CompTIA Reneges, Reconsiders on Lifetime Certifications

garg0yle writes "Recently, it was reported that IT certification house CompTIA had changed their A+, Network+, and Security+ certifications — rather than being 'for life,' there would now be a recertification requirement through continuing-education credits (and an accompanying fee). Needless to say, this made a lot of people very unhappy, and today it was announced that CompTIA has reversed their decision. Basically, any certification obtained before 2011 will still be 'for life.'" Ars notes the coincidence that CompTIA contacted them about the change of heart an hour after Ars's story about CompTIA's initial switcheroo went live.

Comments

CompTIA

[Lord Ender]

CompTIA certs are the community college diplomas of the IT certification industry. Who cares, unless you're going for an internship or level-1 helpdesk position?

Re:CompTIA

[Attila Dimedici]

CompTIA certs only impress people who don't know anything, and are helpful to get you through the HR screening by pasting it on your resume. That accurately describes most college IT degrees, actually.

That accurately describes most college degrees, most of the time they are necessary to get past HR screening, but tell you nothing about the qualifications of the individual in question.

Re:CompTIA

[Lord Ender]

In pursuit of my engineering degree, I learned useful things I would not have "discovered" on my own. I understand how things work under the hood. I also learned finance and communication skills.

A diploma from a real college means something.

(oh and I got to build robots!)

Re:CompTIA

[causality]

CompTIA certs only impress people who don't know anything, and are helpful to get you through the HR screening by pasting it on your resume. That accurately describes most college IT degrees, actually.

That accurately describes most college degrees, most of the time they are necessary to get past HR screening, but tell you nothing about the qualifications of the individual in question.

College is about having goals, meeting deadlines, and dealing well (i.e. obediently) with authority figures, your willingness to allow them to determine the use of your time, your ability to follow their detailed instructions, and your willingness to be a cog in a large institution. Those are the qualifications employers find desirable. They likely know that in this industry, a degree does not necessarily indicate skill or ability and that many of the most skilled developers and technicians never went to college. What they do know is that it demonstrates you are willing and able to jump through hoops of the sort that they find useful.

Re:CompTIA

[dcollins]

This is such horseshit. I found my time in college to be uniformly exciting and mind-expanding. I can't even imagine what kind of personality it takes to have never found a single college class be educational. It's like the whole "mentor/student" concept has a been a hideous gaffe for what, 4000 years?

Re:CompTIA

[Mister Whirly]

If you are looking to the academic world to teach you about the business world, you are already two steps behind.

Re:CompTIA

[Em Emalb]

100% agree.

Real world (IE, not at your school) experience is all that matters to people who run good IT departments.

Who cares if you graduated Cum Lordy from some stupid school? All that shows is you can study well. Big whoop. Can you think intelligently about a problem? Can you go from A to X instead of A,B,C,D, etc..? That's what matters, IMO.

Re:CompTIA

[Machtyn]

Either you were lucky or you didn't notice the hoops you had to jump through. I've been to two different colleges (Jr. College and a University) and, while I've appreciate the advisors, they were mostly unhelpful in getting me to the correct classes. That was a frustrating hoop I had to jump through. I had to deal with classes at odd times of the day, whether I enjoyed it is immaterial. I had to deal with inane professors that would rather be in their office designing whatever theory they were working on. Or student-teachers that were either hard to understand (foreign) or couldn't teach (expound information to students, give assignments that made sense).

Can you truly say that you enjoyed every single class you took? Probably, like me and most of us, there were some classes that were terrific and some that were obnoxious. I learned a lot at my JC, then got a lot of professional experience, and then learned a lot of Maths at the Uni. The other stuff, because of experience, I already knew (though some of those were quite enjoyable).

Re:CompTIA

[Hork_Monkey]

Want to know how I know you never even started an MBA program?

Really. Try it. You'll learn loads, believe it or not.

Just because you're smart doesn't mean that learning the formal fundamentals in a couple of business oriented areas won't make you smarter.

As for being able to think intelligently, you either are able to or you're not. But, by having a larger pool of stock knowledge you can think intelligently in more areas.

Re:CompTIA

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say that's pretty shit...
Shame that you're so clever and didn't go to a better uni.

Entry level CompSci classes are usually pretty easy anyway - it's supposed to be introductory, so the object isn't to be overly complicated, but to teach you how programs work, how to code, input/output basic debugging etc. Where I was we had a lot of maths/physics people taking the classes because it helped them.

On the other hand, it seems that your whole unit structure is fucked. Sorting and data structures should be in their own units. Intro classes (especially at the first year) should basically teach you about programming constructs - loops, if statements, while, do while, switch statements, function calls, program flow etc. Have in mind also that introductory classes are meant for people with no prior experience, so necessarily start from scratch.

Personally I don't know what you're complaining about. If it's that easy, go to the library and study something else (or drink beer). My first experience with genetic algorithms, neural nets and fuzzy logic was by randomly checking out books from the library because i thought "I wonder what else people do with computers". I had many drunken discussions with like minded friends of mine about these subjects.

Don't wait to be spoonfed, seek out information you like by yourself. This is the only time you'll be able to do it - once you start working in IT a little part of your soul will die each day, until you wake up one morning and say "fuck it, I'm outta here" and either start the next google or become a painter.

wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to me how getting a degree is any different?

Re:wow ...

[spun]

You have to jump through far more arbitrary hoops for a degree, even a measly four year. That's what employers want to see. Not particular skills, but arbitrary hoop-jumping ability.

