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Title: IT Certs Post by: Sky on January 21, 2011, 07:07:33 AM So a local college just got a grant for a hojillion dollars (1.6M, iirc) to give out in the neighborhood of 2500 Cert training courses. Unclear on if they'll offer the testing at this point, I just got off the phone with the rep over there. I got all excited because they mentioned in the email MCITP and CCENT, both of which I'd like, especially given the goddamned funding problems hitting libraries (open your paper, your library was probably cut and in trouble). Bzzt, they are having trouble finding a teacher and aren't sure it's in the budget. Few pro level students have contacted them, so we're going to try and push for both. Right now they're looking at comp tia stuff via sybex, A+ and Security+. Before I worked at the library I was looking into A+ and it seemed really outdated for the time (1999), focused on a ton of minutiae that is more or less irrelevant to daily IT work (memorizing BIOS codes or something).
So a couple questions to the certed folks here. If you had to choose between the MCITP and CCENT, which would you prefer and why? Is the A+ good now? Security+? The training is free, and it looks like I need to bulk up the resume, so I'm going to take everything they're going to offer and be a generally bug up their butt for the next three years of the grant. I'm just wondering where to focus my initial energy, since the first things I tackle will probably be what I lean on for a job search next winter when the government decides to do away with library funding. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Hawkbit on January 21, 2011, 07:38:21 AM I've been out of the industry for 10 years, so take this with a grain of salt.
I did my A+ in 99 and it was basically a computer primer. It always supports outdated o/s and is really just for establishing a baseline knowledge for technical support. I was in the middle of working on my Network+ and MSCE/MCP when I said fuck it all, and the MCSE/MCP is kinda like the MCITP now. It's a good, rounded plan for getting your foot in the door for a networking position. You will be expected to continue educating while working if you get a job with that tech degree. Cisco certifcation were not for the faint of heart and our company would not offer paying for them unless we had A+, Network+, MCP and MCSE under our belt. My two friends that have worked their way up the ranks through all that crap and finished their CNAs (CCENT) are making between $60-75 right now, neither has a college degree more than an associates. One has to work in very, very hazardous conditions though (medical testing lab with Anthrax and other biological agents). So be prepared for some odd jobs sometimes. The basic path 10 years ago was Comptia (A+, Network+) ---> Microsoft (MCP, MCSE) ---> Cisco (CNA). I would be surprised if it has changed drastically. Good luck on getting the funding. As long as they can get you all the way to where you want to be, it will be worth it. I'd be concerned about them pulling funding halfway through your coursework, imo. The way things are funded these days.... everything in two year cycles. EDIT: Changed CNE to CNA. :uhrr: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on January 21, 2011, 07:45:27 AM Besides what Hakwbit posted, which I agree with, I would only suggest that you read on the material the cert covers and determine if that is what you want to do. I'm looking at certs again after ten years as well, but it's more mid to high range stuff, although I'm planning on blowing through a three-pack of intro Linux classes this year. I read class summaries and decided if it was something I was going to be bored with or not. For getting certs, though, I'm hoping to simply read some books and take practice tests. My actual class choices are based on what my boss says I need to do (other than "get certified") as well as current gaps in my education as far as what I am supporting. Basically I chose Baby Linux, Advanced Power Virtualization and HACMP (which has a new name of course). My fourth pick is actually to attend the IBM conference in Miami, for which I need to print business cards for beforehand. :why_so_serious:
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: fuser on January 21, 2011, 08:52:38 AM The basic path 10 years ago was Comptia (A+, Network+) ---> Microsoft (MCP, MCSE) ---> Cisco (CNE). I would be surprised if it has changed drastically. That's actually a useless Novel cert I have go figure. Think you mean CCNA or CCIE. If you had to choose between the MCITP and CCENT, which would you prefer and why? Is the A+ good now? Security+? MCITP, everyone has some sort of Microsoft equipment. Not everyone runs Cisco, you see more random devices in SMB. At the time(98/99) I had some certs offered to me A+ was the starting point but as you mentioned it was extremely old for the time and they were just starting to transition away from a lot of old tech. I didn't take it because coming into the position I was already CNE certified and thought it would be a waste of money and asked for funding for CCNA instead. This never happened so get whatever you can. Take as much as you can but leave the A+ to last try to do Security+, Linux+, Network+. Certs for virtualization Yegolev mentioned would be a really great to get as its where the market is heading for everything. If there's a cert I'd really like to get is the RHCE (http://www.redhat.com/certification/rhce/) Linux cert as its really broad and transfer well to any distribution. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Morat20 on January 21, 2011, 09:02:02 AM The whole cert thing always makes me feel a bit lazy, or out of touch, or something.
I have like zilch. I can't see how relevent they are to my job, but can't help but wonder if I'm missing some obvious ones that would make my resume look a heck of a lot better for my job. (I do development work, though -- master's and years of experience, but no certs of any sort). Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: bhodi on January 21, 2011, 09:23:50 AM I'm going to just cut/paste bits from from the SA megathread OP (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3117356).
