No more hiding in the server room

Certification Traning / Testing

This is a multi-question post so bear with me.

1. Does your company pay for learning materials? (ie. books, exams, etc)

2. If not, have you found any programs out there to help with the costs?

3. Is there anything out there to offer financial assistance to SysAdmins/IT groups get training they need?

I know it comes back on us as professionals to keep up our skill sets but sometimes its difficult to find the resources necessary to get the training we need.

Tags: Certifications, Cheap, Company, My, blah, is, to

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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on December 2, 2009 at 7:30pm

1. I'm on my own at the moment and have very little cash flow. That's a "no". =)

2. Yes, entering every IT raffle that you find and attending every user group / vendor meeting within a 100 mile radius. In fact, the week-after-next I'll be taking a USD$2,500 5 day class for FREE because I won a voucher at a Microsoft TechNet/MSDN event. BTW, that was my second free 5 day class that I've won. I've also won a hard drive full of TrainSignal.com videos (multiple thousands of dollars worth of training!), over $100 in InformIT.com books, Office 2007 Pro, numerous copies of Vista, one copy of retail Windows 7 before it was released to the public (at a official Microsoft prelaunch event), an XBox game, freebie books too numerous to count (kinda of useless since I have a Safari Books account which has just about every IT related book known to man) and probably more that I'm forgetting.

3. Mom.

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Rudinger on December 2, 2009 at 7:38pm

3- lol Moms out of the question for me... mine or my wifes... I never seen any of the tech events here in Nashville, everyone here is either a programmer or graphic designer. The Admins don't come out here I guess.

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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on December 2, 2009 at 7:53pm

Okay, how about dad then? =)

A big city like Nashville has to have at least a few user groups. Check out a technology that you're interested in and hunt around for one. For instance, I get emails from VMWare all the time about going to one of their sponsored events in the Ohio valley area. There's one in your area. Check out NLUG, or the SQL Server user group, or the cisco one, or... the list could go on and on.

You can get to know people, enter raffles and etc. I know that's not exactly the most polished way of getting goodies, but if you're well is truly dry, it's a decent primer. I'll be thinking of you while I'm in my free SQL Server 2008 class. =P

Even sans the classes, user groups are great places to talk to others that do what you do (or what you wished you could do) and learn heaps. Actually, that's the biggest reason why I'm here on this web site.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Simmons on December 2, 2009 at 7:42pm

1 - My company bought me an O'Reilly Safari subscription after I whined for a year or two. That's really about it

2 - Some college loans will cover trade school or the equivalent. I have taken Cisco certification training using a loan from a private institution to pay for it before

3 - Not specifically that I know of, but I'd be interested in hearing about anything you find.

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Rudinger on December 2, 2009 at 7:53pm

Matt- I thought you were the answer man... but I'll surely post what I can.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Simmons on December 2, 2009 at 8:34pm

My brain is currently somewhere between hamburger and a finely ground puree. I'll think some more after sleep :-)

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Rudinger on December 2, 2009 at 8:41pm

caffeine it's a wonderful drug lol

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Permalink Reply by Graycat on January 21, 2010 at 8:33pm

Zombie time! :) lol

1. I can usually get books and materials through the company with no major dramas whenever they're needed. Exams I pay for myself unless I can get on a course which I can get the company to cough up for. Usually though the courses are only done when there's a clear need to bridge a skills gap. The last two were VMware vShpere 4 and Introduction to Exchange 2007 both because we're planning on implementing major projects revolving around those applications and need the skills inhouse to support it. Doesn't happen very often though! :) lol

2. A few years back I bought a lifetime membership to the ExamForce exam prep and training materials for Microsoft and Cisco. I use these once I feel I'm ready to take an exam on a particular subject just to give my skills that final polish. I've also got some of their video training courses but have yet to really crack into them.

3. You can get professional loans for training etc over here in the UK and I believe some "Zero to MCSE in 2ms" companies offer to finance the courses.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Short on January 22, 2010 at 3:52am

1. They'll often pay for books, and reimburse for the exam if you pass (now that's incentive). Assuming it's something actually relevant to your job. I probably couldn't get a cert in "basket weaving with thicknet cables".

2. I've had surprisingly good luck getting certification study books from the public library (usually through inter-library loan - so it takes a while, but you can't beat the price)

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Rudinger on January 27, 2010 at 4:53pm

Thanks for the replies yall. I thought this might be helpful to share: ACM.org, if youre not a member check it out. You can join for 99 bucks a year. With the membership you'll get access to O'reilly bookshelf and cbts off of Element K. I've been a member for 2 years and got a nifty Alan Turing coffee mug... but it's something at least if you're trying to get some skill updates on the cheap. Where do yall find your braindumps or testkings, I haven't really found a good place for anything like that.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Ayer on January 27, 2010 at 5:02pm

Nice tip! I'll also suggest that anyone who does join should consider putting you down as the person who referred them: http://campus.acm.org/public/mgm/