questions asked during network engineer interview

Thu Jul 23 03:57:52 UTC 2020

On 23/Jul/20 00:55, Łukasz Bromirski wrote:

> And yes (to the main topic of this thread) - I have some certs.
> I understand people without certs tend to discard them as
> non-relevant or even toxic. Yes, I’ve met “paper” CCIEs,
> but also JNCIEs and I can see the point being made. I’ve
> met great minds (also on this list) without any networking
> certificates. I believe that until you see real person on the
> other side of table and not her/his cert(s), good chat and
> questions will remove all doubts. Everyone has to start
> somewhere and make those first errors, and being ‘expert’
> doesn’t mean you’re not making them anymore.

My experience has been very good with people that got their certificates
somewhere between the mid-to-late 90's and early-to-mid 2000's, and
opted not to renew them because they were too busy deploying and
operating real networks (that 3-year renewal requirement was a neat
trick). I'm not sure if there is a correlation in there.

From about 13 years ago, I met a number of engineers who specifically
sat for certifications because it was an immediate guarantee on a
minimum base salary in several companies, regardless of actual
experience. I lost my faith in automatically assuming the best from
CC-this or JN-that when a CCIE we hired at a previous job couldn't
design a system from scratch, all by himself. So I'll still give anyone
with a certificate the time of day, but it won't have any bearing on
their abilities, until we've had a real chat. My observations are just
that more of the hires I've done have been of those who have 15-year old
expired certifications, or none at all.

I have a few certifications, from 2003 and 2007. I tried to get more but
the Internet was moving way faster than I could study :-).

Mark.