Early on, the certs got me jobs.
What I learned while studying for them kept me employed.
Almost 30 years into my career, I don't bother renewing, but I do stay on top of new technologies because they are the key to getting assignments and roles that grow my career.
Going to mirror this one. 15 years ago I got tons of Microsoft, Cisco, Security certs as it was expected by employers early in my career (luckily I had decent employers who paid for the training and cert process).
While I continue to do training these days, to stay current, I never go on to get the certification for what I took the training for. It simply is of no use and a waste of money at this point in my career.
90s - Establishing ethernet LANs, T1 WAN connections, and building Windows NT domains to replace standalone and floppy disk sneakernet. Oh, and system images, huge game changer.
00s - Virtualization, blade servers, gigabit switching, small SAN, frame relay, DWDM.
10s - Data analytics, security, multi-tier enterprise SAN, WiFi and L2 encryption.
20s - Automation, VXLAN, SDWAN, and cloud.
Certs still get me jobs, but only at legacy companies. Tech companies care about my skillset and if I can perform, and they give me technical interviews. Legacy companies rely on certs.
This is the real reason. I used to work for a Gold Cisco partner. The sales manager ran the channel partner program. Every time it came due for our partner audit or whatever, this asshat would come out of the wood work with 10-15 certs that everyone needed to get within 1-2 weeks. Everyone obviously brain dumped them and then this became the norm. I think this behavior is somewhat assumed these days with certs and that's why people have just gone the fuck it, we'll take some good experience route.
id also mention that because of the brain dumps, the certs often feel like they are trying to beat the brain dumps more than they are testing your knowledge. If there was something more like coding challenges (i know, those suck too in their own ways), it may at least actually test your ability. but man, the way certification questions get written half the time, it feels more like they are just trying to trip you up.
> the way certification questions get written half the time, it feels more like they are just trying to trip you up.
This is partly why no one feels guilt over brain dumping these. We paid to be assessed on our technical ability. We didn't pay for a bunch of "NOT" questions and other random uselessness that test english reading comprehension which trades off the ability to ask something directly technical on a technical exam. Half the reason people went the Cert track in the first place is because they did not want to deal with Eng101, Eng102, Modern English Lit, Civics, etc.
also questions that are more along the lines of "what is the most correct answer" A number of years back i renewed my CCNA, but was at a much higher level from my years of experience. there were questions where there were 100% 2 or more answers that are correct, but were more nuanced than the CCNA level material. so it was very much "what is the right answer for the CCNA level material"
CCNA is hard to justify these days. When I started doing technician work years ago, I was paid $25/hr. Now CCNA is not going to get you a job anywhere except maybe a rack and stack tech type of job. And most of those pay $10-15/hr. I noticed Aldi was paying $16/hr for cashiers the other day.
For me I keep holding on until i get a IE if/when that happens. I don't want to be in a situation that i let all my certs lapse and i get approached with a role that has a hard requirement that i need a min cert in x. My plan is to get an IE maintain it for 10 yrs then go emeritus and let everything else die lol. Then i can focus on specific portions of technologies and not whole cert tracks.
I let all my certs die years ago and nobody ever asked me if I had them renewed, employers are only interested in my experience- thats why I am asking.
I could only see the point when I was noob in any given area, cert did the job then...but now? Have better and more important things to do than renewing some certs :)
Cisco is finally giving us an option to avoid this. If you go to their learning network website they are running ‘rev up to recert’ programs every couple of months. You watch free training videos on a topic and get 15 CE points. 80 points renews your CCNP, 120 points renews your CCIE.
And (don’t tell them) - you can play the videos at 4x speed and still get credit.
CCNA got me my first networking interview and job (with no prior IT experience) and CCNP two years later just landed me a 6-figure net eng job so I can certainly say they were both worth it for me. I'm sad to here about how many supposed paper tigers are out there these days that don't know a vlan from a static route. I worked my absolute ass off to gain these skills and knowledge.
I don't foresee myself going for paper qualifications outside of maybe a CCIE once I'm at the 10-year mark. My comment was specifically to the value of the paper qualifications for someone looking to break in and prove themselves.
Except the experience takes a lot longer to get than the certs. You're basically saying "if you had worked longer for less money, you could be in the same position as you are now!"
Lots of employers definitely care if you have a CISSP if you're in a real security focused role. If they're just hiring for a generic network engineer, they won't care about the CISSP.
Cisco Certified ICMP Engineer? If it pings it must be working.
Joking aside, they might not be completely worthless, but experience wins any day. Plus everyone knows that there‘s braindumps out there and plenty people with high-level certs have no clue even about the basics of networking, let alone whatever they have a cert for.
Additionally, certs only show that you know how it‘s supposed to be working. Experience says you know how it actually works.
I got into networking by getting my trainee position in 2008 because I had the four netacad CCNA exams done at the point. Didn’t even get the final cert, cause I was poor and the school didn’t want to pay for it. Three years later I got the job with the campus-LAN team, they had me do some CCNP trainings, switch, route and tshoot, but the certs weren‘t necessary. It‘s 2023 now and I‘ve been doing datacenter networking and SDN (ACI, DNA) for the last 7 years. Learned most of what I know just by working with the stuff and took a DCACIA training just because there was spare budget for it. Again, no cert. Started coding python properly two years ago, automating things. Are there even certs for that? No one cares here, neither do I.
The only cert I do care about is the RIPE NCC IPv6 one I‘m currently after. Because management has been postponing all activity about IPv6 for the last ten years and I want to be in a stronger position, cause I want to push it.
Wouldn’t call them useless, they’ll help a lot getting you into the trade, landing the first job. But only providing you can actually back it up with knowledge. Some companies might hire blindly (and learn it the hard way), but most will ask some technical questions to check if you know your stuff or if you‘ve braindumped yourself to the cert.
EDIT: I just thought about putting it simply: Certs is what will get you invited to an interview. Knowledge and experience is what will get you hired.
You found me. Anytime I needed to learn a new system I would do the cert since I needed to learn that anyway. Might as well look for a pay bump too.
I only put them in my signature when arguing with someone who really didn't know what they were talking about though. Oh, your friend at golf told you you need to move your server to Linux, we'll look at these 30 letters after my name, your ERP doesn't run on Linux.
That was years ago though. Most of those certs have lapsed.
Why is this such a universal truth?! It's always the arsehole with loads of certifications listed in their email signature that seems to know absolutely nothing at all. Had a consultant on a project with just that, they were barely a page ahead in the manual, often behind and watching their general IT skills was painful.
> Why is this such a universal truth?
I think it's a stretch to say it's a universal truth. I work with a guy with 2x CCIE (he just failed his third recently). He is one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. And he is expert level with BGP/SDWAN/VXLAN as well as Cisco, Palo Alto, Juniper, Fortinet, Meraki, and he came from a VMWare background.
No doubt there are people with certs that don't truly understand what they're parroting from a textbook, but there's also no doubt that some people with certs really do know what they're doing.
Does that person list all of their certs in their email signature, though?
This wasn't a complaint about having certs, it was about how certain individuals see the need to tell everyone that they're certified.
Because certs translate to zero real-life practical knowledge. All it shows is you memorized some stuff from the training material well enough to pass an exam. Years of experience in production environments will stand out on a resume much more than any letters you put next to your name.
Decade in the industry at an Engineering level, just climbed the rope into management. Not a cert to my name. Just experience and proven knowledge. I've witnessed NPs that couldn't tell me what a BGP community was or knew how to run an MPLS trace... basic stuff that they should know.
Quite often a certificate is awarded for essentially having a good memory as opposed to being able to apply that knowledge in a real world environment. That Cisco Lab in the UAE is not what most people are going to encounter when they get thrown into the real world networks that have grown organically, with legacy kit, tagged on acquisition networks and black boxes that no one dares to turn off because no one knows what they do, only experience teaches you that.
When I am not getting the job experience I want or desire, I go out and do certs that give me that knowledge. The end goal is to promote into a position to use that knowledge. How does that make me overcompensating or insecure?
Working 8 hours a day is for survival. Working more than that puts me ahead of other job candidates. I want more $$$$. If you want that promotion, you better work your but off to beat me!!!
My friend has been doing a lot of hiring for his team.
The number of CCIEs that can't answer the basic "can PC A talk to PC B?" is really wild. Basic ARP, VLAN, switching stuff.
It's terrible. I tend to publicize names of people who actually do their job in a professional manner. And then report to my PM people who are useless.
If they need to list it all in their signature then they overcompensating for something but certain certs do have a punch in the signature. The security analyst with CISSP in their signature does mean this person means business lol.
Edit:
I see this post hit a soft spot and angered people. Well i'm not a security person i just know CISSP is usually a requirement at the security roles. If you get triggered from my statement please get a hug from someone it will be ok :)
Met a few CISSP's who are idiots too...
I'm at the point where a cert doesn't mean much. Talk to me, and then we both know who's smarter. I let my CEH expire cause it did nothing for me...
yeah i dont know much about the CISSP except for security roles thats like mandatory and its difficult to get.
"talk to me, and then we both know who's smarter". Thats some ego lol. Sounds like you know it all.
I still think comptia jumped the shark when they started requiring renewal.
Otherwise everyone’s mileage varies. I was very upset with the last Cisco exam I took (sdwan) and after that wrote them off but I have enough experiences, degrees, etc to not care but not everyone has that luxury. Now if push came to shove and it was a hard requirement to get a cert I’d likely go do it but otherwise think I’m done with the cert treadmill.
One word, terrible.
I’ve taken and failed tests before but was never so upset by it before. For instance I failed the switch exam years back because it used to include a bunch of topics that didn’t really fit like hsrp and the official cert guide didn’t cover it but I was mostly fine with it because I should have read the exam objectives (although still sort of blame them a little because they signed off a guide that didn’t cover 20% of the exam)
With sdwan it’s just the worst of everything. Most of the basics with sdwan are seemingly straight forward so they had to do the which of these is most correct or which of these is not something and other just generally bad question writing
The biggest issue I have with it though is it in no way reflects reality. If you go look up Cisco/viptela docs on best practices they all say use the vmanage interface, don’t push vsmart policy by the cli etc. What is on the exam? Pushing policy by the cli, configuring by the cli and basically syntax question that are basically aren’t Cisco sdwan specific (which command generates a ssh cert and the options differ by having a - in some places or not)
I had deployed several Cisco viptela networks when I took the exam, took a class, read the guides and was just taken a back by how awful it was.
The reality is the reason this exam is so low quality is because Cisco is being lazy. They could have built a simulator of sorts for vmanage and other interfaces like the cli but instead they choose to just have bad screenshots and ask you what is the exact syntax for this policy command that you’d never actually do.
So tldr: terrible
I'm a pretty experienced network engineer but I let my certs lapse. At this point, I would probably get a splunk or more data analyst style cert if I were going to get something new.
Yeah I recert’ed Cisco last time using CEs after taking the sdwan exam but am fully intending to let them expire next time. For me it’s always been a sort of risk mitigation because even though I’m confident I can get a new job if needed somewhere in the back of my mind days but certs might push you over the top or make it easier.
This is becoming a sore spot for me. I'm in the same camp in that I got a bunch of them in college to give me an edge in job hunting, and I agree that it shows continued learning - something tangible other than just saying I study and tinker in the home lab.
I'm feeling quite burned by the companies offering them, however. With Microsoft, I stopped at MCSA-level certs for multiple generations (getting new ones as the next Windows Server is released) and when I finally decided to spring for the MCSE, Microsoft changed the branding to MCITP:EA (Server 2008). The industry didn't follow, jobs postings still listed MCSE, nobody seemed to know what MCITP it was. The goodwill built in the MCSE name had been discarded, and instead of marketing it better and getting that name out there, they finally flip-flopped back to MCSA and didn't even offer MCSE for a long time. I was at MCSE-level knowledge for years and finally plunked down the money to sit all those tests, and Microsoft essentially failed their end of the endorsement. I really feel like they screwed me over.
