Are certain certificates not worth it because AI?
Posted by TheFrozenDude07@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 36 comments
A few years ago, I finished my degree in system administration, but early in my career I moved into the hardware side of IT. I worked in field service for several years, including enterprise environments where I learned server hardware, repairs, replacements, and datacenter/on-site operations.
Basically, I wanna get back into into becoming an sysadmin but with AI changing so rapidly fast , is it worth doing it the traditional way? (Windows Server, Microsoft admin certs, CompTIA, ITIL, cloud admin paths, etc.)?
IT has changed a lot over the years, and now AI is starting to affecting the industry.
If you already had all the knowledge and experience you have today, but had to start over from zero in 2026, how would you approach becoming a sysadmin again?
Which certifications would you skip entirely?
Which certifications would still be worth getting?
Which skills would matter more than certs now?
Has AI changed what a junior sysadmin should focus on?
What path gives the best long-term value today?
Much appreciated!
Jonesk_ey@reddit
What you can actually do matters more than how many certs you've stacked, especially early in your career. A candidate who can walk through a Proxmox or Hyper-V lab they built at home, explain why they segmented the network the way they did, and pull up an Ansible playbook they wrote for patch compliance will beat someone with three certs and zero hands-on work. Not close.
Has AI changed what a junior sysadmin should focus on? Yes, but probably not in the direction people panic about. The work that used to fill a junior's day (password resets, first-line tickets, routine patching) is mostly getting eaten by automation and service desk bots. That doesn't kill the job, it just moves it. You're now expected to monitor the automation and clean up when it misbehaves, rather than being the automation yourself.
What this actually means for you: in 2026, a junior who can automate their own boring work is worth a lot more than one who just does it faster by hand. Cloudflare and HashiCorp have both been pretty open about this, and it shows up even in how they hire for junior infra roles. If you can read an IaC template and submit a reasonable PR against an automation repo on day one, you're ahead of most.
ravenze@reddit
Even if you use AI to get the answer, you need to know enough to CHECK it. If ypu're rolling AI slop to PROD, you're not gonna last long.
AdeelAutomates@reddit
Exactly.
AI when you don't know the subject in hand, it feels like miracles.
AI when you know the subject in hand, you see it's shortcomings.
This is why any juniors in IT, managers and other ppl not directly involved in the depths of IT... rave about it while any one that is senior is cautiously optimistic at best.
I personally do use it but more as a space to brainstorm and be nudged in directions rather than offload all of my cognition.
LessTax99@reddit
When I first got started seemed like a revolution. As I got more technical all cracks began to show. AI is a mile wide, 1 inch deep.
Valdaraak@reddit
That's the thing with AI. Everything it does looks amazing at first pass, but the longer you look at it the more failures you start to notice.
ledow@reddit
I've never paid any attention to certs, whether hiring or being hired.
They are, for the most part, checkbox exercises that anyone could memorise and pass in an attempt or two - many of them without even needing a computer! As such, they don't demonstrate anything to me.
AI hasn't changed that, in fact it probably makes it slightly worse because it's now technically "easier" to cheat at certain certs.
If you have an appropriate cert to go with your already-proven skills? (shrug), fine.
If you have just the cert? It means nothing.
If you have the already-proven skills but don't have the cert because you've never bothered with it? (shrug), fine.
If you CAN'T PASS the cert... then we have a problem but that's not necessarily related to your skillset. Some people are just bad at formal exams, etc. Same way that I know a lot of people in the industry who hate "practical tests" as part of interviews because they're not good at them. But I know that, in the role, and even under pressure, they're just fine.
If you have NOTHING ELSE then a cert says to me "They were trying to do something". But on that level, someone setting up a cheap, shite home lab to learn something new for themselves? That speaks volumes, more so than a cert.
Certs are HR-hiring checkboxes. And they mean you'll be accepted by companies who have no idea how to test candidates other than those HR-hiring checkboxes. Which means you'll be working, with, alongside, under and above people who... were hired for their ability to check the HR boxes when they didn't know how to test you otherwise.
I see them as rather valueless. Many people I know in the industry do too. Either you're expected to have them, because of the role you're working in, and so everyone else already has them anyway, or you're not actually expected to have them, and so it doesn't matter.
Not having a single industry cert has never hindered me, or anyone I know who didn't have them.
Optimaximal@reddit
I went through a process pre-pandemic of wanting to get some basic certs in IT to back up my abilities with proof.
I realised whilst doing the first course that it was a) really out of date & b) designed purely to generate an industry of people constantly engaging with next years course and taking the tests to pass that one.
ledow@reddit
I have guys who work under me who I'm required to spend some training budget on.
