Certification or College degrees?

Thu May 23 16:28:02 UTC 2002

Thus spake "Vadim Antonov" <avg at exigengroup.com>
> 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.
...
> > 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.

Where did I say that?  Read my statement again; I think you're in violent
agreement with me.

> > 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 :)

I find most of them make great fry cooks ;)

> > 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.

If you take a non-logical, non-visual, non-geeky technician and push him through
a CS program, he'll emerge still a technician.  Will a piece of paper make him a
more valuable employee?  Probably not.

> > 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.

I do have great respect for MIT, Stanford, and a few others.  However, only a
tiny fraction of 1% of CS grads come from those programs.  I'm basing my stance
on the rest of the population.

S