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Google IT Support Professional Certificate
- kevin2r 9y agoHow this certification program compares to CompTIA A+ ?
- Kephael 9y agoBoth are likely to be equally worthless in getting an IT job, IT jobs require experience in the field and not just knowledge.
- ralmidani 9y agoThat old Catch-22: how do you gain experience in the field if nobody will hire you?
- FuckOffNeemo 9y agoWork for exposure shrugs
- 659087 9y agoI wouldn't even call what you get from those programs knowledge. Knowledge implies understanding of the subject material, which I've never seen from the "A+ certified" crowd in my entire career.
- freehunter 9y agoA+ covers IT support and touches a tiny bit on networking, Windows admin, and basic hardware. 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.
- kevin2r 9y agoHappy that it covers writing code for automation. I have automated some tedious tasks at my current job, it saves hours of frustration and boredom.
- datguacdoh 9y agoWe based this on our internal training for our IT hires based on the gaps we found when we onboarded people over the last 7 years. We invested a lot in making the material practical and lab driven vs just rote memorization. Disclosure: I worked on this program.
- JBlue42 9y agoThanks for being on this thread and commenting in a few places.
- arca_vorago 9y agoI just wanted to say thank you, as a senior sysadmin this looks like a really good course to uptrain t1/2's with, and it does seem to be more concise and relevant than other similar courses. I rip on google a lot, but I can appreciate good work when I see it.
- jpera 9y agoI am currently taking the course and I can tell you that for 50.00 it is well worth it. I have been in IT Support for 20+ years and can tell you that it is constantly changing and although I have a degree I did not learn the majority of the knowledge I have from college. We have had interns and hires that have certifications out the wazoo and 4-year degrees but do not know how to change a toner cartridge or could not describe how DNS and the internet works. I was super excited when the course went over DNS. Before I started this course about 3 weeks ago I was showing an employee how DNS works for an issue he ran into. I also like how the course went over Linux and windows, mac, etc. The course was not one sided like a lot, of courses, focusing specifically on the vendor. I also like how they have labs that have interaction. Any good training should have actual labs with hands-on experience. I personally think we have too many people that memorize brain dumps to pass but could not do the hands-on work. I did not run into a formatting issue with the things not matching up on the labs so I cannot attest to that. I do remember that they specifically say please take this on a desktop or laptop. It said something about not taking them on mobile devices or tablets. I also saw that sometimes when you put in an answer that if you left a hyphenated word out or only put the first part of the word it would now except the answer. That being said you can review the material as many times as you want and you can also retake the quizzes and assignments so there should be no reason for you to not pass unless you're just lazy. That being said, the course does not go over everything and nor should it. It is an entry-level course for 50.00 that you can do on your on time to further your education and career. Back in the day, CompTIA used to cost 50.00 but now it is 410.00. Most of the vendors have gouged on pricing in the last 20-30 years. Hats off to Google for trying to make a difference and not trying to charge people a gazillion dollars for it.
- mandazi 9y agoIs this similar to other courses but just branded as Google or is there Google specific knowledge? Do you get a chance to work for Google after taking this course?
- gaius 9y agoThere’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?
- blakesterz 9y agoI thought I just read about layoffs in all the big support centers in India? Are those similar jobs? Where is IBM, DXC et. al. sending the jobs or is that all just unrelated or my bad memory? For some reason I thought the general trend lately was many Western countries were bringing support jobs back to their own countries.
- geodel 9y agoIMO the reduction of workforce IT / Software related field is worldwide. Now place I work is hiring whole bunch of people but just on basis of that I wouldn't say in general is industry is creating whole lot of jobs. 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.
- ams6110 9y agoYou can't really offshore swapping out a defective network cable or replacing a hard drive. I haven't looked at how they define an "IT Support Professional" but I'm assuming it's not just answering a phone and following a decision tree and saying "I'm very sorry to hear that you are still experiencing a problem" before each step. Anyone can do that with almost no training.
- Kephael 9y agoSure you can, just move most of your computing resources to the cloud and let Amazon manage hardware maintenance.
- sigstoat 9y agooffice workers still have computing devices on their desks, keyboards monitors, mice, printers, label printers, scanners, voip phones, switches, routers, access points, sip callboxes on the doors, projectors, access control systems, etc. maybe the office will finally go paperless this decade, and a couple of those will go away. they'll just be some new IoT fuckery to contend with.
