nanog mailing list archives
Re: Certification or College degrees?
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <ssprunk () cisco com>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 11:28:02 -0500
Thus spake "Vadim Antonov" <avg () 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
Current thread:
- Re: Certification or College degrees?, (continued)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Vadim Antonov (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Alexei Roudnev (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Andy Dills (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Scott Weeks (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Randy Bush (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Scott Weeks (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Alexei Roudnev (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Vadim Antonov (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Alexei Roudnev (May 23)
- RE: Certification or College degrees? Daniel Golding (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Arman (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Stephen Sprunk (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Vadim Antonov (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Brian (May 22)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? David Lesher (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Brian (May 23)
- Re: Certification or College degrees? Andy Grosser (May 22)