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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.
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?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Get a real degree or don't bother. Certs are 100% useless as a metric of anything other than memorization and having had a little money to spend.
Explain to me how getting a degree is any different?
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.
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.
What company do you recommend? Personally, I've found CompTIA certs a useful part of my portfolio of credentials. Not the only part, of course, but worth the money. I've heard people complain that all certifications are worthless, or some are, but I've never seen any evidence. Where's your evidence? Or is this less about evidence and more about polishing your knob?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The new terms on the "for life" certifications give them the right to kill you as termination of contract.
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 God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Certs already have a natural shelf life. Stuff like A+ and Security+ get you in the industry's door. Microsoft certs naturally expire as new products come out. You don't have to say MCSE NT is expired, employers will ask you for your MCSE 2008. And of course you'll try to explain to them that there's no MCSE anymore, it's an MCITP and they'll say "Yeah, well you go and get your MCSE 2008 and get back to us."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Here in NY the degrees acan include the cisco cert classes. So, besides learning the tech you learn business skills and other things that you don't learn in a cert course.
I have always considered experience more important than CompTIA certs. Not to take away from the ability to get these certifications but I found the 3 years of IT experience in internships I had accumulated before graduating with my BS in CIS to be a more valuable asset.
(not really, Im lame cause I never got my A+, just a job as a sysadmin)
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7eYnDddsic
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
By 2016, anyone with the lifetime cert without recent experience will be hurt.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It used to be that CompTIA's cert never needed renewal.
Then someone realized that a "lifetime" technology certification is as valuable as 25-year-old bread, CompTIA changed to say you'd need re-certification periodically.
But, of course, that didn't fly with the armies of A+ drones who paid good money for their "lifetime" certification.
CompTIA's new position is, once again, the A+ is good for "lifetime". However, they're sticking to the position that technology moves too fast for an old cert to be still good.
The compromise position? Once enough time and progress has elapsed since your cert was issued, CompTIA's elite certification ninja team assassinates you. Your cert was, therefore, good for your "lifetime".
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Being a Windows systems guy, I've kept my Microsoft certifications current over the years. (Say what you will...it gets you past the first resume filter if you ever find yourself in need of a job.) Back when the NT 4.0 certifications were rolling over into the Win2K versions, Microsoft introduced the concept of an expiring cert. Personally, I think part of this was due to the fact that Microsoft significantly increased the difficulty level of the Win2K exams to reduce piracy and try to revalue the credential.
People who had the NT 4.0 certifications freaked, saying that Microsoft had no right to invalidate their credentials. Microsoft reversed the decision, and made the certifications last as long as support for the product did. They still stop offering exams for new people, but people who have the cert keep it.
Does this matter? In my mind, no way. I can think of only one place NT 4.0 skills might be valuable today, and it involves embedded systems with no typical Windows user interface. (The New York subway system uses NT 4 for their fare collection machines.) Most places aren't using it for the general file-and-print server work that the certification was aimed at.
I think it's just the perception of value. Even in 2010, there are a lot of people paying certification mills...I mean, training schools...many thousands of dollars for certification classes so they can "break into the lucrative field of IT." Community colleges regularly integrate the A+, Microsoft and Cisco cert classes into their degree programs. Some of those thousands of dollars are still being paid for long after the cert is achieved. People just don't want to feel they're holding worthless paper. In reality though, things change way too fast to declare that someone is "certified for life" on PC hardware. I find that if I take a couple months to focus on some piece of software, I turn around and hardware platforms have completely changed while I wasn't looking. Imagine an A+ cert holder from 1995 put in front of a quad-core machine with SAS drives, a huge video card that's basically a mini-computer, and other interfaces that didn't even exist in 1995.
Well looking at many entry level job positions, many still require A+ certification. I agree that if you want a job higher up the tech food chain, A+ is worthless, but then again, thats not what its designed for.
I am glad I went for the CS degree, which will last a lifetime. It took me seven years of hard work and tuition money but worth it. During those years, I worked full time. IMO, a college degree commands more respect than a certificate.
I'm a CNE.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Certs are a joke. Im a highscool dropout, never taken any certs but I do pretty damned well. When I used to work for a consulting firm and we would get fresh college grads with plenty of certs but a lot of them just didnt have what it takes to make it in consulting. Now I am the the Sysadmin for a very well known private company and still consult on my off time through word of mouth from my previous clients. I specialize in Microsoft and Cisco. I do switching, routing and VOIP specifically call manager. Certs are a joke I have been doing this stuff since I was 14 kiss my ass you corporate mongers.
I work as a contractor for a defense agency. Part of the requirements to work here include getting an A+ and/or Network+ and a Security+ cert. If I get deeper in this, I'll have to get a CISSP. Just more hoops to jump through to keep my job.