Almost universally, over the last 25+ years, every single person who I've tried to do that with has landed on the same kinds of conclusion: "Sure, we can waste money on this. But it's not teaching me anything." And enough people in industry are like me that I'm not sure who we're "proving" our abilities to.
So MS/Cisco/whoever says that I'm qualified in X. This year. A few years down the line, that's expired and worthless and even they don't recognise it. And... who is this supposed to convince or reassure? When I've met countless people with that cert who don't have the first clue about the very subject they're cert'ed in? And countless people with no such certs who can wipe the floor with them?
I had a problem once with an MSP and they referred a particular project to their "networking guys" because "they had all the certs". It was, in a word, hilarious. Guys with CCNA, etc. were basically unable to route a second subnet over a particular connection. MONTHS of trying. Months of arguing and fighting. Months of both our time. And even demonstrating to them "Look, this is how I did it before!" in a configuration that had been in place for years, that I'd done myself. But in the end? They basically told my employers it was impossible (not just that they didn't want / couldn't do it, which I would have accepted), and they were being paid by the hour to get it done! So I reverted to my previous configuration and sent their kit back to them.
An office-full of cert'd engineers couldn't do a simple thing that's explicitly covered under their own certs.
And though that's just one datapoint, I have to say - that's the observed trend that I see over, and over, and over again. Employers have even said to me themselves - the guys with all the certifications and training and selling their knowledge as "experts" appear to know less than the guys just paid to do the job with no training. I've had employers literally say "Oh, good, because the guys with all the certs never know anything".
I'm a massive advocate for education, I really am, and I'll take the word of skilled, expert, intellectuals over my own in almost every walk of life. But IT industry certs are basically a participation certificate as far as I'm concerned, and myself (and people who I work for, with, or who work under me) tend to think the same.
Plus_Stable3165@reddit
I wasn’t as bad as you described but after landing my first networking role after getting my CCNA I remember thinking that because I had that cert I knew something. Nope! Actual day to day work is so much different and requires not only different skills but different knowledge and how to apply that knowledge which certs don’t remotely prepare you for.
In a year or 2 most of these certs are generally worthless. There are certain certs like CISSP which have value if you’re looking to climb the management ladder it seems.
TheFrozenDude07@reddit (OP)
It's funny you already mention it. I was actually thinking of setting up a home lab setup and document it over the course of a year and see where it goes. I have old left over hardware that's still works.
I guess I will focus on stuff that's valuable and do a few certs, because of hr.
Thank you for writing this.
cleansheet25@reddit
Home labs are great. Throw actual applications on it, try to run prod as best you can.
The certifications themselves might not help much in getting you a job, but if you lack field experience they can give some indication of what you might have missed in your home lab explorations.
cleansheet25@reddit
I see where you are coming from, however I look at it differently:
They are literally a roadmap of pain points for the vendor. You can tell from their question pool the scaling and reliability problems they actually face. Stuff you won’t hear from most PreSales engineers.
The question pools indicate the expected technical depth of the operator.
They show the terminology the vendor uses, particularly useful when vendors like to coin their own terms for decades old concepts (looking right at you, Microsoft!)
These are valuable both when you are starting out your career, and when you are trying to sift through vendor evaluations.
Certs are not a sole indicator of operational competence for sure. For that, you need a portfolio and the ability to communicate what you can do. But they do serve a limited purpose.
BadSausageFactory@reddit
I wouldn't bother with this industry. Go learn a trade. Wife's kids are ex-military truck driver with all the hazmat certs and a plumber in the northeast where pipes burst and keep him busy. I don't see ai getting into either of those niches too soon so I'm happy for both of them.
bdanmo@reddit
Yeah, honestly. Bunches of people at my place have been canned and I’m the one guy left with 4 jobs and the same exact below-market pay I had before. It’s absolutely miserable. I have a mind to start getting into cabinetry / finishing trim type stuff. Just work with my hands and stop looking at a computer all day every day. I’m so toasted right now.
natflingdull@reddit
I have to second this, at least in the US job market, I don’t recommend that anyone go into IT right now if it can be helped.
Its not really that AI tools can replace Sysadmins, they can’t. Its that leadership across American companies believe it can enough to freeze out new positions and not backfill people leaving/retiring. Its made it a bad situation for people with experience, and seems untenable for people entering or reentering the field
Personally I hope this will swing back around like offshoring did, where eventually the market will normalize when people realize you don’t have IT people just for implementation but also for when things don’t work, but for now the market is oversaturated, over competitive
TheFrozenDude07@reddit (OP)
No worries. I appreciate the honesty!
aeroverra@reddit
Idgaf about certs but having a broad understanding of the field matters.
