Training cost...yeah, I'm out

@Macdaddyohbob My previous employer was an educational organization where I used Jamf Pro to manage 1300 Macs. Every year was a battle to find funding for renewing the Jamf license, and forget about training, as the district couldn't bring itself to allocate funding in the annual budget (their standard was Lenovo PCs, my school was the Mac exception). Like you, I was looking for new opportunities, and Jamf certification looked to be a key requirement. I bought my own training pass, and covered my own expenses for travel to the training sites (Atlanta, Minneapolis (2x), and Washington D.C.). Since the training was applicable to my work I did get paid professional leave to attend, but I'd have gladly used vacation time. 11 months after completing the CJA course I started what's basically my dream job to run the Jamf infrastructure for a Fortune 50 company. Yeah, I'd say the time and money I put into the certifications was worth it.

At each of my last 2 employers, I paid the cost of the training and travel for both my Jamf (CCT and 300) training and for Apple ACSP training. I knew I would have gotten either a "no" or a "not now" if I had asked the job to cover the training, so all that I asked was to let me do the training on-the-clock. In both cases, the training helped me get qualified for better-paying jobs, and that has more than made up for the cost of the training. Had they covered the cost, it wouldn't have been a great outcome for the employer, because I moved on from both jobs within a year of completing the training.

Jamf training has been a real boost for my career. I wouldn't have gotten my last 2 jobs without it.

Thanks guys for sharing your experience. That does ease my mind a bit. Ultimately I'll probably eat the cost myself in hopes it'll pay off.

Hi @macdaddybob ,
It looks like @sdagley and @jefff have provided some quality feedback and I'm really happy to see their investment in training has paid off.

I did want to mention that in April 2017 we released the Jamf 100 Course material available online for free to everyone and in September 2018 we released a new certification offering that is designed to be much more accessible to a global audience and at a more approachable price point. The Jamf Certified Associate exam pairs with the Jamf 100 Course material and is available here: https://training.jamf.com for $100USD.

I suggest you plan far in advance or try to get an employer to pay for it. I completely understand about the price of these classes. It's fairly par for the course when you compare them to the Microsoft side of things. Not trying to imply it's right, but people are paying the $2500. I did, like 3 times. Spread it out over the course of a few years and invest in yourself. It's worth the money in the end, imo.

I particularly learned the most in the Expert class but don't expect to pass that one on your first try... that is unless you're already a scripting pro.

Don't think it is actually an increase. IIRC, my CCT training was $2500 back 2-3 years ago, haven't been able to convince work to pay for the next round under a new contract, but still tempted to pay for it myself just for personal job growth.

I paid for CCT training myself around 2-3 years ago. I did this after a job interview. The IT manager at the PR firm I got interviewed in told me that although I had the skills and experience of using JAMF, what I was lacking was proof/ certification of that JAMF experience. Which led him to choose the person over me because he had one. And advised me to get the certification. I'm glad I did because it opened a lot of doors. It is expensive and nerve wracking because it came out of your pocket, and you have no choice but to pass it. But to me, it was well worth it. Hope this helps.

I think it's unconscionable that there is not a test-only option. So, someone could be the best Jamf expert in the world and they still must take 12 days worth of training classes before they can earn the 400 Certification? With travel expenses, thats an over $10,000 "investment". I'm not sold on the value. It's a shame and makes the program seem like a "lesser" offering. Even Apple lets you take just the tests for certification.

I'd like to see some education pricing in the future.

Jamf is not the only company with this model. VMWare follows the same model, and VMWare certs are often sought after by employers as well (VMWare courses are ~$3000). There are other vendors who's certs have stringent requirements prior to being able to take the exam (CISSP is one example, the exam is also $700).

I just found this thread via Google search and I'm glad I did.

I too have been shell shocked by having to foot not only the price of the cert(s) but travel costs as well. I'm glad to read that for a good number of you paying out of pocket has ultimately been worth it.

I was fortunate enough to be located in the Minneapolis area and my employers have been good to me and paid for both the 200 and 300 classes. With that said I do believe these certifications are definitely worth the money and time required, jamf is growing rapidly and the use of their product in education and business is widespread. The 200 class ends up giving you a very good basic understanding of terminology and use of the MDM product but the 300 class is really where the work begins. Not only this but the networking and connections created while attending the classes are invaluable. Just some thoughts...

One major complaint I have... I understand the reason behind it 100%, but it frustrates me that you MUST take the certs in order.

We bought Jamf, went through the jumpstart, and spent about 6 months running it before I went for the Jamf 200 course. I won't say it was a waste of my time at all, but most of the people in the class had not used Jamf yet, and were learning the basics. I'd been managing Macs for 15+ years at that stage, and had stood up Jamf from scratch twice (and had been lobbying for Jamf in my workplace for several years, so fairly familiar with it). I tried to argue to take the 300 class, but was denied twice saying no chance without the 200 cert first. Again, the class wasn't a waste of time, but wasn't especially challenging, and the test took about 1/2 an hour to pass with flying colors. The 300 level course would have been about the challenge I expected.

I've never been able to convince my office to pay for the 300 level cert since. I may break down and do it out of pocket - I've lost at least one job offer in the past couple of years because they didn't view my 200-level cert as "senior" enough.

@Taylor.Armstrong Totally get where you're coming from but I think one of the reasons the certs must be taken in order is to preserve the quality of Jamf certified techs. I've known people before that can take a "boot camp" style approach to certs and pass the tests by just doing a sort of brain dump. These folks didn't remotely know what they were doing but they could pass a test to get the cert, I'm thinking Jamf is just trying to prevent those kinds of people from devaluing their cert system to begin with.

@edickson I don't disagree... just wish there was some degree of flexibility. I actually had both my Jamf Buddy and the engineer who did our jumpstart appeal to whoever the decision maker was, but got shot down. This was when the "200" was titled the "Casper Certified Technician" - my CIO was almost unwilling to pay for the training, asking why his senior admin was taking a "technician" level class. And sadly, they haven't been willing to pony up for training again since.