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Mon Jun 8 03:07:10 UTC 2015

On Sun, 7 Jun 2015, Joshua Riesenweber wrote:

> As someone studying their first CCIE (RS), I sometimes find these kind 
> of discussions disheartening. They come up every now and again, and the 
> opinions seem vary anywhere between 'a good interview tool' and 'less 
> than worthless'.
[snip]
> Does a certification mean that you are an expert? No. Does it mean you 
> are devoid of skill? No. All it means is that the person has studied the 
> curriculum, and passed the tests.No more, no less.
[snip]
> When I see someone who has a certification, and they can follow it up 
> with actual skills, it indicates they have a certain level of dedication 
> to improving themselves and their education. (In my experience it takes 
> more time to study a certification track than to learn just what you 
> need to get a job done.)

Agreed.  I don't think certs are completely worthless, nor do I make a 
professional judgment on someone based solely on the alphabet soup they 
append to their name (or don't).

I've been working in the technology world for over 20 years and have had 
the opportunity to work with people who had the papers and were top-notch, 
and people who had those same papers and were complete tools in an "*I* 
have a CCIE... my excrement can't *possibly* stink!" kind of way. 
Likewise, some of the sharpest people I've ever worked with had no certs 
at all, but there were lots of tools there, too.  Certs are nice, but 
someone who has them on their resume had better be prepared to walk the 
walk in a technical interview.

As the OP mentioned, the alphabet soup just puts someone at the head of 
the line for a phone interview.  Nothing more.

jms