Worth it to pursue CCIE ?

I feel that companies nowadays require one to have a wide variety of knowledge.
They expect you to know firewall, wireless, F5, and almost everything.
I feel that the demands are unreasonable.
Worse still they dont provide training.
Shld I focus on CCIE or do something else?

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slinuxuzer

It really depends on exactly what your goals are, also knowing more about your background would be really helpful, certs, experience level etc. Although there are no set pre-reqs for CCIE, there is a commonly accepted level of experience believed to be required to succeed.

Is there monetary value in CCIE, YES! And a lot of it. Are there bragging rights? Sure. Is there knowledge to be gained? If you follow a methodical process, don't use brain **** and actually learn the material at an expert level, you will gain a level of knowledge that puts you well above the pack.

Phiers

Even an unsuccessful pursuit of a CCIE will teach you more about yourself than you may want to know: your time management, organization, preferred study methods, how well you handle disappoint/success, etc. It will help you improve on your flaws, and build on your strengths; so just taking on the task will provide a career boost just from those benefits since you'll have more confidence during interviews when job hunting while studying.

Now, if you actually receive that number; then the job market is yours. However, if you don't pass on the first attempts, and decide to pivot; the learned ability to acquire knowledge from pursuing a CCIE can be easily redirected to other topics such as F5, AWS, Juniper, Name your vendor. Picking up those technologies will happen quicker due to the study techniques acquired from the CCIE pursuit.

NOC-Ninja

I jump to 27% raise once I passed. Then moved to a 50% raise this yr.
Stick to 1 technology that you are great at then branch out. Nobody will know everything.
Personally, there is a demand for networking skills. A lot knows systems and VMs. You can find those guys at the desktop support. They can transition easily. The network guys that has real experience of deploying and implementing the technologies barely exist.

Id recommend to focus on ccie. Cisco buys most of its competitors anyway. lol

CCIE is also a insurance policy. Correct me if im wrong. I think a company needs 4 ccie's to be gold partner. This gives them more than 45% discount. You can jump to another job again and again once you get a CCIE or demand a salary. AKA here is the market price for a CCIE.

Welly_59

dppagc wrote: »

I feel that companies nowadays require one to have a wide variety of knowledge.
They expect you to know firewall, wireless, F5, and almost everything.
I feel that the demands are unreasonable.
Worse still they dont provide training.
Shld I focus on CCIE or do something else?

If you've got the experience and knowledge to pass CCIE but can't setup a firewall or a simple load balancing solution then you've done something wrong. Those are skills you can pick up through experience

jamshednet

Hi
Which CCIE is most demanding, easy to pass, hard to pass, should do in a sequence?

CCIE R&S
CCIE Security
CCIE SP
CCIE DC
CCIE UC
CCIE Wireless
CCDE

bharvey92

jamshednet wrote: »

Hi
Which CCIE is most demanding, easy to pass, hard to pass, should do in a sequence?

CCIE R&S
CCIE Security
CCIE SP
CCIE DC
CCIE UC
CCIE Wireless
CCDE

Easy to pass..lol. If they were easy then we'd all be walking around with our numbers.

Nutsy

Easy = the one you are most interested in. Hardest = one you could care less about.

Fadakartel

bharvey92 wrote: »

Easy to pass..lol. If they were easy then we'd all be walking around with our numbers.

Probably the one you have hands on experience with, CCIE routing and switching also has the most amount of material available.

Still CCIE ain`t easy lol

dppagc

Welly_59 wrote: »

If you've got the experience and knowledge to pass CCIE but can't setup a firewall or a simple load balancing solution then you've done something wrong. Those are skills you can pick up through experience

Load balancing is simple.
Adding firewall rules is simple.
But I dunno the command lines in the checkpoint. LOL

dppagc

Nutsy wrote: »

Easy = the one you are most interested in. Hardest = one you could care less about.