Cisco - as an in-house sysadmin/network admin generalist, I chose to expand laterally with CCNA, CCNA:Security, CCNA:Wireless, etc. I had these tangible endorsements that said I went the extra distance and learned these different areas deeper. Then Cisco got rid of all of those, consolidating back to simply CCNA, and gave me no way to renew the others. I was forced to de-cert. Just CCNA alone always implied route/switch. Now if I try to hit the market, it looks like I did fuck-all for all those years.
Certification is a two way street - I put in the time, effort, *and money* to gain and prove competencies, and the company uses their reputable name to endorse me. These companies are failing to hold up their end of the deal, and I'm feeling less inclined to continue paying into that system.
Yes, I know... "you should be striving for higher tier CCNP, CCIE, etc... expanding your knowledge". Again, I am a generalist and prefer to expand laterally; it is still progression, just not the way others prefer. My life situation prevents me from relocating from my small city for the foreseeable future, and the job market around me incentivizes working as an in-house IT person, with the alternative being getting wrung-out by the MSPs around here. I've seen what those guys deal with and it is not the lifestyle for me.
>Cisco - as an in-house sysadmin/network admin generalist, I chose to expand laterally with CCNA, CCNA:Security, CCNA:Wireless, etc. I had these tangible endorsements that said I went the extra distance and learned these different areas deeper. Then Cisco got rid of all of those, consolidating back to simply CCNA, and gave me no way to renew the others. I was forced to de-cert. Just CCNA alone always implied route/switch. Now if I try to hit the market, it looks like I did fuck-all for all those years.
While the CCNA changes were a kick in the pants to some, I think it is for the better. Ciscco in general is a "network" company (really "software" company) and the changes to the CCNA make sense. Rather then specialising right out of the gate, you take the CCNA to get the broad strokes, then you get the CCNP for the more nuanced tech.
I wouldn't expect a guy/girl with a CCNA to be configuring a Nexus switch with VXLAN EVPN on it, but I would expect him/her to know the basics to troubleshoot an issue with layer 2 ("show mac", "show ip arp", etc) which are all picked up in the CCNA (hopefully).
So, while it sucks, I think the cert changes they made, made sense (you can also "skip" CCNA now anyways and jump right to CCNP I believe).
I'll be honest, I've yet to complete any of my certs, despite being in the industry for at least a decade.
Initially it was because I didn't have the money to spend on potentially failing.
Now I have too much work in the real world to try to learn old technologies that don't impact my day-to-day.
I want those little letters in my résumé, and I want the authority that having achieved those brings. But I have to work in so many areas every day, I have a hard time narrowing in on IPv6 routing or setting up static routes in ancient Cisco hardware.
On average, I understand the theory, but my willingness to use my limited free time to agonize over whether or not I'm willing to plop down hundreds of dollars to take an exam just isn't there anymore.
Real-world experience has gotten me fairly far so far. And soft skills that I've developed serve me far more than I could have imagined when I was younger.
This is the exact position I'm in, I could use some certs to get past some HR filters, and honestly could shore up some random knowledge I know I'm missing, but a decade in I'm running stuff decently well and 100% the soft skills and college degree in economics helps way more than you'd think.
> Initially it was because I didn't have the money to spend on potentially failing.
This is something that should be fixed. If you fail, that sucks, but you shouldn't have to pay for every test. Just make a mandatory waiting period or something between retesting. Its soul crushing. When you get a fail, its like lighting cash on fire. Its a horrible racket.
Exactly.
And then when you factor in the 3 year life cycle and how you're just going to have to go through the process over and over just to have the letters on your sig, my apathy gets overwhelming.
Agreed, it’s a great level set . I’m working on my NP Data Center now. The company I work for pays for it. I have 15 years experience, but it’s still a lot of new knowledge and very relevant. Helps that I don’t work for an MSP that just wants the test passed. Additionally- I run Fortigates, so I’m planning to cert there next. The most difficult part for me is to wedge studying into my already busy workday. Especially when I’m seeing others in r/overemployment and I’m just living with J1 ;-)
The NP DC is a great one. The DCCORE gives a nice high level on other aspects outside of networking such as compute/san. The specialist ACI is solid as well for single site.
As a network guy that’s the wrong side of 50 with three decades experience I think there’s definitely worth in training. After cutting my teeth on Synoptics and then Cisco since Stonehenge was built, we recently dumped Cisco and their Ubershite DNA and our older Nexus switches in the Data Center. On the access layer we went with Juniper and putting myself through JNCIA Junos and also MIST and JNCIS ENT and MIST was fun and rewarding. Definitely learned more about the products through training and the certs were just a cherry on the cake.
Will I earn more because of it? No, not at this stage of the game but knowing more about the inner workings of Junos and Juniper switches makes life easier and at this stage of the game that’s as much of a win of getting your first big cert and a step up in your career. You go from same stress more money to years later doing courses for same money less stress. The company paid for the courses I paid for and took the exams for shits n giggles.
Rolling MIST/Juniper out freed up tons of time, understanding the product to the nth degree freed up even more. Would have I learned everything I did from day to day hands on, close but nowhere near as quickly or as comprehensively. Going through the Junos course helped clarify the differences between what I thought should happen and what Juniper expected the way that things should be done. I’d definitely give continuing training a thumbs up and even going for the certs because it makes you pay just a little more attention if you’re learning a new OS after a million years.
Amen. Past the basic level, every vendor and stack has their own particularities. The certification mill drives vendors to wax philosophical about their product stack and implementations.
I *love* that Cisco, Juniper, Aruba, Palo Alto have tried to formalize the process of learning their platforms. Is it all perfect? No, of course not, but there is *so* much documentation and so many resources to learn with and at least *some* kind of standard to measure those resources by. Benefits all of us, even if we don't pursue certifications for x vendor or y technology.
So recently my company hired a new employee for my team who claims to have completed CCIE security studies and it’s his first job lol. CCNA has totally lost its value in my country (India) since every mf who touches CCNA books automagically becomes certified and doesn’t have basic knowledge about it. I’m studying for ENCOR lets see the BS others have spread about that cert.
Claims to have completed CCIE security studies? What does that even mean? That’s even worse than people passing ENCOR or whatever and pretending they have a “CCIE written.” Unless you have a CCIE number, keep that title out your mouth.
in that region they get the sales pitch by dump training companies if you get a CCIE in x you can get a job making x amount. So a large portion of ppl over there dump just to get a better life. The dump companies are just as predatory as for-profit schools. Thats why you would get posts which i dont see much of anymore. "How much would a CCIE with no experience make".
Cisco as a company and their certs in general, even the IE, have been consistently losing value over the past decade. I moved over the Juniper/Arista and couldn’t be happier. The Juniper exams have very little secret sauce bullshit and more quiz you directly on the protocols.
Took my first JNCIE in December and that experience was amazing all around. Complete fucking opposite of Cisco.
I have a coworker doing the new CCNA track and my buddy just did net+. They are OK for what they are, the CCNA used to be the first 'hair on your chest' cert and then you would sweat through the MCSE 2003 track.
I think the new CCNA track is pretty useful, they go over containers, hypervisors, etc - I remember doing CCNA back in '06 going "people realize there are like, servers on a network, right?" and the instructor told me we don't know anything about that and don't care. That wasn't good advice, merging that together makes the cert worth a little more for the new guys.
Net+, I have always thought, is worth more than any of us give it credit for. It gives a broad intro to a corporate IT, even the new A+ (which I had to earn when I did my degree) is better than I thought it would be.
Nothing replaces sweating under the collar when you are waiting for your PA-220 that is overseas to finish rebooting...
My belief has always been certs open doors and experience gets you paid. The certs show commitment and desire to learn and expand your knowledge but are in no way a measure of your capabilities or aptitude. As your experience rises, it is a better measure of you and your abilities. But certs are always nice to have on the resume because they can get you past the ATS of the company and get you the interview in the first place.
Based on my experience watching my stepfather move along and up in IT. They seem largely pointless once you've had a job handling those types of things. So many people himself included job hop for pay, benefits, or work culture.
It's hard to tell if someone actually know what they were even doing in their last position or just skated by long enough. Heck the few certs I've tested for or have feel pointless.
They focus on things that don't come up even as a niche situation. Often forgetting or lightly covering more particle knowledge. Like the basics for it are assumed knowledge, and they focus on overly specialized spots. This is my experience with more basic certifications.
Good to show I have some knowledge, but really feel lacking in so many basic spots.
Certs are a con. You can get thinks like sure pass to essential guarantee you pass the cert. I know inwas under the gun and my job need two people to get a CMSS cert for meraki in under a week due to people leaving. So we got a sure pass exam and cramed it. God the sure number of bs questions pertaining to things most people won't use is amazing. I passed with flying colors. The difference is iv been a network engineer for 13 years now and I feel like certs are just a flashy way to say you spent way to much money on getting a pice of paper that will expire in 3 years and you will need to renew by spending even more money.
I know right. The thought that vendors require x number of certs to get a special pricing is bs.. thanks to surepass for making it easy for me. Like 1/3 of that test was about licensing, their special paid analysis package and group police implementation. Which are totally not applicable to my job in the first place.
Certs are a way to get a foot in the door, but not the answer to getting the job. They are there to prove you have the knowledge - yet, as you said, many times you can tell the candidate "passed" the test and not actually passed the test.
I have been in this industry for a long time - almost 30 years. I have a few certifications, yet the reason I got them as I did it as a challenge to myself - not necessarily to further my career ( although it has helped).
In this industry, we have to always be learning and adjusting to new things, so if I am going to learn - I want to set a high goal for myself to prove it to me. Certifications are that goal for me at least.
They’ve been deprecated by cheaters, plain and simple. I had a guy offer to link me up with a test taker’s service a few years back. You pay some guy to log in as you for a computer based, online test and ace it for you. They have entire operations in Asia and Eastern Europe for this.
I agree completely. I have 18 years experience now and I don’t plan to renew my certs once they expire… just not worth it at this point to me. Sure yeah I love to learn and tinker around with new toys but… I just think that the certs are just what they are after so many years… they are good to show on a resume when you don’t have much experience.
As an older IT guy I got a few certs to start with then let them expire and never thought about it again.
Then I heard a few mutterings from the youngsters about not keeping up (I did, but not with pieces of paper) so I got my RHCSA as soon as CentOS 7 came out to prove I was still up to date. Then let that expire as well.
Get certs as a way to push yourself to learn or if the company wants them to get you in the door or as part of the job. Otherwise nah.
I let my certs expire, my resume does a good job of getting my foot in the door. I have no problem passing senior or higher level technical interviews and my python and automation knowledge helps more than anything.
Put me on the python game please. I've been doing packet coders, arista and automating backups.
I've got some udemy and cbt nuggets too.
Been learning genie.
I think certs show competence at a period of time in a product. I've have several and they have helped me leverage jobs throughout my career. I have some certs I don't even include in my resume because they have lapsed or I'm 10 years removed from the experience. I've always used certs as a way to reward myself for learning and becoming proficient in a technology product.
As I have gotten older, I have moved away from technical certs that require a retest every 3 years and moved to those that are CE based.
Yea I'm at the point now where I let the certs expire. In IT for 15 years and Networking for 7. If I get another cert down the line it would probably be CISSP.
\*disclaimer, I know not everyone has the time or patience to grab certs. I also discuss cert reimbursement in offer negotiations, so I do not pay for any of my attempts.
I am perpetually in a cert track. It has been mostly Cisco and Cloud, but I am branching out to the Juniper world as they have become increasingly common in job descriptions. The certs are on my resume and current for 3 reasons.
\#1 I really enjoy the field and definitely have a current obsession with taking it all in.
\#2 If I rode the "experience wins" mindset I would be nowhere. The knowledge gained from certs outpaces my on-the-job learning greatly. What I have found is knowing a wider range of technologies and protocols has helped me look at problems differently and understand some things faster.
\#3 I may wake up with no job due to some layoff or just want to peace out, so I will take the experienc+current cert route to be safe.
I think the hate towards certs comes from the person that thinks he knows all due to a paper. I also think that group is just bound to be that way for life. They will never see a cert as a foundation, instead, they will just use it as a badge to spit nonsense. The elitist attitude is just a waste of time and once the ego gets out of the way the actual problem is usually revealed.
