Just an observation from my 10+ year in IT (certification related)

On this forum you see people with multiple certifications, sometimes 20+. Heck even myself I have 10 or so. However, when I am working either as a FTE or contractor I rarely meet people with certifications. Maybe the best of the best come here to post, I am not sure.

I remember a while back at work our network architect was going to the community college to get his CCNP, had his CCNA. When he finally got it, it was a BIG DEAL. On here it seems like if you get it so what the big one is the CCIE. I just don't see that being the case real world. Of course I am referring to ~10 total environments, maybe it's just the luck of the draw.

What I am trying to say is the expectations on here and from what I have seen real world carry a large delta. Does reality fall somewhere in the middle?

This is not an attack on certifications, it's an observation I want to make that clear.

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Comments

chopsticks

Some of us pursuing multiple certs is because we use it as a push to learn more things of IT. Also the current IT backdrop is very different from, say 20 or even 10 years ago, where you are a specialist in one area, you are good. Now employers are looking for value - an IT person with multiple skills. Hence I believe this make up of your observation.

TechGromit

I was one of the people that could care less about certifications, after all I have have a good paying job, why bother.... until I didn't have a good paying job. Looking for work was a real eye opener for me, I need to make my resume stronger when competing against others looking for work.

volfkhat wrote: »

Certs have value... if your Employer thinks they have value.

Unless you plan to stay with your current employer until you retire, chances are at some point in the future you will be interviewing at a potential employer that does value certifications.

LeBroke wrote: »

A lot of IT people see certifications as basically useless. I.e. if you already know something, why get the certificate?.

If everyone was completely honest about what skills they possess, you wouldn't need certifications. but more than a few people "embellish" there skills to make themselves look better. An interviewer could "test" an interviewees knowledge, but not every interviewer is knowledgeable about the positions they are hiring for.

volfkhat

mbarrett wrote: »

Agreed - I have achieved a few certs that I let expire because the world (and my career) moves on. I only list ones that are active & relevant to my career in the present. If somebody submits a resume with 15 certs on it, they are either a genius who can get a job with NASA or they have a lot of stuff that isn't relevant to the job & their recent work history. It's usually easy to tell from their work experience what they're actually good at...

Well...
Someone can have a dozen different certs.... along with over a dozen years of experience.
Is 1 certification per year really that outrageous?

I would argue it represents a person who loves IT and is always learning new things...

(as for applying for a job; i agree: just include the certs that apply to the position)

bigdogz

@IristheAngel
I think this goes to type of experience as opposed to experience as you have stated. Reading the book and labbing from time to time can help learn. Among other things, I am a part of our local Cisco group and go to other IT / Infosec meetings/ lunch and learns that help me learn more about the latest tech.

@ OP
I work for an MSP who just recently gave us one free year of training all things M$. When you work for an MSP/ ISP you tend to gain more favor if your organization has more certified people of vendor specified certifications.

Then there are the vendor neutral certifications... these are certifications that you have to maintain and obtain Continuous Professional Education (CPE) points (1 hour per CPE) to learn more about the field. In some cases, obtaining certifications help when studying for the exams. Keep in mind that I want to learn the topic and then take the exam, just cause it's free or I know the material discussed in class.
There are also vendor neutral certs such as the CCSK where vendors are making standards... something like IEEE but at a different OSI level.

I personally like to learn and keep the boy scout and always be prepared in the case I am laid off. I always try to find new jobs but moving out of state is not ideal for me at this time.

Regards

TechGromit

Iristheangel wrote: »

I know everyone here says experience is king - it's definitely a factor - but I've had enough experiences like the above or interviews where people with 10+ years of experience couldn't tell me their favorite routing protocol or didn't know what IPSec was that I now take experience with a grain of salt.