For the record, I've got a Redhat RHCE, CCNA (lapsed), and a slew of Bea Weblogic shit which I strive to never use in my life again because weblogic administration fucking sucks. All of them have been sponsored through companies I have worked for. I don't really need them to find work, as my career is solidly in the "nepotism" stage at this point and most of my interviews have been a formality or non-technical personality checks. I am not especially fond of A+/Network+ stuff, since you can feel someone out for that knowledge in a 30 minute interview, and finding someone who understands troubleshooting and has a compatible personality is way more important than if he can memorize a netmask table or IRQs (do they even make you memorize IRQs anymore? Probably not), but I can see having buzzwords that getting past the HR resume shredder is important. Quote So, you just got out of college and you want to get into IT. In this market. Pardon the rest of us jaded veterans as we simultaneously laugh at your enthusiasm and pity you for entering this market. Sadly, college doesn't mean anything in the computer janitor field. Generally speaking, there are three things that you need for the interview process: Certifications to get in the door. Experience to not make a fool out of yourself in the technical part of the interview. Nepotism to actually get hired. The focus in this thread is, obviously, the first. Now, let's get one thing out of the way: a pile of certs does not a guru make. Certs are a tool used by the HR manager to plow through thousands of resumes. This whittles the field down to a manageable number of candidates for the overworked and understaffed manager to interview. Once you get to the technical interview, you will be grilled on things that are important to that organization, not CCNA exam materials. You could be in the field for 25 years and whiteboard Google's LAN from memory and it still won't mean anything to HR. Although people with 25 years of experience mostly skip right to "nepotism," it's just an example. Get used to examples that ignore the real world - this thread is about certifications. ----------- CompTIA Get your A+ if you're going into tech support or helpdesk or what have you. I haven't seen a lot of demand for the other ones; the Security+ and Network+ are better served by Cisco certs. Harry Totterbottom disagrees with me slightly: Quote Harry Totterbottom posted: Security+ is actually viable for trying to get your feet into an entry level network security gig. [...] Also the A+ is a joke if you've been in the field for any real length of time, however there are a few consulting companies that will want you to have it to maintain whatever BS marketing they're shoving down their customers throats. That said, I walked in and knocked out both the 220-601 & 220-602 without any preparation in under an hour. Others There are many other application-specific certifications around. Citrix and VMware are probably the biggest app certs around. If you're going to be working extensively with a technology, it behooves you to con your employer into paying for a certification for it. Oh God How Do I Take An Exam Short answer: Go to a licensed VUE or Prometric site, pay them a few hundred dollars, take test. The tests are downloaded from central servers shortly before you take it, so you may not REALLY need an appointment, but they'll be much nicer to you if you have one. Long answer: Most IT education companies have Prometric/VUE centers on-site, and if you're taking a boot camp you can usually go straight into the exam on the last day of class. The test-taking experience generally involves being led without any personal belongings into a room full of WinXP boxes, sat down in front of one with a small dry-erase board and a marker, and the test software takes it from there. You'll have a time limit and usually a questions-remaining ticker. Time management is the most important part of any IT exam. Once that's done, the test results will be displayed and sent to the test proctor, who will escort you out of the room and then try to hard sell you on taking more classes. If the machine crashes during the test, start praying. Alert the proctor immediately so they can stop the clock if necessary. The first thing they'll try to do is recover your test so you can resume where you left off. If they can't recover it, they'll tell you to make an appointment to re-take the exam with a complementary voucher. If the crash results in the machine thinking you hit NEXT NEXT NEXT FINISH until the test was over or time ran out... it's your word against theirs and you're probably out a few hundred bucks. Dem's the breaks. I would personally pass on the A+. Virtualization is definitely where the market is headed and is a rapidly growing market, but since you're going VMware for that (You are going VMware, they are the only game in town) all their stuff is structured for company sponsorship (read: expensive). SANs, enterprise storage, blade systems are growing along with it. Sadly, not really something you can 'break into' without a stepping stone elsewhere. I have no idea how to break into the market beyond a CCNA, I just wouldn't go the microsoft route. Things aren't looking good for them and their bewildering array of cross-linked certifications. Is there an overall list of the classes? I think we could probably pick stuff for you and suggest better if we had the full list. Morat, as much as I personally loathe Oracle for a variety of reasons, they are it for "high paying" and, as a database guy / from what I've gathered here, getting the 11i cert stuff would be extremely desirable for you and once you have it and a modicum of schema skills, you can pretty much name your price. Good DBAs are in demand, DBAs that can design schema are a rare and highly desired species. Probably because it slowly drives you insane. DBAs burn out quickly and with extreme regularity. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Kitsune on January 21, 2011, 10:51:09 AM A+ is something of a joke certification at this point. It's a bad sign when a friend in charge of her IT department called me about an applicant's resume to tell me, "At least he has his A+!", and we both laughed.
Which certifications you go for depends heavily on exactly what you want to do. Cisco certs are for people who want to be working on network infrastructure that uses, duh, Cisco equipment. Most companies don't have sufficient infrastructure needs to support a full-time Cisco tech, so you'd either have to freelance to support lots of smaller companies, or work for someone really big. But if you do get such a position, it tends to pay very nicely. Microsoft server certs are a lot more flexible in the jobs you can land, but there's more competition in the field. Even relatively small companies can need a full-time network admin, though they may not be able to pay very well. If you do go for that, I'd strongly recommend that in addition to the server certs, you grab the desktop certs. They're easy, they only require a couple of exams to acquire, and can give your resume a tangible leg up over someone who only has server admin certification. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Hawkbit on January 21, 2011, 11:21:16 AM That's actually a useless Novel cert I have go figure. Think you mean CCNA or CCIE. Yes, you're correct - I meant CNA. Sorry, and Thanks! Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on January 21, 2011, 11:42:51 AM I have like zilch. I can't see how relevent they are to my job, but can't help but wonder if I'm missing some obvious ones that would make my resume look a heck of a lot better for my job. (I do development work, though -- master's and years of experience, but no certs of any sort). I don't know if you really really need certs if you are programming, but if someone can sell a cert in something, they will. It's more important to (the bosses of) people who fix things, since it's some assurance that you actually know how to fix the thing you are working on. I'd suspect this is why an Oracle cert would mean something. Everything is indeed becoming virtualized. I work on fewer and fewer real things all the time. Won't matter the general platform, just getting something in it will be a great idea. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on January 21, 2011, 12:42:05 PM A+ is something of a joke certification at this point. It's a bad sign when a friend in charge of her IT department called me about an applicant's resume to tell me, "At least he has his A+!", and we both laughed. After looking over prep books in 99 when I was originally trying to get my career going, even then I could see it was extremely limited and not really necessary. "Why woud I memorize something I can look up?" Then the person who was in the running for this job with me said on her resume that she was 'working on' her A+. When asked in the interview about that, I told them why I wasn't. I guess that won some points.I'm not sure where I'm heading career-wise at this point. 