I'm getting disillusioned

How about as instructors we do something many of us are more than skilled in doing. By direct email to Steve Schneiter, I sent him a link to what I believe is a site containing questions that are likely a "brain dump" for the SY0-601 exam and asked that he respond to this posting, providing an email address where we, as instructors, can share links to our investigative findings.

Steve
 
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Go to r/CompTIA on Reddit. A whole board full of inexperienced people telling each other to watch all 16 hours of Messer's videos and Dion's class on Udemy and Anki flash cards. And then they study for three to six months to barely pass. And then they take a victory lap like they're the most fantastic thing on the planet. Not one of them is employable.
 
I just read one post from a person claiming to have passed the Net+, Sec+, PenTest+, and CySA+ in a single week. The person also claimed they had been working in cyber/software engineering from the ages of 16-22 and that their only preparation for the exam was doing a once-over on the OSI model. They also claim to have a BA in CompSci in 3 years and a Masters in one year and will be starting as an Adjuct Professor next year.

There is a slim possibility that the poster is a wunderkind, but an even larger possibility that they cheated or they're lying.
 
I just read one post from a person claiming to have passed the Net+, Sec+, PenTest+, and CySA+ in a single week. The person also claimed they had been working in cyber/software engineering from the ages of 16-22 and that their only preparation for the exam was doing a once-over on the OSI model. They also claim to have a BA in CompSci in 3 years and a Masters in one year and will be starting as an Adjuct Professor next year.

There is a slim possibility that the poster is a wunderkind, but an even larger possibility that they cheated or they're lying.
Sounds pretty unicorn-y to me. The Frank Dux of IT, right?
 
Another thread:

Poster commented that he failed Sec+ three times and wanted to know if there was a way to get around CompTIA's requirement that he wait a specified period of time before he's allowed to retest.

Another thread:

Poster wants to know if he buys a voucher in a country where it is less expensive, if he can use it in the US.

It's awful over there.
 
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Jarrel

Well-known member
  • Feb 17, 2020
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    www.jarrelrivera.com
    Another thread:

    Poster commented that he failed Sec+ three times and wanted to know if there was a way to get around CompTIA's requirement that he wait a specified period of time before he's allowed to retest.

    Another thread:

    Poster wants to know if he buys a voucher in a country where it is less expensive, if he can use it in the US.

    It's awful over there.
    There is a way to get around the retest - use different account perhaps (?).
    Regarding vouchers, typically, they are country specific or user specific.

    I understand the query on vouchers, since it incurs cost, and people want to save money.

    I am not a fan of people wanting to circumnavigate the policies on retesting. The reason why those timelines are in place is for students to take time and review before retake - so if the students just want to take the exam over and over again, it becomes like a chase of luck, instead of getting certified because they are competent enough.
     
    I've been keeping a close eye on and thought a lot about this thread. I get that I live in the ivory tower and most of my courses don't teach towards certs (but some do). So I am in many respects isolated from a lot of the concerns that spawned this thread. And I also see the value of certs: case in point, I had 22 cybersecurity students pass the (ISC)2 CC exam last semester, one pass the GIAC GFACT, one pass the Security+, and 50 web science students pass an Azure fundamentals exam (they could choose from AZ-900, AI-900, DP-900, or SC-900) last semester.

    I do read the Reddit from time to time, though I don't have an account there. Is it disappointing when there are posts that trivialize the difficulty and the achievement of passing a cert? Sure. I'm not immune to that either. However, we don't know the context of these peoples' lives. And there are a myriad of situations where I would still encourage someone to go back and learn the material the right way but understand why they felt like they needed to rush to get the cert. We are never going to know those contexts. And I am not advocating that everyone deserves that level of compassion, but some of them do. It is worth remembering that from time to time.