The oxymoron is that no experience = no job.

dwemer

Someone who is not an expert in any one area, whether that is from experience or certification training or both, will be given the generalist's tasks and responsibilities. Sounds like you've had some exposure in a variety of areas. What interests you most? If there is more than one area, what are the market indicators for the areas? Decide on a focus area and become the expert. And in whatever area you choose, you will still be learning everyday but much of it will be built on concepts you know, even furthering your expertise. Working toward and hopefully attaining a CCIE will get you on track as a specialist. A CCIE gives an employer some very positive assumptions they can make about you to get in the door and/or help retain you. Then you have to back it up. Good luck in your decision.

dppagc

Problem is now employees expect you to know everything... which is unrelaistic.

Legacy User

don't think the job requirements as must haves. Think of it as a wishlist and if they list 10 technologies if someone has experience with like 4 of them and can learn on the job they can easily fill those roles. You never want to apply to a job that is exactly what you currently do because it'll be more of the same thing without room to grow.

EANx

dppagc wrote: »

Problem is now employees expect you to know everything... which is unrelaistic.

That's not new. There have often been unrealistic employers that want people who have 4-5 years in unrelated technologies as well as those who want several years of experience in something that was recently released. These people fall into two camps, the unrealistic and the ones that are pretending to advertise a job so they can say "See? we tried. Please now approve our application for an H-1B."

AwesomeGarrett

You'll only find out when you get your digits!!!

hurricane1091

It's still worth it but I feel you OP. Having a CCIE would be beneficial to me in RS at my job, but not as much as I would like. We really do not do anything special routing/switching wise. I'm more focused on getting Catalyst 9ks into our networking for some smart networking personally.

dppagc

Yup they expect people to know win server 2016 with 5 years exp

victor.s.andrei

dppagc wrote: »

I feel that companies nowadays require one to have a wide variety of knowledge.
They expect you to know firewall, wireless, F5, and almost everything.
I feel that the demands are unreasonable.
Worse still they dont provide training.
Shld I focus on CCIE or do something else?

I would focus on how to write and present information first before you even think about technical certifications.

But, back to your question, yes, that's a fair observation, if you're talking about many in-house IT departments: the lines between network operations, engineering, and architecture are very blurry, and often, you will be expected to perform multiple roles.

Here's my advice, having been there and done that in the first five years of my career so far:

1. In-house IT departments are the ones most "unreasonable." That and certain legacy "consulting" body shops. I won't name names here. If you must work for a non-tech, non-networking employer in a networking role, recognize from the beginning that people look at you as a cost center rather than a profit center, and you will be persona non grata the moment that the business figures out how to obtain your services (or better) at a lower cost than what you are charging (or earning in compensation). If you must go down this path, use it to get experience working on the networks of future clients, and then apply for a job as a CSE in Cisco's TAC. Once you make it to Cisco, Cisco will provide you with ample resources to get a CCIE, if that is what you want.

2. Alternatively, you may choose to join a tech, networking employer such as Cisco, Juniper, Check Point, Palo Alto, Infoblox, SolarWinds, F5, H-P or HPE *giggle*, Arista, etc. They will provide you with training, but you will specialize once you get there.

3. You can also try out for a proper service provider, say, a Rackspace or an Amazon Web Services or a Microsoft Azure. Personally, I think this may be the smartest option, since practically everything is going to commodity white-box network hardware and cloud anyways. (For the nay-sayers, that doesn't necessarily mean the public cloud, since there are quite a few large organizations that are retaining AWS to build special virtual private clouds for them on dedicated hardware).

4. If a company won't provide you with training, fine, if it's of type 1. (If it's of type 2 or type 3, GTFO immediately.) If a company says you don't have time to learn, GTFO immediately. As for training, there are plenty of options, if you look carefully. For example:

You could start an actual tech degree at a legitimate, accredited school that also gives you access to MSDNAA (and maybe discounted VMware certification vouchers!).

