Certification or College degrees?

Thu May 23 08:40:47 UTC 2002

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

> Thus spake "Nigel Clarke" <nigel at forever-networks.com>
> > Certifications are a waste of time. You'd be better off
> > obtaining a Computer Science degree and focusing on the
> > core technologies.
> 
> If you're looking to write software, sure.  A CompSci degree won't help you
> in the slightest at operating networks.

Stephen - I bet I can do networks much much better than most cisco CCIEs,
even after years of doing network-unrelated work :)  That's because I
understand _why_ the stuff is working, not only how to make cisco box to
jump through hoops.

> > Why would you devote your career to learning a vendor's
> > command line or IOS?
> 
> You don't.  You devote your career to learning networking.  IOS is a base
> skill which is necessary (today) to utilize that knowledge and, more
> importantly, get a job.

Yawn.  Are you serious?  Sure, you need to have some idea of what things
are and how they work, but finding a magic incantation in IOS manual is
not something which only ceritified cisco "engineers" can do.  Unless both
IOS and documentation deteriorated much much further than I think.

> A person with lots of knowledge and no skills is a liberal arts major, not
> an engineer.

One of the best network engineers is the world is a liberal arts major :)

> Academic respect doesn't pay the bills.

Sure, being a trained _technician_ pays bills.  Just about.  In my
experience, having a real education does much more.  Also, need I to
remind you where the cisco (the company) came from? :) [hint - it was a 
certain university which had a need of IP routing boxes, and developed 
them in house;  they also created workstations along the way, known 
nowadays only by the abbreviation from "Stanford University Network"]

> > 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.
> 
> Degrees are, in essence, a certificate that you are capable of learning
> things by rote and regurgitating them later, possibly applying a small
> amount of thought (but not too much). 

Depends on where you got it.  Try to get through MIT or Stanford by 
learning thing by rote :)  I think you'll find yourself with self-esteem 
below the floor, and a ticket home after the very first exams.

--vadim