Certification or College degrees?
Vadim Antonov
avg at exigengroup.com
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
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