- 27182818284 9y agoGlad to see the partnership with Coursera for it. Althought MOOCs haven't changed the world in the way they were hyped, I still think they have incredible promise for stuff like this or for stuff like Udacity's training of new frameworks like React or working with Android.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoI'm not convinced that there is demand for a large number of IT Support Professionals, or if there is, there's not enough of a demand for employers to hire outside of the few tech hubs of the country. I've held A+, Network+, Project+, Security+, and CCNA certifications for a while now in the third largest city in Missouri, yet the only positions that have been available to me have been low-wage temporary contract jobs.
- dexwiz 9y agoIT 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, 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.
- rb808 9y agoEspecially as I think many dev jobs will disappear. 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.
- pm90 9y agoAt the risk of sounding utterly foolish in the future, I would say that there will always be jobs for the creative developer. The one thing that has made Software Engineering stand out from other professions is just how SE is essential/Integrated in fields outside of its immediate application. What I mean is: devs are required in Oil and Gas, Academia, Education, Manufacturing etc. apart from the regular jobs in the Computer world (i.e. Software-only companies like MS, Google). 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.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y agoTechnically there are still jobs for horse carriage drivers, but that doesn't mean there's a bright future in that career.
- stctgion 9y ago
- bluedino 9y ago>> the average starting salary is $52,000 according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics That's a decent salary for a Windows or network admin in middle America. Helpdesk positions are lucky to pay half that.
- da_chicken 9y agoYeah, this smells like an ambiguous definition combined with, "We averaged San Francisco with Wichita."
- leesalminen 9y agoWe’re not located in the valley and our help desk positions are within 10% of that number. 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.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoNo, 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.
- leesalminen 9y agoThat's a fair point. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was in the Midwest. That's quite unfortunate.
- freehunter 9y agoIt's not like that everywhere. Yeah if your city is imploding, you're going to struggle to find any job, which is of course one reason why the city is declining and wages are stagnating. But $50k in Boulder isn't $50k in Flint or Gary, so comparing salaries like that is kind of ridiculous. More than half a decade ago I was hired out of an internship at a fairly average company doing fairly average work in a mid-sized Midwestern city making $51k/yr. I was 23 and the internship was the only IT experience I had. So take an anecdote as an anecdote... it's not always true across the board.
- excalibur 9y agoThe arrogance here is appalling. "Here is a new cert that nobody in the industry is familiar with, but it will qualify you for an entry-level role pretty much anywhere, because we're Google and we said so."
- rwc 9y agoWould you have preferred they introduce it with the messaging "Here's a new certificate program, we have no idea if it has any value whatsoever."
- Chris2048 9y agoTBH, the arrogance is justified, since people consider them reputable.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoReputable 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.
- Chris2048 9y agoBoth. 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.
- jstarfish 9y agoFor 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.
- startupdiscuss 9y agoI wonder why they picked Coursera over Udacity or EdX. EdX seems quite Microsoft heavy. But Google has released a lot of material on Udacity, and they have other connections (Thrun). Just curious.
- gaius 9y agoLinux Foundation are also on EdX btw
- hobaak 9y agoGoogle just sponsored Web app developer and Android developer nanodegrees to thousands of people. https://www.udacity.com/google-scholarships https://www.udacity.com/google-scholarships I guess they are giving big players like udacity and coursera even support.
- smilbandit 9y agoI'm not truly sold on the merit of this program or that it will lead directly to a high paying job. I do know that there are very few employers who will consider this cert as a negative. At $50/month it could provide some with that first step to something more.
- north_east_dev 9y agoAnd in true Google style I expect them to slowly ignore it and then drop the program, leaving anyone who invested in it high and dry.
- ProAm 9y agoAnd good luck talking to anyone at google about said program.
- meritt 9y agoUnless they've figured out a way to attach a DRM policy to the knowledge you learn from taking a course, I don't think it's possible for them to leave anyone high and dry.
- gaius 9y agoSome certs must be regularly renewed, e.g. ScrumMaster. If it’s de-supported then the certs evaporate.
- meritt 9y ago"Hey Doug, Got a minute? So the university where you learned Computer Science, well we just found out they recently closed their doors. Since they are no longer an accredited institution, nor do they even exist, we're going to have to let you go."
