The CCIE Superhero

I have to admit that whenever I hear someone is a CCIE, I get this automatic assumption of brilliance and OMG I now have nothing to contribute as this person HAS TO BE all that and a bag of chips. Some people confer almost godlike status to CCIEs. However, I have heard plenty of people say that a CCIE doesn't really impress them and tell stories about clueless CCIEs.

It seems that if someone got a CCIE how can they NOT know what they are doing??? Then again, it could be that the person geared up for all this crazy off the wall theoretical lab stuff but may not truly have an aptitude for real world networking mysteries.

I think some folks are just geniuses who happen to have a CCIE and maybe some people took the test enough times and lucked out. I dunno. What are your experiences with CCIE holders? Have they really been that impressive or just bleh... perhaps a mixed bag??? I want to hear about people's experiences.

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Comments

DevilWAH

There are two type of people.

Parrots who can read a book and then be able to recall every little item, but understand nothing

and those who can learn theories and form there own ideas.

Of course there are also all those in between

The Parrots while good at passing exams are not always very good at looking out side the box. So while the can configure all the technologies, this does not mean they can adapt it to fit specific needs. They have this "by the book" attitude, but any one with real world experience knows that by the book almost never works. It has to be adapted to the customer and specific company needs.

Having worked in a very large globle Cisco company, I can tell you CCIE's means very little as to how good an engineer some one is. I have seen non qualified engineers with better real world skills than some CCIE's. However I have also worked with some truly gifted CCIE's.

CCIE's are not god's but any stretch of the imagation. People get my respect from how they work, not the paper they have. And they are never always right! so never assume they are correct. I don't mean question them at every turn, but feel free to ask them to explain why they are right. Any good engineer should be happy to back up there statements with some facts. (indeed many will then spend hours being geeks/nerds and telling you all the find detail.

inscom.brigade

When you have the current V4 np people think that youshould know everything!
I took the written exam but have not taken my LAB. From my studies the np isall still by the book. The IE is just beginning to test your ability of outsidethe box ability. I have lots of work to complete before I attempt my IE LABexam. I consider myself very capable in lots of tech situations, specific tocisco.
I think, my opinion anyone who has completed the lab for the IE, definitelydeserves respect, I would certainly feel humbled by any IE, for that matter anyNP! You can not say that it is easy to pass the NP exams, if you do, well thendo it. I passed the NP, I THINK THAT IT WAS TOUGH! If it was not tough, thenwhy in this competitive job market is it so easy for me to get job interview.

1+, for IE = GOD LIKE

Zartanasaurus

martaw wrote: »

Some people confer almost godlike status to CCIEs. However, I have heard plenty of people say that a CCIE doesn't really impress them and tell stories about clueless CCIEs.

I think the latter sentence can be a result of the former. You hear CCIE and you think this guy should be able to recite every RFC in 6 languages and when he can't, he suddenly drops into clueless category.

Of course, I've met a lot of certified people that I was less than impressed with and it had nothing to do with placing them on a pedestal.

shodown

This depends on the person. My CCIE story is one about a person with no real social skills outside of talking to people on COD. I'll keep it vauge as they lurk this site. We were doing a big cut and they needed me with them. This was over 100 sites and 20,000 phones. We were moving them from call manager 6 to 8. Every time something came up they would say "I will do it you don't know" which was true as I made several phones calls to them the weeks prior and asked for documentation and I finally had a discussion with them 3 days before the cut on what was expected out of me. So they pretty much walked all over me that night. The next day some general Troubleshooting came up and they were flustered. I asked to take a look cause this area was my speciality and they made the comment about they searched high and low. I solved the problem with 1 debug and 5 min. The next problem came up and again I solved in 5 min with the links to the bugs on cisco's website. I handed this persons A55 to them over the next few days in troubleshooting and they finally told me I was a decent engineer even though I wasn't a CCIE. Needless to say I never worked with this person again the rest of my time with the company even when they requested my help.

it_consultant

My main problem with people that get this deep into a certification process is that they can get tunnel vision to the rest of the IT world and other manufacturers. I have sat in meetings with CCIE/CCNP voice people who looked bewildered that we were running Cisco phones run atop HP switches - no you can't blame your terribly implemented call center software and IVR on the HP switches.

I have certainly worked with NP's who were not afraid to jump into an HP or a Juniper etc. The only reason why they pursued the cert was because it was a job requirement or something - they are much more cavalier about it than someone who works for a Cisco partner and only ever touches Cisco stuff.

DevilWAH

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

I think the latter sentence can be a result of the former. You hear CCIE and you think this guy should be able to recite every RFC in 6 languages and when he can't, he suddenly drops into clueless category.

It's the ones that can recite every RFC that are often the most clueless, and use the fact they can recite them all as a cover to the fact they don't under stand how to really apply any. The best CCIE are the ones that might have to look up on google to tell you the RFC number, but who can take several technologies in there head a visualise how they will work to gather. Are able to then take theses ideas and explained to technical and non technical alike.

CCIE who do not have good abstract reasoning skills, do not make good support or designee engineers, although they can make very good implementation engineers.