Jack Nalbandian wrote: > > I still seem to be unable to get across the central point. It > does not > matter what is more potent or more reliable than the other. > The point is > that neither should be either undervalued or overvalued by way > of unfair > propaganda and preconceptions. > > I have experienced that a college degree holder can also be as > incompetent > and moronic as a non-holder, but I DO NOT go on a crusade to > ridicule > college education. Nor do I discourage someone from EARNING a > degree, and, > in fact, I completely agree with the idea that a bachelors > degree should be > EARNED when it is most opportune: early in life when not bogged > down by > life's responsbilities.
Oh, believe me, I understand your central point. Trust me, you're getting across just fine. Yet I believe you're not giving proper emphasis to people who choose to earn their degrees later in life. True, such a thing is more difficult. But it's something that's performed by many. Just because you may have missed the train when you were young doesn't mean that you should't try to catch the next one later. > > I also, on the same exact and precise token, do not discourage > people to > EARN a certification from the vendor relevant to their current > position to > update their knowledge. I happen to have gained much from > Cisco's program > as well as MS's due to my particular area of work: Indepedent > constultant. > I don't have to prove that I have "Harvard business knowledge" > when the > reality that I deal with dictates that I understand NETWORKING > principles. However, surely you would concede that having that business degree from Harvard would help your career. I'm an independent consultant also, and we both know that it's not like the old days anymore when you could win deals merely by demonstrating technical acumen. Surely you would agree that winning deals these days often times means showing a client how hiring you ultimately makes sense to him, which often times means that in addition to technical skill, it also takes an intimate understanding of business concepts like ROI, payback period, capital depreciation schedules, op-ex, and that sort of thing. Which gets to a point that I've been making for awhile. In the post-bubble networking industry, if all you know is network techologies, you really don't know much. The fact is, companies don't really care about the intricacies of BGP, ATM, QoS, or whatnot (they may say they care, but they don't actually care), they only care about how these things translate into money. The point is this. In the late 90's, you really could live just on certs and tech knowledge. To do so now is to live dangerously, as all the unemployed CCIE's can attest to. Tech skill is not enough - people need learn how the relationship between tech skill and money. Companies will hire you (or not) based on whether they think they will make money (or not) from doing so. > > It is a simple idea, and it is crucial to the welfare of each > company: Judge > each individual by their own merit as much as the situation > allows and as > the situation requires. I know companies who do this, and they > are run most > efficiently. Other who do not follow such principles always > suffer from > disgruntled employees. However, your argument suffers from a flaw of logic. See below. > > As to some of the points you outline (sorry I cannot get to all > your points > or if I have missed any): > > 1. Cisco's (and Microsoft's for that matter) example of who's > on the Board > of Directors or in management in general is irrelevant to the > discussion > except for the fact that they are managers, specifically > managers. Those on > the board or in management have proven themselves to be > managers, while the > CCIE's are proven technicians, network engineers. There is no > "Vendor cert > for management." We are, yet again, devaluing something, an > orange per se, > by putting it in an apple contest. Irrelevant! Au contraire - entirely relevant. The fact is, many engineers (not all, but many) don't want to be engineers forever. I know if I'm still schlepping boxes in 20-30 years, I'm going to slit my wrists. The greatest value of the degree is that it gives you career flexibility - if you decide you want to do something else later in life, you can do it. Without that degree, you're basically stuck, with your only 'escape' being to found your own company, a la Gates. The real question you have to ask yourself is are you absolutely sure that you're content with being the tech guy forever? And in the case of the CCIE, are you content with being the network guy forever? And besides, it doesn't exactly jibe with your argument above that companies who place an emphasis on degrees seem to suffer from a high number of disgruntled employees. Microsoft, Cisco, and other such degree-oriented companies are perennial contenders for best companies to work for, as demonstrated by surveys run by Fortune Magazine and Businessweek. In fact, of all the favorite companies, not a single one carries a predominance of non-degreed people. In fact, the opposite is true. Furthermore, think about what you said above. You said that companies are run more efficiently if they judge each individual by his own merits - and I take that to mean that the company should 'de-emphasize' the importance of the degree. Yet, consider the logic of this argument. If these companies are really so 'efficient', then why don't they dominate the ranks of the Fortune 500. If such companies are really run so efficiently, then it should be no problem for these companies to compete with and destroy the corporate dinosaurs that use business practices of yesteryear. The free market is Darwinistic in that it dictates that more efficient enterprises tend to live and less efficient