Gettin' Certified

I'm on a quest to enter IT for real. I've been IT-adjacent for years now, working in sales support, but I've discovered that I hate sales. Not the people themselves - I'm quite chummy with a number of ex coworkers who are salespersons - but the whole enterprise of being in sales. It's not an accident that executives are drawn almost exclusively from the sales department, where everything is reducible to a set of KPIs. Those who ascend the ladder do so because they meet arbitrary quotas, deflect blame, speak in comforting platitudes, and take credit for positive outcomes, regardless of any true involvement. It is not actually required to know anything about a product or service being sold, and in fact, such knowledge distracts from the hard work of arranging numbers in a spreadsheet and then presenting that spreadsheet to a group of higher-ups who will ostensibly make "decisions" based on those numbers, even though most executive decisions have already been pre-determined by confirmation bias and perverse incentives. Having actual knowledge and doing actual work are both reserved for people in other, lesser departments.

Anyway, one of the reasons I want to be in IT is so that I can work from a position of authority. Not as a decision-maker, per se, but as someone who possesses concrete knowledge, and can say "yes" or "no" to things based upon objective truths rather than subjective whims. 

Last week, I passed the first of two exams to get CompTIA A+ certified. The first test, Core 1 focused on network and computer hardware, as well as troubleshooting best practices, peripherals, and mobile devices. The upcoming Core 2 will be focused on operating systems, browsers, command lines, soft skills, and more troubleshooting best practices. It also requires a higher score to pass. I'm not too worried, but I still have lots of material to review. I will be immensely relieved if/when I pass.

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