Cisco moves even more to china.

Fri Sep 24 00:54:59 UTC 2004

On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 02:29, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
> I've always personally taken anyone who said "but I'm an MCSE" with a 
> grain of salt.  I've had equal respect for the A-plus and Net-Plus 
> certifications, which are basically bought.

I take most certifications with a grain of salt, including degrees,
unless someone clearly demonstrates he know's what he's talking about,
is able to make intelligent decisions and learns new techniques quickly.
In which case a certification is still just an add-on ;-)

> I used to have more trust in the /CC../ certifications but I find I may be 
> laughing those off too quite soon.

The vendor's introductory certs (CCNA, CCNP, JNCIA, JNCIS) don't say
anything about a candidate, except exactly that ("I got the cert"). CCIE
and JNCIE are still at least an indicator someone was at a certain level
at the time of getting the certification, but are still no substitute
for experience and a brain in good working order. It's too bad there
aren't better "general" (non-vendor specific) certs, since what often
lacks is general understanding of network architecture and protocols. 
You can teach anyone the right commands for Vendor X and they'll prolly
get a basic config going on a few nodes, but when troubleshooting time
comes it's useless without good knowledge of the underlying technology,
which none of the vendor certs teach very well (IMHO anyway ;-)

Cheers,

Erik

-- 
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Erik Haagsman
Network Architect
We Dare BV
tel: +31.10.7507008
fax: +31.10.7507005
http://www.we-dare.nl