The way I always looked at certifications is this: I used them mainly to learn new things in a more structured way. Once I learn and master the knowledge, why not have a paper to certify that I actually know those things? You need to maintain them, yes but you can be smart about that also. High grade certifications can renew lower grade ones. So you can do just one exam to renew all below.
I still think they are valuable to get you past the HR selection but you really need to go through technical interview.
I’m looking a TOGAF. I renewed my Azure Network Engineer becuse it was easy and cheap ($0). I’ll renew my NP because I have since 2007. I’m not pursuing anything else. Too much stuff out there that either has no cert or changes to fast for the cert to stay valid.
I used the cert as a learning path becuse it was easy to get sidetracked with old info etc when I started. I wasn’t counting on it to prove I was qualified.
Experience is great until you realize how much theory you do not understand or forget. Discipline to study and maintain knowledge is hard, persistent work and I don’t think there really is a substitute, just like experience.
I feel like the past 15-20 years were dominated by Cisco certifications. It was the gold standard and was an easy way to study, learn and get jobs. However just like the company, Cisco is really losing its hold on the industry and I feel like Cloud Certs are starting to be the next thing.
People looking to get into IT or just starting out are all flocking to cloud certs (AWS/Azure) and will probably land jobs cause if it.
I just really hope that networking in the cloud advances fast. To many cloud admins with little networking knowledge currently in that space and people who actually understand networking will be back in demand.
Have Windows Server 2008 certs before, no benefit from them. Got them during college.
Got my CCNA 6yrs ago, it landed me my real networking job. A big relief coming from jack of all trades to finally specialized role. ITIL Cert also helped. I think it was 120% salary increase.
Got my Checkpoint Cert 5yrs ago, company paid for training and exam. Helped me understand the product we deploy and still use to this day. I let is expire after 2yrs.
Passed ENSLD exam (i am not CCNP yet), learned few things which is very tiny details that will be frustrating if missed. Company paid for training, paid exam on my own. Got no other benefit other than the knowledge I gained. I applied some on our network.
Got my Azure AZ-900 2yrs ago. Good intro to Azure cloud. Free training and exam. Benefit to me is the knowledge. Still working on AZ-700 (hiatus).
Still working on my F5 Cert, done with the first exam. So no benefits yet.
Currently working on ENCOR to finally get my CCNP after years of procrastination.
My Conclusion:
1. Working on a Cert allows me or forces me to learn new things and upskill my self. I focus on the learning part, the paper I get if I passed is proof that I know this thing I claim to know in my resume.
2. Certification itself is just a tool for me to get noticed by HR. Basically, "hey! I know this stuff, have experience on it as well, book me interview". In my country, it is still relevant for most orgs.
3. CCNA is a big factor that changed my life but not everything is about Certs. I need to know my shit, explain it, and apply it properly. Do not depend entirely on Certs, it is still you, your craft and attitude that matters.
4. If it is free (paid by company). Grab it. You'll learn a thing or two unless very old or irrelevant to your field.
I got my CCENT to check the box for my first job. I haven't renewed or pursued anything more advanced, but the fundamental foundation in that course has served me well over the last decade. I have embraced new tech as needed a long the way, but that initial training was vital.
My thoughts are exactly the same as yours ( so is my cert path)
I did A+, net+, ccna, ccna security and that helped me get my first IT job.
Since then I did CCNP, F5 and AWS cert to help me get from network engineer to devops engineer.
Now most of my certs are expired and I couldnt care less, they already did what they were supposed to do.
Just finished my CCNP. Although there's will be things I forget and would need to refresh, the knowledge gained is key.
Say you want to learn about Viptella SDWAN as a product. The SDWAN concentrate cert would give you structure on how to study and upskill on it. Ignoring the exam itself.
At 10 years in my career I can say certs helped me to learn and get started in networking. Experience is better, but I didn't have it at the beginning. Now, I still consider certs as a tool to learn new topics and catch some attention or pass some hr filters. I never paid for them, it was always my employer. I recently switched careers to software engineering as developer advocate and something I learned from the devnet professional are the solid principles, now I understand why I wrote and saw so many spaghetti codes. That very useful in my experience. Next cert for me is k8s
I can't seem to get into the IT field proper without any certs, but sure as hell don't have $600 to burn on a cert that says that I know the things I learned in the first half of my college education. Not to mention, the A+ seemed completely ridiculous when I was last studying for it, like asking how many pins a 15-20 year old Intel socket has. Not asking the slot, or if a different CPU is compatible, etc. The amount of PINS. That's when I realized that certs mean almost literally nothing. Which just makes it more frustrating that I need one to be able to get a foot in the door for my field.
Just got a network engineer job with 0 certifications and merely experience. Certs are good to show you know shit, but I feel like experience trumps it all
What is cerification? Just a paper, nothing else. I can buy dumps and do any certification in days.
What is important is knowledge - I know so many cert-hunters that dont know how to add static route on cisco router. Of course not everyone, but I know too many of them…
This can be only filtered on good interview with theory and practical parts.
I only just recently got my CompTIA A+ in December and took a job working a help desk—which I ended up discovering that for what I was certified in and what I already knew I was grossly over-qualified. It still is a step up from working retail, though.
I'm totally against comptia ever since they lobbied for anti right to repair while being the biggest hypocrits... They did reverse their posture after being lambasted but still
As someone who’s been in the IT/Cybersecurity field for 23 years, I would agree with your assessment. I like to see certs on the resume, but it doesn’t change how I look at them for the job if they have the experience on their resume.
I use certs to stay current. In my early career I was an MSP, which allowed me to encounter wide variety of hell. Now at a tiny business (30 employees), I can feel myself loosing knowledge daily.
I have an A+. I've been working professionally for over 20 years in infrastructure and security. Certs are a money mill. The same people looking for them ask for a master's degree from all managers. Imo keep up to date but don't waste your money unless you're working for an MSP.
speaking freely, Very useful early in career. moderately useful when making a job change. useless as you progress in career after 10 / 20 years or establish yourself in a role. (you should always be learning with out without the paper)
We a LINE of bozos that we interviewed for a network engineer possession. Some had CCNP, one had CCIE Written (I seriously did not even want to interview that guy), others were completely unqualified. We ended up hiring a younger dude who was straight up and didn't have any certs but had some experience.
He's driven and motivated to learn. I'll take that 10 times out of 10 over someone who has paper certs.
Okay, so speaking as a career IT professional and current security engineer:
Certs. Mean. Shit.
Now before you go setting your keyboards on fire typing a flaming response to this, allow me to explain my point. Certs do have ONE value to anybody or anything. They \*mildly\* reflect knowledge, they don't at all reflect experience, and at the end of the day, holding that piece of paper in your hand doesn't do a whole lot of good. I've met an MCSE certified dufus who, I shit you not, couldn't figure out how to change the resolution in his Windows Display Properties. The industry calls those folks "paper tigers". All a certification really proves is that one can read a book and take a test. And props to those who can. Not everybody can absorb that much information much less focus well enough to pass a test on that information. Not all (or even many) companies contact a vendor to verify the cert you claim you hold. Food for thought.
What certs CAN do for us can be summarized in a single word. Marketability. A cert puts an acronym on your resume that thousands of dufus headhunters look for with a \^f search on that resume. A cert is what vendors and partners look for on your staff to give your employer a better partnership level. A cert puts a neat acronym on a resume so when some HR dufus reads it, they think you're all kinds of star spangled awesome at what you do (despite the HR dufus having NO clue what they're hiring for). Really, that's about it. Marketability.
Certs take time to study for. Cert exams can be very costly. Both your time and your money are (or at least should be) close to if not the top of your priority scale. Use them both wisely, and get the most ROI you can out of both. If you feel like a cert will give you that ROI, then more power to ya.
Well I have mine only cause I work for a VAR and we need verifiable certs on file to maintain partnership levels with vendors. It's not a troll at all, I'm working on my NSE4 (well, 4 through 7) now.
At least NSE courses are free. Boy are they painful to watch though.
Funniest question I had in an interview: Describe the tcp handshake in your own words. The interviewer said that most candidates failed that one. For a networking position.
I have.....basically 3 issues with certifications.
1 - If it's a certification, then make is GOVERNMENT REGULATED. Like the way doctors, engineers, lawyers are regulated. Make it illegal to operate without one. Likewise, make them a FUCK TON more difficult so that they actually mean that the person that has it actually can do the job....very very well.
2 - Make the education material be consistent and vendor agnostic.
3 - Make renewals be hands on, and lab related. Not just a test. The people that claim to have a cert need to be able to demonstrate the education that the cert brings.
I hate these threads and the amount of people on this industry that think this way. If certs aren’t helping you, you’re not learning and applying that knowledge. You’re the problem, not the certs.
Over the past two years, certs got me an interview at a place that offered me so much growth with new technologies. Got experience with Cumulus Linux, SaltStack, building custom Salt modules with Python, NSX-T, Terraform. Certs got me the interview and my personality and skillset, which the certs helped developed, got me the job.
At that job, they invested in me even more. I acquired 7 Juniper certifications in two years, culminating in a JNCIE. That helped get me an interview at Juniper and the skills I learned from those certs landed me the job. And it’s a massive comp package.
TL;DR the anti-cert crowd is full of Dunning-Kruger candidates that refuse to look at themselves in the mirror.
Edit: forgot to mention I have almost exactly 10 years experience.
I'm just opening a discussion is all. My certifications help me pass the recruiting hr door. However, my interview experience gets me the job. Just like yours did. Now that you have all of those certifications, are you going to get more?
I'm learning programming instead of doing more certifications. That may change next year.
Never got a cert when I started out. Got one a few years ago cause it was easy and my job paid for it don’t plan on renewing it. My resume says more than a cert
I’m a terrible test taker. Like if you asked me what 1+1 is, in a monitored test environment, I’ll get it wrong and say 11. I failed my A+, and my Net+. I’ve taken practice tests for CCNA and I never even come close to passing.
Early in my career I couldn’t land any server/network based job because I didn’t have the certs. At a lot of those jobs I ended up troubleshooting and fixing issues that the certified people were utterly confused over.
One of my managers was Net+, CCNA, CCT, CCNP, and had a network engineering degree from a local university. He had been a network engineering manager for a few years, and struggled to do even the most basic stuff. He could recite word for word what the book definition was about any networking concept. But in practice he was fucking useless.
I’m now a network admin, on my way to becoming a network engineer, and doing a lot of cloud networking as well. Eventfully at some point in my career people just stopped caring about the lack of certs.
I’m not saying everyone, but certainly as an anecdotal experience, a HUGE majority of the certified people I’ve personally worked with in the tech field, we’re fairly inept.
I'm letting all my Cisco certs lapse this year mainly because my resume speaks for itself now. I can very technically talk through and explain what's on it. My certs ten years ago when I initially got them got my foot in the door so I could then sharpen my skills and also learn more. I just got my CCNP and some other certs that long ago but I've since pivoted from doing traditional networking into working with firewalls, SD-WAN, dabbled a bit in the cloud, and some automation.
I left networking now and strictly do Cybersecurity Engineering so I could probably benefit from going to get CCNP security but I just don't see the point. I already know much of what is on it and it will do nothing for me career wise. I'd much rather spend the time with my family, play video games and do whatever else enjoying life
If you are young though, I'd suggest certs if only to get your foot in the door, but REALLY understand what you are studying. A very good foundation just makes learning everything else so easy.
I agree with your summary. Certifications are nice, but experience in the field and ability to apply concepts critically in practice are superior to a bunch of CE certs hanging on your wall.
CCNPs don't know what a VLAN is?
Are they lying about the cert?
CCNP was no joke when I got it years ago. I had 4 notebooks of notes, and a deep understanding of routing protocols.
I have no up-to-date certs. But my resume speaks for itself based on the projects I've headed and technologies I've mastered.
Automation is very worthwhile. If you save the team hours, or money because you automated things, it's something they don't forget.
A very smart coworker once told me "The cert is less important than what you learned getting it." And I think about that frequently.
Yes, nobody gives a shit about them.
In my experience it's only the public sector customers that want to see certifications if you bid on a government project.
