the short stack, back in the day. Outside of that context, in social situations, it used to be somewhat amusing to ask Certified people about material that should have been in the first chapters of their training and see the blank looks or hear how they would try to dodge the question. That got old eventually since they could never ever answer even the most basic questions, not even once.

If you want to do the same one thing over and over don't look to ICT. In fact forget ICT completely and move into M$ certifications where you'll be doing the same repetitive, corrective maintenance over and over and over and over again while endlessly bleating to angry staff the mantra, "reformat, reinstall".
In contrast to M$, ICT is about analytical thinking and problem-solving. Knowledge is aquired just-in-time not just-in-case so front loading too much will be pointless unless you enjoy it as an end in itself. There certification does not and cannot play much of a role.

I actually cannot decide if that mentioned perfectionism is a good habit at all.

The main question for me is - how I should spend that 10000 hours? Should I try to memorise the subject in very detailed level, like knowing all commands of vi editor (required by Linux+ certification) or I should go forth and forth and forth and take only main things of all the books that I read? And I can always google vi commands, if I ever will need them.
There is always competition in job market and while I cram vi commands someone will read entire chapter or 2 chapters. And he will win in competition.

It can only mean almost everyone use brain dumps and that has nothing to do with certification level itself.

"Brain dump" means the material was neither learned nor mastered. It means that certification is a warning flag.

the competition is not about vim (or any other program). It is almost irrelevant, although knowing vim will help you to work faster. But you don't need to know all the features of vim (actually I think that is impossible).
Competition is always about solving an issue and you need creativity, competence, knowledge, patience and .... to be able to solve it. And next time you will need to solve another issue and you will need different skills. So a certificate will always be a single skill but not the full picture (speaking about a person).

Link08, you seem to be ignoring EVERYTHING I've said to you. Yes, that is exactly what I've said at least twice in this thread alone, and have flat-out said that I personally think that certifications are meaningless, for the most part. But you seem to have your mind made up that it does matter, and you KEEP ARGUING the point. You asked a question, and were given the answers. Either accept them or don't. No need to keep asking.
The 'detail level' isn't there, sorry. Again, these things are about KNOWLEDGE...if you know how to configure one service, you have a pretty good idea on how to configure others. AGAIN, knowing basics and having depth of knowledge is something that's learned by DOING, and having experience. Once you get that, you can pass a certification exam easily. But you continue to harp on "I need to memorize EVERY COMMAND in vi, etc., etc," to get a certification. Wrong.
Again, you keep going on about vi; there is no 'vi' certification...you don't need to know EVERYTHING about vi to pass any exam, anywhere. If it takes you 10,000 hours to pass an exam, you need a different line of work. In your scenario, yes...that person will 'win in competition', but you don't think about WHY he will. That is simply because he HAS KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE, and you don't. If you want to spend your days analyzing every vi command, while someone else has learned to configure services, stop/start things, troubleshoot processes, install software, etc.....that is, the things that MATTER IN THE REAL WORLD, then yes, you will lose. You will ALWAYS lose, because you're not doing anything that matters.
Right...which is why you've been told many, MANY times now that no, certifications aren't required, and that most folks here don't pay them much mind. Why do you keep asking???

Two decades ago certs for IT didn't exist. For the most part. RHCE, MCSE, and that's about it. The point being that when someone wanted an employee they interviewed them, then tech tested them. The employer didn't REQUIRE the potential employee to buy $30K in certs just to get past the circular file. In the case of IT, it's 10,000 hours in NON-IT related fields to earn the money to take the cert(s). At which point you're over 30 and they wont hire you anyway. Noting that 40 hour weeks for 50 weeks is 2000 hours. So 5 years for your entry level job to crimp wires. Which you had already been crimping with a screw driver and thumb tack for ten years.

When I started MMORPG my friend, who was already playing sad me "you better quit, because nobody plays like you".
I like certification and like learning very much. And it's difficult to me to exclude even some subjects, but I understand that must do that, because it's simply not enough time in life to learn it all. I wish even to study math, geography and other subjects but I can't and will never be able to do this in this life.
I wish I better study everything and google only minimal. But I see that there is a large competition and really - system administrator must know a large variety of different technologies. And because of this - while I cram vi commands - someone will learn new technologies.

Do you understand what's brain dump? Do you understand that it's illegal? Do you understand how much effort companies make to actually make that questions on exam? Do you understand that the questions is made very hard so that only person with excellent knowledge will pass?
I do not understand why you make certification=dumps. It's not. It's like complain to Hollywood that their movies are downloaded from trackers. They can't do anything about that. They wish but they can't.
I, as you, also didn't see the single person who passed without dumps. That only tell that this person is silly, not that exam is bad. Sometimes companies force them to do so and they have no choice. I even have disputes with such persons and it's very strange for me that they do not understand that it's bad. Like many people think that it's actually very strange thing to buy Windows license (like my wife). But it's not strange - if you do not do this - you are thief period.

