For me, the CCIE is more of a personal gain than a career booster. I think
anyone who has been working in a WAN environment for 3 or more years should
know most of what a CCIE would encounter on a daily basis. Remember, the
CCIE makes you an expert in ALL areas, but some technologies you bump into
only once in a while. I would say I'm about equal to a CCIE in high speed
Ethernet networks in a Layer 3 Switched environment, also ATM in the WAN,
Frame Relay, etc.. I've also had a tremendous amount of experience with
802.11b Aironet and Cisco PIX too. These are two things not covered in the
CCIE R/S. However, a CCIE is expected to know about FDDI and Token Ring,
something I haven't worked with in a while. So when the expertise is
needed, count me out in that department. Also, my area of emphasis requires
me to know a lot of Nortel PBXs and to some degree, Nortel backbones and
edge devices. Cisco doesn't teach you anything about that. Nortel is #1 in
the PBX world so when you are ready to integrate VoIP, you must have some
knowledge of Nortel. There is no doubt that you will show up on to customer
sites who are interested on Voice Over services to save money, but are not
ready to dump their multi-million dollar Nortel PBX in favor of a Cisco
AVVID solution. In my opinion, the AVVID solution has a way to go before
being mature. It doesn't even play music while the client is on hold...ugh!
Anyway, when getting the CCIE, above all things, you will feel strong and
proud. It is a great certifiecation and at least you know you accomplished
something profound. I still want to do the CCIE Design, but it's out of
beta and Cisco put it on hold for the moment. To make the most of your
CCIE, try working for a company the utilizes technology heavily. Companies
like Sprint, MCI, Qualcomm, Nokia, all need CCIEs. Companies like JC Penny,
Sears, and Prudential are not technology-baed companies and although they
have WANs, they don't care if you are a CCIE or not. Just keep the network
up. Make sense?
Regards,
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: CCIE salary
> Mark, Pete:
>
> I need to say something here. I live about 3 miles from Cisco's Federal
> Marketing offices, in Herndon, VA, and I know a couple of engineers.
>
> One of those employees teaches my router class on Satrudays, at a local
> university, [I am an MCP, working on my CCNA, hope to test in June].
> This instructor said, that Cisco employees are usually too busy doing real
> world research for customers, and the CCIE is not that important, but
still
> prestegous for them. What I am trying to say is Mark, as long as you are
> working in your field and have X amount of knowledge and experience, a
CCIE
> won't matter too much, sounds like you are at the Top of the Network
> Engineering Hierarchy anyway.
>
> Pete:
>
> What do you mean by the following:
>
> "CCIE is
> really an enterprise discipline."
>
> Regards,
>
> Jess
>
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