- jtrujillo 9y agoThis may not cause you to lose your current position, but could be detrimental next time you are job hunting
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- skybrian 9y agoWhy do you say that? Someone who gets a job this way will probably be happy even if the course they took is later dropped.
- eitland 9y agoAs many here seems to doubt the market for this thing: 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.
- wpdev_63 9y agoOle udacity, the ITTech of 'learn on the web' sites. Money would be better spent on a respectable certification like MCSE.
- freehunter 9y agoWow the MCSE and this certification could not be any less comparable.
- JoblessWonder 9y agoYeah... that is like saying "Money is better spent getting a college degree in CS!" Sure, they both might be true but they aren't all attainable for everyone.
- wpdev_63 9y agoThey're both pretty much exams. The 'MCSE' or any other certification from Microsoft would be worth more and probably be cheaper than udacity. If your goal to have something to show to a potential employer, MCSE will hold alot more weight. Udacity degrees, certifications or whatever they're called are GEDs of certifications and should be treated as such. If you want an actual job where you will be respected at, don't go to udacity.
- freehunter 9y agoMCSE certs prepare you for a vastly different job than IT Support. Think CompTIA A+. IT Support and systems administration are different jobs and different certifications help out in different ways. When I got my CompTIA Security+ in college, I got asked by interviewers why I got that and not the CISSP. The answer is, while the CISSP is a far more respected certification, the requirements and entry price are also far different. The CISSP is not an entry-level certification, it actually mandates a certain number of years in the industry. MTA is entry-level. MCSA is entry level. MCSE is for established professionals, it is an expert-level certification, so of course it's more respected. The people taking it are already well-respected experts themselves. The MTA is the Microsoft certification that's most comparable to this. Not MCSE.
- aestetix 9y agoGiven the current state of support Google itself offers, there is more than a bit of irony here.
- datguacdoh 9y agoDisclosure: 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.
- softawre 9y agoAs someone who works for a biggish software company - internal IT is hugely important when it comes to employee satisfaction.
- _RPM 9y agoDoes anyone remember the movie "The Internship", in which all of interns were IT Support? It's really funny that that they portrayed them as IT Support.
- jstewartmobile 9y agoBetween very-very large scale integration, walled-garden consumer devices, and the everyday nature of distributed computing, IT is a dead man walking. 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.
- user5994461 9y agoI've seen that at big brand name. The network was dead multiple times every week for entire hours. It's so terrible. 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.
- jstewartmobile 9y agoMost megacorps don't seem to care. IT by goon squad has been standard operating procedure for almost a decade now.
- CodeSheikh 9y agoIt would be nice if Google can have a real customer support of its own first where you can reach a human at the end. I have been trying to get help on Google Voice issues that I have been having for months now, and the only help I have available is community driven "Google Support" forums.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- arca_vorago 9y agoIf you have a business account with them you get a rep that you can actually speak to, just fyi, google has been improving business support vastly over the last few years. Everyone else though is relegated to those ms-support-esque forums.
- geff82 9y agoIn Germany, this is called "Fachinformatiker für Systemintegration" and is an official professional apprenticeship for which you do not pay money, but GET PAID as you are spending 30% of your time in school and 70% applying your knowledge in a company. If you have 4.5 years of experience on-the-job in IT you can just apply for the final exams without going to school.
- amelius 9y agoYour boss can still pay for your education if you take it from Google.
- dx034 9y agoBut then you have a Google degree and not one certified by the government. Google is reputable now but I wouldn't be so sure if the Google degree is worth much in 20 years.
- gregcoombe 9y agoThis is a certificate, not a degree, which is a fairly important distinction. The goal is to teach a set of technical skills that allow you to get a specific job. In 20 years, your experience will count much more than either a degree or certificate.
- Consultant32452 9y agoYour experience will count much more than a degree or certificate in far fewer than 20 years. It's probably more in the 2-5 year range, depending on your degree and experience.
- gregcoombe 9y agoAccording to Google translate, that is a "Systems Integration Specialist". I really like it: it's more descriptive of your actual job than "Information Technologist".
- protomyth 9y agoWill Google also partner, like Apple, with some of the community colleges in the US to deliver the training to populations that might need the additional help?
- killjoywashere 9y agoNow if only they'd open-source the REWS training pipeline.
