POLL: For those who work in technology
 

Do you update your certifications?

Do you have any certifications?

Or did you just get a degree?

I am finding out more and more people are looking at certifications over college degree, and are looking at real world experience over college degree.

Are college degrees going to disappear for technical/developer jobs?

What are you people doing for your resume, or what are you looking for if you are in charge of hiring technical people?

I do update my certifications (Mac OS ones)

lol, could a mod fix my poll and grammatically correct the last option? It looks like I have no education:mad:

Anyways, yeah I am getting ready to just bite the bullet and finish my MCSE, it can't hurt. My apple certs I am forced to renew, otherwise they expire.

Other certs are good for life, but newer ones come out.

After my MCSE, I want to go ahead and get Linux.

I got my MCSE 4.0 and CCNA/CCNP 2.0, CCDA/CCDP 2.0 at one point. The MCSE didn't expire like MS said they would,but merely became more and mroe useless and the CCxx did expire as I wasn't in that field any longer and saw no need to continue my education in a field I was starting to despise due to job shortages around the year 2000.

All the time and effort spent could have made me a doctor twice over. Though I freely admit that proper studies don't have the luxury of study-at-your-own-pace and slight costs of a cert route.

I have always been interested in computers (by that I mean macs!) but have never wanted for it to be my career....
Thats why I have over a thousand posts to my name...! If I cant figure it out I pester you lot! ;)


I figure that you cant know everything..... and if you cant.. you should know someone that does!

degree in furniture design! BA(Hons)

I have a Math degree, some graduate work in the Liberal Arts, no certifications, and otherwise am 100% self-taught over a 21 year career in software/technology consulting.

It pays to be diverse. ;)



P.S. - last option in poll edited...

I won't vote, because I'm not actually employed right now. However, I'm working on getting a degree and certifications.

I'm a high school dropout.

Same here.

-- Gnarlie's Applescript page:
http://Gnarlodious.com/Apple/AppleScript/

When I went to College (1980-82) there were no personal computers, and the tech department had us using a mainframe with terminals which - get this - used a golfball paper scroll printer instead of a monitor. That's right, folks, no monitor. The entire feedback loop happened on a printer.
Do I feel old? Not really. I learnt everything a step at a time. When the Mac first came out we got one where I worked and since then with every upgrade of soft ware or hardware I've learnt a bit more.

My first mac (1988 I think) was a 128k single floppy version with no hard disk. Quark Xpress from version1 (the install disk was a single floppy). Pagemaker from version1. Mac OS from version 1. Before colour. Before postscript. If I had to start now with the complexity of the software, I don't know if I could do it . . .
Respect to those that do.

cool thanks for voting, I was just trying to get an idea of what the people out there have as far as qualifications. I dropped out of college because I was already in the field during college. Well, I went to art school and majored in Animation, but ended up doing IT work while in college and liked it.

I don't have any formal IT training other than me teaching myself. My first mac was in the later 90s and it was a performa 6400CDS (i think). I had landed my first tech job and my boss at that time was teaching me how to solder. We had two of the exact identical performa macs in the tech shop. One of them had a bad logic board and the customer had decided to just upgrade to the first generation G3 B&W, which were just out at the time. The other one had a working logic board, but they ripped the ADB port out of the back. That customer also decided to buy a new mac rather than get it fixed. So, we took the working ADB port off of the bad logic board and soldered it onto the good logic board that had the ripped out port. It worked, and we now had a working mac in the shop that no one was going to claim. Our clients told us to just recycle it. So, I tossed another 32mb stick of ram in it, and a 3gig HD and loaded OS 8 on it, and that was my very first mac I ever had. Before that I had just built PCs, and the tech shop I worked for was both a PC and a mac repair center.

I took it home and played with it, crashed the OS probably 10 to 15 times, reloaded it, tried tweaking the extensions and system folders, ran hacks (or what I tried as a hack), wash, rinse, dry, repeat.

So, really I am self taught, or I suppose you could also say I did apprentice under a few people. I did have some cool bosses back in the day that showed me how to do some neat stuff like circuit board soldering, or little tricks of the trade, or fast software fixes, etc. Then I went out and got certifications so I looked good on paper (aka my resume) and was a more valuable asset to my current job.

If you want to work in big-company IT, at least some form of degree is needed since they value paper over abilities. Particularly if you want to progress to any sort of management position. You can't join the club if you don't have the pedigree. For smaller companies or in IT service companies (except the large ones), it's not relevant.

