On 23/Jul/20 00:55, Łukasz Bromirski wrote:
And yes (to the main topic of this thread) - I have some certs. I understand people without certs tend to discard them as non-relevant or even toxic. Yes, I’ve met “paper” CCIEs, but also JNCIEs and I can see the point being made. I’ve met great minds (also on this list) without any networking certificates. I believe that until you see real person on the other side of table and not her/his cert(s), good chat and questions will remove all doubts. Everyone has to start somewhere and make those first errors, and being ‘expert’ doesn’t mean you’re not making them anymore.
My experience has been very good with people that got their certificates somewhere between the mid-to-late 90's and early-to-mid 2000's, and opted not to renew them because they were too busy deploying and operating real networks (that 3-year renewal requirement was a neat trick). I'm not sure if there is a correlation in there. From about 13 years ago, I met a number of engineers who specifically sat for certifications because it was an immediate guarantee on a minimum base salary in several companies, regardless of actual experience. I lost my faith in automatically assuming the best from CC-this or JN-that when a CCIE we hired at a previous job couldn't design a system from scratch, all by himself. So I'll still give anyone with a certificate the time of day, but it won't have any bearing on their abilities, until we've had a real chat. My observations are just that more of the hires I've done have been of those who have 15-year old expired certifications, or none at all. I have a few certifications, from 2003 and 2007. I tried to get more but the Internet was moving way faster than I could study :-). Mark.