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Google IT Support Professional Certificate

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Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#81
post #78
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that I can get a basic web app up in an hour rather than days does not mean that I only work an hour per week, it means that I can spend my time building much more complex applications.

Depends on who's paying, if the client only needs a basic web app - we just need the support guy.

That frees up the developer to work on projects that would have been infeasible a couple decades ago. To put it another way, has the growth of high level languages like Python led to more jobs or fewer? I strongly suspect the answer is more.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AS in CS working in IT here, can confirm. My college classes were programming C++, physics, calculus, and hardware architectures. Barely anything to do with IT.

We actually expect our support team (at least portions of them) to build internal apps that automate workflows for ops work or for users. It's not always as complex as a full soft eng role, but some of our IT staff do move on to those positions internally based on the work they do in IT. I think it really depends on the company you do IT for, and what they expect for the role. At Google, our IT staff are full time en…

> At Google, our IT staff are full time engineers.

If this course is based on this view of the IT Support role (which I heartily approve of, but which is not the baseline norm in the industry) it really should be called the IT Support Engineering Professional Certificate or something similar, because otherwise it won't communicate it's real focus either to applicants or, perhaps more critically, hiring officers.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#83
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT is not CS. Not even similar.

My college has a separate major for each. 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.

More like Computational Mathematics

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputable in the field of doing IT in a Windows-dominated business world? Or just reputable as a company in general? 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.

Both. And if Coca-cola funded a networking cert, I'd consider it reputable too. It be a Cisco cert wouldn't make sense though, then it would be banking on Cisco's reputation.

For better or for worse, there's a limited subset of certification vendors that are considered reputable by most hiring managers. Most of their certifications consist entirely of alphabet soup and are recognized nationwide if not globally. (Unfortunately this does lead to some unfortunate mishaps, like OSCP being overlooked in favor of garbage like CEH).

When someone comes along with an official "I can MongoDB certified architect" certificate issued by Mongo themselves, it's a good talking point during an interview, but we don't consider it a credential in itself.

There's no way to vet every arbitrary corporate certificate that comes through the door; we don't know if it's the result of a rigorous apprenticeship, 1000-question exam, a practical and 10 years of industry experience or a couple YouTube videos and a questionnaire. We don't know if the standards changed with management; what used to be impossible to attain is now printed like money. We don't know if the way Coca-cola teaches students to do things complies with best practices or industry standards, or just with Coca-cola's vision for how things should be done (which is absolutely what I'd expect from an entity like Google, who has demonstrated this in other avenues of influence).

Equifax could have printed certifications. Until recently, they were a reputable name. Would you trust an information security certificate issued by them now?

There is no accountability with corporate certifications. You're advocating faith-based hiring by trading on name alone.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but Boulder CO is still one of the few cities in the country growing economically(I assume that's where you are from your profile). There are many larger cities in the Midwest declining, and it's here that it's nearly impossible to get a low-paying "entry-level" position without a degree and several years of experience. And they certainly don't pay $50k.

That's a fair point. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was in the Midwest. That's quite unfortunate.

You can still get a good software engineer salary in the midwest. In Indy we have at least 4-5 places that will pay you 140k+, the place I'm at will pay 180k for someone that has proven their worth. That is a lot of money in Indiana.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#87

Given the current state of support Google itself offers, there is more than a bit of irony here.

Disclosure: I am one of the instructors for this course and went through Google's IT Residency Program. 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.

As someone who works for a biggish software company - internal IT is hugely important when it comes to employee satisfaction.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#88
post #4

There’s no better example of a dynamic, fast-growing field than IT support 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?

FTA: "In the United States alone, there are currently 150,000 open IT support jobs"

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.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#89
post #79
post #9

IT Support will replace factories in Middle America. These are jobs that are 1)Trained quickly 2) Geographically distributed 3) Cheap. IT Support needs to be onsite for hardware, but any Software can be distributed in smaller cities or work from home. Maybe Google will have a real help line one day? It is also a great path into technology for those who did get CS degrees from a top school. Side note: In the video, al…

>IT Support will replace factories in Middle America. Hardware continues to be more reliable, more integrated, and cheaper. For most office jobs something like Chrome OS or iOS would be sufficient.

Not if you have to run Excel with 5 add-ins that regularly destroy each other.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#90
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree completely. IT is going the opposite way, much of the maintenance is becoming commodified so the more complex tasks almost always involved writing actual code. 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.

I vehemently disagree. The whole SWE/DevOps trend isn't super popular once you leave Silicon Valley. At the end of the day, most businesses still use Windows, and most IT staff are telling people how to print correctly and resetting the passwords people forgot for the umteenth time this week . This isn't going to change in the near future, and I assume Google's IT Support certificate is either teaching the skills nec…

Those IT people are dinosaurs. Many of these folks are around, but the job openings are slim because they are attriting away.

80% of traditional IT hocus pocus can be automated or performed by an office manager or admin.

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