    And it is not all malodorous over there either; that characterization is not fair to many of the posters, not fair to likely the majority of readers (who far outnumber the posters), and not fair to us as instructors. What about a post from yesterday celebrating a CySA+ win, where the poster very clearly did things the right way? They earned all the certs leading up to the CySA+, they took (part of) a video course, they studied the books, took practice exams, and went through the TryHackMe Cyber Defense learning path to gain hands-on experience. That's the right way. And while I do see some of us having commented on that thread, not one of us (and I include myself here) congratulated that person for doing it the right way, pointing out that this is a right way to do it, and encouraging others to use this as an example of how they can earn the cert the right way.

    We should not forget the negative and positive impacts our behaviors can have on others. We do need to police. But we also need to be encouraging and compassionate and lead by example. So what I'm going to do right now is make an account on Reddit so I can do the things I just said.
     
    And while I do see some of us having commented on that thread, not one of us (and I include myself here) congratulated that person for doing it the right way, pointing out that this is a right way to do it, and encouraging others to use this as an example of how they can earn the cert the right way.
    It's been a while, myself, since I was on that particular Reddit channel, mostly because it's more of a time sink - and if I want to spend a few minutes writing something, I'd rather do it here on CIN than out there in Reddit land. That being said, I have done this, myself - celebrated the wins of those who did it right, and while I do agree that positive reinforcement will have an effect on a few, I think we do see a continued trend of candidates who would rather do whatever is minimally necessary to get the credential - the ones we earned with hard work.

    With respect to vouchers, well, while I get all of my testing paid for, either through comp vouchers here at CompTIA for being a TTT addict, or through my company, I do understand the anger that some have that they had to pay full price when others got them by scamming the system.

    Case in point, I called out a poster here on CIN last year for attempting to acquire a voucher by super-speeding or hacking On24 to get credit for completing the TTT sessions. That person never responded and hasn't since my calling him/her out for attempting to scam CompTIA for a comp'ed voucher. Stephen and I spoke about this a few times, about how CompTIA is working internally on the voucher misuse/abuse, since there is a financial impact to CompTIA and labor impact to Stephen and company to have to process vouchers for these folks. After all, I think the TTT program is an amazing resource for those of us who need/want to maintain our cert status.

    Another case in point is being asked, point blank, to pirate materials that I've gotten from CIN. Getting the PDF of a textbook has a lot of value and is perpetual. Meanwhile, the person who asked me knew he was asking me to break the rules. I politely told him 'no'. He "understood", meanwhile he and I both knew he was trying to get something for which he was not entitled.

    Perhaps the furthest I can go here is to basically say, "who gives a flying flip what others do - it doesn't impact what I do. As long as I'm doing it the right way, if they want to cheat, that's on them." Maybe it's easier to stick my head in the sand and just focus elsewhere. But if we're not interested in holding the line on this, either through positive reinforcement or using a bit of negativity, the point is, we have to see the value in certification *first*, before our students will follow suit. Otherwise, I think we're, at heart, being disingenuous.

    /r
     
    Let me pose it in a manner few want to consider. Some training companies (notice I did not say all), focus their efforts on "career changers" as their customers. They rush them through a series of three certification-related courses in a boot camp style 5-day format for each course. The students are being educated in a firehose manner, lacking sufficient time to absorb course content before facing the certification exams. Instructors are being evaluated based on student success. What could go wrong with this setup?
    Potential employers should ask candidates how they received their cert. If the candidate did a 5-day boot camp, you can bet retention has fallen to 20%. If the candidate did self-study or a well-paced multi-week course, the retention and hireability are much higher. CompTIA needs to publish more certification info than just the date the candidate earned the cert.
     

    Rod Oatis

    Well-known member
  • Aug 28, 2019
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    TX
    Potential employers should ask candidates how they received their cert. If the candidate did a 5-day boot camp, you can bet retention has fallen to 20%. If the candidate did self-study or a well-paced multi-week course, the retention and hireability are much higher. CompTIA needs to publish more certification info than just the date the candidate earned the cert.
    That's where performance-based assessments during, or as a part of, the interview process become valuable. The employer 'owns' the scenarios and can rotate through a number of scenarios to limit exposure. There will always be a gap between knowing how something could be done and being able to actually do it.
     
