I made no such point. The A+ will be incidentally publicized to an employer only because they see it on my CV/resume. My goal isn't to promote their cert; my goal is to give me every advantage over my competition so that I'm the one who gets hired.

Bottom line is this: if you don't want the A+, don't get it. It's your choice. But know that some of your competition WILL have it. If you *truly* think the A+ doesn't matter, you have nothing to fear.

Well I've seen it before with Sun and Microsoft. While there are some positives to certification its had many negatives :-

1. Dumbing down recruitment

2. Allowing braindumpers to appear as experienced as hard working pros

3. Vendor specific education with possible vendor bias.

People made a big deal about stopping free MacDonald's education materials in primay schools, care to guess why ?

Then I'd say you've been very fortunate, I've paid for all my exams apart from one. So thats like 92% self funded ? I've also had more IT employers than yourself. All this is fairly anecdotal, your present industry (certification training) is also likely to skew the matter.

Of course we could have a poll...

Fair point, you mentioned a hypothetical conversation between an employer and a candidate where the candidate explains the A+ to the employer. To me this is viral marketing, where the candidate is promoting CompTIA for free.

Well you see here you really have hit the nail on the head, certification vendors have long exploited peoples hopes and fears with their advertising. IT is a tough industry to remain in work and attractive to employers, by exploiting IT staff's inherrent insecurities they have created an industry. The reality is people get paid pretty much the same, work pretty much the same, but now they must pass tests and pay corporations to keep their job.

For the record I do not possess the A+. Much of the content would also be covered on year one of most decent computer courses, that combined with some hobbyist exposure to PC's, its really not that big a deal to most UK employers I've met.

In what way?

Agreed. That's why you aggressively pursue the braindumpers... which isn't happening.

I have no problem with vendor bias if I want to advertise myself as being proficient with that vendor's hardware/software.

Actually, as I stated before, the CV mentions the A+, and any employer worth his salt is gonna ask himself what the A+ is and do the research for himself on what the A+ certification is and whether it tests on things relevant to the job he is advertising.

Yes, certification *does* rely on viral marketing. If there were no certified people, most employers wouldn't request it, and if employers don't request it, most people won't get certified in it. Chicken-and-egg. The way to make any certification program take off is by those few who do get certified in it. Case in point, the MCSA: very, very few employers knew of the MCSA until receiving a resume/CV with that acronym staring them in the face. Now that the MCSA is gone, it's (finally!) started to catch on with employers... perhaps a little too late, eh? But that's how certifications become popular.

And vendors rely on certifications for another form of viral marketing: if there's an army of certified techs who can support a particular technology, companies are going to tend toward buying those technologies. And with that goes the flip side: if it's hard to find techs who are capable of supporting a particular technology, they're not going to buy those technologies.

So... I won't disagree that it's viral marketing. You say that as if it's a bad thing.

You've got it backwards. Techs can choose to certify or not. It's their choice. There's no "must" to it. If you think it's just a bunch of spin and crap driven entirely by the certification industry, simply don't get certified and show them you don't need the certifications. DOWN WITH THE EVIL INDUSTRY THAT FORCES US TO GET CERTIFIED!!!, and all that... right?

No I didn't say viral marketing was bad, I said I feel under no obligation to 'market' or 'sell' CompTIA to anyone after their recent behaviour.

Viral marketing or 'Word of Mouth' can work both ways, CompTIA seem to be forgetting that.

On that, we can agree. Hopefully CompTIA sees how upset the "lifetimers" are.

Good to have you back BM!

"Those loud Yanks!" heehee!

I'm not aware of any friends in the UK that have had any of their certs paid for them - 5 day cram courses that training companies claim (and which the employers fall for) to teach you what you need are paid for, but not the exams afterwards.

Maybe a UK/US divide, but I just have friends who all work for stingey companies!

In the UK, without the special letters in your CV (MCP, VCP, MCSA, CCENT, MCSA, CCNA etc.etc.etc.) you won't even get through the filtering that recruitment agencies do - the reason behind this is that the agents aren't technical and simply do a match between job description and CV. They don't really know what they mean, let alone what x years experience in AD means - and this comes from personal experience of a friend that worked for one at one time, he said they were all like it.

And that's why I recommend getting all those letters. ;) The more letters, the better chance, right?

Keep in mind that although some recruiters/employers don't know what they mean, some do. Never underestimate your competition... or your employer.