- danans 9y agoI got started at Google years ago in the IT support department. I was an atypical case because I have a CS degree from an prestigious university, but at the time, I was caught in the fallout of the dot-com bust, so I needed any job I could get. 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.
- aesthetics1 9y agoIt's hard to find anything about working at Google that isn't geared towards SWE. What job title(s) would someone working for Google in IT support hold? Is the interview process as grueling as the SWE positions, or is Google looking for generalists?
- danans 9y agoThe job title is "Corporate Operations Engineer" [1]. I don't know what the current interview process is, but it's almost certainly quite different than the interview process for Software Engineering. There is probably an emphasis on troubleshooting and support-related skills and abilities. [1] https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=en-US&jl=37.7749295%3A-122.4194155%3ASan+Francisco%2C+CA%2C+USA%3AUS%3AUSA%3A7.675068552023236%3ALOCALITY%3A%3A%3A%3ACA%3ASan+Francisco+County%3ASan+Francisco&jld=20&j=corporate+operations+engineer& https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=e...
- datguacdoh 9y agoIn IT, it depends on the level, but early on we look for generalists, and then expect people to specialize over time. The interview process is similar to SWE, but for new grads the technical bar is lower. The title is Corporate Operations Engineer, unless you're in our IT Residency Program, in which case it's IT Resident.
- tvanantwerp 9y agoI'm not convinced of the quality of this course material. I thought I could try it out, see if I could fill some gaps in my knowledge. I tried out some of the quizzes and they were just bad. Course 1, week 2, for example, asks you to match items to where they go on a motherboard. This quiz is flatly wrong. It asks you to match a PSU to the rear Ethernet port, and a SATA cable to an IDE port. Being so obviously wrong about something so basic gives me serious concerns about everything else. I quickly cancelled the free trial.
- aesthetics1 9y agoI went through the first several weeks of course 1, and you are spot on. The quiz in week 2 is absolutely wrong (did anyone audit this?). I skimmed through the first 6 weeks and even for a beginner course, this is way too dumbed down. 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.
- AustinLin 9y agoI was also a bit surprised by the simplicity of course 1, but then remembered that the course as a whole is designed for folks with no experience. Looking through the descriptions for the other courses (the actual material isn't out yet) I'm hopeful they will have the level of depth I think we're all expecting.
- datguacdoh 9y agoYeah you definitely want to keep in mind that this cert, and especially Course 1, has to be accessible to anyone. So it's building a foundation of common knowledge for the other courses which absolutely go into much more details.
- datguacdoh 9y agoI sent this on to the right people. We audited the course and had a private external beta, so it's surprising to see obvious errors like this. I imagine there might be something else going on with the labs.
- harlanji 9y agoGlad this is a thing. Waiting to see feedback, might dabble a little. But I have family who would be open to just about any suggestion (midwest+sw US). Lots of tight knit support groups that prevent the younger ones from relocating unless they have a handful of siblings or similar. They're bored out of their minds and without hope in some cases. I tried to get my brother into A+ type material as a way out of warehouse-type jobs, being that computers are how I made it anywhere. I understand those don't sound like great employees, but on the contrary, if it's a legitimately good option it could do wonders for their morale and they'd be loyal. So kudos to Google for getting started with this.
- arthurcolle 9y agoit support is where thought goes to die
- mickduprez 9y agoI signed up for this course even though after a brief look it looks like more of an entry-level course than a full-blown IT specialist course (which is understanding considering the course delivery being web-based). 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.
- skimaskninja87 9y agoThis certificate is geared towards CS, Mathematics, or Engineering students or enthusiasts or self taught programmers and engineers. The job: Application Support Analyst, IT Analyst, Tech Support Analyst... You'll find the job descriptions on Indeed.com..... If you are currently an "IT major" you may learn some of this material as part of your major coursework. Otherwise, calling it "IT Support" would be very misleading for someone like me who has done Help Desk/Desktop/ Networking/System Administration/ Networking security for the past 13 years with MCSE, COMPTIA, and Cisco certifications and I'm giving someone advice as for as which path to follow. 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.
- skimaskninja87 9y agoA better description using the OSI Model: This certificate is perfect for someone who works at the Application Layer or Layer 4 and above.....
- lukecage0 9y agocan it be useful for indians also
- lukecage0 9y agois this course only for americans?
- Nawaz1 9y agoHow the exams will be conducted for each course in this program?