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    Potential employers should ask candidates how they received their cert. If the candidate did a 5-day boot camp, you can bet retention has fallen to 20%. If the candidate did self-study or a well-paced multi-week course, the retention and hireability are much higher. CompTIA needs to publish more certification info than just the date the candidate earned the cert.
    I disagree that self-study proves anything. I've seen far too many people admit they used a 16-hour abridged video series, online practice tests, and flash cards to exam cram and memorize their way to a certification.
     
    Potential employers should ask candidates how they received their cert. If the candidate did a 5-day boot camp, you can bet retention has fallen to 20%. If the candidate did self-study or a well-paced multi-week course, the retention and hireability are much higher. CompTIA needs to publish more certification info than just the date the candidate earned the cert.
    CompTIA has always kept that metric data pretty close to the vest. For years, I've wondered about overall pass rates for certification, whether anyone has ever really been decertified as a result of cheating/braindumps, or the like. I don't expect to ever hear anything on these topics, but I do wonder a lot about it. I don't think they "need" to publish that data so much as we "want" them to - and there's a difference there.

    @Steve, that's where performance-based assessments during, or as a part of, the interview process become valuable. The employer 'owns' the scenarios and can rotate through a number of scenarios to limit exposure. There will always be a gap between knowing how something could be done and being able to actually do it.
    At this point, I think this is the gold standard - can a candidate actually do the job. Of course, this gives credence to the script kiddie types out there that watch videos on HOW to do something, but they don't understand the underlying technology or knowledge. But they know how to do something enough to execute commands in a performance review. The onus is on the hiring manager to screen out the real 'haves' vs. the 'have-nots', but if if a company wants to hire a paper cert to do a job, that's on them.
    I disagree that self-study proves anything. I've seen far too many people admit they used a 16-hour abridged video series, online practice tests, and flash cards to exam cram and memorize their way to a certification.
    I don't think any one method of study is any better than the other. Depends on the learner, CTT+ will teach you that. Kolb's model also shows that. I think a self-study based script kiddie or an instructor led student who's farting around in class on Facebook while a lecture is happening stand the same chance of being job ready.

    In the end, we're wanting to win the hearts and minds of the learner population and get them to do it the right way. Put in the time. Learn the material. Study. Certify. Not take shortcuts - because it validates all the work we've done to get there. Will we do win those hearts and minds? Not likely, in my view, because as I said earlier in this thread, if there is something of value, it's human nature to take the shortest course of action to acquire that bit of value, not to earn it through hard work and discipline (the right way). Again, human nature is what we seem to be fighting here.
     
    Another thread:

    Poster asking if it was possible to use a VPN so they could buy a CompTIA exam voucher from a different region of the world because it was cheaper than the US voucher.

    Another thread:

    Poster bragging that they passed Sec+ in 9 days by skimming Messer's and Dion's videos and taking 2 practice exams every single day.

    Another poster criticized me for saying that experience was more important than memorized information.
     
    Poster asking if it was possible to use a VPN so they could buy a CompTIA exam voucher from a different region of the world because it was cheaper than the US voucher.
    Scammer.
    Poster bragging that they passed Sec+ in 9 days by skimming Messer's and Dion's videos and taking 2 practice exams every single day.
    Perhaps he did. If we did that, we could do the same thing. We don't know what his previous knowledge was, do we?
    Another poster criticized me for saying that experience was more important than memorized information.
    He's entitled to his opinion. But his lack of experience is only that much more evident.
     
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    Eugene

    Well-known member
    Aug 16, 2019
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    Jacksonville, FL
    Let me pose it in a manner few want to consider. Some training companies (notice I did not say all), focus their efforts on "career changers" as their customers. They rush them through a series of three certification-related courses in a boot camp style 5-day format for each course. The students are being educated in a firehose manner, lacking sufficient time to absorb course content before facing the certification exams. Instructors are being evaluated based on student success. What could go wrong with this setup?
    I try to do a bootcamp for an hour or two to help students on the side so I can help them outside of class a minute since they do get the firehose manner.