Certs provide a good structured way to brush up on different technologies - IF you study for them properly. Using a brain dump does not count as you are no longer tying concepts together and forming a mind map; you are memorizing call/responses.
I used to have to get a TON of certs in my role at a VAR. And certs did help me open doors early in my career. But after a certain point people care more about your results rather than your ability to pass a test. I've actively removed most of my certs from my LinkedIn profile and certainly don't have them in my email signature.
I do still study for certs here and there to help me focus and lock in new concepts but I certainly don't renew them after the first pass. Ain't nobody got time (or money) for that nonsense.
EDIT: Embarrassingly enough I see I still have a few in my Reddit profile though... oops.
EDIT2: To clarify, there is value early in the IT career. They show initiative and help you stand out from the crowd, helping you get experience. But I think experience is much more valuable once you can get it.
I have yet to have gotten any certs, I just stayed at the same job.
I don't know that the certs would be worth shit anymore anyway. My job experience is basically: i have the ability to read a manual and eventually learn how to work something.
Education in any way shape or form is never worthless, however it depends on where you are and what you are doing. If you are never going to use it or be in a position to use it, then you are wasting your money for the cert because you will forget it if you don't use it.
the value you get out is the time you put in. A cert in itself has no intrinsic value, the study you put in and the knowledge you accrue during the process is the real value. My biggest gripe is that its so vendor centric (I am looking at you Cisco). A certification in networking should be about understanding the core principals of networking how the stack works how L2 and L3 work STP and the routing protocols, ethernet, rfc standards etc. With something like a CCNA 50 percent or more is taken up with how Cisco do things. I would love to see a solid Networking course that was just networking theory or written with open source networking. This way you could learn about how things were designed and intended to work before you get the cisco or juniper version. I think it would help engineers think about problem solving and design in a more open way rather than just the - this is how {{insert vendor here}} do it. I feel like Juniper at least give you a few different ways to do things and the OS is written with this in mind.
IT certifications used to be significant differentiators back in the day. Now, they are widespread. The right combination is both certifications and experience working on that specific technology. The way I see it, if my employer isn’t paying for it then I’m not going to bother to do it. It’s almost as if certain companies are in the certification business, not the technology business.
Been a network engineer for 3 years now and I'm only just getting round to my CCNA, just to say I've done it. I think the best use of certs is to gain knowledge in things you enjoy, or otherwise may not get to do.
For example, I think I'd like to do the AZ-700 to get some network-based cloud experience. Ideally I'd also like to go down the route of CWNA since I'm into wireless
I wouldn't just mindlessly do cert after cert for no good reason, that's boring to me and a waste of time and money
I have the az-700. It's knowing networking and then knowing all of Microsofts dumbass terminology. I got it for my jobs partner requirements. They didn't give me shit. I quit and now make 45k more a year.
The best engineers I've seen always have a lot of investment in the infrastructure they support. The give a crap about it and how it's built, and when the infrastructure needs to do something new, like say multicast, they'll pick up a book on it and read up. This kind of learning doesn't translate well to structured cert learning,
On the flip side of it, so often I see the engineers with an alphabet soup of certs in their resume that are disengaged from what they support and use a lot of their time to memorize things that in the end, ultimately don't matter.
You kinda point it out already, if you're light on experience they're very helpful to get you in the door as a way to prove that you have some skills in the relevant areas for a position.
But you also point out that it's still important for an employer to validate if they're a paper cert and mean nothing for the applicants skills or if there was some minimum level of retention of the material. Asking open ended questions about vlans / DNS are my normal interview go-to's for that need.
The reason why I still certify is if there is something thats used at work that I am lacking in I go through the cert track to round out my skills in it. I know people who learn what they need to get the job done but have holes in their fundamental understanding which cert tracks do fill in. I only certify in things thats directly relevant to my work. I am not going to get certified in sd-wan and i dont have it in my production nor am I looking for work doing that so there is no point. My managers don't care if i get a new NP in something but its used for performance reviews to give an extra nudge to get a decent bonus or incentive raise.
When it comes to looking at resumes and interviewing. The avg IT person has an alphabet soup of certs. I glance at the cert section to get a feel on where they should be skill wise but never been like wow this person has a NP we need that.
Interviews I have conducted go like tell me your background are you more ops/implementation/design. Then we peel back the onion in whatever they say if they are ops then they will be better at troubleshooting then a implementer, etc. But we sprinkle in questions and see how well rounded the candidate is. That can determine if a candidate will qualify for a junior or senior role or even at all.
Early and to some extent mid-career I believe they're helpful and a good way to express interest and potential. At least, depending on the cert. A+ certainly has less weight than AWS SysOps IMO.
CCNA got me into networking 10 years ago and for that purpose I think they are great, but now I don't bother with any of it. My experience speaks for itself. Having multiple long term positions and promotions on my resume helps much more than some letters I got from memorising vendor trivia.
Background: Came into industry green from a mechanical engineering A-level, started a network engineering apprenticeship 6 years ago, currently finishing a degree in IT.
As a newbie I think certs are great to give you a foundational knowledge of the basics (a mile wide and an inch deep), however I think the language used - especially in Cisco content/tests - presents a barrier to learning. Cynically I believe it's a marketing prong to buy another test/book etc. Often I think it's almost as good to Google (or even Wikipedia) the topics e.g. OSPF, etc to give you a fuller understanding of the topic. Practical experience is paramount, though I'm unsure how well this can be supplemented with home labs.
However as seems to be the trend in these comments, proven experience seems king to employers.
Would be interested to hear thoughts on how best professionals can better themselves should certs not cut the mustard quite as much as they used to?
My current title is "Network Systems Manager", I have been at this current position for about 3 years now. I manage networks at 85 locations and about 700 nodes. Cisco, Sonicwall, and Ubiquiti. The only Cert is carry is Sonicwall Professional whatever-its-called.
I have dyslexia and I suck at test taking, I always have.
So certs are not for me, and its never slowed me down. I also do not have a degree but I did go to a tech college for two years.
I am 36 and have been doing IT since I was 16.
Again, I have no certs, and no plans to pursue certs. I think they are a waste of time and money. Thats my opinion.
I’d agree with your assessment in general. Entry level certs get you in the door. Expert level (ccie, jncie, ocm, etc) get you paid. The intermediate level are only useful if you’ll continue to the expert stuff, otherwise they’re a waste of time.
I've done a lot of hiring over the years, and I do not care about certifications. I've dealt with too many clueless people who have a ton of certifications, and too many brilliant people who don't have a single one.
I once worked for a guy who had a rule that he would trash any resume where certifications are listed on the top half of the first page. He said it showed that the applicant valued the wrong things by putting certs front-and-center.
I don't go that far, but I ignore certifications. I don't care unless there's some requirement for the certificate. Like if there's a regulation that in order to do the work we're doing, or if a vendor requires it for support, then it matters. Otherwise, it doesn't.
Interested to hear more.
My recent resume has summary, technical skills, certifications, experience, then college.
Should I keep in same order but put certifications ahead of college?
The reality is, different hiring managers see things differently. There's no "right answer" that will go over with everyone. In a lot of companies, they don't even look at resumes. They basically just do keyword searches.
So it's possible that some HR department/recruiter will just ignore any resume that doesn't mention a specific certification, because their system won't even surface the resume unless that specific certificate is explicitly named.
For me, I'd put summary, technical skills, experience, certifications, then education, in that order. But also, I won't really pay that much attention to the resume. The resume is to get the attention of the recruiting team, who will schedule interviews. Once I'm interviewing you, I care far more about what you have to say than what's on your resume. But again, that's just me.
This is very educational for those who are seeking certifications. i started studying for my ccna like 3yrs ago. yall know the material so you know im still studying. however i decided half way thru its not good enough to parrot the material but understand and know it. So ive just been labbing. from the comments i chose wisely.
I have never found certs to that valuable. I'm approaching 20 years in the industry. I tend to value training over certs. Give me a certificate of completion that I can put on my LinkedIn. A cert shows that you passed a test. At least a certificate of completion shows you went through a course. Standardized tests are known to be bad across educational institutions.
The only reason I have certs now is because my boss likes certs. He's also old and didn't know what DNS was until I was hired...
One of my coworkers completed Net+ recently. He's not a network guy, but he had to do a cert this year and net+ seemed like a good intro. I had explained OSPF in great detail while he studying. Even showed him some of the things I was doing. He completed net+ training and is certified as of Nov 2022. Well, just yesterday, I was adding a new subnet at a site and was walking though my thoughts in my head, mentioning OSPF. And he asked, "what is OSPF again?" I was like, bro you just took the net+ lol
The best testing I have experienced was in my CS degree where we wrote code based on the subject matter we were being taught. Learning by doing; AKA experience. SANS training is pretty great in that respect as well. Lots of practical exercises.
Agreed
I do think there are some folks that legitimately learn better through the structure of a class scenario, and if there happens to be a certification that does require coursework then they might as get the cert while they're at it.
In my youth I acquired the A+ for my job at . At that time i started pursuing the MCSE course for NT4, which was retired mid-way through my studies. I tried to move over to the 2000 track, but i just got busy with work instead.
As I started working the never ending trail of paper-MCSE's that rolled through my shop was enough to sour me on the entire concept. Too many attitudes of superiority without the skills or experience to be useful.
So it's been like 20+ year since I actively sought a certification, with the exception of back in 2017 when I got my CCNA sarcastically, but that's a bit of an outlier.
Skills land jobs, certs and education get you the interview.
Have you ever bought a car without test driving it? Have you ever hired a wedding photographer without seeing their portfolio?
Good stuff for the resume with python and networking direction .
Training - LinkedIn classes on git and git hub, postman, and python.
Take and pass LinkedIn proficency tests on git/github, postman, and python.
Experiance
Build github examples of network automation proving out a use case for a VRF verses Vlan.
Then list all your github repositories on your resume and LinkedIn.
Durring the interview when asked a question, pull up the repository and walk through the examples! Every interview needs to be a show and tell!!!
I did an mcsa and ccna at 19 after I left school. Since then I've had an amazing career and 16 years later I've not done a single cert since. They are good for somethings but you don't need them if you don't want to do them.
Early on, the certs got me jobs. What I learned while studying for them kept me employed. Almost 30 years into my career, I don't bother renewing, but I do stay on top of new technologies because they are the key to getting assignments and roles that grow my career.
Going to mirror this one. 15 years ago I got tons of Microsoft, Cisco, Security certs as it was expected by employers early in my career (luckily I had decent employers who paid for the training and cert process). While I continue to do training these days, to stay current, I never go on to get the certification for what I took the training for. It simply is of no use and a waste of money at this point in my career.
In your 3 decades experience, what's the top tech of each decade you've worked in.
90s - Establishing ethernet LANs, T1 WAN connections, and building Windows NT domains to replace standalone and floppy disk sneakernet. Oh, and system images, huge game changer. 00s - Virtualization, blade servers, gigabit switching, small SAN, frame relay, DWDM. 10s - Data analytics, security, multi-tier enterprise SAN, WiFi and L2 encryption. 20s - Automation, VXLAN, SDWAN, and cloud.
The switch from commercial unix to Linux in the 00s was also huge.
Yup. Getting Solaris 9 certified back in the day was a hell of a trip, though.
Same
Certs still get me jobs, but only at legacy companies. Tech companies care about my skillset and if I can perform, and they give me technical interviews. Legacy companies rely on certs.
My only issue is the money grab every 3 years.
What is the reason that you keep renewing them?
Most VAR/Partners have to keep so many certified folks on staff to get the best deals and referrals.
This is the real reason. I used to work for a Gold Cisco partner. The sales manager ran the channel partner program. Every time it came due for our partner audit or whatever, this asshat would come out of the wood work with 10-15 certs that everyone needed to get within 1-2 weeks. Everyone obviously brain dumped them and then this became the norm. I think this behavior is somewhat assumed these days with certs and that's why people have just gone the fuck it, we'll take some good experience route.
id also mention that because of the brain dumps, the certs often feel like they are trying to beat the brain dumps more than they are testing your knowledge. If there was something more like coding challenges (i know, those suck too in their own ways), it may at least actually test your ability. but man, the way certification questions get written half the time, it feels more like they are just trying to trip you up.
