TADA Tier List of Certificates

[Vle045]

I've heard a lot of people say that it's hard getting a data analyst position with just that certificate. Data is different from several other fields in tech. They often want knowledge of statistics and a strong knowledge of the type of data that's being analyzed. For example, they'd prefer someone with a biology or healthcare background to analyze health data. If they can't get that, then they'd prefer someone with a quantitative degree.

It's yet to be seen how employers will view Google's cybersecurity certificate, but cybersecurity heavily relies upon industry standard certifications, and certificates are not certifications. At least with data and software engineering, certifications are not important.

That makes sense.  I work with Special Education data.  I first had a knowledge of EMIS (state reporting), and special education reporting, compliance, State testing requirements, etc., etc.  Looking at this data all day makes total sense because I know how it all relates.  When I was talking with a data guy, some of the way he looked at it didn’t really make sense because it didn’t apply the data in the right way.  I would love to learn more data tools, but my Excel and Google Sheets get the job done.

[housecat]

TADA Tier List on, which certs will help you land jobs.

Yes as discussed in the thread there is a difference between certificates and certification in cybersecurity. Also strong agree that cybersecurity is not entry-level at all. Canadian colleges usual situate a full round of IT studies (AD/OS/networking/etc) before cybersecurity.

If anyone is interested in cybersecurity, Mad Hat on YouTube lays out the cybersecurity scene pretty well.
To make a long story short, it's highly competitive, you need to go ALL IN on it, no half-measures, and certifications are expensive. He has a bachelor's in cybersecurity and has certs. In one of the latest videos he discusses feelings on AI embedded into cybersecurity, and the HR trends of laying off departments of people in tech. He works for a fortune 500 company. Also at my university I discussed cybersec with students in that program at the time and one person showed me the schedule he made on Google Calendar, omg even I was surprised, and it gives balance to the statement "...in cyber security, you're all-in or you're out." If you choose cybersec, and you have all kinds of cash I would mention SANS as provider of degrees and GIAC certs. I make no bones about it, I've seen the books and omg they are in-depth and create a wide breadth of knowledge. So that's more or less the top dog. If you want employment in cybersecurity, there is a lineup of employers that want you, and I mean want you bad.

Generally speaking the way college learning is setup here is:

General IT -> Employment
Networking and IT -> Cyber Security
Software Development -> AI and/or Data Analytics and/or Data Science (analytics/engineering/etc) 

General IT is more or less the services part of things like tier 1 at an MSP or something. Light AD work, resetting passwords, fixing printer issues, other sort of less but still technical tasks. Tier 2 are the real dogs who understand how to build and create systems, some companies have a tier 3 which are like the engineers, basically long beard and poor eyesight from years of screen usage (okay I got rid of the beard but it was a lark during the pandemic).

Like if you came here and signed-up for Networking, you would take the three year program, get knowledge in communications, VOIP, networking, etc., everything Cisco (routers/security appliances/firewalls/etc.), and so forth. Then after graduation, you would sign-up for a 1-year graduate certificate in Cyber Security (intense) or a 2-year grad cert (maybe more comprehensive). Then try the market or then fetch up a bachelor degree.

Or just go in for a degree, but I strongly recommend doing career cruising or something that explains what people's days look like in these jobs. When I worked as a web dev I worked with tier 3's solving DNS issues and systems integration issues. So if you work at certain companies there can be a lot of bleed over. Also, when I built redundancy into the stack, I had to deal with the infrastructure the company was using and setup databases and backups and make sure the edge servers were secure, more DNS issues, and so forth.

I went back to school for AI, which also gets you into data anayltics etc, glad I did it's fun! Look OpenAI/Microsoft/Google and all these uncle richbags companies with unlimited soros resources get to play with AI that no one else can really touch. We can emulate the same workings, but we can't afford to train LLM's and stuff like that, the computing power is just too expensive. But you can build your generative AI's and adversarial AI's and other fun stuff like building chatbots, and data analytics like sales data or quality of red and white wines (lol famous datasets).

