Kudos and Calamities: The Usefulness of Certifications
Author: thefultonhow

If you’re a veteran of the IT world, you’re probably familiar with certifications.  Certs, as they’re sometimes called, are essentially exams that techs take in order to show that they’re proficient in the subject.  Certs cover everything from basic hardware and software maintenance (CompTIA A+) to Windows network administration (Microsoft’s MCSE) to specialized hardware and software knowledge and network security expertise.

Most techs have accepted certs as the price of entry into the IT field.  In my opinion, though, they are far from ideal.

The first problem with certs is that they are very theoretical.  They don’t ask you to apply any of the knowledge that they require; they just want you to spit it out onto a piece of paper.  Some of this knowledge isn’t even useful in the real world; for example, the A+ Core Hardware exam requires you to know lots of details about cable lengths and numbers of devices supported by the many different SCSI standards.  You’re probably never going to use any of this information in real life; most computer techs rarely see a SCSI-based computer, and even when they do the cables are short and have one or two drives.  And even if you do see some esoteric version of SCSI, it’s a lot more efficient to look the information up online than to try to remember some info that you crammed for the exam.

Secondly, because of their theoretical nature, certs don’t really say how well a tech will fare in real world situations.  It’s useless to know about AGP and PCI-Express and SATA if you can’t figure out how to configure them in the flesh, and how to troubleshoot problems when they arise.  Additionally, chances are that if you take the MCSE, you’ll come across a situation that isn’t covered by your MCSE training, and so you’ll be stuck unless you have real-world problem-solving skills.  It’s hard to measure these problem-solving skills, but someone could have all the theoretical knowledge and no on-the-spot think-it-out ability; such a person would be absolutely useless in an IT environment.

My third problem with certs is a philosophical one.  I just signed up for the A+ Core Hardware and A+ Operating Systems tests, and they were $153 each!  And I gather that more sophisticated certs are even more expensive.  If your work is going to pay for the certs this isn’t a big issue, but if you need them to get a job, then that’s a pretty big outlay.  On top of that, certs generally expire after a couple of years, which makes sense considering how fast technology moves - but instead of being able to “update” your cert with the new technologies, you have to shell out all the money again and retake the exam.  It seems to me that certs are merely a mechanism for the companies that administer them to make money, not an actual accurate measure of technical savvy.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to come up with an alternative, because companies need some way of gauging how competent their new IT hires will be (never mind that certs are not a great way of measuring technical acumen).  But I think companies should be much more focused on references for hiring, and should use in-house training programs instead of hoping that a certified tech will have all the knowledge they need to administer the company’s network.  It’s silly for companies to disqualify applicants merely because they don’t have an appropriate certification for the job.  Unfortunately, it’s probable that companies will continue to rely on certs instead of real-world experience in their hiring - and thus there will always be a market for certification.

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My last column was on Microsoft’s new OS, Windows Vista, and whether it would run on your computer.  However, I got a couple of things wrong with regard to PVP-OPM and HDCP.

In my column, I essentially said that PVP-OPM will require HDCP-compliant video cards and monitors, or else you won’t get a picture at all.  This is not true; Vista will only shut off your monitor if you don’t have HDCP and attempt to play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content.  As long as you don’t go trying to do that, you can continue to use your old monitor and graphics card.

Also, as far as I can tell, if you use an analog LCD (one that uses VGA instead of DVI) or a CRT, you are in the clear, as content producers aren’t as worried about people using those to copy their content.