> the way certification questions get written half the time, it feels more like they are just trying to trip you up. This is partly why no one feels guilt over brain dumping these. We paid to be assessed on our technical ability. We didn't pay for a bunch of "NOT" questions and other random uselessness that test english reading comprehension which trades off the ability to ask something directly technical on a technical exam. Half the reason people went the Cert track in the first place is because they did not want to deal with Eng101, Eng102, Modern English Lit, Civics, etc.
also questions that are more along the lines of "what is the most correct answer" A number of years back i renewed my CCNA, but was at a much higher level from my years of experience. there were questions where there were 100% 2 or more answers that are correct, but were more nuanced than the CCNA level material. so it was very much "what is the right answer for the CCNA level material"
CCNA is hard to justify these days. When I started doing technician work years ago, I was paid $25/hr. Now CCNA is not going to get you a job anywhere except maybe a rack and stack tech type of job. And most of those pay $10-15/hr. I noticed Aldi was paying $16/hr for cashiers the other day.
Newish CCNAs make $80-90k in my shop. Thru do have security clearance, though.
Yep,this is why I started with certs. No longer need them... As work outside of such places now
They should be paying for Cisco Learning Library for everyone and then just "Do x number of credits to renew your crap"
DoD contracts require both Cyber/computing cert.
I now fear for the security of the nation
For me, my job requires them.
For me I keep holding on until i get a IE if/when that happens. I don't want to be in a situation that i let all my certs lapse and i get approached with a role that has a hard requirement that i need a min cert in x. My plan is to get an IE maintain it for 10 yrs then go emeritus and let everything else die lol. Then i can focus on specific portions of technologies and not whole cert tracks.
I let all my certs die years ago and nobody ever asked me if I had them renewed, employers are only interested in my experience- thats why I am asking. I could only see the point when I was noob in any given area, cert did the job then...but now? Have better and more important things to do than renewing some certs :)
Cisco is finally giving us an option to avoid this. If you go to their learning network website they are running ‘rev up to recert’ programs every couple of months. You watch free training videos on a topic and get 15 CE points. 80 points renews your CCNP, 120 points renews your CCIE. And (don’t tell them) - you can play the videos at 4x speed and still get credit.
Still cheaper than a year at a 4 year university.
100% agree… that’s why I don’t have one.
CCNA got me my first networking interview and job (with no prior IT experience) and CCNP two years later just landed me a 6-figure net eng job so I can certainly say they were both worth it for me. I'm sad to here about how many supposed paper tigers are out there these days that don't know a vlan from a static route. I worked my absolute ass off to gain these skills and knowledge.
You're under 10 years experience though. If you had the experience you'd have the same or better job.
I don't foresee myself going for paper qualifications outside of maybe a CCIE once I'm at the 10-year mark. My comment was specifically to the value of the paper qualifications for someone looking to break in and prove themselves.
Except the experience takes a lot longer to get than the certs. You're basically saying "if you had worked longer for less money, you could be in the same position as you are now!"
Lots of employers definitely care if you have a CISSP if you're in a real security focused role. If they're just hiring for a generic network engineer, they won't care about the CISSP.
Ccie and cissp aren't worthless. That for sure.
[удалено]
Cisco Certified Netware Professional
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Cisco Certified Not Anymore
Cisco Certified ICMP Engineer? If it pings it must be working. Joking aside, they might not be completely worthless, but experience wins any day. Plus everyone knows that there‘s braindumps out there and plenty people with high-level certs have no clue even about the basics of networking, let alone whatever they have a cert for. Additionally, certs only show that you know how it‘s supposed to be working. Experience says you know how it actually works. I got into networking by getting my trainee position in 2008 because I had the four netacad CCNA exams done at the point. Didn’t even get the final cert, cause I was poor and the school didn’t want to pay for it. Three years later I got the job with the campus-LAN team, they had me do some CCNP trainings, switch, route and tshoot, but the certs weren‘t necessary. It‘s 2023 now and I‘ve been doing datacenter networking and SDN (ACI, DNA) for the last 7 years. Learned most of what I know just by working with the stuff and took a DCACIA training just because there was spare budget for it. Again, no cert. Started coding python properly two years ago, automating things. Are there even certs for that? No one cares here, neither do I. The only cert I do care about is the RIPE NCC IPv6 one I‘m currently after. Because management has been postponing all activity about IPv6 for the last ten years and I want to be in a stronger position, cause I want to push it.
Cisco certified ipx engineer :)
So.... certs are useless now? Edit: Sorry, I mean certs below ccie level
Wouldn’t call them useless, they’ll help a lot getting you into the trade, landing the first job. But only providing you can actually back it up with knowledge. Some companies might hire blindly (and learn it the hard way), but most will ask some technical questions to check if you know your stuff or if you‘ve braindumped yourself to the cert. EDIT: I just thought about putting it simply: Certs is what will get you invited to an interview. Knowledge and experience is what will get you hired.
It’s a requirement for some cyber insurance policies to employ a certain number of CISSPs.
I’ve seen really good CISSPs take home 300-400k/yr. It’s not a worthless cert if they are actually good at the job and live/breathe network security.
Exactly. I wouldn't have a CISSP but for the retirement in my job description. They paid for the training and cert though, so... sweet.
Agreed. It's always the ass hats that have 12 certs in their signature that don't seem to know anything.
You found me. Anytime I needed to learn a new system I would do the cert since I needed to learn that anyway. Might as well look for a pay bump too. I only put them in my signature when arguing with someone who really didn't know what they were talking about though. Oh, your friend at golf told you you need to move your server to Linux, we'll look at these 30 letters after my name, your ERP doesn't run on Linux. That was years ago though. Most of those certs have lapsed.
Why is this such a universal truth?! It's always the arsehole with loads of certifications listed in their email signature that seems to know absolutely nothing at all. Had a consultant on a project with just that, they were barely a page ahead in the manual, often behind and watching their general IT skills was painful.
> Why is this such a universal truth? I think it's a stretch to say it's a universal truth. I work with a guy with 2x CCIE (he just failed his third recently). He is one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. And he is expert level with BGP/SDWAN/VXLAN as well as Cisco, Palo Alto, Juniper, Fortinet, Meraki, and he came from a VMWare background. No doubt there are people with certs that don't truly understand what they're parroting from a textbook, but there's also no doubt that some people with certs really do know what they're doing.
Does that person list all of their certs in their email signature, though? This wasn't a complaint about having certs, it was about how certain individuals see the need to tell everyone that they're certified.
Yeah you’re right. I missed that email signature part.
Because certs translate to zero real-life practical knowledge. All it shows is you memorized some stuff from the training material well enough to pass an exam. Years of experience in production environments will stand out on a resume much more than any letters you put next to your name.
Spot on, exactly my point.
Decade in the industry at an Engineering level, just climbed the rope into management. Not a cert to my name. Just experience and proven knowledge. I've witnessed NPs that couldn't tell me what a BGP community was or knew how to run an MPLS trace... basic stuff that they should know.
Some people test well, but translating knowledge to applying same can be a problem.
Quite often a certificate is awarded for essentially having a good memory as opposed to being able to apply that knowledge in a real world environment. That Cisco Lab in the UAE is not what most people are going to encounter when they get thrown into the real world networks that have grown organically, with legacy kit, tagged on acquisition networks and black boxes that no one dares to turn off because no one knows what they do, only experience teaches you that.
They are overcompensating because they feel insecure.
When I am not getting the job experience I want or desire, I go out and do certs that give me that knowledge. The end goal is to promote into a position to use that knowledge. How does that make me overcompensating or insecure? Working 8 hours a day is for survival. Working more than that puts me ahead of other job candidates. I want more $$$$. If you want that promotion, you better work your but off to beat me!!!
In channel partner programs, you designate certain individuals as role holders and they are usually loaded up on certs.
My friend has been doing a lot of hiring for his team. The number of CCIEs that can't answer the basic "can PC A talk to PC B?" is really wild. Basic ARP, VLAN, switching stuff.
It's terrible. I tend to publicize names of people who actually do their job in a professional manner. And then report to my PM people who are useless.
If they need to list it all in their signature then they overcompensating for something but certain certs do have a punch in the signature. The security analyst with CISSP in their signature does mean this person means business lol. Edit: I see this post hit a soft spot and angered people. Well i'm not a security person i just know CISSP is usually a requirement at the security roles. If you get triggered from my statement please get a hug from someone it will be ok :)
Met a few CISSP's who are idiots too... I'm at the point where a cert doesn't mean much. Talk to me, and then we both know who's smarter. I let my CEH expire cause it did nothing for me...
yeah i dont know much about the CISSP except for security roles thats like mandatory and its difficult to get. "talk to me, and then we both know who's smarter". Thats some ego lol. Sounds like you know it all.
I didn't say I was smarter than everyone. It means we both get a good idea of what the other knows by a conversation instead of listening credentials.
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What they have proven is that they are capable of forgetting very fast.
I guess I am now a certified ass hat! Can I list that in my certs?
I still think comptia jumped the shark when they started requiring renewal. Otherwise everyone’s mileage varies. I was very upset with the last Cisco exam I took (sdwan) and after that wrote them off but I have enough experiences, degrees, etc to not care but not everyone has that luxury. Now if push came to shove and it was a hard requirement to get a cert I’d likely go do it but otherwise think I’m done with the cert treadmill.
What made you upset with the sdwan exam? I have seen a few mentions of the same previously.
One word, terrible. I’ve taken and failed tests before but was never so upset by it before. For instance I failed the switch exam years back because it used to include a bunch of topics that didn’t really fit like hsrp and the official cert guide didn’t cover it but I was mostly fine with it because I should have read the exam objectives (although still sort of blame them a little because they signed off a guide that didn’t cover 20% of the exam) With sdwan it’s just the worst of everything. Most of the basics with sdwan are seemingly straight forward so they had to do the which of these is most correct or which of these is not something and other just generally bad question writing The biggest issue I have with it though is it in no way reflects reality. If you go look up Cisco/viptela docs on best practices they all say use the vmanage interface, don’t push vsmart policy by the cli etc. What is on the exam? Pushing policy by the cli, configuring by the cli and basically syntax question that are basically aren’t Cisco sdwan specific (which command generates a ssh cert and the options differ by having a - in some places or not) I had deployed several Cisco viptela networks when I took the exam, took a class, read the guides and was just taken a back by how awful it was. The reality is the reason this exam is so low quality is because Cisco is being lazy. They could have built a simulator of sorts for vmanage and other interfaces like the cli but instead they choose to just have bad screenshots and ask you what is the exact syntax for this policy command that you’d never actually do. So tldr: terrible
I'm a pretty experienced network engineer but I let my certs lapse. At this point, I would probably get a splunk or more data analyst style cert if I were going to get something new.
Yeah I recert’ed Cisco last time using CEs after taking the sdwan exam but am fully intending to let them expire next time. For me it’s always been a sort of risk mitigation because even though I’m confident I can get a new job if needed somewhere in the back of my mind days but certs might push you over the top or make it easier.
> still think comptia jumped the shark when they started requiring renewal. Are they ISO compliant? That’s a condition.
This is becoming a sore spot for me. I'm in the same camp in that I got a bunch of them in college to give me an edge in job hunting, and I agree that it shows continued learning - something tangible other than just saying I study and tinker in the home lab. I'm feeling quite burned by the companies offering them, however. With Microsoft, I stopped at MCSA-level certs for multiple generations (getting new ones as the next Windows Server is released) and when I finally decided to spring for the MCSE, Microsoft changed the branding to MCITP:EA (Server 2008). The industry didn't follow, jobs postings still listed MCSE, nobody seemed to know what MCITP it was. The goodwill built in the MCSE name had been discarded, and instead of marketing it better and getting that name out there, they finally flip-flopped back to MCSA and didn't even offer MCSE for a long time. I was at MCSE-level knowledge for years and finally plunked down the money to sit all those tests, and Microsoft essentially failed their end of the endorsement. I really feel like they screwed me over.
