douglas mizell wrote: > > Jeez, > > That is ridiculous, the program is run by Cisco, a > private > corporation. It is not a government entity and requiring those > types of > prerequisites makes no sense.
Well, to use that line of thought, why not just go all the way? Why require any prereqs at all? Let's dispense with the CCIE-written. Heck, why not go even further and just make the test super-easy. Let's just dispense with the lab and make it a written test, just like the MCSE. Also, if you don't think that corporations don't use prereqs, you're sadly mistaken. Airlines require that anybody they hire as a pilot must have a certain number of documented flying hours. Heck, most large companies have an (unwritten) requirement that if you want to enter management, you must be a college graduate. I know one large insurance company that dictated that all secretaries and receptionists must be college graduates. You can debate the appropriateness of these requirements until the cows come home, but the point is that it's simply false to say that private corporations are somehow prereq-free. >How do you quantify experience > anyway? What > about a guy who has fifteen years in the industry, gets his > CCIE but has > worked on the same technology, same network etc for years, he > is not working > with new technology so has no real experience with it either. A > "labrat" as > you call it has taken the time to explore the new stuff and > will at least > have an idea how to work with it in a production environment. What about it? The simple fact is most enterprises do not run the new stuff. People keep talking about the new stuff as if it's more widespread than kudzu. The fact is, far more companies are running supposedly obsolete technologies like IPX and Tokenring than are running "modern" technologies like Ipsec or IP multicasting. I see people making this mistake time and time again, and in fact I'm going to start including it in my laundry list of "myths in the networking world. A lot of people think that since new CCIE has all the new technology on it, anybody who's passed it is automatically more prepared to work on production networks than the old-school CCIE's who passed the test back when it still had supposedly obsolete technologies. Not only is that false, it is diametrically false - meaning that not only is the fact that the recent ccie exam tests "modern" technologies not a good reason why recent ccie's are more prepared to work on production networks, it is also and in fact a strong and leading reason for why they are less prepared. > There are two > side to this arguement but I think there are a few who seem to > be angry that > a motivated individual is able to study and pull off something > that they > believe is reserved for only experienced engineers. It would > not be in > Cisco's best interest to load the CCIE with unnecessary > baggage. The fact is > that if you can pass the test you are probably an above average > guy > technically and have the potential to learn and master just > about anything > that could reasonably be expected of a network engineer. By the same token, you might feel that you should be able to walk in and take the Medical Board exams right now and if you pass them, you should be allowed to cut people up. Use the same logic you just used in the above paragraph - since you passed the Boards, you obviously know a lot about medicine, so therefore you should be able to start operating on people, right? You know that doesn't fly. You want to be a surgeon? You have to go through all the steps that the medical profession has laid out for prospective doctors. The key question is, I think, how do you view the CCIE? Do you view it as a method of designating true readiness to handle high-level, high-sensitivity jobs (like the Medical Boards or the Navy Top Gun pilot school) or do you view it as a de-facto entry-level qualification - something that is used by people to get their foot in the door? I much prefer the former and I think the vision of the former is closer to the spirit of what the CCIE should be. After all the 'E' in CCIE stands for 'expert'. It is simply inconceivable to think of any other industry where you can be an expert and yet have no real-world experience. Can you really be a medical expert without actually practicing medicine? Can you really be a mountain-climbing expert without actually climbing mountains? Can you really be a flying expert just by playing Microsoft Flight Simulator all day long? True, everybody has the right to call themselves an expert at whatever they want, but that doesn't mean that other people are going to agree with you. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=71503&t=71143 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