Well some very interesting replies on all of this. I checked the MS site after looking at it all the other day and it would appear as if the line they are taking is those that are already qualified as MCSA/MCSE in 2003 upwards will always be able to say "i'm an MC.. you know"! although they go onto say that as technology improves so will the value of the qualification. The intresting thing for myself is IF you upgrade to say MCITP enterprise for 2008 that qualification is only going to last for the duration of that product as the certs will retire!! I would assume the theory is that you would basically just take the new bridging quals in order to update to the newer product a bit like the 70-649/648 do at the moment.

Main thing to look at in all of this is an A+ is 2 very pricey exams and in the UK most companies are not interested the N+ very pricey exam and is only EVER going to be a step towards something like CCENT/CCNA and again to be fair most people are not going to be looking for CCENT which BTW is a lot more in depth and covers everything and above the N+ even though its cisco based. Well those are my feelings anyway and don't get me started on degrees lol.

Love this comment on the CompTIA blog.

and they've definitely pissed people off, theres even a facebook group

I've been thinking about this whole thing a lot over the last few days and I think the biggest problem I have with this whole thing is the 'stealth' launch of the recert policy. No discussion, no 'we might be doing this', nothing in advance to anyone. I took my Network+ on the 12th Dec last year, exactly a month before this policy was announced and I was given nothing in the way of warning.

If CompTIA are willing to do this now, whats to stop them deciding that IT moves even faster than their recert policy suggests and changing the recert policy to 2 years, 1 year or even 6 months? The important thing to remember as well is that CompTIA are saying this only applies to A+, Network+ and Security+ 'for now' giving themselves ample room to drop the recert policy into any other of their certs whenever they like without consultation or warning.

Microsoft learnt the pain and suffering of not listening to users with Vista, the result was Windows 7. I can only hope CompTIA learn as fast as MS (not getting my hopes up).

Face it mate, if they wanted to they could completely drop A+ in two years and say that due to the changes in the industry the current cert is B+ and everyone with an A+ is struck off overnight.

That is a common misconception. The CCENT doesn't cover general networking; it covers Cisco-specific networking. Thus, it doesn't cover the same stuff that the Network+ does.

Nothing in advance? You won't decertify until 12 December 2012. I hate to defend CompTIA, but isn't three years enough advance notice? Would four years have been more palatable for you? How 'bout six? How much time do you need?

You mean, Windows Vista Service Pack 3? Microsoft DID listen to users... they listened to them whine and complain over Vista so much that they changed the name to Windows 7.

The decision to revoke lifetime certification is retroactive by 10+ years, by definition you cannot 'give people notice' of a retroactive decision, we'd all need to get in a time machine and go back in time (in some cases) to 1995 to make any use of the information...

I agree with the point that recent Microsoft policy has seen them being more in touch with users and prepared to face upto issues and address them.

Sure you can. You can give them notice that their certification won't expire until December 31, 2011. Which they did... because that's the earliest that ANYONE - including someone who certified in 1995 - will be decertified. Thus, everyone's got a minimum of two years.

I will repeat for the short-attention-spanned among us: I don't agree with CompTIA's decision to expire the certs of those who were granted "lifetime" certs. But two years is plenty of notice for us to decide what we want to do.

I don't have a short attention span, I think you miss the point, try to understand what I am saying.

Say I am in the market for a lifetime certification with a one time cost below £200 ?

Say two products exist, A and B, I evaluate the products based on their relative merits and purchase A.

A week later vendor of product A fundamentally changes its conditions retrospectively, they also introduce new charges, but tells me they do not want any money now, they will start charging in 3 years time.

How have they given me notice ? I cannot change my original buying decision. The money is spent, the contract is entered into. Really I should now have bought B, but I cannot change my decision, I have been tricked into a contract with terms I sought to avoid.

You seem to have no problem understanding this when people sign unfair TP agreements.

Giving notice, would be to say, there will be a new product C, it will have these new terms to its contract, you can choose to buy it if you like. We will no longer be selling product A, but those that have it can still use it.

This is exactly the approach MS took, its also pretty common with many other types of product.

Retroactive changes to contracts are pretty rare, because in essence they tend to be very unfair because nobody can change their actions in the past !

OSI and subnetting for example, are Cisco specific?

...well at least Comptia's marketing department are a bit worried, all this Comptia A+ bashing and they have stuck an advert on the front of certforums lol

This.