10 years of pretty low level admin has given me some great troubleshooting skills in a limited field, and I haven't had much chance to push anything higher level. At 40, I'm starting to think about possibly a management path. Having little programming beyond some basic scripting (and html lolz) kinda hinders me from any development paths. Otherwise, I'm probably looking at moving up the networking chain. The last decent opening I saw that I was close to being qualified for was for Dep't of Homeland Security :why_so_serious: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Morat20 on January 21, 2011, 12:56:51 PM Morat, as much as I personally loathe Oracle for a variety of reasons, they are it for "high paying" and, as a database guy / from what I've gathered here, getting the 11i cert stuff would be extremely desirable for you and once you have it and a modicum of schema skills, you can pretty much name your price. Good DBAs are in demand, DBAs that can design schema are a rare and highly desired species. Probably because it slowly drives you insane. DBAs burn out quickly and with extreme regularity. DBA work is not for me. I mean, I can whip up a decent schema and can tell you what normal form something is in, and slap a programmer's hands when they try to design a DB layout built around "What makes for easy queries for me" and not "What actually makes sense as a way to store the data, and oh possibly expand it down the line".But if you're asking me things like "Can you prove converting from Schema A to B is lossless and all that" I'll just scream and run away. And I have no clue about the backend shit -- how often to do backups, security patching, fail-over setups, replication. I could probably puzzle it out.... Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: bhodi on January 21, 2011, 01:18:24 PM So what you're basically saying is that you have the hard part down but no idea about the easy parts. :)
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Arthur_Parker on January 21, 2011, 01:25:53 PM I'm not sure where I'm heading career-wise at this point. 10 years of pretty low level admin has given me some great troubleshooting skills in a limited field, and I haven't had much chance to push anything higher level. At 40, I'm starting to think about possibly a management path. Having little programming beyond some basic scripting (and html lolz) kinda hinders me from any development paths. Otherwise, I'm probably looking at moving up the networking chain. If you have a powerful pc you can setup a pretty realistic virtual network. Pretty much everything has 180 day trails nowadays if licenses are an issue, even with basic scripting and automating installs you could automate it to refresh itself every couple of months. After getting a few servers up, I'd just add stuff on top to see what interests you, new areas are opening up all the time for which certificates don't exist and getting in first with a new release of something major really helps and stands way out on a CV. Tracking down the blogs of the new product developers is pretty much a must as the initial documentation will be crap. Most of the new to the field guys I've seen interviewed think a cert means something, even experienced people I've worked with for years who know experience is all that counts, happily apply for jobs while not having any exposure to what they will be supporting/implementing. It's crazy, I've been sent on numerous courses costing thousands of pounds a day and always learn more at home just trying to get the stupid thing to work, because the people teaching the courses, teach courses for a living. Due to the way things go at my place, I'm currently applying for my own job, if I don't get it I'll end up still employed but doing something new, if I'm successful I get a pay rise, currently in two minds about which I'd prefer. A few others have gone for the same job but it's such a specialised field that "management" had to ask me to write the technical questionnaire. The chances that any of these other people will have a working rig at home? Zero. Because it's a complete pain in the arse to do. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on January 24, 2011, 07:58:30 PM And I have no clue about the backend shit -- how often to do backups, security patching, fail-over setups, replication. I could probably puzzle it out.... As far as I can tell, no DBA does. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Chimpy on January 25, 2011, 04:32:06 AM As someone who took the 2009 Network+ exam, stay the fuck away from CompTIA certs. They changed them to a yearly re-cert (at no discount so 300 bucks a year) from a never expire to gain "legitimacy" (and make more money) and the tests are really just general stuff. As someone who had about 8 months of on the job learning and a self study guide as my only exposure to the content, I passed the test easily. No reason at all for someone to take a prep-class for it imo.
The MCITP enterprise admin regimen actually gives you a cert that contains everything the Network+ exam does so I would go that route. Besides, the Microsoft certs seem to have a lot more cred (I see a lot of requests for MCSA/MCSE/MCITP on skills needed sections of job postings). Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Murgos on January 25, 2011, 06:55:39 AM The only cert I hear about from people actually doing high level (highly paid) IT work (defense contractors, DoD, major labs and similar) and wanting to get something more is I think the CISSP?
The issue with it seems to be that you have to apprentice for 5 years under someone who has it already? Anyway, if you want a long term goal that seems like the one to shoot for from an overall hire ability point of view. TL:DR; I am not in IT and have no idea what I am talking about. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on January 25, 2011, 07:00:03 AM CISSP or CCISP? They've mentioned offering the CCISP, but when I talked to the lady on the phone she was mostly talking about the CompTIA stuff and I was pushing for the other stuff. I left it as 'I'll add you to the professional email list' and give them a week to get their shit together.
Next week I begin the campaign of pestering the shit out of them. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: bhodi on January 25, 2011, 10:04:20 AM CISSP is a serious-business security cert. It's hard to get, since not only are the tests tough but you need a sponsor who currently has one.
I was in heavy study for one before I decided you know what, computer security is almost as retarded as game development and I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining fruitlessly to the weakest link in the security chain (the human element) that they are the weakest link in the security chain. It's kind of like arguing with a pig. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: KallDrexx on January 25, 2011, 10:11:46 AM Everyone I know who works (or has worked for) IT security hates their job and wants to change directions.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Lantyssa on January 25, 2011, 11:10:05 AM I was in heavy study for one before I decided you know what, computer security is almost as retarded as game development and I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining fruitlessly to the weakest link in the security chain (the human element) that they are the weakest link in the security chain. It's kind of like arguing with a pig. It's bad on both ends. You have to explain to people they are the weakest link, but you also have to explain to the other security people that humans have to use the system.Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on January 25, 2011, 11:14:39 AM That's why ideally I'd like to just go into management. :drill: :why_so_serious: :ye_gods: :uhrr:
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Zetor on January 25, 2011, 09:45:29 PM You can do CISA instead of CISSP -- the requirements aren't as strict, and the test itself is easier. On the flipside, it's considered less "techy" and more "manager-y". CISM is worse. :p
Almost everyone at my company has CISA, and about half of the people have CISSP (the ones that have been working here for 5 years anyway), but we're a security research lab; it's pretty much mandatory for us. I don't think these certs are too important otherwise, unless you want to be 'the security guy' at your company. [disclaimer: I have nfi how these certs are ranked in the big-company world] edit: I personally love my job, and so do most of my colleagues. However, we don't really do "IT security" in the sense of configuring firewalls and stuff; instead we do hardware/software auditing, which can be a lot more fun... at least IMO. It's always more fun trying to poke holes in someone else's work than doing your own! :grin: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: bhodi on January 25, 2011, 10:04:47 PM It's not, he's lying to you, hardware/software auditing is spreadsheet & paperwork hell. You can tell because the word "Auditing" is in there.