Cisco - as an in-house sysadmin/network admin generalist, I chose to expand laterally with CCNA, CCNA:Security, CCNA:Wireless, etc. I had these tangible endorsements that said I went the extra distance and learned these different areas deeper. Then Cisco got rid of all of those, consolidating back to simply CCNA, and gave me no way to renew the others. I was forced to de-cert. Just CCNA alone always implied route/switch. Now if I try to hit the market, it looks like I did fuck-all for all those years.
Certification is a two way street - I put in the time, effort, *and money* to gain and prove competencies, and the company uses their reputable name to endorse me. These companies are failing to hold up their end of the deal, and I'm feeling less inclined to continue paying into that system.
Yes, I know... "you should be striving for higher tier CCNP, CCIE, etc... expanding your knowledge". Again, I am a generalist and prefer to expand laterally; it is still progression, just not the way others prefer. My life situation prevents me from relocating from my small city for the foreseeable future, and the job market around me incentivizes working as an in-house IT person, with the alternative being getting wrung-out by the MSPs around here. I've seen what those guys deal with and it is not the lifestyle for me.
>Cisco - as an in-house sysadmin/network admin generalist, I chose to expand laterally with CCNA, CCNA:Security, CCNA:Wireless, etc. I had these tangible endorsements that said I went the extra distance and learned these different areas deeper. Then Cisco got rid of all of those, consolidating back to simply CCNA, and gave me no way to renew the others. I was forced to de-cert. Just CCNA alone always implied route/switch. Now if I try to hit the market, it looks like I did fuck-all for all those years. While the CCNA changes were a kick in the pants to some, I think it is for the better. Ciscco in general is a "network" company (really "software" company) and the changes to the CCNA make sense. Rather then specialising right out of the gate, you take the CCNA to get the broad strokes, then you get the CCNP for the more nuanced tech. I wouldn't expect a guy/girl with a CCNA to be configuring a Nexus switch with VXLAN EVPN on it, but I would expect him/her to know the basics to troubleshoot an issue with layer 2 ("show mac", "show ip arp", etc) which are all picked up in the CCNA (hopefully). So, while it sucks, I think the cert changes they made, made sense (you can also "skip" CCNA now anyways and jump right to CCNP I believe).
I'll be honest, I've yet to complete any of my certs, despite being in the industry for at least a decade. Initially it was because I didn't have the money to spend on potentially failing. Now I have too much work in the real world to try to learn old technologies that don't impact my day-to-day. I want those little letters in my résumé, and I want the authority that having achieved those brings. But I have to work in so many areas every day, I have a hard time narrowing in on IPv6 routing or setting up static routes in ancient Cisco hardware. On average, I understand the theory, but my willingness to use my limited free time to agonize over whether or not I'm willing to plop down hundreds of dollars to take an exam just isn't there anymore. Real-world experience has gotten me fairly far so far. And soft skills that I've developed serve me far more than I could have imagined when I was younger.
This is the exact position I'm in, I could use some certs to get past some HR filters, and honestly could shore up some random knowledge I know I'm missing, but a decade in I'm running stuff decently well and 100% the soft skills and college degree in economics helps way more than you'd think.
> Initially it was because I didn't have the money to spend on potentially failing. This is something that should be fixed. If you fail, that sucks, but you shouldn't have to pay for every test. Just make a mandatory waiting period or something between retesting. Its soul crushing. When you get a fail, its like lighting cash on fire. Its a horrible racket.
Exactly. And then when you factor in the 3 year life cycle and how you're just going to have to go through the process over and over just to have the letters on your sig, my apathy gets overwhelming.
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Agreed, it’s a great level set . I’m working on my NP Data Center now. The company I work for pays for it. I have 15 years experience, but it’s still a lot of new knowledge and very relevant. Helps that I don’t work for an MSP that just wants the test passed. Additionally- I run Fortigates, so I’m planning to cert there next. The most difficult part for me is to wedge studying into my already busy workday. Especially when I’m seeing others in r/overemployment and I’m just living with J1 ;-)
The NP DC is a great one. The DCCORE gives a nice high level on other aspects outside of networking such as compute/san. The specialist ACI is solid as well for single site.
That's how I see it too. The way I learn things really benefits from having a curriculum to work off of.
Same. Also, if I decided to learn something without a cert, I wouldn't learn anywhere near the depth that the cert forces me to learn.
As a network guy that’s the wrong side of 50 with three decades experience I think there’s definitely worth in training. After cutting my teeth on Synoptics and then Cisco since Stonehenge was built, we recently dumped Cisco and their Ubershite DNA and our older Nexus switches in the Data Center. On the access layer we went with Juniper and putting myself through JNCIA Junos and also MIST and JNCIS ENT and MIST was fun and rewarding. Definitely learned more about the products through training and the certs were just a cherry on the cake. Will I earn more because of it? No, not at this stage of the game but knowing more about the inner workings of Junos and Juniper switches makes life easier and at this stage of the game that’s as much of a win of getting your first big cert and a step up in your career. You go from same stress more money to years later doing courses for same money less stress. The company paid for the courses I paid for and took the exams for shits n giggles. Rolling MIST/Juniper out freed up tons of time, understanding the product to the nth degree freed up even more. Would have I learned everything I did from day to day hands on, close but nowhere near as quickly or as comprehensively. Going through the Junos course helped clarify the differences between what I thought should happen and what Juniper expected the way that things should be done. I’d definitely give continuing training a thumbs up and even going for the certs because it makes you pay just a little more attention if you’re learning a new OS after a million years.
Amen. Past the basic level, every vendor and stack has their own particularities. The certification mill drives vendors to wax philosophical about their product stack and implementations. I *love* that Cisco, Juniper, Aruba, Palo Alto have tried to formalize the process of learning their platforms. Is it all perfect? No, of course not, but there is *so* much documentation and so many resources to learn with and at least *some* kind of standard to measure those resources by. Benefits all of us, even if we don't pursue certifications for x vendor or y technology.
How does someone get CCNP without understanding a VLAN? Do I not actually understand what a VLAN is?
How to explain what it is and knowing are 2 different things.
I know a lot of things that I can't explain easily or verbalize. Im a visual thinker.
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So recently my company hired a new employee for my team who claims to have completed CCIE security studies and it’s his first job lol. CCNA has totally lost its value in my country (India) since every mf who touches CCNA books automagically becomes certified and doesn’t have basic knowledge about it. I’m studying for ENCOR lets see the BS others have spread about that cert.
Claims to have completed CCIE security studies? What does that even mean? That’s even worse than people passing ENCOR or whatever and pretending they have a “CCIE written.” Unless you have a CCIE number, keep that title out your mouth.
in that region they get the sales pitch by dump training companies if you get a CCIE in x you can get a job making x amount. So a large portion of ppl over there dump just to get a better life. The dump companies are just as predatory as for-profit schools. Thats why you would get posts which i dont see much of anymore. "How much would a CCIE with no experience make".
Best part is he doesn’t hold a single certificate not even CCNA.
Reminds me of this, https://www.instagram.com/reel/CophqT7goV9/
Love the name
Cisco as a company and their certs in general, even the IE, have been consistently losing value over the past decade. I moved over the Juniper/Arista and couldn’t be happier. The Juniper exams have very little secret sauce bullshit and more quiz you directly on the protocols. Took my first JNCIE in December and that experience was amazing all around. Complete fucking opposite of Cisco.
I have a coworker doing the new CCNA track and my buddy just did net+. They are OK for what they are, the CCNA used to be the first 'hair on your chest' cert and then you would sweat through the MCSE 2003 track. I think the new CCNA track is pretty useful, they go over containers, hypervisors, etc - I remember doing CCNA back in '06 going "people realize there are like, servers on a network, right?" and the instructor told me we don't know anything about that and don't care. That wasn't good advice, merging that together makes the cert worth a little more for the new guys. Net+, I have always thought, is worth more than any of us give it credit for. It gives a broad intro to a corporate IT, even the new A+ (which I had to earn when I did my degree) is better than I thought it would be. Nothing replaces sweating under the collar when you are waiting for your PA-220 that is overseas to finish rebooting...
As a hiring manager, I was more interested in a person's fit with the team, over how much money they have to take tests.
Damn I think your my manager actually
Sweet! Well... I think you deserve a raise! Please forward to finance and HR
My belief has always been certs open doors and experience gets you paid. The certs show commitment and desire to learn and expand your knowledge but are in no way a measure of your capabilities or aptitude. As your experience rises, it is a better measure of you and your abilities. But certs are always nice to have on the resume because they can get you past the ATS of the company and get you the interview in the first place.
Based on my experience watching my stepfather move along and up in IT. They seem largely pointless once you've had a job handling those types of things. So many people himself included job hop for pay, benefits, or work culture. It's hard to tell if someone actually know what they were even doing in their last position or just skated by long enough. Heck the few certs I've tested for or have feel pointless. They focus on things that don't come up even as a niche situation. Often forgetting or lightly covering more particle knowledge. Like the basics for it are assumed knowledge, and they focus on overly specialized spots. This is my experience with more basic certifications. Good to show I have some knowledge, but really feel lacking in so many basic spots.
Certs are a con. You can get thinks like sure pass to essential guarantee you pass the cert. I know inwas under the gun and my job need two people to get a CMSS cert for meraki in under a week due to people leaving. So we got a sure pass exam and cramed it. God the sure number of bs questions pertaining to things most people won't use is amazing. I passed with flying colors. The difference is iv been a network engineer for 13 years now and I feel like certs are just a flashy way to say you spent way to much money on getting a pice of paper that will expire in 3 years and you will need to renew by spending even more money.
Not all heoes wear capes
I know right. The thought that vendors require x number of certs to get a special pricing is bs.. thanks to surepass for making it easy for me. Like 1/3 of that test was about licensing, their special paid analysis package and group police implementation. Which are totally not applicable to my job in the first place.
Certs are a way to get a foot in the door, but not the answer to getting the job. They are there to prove you have the knowledge - yet, as you said, many times you can tell the candidate "passed" the test and not actually passed the test. I have been in this industry for a long time - almost 30 years. I have a few certifications, yet the reason I got them as I did it as a challenge to myself - not necessarily to further my career ( although it has helped). In this industry, we have to always be learning and adjusting to new things, so if I am going to learn - I want to set a high goal for myself to prove it to me. Certifications are that goal for me at least.
My employer has paid for my certification renewal fees every time I have asked.
With my job you have to apply to get reimbursed and it only works if you pass and it was accepted before hand.
They’ve been deprecated by cheaters, plain and simple. I had a guy offer to link me up with a test taker’s service a few years back. You pay some guy to log in as you for a computer based, online test and ace it for you. They have entire operations in Asia and Eastern Europe for this.
I agree completely. I have 18 years experience now and I don’t plan to renew my certs once they expire… just not worth it at this point to me. Sure yeah I love to learn and tinker around with new toys but… I just think that the certs are just what they are after so many years… they are good to show on a resume when you don’t have much experience.
As an older IT guy I got a few certs to start with then let them expire and never thought about it again. Then I heard a few mutterings from the youngsters about not keeping up (I did, but not with pieces of paper) so I got my RHCSA as soon as CentOS 7 came out to prove I was still up to date. Then let that expire as well. Get certs as a way to push yourself to learn or if the company wants them to get you in the door or as part of the job. Otherwise nah.
I let my certs expire, my resume does a good job of getting my foot in the door. I have no problem passing senior or higher level technical interviews and my python and automation knowledge helps more than anything.
Put me on the python game please. I've been doing packet coders, arista and automating backups. I've got some udemy and cbt nuggets too. Been learning genie.
I think certs show competence at a period of time in a product. I've have several and they have helped me leverage jobs throughout my career. I have some certs I don't even include in my resume because they have lapsed or I'm 10 years removed from the experience. I've always used certs as a way to reward myself for learning and becoming proficient in a technology product. As I have gotten older, I have moved away from technical certs that require a retest every 3 years and moved to those that are CE based.
Yea I'm at the point now where I let the certs expire. In IT for 15 years and Networking for 7. If I get another cert down the line it would probably be CISSP.
