Mitch, I am lucky, by CIO actually see the benefit of having a CCIE. The way I look at it is why not be at the top of your game. How important is it that those 700 sites remain up? A CCIE in some cases may resolve issues sooner or even prevent the issue all together. I had always wanted to be a CCIE, but never wanted to spend the huge $$ for labs, rack, and testing expenses. When my CIO offered to cover my testing and lab books I jumped at it. I however at the time looked at it similar to your boss.What would my employer really get out of me being a CCIE? At that point I was not going to question a chance at my dream. I started getting my certifications back..I let them expire. It took about a year to get my CCNP back as I didn't take a lot of time to work on it. I finally got to my CCIE written and passed it this past Feb. Even at this point, I had not changed my mind very much. I still pushed through. In March I got stuff from IPExpert and starting going through them. While still in Volume 1 my eyes started to see the real value of a CCIE. I started really learning so many different ways of doing this. I even learned about TCL scripts so well that I now can do a job that used to take me a whole day to do now takes me 15 minutes! My company is like yours. We have hundreds of locations and I was always configuring Routers. Many of these routers had to have very specific configures, but they also followed a pattern. In one day after learning about TCL I did enough research to write a script that will now allow me to type one line into a router. That single line will configure anywhere from 2 to hundreds of vlans in any combination I need. It configured the proper QOS settings for each, writes the VPN tunnel information and even DHCP pool information just to name a few. I later added to it to write the code for a wireless controller as well where it maxed the Vlan configurations exactly. So know when it finished configuring the router it will print the configure for the matching Wireless controller. I just copy and then paste that in to the controller. No longer do I need to look for simple typo's or other issues for all of these networks. The above is just one of the many things I have learned in this process. I also know that if I need to call TAC I will get escalated to a higher level engineer. I thought that may be an advantage, however, now that I am always ready for my lab (less then a week) I feel that I would rarely call TAC for any issue. Once you get to this level you really need to know how stuff operates, not just how to put commands in to get a result. You also need to read the show and debug commands and can spot issues even if there is no error messages being reported. To help your boss feel a little better, not every CCIE is after the $$$ Some just like the technology. After I finish this CCIE I already have plans for another The CCIE Wireless (Hint Hint.any news on when IPExpert will have lab books and racks for this one?) When I told a coworker they said, "You are just going to get the company to pay for the cert and the leave" My response was simple and true, One I like learning and two, even though I could possible move to another company with higher pay it would mean going into a type of position I left before coming to my current job. Right now I love my work. I get to design, configure and install. I am in a position that I get to schedule when and how things will go. Before I had to work with customer schedules. If they wanted to do stuff one weekend then I did it, Now if that weekend is bad for me then I just move it to another. Same for install trips. If my personal schedule as an issue then I can schedule around it. Having that type of flexibility in this field is worth a lot. Hope this helps.. Rob _____
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mitch Peterson Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 9:56 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [OSL | CCIE_RS] Justification for having a CCIE on staff I know this isn't directly related to the studying for my IE. However, I figured you guys were the best group to ask this question since a few have you may have gone though something similar. I'm putting together my portion of the budget for the next years department budget. I've put a CCIE bootcamp class in as well as my lab fees. My boss is pushing back on this saying that they can't justify having a CCIE on staff. He seems to have bought into the hype that CCIEs make ungodly sums of money and that he wouldn't be able to keep me on staff because he thinks I'm going to ask for $100K or more. Anyway, how can I explain that not only is it worth it to have a CCIE on staff but it behooves them to assist in paying for training. My take is that since I'm responsible for about 700 remote sites as well as the corporate office, I think that justifies it in an of itself. Thanks, Mitch No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.112/2388 - Release Date: 09/25/09 05:51:00
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