Though I could be wrong, depending on what/how he has to audit shit, but it's likely the "fun" part of the job is called penetration testing, in which you install and run a program that pokes and prods at the box (completely hands off) and then delivers a 30 page report explaining how patch levels are off and how it's vulnerable to CVE advisory X Y Z. His job likely consists largely of explaining these auto-generated reports to others. :) Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Zetor on January 25, 2011, 10:11:00 PM Nah, we typically do source code analysis and fuzz testing (with our own tool, which is not fully automated)... we try to find new vulns in unreleased prototypes instead of finding CVE-xyz in an existing system. we also participate in some EU research projects and OWASP operations. We do some threat modelling during audit projects as well, but that isn't too much drudgery, at least imo. But I've been known to be insane. :why_so_serious:
e: auditing mobile phones and set top boxes isn't too formulaic either, at least in my experience... Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on January 26, 2011, 07:43:13 AM That's why ideally I'd like to just go into management. :drill: :why_so_serious: :ye_gods: :uhrr: This is easy enough. Get a job and perform poorly, but don't cost the company money via Horrible Mistakes. Also go to lots of meetings and have opinions about everything. You'll be noticed by those who matter. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 10, 2011, 01:39:11 PM Looks like it's Security+ or nothing at this point. There is some talk about the CISSP, but it's vague and I'm not sure how well-managed the program is. The Security + will all be free, so it's no big downer to get, but I wish I knew what the deal was with CISSP as I'd like to hold out for that. I meet in person next week to hand over my info and get my free lewtz, I might push them for a slot in this nascent CISSP instead....
The problem is, if you take one you're done as far as the grant is concerned. I told him I want the S+ and then whatever else I could get. They're trying to lobby the Dep't of Labor (hah), so I'm not optimistic on that. I'm pushing for at least a discount off prep and test for any further certs offered, whoever wrote the grant was pretty clueless, apparently. The official word is that there will be no Cisco or MS certs offered (*nix never even being mentioned until I asked) :oh_i_see: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 10, 2011, 03:00:08 PM This is easy enough. Get a job and perform poorly, but don't cost the company money via Horrible Mistakes. Also go to lots of meetings and have opinions about everything. You'll be noticed by those who matter. Oh, what the fuck ? Between this and the Useless Conversation thread, I'm seriously starting to worry about some of you. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Salamok on March 10, 2011, 03:08:31 PM I wish I knew what the deal was with CISSP as I'd like to hold out for that. I meet in person next week to hand over my info and get my free lewtz, I might push them for a slot in this nascent CISSP instead.... Isn't the main requirement of CISSP a 5 year apprenticeship under someone who already has it? This is easy enough. Get a job and perform poorly, but don't cost the company money via Horrible Mistakes. Also go to lots of meetings and have opinions about everything. You'll be noticed by those who matter. The IT head honchos where I am are the exact opposite, they express opinions on nothing and as such don't leave themselves vulnerable to being wrong. The main skill seems to be "Active Listening". Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 11, 2011, 06:37:04 AM The CISSP requirements are still enforced, but you can get a lesser cert that you can convert into the full CISSP if you then use the lesser cert to get the experience required for full cert. The program is intended for folks already meeting the criteria, though. We have several schools and some DoD folks in the area. I could probably finangle my way in IF they offer it, but it would be a bitch since I'm not really doing that for a living right now (even though it's where I'd probably go if the library dissolves in two years).
The Security+ needs to be renewed every three years if your initial cert is after Jan 1, 2011. Alternately you can pay a yearly maintenance fee :oh_i_see: Used to be ten years. One thing the guy I'm talking to on the phone said was interesting. He said he's excited to do supervisory stints for each class. Apparently there is a lot of supervision written into the grant...and the supervisor basically gets the prep class gratis because he's sitting in. Then he said how swamped they are and how small the department it. I plan on broaching that subject further with my contact when I talk to her in person, after I grab the low-hanging fruit I might be able to get into the staff (part-time) and pick up another cert or three for the cost of the test over the next three years. That would be a total bitch, but facing the first cliff of my career kinda makes it an attractive idea nonetheless.. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 11, 2011, 11:49:13 AM So for the first time in years, they're actually making us do objectives and performance reviews, and one of the things I'm supposed to come up with is a 'professional development' one. Leaning towards a SharePoint cert myself right now, since it combines "easy" with "lucrative".
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 11, 2011, 11:53:16 AM This side of the pond : Sharepoint's a good one to go for.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 11, 2011, 12:16:54 PM I already administer a SharePoint farm without a cert in learn-as-I-go mode (it was handed off to IT after marketing screwed it up, I've got it more or less fixed) so it isn't like it wouldn't be immediately helpful too.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 11, 2011, 12:17:57 PM Lean away from the administration and head towards the construction and design.
Seriously. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 11, 2011, 12:21:02 PM Yeah, that is what I have heard. Getting too much into that in my actual job right now gets into turf war territory, but I fully expect some other people to fail and to get my turn eventually.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 11, 2011, 12:26:15 PM "But really, I feel that Administration courses to teach me stuff I already know would be a waste of your resources. If I understood better how these things get made at the outset, it would give you chaps an extra resource and allow me to be even more efficient."
Try that. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Chimpy on March 11, 2011, 01:00:21 PM Sharepoint is like any database software really, at least in my experience. It is this great piece of technology with all of these amazing uses that people implement in ridiculously fucktarded ways because they don't have someone who understands how to design a database implementation properly set it up.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Salamok on March 11, 2011, 03:24:04 PM I've always thought of sharepoint as Microsoft's answer to the wiki with a dose of Google apps thrown in. Also seems like admins love it because they can point users at it as a self help solution for fucktarded requests, users seem to hate this because most of them are not organized enough to accomplish anything useful with it.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 11, 2011, 04:07:03 PM The database underneath is just SQL, it is all the collaboration stuff on top of it where all the value gets added.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: JoeTF on March 12, 2011, 05:25:24 AM Lean away from the administration and head towards the construction and design. Seriously. Why? Could you elaborate more on that, for us newbies? Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: fuser on March 12, 2011, 01:20:14 PM Could you elaborate more on that, for us newbies? I'm guessing per any IT related activity sysadmin sucks and an unrewarding job. Designing and building things get seen by management for better compensation and parlay over to consulting. I swear to god if there was a Splunk (http://www.splunk.com/) certification i'd recommend it in a heart beat. There is so much business logic reporting/dash-boarding you can do it's insane. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 13, 2011, 12:21:47 AM It's exactly that. Administration of existing systems is seen as an easier ride and pays as such. Every now and again you'll get an Admin that will push the envelope and do nice things to your system, but for the most part you're paying a caretaker.
