From: Howard C. Berkowitz (hcb@gettcomm.com)
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 21:26:33 GMT-3
At 6:23 PM -0500 3/9/03, cebuano wrote:
>More observations to balance the views...
>1. How many people have we met that are self-baptized, self-proclaimed
>"network engineers"?
>2. "Network Engineer" is not even a degree, so practically speaking
>ANYBODY can claim to be one. I know, as I have worked with several of
>them jokers.
>3. How many of these old-timers have done more TIME than actual
>networking.
>
>I'm sure there are numerous individuals who have BOTH the time and
>expertise, but my own observation is that there are MANY of these REAL
>engineers who have forgotten the fact that they had to start from
>somewhere, and that once they're in the circle, they would do and say
>anything to keep young (and yes, inexperienced) professionals from
>joining their ranks.
>Thank God I don't have such friends.
And some of us old-timers had mentors that asked for no reward, other
than to "pay it forward." One of the marks of a true professional is
loyalty to the profession, with an eye always to welcoming new talent.
Such a welcome, however, doesn't always mean what the new talent
would like it to be. Very early in my career, when I did straight
programming, people like Carl Hammer, Grace Hopper, Henriette Avram,
and Wes Ungerleider challenged me---they didn't spoon feed me.
Instead, they encouraged me to make lifetime learning a habit -- a
habit to pass on. I first met Vint Cerf, Scott Bradner, and others
after I was at a level of proficiency -- yet they've never been other
than supportive.
>
>And to Richard,
>
>What does it matter what others say about being a CCIE??
>The journey is more rewarding than the number.
>Okay, maybe that's stretching it too far.
>
>BE A CCIE AND BE YOURSELF.
>
>Sorry for the rant.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
>Tom Larus
>Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2003 12:17 PM
>To: Richard Danu; ccielab@groupstudy.com
>Subject: OT: Re: CCIE Professional
>
>Sorry for responding to the list generally, but I think certain points
>need
>to be made for the benefit of many people here.
>
>The reality is that if you can get the CCIE by practicing on routers in
>a
>lab environment you will have learned some things that many people with
>several years of experience as network engineers have not learned.
Tom, we do get into a question of definitions here. CCIE is indeed a
meaningful test of support skills. It is not, however, a substitute
for more formal engineering training, which might be used in such
things as router design or large-scale network design and analysis.
Cisco itself makes the point that the lab exam does not reflect best
current practice.
This is especially true in public Internet operations -- indeed, the
first requisite to becoming a proficient large-scale network engineer
is to drive a stake through the heart of some of the evil,
error-prone scenarios of mutual redistribution so dear to the CCIE
lab. Use heavy applications of garlic and crucifixes on overloading
information into IGPs and avoiding static/default routes.
>That
>does NOT mean that you will be better than them at solving problems in a
>production network, but you could be very helpful on a team with those
>people. I have worked with people who were much more experienced that
>myself, but even so, I had some useful insights, I was able to quickly
>find
>answers to questions on CCO and elsewhere, and I was pretty good at
>thinking
>through problems. I consider myself junior to these more experienced
>networkers, but I was still useful and valuable.
>
>I am basically into research and writing and studying and teaching. I
>would
>rather lab something up and write about my findings than do a lot of the
>mundane tasks that network engineers end up doing so much of the time.
>Running cable between patch panels and switches and then labeling each
>end
>of the cable, or tracing 100 cables to troubleshoot a LAN problem may be
>considered "network technician" stuff, but network engineers often end
>up a
>doing a lot of that kind of work. The reality is that in a career of
>five
>years as a "Network Engineer" or similar title, many people spend a lot
>of
>time monitoring screens waiting for a link to fail, or cabling, or
>writing
>down serial numbers for licensing purposes, or racking and stacking, or
>having meetings and then more meetings about a network upgrade, or
>populating spreadsheets with data for importing into Call Manager, or
>spending hours at a time on the phone with Telco people about getting a
>WAN
>link up.
And that's a necessary job that should be well compensated. But it's
not engineering.
One of the key parts of thinking as an engineer -- and I don't care
if the skills to do so are self-taught or academic -- is to look at
things as they are, rather than a set of rote answers to pass a test,
or to deal with historical artifacts because they are taught that
way. Every time I see someone trying to coerce a routing protocol or
ARP into Cisco's oversimplification of the OSI Reference Model, I
cringe.
It's not even that ISO doesn't provide for these concepts, but they
aren't in one document, ISO 7498 (Open Systems Interconnection
Reference Model) without appendices. There are an assortment of ISO,
IEEE, and ITU extensions to this model.
In any event, the IETF rarely pays much attention to OSI in designing
protocols. It amazes me that I get people telling me "yes, but what
layer was XXX designed for," when I participated in the actual design
and _know_ OSI layering wasn't even in the back of peoples' minds.
>
>Yes, there are folks who do every day the kinds of things we
>traditionally
>think of network engineers doing, but these people are few in number,
>and
>many of them have been CCIEs for years. There are many folks who think
>that
>the CCIEs should only come from the ranks of these few, but the reality
>is
>that many of us need to get the CCIE before anyone will let us do much
>"network engineer" work. This is the old "chicken and egg" you are
>concerned about.
>
>
>
>Speaking for myself only, perhaps the biggest problem for a "lab rat"
>CCIE
>is one of confidence. If you are like me, you may be too self
>deprecating
>because you know you do not have the years of experience that make one
>so
>valuable in a production network crisis situation. You need to remember
>that you do bring valuable things to the table. It could be writing or
>analytical skills learned in another career or in college or grad
>school.
>It could be accounting or marketing or sales skills learned in another
>career or in college or grad school. It could be something as
>inconsequential seeming as a good personality, which can help when you
>are
>marketing IT products or services.
>
>If you really want to do network engineering work, the CCIE is a way to
>get
>to that goal. However, don't think it will be easy, and do not expect
>the
>money to be the sums people used to talk about (although it still can be
>quite good). Do it because the material interests you, and you may well
>find success.
>
>Tom Larus, CCIE #10,014
Good points. And don't fall into the support rut, assuming you MUST
supplement Cisco skills with Microsoft or other server skills. At the
moment, some of my consulting income does, indeed, come from
certification training. But the majority of my income, at the moment,
deals with the application of traditional telephony background to
IP-converged networks, and having an intimate knowledge of medicine
that lets me see how networking can enhance it.
For those of you that changed from some other career path into
networking, never forget that you may now be in unique positions to
advice lawyers, bankers, automobile dealerships, telephone companies,
etc., on how to make their business work with modern networking.
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