Am I wrong about CompTIA?

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[mikenelson]

The A+ certification has 2 levels. Previously, it was a PERMANENT certification, and then it changed to a renewable 3-year certification. I was given an opportunity a few months before the permanent certification ended, and was told normal training prep materials were sold for about $1800, but were on sale for $200-300. I was scammed into getting this, but was unable to finish reviewing the materials, or take the test. As it turns out, most of this information was already known to me since I already had an Associates degree in Data Processing. Eventually I discovered that a permanent certification is not particularly useful anyway - the more time that goes by, the more outdated the information becomes. Also, in spite of the fact that I PAID for the materials, my access only lasted a few months until the end of that year, and then it was CUT OFF. And the truth of the matter is - any IT tech working today will use the internet to look up these details.

[NeoOwnz]

My first job in IT I told the hiring manager I'm going to take the A+ test in a month. He asked how well I know the material and I replied "very well but I find the material is mostly dated" he hired me and said don't bother with the A+ cert. And that was the best advice any manager ever gave me.

[MadHatter]

There's a reason why I didn't renew my ComptTIA certs after a couple years. Was great for getting me in the door of the IT world, but the on the job experience is where I truly learned meaningful skills. The A+ and Network+ just made the resume look better.

[ArlingtonMatrix]

You and Futo should come out with your own certification named "fully". Make it open source, and have the community of people actually working on the devices decide what information is useful. Then, when people get your certification, they can say they're "fully certified".

[Michael-ppo]

Love your videos! I am a sys/net admin and when I started I had a lot of experience from self hosting. The problem was I couldn't get past the HR filter without an A+/NET+. After getting experience with a company it doesn't matter as significantly.

[rhafp]

I agree, compTIA certs are useless. Only reason to get them is because its required. People buy and study the question banks and not the material anyways.

[shelbysycamore]

I can attest that the A+ changed my life. I didn't grow up around computers but I took a class that taught me the foundation of IT and it sparked a passion in me. Despite that certification opening doors for me, I don't think it should be a requirement for you to work on computers, it should be used as an indicator rather than a requirement.

[SankalpSaxena]

Oh well CompTIA took down LTT video and even the video was taken down from floatplane, So after one year you got your answer... No, You were not wrong

[hectorfigueroa]

Right on point Louis. These certs do not indicate a readiness to work on customer devices. I did encourage people to get an A+ not because of the content, but because it looks good on a resume. At the end of the day, when I hired new techs, a CompTIA cert did not indicate anything other than a suggestion of personal investment, only because it was a financial barrier to receive it. The repair industry needs someone to come up with an independent certification that covers reading board schematics, diagnostic methodology, drive recovery, scripting, basic hardware repair, liquid damage cleaning or recovery, and also just basic business insight. Maybe that training course could be broken into tiers and specializations as Amazon does with AWS. The point of a cert is not to provide senseless barriers, but to certify that you understand the content, and the A+ does not cover what would be required to start the next generation of Rossmann Repair Group!

I don't write often but I would love to hear what you think Louis,
Thanks

[David.S.]

You're right, but this issue isn't just unique to CompTIA..it's applicable to tech college, Engineering in universities, etc. There's no substitute for real-world experience, and the education just merely gets your foot in the door + shows that you can learn/memorize something.

[ghoulslayer__]

I took the 1001 A+ test and SY0-601 test and passed both.

I completely agree with you. Some of the things taught in the CompTIA exams are only useful for hypoyheticals. Ive never used knowledge (yet) from my A+ Certification, and im in Helpdesk IT.

[Ryu_Himora]

When I worked at a technical school we looked into providing CompTIA certification as part of our curriculum. When we got the course materials, one of the questions we needed to give with a straight face was "what socket is Pentium 4". A cpu family that encompasses three different sockets. We also discovered roughly half the questions were about PRINTER REPAIR, a job I would hesitate to inflict on my worst enemy and certainly not something I would expect a technician of roughly 6 months experience to be doing (which was explicitly who the certification was for at this time). The entire company is unbelievable, if you look into the owner he seems to use it exclusively to fly all around the country on "business" and definitely not to be on semi permanent vacation with his wife.

[DJdoppIer]

I feel like this is the same for most college degrees, where they require you to take lots of extra classes that have absolutely nothing to do with the degree or the job you want to get. For my degree, I had to take approximately 30 courses, and out of all of them, only 2 of them ended up being relevant to my job. And yet I had to pay over $50K.

[adamzeromusic]

For my last helpdesk job, I did the ITIL v4 Foundations certification which is similar to the CompTIA A+. You are right in that there was not much in the way of practical/useful information in entry-level certifications like the A+. However, that ITIL Foundations did teach me the language that the higher ups in the organization use, which is really its own cryptic terminology indecipherable to the layman. It also showed me how the organization is run from the top down, and different strategies for running organizations, code application, and hardware deployment. That path of ITIL certifications would mainly be useful for someone looking to get into IT management.

I think the emphasis on the A+ is stupid, but the Network+ did have some practical information about port assignments & configuration scenario examples I found to be useful. Of course, a test is no substitute for real world experience; I learned much of what I know about network configuration & administration when I was a bored teenager hacking routers, and hands-on on-the-job learning at several organizations of different sizes.

[davidg]

I used to teach various certs. Most of the A+ students fell into two categories: (1) enthusiasts who already picked up most of it on their own but needed the cert for their resume, and (2) people who could finish the course but just didn't have much intuition toward it.
Type 1 people frequently went on to other certs directly afterward. I didn't have much hope for type 2 seeing actual success in anything hardware related.

[metalliniak]

I completed A+ circa 2010. I was running a small computer repair shop and until this point I was self taught. Preparing for A+ helped me to organize the knowledge I had and put a strong focus on the troubleshooting process steps. I became more efficient technician after. Can't really say if that's the certification though, or I just had a good book. I do have to agree though, that even back some of the questions were completely irrelevant or outdated. or irrelevant. My personal favourite was How Many pins were there on Simm, Dimm, DDR123 memories. I never understood why would I need to know the number of pins and not simple differentiators.

[cofdeath]

My dad was head of the IT dept. at his company for 40 years before he retired. I've been doing it for 20 years now, and we both agree CompTIA exams are absolute garbage. As you said they're 20 years out of date. Only thing life changing is it being a piece of paper some companies are using to gatekeep certain positions.

[harpsinclairmusic]

This comes conveniently as CompTIA prepares to raise prices on their exams.

[Steele]

Early in my tech career I had to train new hires. They had transcripts and certs saying they knew their stuff, straight A student.

I asked what technical things they had done in the past, like personally, not professionally, this was their first IT related job. They said they'd hooked out a router for their mom. They knew nothing about how things actually worked. The certs mean absolutely nothing. Lol

Also the idea that it all HAS to be modern is sort of misguided. I've had multiple roles especially for government and manufacturing that use almost exclusively legacy hardware and software, because it would cost them millions to modernize. We have some industries that are only supported by spare parts on ebay.

[CptnCobblestone]

From a cybersecurity standpoint I studied SEC+ and it was a good foundation but with actual hands on work it’s a whole different story. Especially if it’s something more specific like Application Security. These certifications should not be mandatory. Maybe encouraged or a plus but not mandatory.