Cheating and Testing

I work in the IT (information technology) industry and one of the unfortunate byproducts of that is a fairly regular rigorous technical certification attainment that is not really as much for continued skill development, as it is is for retaining one's employment. Unfortunately, unlike other disciplines like law and medicine, the need to constantly (and I mean constantly) keep up with the latest technological trends and products by becoming a subject matter expert on the same, has led many a systems or network administrator to purchase overpriced study books, software and purchase systems for lab use (since it's unlikely that you'll be given any time to play with hardware on the job, given today's climate of slash and cut of positions, offshoring the same, and consolidating existing jobs, thereby increasing everyone's workload.

This is one of many reasons why I am looking to eventually get out of the industry all together. It is just not a viable long-term industry, with technology changing rapidly, accelerating the redundancy of IT support staff, since new technology is supposed to make end-users more self-sufficient or self-reliant, yet by virtue of this reducing the need for technical people.

I've written about the problems with the IT industry before, but what I want to concentrate on today is one aspect in particular, which I feel has been grating at my nerves for years, and it was essentially the straw that broke the camel's back, in convincing me that I will be leaving this industry sooner rather than later. I've already lightly alluded to it above, and that is the whole issue of certification and the testing that goes with it.

Now, I have some inherent problems with the nature of IT certification as it stands. Again, unlike doctors, engineers, lawyers, electricians, teachers, and such who have to take some sort of testing or licensing process, their certification is never really in jeopardy after they achieve it. Sure, you may need to do some courses or attend workshops, seminars and conferences to stay current, but a doctor never really is at risk to lose his/her MD as a result of the lapse of time, and similarly the electrician or plumber will never really lose their certificate over the years. With IT certifications, the lifespan of the certification is very short (a few years). That is due to the technology changing, obviously, but what that means is that every few years, you will need to go through testing from scratch. Moreover, what you were previous certified in becomes obsolete quickly, so essentially, the time and money your poured into your books and software and studying does not really have a lot of long-term dividends. Even on a resume or a CV, you will eventually need to drop some of the older certifications (ie. no one puts down that they were certified in Windows NT 3.51 anymore, or even 4.0 for that matter). The very expensive books for those operating systems have similarly become extinct - you wouldn't be able to give away Windows NT certification books if you tried - trust me, I have tried!

But my biggest beef with IT certification became evident to me around 2003, when I earned my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) designation in Windows 2000, after a couple of years of hard study and sacrificing my time and energy outside of the office to do it. I remember that shortly after my son was born in 2003, I was hitting the books once again, working in the home lab on exercises in a 1,000 page book, while my poor wife had a screaming baby in the other room and was also doing the bulk of the housechores as well.

Before I continue, I'd like to provide some context on the declining value of certifications over the years. In 1999, when I achieved my Windows NT MSCE, my company awarded me $15,000 Cdn. as a reward. MCSEs were valued then as experts in their field, and companies like mine recognized that. When I got my Windows 2000 MCSE in 2003, I didn't even get a handshake from management. The only thing I got was an email that said "good job". Should I have expected something? Damn right I should have. No one should be taking their personal time to study for 2 years, for the company's benefit, and not be compensated for it. Do you know why I wasn't?

Because by then the MCSE certification have become entirely worthless industry-wide, no matter what the Microsoft global marketing team will say otherwise. The reason why the MCSE has been devalued is because testing schools were churning out MCSEs by the refugee boatload. There were 13-year-olds who were reported to have obtained MCSE certification. And the reason why these MCSEs were being spit out like nasty tasting black licorice is because people accepted the wide use of cheating on their certification tests.