If they learned nothing new in the last ten years, they really only have 1 years experience repeated 10 times over.

markulous

Iristheangel wrote: »

Even if you don't see them as much in the environments you work it doesn't mean they don't offer value. I think on an average, most people don't strive to better themselves or grow their skills once they get to an comfortable point. That's why you see guys working at helpdesk for 10+ years or others who never got promoted once they got that sys admin job. Even if every employer in the entire world were to say that they didn't care what certification a candidate holds, I would still go after certifications that help deepen or expand my skills. Sometimes it's all in the "journey." For me, it provides a structured curriculum of what to study. Sure, you can say "Well I studied it and I know it so I don't need to get a certification to prove it." That's fine but if you really learned XYZ topic, it's worth throwing a little money into it to prove to yourself by passing a test and it certainly won't hurt your career to have the piece of paper or adding it to your resume.

Another useful component to certs is that by having a curriculm, you're pushed to learn things that aren't in your day-to-day tasks or outside of your comfort zone. I've met architects, senior engineers, and admins who've been in the field longer than I who didn't know what EEM scripts or private VLANs were, didn't know how to filter routes or even why to filter routes, or even how to configure OSPF - all because it never fell into their day-to-day duties or designs over 10+ years and therefore these were things they were never exposed to. Ironically, if they knew about filtering routes or how to prevent routing loops, they could have spared themselves some pain they were experiencing or if they knew about private VLANs, they could have trimmed some of the issues they were having in their environment. These are the kind of things they'd be learning in a CCNP book.

I know everyone here says experience is king - it's definitely a factor - but I've had enough experiences like the above or interviews where people with 10+ years of experience couldn't tell me their favorite routing protocol or didn't know what IPSec was that I now take experience with a grain of salt. Yes, it's great if they have experience but "10 years as a senior network engineer" might not mean the same to you as it does with me.

That's a good point. People get comfortable quite often and they don't really see the need to get any more certs or even renew their current ones. I'd say that the majority of the people I encounter fit this bill, it's the minority that says they want to keep moving up, keep training, and keep getting certs.

DatabaseHead

@Markulous - That's where I am sort of. I did bang out a MS cert last year but other than that been status quo for ~ 4 years. Still growing and learning, A LOT, but haven't been on the paper chase for a number of years.

Not all IT jobs are equal, certifications make a lot of sense for some roles and absolutely silly for others.....

NOC-Ninja

It depends on the location. Engineers come and go. Usually, SR engineers are only there to pay their bills. They know that they dont want to move up or they know that its very have to move up. They refuse to study on their free time. Their attitude is that "Im not really going to move up, Im not getting paid to study, Im not getting a raise for this".

Its up to the person if they want to study. Certification gives you that flow of which technologies to study and it pushes you to study since you have a scheduled test.

Ive seen senior engineers who has 10-15yrs experience but very limited on what they know. Some are only pro in switches, some are only pro with firewall or VPN. I was able to past them with 2-3years of labbing and studying.

IMO get more certs if you want to move up and get paid more. Dont get any certs if you feel that you are happy and comfortable with your current work situation.

Let me just add up that in case there is a layoff. You will be the low hanging fruit if you dont have certs. It also very hard to find a job without any certs. HR has a keyword filter for your resume.

UnixGuy

Having Certs is better than not having certs.

Experience where you constantly chase new technologies, getting invovled in new projects, and keeping an eye on emerging trends is much better than running the same commands and looking at the same screens for 10 yrs.

Comes down to your personal values...working on certs all the time and ignoring your personal/family/health vs having a balance...you get back what you put it in...and luck is still a factor

Clm

LaSeeno wrote: »

My last job the two other guys touted they didn't need certs or a degree. Guess who left for a 33% raise?

Lol me too when i got CISSP I got a promotion and a 28K Increase.

dhay13

Clm wrote: »

Lol me too when i got CISSP I got a promotion and a 28K Increase.