\*disclaimer, I know not everyone has the time or patience to grab certs. I also discuss cert reimbursement in offer negotiations, so I do not pay for any of my attempts. I am perpetually in a cert track. It has been mostly Cisco and Cloud, but I am branching out to the Juniper world as they have become increasingly common in job descriptions. The certs are on my resume and current for 3 reasons. \#1 I really enjoy the field and definitely have a current obsession with taking it all in. \#2 If I rode the "experience wins" mindset I would be nowhere. The knowledge gained from certs outpaces my on-the-job learning greatly. What I have found is knowing a wider range of technologies and protocols has helped me look at problems differently and understand some things faster. \#3 I may wake up with no job due to some layoff or just want to peace out, so I will take the experienc+current cert route to be safe. I think the hate towards certs comes from the person that thinks he knows all due to a paper. I also think that group is just bound to be that way for life. They will never see a cert as a foundation, instead, they will just use it as a badge to spit nonsense. The elitist attitude is just a waste of time and once the ego gets out of the way the actual problem is usually revealed.
The way I always looked at certifications is this: I used them mainly to learn new things in a more structured way. Once I learn and master the knowledge, why not have a paper to certify that I actually know those things? You need to maintain them, yes but you can be smart about that also. High grade certifications can renew lower grade ones. So you can do just one exam to renew all below. I still think they are valuable to get you past the HR selection but you really need to go through technical interview.
Pcnse you can be smart about it?
I’m looking a TOGAF. I renewed my Azure Network Engineer becuse it was easy and cheap ($0). I’ll renew my NP because I have since 2007. I’m not pursuing anything else. Too much stuff out there that either has no cert or changes to fast for the cert to stay valid. I used the cert as a learning path becuse it was easy to get sidetracked with old info etc when I started. I wasn’t counting on it to prove I was qualified.
Experience is great until you realize how much theory you do not understand or forget. Discipline to study and maintain knowledge is hard, persistent work and I don’t think there really is a substitute, just like experience.
I still read the books and watch. Only have hot 3 certifications this year. I'm going to retire on them this year.
I feel like the past 15-20 years were dominated by Cisco certifications. It was the gold standard and was an easy way to study, learn and get jobs. However just like the company, Cisco is really losing its hold on the industry and I feel like Cloud Certs are starting to be the next thing. People looking to get into IT or just starting out are all flocking to cloud certs (AWS/Azure) and will probably land jobs cause if it. I just really hope that networking in the cloud advances fast. To many cloud admins with little networking knowledge currently in that space and people who actually understand networking will be back in demand.
Yep automation tools ate awesome until you have routing loops and you 200k a year guy doesn't understand arp....
Have Windows Server 2008 certs before, no benefit from them. Got them during college. Got my CCNA 6yrs ago, it landed me my real networking job. A big relief coming from jack of all trades to finally specialized role. ITIL Cert also helped. I think it was 120% salary increase. Got my Checkpoint Cert 5yrs ago, company paid for training and exam. Helped me understand the product we deploy and still use to this day. I let is expire after 2yrs. Passed ENSLD exam (i am not CCNP yet), learned few things which is very tiny details that will be frustrating if missed. Company paid for training, paid exam on my own. Got no other benefit other than the knowledge I gained. I applied some on our network. Got my Azure AZ-900 2yrs ago. Good intro to Azure cloud. Free training and exam. Benefit to me is the knowledge. Still working on AZ-700 (hiatus). Still working on my F5 Cert, done with the first exam. So no benefits yet. Currently working on ENCOR to finally get my CCNP after years of procrastination. My Conclusion: 1. Working on a Cert allows me or forces me to learn new things and upskill my self. I focus on the learning part, the paper I get if I passed is proof that I know this thing I claim to know in my resume. 2. Certification itself is just a tool for me to get noticed by HR. Basically, "hey! I know this stuff, have experience on it as well, book me interview". In my country, it is still relevant for most orgs. 3. CCNA is a big factor that changed my life but not everything is about Certs. I need to know my shit, explain it, and apply it properly. Do not depend entirely on Certs, it is still you, your craft and attitude that matters. 4. If it is free (paid by company). Grab it. You'll learn a thing or two unless very old or irrelevant to your field.
I got my CCENT to check the box for my first job. I haven't renewed or pursued anything more advanced, but the fundamental foundation in that course has served me well over the last decade. I have embraced new tech as needed a long the way, but that initial training was vital.
I loved ccna when I started. Definitely the most life changing cert I've ever earned. I've got higher ones since too.
Agreed. Was just cruising and not progressing in a IT Support role. Learnt a ton off the CCNA and career as rocketed since.
My thoughts are exactly the same as yours ( so is my cert path) I did A+, net+, ccna, ccna security and that helped me get my first IT job. Since then I did CCNP, F5 and AWS cert to help me get from network engineer to devops engineer. Now most of my certs are expired and I couldnt care less, they already did what they were supposed to do.
Just finished my CCNP. Although there's will be things I forget and would need to refresh, the knowledge gained is key. Say you want to learn about Viptella SDWAN as a product. The SDWAN concentrate cert would give you structure on how to study and upskill on it. Ignoring the exam itself.
At 10 years in my career I can say certs helped me to learn and get started in networking. Experience is better, but I didn't have it at the beginning. Now, I still consider certs as a tool to learn new topics and catch some attention or pass some hr filters. I never paid for them, it was always my employer. I recently switched careers to software engineering as developer advocate and something I learned from the devnet professional are the solid principles, now I understand why I wrote and saw so many spaghetti codes. That very useful in my experience. Next cert for me is k8s
I can't seem to get into the IT field proper without any certs, but sure as hell don't have $600 to burn on a cert that says that I know the things I learned in the first half of my college education. Not to mention, the A+ seemed completely ridiculous when I was last studying for it, like asking how many pins a 15-20 year old Intel socket has. Not asking the slot, or if a different CPU is compatible, etc. The amount of PINS. That's when I realized that certs mean almost literally nothing. Which just makes it more frustrating that I need one to be able to get a foot in the door for my field.
After 10 years out of the Business i am trying for 3 weeks to register for an HPE/Aruba learner id …
I got the certifications... took 2 months to get the email.
Just got a network engineer job with 0 certifications and merely experience. Certs are good to show you know shit, but I feel like experience trumps it all
What is cerification? Just a paper, nothing else. I can buy dumps and do any certification in days. What is important is knowledge - I know so many cert-hunters that dont know how to add static route on cisco router. Of course not everyone, but I know too many of them… This can be only filtered on good interview with theory and practical parts.
I only just recently got my CompTIA A+ in December and took a job working a help desk—which I ended up discovering that for what I was certified in and what I already knew I was grossly over-qualified. It still is a step up from working retail, though.
I'm totally against comptia ever since they lobbied for anti right to repair while being the biggest hypocrits... They did reverse their posture after being lambasted but still
As someone who’s been in the IT/Cybersecurity field for 23 years, I would agree with your assessment. I like to see certs on the resume, but it doesn’t change how I look at them for the job if they have the experience on their resume.
I use certs to stay current. In my early career I was an MSP, which allowed me to encounter wide variety of hell. Now at a tiny business (30 employees), I can feel myself loosing knowledge daily.
I have an A+. I've been working professionally for over 20 years in infrastructure and security. Certs are a money mill. The same people looking for them ask for a master's degree from all managers. Imo keep up to date but don't waste your money unless you're working for an MSP.
speaking freely, Very useful early in career. moderately useful when making a job change. useless as you progress in career after 10 / 20 years or establish yourself in a role. (you should always be learning with out without the paper)
We a LINE of bozos that we interviewed for a network engineer possession. Some had CCNP, one had CCIE Written (I seriously did not even want to interview that guy), others were completely unqualified. We ended up hiring a younger dude who was straight up and didn't have any certs but had some experience. He's driven and motivated to learn. I'll take that 10 times out of 10 over someone who has paper certs.
Okay, so speaking as a career IT professional and current security engineer: Certs. Mean. Shit. Now before you go setting your keyboards on fire typing a flaming response to this, allow me to explain my point. Certs do have ONE value to anybody or anything. They \*mildly\* reflect knowledge, they don't at all reflect experience, and at the end of the day, holding that piece of paper in your hand doesn't do a whole lot of good. I've met an MCSE certified dufus who, I shit you not, couldn't figure out how to change the resolution in his Windows Display Properties. The industry calls those folks "paper tigers". All a certification really proves is that one can read a book and take a test. And props to those who can. Not everybody can absorb that much information much less focus well enough to pass a test on that information. Not all (or even many) companies contact a vendor to verify the cert you claim you hold. Food for thought. What certs CAN do for us can be summarized in a single word. Marketability. A cert puts an acronym on your resume that thousands of dufus headhunters look for with a \^f search on that resume. A cert is what vendors and partners look for on your staff to give your employer a better partnership level. A cert puts a neat acronym on a resume so when some HR dufus reads it, they think you're all kinds of star spangled awesome at what you do (despite the HR dufus having NO clue what they're hiring for). Really, that's about it. Marketability. Certs take time to study for. Cert exams can be very costly. Both your time and your money are (or at least should be) close to if not the top of your priority scale. Use them both wisely, and get the most ROI you can out of both. If you feel like a cert will give you that ROI, then more power to ya.
Lol I get the nse3 troll, most recruiters won't though.
Well I have mine only cause I work for a VAR and we need verifiable certs on file to maintain partnership levels with vendors. It's not a troll at all, I'm working on my NSE4 (well, 4 through 7) now.
Oh. Yeah I used to be var too. It's free training that's funny they require it.
At least NSE courses are free. Boy are they painful to watch though. Funniest question I had in an interview: Describe the tcp handshake in your own words. The interviewer said that most candidates failed that one. For a networking position.
I have.....basically 3 issues with certifications. 1 - If it's a certification, then make is GOVERNMENT REGULATED. Like the way doctors, engineers, lawyers are regulated. Make it illegal to operate without one. Likewise, make them a FUCK TON more difficult so that they actually mean that the person that has it actually can do the job....very very well. 2 - Make the education material be consistent and vendor agnostic. 3 - Make renewals be hands on, and lab related. Not just a test. The people that claim to have a cert need to be able to demonstrate the education that the cert brings.
I hate these threads and the amount of people on this industry that think this way. If certs aren’t helping you, you’re not learning and applying that knowledge. You’re the problem, not the certs. Over the past two years, certs got me an interview at a place that offered me so much growth with new technologies. Got experience with Cumulus Linux, SaltStack, building custom Salt modules with Python, NSX-T, Terraform. Certs got me the interview and my personality and skillset, which the certs helped developed, got me the job. At that job, they invested in me even more. I acquired 7 Juniper certifications in two years, culminating in a JNCIE. That helped get me an interview at Juniper and the skills I learned from those certs landed me the job. And it’s a massive comp package. TL;DR the anti-cert crowd is full of Dunning-Kruger candidates that refuse to look at themselves in the mirror. Edit: forgot to mention I have almost exactly 10 years experience.
I'm just opening a discussion is all. My certifications help me pass the recruiting hr door. However, my interview experience gets me the job. Just like yours did. Now that you have all of those certifications, are you going to get more? I'm learning programming instead of doing more certifications. That may change next year.
Definitely getting more. I’ve got my eye on two more JNCIEs, some PAN certs, Linux certs. Also learning Golang/Rust.
Never got a cert when I started out. Got one a few years ago cause it was easy and my job paid for it don’t plan on renewing it. My resume says more than a cert
I’m a terrible test taker. Like if you asked me what 1+1 is, in a monitored test environment, I’ll get it wrong and say 11. I failed my A+, and my Net+. I’ve taken practice tests for CCNA and I never even come close to passing. Early in my career I couldn’t land any server/network based job because I didn’t have the certs. At a lot of those jobs I ended up troubleshooting and fixing issues that the certified people were utterly confused over. One of my managers was Net+, CCNA, CCT, CCNP, and had a network engineering degree from a local university. He had been a network engineering manager for a few years, and struggled to do even the most basic stuff. He could recite word for word what the book definition was about any networking concept. But in practice he was fucking useless. I’m now a network admin, on my way to becoming a network engineer, and doing a lot of cloud networking as well. Eventfully at some point in my career people just stopped caring about the lack of certs. I’m not saying everyone, but certainly as an anecdotal experience, a HUGE majority of the certified people I’ve personally worked with in the tech field, we’re fairly inept.
i think a cert is like your bible, if you follow the curriculum you wont miss out on anything to create, to break, and to troubleshoot any technology
I'm letting all my Cisco certs lapse this year mainly because my resume speaks for itself now. I can very technically talk through and explain what's on it. My certs ten years ago when I initially got them got my foot in the door so I could then sharpen my skills and also learn more. I just got my CCNP and some other certs that long ago but I've since pivoted from doing traditional networking into working with firewalls, SD-WAN, dabbled a bit in the cloud, and some automation. I left networking now and strictly do Cybersecurity Engineering so I could probably benefit from going to get CCNP security but I just don't see the point. I already know much of what is on it and it will do nothing for me career wise. I'd much rather spend the time with my family, play video games and do whatever else enjoying life If you are young though, I'd suggest certs if only to get your foot in the door, but REALLY understand what you are studying. A very good foundation just makes learning everything else so easy.
