geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: Rafen on Tue, 18 June 2013, 21:18:05
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I was wondering if anyone who is in the networking field has taken a certification and which one? I am about to graduate college in December and I already have a job working for a computer company performing minor networking troubleshooting, but I want to improve my skills and I think one of these certifications might help. Any feedback is appreciated.
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From my experience (which, admittedly, isn't a ton) and from what coworkers/ teachers have told me Certs < Knowledge. I studied Net+, CCNA, etc but none of those really mean anything if you just know the material and can demonstrate that. I suppose I might go for a cert at some point but only if my employer paid the way.
The way I see it is that they're just another way for a company to make money and so many of them don't mean anything, what's the point?
Though keep in mind that I'm near Silicon Valley so maybe things are a little different here.
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SAP
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From my experience (which, admittedly, isn't a ton) and from what coworkers and teachers have told me Certs < Knowledge. I studied Net+, CCNA, etc but none of those really mean anything if you just know the material and can demonstrate that. I suppose I might go for a cert at some point but only if my employer paid the way.
The way I see it is that they're just another way for a company to make money and so many of them don't mean anything, what's the point?
Though keep in mind that I'm near Silicon Valley so maybe things are a little different here.
I agree that Knowledge is better than certifications but how do you gain that knowledge if you don't experience some of the things that are covered in the cert exams? I guess that is my real question, best way to gain knowledge about a networking topic if you don't get any hands-on experience?
Not really all about spending money to take a cert, I'm just trying to find a way to learn more about things I haven't experienced yet.
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Go buy some server equipment? My point was mainly that theoretical learning (vs exp.) will only get you so far in the IT world.
Hands-on is definitely the best way to learn anything. The piece of paper you get at the end? Just shows you know how to google Cisco brain dumps :P
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In my experience, experience trumps certifications every time.
When I was hired at the dotcom, the net admin was straight out of school with a B.A., I had about 4 years experience, but no degrees or certs. They offered me a higher starting rate before we even negotiated (and boy was he angry when he found out).
My advice, stay where you are and keep racking up experience, that is how you gain it. Start your job search and see what the jobs are looking for before you start looking at certs. Certs can bite you, just as too much education. If a place just wants an entry level net admin (which is what you mostly qualify for), certs can leave you over qualified. Companies, especially today, while they like highly qualified people, they also don't want to pay for it. The person they hire is the one who strikes the right balance.
I'm not sure why you are worried about experience regarding what is on the exams. The exams are to see if you read and understand things. It's not really real world problems, it's sterile. Which is my problem with classroom training as well. It's preconceived problems in a controlled environment. In the real world, controlled equals a lack of problems.
Granted, I'm not a mega corporation, but I tend to hire people who are self taught. They may not have the book experience, but I know they know how to look something up if they don't understand it (some call it Google Fu, like Kung Fu, but for Google). In field work emergencies are almost never the same, and you have to think on your feet, under pressure. A book doesn't teach that. If I know they can troubleshoot and Google things, they are easy to train and I can easily fill in the missing parts they need. Networking's not magic, it's just logic, unless it's Windows, then it can be a logic and black magic all in one.
Also, the advice of buying some cheap equipment isn't a bad idea. It's how I started. Used routers and computers are cheap, it doesn't need to be anything fancy to start with. The only part where it gets tricky for me is configuring T1 lines and workgroup switches. I simply don't deal with them enough (nor do I have a need).
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Go buy some server equipment? My point was mainly that theoretical learning (vs exp.) will only get you so far in the IT world.
Hands-on is definitely the best way to learn anything. The piece of paper you get at the end? Just shows you know how to google Cisco brain dumps :P
you can pick up CCNA books from community college bookstores, and CCNA study racks are getting WAY cheaper these days -- you can get a good setup for like 250-500 :)
the cert itself is crazy expensive though... :(
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The point at which a Network cert is valuable is the Cisco top-tier certs. If you already have the job just concentrate on that for .5-1 years and get a feel for things.
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i have a net+ cert. but it is worthless.
CCNA can be useful. but in reality get some used server equipment and mess around with it. get a cheap blade and mess around with VMWare. you will learn a lot.
but real learning takes place at the job. every network is different and each has its quirks and bureaucracy. no cert can teach you to write a change order.
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I don't think that I am going to go for a certification and will just try to learn as much as I possibly can while on the job. Thanks everyone.
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I don't think that I am going to go for a certification and will just try to learn as much as I possibly can while on the job. Thanks everyone.
Learn off the job too. :)
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I don't think that I am going to go for a certification and will just try to learn as much as I possibly can while on the job. Thanks everyone.
