The Problem with IT Certifications and Their Contribution to the Devaluation of Technology

by Super Ells

For two decades, IT certifications have evolved and diversified greatly.

In the 1990s, certifications were the IT professional's vocational pinnacles; you earned these after having years of experience in the field and taking the test to show your knowledge.  In the last several years with the proliferation of certification boot camps, entry-level jobs now require certifications that normally would have been received after years of experience in the field.

The changes towards certifications going from the pinnacle to just another "check in the box" began in 2010, when CompTIA decided it was more important to change their long-esteemed lifetime certifications to three-year certifications in order to make inroads into the certification profit game.

With this, certifications shifted from a highly technical viewpoint to a split between general knowledge and customer service, degrading the technical side of the certification to irrelevance.  Now, those with lifetime certifications had to get continuing education credits - either from industry or by paying more money to CompTIA, and those who did not sign up for the CE program basically had years of hard work and dedication to our world swiped out from under them.  Their certifications, which CompTIA had promised on paper were going to be valuable and good for a lifetime, became nothing.  In effect, CompTIA used the back door to invalidate every lifetime certification holder (unless they paid for CE) after being forced to back down from invalidating lifetime certifications in 2010.

CompTIA says that the lifetime certifications are good as they were prior to 2010.  Not true.

If they are no longer promoting lifetime certifications and not pushing schools to accept them as credit or industry to accept them instead of their (effectively) pay-to-maintain certified system, then the certifications are worthless on paper.  I am not against continuing your education or keeping up-to-date with technology - you must.  But the fundamentals of computers and networks in 2000 are the same as they are in 2017, and even the fundamentals of operating systems such as Linux and Windows have maintained the same, even if the eye candy is different.

Surely there are some things that are easier to do, and newer technologies that have arrived, but when there is so much of the same as well, does someone need to renew their certifications at an arbitrary time, if at all?  Or is this just a way to for companies to make more money and lock into a line of products?

Yes, I'm bashing CompTIA hard, but they deserve it after being a non-vendor certifier that for years has been looked highly upon as knowing your fundamentals after experience in the field, and pissing it away for the pursuit of the dollar.

The other issue with certifications is certification boot camps.  They are used by non-technical people to get into the field, thinking IT is a way to make a lot of money without having to become passionate.  Those who truly want to enter our field should be welcomed, as long as they are willing to have a passion for computers and technology.

Unfortunately, with the proliferation of certification boot camps, too many people without that passion for technology - or the skills to think outside the box - have entered into IT.  In turn, this has driven away the creativity and the passion to innovate from many, whereas now our world has turned into policy and rigidity, which has stifled a lot of what is good about our field (and to some, our world).  This has not been good, as we see around us every day in the tech world.

In my experience, I have seen dozens of technicians come into jobs working with me (or for me) brag about having a plethora of vendor or non-vendor certifications, and when I ask them to do something simple, such as set up a print server, I get deer-in-the-headlights looks.

Or I'll ask my technicians to figure out how to set up a field-deployable network, and they are locked into wanting to follow policy and build a system that is more fitting for an office!  Really?  Then I ask these technicians if they have thought outside the box for a solution.  Crickets.

And this is the point I make with certifications: they are not meant as checks in the boxes, or a way to keep outside thinkers from entering our world as a profession if they truly are passionate about it.  Now that they are checks in the boxes to get into the profession, their value has been lost.  And these are the technicians we have - and all of the tech world will pay dearly for the commoditization and devaluation of our passion that for many of us is our profession.

If you want to enter the world of hackers, programmers, hardware/software/network engineers and the like as a profession, you better do it with passion and with a mindset that is not of a regular office worker.  Live it, breathe it, learn it - build your experience, think outside of the box, tinker, design, test.  It cannot be a job - it must be part of your life.

If not, there's the door.  Do it as a hobby, or find something different to do.  This is not just a job for many of us.  It is our world, our life's work, our passion, our dream that for some has become reality.  Don't devalue it by just making it another job.

If you want to treat it as just a job - as I said before - leave!  And don't let the door hit you on the way out!