So years of experience mean nothing? What a surprise.
Data Point: I’ve held A+ and Network+ since they were lifetime certs. They do bupkes for me.
For some reason tons of people hiring seem to think having an A+ cert means something. It just means you were able to memorize CompTIAs incorrect answers random procedures. These tests were really bad but they jumped the shark when they started including customer service crap in them.
And seriously they are still full of wrong information and myths, like magnetic screw drivers being able to mess up hard drives.
I am really curious about this. I keep hearing they’re worthless and then I hear no one will a person without experience without them. Which is it? Inquiring minds want to know.
In my experience, if you’ve rolled out PCs to a call floor, that’s way better than a cert because you’ve actually touched lots of PCs, for sure.
I’ve seen people care about the certs, but increasingly less in the past decade, and experience always trumped.
I’m a senior level sysadmin with exactly 0 certs that graduated from college in the 2000s. Learning on your own, getting a foot in the door somewhere, and working your way up still works.
I believe it, and I’ve touched lots of PCs… I just can’t prove it.
Trying man, trying.
Actually I don’t need to build a career. I just want a helpdesk or similar position to work through college because I know I’ll enjoy it, and it’s a great fallback even out of college if I do want to work my way up.
Welcome to Boing BBS, good first post.
I’d suggest thinking about contacting your college IT department and seeing if they have anything that you can do as an intern or part time staff. Some universities hire students to work the helpdesk / respond to minor calls like a printer not working. Learn the infrastructure in use at the school, come up with a few time saving scripts/etc, show them that you can do more than just answer a phone call and ask the caller to reboot. Chances are they will want to keep people on after graduation if they are well liked by the department.
I’ve filled in apps. Never got called for an interview. Right now trying to get my foot in the door working in the tech department in a retail store. Don’t get me started on why I’m beginning to doubt that was a good idea, but I’ll try.
Don’t get me started talking you out of it. Helpdesk work is usually hell.
I know it’s called “helldesk” for a reason, but I actually have a lot patience for assholes (retail, remember?), and I like working out what’s going wrong.
What makes you think it can’t be both? Most CS degrees are fuck-all worthless (speaking as a holder of one), but coding shops still prefer a clueless grad with a CS degree to someone with 10 years’ documented experience and no degree. It’s the grand mystery of the industry.
That’s my start to IT work… oh look the lab needs helpdesk people, may as well get paid to answer all the questions the business students keep asking me.
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