It only shows that you know very little about certification. Do you really think that it's only theory and not practice? If you only read a book and do not make practice on virtual machine and labs - sure you will not pass the exam and will have very little knowledge. Instead, when I read the book - I practice every single command that I read in the book. Certification is not only theory!

LPIC or Linux+ certification require me to memorize vi commands. And I think it's a little silly taking in the account hot much technologies I must learn.

It would be goog if you download brain dump of exams to which I am currently preparing LPIC-1 or Linux+. It's 2 exams but they are the same. And try to pass the exam by dumps and see how many score will you have.

You were a little emotional. And I do not know English well and I didn't answer you since I didn't want a conflict.

I like to think about it this way:
- do you want main technician of nuclear station be perfectionist?
- do you want main technician of plane maintenance team of the plane on which you with your family will fly be perfectionist?
- do you want pilot of the plane on which you with your family will fly be perfectionist?
and so on

We can think of it also this way:
The plane have maintenance after each 3 flies. The plane had 6000 flies and so maintenance team made 2000 maintenance checks of this plane. And they have the checklist on which they make maintenance. And they can start thinking "why do we do that? We make this long checklist every time and nothing bad happens. Let's just cut off the 1 most hard thing from this checklist." And after they didn't check this only 1 point of checklist the plane crashed, because it had problem with part that 1 excluded point of checklist had to check.
Do you think that's impossible scenario?

In past I liked to watch catastrophe movies on discovery channel. And I learned that the cause of catastrophes is very often very very ridiculous. Because everybody think "this can happen only to others, not to me for sure".

The editor vi is ubiquitous by mandate of the POSIX standard. All the POSIX systems have it in their base. If you are faced with a severely corrupted system and have to work in an emergency you will have it there in your tool box. I would deem it essential to know at least the basics of it. You will find it on all the GNU/Linux distros and each of the BSDs, including OS X there.

Learn it. It is very handy for working with configuration files and shell scripts, I find.

Again, you keep going on about "vi commands". Why? There IS NO PART of any exam that requires you to know every vi command. Do you understand this???? You have two very simple choices: learn or don't. You don't seem to want to hear anything else, other than what you WANT to hear, so why bother asking?? We've told you over and over that this is not true, and for you to go and get experience, and not to focus on a certification. But you keep on asking...
Yes, we understand what dumps are, and are very familiar with certification exams, thanks. Do you understand that by following such dumps, you can answer ENOUGH correctly to get a certification???? Not 100% of the questions...but enough. Do you understand that?
I've seen many that have passed on knowledge alone....what I said was that I've never seen someone from an OUTSOURCING COMPANY that actually had knowledge.
No, I know a LOT about certifications, the process, and the ways folks cheat their ways to them. I've taken (and passed) MANY, along with two advanced degrees. I've known several people who have studied off-the-shelf Linux books and have easily passed the exams. If you can't, that's your fault.
Really?? Because the LPIC site doesn't say that at all..requirements are VERY basic: https://www.lpi.org/our-certifications/lpic-1-overview
And Linux+ is 60 multiple-choice questions; again, nothing that says you have to memorize VI commands: https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/linux

Want to try again?
[QUOTE]You were a little emotional. And I do not know English well and I didn't answer you since I didn't want a conflict.
Try to think about things: you have asked a question. You received MANY answers...all of them basically saying "no, certifications' aren't necessary". And the only thing you do is ignore some folks, and KEEP ASKING the same question. You keep going on about how you have to 'memorize vi' after we tell you many times you DO NOT. You keep trying to justify what YOU WANT to fit your question.

HOW MANY TIMES do you need to hear the same answers before you listen???

"Pull back, gentlemen. Pull back." Don't let yourself get emotionally drawn into any argument.

Now that an associate's degree in our local community college costs $283,000 this year and a four-year degree at the University is well on its way to costing a half-million (this is not a drill: repeat, this is not a drill ...), people are turning to alternative forms of education – accredited or not.

http://www.lpi.org/our-certification...101-objectives
103.8 Perform basic file editing operations using vi
Weight: 3
Description: Candidates should be able to edit text files using vi. This objective includes vi navigation, basic vi modes, inserting, editing, deleting, copying and finding text.
Key Knowledge Areas:
Navigate a document using vi
Use basic vi modes
Insert, edit, delete, copy and find text
Terms and Utilities:
vi
/, ?
h,j,k,l
i, o, a
c, d, p, y, dd, yy
ZZ, :w!, :q!, :e!
Yeah, I thought that's really all vi commands. If it's not - I am sorry. But still much commands to learn.

Of course I understand that. That's why I never ever will use dumps. Dumps for me are like when you buy car and after you ride it for half an hour you go back to car showroom and give it back saying "guys take it. I am very generous and want to make you a gift". That's what I think about using brain dumps.

Was that certification or it was university?

I am sorry if do not understand something and keep asking the same again.