I love these Cert questions, there’s always someone who comes on and says they’re worthless and experience is key. Of course, they are right, but training for the certs gets you in the right position to understand and learn, practice, break and fix things (or as I call it, gain experience) in the lab (or GNS3). That is experience, I have loads of Cisco certs, I’m self employed, however by getting certs your company is ensuring their staff is trained, has to maintain that level by re-certifying every 3 years (not just Cisco, GAIC, Juniper, Solarwinds, Checkpoint and many other vendors insist on this) you get to learn what they believe is important and an insight into new technologies (I won’t mention VLANs…).
Why do they believe things are more important then others, well for a start they know their markets, they know what their customers are asking for, and they are supplying it. Having certified engineers means that they are aware of those technologies and also gets the company a discount and other incentives like better support.
As I’m quite established as a consultant, I don’t need the certs, I get to play on the job and I get work by reputation, I know people at Cisco, that helps!, and I do certs now partly also as a challenge, I did the CCNA DC because I did the Nexus 7 course and I wanted to ensure it went in, I did the CCNA SSPO as I train NOC staff and I want to ensure I could validate my position when someone asks “why should I listen to you?”. I can lie about experience, but I can prove I have a cert. Does 3 CCNAs help me? No, not at all, having the first one did, now I have several “P” certs, CCIE written, Solarwinds, Juniper amongst others and I’m currently doing a GAIC cert. It won’t win over the ladies, but it ensures I have to think and stay up to date and train, its easy to forget things when you don’t do them all the time, and as a consultant, my customers don’t want to here me say, “give me a few days, I need to study this”, they want, “there you go, all done”. If you were paying me to come in and fix something, you wouldn’t accept it.
So yes I think certs are worth it, they give you a benchmark, a challenge, if you’re in a small business, they may not be relevant, it depends on whether you want move forward, with that business and or with another.
Again, its easy to brain dump these things, and I’ve interviewed people who have never bothered with them and they’re good, but given the choice between a really good non certified engineer, and a pretty good one with certs, I will always recommend the guy with certs, the company at the very least will save money on support and new equipment. Obviously that depends on the size of the company.
Don’t brain dump, you’re only cheating yourself! Also, don’t be one of those guys who moans about not getting promoted but won’t do any studying, I know loads of guys working for HP who have access to loads of training material (HP provide all their staff with intranet, and remote access to it, full and free training programs, HP, Cisco Microsoft, VMware, you name it, all free and available), however the attitude, “why should I study in my own time, if they want me to know it they should send me on a course”, is deplorable, and all to common, I really don’t get that. It’s the worse thing in the world paying £3000 for a course and being stuck with people who have had it paid for, are getting paid to be there, and see it as a jolly, and are not interested, really p’s me off that!
So in short, it depends what you want out of your career, they are expensive, but worth it, off course experience is key, nothing wrong with a leg up, and experience gives you the lesson, directly after you have the test, i.e. you break, won’t do that again… I don’t know many companies that would be happy with you just gaining experience!
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/policies_reference_tools/earned-it-videos
@Juniper_Networks @SolarWinds @Cisco