Let me explain it, for those who have gone 'full retard.' I said, "I've found CompTIA certs a useful part of my portfolio of credentials" meaning, I have found those credentials helpful in getting my foot in the door. Chirst on a fucking pogo stick, some people are dumb.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I will give a nod to Cisco certs as atleast they make you study the OSI/TCP models in depth with really gives anyone in programming / IT a solid foundation to build off. But I know that stuff already.
OK, I'm retired now and my job as an IBM FE, did require me to have certain certs as part of my job, but (IMHO) the single most useless and easy to get cert was the A+.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I got my A+ a long time ago, because I was out of work and looking for another I.T. job, and figured "Why not? It's not real expensive to get compared to most of the certs. out there, and it's something else to put on my resume to show I'm still trying to keep up with things." As I recall, I was a little surprised it asked so many questions that related to old/obsolete computer systems. (EG. It had questions about which IRQ and I/O address was the default for COM1 and COM2. With anything resembling a "modern" version of Windows, this is pretty irrelevant -- but was critical to know if you were configuring MS-DOS based terminal packages and non "plug and play" internal modem cards.)
Given that, I'm not sure there's a necessity to make people get "re-certified" on a A+? The most significant feature of the cert. may well be that it forces people to learn a little bit of "historically relevant" computer knowledge. There are times, as a tech or support person, you'll run into that stuff -- and most self-taught computer people who started learning in the "post MS-DOS" era might not know anything about it otherwise.
I believe even CompTIA used to say that the A+ was to show "equivalency to a PC technician with 6 months of work experience". So nobody is supposed to really be *impressed" that you have it. It's simply an entry-level cert. that proves you're not just a clueless n00b who wants to fix computers because you thought your Playstation or XBox was a lot of fun, and "computers can't be much different than that!".
As far as it "getting you a job" specifically? It depends. A lot of support places require you have the A+ as a prerequisite. (I think Dell did/does, for example, if you want to do on-site service for them?)
Wow. First comment, huh, ifwm sockpuppet? http://slashdot.org/~Durks
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"See, some of us are well adjusted enough not to need to go on the internet and aggressively defend our jobs, because we're capable of defining ourselves without them."
I'll allow yo to have the last post, whatever mental illness you're suffering from seems to require that you have it, so I'll be generous and ignore the fact that every single ridiculous attack you've attempted was squashed and your points were all totally refuted, which explains why you've stopped even attempting to disprove me.
TY
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.)
The REAL New Mexico Child, youth and Family Development Department Senior systems administrator, and he's not this guy.
505-841-6695, try it for yourself, so you too can see this guy will lie to make himself look better.
First you say
"I've found CompTIA certs a useful part of my portfolio of credentials"
then you say
"Well, I don't give a great God damn how useful my certs are on my job"
Of course, that bit of mental contortionism makes perfect sense to you, but you also think CompTIA certs aren't worthless...
He's saying the later as he's been pushed by people who insult his credentials for no valid reason (by many who post and nit-pick anonymously without providing any evidence of their own credentials.)
As of yet, all the quasi-evidence some posters present here regarding the uselessness of these certs are just mixtures of e-insults combined with personal anecdotes of running into mediocre people.
The certification industry is just a big kick back to m$ and others most of questions have little to do the real world and some of the M$ seem to live in a world of there own software being free and the kinds of setups they have cost to much for many places to have.
I've tangled with him before, but I'd rather be momentarily irritated by someone than risk shutting them out completely. That's also why I browse at -1. You never know what kinds of jewels you might find in a festering pile of crap.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can't even imagine what kind of personality it takes to have never found a single college class be educational.
Oh boy, I'll tell you exactly the type. It's the person who fucks up and attends a yokel school on full scholarship instead of signing away his soul borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to the ivy league, due to his family members being complete horses' asses unable to engage in any type of long-range planning whatsoever and unwilling to contribute to any kind of worthwhile education.
It's the person who spends every class surrounded by jocks and precious minorities with the IQ's of eggplants, interrupting class every five minutes to ask some dumb question. It's the person told by every one of his classmates that they are "just there for the piece of paper." It's the person who watches fraternities completely game the system by stealing copies of tests so that other members can memorize the questions and correct answers. It's the person taught by neo-con idiot professors whose only goal in life is to build the biggest guns possible for stealing natural resources from evil foreigners, and who spend more class time justifying this goal than actually teaching anything approaching enlightened subject matter.
Classes were certainly not uniformly bad, but the bad outweighed the good: architecture professors who didn't understand basic physics, logic professors who couldn't correctly decipher complex syllogisms, philosophy professors whose views on morality would make mobsters cringe. I have literally learned more from Slashdot than I did from college. The few good professors usually only lasted a few years, at most. The ones who remained were either brow-beaten or completely loopy due to the ridiculous bullshit they had to put up with just to do their jobs well.
