2 Law

One guy saw my Metro Ethernet score report this morning and asked me the question: why I keep doing this CCIE stuff. Why I keep taking CCIE lab even there are lots of misery during the journey: losing social life, bunch of money, and all the excitements in the world only for one damn 8-hours exam.

Well, my answer is simple:
- Because it’s fun
- Because last year, when I was still only a CCIE, I tried to apply to Advance Services Team in Cisco Middle East and I got rejected because I was not “qualified enough”
- Because I want to learn new stuff and CCIE is the only thing that can accommodate me

I have invented something that I called 2 Law of Desperate Workers:
Law 1: To get a better job, you need to have good experience and build good working experience profile
Law 2: In order to get good experience and build good working experience profile, you need to work in a better job

So far I use CCIE to solve the 2 Law issue. Well, it won’t give me large scale deployment experience, but at least it’s close enough to make me able to design, setup and troubleshoot complex technology in much smaller scale. So to learn MPLS in deep detail, CCIE Service Provider is the answer.

But the scariest question for me now is: how if I become triple CCIE later this year and still can’t get a better job? What kind of excitement that I can get other than working on fancy features in Cisco boxes? Doing another CCIE by my own is getting harder, because the other 2 tracks left are Voice and Storage. With my current situation, it’s almost impossible to build those 2 labs at home. It’s just too expensive. And until now I’m not interested enough to take that path.

So hear me you guys in Cisco Systems, please accept my message, Mr. Chambers: I’m willing to work in Cisco Systems Advance Services Team in any location in the world.

Why Advance Services?
Because I know people in Advance Service dealing with analysis and diagnosis of highly complex networking problems and complex network designs, up to builds simulated networks in test labs to resolve highly complex problems and compatibility issues. It’s a very challenging job and it gives me a chance to help all Cisco customers directly just like what I have been doing with my current company, with larger scale. And of course, with @cisco.com behind my name.

Why Cisco?
Everything I know related to networking I learned it from Cisco. My bookshelf is full of Ciscopress books. Everytime I want to know about new networking technology, I always refer to Cisco website first. I use Cisco certification to advance my career. I read Cisco books to get clear explanation of RFC. So working for Cisco directly, is just like going home to me.

Why anywhere in the world?
Well, if I had privilege to choose than I wouldn’t write this in my blog and expect someone from Cisco to read it, right?

So until I get the offer from the “better place”, I will keep myself busy in CCIE Service Provider track. I will try to borrow some 7200 routers so I can test EoMPLS Martini and Interworking, several new magical things in networking world. At least for me.
Who knows what will happen after I pass my third CCIE. But at least let me enjoy every second of this journey.

And btw, if you are reading this and know some opportunities and you think it may makes me happy, please let me know. Thanks.