Vendor cert levels

Wed Sep 3 21:56:51 UTC 2014

On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 5:00 AM, Isaac Adams <isaacnanog at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am trying to work out a strategy for vendor certification in our company.
> As a general rule, do you all fund employees certification and if so what
> kind of levels do you try to maintain as good practice?
>
> For example. NOC staff should be JNCIA and engineering JNCIP to JNCIE?
>
> Clearly certification does not usually reflect ability but it does help
> people feel valued and to maintain a basic level of competence.

Hi Isaac,

Personally, I use certifications as more of a weed-out factor. List
lots of certifications on your resume? No interview for you.
Particularly that guy who used what should have been valuable space on
his resume to report having taken a 3-day certification course in
configuring Kentrox CSU/DSUs. Yikes!

Seriously though, certs stink of a cogs-in-the-machine approach to
business, which is the opposite of making folks feel individually
valued. Gee, I can tell from talking to you that you're smarter than
half our engineers but if you want to respond to the red lights in the
NOC you'll have to go get a CCNA.

If you want them to feel valued, give them an education reimbursement
program for any job-relevant training, college coursework, etc. Any
who want to spend it on certs, so be it. Any who want to spend it
professional conferences like NANOG, well, those are the ones you
keep.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
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