Re:wow ...

[Jurily]

It takes longer and costs more.

Re:wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Certs teach you how to deal with specific cases. Degrees teach you how to figure it out.

Re:wow ...

[yurtinus]

Well, that's not entirely it. Employers (typically) want good people, but you can't tell a whole lot about somebody from a resume. You need to get down to interviews to start really figuring somebody out. When an employer has stacks of resumes for a single position, they need to have a means of narrowing it down for interviews. Unfortunately this means some fairly arbitrary decisions and baselines. Tons of good folks are going to be tossed aside in the first pass. Just like knowing somebody on the inside-- those "hoops" are a foot in the door, a basic indication of knowledge. Nothing more.

They probably ought to decertify me, actually

[cptnapalm]

I got my A+ about a decade ago. Tech bubble burst and I couldn't get a job doing A+ work around here. Then I didn't own a computer for a few years and I haven't done anything with Windows in years at this point. They probably ought to de-certify me, quite frankly. On the other hand, I'm not applying for any A+ jobs anymore, so I suppose the question, in my case, is moot.

Re:They probably ought to decertify me, actually

[Deosyne]

For most certs, I would agree, but the A+ is a joke. Actually, that's not fair; the A+ is a capability exam, like if you can pass the A+ then I'd be willing to interview you for an IT position as help desk or something else entry-level. Passing the A+ shows that you have the ability and the willingness to learn things about tech. I'd still expect you to have the skills that I put in the ad for the position, but personal experience and practice may be perfectly suitable.

More advanced positions, on the other hand, are gonna need something a little more robust, like recent work experience and a positive phone interview, before I'll even get off of my ass and head down to the lobby to say hello. In those cases, I would definitely consider the age of the cert if one were listed on the resume.

Non-renewing certs are worthless

[Spittoon]

If the certifying authority doesn't require renewals, or some sort of ongoing training in order to stay certified, then the hiring managers will/should start requiring it. "When did you get your certification? What have you done since then to maintain your current knowledge of the field?" IT isn't like Ancient Literature. What you know today will likely be obsolete tomorrow, and any body that wants to certify qualifications in such a changing environment needs to take that into account. Sounds like they wanted to realize that, but people who just wanted a meaningless cert on their CV wouldn't let them do it.

Renewing would be hard

[inthealpine]

The first thing you do to prepare for a CompTIA test is forget everything you know about computers. Memorize vague and even incorrect answers. Sit in front of a 10 year old CRT that you can feel and see humming. Pass the test. Get a paper certification in the mail a month later and throw it in the safe next to other certs and college degrees... I don't think I would like doing the CompTIA's over again, so I won't.

In other words

[natehoy]

They have taken this policy change and turned it into an advertisement.

"If you act THIS YEAR, your certification will be good FOR LIFE! Act NOW!"

They can imply that certifications earned this year will have more value than certifications earned after 1 Jan 2011, because the ones earned this year never expire. Neither cert will be worth bupkus a year after it's granted, but one that never expires probably feels more valuable than one that does, even if the actual knowledge really does expire.

Re:Where's your Evidence?

[spun]

So, what? Leave them off entirely? It's been, oh, seven years since I last took a CompTIA cert. I feel old now. I've got five of the damn things, and a pile more other certs since then, so do you really recommend not mentioning them at all?

And, dare I ask again, what are you basing this on? Not to be a dick, but without some kind of evidence, it sounds like you are playing little dominance heirarchy games, "look at me! I'm so much better than CompTIA certs, if you have them, what a loser!" So, seriously, besides your own enlightened opinion, care to cite something meaningful, or do you just want to keep knob-polishing?

Re:Where's your Evidence?

[spun]

Well, I don't give a great God damn how useful my certs are on my job. I already know I can do my job. I don't need a cert to prove that to myself. I thought the whole point of certs was to help get a foot in the door.

Re:Nice Ad hom

[elnyka]

Which just about proves my point in it's entirety.

"not to be a dick..."

TY

I always get a laugh at how crazy and defensive you get when you're obviously and irrefutably wrong and shown so,like you were here.

He does have a point man. You are insulting his skills by calling his "computer G.E.D" and by ridiculing his justified defensiveness.

He is still not shown to be wrong in any manner that could be construed as obvious or irrefutable. His question remains unanswered: where is the evidence? I personally and professionally do not think CompTIA certs are necessarily a joke, nor that people who possess them have no significant skills whatsoever.

I have a B.S. in Computer Science, pursued a MS up to my thesis, and currently pursuing a MS in Comp.Eng. I have 15 years of software development experience, both on the commercial and defense sectors, ranging from SysAdmin to programmer to soft. engineer, from developing back-end e-commerce sites to implementations of network protocols to grad research. That certainly gives me a proven insight when assessing the value proposition of certain types of certificates.

Is one CompTia cert a joke? Depends on the individual. Likewise I can say based on professional experience that a B.S. degree (or even a M.S. degree) can be a joke at the hands of a mediocre individual.

On the other hand, when you meet a technician that has been working on the field for years and has a stack of certs like the ones some e-start wannabes like to laugh at, chances are that person knows his shit inside out (as opposed to many compsci dilettantes who have no clue how little they know.)

If there is objective and measurable evidence that indeed we can unequivocally generalize and dismiss people with these type of certs (read "objective and measurable evidence" not feel-good dick-waging), then let's hear it. On another note, I do not see what the problem is with certs having an expiration date. In a technology field, certs should be hold for re-examination and renewal (or they should be versioned like the java certs.)