With the Design and Development role, you're asking to build something new, something that fits new purpose and something that's flexible. That's inherently added value right there and gets more grease. Who would you pay more ? The guy who says 'Aye, it's all ok' every day or the guy who says 'Chaps were having problems with repeated manual inputs, so I built this new input form to deal with it.' Yeah. That's what I thought. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Lantyssa on March 13, 2011, 06:01:05 AM The person who says "Aye, it's all okay" is also prime territory for being cut because no one realizes just how shitty their life is without them until after everything falls apart.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Trouble on March 13, 2011, 06:09:09 AM Reading this thread reminds me the term "IT" really needs some sort of update to reflect how it currently represents way too broad a swath of actual job functions and area of expertise. As a software developer, and even moreso as a web developer, I'm technically classed as "IT" but almost nothing in the system/network/security admin area crosses over. I personally know how to admin and run a webserver and I know how to maintain my own computer as a pretty high level, but neither of those skills are actually required or part of my job. The separation between development and hardware + network/sys admin is growing even bigger every day, as the whole stack is becoming commoditized via cloud hosting and one-click virtualization that requires zero knowledge of how anything besides your development stack (programming language, database, etc.) works.
I just had to laugh at the thought of some sort of certification existing in web development. I have 300 feeds piping into my reader and I spend an hour every day just to keep current on shit because of how quickly things are changing, being added, and how quickly new platforms (mobile/tablet) are popping up each with specific quirks and considerations and technical specs. A certification in all but the most basic stuff would be out of date in a month or three. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Morat20 on March 13, 2011, 08:27:09 AM Sharepoint is like any database software really, at least in my experience. It is this great piece of technology with all of these amazing uses that people implement in ridiculously fucktarded ways because they don't have someone who understands how to design a database implementation properly set it up. I'm job-hunting right now and Sharepoint comes up all the fucking time. I hate saying "I have very little clue what that is" since, you know, that's never good on the interview. On the other hand, I've never used it for anything. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 13, 2011, 08:50:59 AM The person who says "Aye, it's all okay" is also prime territory for being cut because no one realizes just how shitty their life is without them until after everything falls apart. And as Trouble rightly points out, this is the guy who gets outsourced when the infrastructure gets put up in the cloud at Amazon or Rackspace or, God Help Us, Salesforce. The designer is the chap that's needed to translate. Trust me on this, I have personal experience; Just before I resigned the last place, we were in discussions to fire all 3 Admin/infrastructure people and then make a decision on whether to hire new tech developers or retrain the current developers. The IT Dept as it has been known for the last ten years is over. Utterly over. Just like the chaps that used to look after the electricity generators in the factories. Heh. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 13, 2011, 08:52:09 AM Sharepoint is like any database software really, at least in my experience. It is this great piece of technology with all of these amazing uses that people implement in ridiculously fucktarded ways because they don't have someone who understands how to design a database implementation properly set it up. I'm job-hunting right now and Sharepoint comes up all the fucking time. I hate saying "I have very little clue what that is" since, you know, that's never good on the interview. On the other hand, I've never used it for anything. So use it. It's fucking easy. Get yourself a 'SHAREPOINT FOR ASSHOLES' book and then install an Amazon server to play about with it. It'll cost you buttons and it's well worth it to figure it out. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: fuser on March 13, 2011, 01:50:50 PM The designer is the chap that's needed to translate. Trust me on this, I have personal experience; Just before I resigned the last place, we were in discussions to fire all 3 Admin/infrastructure people and then make a decision on whether to hire new tech developers or retrain the current developers. The IT Dept as it has been known for the last ten years is over. Utterly over. Just like the chaps that used to look after the electricity generators in the factories. Heh. I'll disagree in some respects that the day of an IT department is over, and yes the role has shifted (at least for most people). An IT department is still needed in quite a few scenarios in big business where they have a current infrastructure that doesn't make sense to migrate away from. Besides that there is still a lot of planning and management that you need to do with services like EC2 as its not a straight developer stack to hosted mode but more a physical to cloud migration of your existing resources. My admin role has switched from managing most physical hardware to VM/hosted instances and planning. I cannot even remember the last time I had to crack open a machine for service that OEM hardware has gotten so reliable, and that use to be a major focus of the department. An admin today needs not to be proficient in one technology but riding the edge of whats out there and helping shape where a company should move to. Trouble just as you mention trouble that you need to keep up on so many feeds to keep abreast on html the sysadmin world is moving at the same pace for every piece of technology that an admin needs to be following today. If a client asks you can they use OS X for their work email you need to be aware that 10.6 introducing support for outlook via web with Exchange, if they have a smart phone what will or won't work plus how do you set it up. As a real world example I cannot begin to describe how many changes there has been to hosting Ruby code. Our application stack changed so much due to needs of the application from cgi, fastcgi, mongrel, thin, passenger, unicorn in the past 5 years. If you consider then database planning from the development shift from SQL to NoSQL databases an admin generally has to be on the bleeding edge or ahead of the pack. It's totally silly to even consider doing an Exchange roll-out as it's way more cost effective and feature rich to migrate a SMB service to a platform such as Google apps just to refocus the IT efforts. Seriously try to use Outlook Web Access and tell me it's not in the dark ages. Managing a SMTP in this day and age is time consuming and stupid waste of resources(data link, servers, licenses, user management, power, redundancy, etc), its somewhere Google has a huge lead in the market that is killing off the needs for "traditional" admins to support user email/office/desktop. Of all the talk of SharePoint training and development, I have yet to see one SharePoint server used in any sort of respectable way, everyone uses it as a wiki or document change control. It's a technology that requires a big buy in(Server, Office, Desktop OS, Sharepoint server licenses/cals) and a key resource (a business analyst) to do your business logic workflow inside of it and tons of user training. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 13, 2011, 02:52:25 PM I'm not sure you actually disagreed in any respects.