I got my CISSP and was told 'good job' There was supposed to be a program in place to get a bonus and raise with obtaining that cert but after the fact was now told there is no such thing. Oh well, it will help me for my next job!

snunez889

Two main reason I go for certifications are, they provide me with a structured approach to learn something new and to make myself as marketable as possible. If I ever find myself unemployed I want to be able to leverage everything I can in my favor. I could careless if my coworkers have any.
With that said, I haven't worked in an environment where anyone had certs. But the vibe I get from them is they're happy with staying put. Me on the other hand wants to keep progressing.

DatabaseHead

dhay13 wrote: »

I got my CISSP and was told 'good job' There was supposed to be a program in place to get a bonus and raise with obtaining that cert but after the fact was now told there is no such thing. Oh well, it will help me for my next job!

I think this is more of the norm.....

beads

Started doing certifications back when Novel first offering the CNE. With that my thinking on certs and certification training in general have changed a bit over time. Today I see certs as a means of verifying my experience by testing and ensuring that I am looking at everything necessary to be a good analyst of whatever subject material is at hand. Helps keep me from developing technology blind spots as I may not be exposed to such in my usual work environment.

Other than that I've taken so many tests now that unless your just moving the decimal point in four different answers I have at least a 50% chance of selecting the correct question. That is of course, I am in some depth familiar with the topic at hand.

Caffeine and test taking go hand in hand now.

- b/eads

MagnumOpus

Degree, Certs and Experience is the perfect Trifecta. I view Certs nothing more than stripes or badges of honor. The more the merrier.

OctalDump

Iristheangel wrote: »

For me, it provides a structured curriculum of what to study. Sure, you can say "Well I studied it and I know it so I don't need to get a certification to prove it." That's fine but if you really learned XYZ topic, it's worth throwing a little money into it to prove to yourself by passing a test and it certainly won't hurt your career to have the piece of paper or adding it to your resume.

This is almost verbatim what I'd say about the personal value of certification. And if you are smart, you can sell that personal value to potential employers - "I believe in making myself better, so I can do my job better, which provides you with better value". The better you can understand that link, for how you provide value, then not only the better value you can provide but the more likely that value will be recognised. The value is more than just putting something on a resume to pass HR filters.

E Double U

I go for certs for opportunities, money, new skills, and because they are fun (GIAC and Cisco were the most fun).

Not to mention I like to take full advantage of anything available to me. My current employer provides a enough money in my personal development budget to take one cert per year. Why not? The team budget allows me to take SANS training. Why not? Former employer wrote the checks for books, boot camps, and exams for me to obtain CCNP Security, CISSP, and GCIH. I feel like I'm being paid to learn and it is awesome! In the beginning of my career I had to pay for my Microsoft and CompTIA certs out of pocket and I definitely got my ROI. Now someone else pays for my advancement and all I have to do is learn. Sign me up!

Moon Child

I have noticed this too. This is second company been with in IT. On both jobs most do not have any certs or degrees, but they know just as much if not more than those who do. I knew a PHP programmer who I would call a brain. He was the backbone of the company. 20+ years of experience working as a programmer and Unix administrator he didn't have any college degrees or computer certifications. We had guys with engineering and computer science degrees with 5+ years of experience in the field who could not do anything close to what this guy could do. He could do PHP, SQL, Networking with the Cisco Routers, UNIX/ Windows system administration, computer tech support, database administration, etc. He could do anything pretty much it seemed like and he could do it better than anyone at the company.

We had a guy with like 5+ years of experience networking with his CCNA certification who ran into networking problems, this guy who had no CCNA certification or college degree would fix networking problems the CCNA couldn't figure out. We had a team of programmers who would be working on a PHP programming problem all morning, we would go to him and he would have the problem fixed in like 10 minutes. These were very smart guys I was working with, but this guy he seemed like a genius. He could fix anything or solve any problem. I don't know what they were paying him, but it had to be a lot. He could get more done in a workday than what 5 guys could accomplish in the same time frame.