Do your coworkers actively seek Certification?

I keep finding it amazing how my everyone I work with does not seem to care much for certification, education, or moving up.
They all seem pretty content were they are and have no intentions of ever leaving unless they have to.
At my first helpdesk job there were 2 of us who were trying to get certified and we both left that company after 3 months or so because we both got better jobs. All the other guys are still there.
At my current job literally no one has any certs or a degree.(My title is Network Tech) On paper I am the most qualified employee.

When I talk about certs or degrees with my coworkers they usually look down upon them. They say things like "I've known MCSE's who weren't too bright" or "Nothing will change if I get my CCNA."

I am wondering if this is how it is with other people and their coworkers.

On the other side, both my IT employers only cared about the CCNA. And they dont treat it like an entry level cert.

Also I dont mean to sound negative. Its good that people are content with their jobs and if they are happy who am I to judge them for staying static. I just find it odd that so many people are this way (that Ive seen)

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N2IT

PT you are taking it to the next level though which supercedes all your certifications combined IMO, you are getting a solid Computer Science degree.

That is reallty amazing imo. Nothing but props for going after the CS.

PurpleIT

N2IT wrote: »

@ Purple

I disagree about the power of money. Rarely and I mean RARELY have I seen certification mean more dollars.

What I was doing there was equating the desire to advance and certifications; mostly in response to JoJo's statement about people complaining, but doing nothing to better themselves while he works on his certifications/education.

I will agree that certifications rarely DIRECTLY lead to more money (although I have heard tales), they do open doors and those doors CAN lead to more money.

About7Narwhal

As a parallel question: Has anyone else noticed that the people who aren't willing to "waste" their time on Certifications are usually pretty big on belittling you for doing it?

It's almost like a majority of people understand that they can help in some aspect and they fear that people are advancing themselves, but they won't do anything about it to make themselves more desirable. Instead they try to discourage you. I have had a handful of people like that in the past.

N2IT

@ Dave those are my favorites. The ones that are undumpable.

As far as I know the ITIL Intermediates are the same way (which I could careless about

) and RMP, PMP, CAPM. That's what attracted me to them. I just hate getting something someone else can get by memorizing questions, it makes me feel like it's wasted effort.

Priston

Some of my coworkers could care less about certs and others actively pursue them. Some people are extremely good at taking test while others can't take them at all.
I have a co worker who most likely couldn't pass the CCNA, but he can configure and troubleshoot stuff that's on the CCNP and CCIE level. I also have some co workers with CCIE who don't know how term servers work.

Psoasman

A few of my co-workers are doing certs through WGU. I usually spend part of a shift, if there is downtime to work on a lab or read a couple of chapters, just to stay in the study frame of mind.

log32

I think that certifications would get better recognition and value in the market if they were hands on, like redhat / ccie etc.

MiikeB

log32 wrote: »

I think that certifications would get better recognition and value in the market if they were hands on, like redhat / ccie etc.

Of course, but then every certification would cost $500 to $1000+ to take. Thats not good for entry level.

DavidHoffmanJr

Well said Fred. There's a line from the movie "Glen Gary Glen Ross" that in their profession '....one should always be closing'.

I guess in our profession, one should always be learning!

JustFred wrote: »

Not at the current job as no one seems to care besides me, but then again at every gig(i love using this word as it always sounds funny to me) i've been at i have always seen my time there as a probation period and it doesn't matter when i stick around for 1, 2 or 5 years. I look at it this way you'd never know when management would kick you out. keep learning new things and enjoy doing so and when they do kick you out, you can walk right into the next gig because you stayed current and kept learning.

DavidHoffmanJr

Nice thread, but a touchy one. Ptilsen has a point about trying to motivate employees to learn. In many circles, this would help a company earn more business, win more contracts. Pity there aren't more employers like tilsen's, and more workers to 'seize the opportunity'. Good thing there's TechExams, and the real IT goal chasers. Certs get you noticed but in my humble opinion, you'll be tested on what you know in any real enterprise environment. You have to be prepared to defend your credentials, on demand.

YuckTheFankees

The guys I work with:

Young guys are going after certifications
Older guys think they are overrated and do not understand why companies care so much about them.