That is somewhat true, I interviewed for a multi million dollar design firm a few months back and turned it down because it overall was no better than my current job, and I like having things like winter and spring break off. Even though I have no college degree, but I do have several certs, they still offered me the job based off my first interview.

It kind of depends what you know, and who you know, and who knows you to get into some jobs. That thing called a degree is not as valuable as it once was. I know people with master's degrees working resturaunts and bars still.

I'm not actually working now but am slated to start a degree program in wan technology this summer, and have been working on certifications (achds was the first one a few weeks ago). From what I've read in industry outlook reports and what I've learned through talking with friends/ex-coworkers/etc, a college degree will be nice but ultimately it will come down to knowing specific skills that companies need and certifications to have something on paper for said skills, and I find that pretty sensible.

Forgot to mention... I'm a university drop out (Literature :rolleyes:) and just started learning about computers to fix the darn things (Windows side obviously) and to play nice games (Mac way back then). So self thought but as stated here... some degree in your filed is nice. So I took Apple certs since itkinda became my specialty since most techs go "Your on a Mac ? Euh let me find some one who knows Macs"... So I've been getting jobs simply because I know Mac... and honnestly I think I almost learned more by participating and ready on the hints site and in the forums. Not a certification, but better in the sense that you see all sorts of issues related to anything... enough to broaden horizons...

I'm an art school drop out. I've completed a few courses towards certifications, but don't have any.

Yeah, I became the mac tech at my first tech job b/c the mac guy quit and went to a different company. So, my boss slapped an imac on my bench (crt, right around 1999~2000 era) and says take this apart and put it back together and fix it. Then go take the apple certification test, our apple guy just quit.

So, that is what I did, and have been renewing my mac certs ever since. My sub contracting job i do on the side is also mainly mac based. Their main onsite tech guy did not even want to get near a mac. So, I got a call out of the blue on my cell phone one day, and it was this dude who I have never met from this onsite company (pro-onsite). he told me that i was recomended through people I had worked for in the past, and offered me a sub contract job. i met with him, told him my rate, did a 1099 or whatever tax form, and now I sub contract for them for their mac stuff and overflow of pc stuff. when i got offered the sub contracting job to do extra work for this company i did not apply for it, they approached me out of the blue and never even asked me for my resume. i met with the accountant/manager guy one time and we talked and that was it.

I am also an art school drop out LOL

wow almost half mac users on this forum that work in IT (well the ones that voted) are completely self taught.....

I wonder how that compares to windows or linux users?

I'd bet its close to being the same results... Simply that people who learn how to fix computers are people who have to use them without support, so not office or college or university tend to "create" techs. They create specialists in coding, finance tools, graphics work, etc. Most cases where there are actuall courses on troubleshooting, building networks, fixing computers in general are courses given to obtain a certification from a provider such as Apple, Cisco, Microsoft... and who takes those courses and tests ? Techs who want to know more, not people who want to start learning about computers.

I don't like the poll questions.

I have 2 graduate degrees, neither in technology fields.

If I selected "Never went to college for IT" then it might be taken to indicate that I never went to college at all.

Yeah it was suppose to imply that you went to college for something other that IT, I just worded it wrong.

it also doesn't matter if you have a degree or not, which was kind of the point of this poll.

Just as another point of reference, I recently hired someone who is working out really well who has a business degree (BA). He's in school for IT, but he's not learning anything useful there other than Java and some other basics.

One of the things that separates the geeks destined to forever do specific IT tasks from the people who would move ahead and/or be allowed to talk to normal humans is the ability to understand business and customer needs, more so than understanding tech. Whether you learn it in school or on the job, that's a much rarer skill than tech. I interview lots of people I'd never hire because all they can do is the one tech job, not interact with people or understand business.

Great point. Whenever I have to sell myself in an interview process I always mention I like to take in user feed back. A lot of tech people have the whole "Mooooove" attitude with them. like the SNL skit.

I think user feed back is important I also think people skills are important. That is why on my contract jobs I always make good impressions just incase I may need a job in the future. It is always good to help people because they will remember (usually) what you did for them.

One thing to add to your interview skill would be an understanding of business drivers: ROI, TCO, opportunity cost, etc. Not that you should toss trendy acronyms at them, but since IT tends to fall under financial guys it helps to know what they think about all day. And I don't know how many times I've seen a tech guy try to sell technology because it's the latest, or the best, or really cool, or similar nonsensical reasons. What's the ROI? You can't get funding without ROI.