No matter which part of IT you pick, it's fun and has it's challenges, but just look at the outcomes first.

Look my advice is do NOT have the word "bootcamp" on your resume, it's a super hot-potato right now. Applicant Tracking Systems ("ATS") is likely to not approve. Recruiters are also told to be weary. Also when I helped with hiring, bootcamp was an instant no-way because breadth of knowledge is likely absent. As discussed the certs from Google and IBM are great to get, but have a degree as your main qualification, remember you are competing with others.

The reality is even as a web developer, I developed an Android app for a client, written in Java, but Android is a special beast on it's own. I had to know databases very, very well. Selection, creation, and usage was critical. The client had customers with non-English characters in their names so I had to know to select UTF8 formatting. Needed full ACID compliance. They had oversight from a government regulatory agency, so I had to know those rules and regs, as well as privacy law. I had to make sure the data stayed on Canadian servers. Then I had to program in PHP, which I enjoyed, considered security issues. Setup the web server and its Linux operating system, firewall, replication, backups, and all the associated programs (apache, php, etc.) and write reports and put up with a completely uninformed project manager who helped me 0% because he didn't know how to do anything except use Microsoft Project (lol I know it well too, but I was busy.) Then there's handling clients and interviewing their customers for user experience information. Then there's helping the client with SEO and marketing. Luckily I'm also a business guy so it works out, I really enjoyed the planning and fixing their marketing. That's right, I also did the work of SEO and web designer, doing wireframing, etc., with the clients. When I had a client I could use WordPress with, I was like YES AN EASY ONE!

I write all this to explain what I mean by breadth (Programming/Web/Stack/Regulatory/Marketing/Business) aspects as well as the depth (setting up the OS, implementing firewall, setting up backups, trying to secure it all) to present what we in IT are expected to do. There is a lot more, to do like scrums, (cyclical development cycles.) I forgot to mention the endless work with VMware and other virtualisation with hypervisors, but toss that boat in the ocean too.

Also one of the other crazy dogs I was dealing with was a client who wanted to migrate everything in their business to cloud, found out the true cost of cloud (oof expensive as we all said), then decided on hybrid, which was a dog's dinner, last count was 90 technical documents on how this can be accomplished. In the end we rebuilt everything locally, costing the client a raft of money.

Bruv to learn all this on one's own, like it's hard enough even after you do a set curriculum, because there is always something in these complex, integrated systems that comes up. Sure, you have a team sometimes, but if you work in smaller company or more-or-less isolated team and the boss is like fix this or we'll see, you gotta do it, and probably a working lunch at the desk. Now I write about it, the longer curriculum helps build personal confidence, as well as allow your brain to soak this stuff up and see how it's all connected.

I still appreciate speedrunners though! Get the mixed bag experience+academics. Volunteering is an interesting way of leveling up your experience, I normally forget volunteering for IT concerns. Good advice, you'll learn alot, meet some interesting people, and over time maybe get some new references. Good for LinkedIn too!

[LevelUP]

A lot of people who wanna get into cybersecurity are all about the Benjamins. They peep those fat paychecks and wanna get in on that action.

So they come up with a plan to snag a cybersecurity degree from WGU and think they can get it done in 6 months. Then, they expect companies to treat 'em like royalty and get into a bidding war to hire them, thinking they can charge $100k+ a year.

The issue is, cybersecurity ain't no entry-level job, and folks who jump in often ain't ready to put in the grind needed to really shine in the field.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a solid place to check out for getting a better grip on the job market.


Look at things such as:

• Total jobs and if the job is entry-level or not
  
  
  
• Growth of job market
  
  
  
• Entry level pay
  

Computer and Information Technology Occupations

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-inf...y/home.htm

[bjcheung77]

Also, try to 'group' these Cheapies/Freebies along with other cheapies/freebies on the WIKI, for example, Google Cybersecurity with the TEEX Cybersecurity and IBM Cybersecurity Analyst. Or the Harvard EdX Data Science freebie with the Google Data Analytics and IBM Data Analytics/Data Science etc...