N2IT

@ Log I agree. It shows commitment and gives the employer more confidence in the certification. For junior level certifications like A+ no problem, but once you step into the professional level certifications I like the idea of a lab myself.

Nemowolf

In my current position, I am in a team of four. I am going for my Bachelors at WGU and have currently a handful of entry level certs, one of my coworkers has an associates and 10ish years of experience, another is just out of the military and going for their associates, and i think the fourth guy has a bachelors and about 10ish years of experience.

Out of the four of us, only me and the ex-military are doing anything to further our education.

At my last job, i was also on a team of four and i was the only one in five years to get any certifications or do anything with their education. Since i left nearly two years ago, they are all in the same positions and have not done anything since i left.

I just recently worked with 12 contractors for RHI and wow. I don't know if this is the run of the mill IT workers who are desperate for contract work but they were just loafing around, very unprofessional and did not seem to be able to read instructions without additional guidance. Made me VERY confident in my abilities and future prospects. I know that as i knock out classes with WGU i am going to be a prized employee for any IT team.

xe3tec

My coworks all learn constantly for certs and other courses. Actually we get paid for it. All my collegues got CCNA/CCNP and other Qualifications, like my Network Guy been on a week Barracuda Firewall Training. Company actively supports it and kind of expects it, and this year I am in a special position where I am forced(srsly) to do some certs/training, but I can choose which

which is awesome

olaHalo

xe3tec wrote: »

My coworks all learn constantly for certs and other courses. Actually we get paid for it. All my collegues got CCNA/CCNP and other Qualifications, like my Network Guy been on a week Barracuda Firewall Training. Company actively supports it and kind of expects it, and this year I am in a special position where I am forced(srsly) to do some certs/training, but I can choose which which is awesome

Sounds like a good company. I wish that was the norm

wintermute000

My coworkers actively avoid it like the plague. They know what they're doing and been with company 5+ years, know the environment inside out, built it all from ground up and replaced every single device when it fails etc. so there's no active need for it, but I do find that it holds us back in terms of being aware of alternative methods/architectures. It also means that they are bound to the company as they know if they go on market they'll be asked 'why do you have 10 years experience but no CCNA'.

The company is 'neutral' to 'pretty good' towards it in my view, they let you take time off for the actual exam (without docking leave) and will pay the cost if you pass so thats good, but they won't pay for you to sit on a training course for a week (for example).
Given that where I am its around 2500USD per CCNP level course (thats usually 1/4 of the corresponding CCNP (x) ) and that the company loses 1 week of productivity too, thats not so bad I suppose. I have negotiated the occasional rack rental cost out of them but I am paying for all my own books/lab gear (that can't be scrounged from spares) because I like having my own stuff available at home. They've also given me a spare Xeon as a GNS3 box.

cowill

Yea the majority of my peers in my past did NOT actively pursue certifications. ..People that i know away from the job tend to ......but most of my experience comes from enterprise environments, where certs seem not to mean as much.

In my current position, some certs are mandatory. We have recently converted over to Skillport, which has been good and bad....Good cause the certs you dont care about that are mandatory, you can take those Prep tests and a pass counts as your certification. The bad thing about is the company will NOT pay for training as you have Skillport. They will pay for one REAL exam attempt.

010101

My coworkers are slackers. The only one going after anything(MBA) isn't really in IT, more business analytics(runs time system reports all day).
The bad things is the network admin has learned nothing over the last 5-7 years. Guy just doesn't care. He doesn't even have a lot of work to do, he could study at work, but he surfs facebook instead.
If he ever got laid off, he would probably have to go back to a helpdesk job.
Sad.

olaHalo

One of my coworkers asked me about some certs today.
He said he plans on going the MS route and asked what I know.
Needless to say I was a bit excited that he was interested. He said he wanted to finally move on to another job and noticed a lot of jobs asking for certifications.
He was surprised to find out that I have been studying daily for them.

Master Of Puppets

Everyone where I work is certified. Certs are something everyone strives for and we are encouraged non stop to get new ones.I feel like if I don't keep a constant cert flow, people are going to look at me like I'm an alien of some sort

. My manager is very experienced and knowledgeable and has so many certs that he can't keep count of them all.

Gorby

The majority of my co-workers don't believe certifications are valuable, then again most of my co-workers been here since XP debuted. The very few who do get certifications end up leaving because of the lack of growth.