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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Certification or College degrees?
IMO: Certifications are a waste of time. You'd be better off obtaining a Computer Science degree and focusing on the core technologies. Why would you devote your career to learning a vendor's command line or IOS? Cisco has done an excellent job @ brainwashing the IT community. The have (unfortunately) set the standard for "Network Engineers". What do you think is more respected, a masters degree in Networking Engineering or a CCIE. In most circles it would be the latter. Cisco's certification program has effected the entire IT community. Their CCIE's are required to recertify every few years, thus forcing them to stay true to the Cisco lifestyle. I've met some CCIE's who don't know any programming languages or any experience with Unix. It's clear that they are one dimensional and unfocused. Why study the same thing over and over? Do you really have X amount of years experience, or do you have 1 years experience X times? Think about it. If you have been in the field for over 5 years and someone new to the industry by way of certification can handle your work load, that is a serious problem. If anything certs should be used as a stepping stone or advancement to new technologies or areas. Then again, the question of CERTS vs. DEGREES might apply differently to someone without any experience. I guess it really depends on what your looking for. --- Nigel Clarke Network Security Engineer [email protected]
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