I will be completely unsurprised when the higher education scam is the last card to fall in America's implosion of wasteful stupidity, after the mortgage, commercial real estate and personal credit debacles. Then again, I will be equally unsurprised if it never actually gets that far, due to the complete incompetence of our educational system being so well-hidden, near-universally-revered and unassailable, deep within the structure of America's faux economy.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Just because you have a computer science degree doesnt mean you know how to fix a computer. Memorization is not glamorous but a technician who knows his s--t by heart
is a better tech than someone who is winging it. When I went to get my current job, yes having an a+ certification distinguished me from the warm bodies
that were applying for the job. An a+ cert is the difference between $7.50 an hour working as a stock boy vs $12-15 an hour + benefits working as a full time tech.
No the a+ is not for 100k job and its not a substitute for a college degree, but combined with experience it does have its worth and its place.
LOL, really now. That's pathetic. 'You have reached a number that is disconnected or no longer in service.' Give it a try, go ahead. Anyone? Anyone? No, as I thought, only the pathological liar ifwm is still here. Just you and me, buddy.
Still, I'm impressed. You managed to unbore me for about 10 seconds.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
My CompTIA Certification Story
I got my CompTIA A+ certification working as a repair technician in Computer City (defunct now) in 1999. Their two tests were pretty good at determining if you had basic skills to be junior computer repair technician. Their test was valued by employers who wanted some kind of a basic measure of people who did not have a college diploma or a vocational certification from DeVry to determine if they should even bother interviewing you for basic computer support jobs in repair or help desk. This test is still a basic benchmark of computer repair ability.
Later as I started working as a junior Windows Desktop & Server Administrator at a small company and I liked what I learned in the study books from the previous exam and I started gaining skills in server administration so I bought study books to learn more and took their new Network+ and Server+ certifications. I liked that the study guides gave me a general but well rounded overview of network and server administration and it certainly taught me a few things about the field even though I was already administering two dozen Windows 95 desktops and four Windows NT 4.0 at the company along with the network and Internet connection. Later CompTIA released a beta of the Security+ exam and they invited me to take it and get the certification if I passed the exam after answering and commenting on each of the questions in it.
I am planning to go back to take the Linux+ certification sometime this year to round-out my CompTIA certification list since I've been doing a little more work with Linux with Asterisk PBX on CentOS based Elastix release. I know just enough Linux to get around and configure Asterisk but not nearly enough to do any type of even basic administration since I don't use the OS on a daily basis as most people. I looked at the study guide and it gives a nice rounded view of things to know about Linux to fill in some of the holes that I have in my knowledge and since I'll be reading the guide that I already bought a while back I might as well take the certification.
Since then I've put 10-years behind my belt and am now a senior Windows Server Engineer with three MCSE's and various vendor hardware certifications like the HP ASE and others. I will be working on my fourth MCSE this year and some more high end certifications like Cisco, VMWare, Symantec, etc.
CompTIA Became Almost Irrelevant
What a strategy for CompTIA, if this passed they would have become irrelevant in the certification field because they decided to change their minds and renege on their past promise of lifetime certification. If they did decide to expire all the lifetime certifications then I certainly wouldn't bother retaking any of them and I would let them expire since I've moved way beyond what those certifications offer. I bet that most of the folks in my position would just give up on CompTIA then and forget about them. The only folks that would have to worry are those in help desk, desktop support and computer repair who need their cert for their job since they haven't moved up from those jobs yet or their employers who would need to spend even more money to keep their techs certified so they can advertise as an A+ certified shop. Most of these folks who have plans on upward movement within their career already have or will be moving on to the Microsoft Certified Processional (MCP) certifications by now for Windows and Office and I think that they wouldn't bother retaking the CompTIA upgrade exams anyway.
Microsoft Tried to Expire MCSE Certifications Also
All about the benjamins! I personally dont think the CompTIA certs are worth a pile of dog shit unless you want to be a fucking field monkey replacing motherboards for peanuts.
Im a highscool dropout and I think its crap.
You should follow your own advice: http://www22.verizon.com/areacodes/
Look it up, ya moron. 479, as you said. Arkansas.
You are in serious trouble. I'm just saying.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Just to be clear: whoever IS at that number in Arkansas is now under investigation for interstate wire fraud. It's out of my hands at this point.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm honestly curious. I'm a sysadmin at a state agency. You know what that is, right? I'm not an officer, I wasn't elected. I'm not the head of the department, nor did I claim to be. I'm just a sysadmin of a very large department.
Why did you think my number would be listed? If you aren't actually IN CYFD, there's no way you could even find it. I'm not the help desk.
Personally, I think you've got a buddy in New Mexico and had him forward an NM number to your number. Besides being fraud, that's an awful lot of work just to try to show somebody up on the Internet.
