C'mon Team Linus! Help an IT instructor out!

[LogicalDrm]

Answering this with point of view from someone who does have degrees and certs, just not from IT. I can say based on my certs that they don't equal any professional knowledge. Just like education only gives background, not actually how to do your job.

 

As for should LMG staff take courses/exams for these certs, should they do videos about them and so on. Let's start by talking what background those writing scripts and being in front of camera have.

 

Linus is college drop-out with professional experience from marketing and entertainment. Would he benefit from taking exams? Probably not. Alex has engineering background. He probably has some paper saying so. Would he benefit from exam? I doubt it. Jake and Anthony are the ones that would maybe benefit from taking/showing some certs. Would viewers benefit from knowing this? Probably not.

 

So LMG members taking cert exams is pointless in terms of their work and how their opinions and experiences are displayed to audience. Should LMG make video about these certs, what they are and how important they are for someone working in industry? Sure. But who of the crew has actually worked in IT industry? It's probably worst premium tech channel for that. When you have Level1 Tech and Wendell who has businesses in the industry. You could ask Jay who was working in IT before going full time on YT. You have Barnacules who was part of Microsofts QA team before being laid off.

[Kilrah]

On 5/22/2020 at 7:31 AM, USMCallinan said:

At least go sit for the CompTIA A+ exam (Through pearsonvue)...    SO many of your fans would love to make a career in IT but don't know where to start!

I guess you work for them and are looking for some business? Some have pretty strong opinions about certs:

 

 

I tend to think the same, I would avoid jobs that take these as a measure of whether someone is valuable since they only tend to validate basic knowledge you can learn by heart, but not assess someone's reasoning, which is ultimately the most valuable. I.e. if I see a job that wants these I'll assume there's a high probability they just need someone who'll be following scripts rather than actually get to be creative...

 

As someone said I see it as "falling in line" instead of "standing out", and you have to pay $$$$$ for that?

 

[Slayerking92]

On 5/21/2020 at 11:37 PM, Samfisher said:

What is this thread

Its called a "shitpost"

[leadeater]

@Dutch_Master Some great examples of the issue here

 

[Roswell]

I feel like IT is one of the few sectors where people get unreasonably sure of themselves that they can succeed without an education. 

 

If you want to be taken seriously and grow in the industry beyond help desk, forget about certifications, you need a degree.

[Evolution.]

I'm enjoying the chaos that is occurring in this thread but on a serious note certificates can only do so much for landing a job. 

[Jtrizzy]

I am an IT manager, and I have only 1 cert, the most basic of basic A+. Experience outweighs any certs IMHO, and I have 20 years of it. I guess every company is different and some require certs and some don't. Are they necessary? No, are they great sure, do they build knowledge? sure, but breaking shit and fixing it yourself, creating a lab at home is the best way to learn and be creative. I am not a book person, and never did great on tests. I do have a computer science degree, but I can pretty much wipe my ass with it because its useless. I learned the most when someone gave me a used server (windows server 2000). I setup a lab at home, and went to town creating my own environment. With all the youtube training these days, you can learn to build and troubleshoot a server environment rather easily. Learning virtualization, AWS, Microsoft Azure & 365 is what will rocket you to the top. That is the way of the future when it comes to medium business and enterprise.

[WereCatf]

25 minutes ago, Jtrizzy said:

but breaking shit and fixing it yourself, creating a lab at home is the best way to learn and be creative. I am not a book person, and never did great on tests

 

25 minutes ago, Jtrizzy said:

I learned the most when someone gave me a used server (windows server 2000). I setup a lab at home, and went to town creating my own environment

The thing about exams and certs is that, well, what they really teach you is how to answer those exams: there are a whole fuckton of people around with a bag full of certificates, but when they come across a problem they didn't specifically learn about, they'll have trouble applying their knowledge. I've met a lot of such people myself.

 

Me, I probably wouldn't pass any exam right-off-the-bat, but I've definitely learned ways of using some creativity and intuition in order to fix stuff or improve things. Never gotten any official education in IT, but I am always experimenting with stuff at home, like e.g. I just threw myself up a HA Kubernetes-cluster with a distributed filesystem on a separate backhaul from my regular LAN at home, spread over the two buildings -- a great learning experience and some great new skills in my pocket. Not to mention it was fun, as well!

[Jtrizzy]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

 

The thing about exams and certs is that, well, what they really teach you is how to answer those exams: there are a whole fuckton of people around with a bag full of certificates, but when they come across a problem they didn't specifically learn about, they'll have trouble applying their knowledge. I've met a lot of such people myself.

 

Me, I probably wouldn't pass any exam right-off-the-bat, but I've definitely learned ways of using some creativity and intuition in order to fix stuff or improve things. Never gotten any official education in IT, but I am always experimenting with stuff at home, like e.g. I just threw myself up a HA Kubernetes-cluster with a distributed filesystem on a separate backhaul from my regular LAN at home, spread over the two buildings -- a great learning experience and some great new skills in my pocket. Not to mention it was fun, as well!