ones tend to die. So why haven't all these "individual-oriented" companies taken over the ranks of the top companies in the world. I'll put it to you in even more stark terms. Take your argument to its logical conclusion. If you truly think that corporate America is really run so inefficiently because it doesn't pay enough attention to individual characteristics, then perhaps you should start your own company that does precisely that. If your ideas are correct, then your company will enjoy unusual success because it will be better run than those other companies and you'll be a millionaire. > > 2. I again, restate, restate and restate again that I DO NOT > discourage, nor > do I wish to unfairly discredit, discount, ridicule, nor > dismiss the value > of a REAL college education. I am a college graduate as well, > albeit in the > music field, but I see the need for vendor certs (the programs > themselves, > not as much the "title"). Specialization in technical areas > has to be > achieved and measured in some formal manner, specially in a > complex field > like networking. This is precisely the reason why I find it > strange that a > certification program is under attach with such propaganda. If > you EARN a > cert, truly, you will learn a lot. There is essentially little > difference > in result per effort invested. In this thread, I have not attacked certification. The problem with certification is not the certification itself but with the easy-money mentality that it has engendered. Far too many people see certification as a get-rich-quick scheme. It falls to the vendors to make sure that their certifications do not succumb to this mentality - witness the MCSE. > > 3. I do not have "lofty ideals" from which I fly into bouts of > fantasy. I > tell reality the way I have seen it, and I can assure you that > vendor certs > are valued by a good number of people for what they are. > College degrees > have been overrated by a great many companies who hire people > for technical > positions, and these same companies, again, are the ones that > suffer the > most from lack of professionalism in their ranks. For > positions of upper > management (or even "middle" management), I have no argument > either way, as > it is totally out of bounds of this discussion. Again, I fail to see that it is out of bounds to the discussion, for the fact remains that not everybody is going to be happy with being the tech guy forever. And even in lines of your argument, I would argue just the opposite of what you said - that it is precisely the companies who overrate the value of certifications that suffer from much more lack of professionalism than those companies who overrate the value of the degree. Overrating anything is always a bad thing, but the dangers of overrating certs seem to be worse. Want proof? Look at the dotcoms and their brothers, the New-Age telcos, a high proportion of which were populated by certified college drop-outs and also suffered from a pernicious lack of understanding of business practices like proper finance/bookkeeping, proper HR policies, proper decision-making processes, and in short a complete lack of proper professionalism. All you have to do is go to www.fuc*edcompany.com and you can read story after story of dotcoms who handed out paychecks that bounced, that violated Federal notification laws regarding layoffs, that bought goods from suppliers and then welshed on payment, and in short suffered from chronic cases of the very lack of professionalism that you claim they should be immune to. Coincidence? I don't think so. The bigger, degree-oriented companies may be stodgy, but hey, at least if they hire you, you can pretty much rest assured that you're actually going to get paid, something that seemed to be rather hit-or-miss with the dotcoms. Professionalism, I ask you? And even if you want to restrict the discussion just to the technical arena, once again, I believe the dangers of being too cert-oriented are far greater than the dangers of being too degree-oriented. Again, far too many networks were built out in the late 90's by certified but degree-less people, and these network buildouts were performed without so much as a nod to economic efficiency and/or business practicality. Again, take a look at all the new-age service-providers who are now in bankruptcy court because they built out huge networks that hadn't a prayer of making back a reasonable return-on-capital. Finally, I would take issue with some of your specific beefs about degrees. I see that you say that colleges teach you outdated or irrelevant information. But that's really neither here nor there. The point of college is not to teach you cutting-edge information, but rather to provide you with a foundation base of knowledge from which you can learn specific things more quickly. You go to college not to use what you actually learned, but to improve your entire thinking process. Carly Fiorina graduated with a B.A. in medieval history from Stanford. What the heck does knowing about the Magna Carta have anything to do with managing a business? That's not the point. Jack Welch had a PhD in chemical engineering from Illinois - what does knowing about thermodynamics have anything to do with running a conglomerate like GE? Again, not the point. In fact, there are precious few instances of people graduating from college and then actually using in their job precisely what they learned in an actual class. Again, that's not the point. The point of college is not to learn actual specific things that you might use in your job, but to develop lifelong skills like time-management, discipline, mental acuity, emotional maturity, and the like. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=69958&t=69483 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
