Zend Certification Changed My Life!
just read a post by Michael Kismal about PHP certification and it hit me that taking the Zend Certification in 2006 was actually one of those pivotal moments in my life - A real “butterfly flaps its wings and causes a storm” thing.
I took the exam back then because I felt my CV was weak (having really just worked on my own projects/startup before then). Shortly afterwards, I got a job with a small UK firm (Llama Digital), where I worked with a developer named Anto Heley. The ZCE was definitely something Llama were interested in and I’ve no doubts that it helped me get the job. Whilst there, I also worked alongside the guys from Sugarcane Studio (who later go on to do my branding for Pluggable).
After 6 months at Llama I got poached by “Zend UK” (who merged with iBuildings.nl last year). They tapped me up through the ZCE Yellow Pages - a direct result of me taking the certification. I moved to London and started going to PHPLondon meets and met a bunch of really cool PHP people, including Paul Morgan who organised this year’s PHPConference.co.uk. Through the job I met and worked with some interesting/high-profile people and clients.
After 6 months at Zend UK (september ‘07) I left to start up Pluggable. Around that time, my old colleague Anto got in touch to say he’d moved jobs and his new employer needed some PHP help, and they became my first Pluggable client; a few more months after that, a company I worked with whilst at Zend UK became my second Pluggable client. These two relationships have since become the biggest % of my work in the last 6 months, and the work for one of them inspired my article for PHP Architect.
At PHPConference.co.uk, I volunteered to help out Paul, and also managed to do a little branding stunt by exchanging elePHPants for business cards, which helped me make me a few more contacts, friends and hopefully clients. I had also suggested the “PHP Framework Throwdown” talk to Paul and he asked me to chair the discussion: that led to me blagging along a spot to the speakers’ dinner and having the pleasure of meeting some “Famous PHP People”.
So looking back over the last two years, all of my career paths, the cool PHP stuff I’ve done and people I’ve met can be traced back to a single causal event: taking the Zend Certification. I know this is a little bit cheesey but I honestly can’t imagine what my life today would be like had I not taken it - and I really like where I’m at right now.
$125 was money well spent 
Tags: butterfly effect, chaos theory, elephpants, PHP, phplondon, pluggable, zce, zend, zend certification
June 30th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I’m hoping to get some interesting offers too after just passing the exam.
How long did it take for you to be added to the ZCE yellow pages? I can’t find the edit details button anywhere on the site and the forums suggest that a lot of other people have had problems with this too.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
It was a couple of years ago and I don’t remember exactly, but it didn’t take too long after passing to be entered. I think you need to be listed in the Yellow Pages before you can see the edit-details button.
I wouldn’t bank on getting loads of amazing offers coming your way just because you’re listed though; I’ve not received a “ZCE spam” for months and perhaps only 5-10 ever.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
[...] nice example of how the ZCE has affected another PHP developer’s life can be found at Richard Harrison’s [...]