Oh, agreed! My nephew went into car maintenance and diesel repair - had a ton of well-paying job offers when he graduated from his training program two years ago and has already switched jobs to one that pays even more. His goal is to open his own diesel engine repair business.
Both of my kids have careers in fields where a college degree is mandatory - there were huge loan bills afterwards, which I was able to pay off with money I received after two deaths of family members - I consider it a good use of the money. My son tells me everyone he knows is paying off massive student loans - and they’re in their early 30s.
Daughter’s friend graduated medical school last year and is a now a second year resident - has $500k in student loans to pay off - even on a doctor’s salary, that is terrible.
I’m glad that I went the tech college route in at least one way.
No student loan to follow me everywhere.
I make ok for county IT person and I took six classes in computer repair at local tech college in 99. That was enough to get an A+ and couple of Microsoft certs in NT and W2K when those were things.
My A+ and experience got me pretty far.
Fast forward to 2024 when my company was in the process of being bought out by a German one. I started getting back on the certification horse again.
My management at the time did not care about any personal achievement unless one was a favorite. It wasn’t always that way. The attitude came about close to when Joey B. got elected.
I hadn’t taken any cert exam since about 2000 and it looked like there were going to be some opportunities to advancement. I was big time wrong there.
Anyway passed a few lightweight exams such as ITF+ and a couple of LPIs. I was also taking a class when I could afford it at the same tech college I learned computer repair from.
Some people’s management would get their people sent off or reimbursed for advanced schooling. I was taking Cyber security and made some A’s and B’s. The plan was to face Security+.
My new village idiot worldwide IT service desk manager had zero concept of anything I proposed or had in mind. His mentality is whatever you were, you are and forever will be. The rest of the monoliths in my direct management, new or old guard felt the same way.
Never mind it was usually one of them who ran to me needing something since I was the only person in a critical job. The applications idiot who never came in, never knew anything, and did even less got to coast.
After a month of having a shouting match with the village idiot and trying to figure out the secret phrase to get reimbursement, I gave up and left one day.
During my time as a pro bum which was a year and half to August 2025, I have racked up almost 30 certifications. A mix of low to supposedly higher ranking ones.
I’ve worked out a system to taking tests of studying, practice tests and a lot of Udemy.