From: Ahsan Mohiuddin (ahsan.mohiuddin@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Nov 09 2007 - 10:44:38 ART
I will agree with William that CCIE is not comparable to MCSE or other testking-able certs. You need a lot of character to achieve your number. On the other hand, the hype of CCIE is so great that the hiring managers, with eons of industry experience under their belt, will throw anything and everything at a fresh CCIE for the sake of challenging him or her. I think these seasoned IT professionals feel threatened by this hype, and possible consequences for their own careers if they hire a ccie.
The key thing to remember about a ccie is his proven record of exponential learning ability. He doesn't know everything but eventually he will -- but, thats something thats to be feared as well. =)
-Ahsan
William Nellis <nellis_iv@yahoo.com> wrote: The way you keep less than qualified people from taking your position or the sale, is by demonstrating your value day in and day out. Not by creating an exclusive club. The best thing we could do is, not form an "industry guild" (actually, on that note, there is probably only about 50 of them already... which means none of them hold any merit)... So industry certifications are supposed to give some ability at this. Given, they are not perfect, the CCIE is challenging enough to move beyond rote memorization, and it is also unbiased. Even if it is not perfect, having this unbiased system is better than having a bunch of guys sitting with elk hats making subjective votes on who can join the union. How do you measure that? How do you offer a business case for value based on subjective matters? If the unbiased system isn't working, lets improve that instead. I'm of the opinion, that while it aint perfect... it does weed out allot of
people.
I honestly dont have the answer to all these questions, one of the main problems is IT is a constantly sliding window. It develops at a pace in which whatever standards you set now will need to be reevaluated every 24-36 months for relevance. Another problem is there is a constantly short demand for talent. There is ample "people", but the companies need talent. I think there are allot of people in Ops and Tier 1/2 positions that want to move around and develop but are challenged because there are lots of other people there, while companies are looking for tier3/4 type people to work on their ever increasing networks... (for sake of simplicity I put all people in 4 tiers for this discussion)
AND, the Tier 3/4 people today that don't stay abreast of the moving targets lose value over time. Tech is rough man, you got to work just to stay afloat. These networks aren't getting any easier, and it seems the more companies rely on them for increasingly mission critical reasources, it keeps getting hairier.
So, when interviewing people, your not looking just for someone to do the job today. That isn't as bad, but also looking for people that can understand new technology and advances As they are being written and coming out, and be able to grow with them and design for them. So your looking for someone with promise, someone you can invest in and get ROI out of. Someone with critical thinking, experience to some degree, and probably a Cert to get their foots in the door.
I don't think the "bashing" of these so called Paper CCIE's is the same as the bashing we used to do of paper MCSE. it's a whole other level, and given, they may not be the BEST of the BEST in every permutation, and you can pick them apart, they have reached a milestone in their education that, like it or not, makes them an asset. Not for every opportunity or every organization, but an asset none the less. Because, at the least, you can ensure they have some semblance of problem solving capabilities, or that they worked extra hard to get it. So, like it or not, the reason CCIE is the most respected cert, is because it is the best the industry has.
CCIE = Aptitude + effort. So, you can say some people don't have as much aptitude, but in that instance, it means they had to exert more effort.
And another reason to stop the "Paper CCIE" stuff already, it's a plaque, darn it.
-------------------------------------------------------
r/s
William Nellis IV
nellis_iv@yahoo.com
----- Original Message ----
From: Dennis Dumont
To: Scott Vermillion ; swm@emanon.com; darth router ; M_A_Jones@dell.com
Cc: cisconuts@hotmail.com; joe@affirmedsystems.com; pauld@marshallcomm.com; jlogginsccie@san.rr.com; tom.nohwa@gmail.com; ccielab@groupstudy.com; Leon Adato ; Marci Carpenter ; Michael Carpenter
Sent: Thursday, November 8, 2007 5:17:20 PM
Subject: RE: CCIE Important Interview Quesition asked by Sunrise, Swiss
Back when I was a hiring mgr, I had a few questions I
asked that had multiple right answers. Case in point,
"You have just typed, 'deb ip pack det' in your
session, but nothing shows up. What's wrong and how
do you fix it?"
Yeah there's LOTS of answers to this one, but I was
looking for the thought process, not the actual
answer.
I don't see how 'lifting' router or fixing it still
attached to the rack applies, but I'll say this - I
concur wholeheartedly with the other comments in this
thread around 'paper' CCIE's. I thought I'd never
admit such a thing existed, except I've interviewed
too many of them. They couldn't design there way out
of a wet paper bag, and probably couldn't troubleshoot
an inverted 60-pin serial cable.
I think this points to an even more pervasive problem
in the IT industry - lack of governance, or more
correctly of an admission process to the industry.
Just because I can cram a Transcender or TestKing test
puke, doesn't mean I know anything about the
technology. Quite frankly all certifications EXCEPT
the CCIE Practical exam are fundamentally flawed by
being a multiple-choice questionnaire. The correct
answer appears in the test question simply for the
person to select - but I digress
I said this before on other forums, but I think WE
need to decide what to do with OUR industry. I think
we need a guild, or some form of regulatory body, like
what Lawyers, Doctors and even CPA's go through to
ENTER their respective professions. We need people
like Scott Morris, Linus Torvalds, et. al. to be on
the Board and to delineate how the rest of (that
haven't already proven our worth through years of
contributions) get into the Guild. I think a system
that follows the Apprentice, Journeyman, Master kind
of hierarchy would work well and has significant
recent and historical validity.
What do YOU think? How do we either prevent
less-than-qualified people from taking our positions
(or our sale), and/or how do we validate that we as a
person know what we are talking about and can be
trusted?
Just my $0.02
Dennis Dumont
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