:awesome_for_real: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: fuser on March 14, 2011, 07:55:57 AM The IT Dept as it has been known for the last ten years is over. Utterly over. Just like the chaps that used to look after the electricity generators in the factories. Heh. Just wanted to clarify anyone looking in how most it departments have transitioned but some big business is still the same. When I originally read your post it was like "We're gutting IT, death to them!" :why_so_serious: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 14, 2011, 09:30:02 AM We're drifting farther and farther away from the point of the thread and into our own thread, so all I'll say in answer to that is :
Do you think your business would scruple to get rid of IT departments if they could do so ? Given your obvious answer to this, and given the rise of outsourcing and SaaS opportunities that are more commonly available with decreasing costs, do you think a career move that relies solely on adminstration is a good idea ? You say Big Businesses aren't moving yet and you're correct : My point is that it makes most sense for big businesses to do so, given cost savings and other benefits, and once the scales tip that's Just What They're Going To Do. This isn't just my opinion either.... Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 14, 2011, 09:42:05 AM Someone has to do the work. If it's outsourced to a third party, go work for the third party.
I start the Security+ stuff next week. We'll see how that goes, the management of the program doesn't instill much confidence. And the 'career specialist' just sent all the emails with everyone in the To: field. :oh_i_see: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 14, 2011, 10:56:25 AM You're entirely correct.
Except for that pesky 'Limited Seating Available' thing. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 14, 2011, 11:59:00 AM Welcome to the end game of global capitalism.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Salamok on March 14, 2011, 05:32:06 PM IT Administration seems to be 90% wiping users noses and 10% systems admin. It used to be much more fun when it was 70-80% building, balancing and supporting all the fledgling systems that have since become robust enough to not require the attention they once had. Pretty much why I bailed for the dev side was I just got tired of expending nearly all my energy supporting moronic users from themselves.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Trouble on March 15, 2011, 01:50:12 AM Despite hardware platform quantities technically increasing, the relatively relability and need to for manual maintenance is going down at an incredible rate. In computers/IT "disruptive" technologies are more common than not (where the rest of the world only gets to see the crazyness of it occasionally). The whole cloud thing sounded like a bullshit marketing technique for a couple of years. But no, it's actually how shit it is going from top to bottom. When you can deploy pre-optimized images on demand to shards of computers, guaranteed 100.000000% uptime given the fact you're delivering from a hundred geographically disparate data centers nearly instantly and it's 100% transparent to clients/users... Well let's just say that it's not going to be long before the majority of that job force from the past and and the current is going to be fighting over the small to mid size companies who haven't figured out Google Apps is far better, cheaper, and more effective than anything they could do themselves.
There absolutely is room for people manning datacenters, people doing the hard planning and thinking, etc. But that's like talking about the guy who runs 100 robots at the car factories. Be that guy and you're good. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: JoeTF on March 15, 2011, 03:42:28 AM From what you say, old-style IT-admin is shrinking field. Yet bunch of job growth reports (ie. US Department of Labor) say that there will be positive growth in number of sys- and net-admin jobs.
So, wtf? Are those guys totally out of touch with reality, or are we missing some part of the puzzle? Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 15, 2011, 03:58:16 AM As Sky pointed out, as the Cloud and SaaS operators grow, more will move into the market to compete. This will create the short-term growth of positions available : The admins will be needed at the big farms. The competition here will be large, I suspect, with a lot of currently well-off 'dabblers' not making the cut.
Like any other competitive marketplace, this will eventually shrink and stabilise until the next thing comes along to kick its ass. In My Opinion. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Trouble on March 15, 2011, 09:01:41 AM Yeah admins of various kinds will be a growth industry for a while. But the technology very much lends itself to automation as well and automation wins out long term wherever it's viable. Stuff like security focused It guys will see a growth piece of pie short and long term I'm guessing.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 15, 2011, 09:21:31 AM Dep't of Labor is investing in security training right now, that's where the grant for my cert is coming from, and they dropped all but security-focused certs from the program. Somebody is fed up with teh hacks.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Morat20 on March 15, 2011, 01:51:36 PM So use it. It's fucking easy. Get yourself a 'SHAREPOINT FOR ASSHOLES' book and then install an Amazon server to play about with it. It'll cost you buttons and it's well worth it to figure it out. One of the companies I'm interviewing for is pretty big with Sharepoint, but their first statement was "You do C#? Web development? SQL? Yeah, no, you can already do the hard stuff. We'll teach you Sharepoint. How do you feel about travel?"Admittedly, that's just the nice HR person and not their hard-ass "I'm going to screen you for technical skills" actual phone interview. This was the buzzword person. OTOH, they're also a Microsoft Gold-something or other group, so I'm pretty certain that means working there would lead to certifications. Of course, on the third hand, they're basically consultants and trouble-shooters for document management, meaning it's basically custom tweaks to fit client needs. (So travel sounds like 'Requirements and Spec meetings" and "Implementation/prototyping handholding") Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on March 15, 2011, 01:54:41 PM IT Administration seems to be 90% wiping users noses and 10% systems admin. It used to be much more fun when it was 70-80% building, balancing and supporting all the fledgling systems that have since become robust enough to not require the attention they once had. Pretty much why I bailed for the dev side was I just got tired of expending nearly all my energy supporting moronic users from themselves. See, you need yourself a nice batch of people across an ocean or two to handle this for you, then you can start attending meetings and proposing shit. I've said recently, more than once, "I think Manilla is supposed to be doing that." Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 16, 2011, 12:49:56 AM One of the companies I'm interviewing for is pretty big with Sharepoint, but their first statement was "You do C#? Web development? SQL? Yeah, no, you can already do the hard stuff. We'll teach you Sharepoint. If you can do all that, Sharepoint is just a name. You should poke your nose into it to reassure yourself of that and then put it on your CV. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Salamok on March 16, 2011, 01:07:54 AM IT Administration seems to be 90% wiping users noses and 10% systems admin. It used to be much more fun when it was 70-80% building, balancing and supporting all the fledgling systems that have since become robust enough to not require the attention they once had. Pretty much why I bailed for the dev side was I just got tired of expending nearly all my energy supporting moronic users from themselves. See, you need yourself a nice batch of people across an ocean or two to handle this for you, then you can start attending meetings and proposing shit. I've said recently, more than once, "I think Manilla is supposed to be doing that." One of the companies I'm interviewing for is pretty big with Sharepoint, but their first statement was "You do C#? Web development? SQL? Yeah, no, you can already do the hard stuff. We'll teach you Sharepoint. If you can do all that, Sharepoint is just a name. You should poke your nose into it to reassure yourself of that and then put it on your CV. You are literally the 1st person I have ever run across that doesn't on some level agree that sharepoint is a total piece of shit, is your positive experience coming from actual use of the product or is your exposure limited to a "managed it to a successful deployment w/o having to use it on a daily basis" role? Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 16, 2011, 02:31:58 AM You are literally the 1st person I have ever run across that doesn't on some level agree that sharepoint is a total piece of shit, Point to the part of the thread where I mentioned anything positive or negative about Sharepoint itself. I dare you. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Lantyssa on March 16, 2011, 06:24:51 AM *points to the post above this one*
I can hear it. In your voice. Right there. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 16, 2011, 06:35:50 AM I'm pointing at the thread's private parts.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 16, 2011, 07:36:08 AM *points to the post above this one* I can hear it. In your voice. Right there. Silence, or I shall bring you to your knees. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Morat20 on March 16, 2011, 10:18:22 AM If you can do all that, Sharepoint is just a name. You should poke your nose into it to reassure yourself of that and then put it on your CV. I might just do that. *sigh*. My problem with resumes -- and interviews -- is I'm just not big on padding myself or my resume. I seem to be forced to say things like "Oh, yes, I've done four or five years of that -- but that was ten years ago" or "Well, admittedly C# is the bastard love child of Java and C, which I have so much experience I could probably write the compiler in my sleep, but I technically only have like 3 years experience. Really only 2".Whereas I'm pretty sure that, to most people, they say "I've fucked with C# for like a month, and it's so much like Java that I'll just say I have five years of it, and hide my learning curve under "I'm a bit rusty" if hired." So I get the nasty feeling my resume is being taken with a grain of salt I technically already applied, because I can't seem to exaggerate at all. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on March 16, 2011, 10:36:37 AM Well, perhaps the less said the better. Cut yourself off after the comma in each case. At least don't undercut yourself, even if you can't exaggerate.
