Re: Cisco moves even more to china.

[John Kinsella <jlk () thrashyour com>]

Oh Jesus cry me a river...

People, you're in tech.  It will never stop changing.  That means you
should never stop learning.  If you stop learning, yes somebody else
is going to take your job because as an area of tech matures, tools
to manage it become better, less sophisticated people can do the job,
and operational cost of that widget goes down.  Do you really want to
still be hand-editing BGP configs in 5 years time?  Should web monkeys
still make $80k for writing HTML?  Go learn something new and be the
badass at that and you'll keep making your 6 figure salary.

Or, to look at it from a humorous point of view:  It's just a matter of
time until neurosurgeons will be coming from ITT tech. ;)

John

On Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 08:12:47PM -0500, Jason Graun wrote:
> I think the IT field as a whole, programmers, network guys, etc... are going
> to go the way of the auto workers in the 70's and 80's.  I am a CCIE working
> and on a second one and it saddens me that all my hard work and advanced
> knowledge could be replaced by a chop-shop guy because from a business
> standpoint quarter to quarter the chop-shop guy is cheaper on the books.
> Never mind the fact that I solve problems on the network in under 30mins and
> save the company from downtime but I am too expensive.  I used to love
> technology and all it had to offer but now I feel cheated, I feel like we
> all have been burned by the way the business guys look at the technology, as
> a commodity.  Thankfully I am still young (mid 20's) I can make a career
> switch but I'll still love the technology.  Anyway I am going to start the
> paper work to be an H1b to China and brush up on my Mandarin.
>
> Jason
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On Behalf Of Erik
> Haagsman
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 7:55 PM
> To: Dan Mahoney, System Admin
> Cc: Nicole; nanog () nanog org
> Subject: Re: Cisco moves even more to china.
>
>
> On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 02:29, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
> > I've always personally taken anyone who said "but I'm an MCSE" with a 
> > grain of salt.  I've had equal respect for the A-plus and Net-Plus 
> > certifications, which are basically bought.
>
> I take most certifications with a grain of salt, including degrees,
> unless someone clearly demonstrates he know's what he's talking about,
> is able to make intelligent decisions and learns new techniques quickly.
> In which case a certification is still just an add-on ;-)
>
> > I used to have more trust in the /CC../ certifications but I find I may be
>
> > laughing those off too quite soon.
>
> The vendor's introductory certs (CCNA, CCNP, JNCIA, JNCIS) don't say
> anything about a candidate, except exactly that ("I got the cert"). CCIE
> and JNCIE are still at least an indicator someone was at a certain level
> at the time of getting the certification, but are still no substitute
> for experience and a brain in good working order. It's too bad there
> aren't better "general" (non-vendor specific) certs, since what often
> lacks is general understanding of network architecture and protocols. 
> You can teach anyone the right commands for Vendor X and they'll prolly
> get a basic config going on a few nodes, but when troubleshooting time
> comes it's useless without good knowledge of the underlying technology,
> which none of the vendor certs teach very well (IMHO anyway ;-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Erik
>
>
>
> -- 
> ---
> Erik Haagsman
> Network Architect
> We Dare BV
> tel: +31.10.7507008
> fax: +31.10.7507005
> http://www.we-dare.nl