AdeelAutomates@reddit
Exactly. I am pro certs but only because of the journey (learning) not destination.
People who study focuses on the content of the certs to learn, hats off to ya
People who study the exams of the certs to get a badge, question your priorities.
I studied az104. Many years ago. It took me 7 months of studying, 3-4 hours a day. Not because I was preparing for the exam I didn't even care about it until the last 2 weeks. Most of time was spent trying to really learn azure it self though exploring the platform, trying it out with powershell l, learning infrastructure as code, etc.
bdanmo@reddit
Certain certs now matter more because of it. Know your stuff.
achristian103@reddit
Become an accountant or go into healthcare.
This IT shit ain't worth it.
sryan2k1@reddit
Certifications are almost never worth it unless your employer is paying for them (both in time and money)
BitterCaregiver1301@reddit
This is the biggest loser mindset, you need to ditch this shit asap friend.
sryan2k1@reddit
Nah man. All a cert means is you can cram for a test. A majority of the people I've met with a ton of certs have absolutely zero practical ability to use any of that, and companies that only care about hiring people with certs (outside of partners that actually need those for their partner status) also care more about looking like they know what they are doing than knowing what they are doing.
AFlyingGideon@reddit
In the past, we've sent people to Cisco training and they'd return having learned useful material. This is a number of years ago, though, so it may have changed.
mkosmo@reddit
Cisco's technical certs are still worthwhile for networking folks.
mixduptransistor@reddit
I wouldn't say certifications overall are useless. They do show you've got SOME knowledge of the material. It's not enough on its own, though, and certainly people often just memorize the test and couldn't apply the knowledge. That's what an interview is for. I also definitely don't look fondly on someone who has like 10 certs. Like 3 max, unless you've got a bunch that are in a chain that build together.
uptimefordays@reddit
I suggest focusing on the fundamentals: operating systems, networking, services, and building up from there. You have hardware experience and formal education, so it shouldn’t be too challenging to develop these skills.
Polyolygon@reddit
We used to run our network with admins that had their Cisco certs. It was a mess we are still cleaning up. It instilled trust that they knew what they were doing. But then once you dug into that mess, it was clear they didn’t have the actual experience and knowledge to make a quality infrastructure. You get a couple people coming in that have done the job in the past, and you find a bunch of looping going on, poor routing, and just a bunch of other issues causing network degradation. It became clear why tickets about the shitty performance and inconsistent performance weren’t resulting in any meaningful fixes.
Extra-Organization-6@reddit
certs were never about proving you know the material, they are about getting past HR filters. that hasnt changed with AI. if anything AI makes hands-on experience more valuable because anyone can prompt their way through a lab but not everyone can troubleshoot a production outage at 2am. get the certs to get the interviews, then let your actual skills do the talking.
IRideZs@reddit
AI Is a tool and should be used as such
It has not discredited any sort of education that you would acquire by going through a cert test/class
In what ways are Ai affecting the industry that certain education isn’t worth it?
This isn’t really the best sub for career advice either
natflingdull@reddit
I disagree, but you need to identify where the advice is coming from. Too many people leave their nationality out of their advice which often creates a lot of confusion
BadSausageFactory@reddit
remember 2006 when leadership all decided they didn't need in-house IT and all got MSP crazy? this is going to be like that except they think they can fire the MSP and get AI crazy.
IRideZs@reddit
I was not in my career in 2006 lol and tbh I don’t experience a large majority of what is happening in this sub in my personal life. Most companies/organizations around my area don’t blindly follow the hype. I’ve had 2 interviews recently for a security engineer position and the vibe I got was pretty level headed thinking when it came to LLM implementation and usage
Maybe it’s just my location but a lot of people are just blowing over AI around here. I hope most people see it as an advanced tool not a catch all solution
Chicago suburbs
gambeta1337@reddit
I believe certs are only good if you’re trying to specialize in something, like azure or aws
Jizzmeista@reddit
Certification is worth more now than before IMO, because it proves someone has sat an exam with no access to an ai tool to help them with the answers.
Foundational knowledge on subjects is going to be in shorter and shorter supply as people use ai for their use case only every day. Certs prove you have a proven breadth of knowledge on a subject.
Iwanttoberich_8671@reddit
the real shift is that skills + proof (projects, real work) matter more than ever. Certs can still help as structure or HR checkbox, but theyre not the main signal anymore