Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by linuxftw 2304 days ago
I've been out of the Microsoft loop for a while (thankfully). Their new certs are confusing, it's not really clear what the person that does the "Active Directory" stuff even needs at this point.

MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert. Matched industry job titles and responsibilities.

"Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate"

Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365." Microsoft has lost their minds with this 365 nonsense. "Administrator Associate" also sounds inferior to "Administrator". Is this an entry level certification? It used to be somewhat simple hierarchy: Administrator, Engineer, Architect in the IT world. Now it's buzzword soup everywhere.

2 comments

>"Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate"

> Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365."

This part seems fairly clear to me. Teams is a product inside of the Office 365 family of products. So that certification would be for someone that wants to be an administrator for Teams.

That being said, I do agree with some of your points: like "Administrator Associate" is a bit confusing. Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think. Office 365 is for the productivity apps (including Teams), and then Microsoft 365 is for Win 10 + Office 365 + Security things... could get confusing quick.

> Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think.

I just never heard "associate" used in reference to a title on anything related to informatics.

What about the “associate” in the entry-level CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)?
AWS also calls their 2nd level certification „Associate“ [1].

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/de/certification/

Citrix also called (calls?) their first tier cert "associates". Citrix Certified Associate, going up to Profesional, and Expert.
>>MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert

the SA is MCSA is not System Admin, it is Solutions Associate and has been for a number of years

MCSA was Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate

MCSE was Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert

They changed the names in the Early 2000's if I remember correctly