In Cisco, pass another CCIE means hard cash. Yes boys, Cisco pay money straight away for an employee who passes CCIE lab.
But that’s all. I mean once you join Cisco, it doesn’t matter how many CCIE you have passed. What really matters is your performance in delivering your job. In fact, since I joined Cisco I never introduce myself to the customer: Hi, I’m H from Cisco Advanced Services, and I'm a triple CCIE. And I guess even I did this, my customer would look at me and say: So? Who cares? Just fix my network! :)
So anyone can give me a good reason to become quad CCIE?
To join an elite club of few guys who have four or even five CCIEs? Interesting and very tempting indeed, but do I need to take another CCIE just to be proud of myself?
To learn new technologies, in this case Voice and Storage? Yes, it’s true. But those won’t help me in my current job, or even with the future job where I want to be specialized in Service Provider technologies. Voice means Enterprise Voice. And Storage is more related into Data Center. They can drag my focus away from SP core technologies such as MPLS and NGN stuff.
To compete with Scott Morris? Dude, I believe he’s considered as one of the respectable networking geeks not because he has 4 CCIEs, but because of his extensive experience, his commitment to continuously upgrade his knowledge, his willingness to share the knowledge to the community, he knows many other products not only Cisco, and obviously because he has a very cool lab in his basement.
So I’m not in the same league with him.
As I said in my profile for this blog: I wish to become an expert one day, and my greatest fear is to become a guy without any specialties. By taking another CCIE lab, I will drag my focus away and that for sure will not make me specialize in anything.
However, passing another CCIE is important if I want to become network solution architect, since this kind of job requires me to know all the technologies plus the way how to make them work together.
So unless someone can come up with a very good reason, it looks like it’s time for me to start drilling down to a particular technology area to focus my expertise. And I still have two more weeks in San Jose to find out which one. And please allow me to share my picture enjoying sunset in San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge ;)
7 comments:
You already rank highly with the elite CCIEs. Plus you seem to have a great following who are inspired by your tales.
My vote is you should go for CCIE Voice.
I say save yourself the grief if the remaining specializations are in areas that you aren't passionate about. There's no doubt that you will be able to learn the technology to the point that passing the CCIE will be a breeze for you.
I say wait until the CCDE and/or CCIA (or whatever Russ White was talking about in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlmf0wgkbVk) becomes available, and take a run at that... :)
Technogly is not ended on cisco, Routing switching is not all about cisco, The world of netowrks is bigger than that. there is lot more to explore
if CCIE Voice doesn't passionate you..You may go towards JNCIE track...Like Scoot Morris did.
All in all you listen the voice of ur heart and u surely will !!
Hi Branto, expert certification in design for NCE actually is not required, since you have to do that for living anyway :) I mean, that's written in the job description and the moment you walk in any customer sites as NCE that means you have to know and deliver the best practice design for them. But Cisco AS may 'force' all NCE to be certified on that track to support the program, just like Cisco 'recommend' all the engineers to have at least the 1st CCIE.
Hi Rising Sun, to be frank JNCIE makes more sense to me bcoz it's related to my daily work, I mean the SP technologies inside JNCIE lab, not the JUNOS. And JUNOS is just the interface, just like the IOS XR. MPLS is still MPLS in both JUNOS and XR. But to go to that track I need to setup Olive first.. hmm
himawan, don't kid yourself if you think you're competing with scott morris! Why would you even compare? You are working in a real world, inside cisco, with real networks, real customers, growing your experience as a real expert. Scott is sitting in bootcamps everyday, teaching ospf timers and route reflectors to ccnps... you think that's experience? some sort of a "league"? ask him how many times he took ccie voice lab. ask him when was the last time he worked on a project for a large real world customer.
you're doing a great job, man, and the lack of ego will help you greatly in your life. people respect that.
do another ccie just because you can. And then just don't announce it on your blog, you'll prove yourself that you're not competing with anyone and just did it for yourself. And I know you just love coming to that lab! :)
best of luck to you man
I think if you can do it, just do it.
I'm on the pursuit of the CCIE. Just a quickie.. i used to work at Cisco but got fired for saying an expletive that a manager said i directed at him (Damn you, Nigel Simpson.... DAMN YOU!!). We all know that it was said in frustration and not at him. Anyways, as this was 8 years ago i was wondering would i be able to work at Cisco again or is this door closed forever?
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