To circle back on my previous posting on the Peter Principle, I will say that I have spent much too long being much too bitter about something that is actually a good thing. Also, certain lackluster elements of the organization are being or have been replaced, and the remaining people seem a fine enough sort. After 12+ months, the culling is coming to a close. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Zetor on March 16, 2011, 10:53:10 AM I'm forced use Sharepoint at work, but it's not that bad. Well, we actually don't use the web interface at all, just the ability to share documents and edit them concurrently with office2010. As soon as we discover another collaboration suite that allows us to do that, we're so outta there!
Re C#: it is kind of like a sucky Java. Or Java is like a sucky C#. Depends on who you ask... :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Chimpy on March 16, 2011, 12:56:36 PM Microsoft is serious about Sharepoint. And since you are probably not going to see many companies drop using MS Office, as Sharepoint continues to mature and improve you are going to see a lot more deployments of it as good interoperability between your collaboration suite and the applications your end users already know/use is a big selling point.
And Sharepoint (like anything) is always limited by quality of the implementation. The company I worked at used a quickly kludged together web-portal front-end to their Sharepoint server that left a lot to be desired. But I blame that almost entirely on their horrendous IT policies and practices, not on the technology. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Morat20 on March 16, 2011, 02:56:21 PM And Sharepoint (like anything) is always limited by quality of the implementation. The company I worked at used a quickly kludged together web-portal front-end to their Sharepoint server that left a lot to be desired. But I blame that almost entirely on their horrendous IT policies and practices, not on the technology. lol. I have a technical screening tomorrow with a company whose entire business model is just that -- throwing together web-portal front ends for Sharepoint. Straight B2B stuff. I think they do other things as well (they're a fairly sizeable consultant firm) but that's the segment they're looking at me for. I swear, months of nada and suddenly I'm consumed by phone interviews and screenings and crap. Worst of all, the ones moving the fastest is the job I want to take the least, with the shittiest commute (although good pay). Trying to put them off long enough to see if any of the others pan out is a killer. But to echo your point -- everyone keeps mentioning Sharepoint. EVERYONE. It's on at least half the jobs listings I've checked. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: bhodi on March 16, 2011, 05:17:50 PM Remember, Sharepoint is activex, so it doesn't work on macs. At all. And it fucking sucks. But so does most collaborative software, I guess.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 16, 2011, 05:19:05 PM A lot of it doesn't work properly in Chrome or FF, for that matter.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Trouble on March 16, 2011, 06:21:30 PM Google motherfucking docs. I hope there's no companies that aren't already well into the MS teet thinking of implementing Sharepoint as their starting point. There's any number of much better solutions. The MS "Buyin" is no longer tenable with the last few years of lightspeed web advancement. ActiveX? Seriously?
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Chimpy on March 16, 2011, 06:32:37 PM GoogleDocs is fine and dandy for a way to share documents, but their web apps for spreadsheets and word processing blow as much or more than Sharepoint does as a document sharing tool.
