Can we talk about how 20 years in this field taught me a different lesson about certifications

I hit 20 years as a computer technician last month and the number that surprised me was that I still run into problems every week that no certification ever covered. I work at a small shop in Cleveland and we had a server fail last Wednesday that took two days to fix because the issue was a weird capacitor on the motherboard, not software. It made me realize that experience matters more than the CompTIA A+ I got back in 2003, even though everyone pushes certs as the only way into this trade. Has anyone else found that real world troubleshooting beats any exam you can take?

2 comments

2 Comments

blake4321mo ago

That capacitor issue you mentioned reminds me of something I noticed about how people learn things in general. I'm talking about that gap between what you study in a classroom and what actually happens when you're on your own, holding a multimeter. @mary_schmidt hit on it when she said people with modern certs still freeze up on a bad power supply. I see the same pattern in other trades too. My buddy is a mechanic and he says the same thing about ASE certs versus diagnosing a weird noise in a 2008 Honda. The real world never follows the textbook. Its like studying for a driving test by reading the manual. It helps you know the rules, but it wont teach you how to handle a guy cutting you off in the snow.

mary_schmidt1mo ago

I mean, you mentioned the CompTIA A+ from 2003, but that test actually got updated quite a bit over the years. The version you took was probably all about Windows 98 and IDE drives, not really preparing you for modern server hardware. Idk, I think certs can be useful for some things, but they definitely don't cover the weird capacitor issues or real world stuff you see on a daily basis. Maybe it's just me, but I've seen people with all the latest certs still freeze up when a power supply fails in the middle of a busy day. Experience really is the best teacher for those unexpected problems.