Learn off the job too. :)
This.
I actually fell behind while working at the Dot Com. If I hadn't taken side jobs and been messing around at home, my skills would have fallen behind. On the job is good, but you can get stuck dealing with the same issues over and over.
You need to keep proactive in learning, even though some jobs claim they will help you stay current, you can't count on it. This pertains to life as well.
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Yea setup a lab at home. Learn about VMWare, IPSec, and just **** around.
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If you can find the course materials/books cheap enough, it can't hurt to pick them up and flip through them, but unless you're swimming in money I wouldn't rush into taking the exams.
As mentioned by others, buying some actual network equipment and setting up a lab at home is a great way to tinker and learn the ins and out without having to worry about potentially breaking something important.
I learnt my way around Juniper devices by getting a one of them on my desk and working through their "day one" documentation, which turned out to be a great foundation.
If you're anything like me, you'll learn a lot more from videos than you will from static text. I find the CBT Nuggets videos great (it is a subscription service...), and they do a few Cisco and Juniper, plus Windows Server courses (usually actually training for certification exams.)
If you want to branch out a bit too, see if you can't get some experience working with VMs since that is where a lot of server infrastructure is heading/already has gone.
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I have two degrees, one in CIT, and one in MIS, which have proven more than worthless to me.
I have a Net+ and feel it is worthless.
I have a MCSE from 2003, it's worthless to me.
I never upgraded my MCSE to MCITP because I felt it was worthless.
I have a CCNA and now feel it's worthless.
I was going to go for CCNP, but felt it's worthless because my end goal is CCIE.
I passed my CCIE written, also worthless, but when I pass the CCIE lab it will be my first cert that I don't feel is worthless. The CCIE lab doesn't have multiple choice questions that you can just memorize from a brain dump site, and nobody questions whether you are a "paper CCIE" because it just isn't possible. It gets universal respect because you pretty much have to have real world experience to pass it.
I have 13 years of IT experience involving everything from PCs, Windows/Linux/Unix servers, virtualization, networking, VOIP, writing code, etc., and it is worth more than all of the peices of paper combined. When I first got into IT, I was all about getting pieces of paper, thinking it would somehow magically advance my career. However, as I met more and more people in my industry, I came across "paper MCSEs", "paper CCNA's", and "paper<insert cert here>" who could study for a test and pass it, but had no real world experience to back it up. I also had classmates that thought they would land $80k/yr jobs after getting their bachelor's degree, with no experience. In my first consulting company I worked for, I worked with a guy who was MCSE who hadn't actually worked on a production server, and he couldn't even figure out how to reset a user's password in active directory! He just was good at memorizing books, or more likely brain dumps. I have learned that quite frequently, the way that exams want you to answer questions are NOT how things get done in real life, Ex: in real life you use third party tools which save tons of time and increase accuracy. There is no substitute for real world experience, especially resolving outages that cause thousands of users to be unable to work, which as you can imagine is SUPER stressful. In interviews I have often been asked to explain the biggest outages I have ever resolved, and how I resolved them. As far as why I am against degrees, I found that all they show is that you can attend a college for four years, and upon completion employers are hesitant to hire you because they think you want too much money. I actually had a former boss tell me that he didn't want to hire me because of my degrees, but my varied experience won him over. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed getting the pieces of paper, but in hindsight don't feel they were worth the effort.
I would HIGHLY recommend that you work at a consulting company, not a corporate IT department if your goal is increasing your knowledge and building up a resume. Take minimum wage if you have to, because you will rapidly increase your worth and put all kinds of useful stuff on your resume, which translates to much more money later. You get to work in tons of different environments instead of just one company, and often they will pay for your certs and insist that you get them to maintain their partnership levels with companies like Cisco and Microsoft. It's also pretty common in large corporate environments to be pigeonholed into doing one boring job that doesn't advance your knowledge(DNS admin, active directory user admin, etc.). Don't even get me started on "change control" and other corporate bureaucratic practices that amount to filling out 20 pages of paperwork to do necessary tasks, and those 20 pages have to pass through three different departments within IT for signatures. I've been trapped in corporate IT jobs before just to get a paycheck at an easy job, but consulting companies improve your knowledge WAY more.
Get the experience first, then get the pieces of paper if not having them holds you back because you need a certain cert to qualify for a promotion. Also use GNS3 to learn about Cisco if you don't have real equipment to practice on, and use VMWare/Xen/Proxmox to setup virtual servers to practice the Windows server stuff.
Be prepared not to have a life if you really want to have maximum upward mobility in this industry, and to get calls at 3AM if something major breaks. Good luck.