Carroll Kong wrote:
>> > However, in terms of sensible fairness, I do not see how having > years > of "production experience" is going to mean crap if you utilize > it > improperly or got little out of it. (think of the guy who > calls TAC > every other day, and now thinks that the config registers for > password recovery are the same for all routers). Your entire argument is predicated on the notion that production experience isn't worth very much. Sheesh, you just left yourself wide open to a HUGE attack, so huge that I'm surprised you can't see it. Namely - if experience is so darn worthless, then why does every single company in the world want it? Name me a single company that doesn't care about experience. Can't do it, can you? What you're telling me is that all the companies in the world are placing a premium on something that is essentially worthless. So basically you're saying that every company in the world is wrong and you're right, is that true? If so, hey, please, by all means, start your own company and because you apparently your hiring practices will be better than everybody else's, you'll be a billionaire soon. > > Why not test the individuals harder, instead of putting up this > "number of years" barrier? Might as well ask ourselves why we can't just "simply" win the lottery. We both know Cisco is not going to do anything that actually requires substantial effort on their part, so why waste belaboring the subject. You're comparing the perfect solution that will never happen to something practical and attainable. > > Well, perhaps it was a bad analogy then (the pilot bit). I am > okay > with forcing people to do meaningful experience of sorts. I > also > think a good lab scenario based off of someone's "real world > experience" (eh, just insert disaster scenarios into the lab, > not > that hard. :) ) and clocking time against that is a good > idea. > Having them sitting around doing "nothing", seems to be just > wasting > people's time and money. > > However, given that everyone is not going to have an even > experience > in any workplace, it seems to be a very uneven barrier. > Furthermore, > as I mentioned, in some cases, so little comes out of it at > times > that to even compare people by the number of years would be > ridiculous. And yet that is precisely what companies do, and I have to imagine that they have good reasons for doing so. You wanna get hired as the lead engineer at a tier-1 backbone provider? You have to have X years of experience to even get into the interview room. Could those X years of experience have been spent in a NOC playing solitaire? Yeah, I guess. But hey, those are the rules. We all know that if you don't have any experience, you will not be considered for that job even if you could handle it. Unfair? Maybe. But guess what - life is unfair. My proposal is no more unfair than life itself. > > Well, if anything, make the exam harder. Not going to happen if it means that Cisco will actually have to put effort into it. > The years of > experience > seems too hazy to me for quite a few reasons. > > 1) experience is not equal > 2) experience can turn into misinformation > > I just do not like this "easy" way out to build a quick > "filter" that > seems like it is not going to build stronger CCIES necessarily. And again, this is precisely the "easy" way that companies filter out candidates. Again, if you really think the whole world is dumb for doing this, then by all means start your own company and blow them all away. > > > > The only thing you did was delay them, and delay > potentially > > > qualified individuals. Are you even sure they will have > even a > > > SHRED > > > more experience after doing carressing for so long? Is that > > > shred > > > going to really help them when they "study" for the exam by > > > going to > > > bootcamps, reviewing braindumps, etc? > > > > A shred is better than nothing. And I am confident that many > of them will > > have more than a shred. > > Well, I can give you a list of people who will disappoint you. > :) > However, I never said a "router carresser" might not be very > bright. > A good number of them are like that; they too are held back > (but > this time by their employers). However, let us test them on > their > merits, not on how long they were carressing. Why not? That's precisely what employers do. > > Yeah but to employ such a method to filter people, and to > potentially > get very little results. Hey, if the results are good enough for all the employers in the world, they should be good enough for the CCIE program. > > What I am saying is not everyone's experience is a very good > one. > You get those who see one Cisco router crash once due to a bad > DIMM, > and he thinks Cisco sucks for routers. > > Experience can be flawed, or it could be overwhelmed by raw > knowledge. "From my experience, reinstalling the OS and > picking the > automatic DHCP will fix my network settings". "Um... you can > just > change the IP address in the control panel". During the Win9X > days > and NT days you would run into bozos like those. Or "From my > experience a /24 mask is all I need and it works great." > > Of course, there are some who would argue "if they had > experience in > a big bad production network they would see the need for it." > Well, > if you just have any sense of how the networks work, you would > already know fairly optimal network partitioning and address > allocation. Some people need to "learn by failing" or smashing > their > head against the wall. Some people just read the manual and > realize > you do not need to do it that way. Some people keep plugging > in > different CAT5 cables, some people think about what kind of MDI > you > need, then plug it in. Others buy the auto XMDI switches and > never > learn so when they see the legacy setup their get burned. > > Misinformation creeps in a lot. The thing is, why bother > filtering > out these details. Just make the exam fit the requirement of > the > knowledge and experience you desire. But yet again, employers want experience. Why, if it's so easily warped? Are they really