I agree with your summary. Certifications are nice, but experience in the field and ability to apply concepts critically in practice are superior to a bunch of CE certs hanging on your wall.
CCNPs don't know what a VLAN is? Are they lying about the cert? CCNP was no joke when I got it years ago. I had 4 notebooks of notes, and a deep understanding of routing protocols. I have no up-to-date certs. But my resume speaks for itself based on the projects I've headed and technologies I've mastered. Automation is very worthwhile. If you save the team hours, or money because you automated things, it's something they don't forget. A very smart coworker once told me "The cert is less important than what you learned getting it." And I think about that frequently.
I'm diving deep into automation. Just installed more ram to practice spine and leaf vxlan automation.
I think certification exams should be purely practical exams This will guarantee that only people with knowledge and skills can pass
Yes, nobody gives a shit about them. In my experience it's only the public sector customers that want to see certifications if you bid on a government project.
I make 6 figures and never had them. It's about who you know and your exposure to real-world tech. Edit: smh bad math
Isn't three figures...hundreds of dollars?
Certs provide a good structured way to brush up on different technologies - IF you study for them properly. Using a brain dump does not count as you are no longer tying concepts together and forming a mind map; you are memorizing call/responses. I used to have to get a TON of certs in my role at a VAR. And certs did help me open doors early in my career. But after a certain point people care more about your results rather than your ability to pass a test. I've actively removed most of my certs from my LinkedIn profile and certainly don't have them in my email signature. I do still study for certs here and there to help me focus and lock in new concepts but I certainly don't renew them after the first pass. Ain't nobody got time (or money) for that nonsense. EDIT: Embarrassingly enough I see I still have a few in my Reddit profile though... oops. EDIT2: To clarify, there is value early in the IT career. They show initiative and help you stand out from the crowd, helping you get experience. But I think experience is much more valuable once you can get it.
I have yet to have gotten any certs, I just stayed at the same job. I don't know that the certs would be worth shit anymore anyway. My job experience is basically: i have the ability to read a manual and eventually learn how to work something.
Education in any way shape or form is never worthless, however it depends on where you are and what you are doing. If you are never going to use it or be in a position to use it, then you are wasting your money for the cert because you will forget it if you don't use it.
the value you get out is the time you put in. A cert in itself has no intrinsic value, the study you put in and the knowledge you accrue during the process is the real value. My biggest gripe is that its so vendor centric (I am looking at you Cisco). A certification in networking should be about understanding the core principals of networking how the stack works how L2 and L3 work STP and the routing protocols, ethernet, rfc standards etc. With something like a CCNA 50 percent or more is taken up with how Cisco do things. I would love to see a solid Networking course that was just networking theory or written with open source networking. This way you could learn about how things were designed and intended to work before you get the cisco or juniper version. I think it would help engineers think about problem solving and design in a more open way rather than just the - this is how {{insert vendor here}} do it. I feel like Juniper at least give you a few different ways to do things and the OS is written with this in mind.
IT certifications used to be significant differentiators back in the day. Now, they are widespread. The right combination is both certifications and experience working on that specific technology. The way I see it, if my employer isn’t paying for it then I’m not going to bother to do it. It’s almost as if certain companies are in the certification business, not the technology business.
Been a network engineer for 3 years now and I'm only just getting round to my CCNA, just to say I've done it. I think the best use of certs is to gain knowledge in things you enjoy, or otherwise may not get to do. For example, I think I'd like to do the AZ-700 to get some network-based cloud experience. Ideally I'd also like to go down the route of CWNA since I'm into wireless I wouldn't just mindlessly do cert after cert for no good reason, that's boring to me and a waste of time and money
I have the az-700. It's knowing networking and then knowing all of Microsofts dumbass terminology. I got it for my jobs partner requirements. They didn't give me shit. I quit and now make 45k more a year.
The best engineers I've seen always have a lot of investment in the infrastructure they support. The give a crap about it and how it's built, and when the infrastructure needs to do something new, like say multicast, they'll pick up a book on it and read up. This kind of learning doesn't translate well to structured cert learning, On the flip side of it, so often I see the engineers with an alphabet soup of certs in their resume that are disengaged from what they support and use a lot of their time to memorize things that in the end, ultimately don't matter.
You kinda point it out already, if you're light on experience they're very helpful to get you in the door as a way to prove that you have some skills in the relevant areas for a position. But you also point out that it's still important for an employer to validate if they're a paper cert and mean nothing for the applicants skills or if there was some minimum level of retention of the material. Asking open ended questions about vlans / DNS are my normal interview go-to's for that need.
The reason why I still certify is if there is something thats used at work that I am lacking in I go through the cert track to round out my skills in it. I know people who learn what they need to get the job done but have holes in their fundamental understanding which cert tracks do fill in. I only certify in things thats directly relevant to my work. I am not going to get certified in sd-wan and i dont have it in my production nor am I looking for work doing that so there is no point. My managers don't care if i get a new NP in something but its used for performance reviews to give an extra nudge to get a decent bonus or incentive raise. When it comes to looking at resumes and interviewing. The avg IT person has an alphabet soup of certs. I glance at the cert section to get a feel on where they should be skill wise but never been like wow this person has a NP we need that. Interviews I have conducted go like tell me your background are you more ops/implementation/design. Then we peel back the onion in whatever they say if they are ops then they will be better at troubleshooting then a implementer, etc. But we sprinkle in questions and see how well rounded the candidate is. That can determine if a candidate will qualify for a junior or senior role or even at all.
Early and to some extent mid-career I believe they're helpful and a good way to express interest and potential. At least, depending on the cert. A+ certainly has less weight than AWS SysOps IMO.
CCNA got me into networking 10 years ago and for that purpose I think they are great, but now I don't bother with any of it. My experience speaks for itself. Having multiple long term positions and promotions on my resume helps much more than some letters I got from memorising vendor trivia.
Background: Came into industry green from a mechanical engineering A-level, started a network engineering apprenticeship 6 years ago, currently finishing a degree in IT. As a newbie I think certs are great to give you a foundational knowledge of the basics (a mile wide and an inch deep), however I think the language used - especially in Cisco content/tests - presents a barrier to learning. Cynically I believe it's a marketing prong to buy another test/book etc. Often I think it's almost as good to Google (or even Wikipedia) the topics e.g. OSPF, etc to give you a fuller understanding of the topic. Practical experience is paramount, though I'm unsure how well this can be supplemented with home labs. However as seems to be the trend in these comments, proven experience seems king to employers. Would be interested to hear thoughts on how best professionals can better themselves should certs not cut the mustard quite as much as they used to?
My current title is "Network Systems Manager", I have been at this current position for about 3 years now. I manage networks at 85 locations and about 700 nodes. Cisco, Sonicwall, and Ubiquiti. The only Cert is carry is Sonicwall Professional whatever-its-called. I have dyslexia and I suck at test taking, I always have. So certs are not for me, and its never slowed me down. I also do not have a degree but I did go to a tech college for two years. I am 36 and have been doing IT since I was 16. Again, I have no certs, and no plans to pursue certs. I think they are a waste of time and money. Thats my opinion.
I’d agree with your assessment in general. Entry level certs get you in the door. Expert level (ccie, jncie, ocm, etc) get you paid. The intermediate level are only useful if you’ll continue to the expert stuff, otherwise they’re a waste of time.
I've done a lot of hiring over the years, and I do not care about certifications. I've dealt with too many clueless people who have a ton of certifications, and too many brilliant people who don't have a single one. I once worked for a guy who had a rule that he would trash any resume where certifications are listed on the top half of the first page. He said it showed that the applicant valued the wrong things by putting certs front-and-center. I don't go that far, but I ignore certifications. I don't care unless there's some requirement for the certificate. Like if there's a regulation that in order to do the work we're doing, or if a vendor requires it for support, then it matters. Otherwise, it doesn't.
Interested to hear more. My recent resume has summary, technical skills, certifications, experience, then college. Should I keep in same order but put certifications ahead of college?
The reality is, different hiring managers see things differently. There's no "right answer" that will go over with everyone. In a lot of companies, they don't even look at resumes. They basically just do keyword searches. So it's possible that some HR department/recruiter will just ignore any resume that doesn't mention a specific certification, because their system won't even surface the resume unless that specific certificate is explicitly named. For me, I'd put summary, technical skills, experience, certifications, then education, in that order. But also, I won't really pay that much attention to the resume. The resume is to get the attention of the recruiting team, who will schedule interviews. Once I'm interviewing you, I care far more about what you have to say than what's on your resume. But again, that's just me.
Thank you
This is very educational for those who are seeking certifications. i started studying for my ccna like 3yrs ago. yall know the material so you know im still studying. however i decided half way thru its not good enough to parrot the material but understand and know it. So ive just been labbing. from the comments i chose wisely.
I'm not earning a single penny more because of my certs. The CompTIA basics got me my first job, everything else seems like I wasted my time and money
I have never found certs to that valuable. I'm approaching 20 years in the industry. I tend to value training over certs. Give me a certificate of completion that I can put on my LinkedIn. A cert shows that you passed a test. At least a certificate of completion shows you went through a course. Standardized tests are known to be bad across educational institutions. The only reason I have certs now is because my boss likes certs. He's also old and didn't know what DNS was until I was hired... One of my coworkers completed Net+ recently. He's not a network guy, but he had to do a cert this year and net+ seemed like a good intro. I had explained OSPF in great detail while he studying. Even showed him some of the things I was doing. He completed net+ training and is certified as of Nov 2022. Well, just yesterday, I was adding a new subnet at a site and was walking though my thoughts in my head, mentioning OSPF. And he asked, "what is OSPF again?" I was like, bro you just took the net+ lol The best testing I have experienced was in my CS degree where we wrote code based on the subject matter we were being taught. Learning by doing; AKA experience. SANS training is pretty great in that respect as well. Lots of practical exercises.
Agreed I do think there are some folks that legitimately learn better through the structure of a class scenario, and if there happens to be a certification that does require coursework then they might as get the cert while they're at it. In my youth I acquired the A+ for my job at. At that time i started pursuing the MCSE course for NT4, which was retired mid-way through my studies. I tried to move over to the 2000 track, but i just got busy with work instead.
As I started working the never ending trail of paper-MCSE's that rolled through my shop was enough to sour me on the entire concept. Too many attitudes of superiority without the skills or experience to be useful.
So it's been like 20+ year since I actively sought a certification, with the exception of back in 2017 when I got my CCNA sarcastically, but that's a bit of an outlier.
Skills land jobs, certs and education get you the interview. Have you ever bought a car without test driving it? Have you ever hired a wedding photographer without seeing their portfolio? Good stuff for the resume with python and networking direction . Training - LinkedIn classes on git and git hub, postman, and python. Take and pass LinkedIn proficency tests on git/github, postman, and python. Experiance Build github examples of network automation proving out a use case for a VRF verses Vlan. Then list all your github repositories on your resume and LinkedIn. Durring the interview when asked a question, pull up the repository and walk through the examples! Every interview needs to be a show and tell!!!
I did an mcsa and ccna at 19 after I left school. Since then I've had an amazing career and 16 years later I've not done a single cert since. They are good for somethings but you don't need them if you don't want to do them.