All kidding and bantering aside, you should seek professional help.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
....If I receive my CompTIA certification in Vacuum Tube Theory prior to 2011, I'm all set, right?
];)~
Regards;
Well, I'm a high school dropout who got my associates, working on my bachelors (in management), working on my A+ cert, who hopes to get his MBA, so I can sit around on slashdot all day and call everyone an idiot when this article gets duped again.
>(EG. It had questions about which IRQ and I/O address was the default for COM1 and COM2.
COM1: 3F8, IRQ4
COM2: 2F8, IRQ3
No, I did not Google that info - I still remember this stuff when I worked on PCs 20 years ago.
Dude! Cut it out! Only apk is allowed to use that much bold. As I was scrolling down and saw the ocean of bold in your post, I thought "Oh boy, another rant on HOSTS files and raw sockets in Windows." :^)
in Circuit City.
New Economic Perspectives
The cert is a hoop to jump through, not an achievement to be flaunted, dont even bring it up during an interview.
Ok the CCIE is an exception, as the lab exam story is interesting to most network interviewers.
Storm
Let me relate my university experience. I'm not 100% sure about US tertiary education terminology, maybe a Danish university is what you call College?
College is about having goals
Yes. My goals. Learning (about) Computer Science in order to become a better programmer. Getting straight A's on my exams. Learning the material.
meeting deadlines
Or asking kindly and slightly embarrassed for an extension, sometimes. You know, negotiate with the people who are dependent on your work (either for grading it or for linking with your code). Or, sometimes, yeah, just meet the damn deadline.
and dealing well (i.e. obediently) with authority figures
You're quiet in class out of respect for your classmates' desire to learn. You hand in your hand-ins on time out of respect for your TA. You follow the rules about which and how many courses you must take, but the constraints on your choices are well-aligned with your own learning goals.
Then again, I'm not shy about asking for clarification or "I think you missed the special case where [...]", or "You wrote X; I think you mean Y?". Your lecturer ain't perfect, and I'm not a perfect TA. I welcome corrections, as I sense my lecturers do.
your willingness to allow them to determine the use of your time
You choose your major and minor, and have a large degree of freedom in choosing courses once you got the requirements for a bachelor satisfied.
Similarly, you can choose to not work for Google/Sun/SAS if you don't like them. Or you can move around on the job market. And you choose whether to apply for the Marketing VP or the Software Development position.
Even when you work for the University, as a TA, the TA-to-courses allocation is done in a way that tries to optimize social utility. And intra-course time slot allocation is done by negotiation. You don't choose completely freely, but the authority in question tries to give everybody what they want (to the best of its ability).
your ability to follow their detailed instructions
"Solve problems 1 through 7 on the course web page, and 16.2 through 16.5 in $BOOK". Detailed? Instruction? I take that as a suggestion to help you learn. No TA I've encountered really gave a $MAKELOVE about whether you learned, although they were willing to help if you wanted to. You're free to solve fewer exercises, or more, and if you ask questions beyond the curriculum, most TAs and professors are willing and even eager to have a fruitful discussion with you.
and your willingness to be a cog in a large institution.
In the University, the institution is there to serve you. You don't make it run, you consume its output (the output really being the process).
Yes, there are resource constraints. The courses start aligned at semester boundaries. Some courses are only held every other semester/year/period due to too low attendance if it was held more often. So what?
Maybe US Colleges are very different from Danish universities?
I think the most important thing you learn besides your subject matter (i.e. the math, programming, anthropology or whatever) is to plan and organize your own learning efforts. If you learn that. I'm on my 6th year (phd student) and I'm just beginning to need to think about what I can do besides showing up for lectures and exercise sessions in order to learn the subject matter.
You don't take advanced degrees in assembly line manufacturing. I see how the qualities you claim College teaches students might be useful there. I think the qualities I've observed are more useful in knowledge work.
But to be fair: fitting into a large organization and agreeing to use you time on what others suggest is useful if you work at a large company. Then again, you're free to seek employment at Google where you get to spend 20% of your work hours rather (more) freely. I think they see individual entrepreneurial spirit as a useful thing.
The reason for expiring them is the US Government, primarily the DoD.
Under DoD 8570 if you do anything with computers besides basic end user functions you need a security certificate and for most people Security+ is going to be the one needed. DoD 8570 requires that you keep the certification renewed so with them expiring the exam they have a continual source of income.
Also alot of offices and bases have been requiring A+ and Network+ from all airmen who do basic repairs to computers so with a 3 year expiration there is a good chance they will get a large of of those people having to take the test a second time.
Thats awesome. So what your saying is go to college so you can sit on your ass? I enjoy working because I do it on my own terms. I make an awsome salary for a 28 year old and I have never paid a single dollar for tuition. When my client made me an offer to come on board full time I only had 2 demands. My pay raises and I 100% run the network the way I see fit.