all dumb? > > I am sure there are some companies still hiring new employees. > I > mean by that mentality, why bother with a degree or any any > number of > certifications? It just means you have to stay even more > competitive, and why deny people from getting a chance to even > take > it? > > Of course this is all moot if you are okay with an unfair but > surefire way to reduce the number of CCIE candidates. Although > by > how much, I wonder. The same lab rats are the same types who > will > find their buddy to fudge through or be able to "fast talk" > through > their manager and become the local guru. I know a guy like > that. He > still has his job and put down the O so generic "assembly > language" > on his resume without specifying the architecture and he also > wrote > how he knew Java and was having problems with basic > instantiations of > classes. He knows a few Compaq model numbers and can spit them > out > faster than a computer. :) What can I say - there will always be cheaters. We make the exam harder and more people will hire 'ringers' to stand in and take the test for them, or they'll pay off proctors to give them the test answers like what famously happened in the Beijing lab, or other such games. There will always be cheaters no matter what you do. Neither your nor my proposals is about dealing with cheating which is an entirely different topic. > > > > Uh, I'm afraid I don't follow. Obviously there are guys who > have lots of > > experience out there who are incompetent. I'm not denying > that they are. > > But obviously back when they had no experience, they were > REALLY > > incompetent. Therefore it logically follows that somebody is > necessarily a > > better worker because of experience. That doesn't mean that > he's > > necessarily good, just better than before (i.e. the > difference between bad > > and worse). That's the point. Nobody ever got worse because > of > > experience. If I give you experience, you still may be bad, > but you're > > going to be better than before. > > If that is the case, then you see that if you can have a big > scale, > it would tell you individual A with no buffs is better than > individual B even with his "buffs" or years of experience to > give him > more weight. In that case, test them for how well they perform > in a > scenario, not because one guy has more years of experience. > > Also, bad experience does not always make you better than > before. It > can make you worse. You can learn a lot of misinformation, and > spreading that is horrible. You can also acquire a particular > bias > which is completely unfounded. That is why sometimes companies > will > refuse to hire someone with too many years of experience. If > they > get bullheaded, he'll want to use his ancient technology that > he is > so good with instead of something that makes more sense, more > scalable, and well supported in the future. > > You can also gain a false sense of "skills". Remember the guy > who > said "I have three years of experience in an ISP, I think I > know what > I am doing" when he claimed you needed NetBeui to "route > Windows file > sharing" over two Layer 3 networks? See, he insisted he was > right > and refused to listen to me, no matter how reasonable I > sounded. If > he did not use his experience as a shield for his incompetence, > we > could have avoided his bullheaded statement. But he did, so he > did > the wrong thing and all because of his "experience". And yet again, all the companies in the world do precisely the thing that you apparently disagree with - namely that they key on experience. You want a high-level job, you have to have X years of experience, and if you don't, you won't be considered for the job. Are you saying they're all wrong and you're right? > > The CCIE without any experience is still more marketable than > the guy > without any experience and just a CCNA. (given that all other > things > are equal). If it is his own preogative, why hold him back at > all? > The poor job market is like a tidal wave that holds down the > people > who do not have an extremely good skillset. However, that does > not > mean the all the people who do not have jobs are to be thrown > in as > the same level of marketabilty. I think it's safe to say that people without experience are really just different shades of dark when companies right now are looking for the light. The fact is, everybody knows that without experience, you're going to find it difficult to get a job, no matter what your other qualifications may be. Unfair? I don't know and it's not my place to say. But I do know that's the way it is. > > > Look, I freely admit that my proposal is a compromise > solution, and > > proposals from Howard are better. In fact, I have waxed > poetically on just > > such changes on alt.certification.cisco numerous times. > However, I'm a > > political pragmatist and I realize there's no point in > proposing solutions > > that Cisco would never implement because they're simply too > lazy to do it. > > Anything that is proposed has to be easy for them. You can't > fairly compare > > a compromise solution that gives you some (but not all) of > what you want > > against a perfect solution that gives you everything you want > but that will > > never be implemented. Getting something not as good as > getting everything > > but is clearly better than getting nothing. > > > > Or how about this. Instead of going around shredding other > people's > > arguments, how about if you propose something that would > improve the > > program, and more importantly, might actually be implemented > by Cisco? > > Hm, not sure if I should take that as somewhat of a personal > attack. > In any event, I had no intention of turning this into some sort > of > personal attack on you or your ideas. While you may feel I am > not > contributing, (I always hated when people in the open source > community said "don't complain write a patch!", because there > are > some merits to just supposedly "complaining), I feel I am > giving > constructive feedback to your solution. > > An experience barrier seems like it will