Most of the Cisco Associate-level certifications (R&S, Wireless, Collaboration, Data Center, Security) and Professional-level certifications have tons of study material available: books from Cisco and Sybex, Boson simulators and exams, and so forth. You can even buy real gear inexpensively.

Cisco has a Global Cybersecurity Scholarship.

Palo Alto ACE training is free if you take the Web-based courses.

AWS offers a Free Tier for one year and several of it's "Essentials" classes (such as the Technical Essentials class that is the pre-requisite class for higher level AWS certification classes).

If you work for a tech company, you may be able to take training from other tech companies through special partnerships. (This is how I got Infoblox training.)

Juniper revamped its Fast Track and other learning options to include a free Open Learning offering if you qualify. That gets you access to the Web-based version of the Intro to JunOS course plus three weeks of mentoring and a free voucher.

Bottom line: figure out your career path and then figure out what education and training you need along the way. If your employer doesn't want to pay, get creative...and/or find a new employer if they are being unreasonable with you.

victor.s.andrei

dppagc wrote: »

Yup they expect people to know win server 2016 with 5 years exp

That's nice. I expect a million dollars a year, a company-provided limo, a hot tub with five sexy women, and a 7-hour work week with no on-call. Oh, and I only work for 8 weeks every year.

Just because someone expects something ridiculous or unreasonable doesn't mean that s/he is going to get it.

victor.s.andrei

dppagc wrote: »

Load balancing is simple.
Adding firewall rules is simple.
But I dunno the command lines in the checkpoint. LOL

Google is your friend. CheckPoint does have some rather extensive CLI reference manuals out there.

dppagc

victor.s.andrei wrote: »

I would focus on how to write and present information first before you even think about technical certifications.

But, back to your question, yes, that's a fair observation, if you're talking about many in-house IT departments: the lines between network operations, engineering, and architecture are very blurry, and often, you will be expected to perform multiple roles.

Here's my advice, having been there and done that in the first five years of my career so far:

1. In-house IT departments are the ones most "unreasonable." That and certain legacy "consulting" body shops. I won't name names here. If you must work for a non-tech, non-networking employer in a networking role, recognize from the beginning that people look at you as a cost center rather than a profit center, and you will be persona non grata the moment that the business figures out how to obtain your services (or better) at a lower cost than what you are charging (or earning in compensation). If you must go down this path, use it to get experience working on the networks of future clients, and then apply for a job as a CSE in Cisco's TAC. Once you make it to Cisco, Cisco will provide you with ample resources to get a CCIE, if that is what you want.

2. Alternatively, you may choose to join a tech, networking employer such as Cisco, Juniper, Check Point, Palo Alto, Infoblox, SolarWinds, F5, H-P or HPE *giggle*, Arista, etc. They will provide you with training, but you will specialize once you get there.

3. You can also try out for a proper service provider, say, a Rackspace or an Amazon Web Services or a Microsoft Azure. Personally, I think this may be the smartest option, since practically everything is going to commodity white-box network hardware and cloud anyways. (For the nay-sayers, that doesn't necessarily mean the public cloud, since there are quite a few large organizations that are retaining AWS to build special virtual private clouds for them on dedicated hardware).

4. If a company won't provide you with training, fine, if it's of type 1. (If it's of type 2 or type 3, GTFO immediately.) If a company says you don't have time to learn, GTFO immediately. As for training, there are plenty of options, if you look carefully. For example:

You could start an actual tech degree at a legitimate, accredited school that also gives you access to MSDNAA (and maybe discounted VMware certification vouchers!).

Most of the Cisco Associate-level certifications (R&S, Wireless, Collaboration, Data Center, Security) and Professional-level certifications have tons of study material available: books from Cisco and Sybex, Boson simulators and exams, and so forth. You can even buy real gear inexpensively.

Cisco has a Global Cybersecurity Scholarship.

Palo Alto ACE training is free if you take the Web-based courses.