Couldn't agree more with what @WereCatf said. Another way to gain knowledge, if you are in school is intern with a IT MSP or an internal IT department with a medium to enterprise size business. You won't get paid, BUT, the experience and knowledge you will gain in a few years will be more than what you will learn in school. It is very easy to get your hands on networking equipment for cheap or free from these internal IT companies as they upgrade their existing infrastructure.  Learning to configure a firewall for instance (you learn one, you learn all, they ALL do the same thing just worded different) will be valuable. How to configure nat policies, routing policies, VLAN's etc. Those are all SUPER useful in the real world. I always give my techs the same advice when they start out in Level 1 position, if this something you truly are passionate about and want to advance, learn as much as you can and not just at work, on your own time. You can only learn so much at work as most issues are the same or reoccurring with different clients. How much can you possible learn installing printer drivers and resting AD and email passwords? Not a hell of a lot. Research and learning on your own time is key.

[Dutch_Master]

1 hour ago, Jtrizzy said:

I am an IT manager, and I have only 1 cert, the most basic of basic A+. Experience outweighs any certs IMHO, and I have 20 years of it. I guess every company is different and some require certs and some don't.

Well and exactly therein lies the problem: IT managers, who assumingly either advise HR folk on what type of staff they need or do the selection themselves, want experience and simply don't give a toss about certs. Remember, I'm not a High School Graduate, I already had a 15yr career in a totally different field and now wants to switch over into IT. It's people like me, who want to work but simply don't have the experience managers like you require, that can't get a job, not even as a trainee (too old!) or junior position, just because managers have unrealistic views on the current job market. I have news for you: the pool you're fishing in, is empty! And has been for some time. Yes, I totally understand why you want an experienced IT-staffer for as little money as you can get away with. But those aren't around anymore, because literally everybody wants that same bloke (or gal, very modern these days!) for their job vacancies.

 

So, in actual fact, you've confirmed what I wrote initially: if you don't have experience in IT, you won't get it as no-one will hire you for your lack of experience and the industry keeps complaining bitterly about not having enough candidates, if at all

 

(no offence, nothing personal, but I do get quite angry when doing the best I can with the lack of resources I have to face in my personal situation doesn't even get acknowledged by companies looking for new staff)

 

PS: although I know how to make Bash scripts, write simple HTML pages and some basic CSS, I'm not a coder. And learning to code takes time. Time I don't have given my age, as I'm already pretty much too old for employers anyway (40+!)

[Kilrah]

Changing careers and not knowing much about what you want to get into isn't easy regardless of field, especially if it's very technical. 

 

Older people are also unlikely to be as flexible and "malleable" than a youngster, they won't accept conditions that you can give to a young guy entering the job market.

[Jtrizzy]

59 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Well and exactly therein lies the problem: IT managers, who assumingly either advise HR folk on what type of staff they need or do the selection themselves, want experience and simply don't give a toss about certs. Remember, I'm not a High School Graduate, I already had a 15yr career in a totally different field and now wants to switch over into IT. It's people like me, who want to work but simply don't have the experience managers like you require, that can't get a job, not even as a trainee (too old!) or junior position, just because managers have unrealistic views on the current job market. I have news for you: the pool you're fishing in, is empty! And has been for some time. Yes, I totally understand why you want an experienced IT-staffer for as little money as you can get away with. But those aren't around anymore, because literally everybody wants that same bloke (or gal, very modern these days!) for their job vacancies.

 

So, in actual fact, you've confirmed what I wrote initially: if you don't have experience in IT, you won't get it as no-one will hire you for your lack of experience and the industry keeps complaining bitterly about not having enough candidates, if at all

 

(no offence, nothing personal, but I do get quite angry when doing the best I can with the lack of resources I have to face in my personal situation doesn't even get acknowledged by companies looking for new staff)

 

PS: although I know how to make Bash scripts, write simple HTML pages and some basic CSS, I'm not a coder. And learning to code takes time. Time I don't have given my age, as I'm already pretty much too old for employers anyway (40+!)

We hire Level 1 techs that don’t have any certs or experience all the time. We train them and on average within 12 months they have bee promoted to escalation tech. We are looking for some right now actually. I never once said we don’t hire people without experience. Just don’t expect to get paid $50k+ with no experience. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

On 5/22/2020 at 7:39 AM, USMCallinan said:

Im not sure, but I want the Linus team to take certs and give feedback!  I FORCE my students to watch Linus Tech Tips!  LOL

you force them to watch a channel that's just for entertainment purposes and that frequently gets things wrong? 

 

i feel bad for the students.

[Dutch_Master]

2 hours ago, Jtrizzy said:

We hire Level 1 techs that don’t have any certs or experience all the time. We train them and on average within 12 months they have bee promoted to escalation tech. We are looking for some right now actually. I never once said we don’t hire people without experience. Just don’t expect to get paid $50k+ with no experience. 

