I checked out some of the material a bit further through the course as well, and I cannot recommend it for anyone serious about the profession. It looks good on the surface (reading the course summaries and the objectives), but the quality just isn't there.
Personally, I don't have a high opinion of anyone whose only stated qualifications are these sorts of certifications --- all it really shows is rote memorisation, when good IT support relies on creative and insightful problem-solving skills --- including being good at... Googling.
- The Coursera Team
It is also a great path into technology for those who did get CS degrees from a top school.
Side note: In the video, all the Google VPs and Leads were sitting in bright offices. The IT staff sat in dark rooms with little or no windows. @2min mark, the IT staff look to be in a dungeon at night.
Tonyour side note, the help desks (we call them Techstops) are anything but a dungeon :) you can image search for "Google Techstop" and get a very representative view of what they tend to look like.
My college classes were programming C++, physics, calculus, and hardware architectures. Barely anything to do with IT.
A lot of people in my class dropped out of the CS program because they had confused the two.
I really think we should rename “computer science” to “computing science” or “computational science” - just please get the word “computer” out of there.
It's become more of a SWE org everywhere.
It's funny because SWE peeps get really defensive about IT vs SWE roles; like they don't want to be associated with IT for some ego-related reason.
More free, open source platforms that are powerful and free but just need some configuration, customization and support.
Developing getting simpler to becoming just config anyway. We're already seeing this, you dont need to know anything about pointers any more, just hooking up libraries.
IT support will ALWAYS be required though. Unless we build some kind of AI that can diagnose issues like humans do... after which they will all become obsolete. But I don't see that happening in the next 50 years.
I eventually interviewed successfully to become a SWE, but my experiences working with the broader swath of people (not just CS/CE grads from elite programs) in IT really opened my perspective on technology, products, and the diverse set of people and talents it takes to make an organization function.
I have no connection to this certificate effort (I moved into development eons ago), but I think that the opportunity for exposure to a technology profession that this program offers could be the foot in the door for a lot of people, regardless of their background.
[1] https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=e...
That's a decent salary for a Windows or network admin in middle America. Helpdesk positions are lucky to pay half that.
I just shared this course with our support team. They’re great at product support and know it inside and out, but can be lacking on the IT side which is where I generally have to get involved.
This course looks promising.
It's unfortunate that the company's external support has such a bad reputation. But our internal support team is actually highly regarded and loved by employees. The training here is very much based on the training we provide to our internal hires.
When each compute node becomes essentially a disposable quantity, what does that do to the value of the people who service them?
People will say "What about networking?", as though locality makes a difference here. I've seen so many local network deployments where a guy in India configures the switch and firewall, then mails them over here and pays a local guy who is practically illiterate $75 for half a day's work to mount and plug everything in. They may have to go back-and-forth for several attempts since local guy is a hot mess. Even so, at $75 a pop the economics still work out.
There would be a dozen contractors in the room. They discuss who works on what in the morning, then the network is down and noone can do anything for half the day.
I think Coca-cola is a reputable company (probably, I'm sure someone knows some dark secret I haven't read about), but I wouldn't assume a Cisco networking certification from them is reputable.
Now with that said, a "job" consisting of these skillsets is more of a TIER III/IV in IT Support, but can serve as entry level experience for DevOps for CS or engineering functionaries (CS grads and self taught).Especially someone like me who already has technical IT experience and it is a requirement that I am versed in at least one scripting language and some automation scripts and tools.
My advice....this certificate was formulated as a gateway to DevOps, technical support, not "IT Support," in the traditional sense. You won't receive calls about not being able to retrieve emails, paystubs, lost files, identity management and access. However, if an internal company app or the companies software product is buggy, that's where you start. "Back-end IT Support" would be more accurate.
Less than 10 years ago I was hired to do a job that was 80% mindnumbingly boring. (Think copy and paste to Excel.)
I was paid well above the USD50' that is mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
There was a team of us with widely different background and I think only me and one other had degrees in IT.
One of my colleagues came straight from a job as taxi driver (got hired after talking to someone in the company while driving him to the airport).
In case anyone wonders: he turned out to be really good.
Disclosure: I worked on this program.
I rip on google a lot, but I can appreciate good work when I see it.
This course seems to be pretty comparable, but it also covers writing Ruby code, managing Chef, and using Git.
Of course another big difference is this course teaches you exactly what you need to know, while CompTIA leaves it to third-parties to write the training materials independently from the courses, so you're reading a 500 page book for a 100 question exam.
I've been writing code for over 15 years and have seen more than enough opportunity to expand my business into the IT side of things, a lot more than contract coding anyway. I've let these opportunities go by as I don't have any real qualifications although I reckon I could cobble enough together with my experience to get by.
That being said, if I get a cert' from this it might be the confidence to push my business further if nothing else.
EdX seems quite Microsoft heavy.
But Google has released a lot of material on Udacity, and they have other connections (Thrun).
Just curious.
Is this why IBM, DXC et al are laying off Western workers like it’s going out of fashion and offshoring those jobs as fast as they possibly can?
For some reason I thought the general trend lately was many Western countries were bringing support jobs back to their own countries.
I think going forward the hiring would be at best replacing people who joined in 80s in case those jobs are not totally automated away.
This program was literally started so Google could provide tech support to its employees. A highly technical group with access to a leading public cloud. None of that does away with the need to provide IT support.
Money would be better spent on a respectable certification like MCSE.
Sure, they both might be true but they aren't all attainable for everyone.
