@flaxking said in Always Study for the Future SAMIT Video: When I was deciding when if I was going to do Server 2012 or 2016 certifications, I went with 2012, and I'm glad I did because it was still a year from that point that the Server 2016 exams came out, and I was already certified. Maybe I should have worded it "study for the farthest future that there is a test for"

@biglittle said in Certifications for IT SAMIT Video: I found this very interesting, since I'm switching to IT from education I always saw certifications as state mandated in order to even be considered for a position. Oh yes, in many cases if you want a government IT job you will require certs. In fact, you'll be required to have certs from other industries. That's the degree to which government IT isn't considered professional. Government IT often pays a fraction of the industry and is not taken seriously. In NY state, for example, top level IT technical positions are often below entry level in pay. So below the professional scale. So if your goal is "government IT" which is sort of its own thing, you'll need certs from non-IT to even be allowed to be hired. But it's often considered on the fringe or outside of "real" IT. Keep in mind that while we often use IT Professional, as a term, IT are not professionals. Actual "professional" guidelines are actually considered insulting in IT. The idea that IT could be certified or that university education would be meaningful, the very tenants of professional work, are insulting in IT where things are performance based, not government pseudo-union based. A better term to use, at least in your head, is IT Practitioner, not professional. IT does not function if held to the standards of normal "professions". The education or certification needed for those fields are far too low to be useful in IT. The breadth of knowledge and continuous education needed for IT success are much higher than many other fields. This is why it is not considered polite or appropriate to compare IT Practitioners to something like doctors. The bar for being a successful doctor is embarrassingly low for IT, for example.

@sully93 I have a video from MangoCon 2016 where instead of talking about "what isn't IT" I talk about what it is. I have a recent SAMIT video on separating IT from SE. I'll do one soon on separating IT from Bench.

@black3dynamite said in Understanding the Microsoft MTA Certifications SAMIT Video: @scottalanmiller said in Understanding the Microsoft MTA Certifications SAMIT Video: @black3dynamite said in Understanding the Microsoft MTA Certifications SAMIT Video: @scottalanmiller said in Understanding the Microsoft MTA Certifications SAMIT Video: @black3dynamite said in Understanding the Microsoft MTA Certifications SAMIT Video: Where I work at, we are a test center and our students or instructors can go for certifications like MTA, MOS, and MCE. So you are a secretarial training center? What do you do? MOS is for secretaries and receptionists. MCE is for teachers. MTA is for pre-topical students. No, I am the IT Support Specialist (damn those long titles) for the school that is also a Certiport test center too. I got that YOU are in IT. I'm just wondering what they do that offers those non-IT certs. It makes sense that all of those exist, they all have a solid place and reason. Just not IT reasons. Or in the case of MTA, not professional IT reasons. We do provide IT students with TestOut. http://www.testout.com/Certification/Pro-Exams/Catalog Never heard of that one.

Thank you, just bought it. Will give feedback once I get into it.

I think that he skips mentioning that PPP, the Point to Point Protocol is not a VPN protocol. Even in the 1990s it was not considered that as it is not virtually private, as a VPN is. It's useful to have mentioned here and the Network+ might require it and it is certainly good to know and understand, but he lists it along with VPN protocols and I didn't hear him ever point out that it isn't a VPN Protocol even though it was the first one mentioned in the VPN Protocol list.

@john11smith said in Resources for the Network+: Struggled understanding some questions because the wording of the exam like nothing I used to see. CompTIA is not known for their clarity.

@IRJ said in Logical IT Certification Progression: @Dashrender said in Logical IT Certification Progression: @scottalanmiller said in Logical IT Certification Progression: @Dashrender said in Logical IT Certification Progression: @guyinpv said in Logical IT Certification Progression: al details. I don't regret buying or reading through any of them. Books on Windows, DOS, printers, networks, repair and troubleshooting techniques, system design and building, etc etc. All of that is good. Answer questions posed at an interview. Besides, bench techs don't think, according to @scottalanmiller, they work by script - aka, reading a script and doing what it says. Once you have to start making decisions, you're no longer a bench tech, you're in IT. Not quite, but that's closer. Bench is about tech, about consumer gear or business stuff that falls into consumer spaces. IT is "Business Information Infrastructure." Lots of bench people make decisions. Like if you are building a white box desktop for a gamer, the bench guy will likely make several decisions from CPU to GPU to RAM to case and power supply. It's not a script, but it is not BII, either. hey - you're making it grey again There isn't nearly as many strictly hardware people anymore these days. Not nearly, most are in datacenters now.

Looks great !! Thanks for the doc.

@antonit said: I am referring to the following: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional AWS Certified Developer - Associate AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Which one of these would fit the bill better for my career? Solutions Architect is not what you have done in the past and not where you are looking at being currently. So those are more for a change in career direction more than anything. The Developer is not at all what you do, so that is out. DevOps, likewise, would be a major career change. Not a bad one, but it's a very different role and would be a long term transition. SysOps Admin would be the logical starting point as it leverages where you have been and where you have been thinking of going. For all of them, Associate is the starting point, you would do that before considering the Professional level.

@ryanblahnik said: If a lot of these seem to have more value from the material studied than from the cert itself, are there any others that stand out as covering important ground? I found the process of getting my certs to be incredibly valuable. Probably on par with any of my top learning for my career. It was the late 1990s and I did every CompTIA exam at the time and the hardest, longest Microsoft track and a huge number of Brainbench certs all over just like two or three years. I never once attended a class, I bought loads of books, got an ancient Pentium server (yes the original 586 single proc box!) and about five old desktops mostly 486, one Pentium and two PPros and built everything from scratch and did every lab and tested every configuration. No virtualization back then. And MS trials were 90 days, not 180. And an NT4 install could take two days!! And 33Kb/s dial up Internet access at best. Reading the books, cover to cover, doing every example as I went forced me to learn the material including the concepts. Doing the actual certs forced me to not skip over details that seemed unimportant. It made me work to completeness and many of the concepts that I would have ignored when I was young turned out to be very important and the people writing the books had a good idea of what I needed to know

I think it is time to start sending sweaters to hell. They'll need it!

@Minion-Queen said: @scottalanmiller said: @Minion-Queen said: I think we are going to do a good panel discussion. Allow people to ask anything they want but that is about as close to a "general" session as you really can get. Like my big open room session at SpiceWorld 2013. Yes! But everyone complained that it wasn't enough time. Yes, it was way too short for what it was. Because it was lots of different topics rather than just one it could easily have gone longer than the standard time slot.

That's awesome that there is more variety and ability to focus more. I agree, DC would be the best in general, Cloud probably the second most general. Network and Desktop seem far more focused and likely to be used in less general career options.

I have not seen anything in as high of demand as Linux has been the last several years. Other things get more attention in the news because they are newer, flashier or more interesting to the public, but in the business space it seems that Linux is remaining the big ticket item.

@StrongBad said: That's not good. Bait and switch is a good way to burn your bridges. RIght, it's only a 60 day trial too. So, not really free if you ask me. When I receive the sales call I will let you know.

@Bill-Kindle said: By harder I hope they mean that it will be harder to boot camp these tests. The description makes it sound that way, at least.

@wowitsdave said: I took the 2009 objectives- probably much later than you two. More than a decade later. If you took it is 2009 it must have been updated for Windows 98 since the 1998 objectives were Windows 3.1.