AWS offers a Free Tier for one year and several of it's "Essentials" classes (such as the Technical Essentials class that is the pre-requisite class for higher level AWS certification classes).

If you work for a tech company, you may be able to take training from other tech companies through special partnerships. (This is how I got Infoblox training.)

Juniper revamped its Fast Track and other learning options to include a free Open Learning offering if you qualify. That gets you access to the Web-based version of the Intro to JunOS course plus three weeks of mentoring and a free voucher.

Bottom line: figure out your career path and then figure out what education and training you need along the way. If your employer doesn't want to pay, get creative...and/or find a new employer if they are being unreasonable with you.

Hi victor can I ask how you managed to find out what you want to do?
Personally I wish to specialise in CCIE SP and R&S but I fear that opportunities will be limited since the industry expects me to know this and that.

So do you recommend that I find a job in cisco if I wish to specialise?

victor.s.andrei

dppagc wrote: »

Hi victor can I ask how you managed to find out what you want to do?
Personally I wish to specialise in CCIE SP and R&S but I fear that opportunities will be limited since the industry expects me to know this and that.

So do you recommend that I find a job in cisco if I wish to specialise?

The school of hard knocks. Some like to call it life.

You can go for just CCIE R&S and SP but be careful if you're only going for that. Novell was once a ticket to success. So was a Microsoft MCSE.

Plus, not every place is a Cisco shop. Some use Juniper. Others (mostly financials, I think) use Arista. The big cloud providers (and companies like Facebook) are experimenting with white-box and SDN - which means that vendor certifications pale in comparison to actually knowing your stuff.

ccie14023

I like to self-promote my own blog when this question comes up:

The value of a CCIE - SubnetZero

Saves a lot of typing. (Short answer is I that I do see value in the CCIE.)

As for getting locked in to Cisco...

My CCIE's were quite useful in getting me a job at Juniper, and my JNCIE was respected in getting me a job again at Cisco. Obviously you want certifications/experience that tie in directly to the products/technologies you will be working with. However, most hiring managers (myself included) generally respect that someone who understands one vendor can easily understand another. I still think it's hard to go wrong pursuing a CCIE as long as you are willing to devote the time and money, both of which can be considerable.

tunerX

I would rather have my CCIE than not have it... Digging into the CCIE realm gives you more knowledge than you realize.

If you are studying correctly, you are learning very low level details about protocols and standards that can apply to any vendor if they develop their networking technologies based on standards.

I may not know how to, off the top of my head, configure every detail of every vendor... but I know what should be configurable. I can definitely tell you the difference between a protocol behaving correctly, based on standards, or when it is failing. I can also do packet captures of every vendor who uses industry standards to verify if things are right.

Learning the basic CLI/GUI based configuration steps for a particular vendor is minor compared to knowing low level details, and being able to conceptualize what good and efficient looks like.

EricsLearning

Even if I never get my numbers studying for the CCIE security has made me a much better engineer. I got my CCNP security back when it was called a CCSP and have been doing the job for years but this journey toward the CCIE has been invaluable.

dppagc

Is it possible to pursue CCIE without rack rental?

Fadakartel

dppagc wrote: »

Is it possible to pursue CCIE without rack rental?

If it`s for the routing and switching track then yes you can with Cisco VIRL or GNS3 hell even EVE-NG you can do your CCIE for SP or R&S (security also but you may need some equipment and some VMware knowledge to virtualize some stuff)

tunerX

dppagc wrote: »

Is it possible to pursue CCIE without rack rental?

I agree with Fadakartel. If you look at the equipment layout at INE they specify exactly how to setup your lab without rack rental. Rack rental is more about if you don't want to spend time and money on equipment and management of equipment... with rack rental there isn't a need to maintain a lab at home to complete all of a providers labs.

dppagc

Where do you all find the practice labs?

Iristheangel

dppagc wrote: »

Where do you all find the practice labs?

Usually you buy workbooks like INE, Micronics, Cisco 360, etc.