nanog mailing list archives
Re: Certification or College degrees?
From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org>
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 19:27:42 -0400
In a message written on Wed, May 22, 2002 at 06:37:35PM -0400, Nigel Clarke wrote:
Why would you devote your career to learning a vendor's command line or IOS?
Selling your soul to a vendor is not always a bad decision. It happens in all industries as well. If the vendor is popular, there will always be people willing to pay for detailed experience with that vendor, or for esoteric knowledge about that vendor.
Cisco has done an excellent job @ brainwashing the IT community. The have (unfortunately) set the standard for "Network Engineers".
I'm biased, see .sig, but having been through the process, and seen what other vendors (eg, Microsoft, Novell) do with their programs I do believe that Cisco wants their certifications to mean something. No, that doesn't mean everyone who is certified is an expert. It does mean the odds that someone with a Cisco certification knows something are probably an order of magnitude better than a Microsoft certified person.
What do you think is more respected, a masters degree in Networking Engineering or a CCIE. In most circles it would be the latter.
What I really want to address is that you don't get something like a CCIE for the "respect". Believe me, I don't get any for having it. When I got it, I was a consultant. The reality was if I had a CCIE my employer could bill me at a significantly higher rate, some of which they passed on to me. Why did people pay these rates? The answer was simple, they had better odds of getting someone good. These people would go through 4-5 "Network Engineers", get frustrated because they really and truly didn't know anything, they would then pay for a CCIE and, more often than not, be happy. I really don't think Cisco is better or worse than other industries. Are all ASE Certified Master Mechanics people you want working on your car? No. Are there some non-certified mechanics who could run circles around the certified ones? Of course. That said, your odds are much better that your car will run again if you have a certified mechanic. Many have said business is simply risk management, and certifications are a way of managing that risk. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell () ufp org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request () tmbg org, www.tmbg.org
Current thread:
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Nigel Clarke (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Andrew Dorsett (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Brian (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Andrew Dorsett (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Valdis . Kletnieks (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Brian (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Ariel Biener (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Scott Francis (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Leo Bicknell (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Stephen Sprunk (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Sharif Torpis (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Eric Gauthier (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Sharif Torpis (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Sharif Torpis (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Valdis . Kletnieks (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? cw (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? cw (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Måns Nilsson (May 25)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Arnold Nipper (May 26)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Sharif Torpis (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Andrew Dorsett (May 22)