I am not a huge fan of Microsoft or many of their applications, but the whole "let google do everything for us!" mantra is not any better. It also has nothing to do with the topic of the thread which was about what places would be good to get certification in, and whether any of us like it or think it is total garbage, Sharepoint IS something that companies are using and will continue to use. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Trouble on March 16, 2011, 06:43:10 PM Just pointing out there are alternatives. I'm sure there's other better ones but I haven't done the research. Microsoft tie in isn't something you want with the proliferation of platforms that aren't Windows though, I know that much.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 22, 2011, 11:20:17 AM Avoiding derail in the book thread:
Security + Guide to Network Security Fundamentals. Whee. We have a forum component to the class, and the bulk of my posting thus far is critiquing the book. One exercise is to download an app that disables writes to a USB drive. A book on security points to an (ad-laden) website (hey, the guy's getting free hits from the book) and then to DOWNLOAD AN EXE...the best part is that the app's author clearly states, above the download link...all it does is flip a registry bit. So rather than explain how to do that (or at this level, just tell you the path, derp)...Not to mention there's an even better way to do it with a custom .adm that it took me all of one second to find on google. Ye gods. The example RSS feed has an ad between each entry of the feed. :oh_i_see: Again, crazy not to, with the free traffic from the book. But so obnoxious and my mind can't help but rebel. And that's not even getting into the tests themselves, how is it really testing my readiness for hardening my network to know "___ billion dollars was lost due to the Blaster/whatever" I'll take 'a shitload' for the total amount of relevance, Alex. Grr. I do so badly with structured learning, because so much of it is nonsensical. And memorization prioritized over critical thought :oh_i_see: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: fuser on March 22, 2011, 12:24:41 PM We have a forum component to the class, and the bulk of my posting thus far is critiquing the book. One exercise is to download an app that disables writes to a USB drive. Why... why... why for yegods sake are they not using Group Policies?! Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 22, 2011, 12:36:06 PM On that tangent, I was bummed when the Gates Foundation handed over their old public computer security tool (basically some custom policy files) to Microsoft, who ended that program and started Steady State (which is ok, but much more closed). Then they made Steady State into a decent (but limited) product...and end that program with no Vista/7 support. :mob:
Had one woman in the course recognize me. She used to work for Dell and remembered me getting frustrated with her slowness (she put it nicer than that!) during a mobo swap and I just did the swap in the time she was laying out her materials :p Funny how things stick in people's minds, I'd totally forgotten. About half of the 15-person class has no right being there, Derp Alert. I look at some of the brainiacs here and feel incompetent, and then I see the real morons and remember I can at least get the job done :p Also, the instructor responded to my post about the exe download by putting out a big yellow banner that the exercises were optional and not to run them on their personal PCs and to only run them on a test installation (because most students have access to that?). This is kind of meta fun. Really enjoying the kick in the pants, too. First structured learning I've done in six or seven years. Really needed this to refresh the skill sets. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ironwood on March 22, 2011, 12:48:40 PM Had one woman in the course recognize me. She used to work for Dell and remembered me getting frustrated with her slowness (she put it nicer than that!) during a mobo swap and I just did the swap in the time she was laying out her materials :p Funny how things stick in people's minds, I'd totally forgotten. Heh. You could really have shortened that story. Try this : One woman in the course recognised me as an utter cunt. See ? So much shorter. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 22, 2011, 01:01:20 PM We have a forum component to the class, and the bulk of my posting thus far is critiquing the book. One exercise is to download an app that disables writes to a USB drive. Why... why... why for yegods sake are they not using Group Policies?! I can only assume this is not in an AD environment, because otherwise yeah, it would be completely retarded to not use Group Policies. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 22, 2011, 01:52:47 PM You could still set it up with local policies, at least that's how we were doing it before.
IW, an utter cunt who she remembers fondly for teaching her how to quickly install a motherboard Or maybe the word means something different on the Isle of Uttercunt :) Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: fuser on March 22, 2011, 02:09:37 PM On that tangent, I was bummed when the Gates Foundation handed over their old public computer security tool (basically some custom policy files) to Microsoft, who ended that program and started Steady State (which is ok, but much more closed). Then they made Steady State into a decent (but limited) product...and end that program with no Vista/7 support. :mob: Ah so that's where Steady State came from? I remember using those policy files and building upon them on further PC deployments in a public environment. We gave up on trying to secure the pc via registry, policies, file, and bought DeepFreeze licenses. I can only assume this is not in an AD environment, because otherwise yeah, it would be completely retarded to not use Group Policies. But you can use local Group Policies to secure a standalone PC. Needless to say this can be defeated by a varity of methods but so can a registry flag :grin: Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Ingmar on March 22, 2011, 02:12:10 PM I assume what the exe in question is doing is just changing the local security policy. I do agree it would be better just to teach people how to do that themselves, but hey, then they wouldn't get the ad dollars. :awesome_for_real:
EDIT: Oh I see, just a registry flag indeed. Even better. Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 22, 2011, 08:06:29 PM Ah so that's where Steady State came from? I remember using those policy files and building upon them on further PC deployments in a public environment. We gave up on trying to secure the pc via registry, policies, file, and bought DeepFreeze licenses. Actually, I give a lot of credit to MS on this one. They really developed the SS app to the point where it's almost perfect for our library setting, a nice balance of security and usability. I like having the degree of control over OS, IE and Office components, automagic updates and disk protection all in one package. Every morning I come in and see the computer doing its own upgrades without having to dick around with the disk protection, I grin. It's been interesting watching OSX and Windows go back and forth over the years for the ease-of-use and features crowns (from a management standpoint).Also, while I've urged the libraries in our system for years to move to it, they're all using Deep Freeze. I like "free" :) Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on March 22, 2011, 08:25:30 PM Woke up this morning, decided to get an AIX 6.1 Admin cert.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on March 23, 2011, 06:26:55 AM Woke up this morning, decided to get an AIX 6.1 Admin cert. World's oddest blues song.Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Yegolev on March 23, 2011, 09:01:21 AM Works best with trumpet or cornet.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on April 26, 2011, 09:07:36 AM Sitting the Security+ exam this Saturday. Nervous.
The prep course was garbage, already griped about the lame book. For the final week of prep, someone started a thread bitching about the materials and how they felt woefully underprepared, echoed by just about everyone. We all shared a bunch of supplemental stuff we've been using, but total silence from the "Professor". Then he pipes up on Sunday (closing day) and says the book is all you need, everything is fine, ra-ra pom-poms, look at how great everyone did. When we start with 15 people, end with 10 and only 7 (including me) qualified for the voucher with 85% on open book tests? Either way it goes on Saturday, I'm going to be taking complaints (along with several classmates) to the administrators of the grant. Going to try for an exemption on the '1 cert' rule of the grant, based on the utter mis-handling of this guinea pig session (all my insisting got me in the first round of Security+ prep). Might be able to get a CEH out of it, not sure if I'm ready to tackle CISSP or be able to meet the experience requirements (unless I have to go find a new job, I guess, won't know that until May or October). Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on April 30, 2011, 10:03:25 AM Several of the folks taking the test were wicked cocky. They all bombed. The woman I mentioned (who used to work for Dell) and I were both nervous and we were the only two who had used supplemental material. She passed with an 85%, I got a 94%. In the end it was an easy exam but I'm glad I over-prepared anyway.
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Selby on April 30, 2011, 11:10:04 AM They all bombed. This was my favorite part of college: watching cocky assholes bomb tests. Congratulations on passing!Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: RhyssaFireheart on April 30, 2011, 03:23:46 PM Congrats, Sky!
Title: Re: IT Certs Post by: Sky on April 30, 2011, 09:36:52 PM My fiancee is taking an intermediate level class with one of the program administrators...2 people passed my exam. She also said they're trying to push for 'exceptional' students to be allowed multiple certs from the program, so there's a possible CISSP or CEH that might be available. I plan on doing a post-mortem with the program admin about our shitty "professor", though I'm pretty sure with 2/15 pass rate it's pretty obvious it's not working.
Less than an hour after passing I had my first offer from the Chamber of Commerce to do a presentation later this year :grin: |