Now, people who engage in this practice will vehemently deny that they are cheating. Yet, let's look at the facts. People were using software (which I won't name here) which had the exact test questions. These unscrupulous software companies would send people (anonymous agents, paid by cash) to write these certification tests (and pay the standard $150 - $250 fee per test), and in doing so they wore cameras that captured the questions word for word. Because the overall random selection of questions can number in the 1,000 range (typically, there are around 50-100 questions on each exam), multiple agents were sent. Once these companies had the pool of questions more or less covered, they then did their research and found out the correct answers (these exams are all multiple choice by the way - answers-wise, even for the questions that are scenario-based). After confirming the answers, they then would sell the entire package of 500 or so questions and answers to whoever wants to buy it. All you need is some cash, and a very good memory in order to memorize the entire pool of questions and answers. Now, people were arguing vehemently that it was cheating because they considered it a study tool since these "guides" gave reasons why certain answers were right and certain answers were wrong. It was a pretty sad argument people made, since I asked them why they didn't use other products in retail stores which did the same thing but guaranteed wasn't comprised of the EXACT test questions. I never once got a satisfactory answer for that. They simply continued using these products to cheat, and of course, they produced nearly perfect scores for their exams. Of course, this caught on industry-wide, with IT professionals who didn't want to spend money on books and materials and more importantly, didn't want to spend the time to actually learn something. More than likely, their companies were pressuring them to obtain certification, so they took the easy way out.

I'm not making any of this up. I saw this on my own team that I managed. Our company lay down a mandatory certification goal for all technical people - of course, it was expected that people use their personal time to achieve this work goal, which irritated the hell out of a lot of the team members. I started hearing rumblings of a few of them who were exchanging the software program and since I am neither a dictator nor a micromanager, I encouraged them to do it the honest way and even offered to hold seminars at work where I'd actually work with them on the material, but they simply decided to use these dubious materials to obtain the actual pool of test questions and answers and to no one's surprise, almost all of them came out with 100% on the exams. As they were congratulating each other in 2002-2003, they all knew that I was pissed, considering the fact that I did it the honest way and I barely passed a couple of the exams (and took 2 1/2 years to go through all the exams while they took a mere 2-3 months). A few of them approached me and said that they knew that it wasn't right, but they just don't have the time - and besides, when they were going to college or university, cheating was widespread there, so if everyone else is trying to get an edge, why shouldn't they?

I'm not sure of what to say to this - I just shook my head and I was very disappointed at how things turned out. Of course, this being an industry wide practice, it immediately devalued technical certifications in general. I spoke with my manager about this practice and he said that while he didn't condone cheating, he recognizes that people in the industry are being overworked and don't have time to use their own precious time in order to achieve some silly company goal. So it was obvious that he wasn't about to do anything (and it would have been hard to enforce an order anyway, since people can just deny that they're using the materials).

It has always been my belief that if you do things in a half-assed way or take unscrupulous shortcuts, things will eventually come back to bite you in the ass. And sure enough, for these people it did. Some of these folks, due to what their management and peers viewed was a correlation between their extremely high scores on the exams and an assumed heightened technical skillset were placed on projects or were considered subject matter experts on certain technical topics. Well, I can tell you that one of the very few times I tore multiple strips off someone was when they were working with a customer on an Active Directory permissions inheritance issue and were stumped. They then made the unwise decision to come by my desk and ask me for assistance. I probably should have restrained myself, but I was well beyond restraint. Anyway, what I told them in pretty curt language was that, "You took three exams on this topic and scored 99-100% on each exam - why are you asking ME for help????" (after all, I only got 79% or so on the exam). Of course, after seeing their face turned flushed red due to embarrassment, I then proceeded to explain a pretty simple concept that, had they actually taken the time to study, they would have grasped pretty easily. Anyhow, it's a bit ironic that most of those people have since been released from the company or moved to other accounts. I am the only one still there from the original team, and my management tell me that one reason I continue to survive all the downsizing is because I have a diverse and solid technical skillset. That didn't come overnight. There are no shortcuts to real learning and real knowledge. You have to put the time in.

Nowadays, companies are starting to realize that many certified people out there have "paper" certifications, which indicates that they don't have real life knowledge or experience, and companies are no longer desiring (at least en masse) their interview candidates to have any technical certifications. I've been on interviews where the prospective employer indicates that they'd prefer that people don't have certifications since at least they know that they aren't cheating. At the very least, some employers recognize that cheating is not a desireable trait.