do little to nothing > to > improve the CCIEs for the reasons I described > 1) experience is not even > 2) individuals with more "experience" are sometimes far worse > than > individuals with less "experience" Companies have done exactly what I have proposed for decades and they don't seem to be any worse for wear. In fact, it was precisely when they chose to break tradition and hire less or non-experienced people for high-level jobs did they get screwed (i.e. the dotcom era). You could argue to any company that since experience is not even and that individuals with more experience can be worse than individuals with less experience, then they shouldn't key on experience they way they do. But hey, it has been shown than using experience as a gauge works. Is it perfect? Or course not, there is no perfect gauge. But it's a heck of a lot more powerful than anything else - otherwise why would they keep doing it? Think about it - why exactly do more experienced people, in any white-collar profession, make more money than less-experienced people? Why exactly do white collar workers' salaries tend to increase with age (until they retire, that is)? Do you think companies really enjoy paying more money to older, more experienced people? Oh, hey, you got more experience, so please take more of our money because we want to be less profitable? If experience is so useless, then why don't people's salaries go down or stay the same with time? Since experience is apparently garbage, then by all means let's hire some guys fresh out of school and get them to be our executive management. Experience? Who needs that - experience is worthless! Look, I agree with you that experience is amorphous and difficult to quantify. But it's still the most useful gauge we have. Perfect? Of course not. But better than anything else we got. Companies have learned that the hard way and that's why they continue to use it. If this is really such a bad policy, surely a company would have figured this out by now and turned their hiring practices upside down and then used it as a competitive weapon in the marketplace. But companies obviously realize the limitations of the gauge of experience which is why they also insist on interviewing candidates. However, my point is that if it's good enough for the corporate world, it should be good enough for the CCIE program. It's a tried and true gauge that has been vetted by the corporate world over and over again. Imperfect? Yes. But still good enough. And clearly a lot better than nothing, otherwise why would companies still use it? > > The one idea I did like is possibly a strong Lab to at least > learn > minimum basics. The number of network administrators out there > who > do not know what subnet masks are or CIDR style notation is > mind > boggling. I even ran into one who was not sure on VLANs, he > dared to > say "Yeah I know the theory but what exactly are they?". > Sheesh, do > not say you know the theory if you do not know it... because if > you > did you would know it! ;) > > Some notes I think that came out of this entire discussion > > - Strong pre-Lab with minimum hours/requirements. Perhaps some > Cisco > standards to be implemented and taught. > - A more difficult or dynamic exam, perhaps with some open > ended > elements. > - If Cisco kept a log of the performance of the individual, > such as > number of retakes, the quality of their feedback, then at least > employers could call Cisco to get a better feel. Of course, > not even > medical schools do this though if I remember correctly. Once again, you're sitting here comparing the perfect to the possible. Unfair unfair unfair. > > I am just very strong against the instant filter due to "number > of > years of experience" since that means so little to me and from > what > my clients have experienced. And yet it means so much to all the companies in the world. Heck, why not call up the Board of Directors of any of your clients and propose to them that if a person off the street can talk a really really good game, they should can their CEO and replace him/her with that person. Never mind the fact that that person has no previous high-level management experience before, because experience is apparently not important. Then listen to the Board laugh you right off the phone. > From what I see, the CISSP does > that to > just mask the fact that their written exam is just a bookworm > exam of > little practicality. (from what I have heard). > > If anything, I would rather see Cisco improve the difficulty of > the > exam itself, rather than employ such filters. I feel that such > a > filter would not really affect the quality in a positive manner > as > greatly as you think, but would decrease the "supply" which is > beneficial to existing CCIEs. If that is the end goal, let's > do it! > :) I just think it is grossly unfair and slows down > individuals. Like the job market? By the same token, it may be "unfair" for companies to require X years of experience to become CEO. Hey, life is unfair. It is not the job of Cisco to conquer all the unfairnesses of the world. Cisco is not a religion. > > For the CCIE, we should be putting up signs "you have to be > this > height" (you need these skills), not "you have to be this age". > (you > need to be this old Again, not gonna happen. From their track record, we both know that Cisco is not going to do anything that actually requires them to do a lot more work. I would love it if they were to do so, but it ain't gonna happen. So let's be realistic and talk about what they might do. My proposal is actually do-able because it's easy. You hire a background check company to audit a random number of candidate's resumes, and you increase the lab fee of everybody by, say, $10, to cover the costs. Everybody always says to make the test harder and more realistic, but nobody ever comes up with a way to do that that doesn't involve substantial work on the part of Cisco, which means the idea is DOA. > > > -Carroll Kong > > Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=71879&t=71143 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