Thx for clarifying that. I'm glad to hear you do and my best wishes for your venture as well as for your staff, unfortunately it seems you're quite a minority. Even then, I doubt we'll meet anytime soon as I reckon you're not in Europe, let alone in my country

[foldingNoob]

you seem like the monorail guy from the simpsons. Certs are useless. Get the job first then get the employer to pay for the certs they need. I find many employers looking for entry level 1 staff are looking for customer service/retail experience, not qualifications. I got my foot in the door by working as a security guard/door man to a commercial property. I have no certs, only an unrelated science degree.

[Samfisher]

On 5/24/2020 at 1:38 PM, Vitamanic said:

I feel like IT is one of the few sectors where people get unreasonably sure of themselves that they can succeed without an education. 

 

If you want to be taken seriously and grow in the industry beyond help desk, forget about certifications, you need a degree.

You contradict yourself here.  A degree has very little useful knowledge by the time you're out in the working world.  Certifications rule the IT world and provide more actual useful knowledge than a degree.

[Roswell]

2 hours ago, Samfisher said:

You contradict yourself here.  A degree has very little useful knowledge by the time you're out in the working world.  Certifications rule the IT world and provide more actual useful knowledge than a degree.

Yeah sure, if you just want to make scraps at a help desk or make WordPress sites for doughnut shops, rely on certs. However, if you want an actual career path in real IT, you need a degree.

 

If you want to be a network engineer, systems administrator, programmer, network/solutions architect, software engineer, designer, database admin, DevOps, InfoSec and so on... you need a degree. Nobody is going to pay you that kind of money because "you taught yourself" and have an A+ and Cisco cert, lol.  

[LogicalDrm]

4 hours ago, Samfisher said:

You contradict yourself here.  A degree has very little useful knowledge by the time you're out in the working world.  Certifications rule the IT world and provide more actual useful knowledge than a degree.

If we would look with very narrow sight, a degree of anything is only good for very static fields of science and research. Aka none outside of history. Science and research are developing fields. Having a degree means that you know basics of the field. They are grinded into your backbone. If you only learn on the job, they don't bother teaching you basics, the reasons why things are done. So you only learn how one company does things, not why they do it that way.

[Samfisher]

19 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Yeah sure, if you just want to make scraps at a help desk or make WordPress sites for doughnut shops, rely on certs. However, if you want an actual career path in real IT, you need a degree.

 

If you want to be a network engineer, systems administrator, programmer, network/solutions architect, software engineer, designer, database admin, DevOps, InfoSec and so on... you need a degree. Nobody is going to pay you that kind of money because "you taught yourself" and have an A+ and Cisco cert, lol.  

What?  I was a network engineer, currently a systems admin.  No interest in programming so I'll never be a programmer.  I never did my degree, and I'm doing fine with my career.  In fact, I've never ever made just scraps from my IT work.  Will I ever be filthy rich?  No, and neither will the vast majority of people with degrees.  I chose to skip out on my degree as the cost would be prohibitive beyond imagination where I come from, and have thrived on working hard and working smart, making connections and learning skills I actually need for the job.

[Roswell]

17 minutes ago, Samfisher said:

What?  I was a network engineer, currently a systems admin.  No interest in programming so I'll never be a programmer.  I never did my degree, and I'm doing fine with my career.  In fact, I've never ever made just scraps from my IT work.  Will I ever be filthy rich?  No, and neither will the vast majority of people with degrees.  I chose to skip out on my degree as the cost would be prohibitive beyond imagination where I come from, and have thrived on working hard and working smart, making connections and learning skills I actually need for the job.

So... A sysadmin with no programming knowledge, that would be an enormous red flag on a resume.

 

You're kind of proving my point here. If you don't know a programming or scripting language, one would assume you're managing something like a single switch and a few printers. A degree would teach you the aforementioned tools so you could get a job with someone bigger than a mom and pops business and make a good living.

 

Like, if I walked into a fortune 500 company and applied for a systems administrator position for 100k+ a year without any schooling or programming knowledge, they'd laugh me right out of the room.

[Samfisher]

On 6/7/2020 at 11:56 AM, Vitamanic said:

So... A sysadmin with no programming knowledge, that would be an enormous red flag on a resume.

 

You're kind of proving my point here. If you don't know a programming or scripting language, one would assume you're managing something like a single switch and a few printers. A degree would teach you the aforementioned tools so you could get a job with someone bigger than a mom and pops business and make a good living.

 

Like, if I walked into a fortune 500 company and applied for a systems administrator position for 100k+ a year without any schooling or programming knowledge, they'd laugh me right out of the room.

I've worked at several of the largest companies in my country...so yea...  I do scripting, not full on programming.  And no SysAdmin I've ever interviewed at required any programming knowledge.  Your mile may vary of course, but how many people actually work in a 100k+ a year job at a Fortune 500 company?  I live a comfortable life in my country earning what I earn.  I'm not advocating not getting education, I'm saying where I come from it's not the end of the world.