IT Certifications

[Liesje]

Any other IT professionals out there that can recommend? MCDST or A+? My employer will pay for one. I'm leaning towards MCDST, but I don't know if one really is more valuable than the other.

 

[ntalwar]

certmag.com has good info on this.

Here's a 2006 salary survey, by cert. type:
http://www.certmag.com/articles/templates/CM_gen_Article_template.asp?articleid=2479&zoneid=223

The numbers vary widely by area - those actually look low to me.

 

[mattgerth]

For what it's worth, I did a job search for each one on dice.com and got 37 hits for MCDST and 723 hits for A+.

 

[redhotswami]

ftw mcdst??? i hadn't heard of that. i've been out of the computer field for ages. i feel so left behind.

 

[Liesje]

A+ is far more common, but considering that I'm not at all interested in any sort of computer hardware and I do primarily call center support, I've been leaning toward MCDST.

And $79K being the average base IT salary?!?!? Yeah, now I can see why Michigan is still considered 49th out of 50 states as far as economics. Most of us don't make half that and there's so many IT people around, you consider yourself lucky just to HAVE an IT job (or ANY job these days). Oh well, like I've posted in my journal this is just a job I do to pay the rent. I really don't care for it one way or the other and don't take the IT field very seriously. That's why I'm just doing the certs my employers pay for

 

[mattgerth]

And $79K being the average base IT salary?!?!? Yeah, now I can see why Michigan is still considered 49th out of 50 states as far as economics. Most of us don't make half that and there's so many IT people around, you consider yourself lucky just to HAVE an IT job (or ANY job these days).

I have an MCSE, CCNA, a Nortel Cert. and I don't make that much either.

 

[Liesje]

I don't think our IT director/college VP makes that much...

 

[ntalwar]

salary.com has graphs of salary by title and location. Not sure how accurate it is.