Essendon wrote: » That's a pretty stiff target you've set for yourself. I am assuming you have lots of experience to get you through all these exams?
LAN_Guru wrote: » 17 years as full-time IT professional. Have worked as a sr. field network engineer at consulting companies for the last 9 years. Cut my teeth on Netware 3.11 back in 1994, got my MCSE on NT 4.0 in 16 days in 2000 (took the 6 exams the last 8 days of that 16 and had a 916/1000 average exam score). Have been working with Server 2003 since 2002 and Server 2008 since before it was released. I just don't work with the enterprise features and functionality very often.
pzero wrote: » Certifiably insane? Thats a pretty ambitious goal. You must be studing full time for that. Not to put a downer on it, but have you factored in what happens if you fail an exam or will you just keep hammering on schedule? (excluding roadblocks like not passing pre-req certs) The best of luck to you! Keep us updated on your progress.
Essendon wrote: » Damn man, I sure hope you stick around!! Just of curiosity, why all the varied certs, the EA-CCEE-CCNP. That's 3 completely different beasts. Good luck with the tests, I can only speak for the MCITP: EA, the 647 was a bit of a beast, the others werent that much of an issue.
kohadara wrote: » Nice man, But what kind of books did you use to prepare your 70-640 and 70-642. I need to follow you exemple
LAN_Guru wrote: » I have taken a 6 month sabbatical from work (consulting Sr Field Network Engineer) to do this. So yes, I am a full-time, self study student. i am devoting 50-60+ hours a week towards preparing for exams. Some exams I have allowed 50 hours prep time and others (CCNA for example) I have allowed 150 hours prep time (Wendell Odom says most people spend 10 hours a week for 10-14 weeks on CCNA and I learn very quickly and have Cisco experience, know my way around IOS) Some exams will take less time than I allowed. I was very conservative in my estimates. I spent about 40 hours 6/27-6/30 preparing for 70-642 and made 880/1000 last Thursday, 6/30. I have also allowed a 3-day weekend off twice a month to go visit my fiance who lives 200 miles away and 10 days off in September because my birthday is the 2nd and hers is the 6th so we will take a vacation then. Failure is not an option...
NOC-Ninja wrote: » How come you didnt have any CCNA or CCNP when you were a Sr Field Network Engineer?
Ahriakin wrote: » I understand that when consulting you need to have exposure to many different technologies but tbh you seem to be trying to rack these up as trophies more than anything else. It's not hard to cram and rush certs, it is hard to maintain indepth knowledge in those fields as you do more of them. It may also count against you in some interview situations. We often receive and reject resumes (with less aggressive cert achievement schedules) based on the fact it's obvious the candidate did many of them just as padding, there's a certain point where less-is-more holds true for certification (of course that line depends on your career track, again I know as a general consultant it's very different to a specialist).
LAN_Guru wrote: » Who would you rather hire, someone who can take a book home over the weekend and come in Monday morning with an excellent grasp of the technology and can start billing hours deploying that technology that day or someone who takes the book home and attains 10% better understanding of features he will never use and spends 2 months learning it? You may have lost out on the opportunity to hire some very sharp fast learners by tossing resumes of people with aggressive cert achievment.
LAN_Guru wrote: » Because none of the companies I worked for were Cisco partners or resellers and we have done very little Cisco work. In the corporate and government environments, there were Cisco engineers who did nothing but Cisco. As I stated in another post, I know my way around Cisco enough to add routes, NATs, ports, port forwards, VLANs, etc. I could pull a router, switch, or PIX out of the box and configure it. Would the config be perfect? Probably not. Would it work? Probably so. Would I be able to bill the client for all my time? Probably not because it would take me more time to config the device than someone who has done the training and knows the commands, syntax, best practices because they have done the training. Do I NEED these certs for my job? No (except for MS Partner competencies.) Do I WANT these certifications? Absolutely! I know that spending the time to prepare for these exams will make me a better engineer and my clients will benefit from that. I can market Cisco service to my existing and prospective client-base. Plus, I will be able to increase the percentage of my time billed to time logged to time worked because I won't have to spend as much time researching things when working with these technologies. I can't bill clients for my learning curve. As Paulie Shore said in "In The Army Now", it's a win-win situation. My clients benefit so I also benefit. Bottom line is, I make more money for working less time and the clients benefit from increased competency by getting better quality at lower overall cost. My hourly rate will go up but the amount of time to accomplish a task goes down. An added bonus is that I can more effectively hire, train, and retain Jr Engineers.
Forsaken_GA wrote: » Yes, you are absolutely, totally, bat-**** crazy. Say hi to George Lucas at the next meeting.
EdTheLad wrote: » Good job Forsaken_GA, i don't think NOC-Ninja and Ahriakin are participating as the thread creator anticipated. Get on board guys, were supposed to say " wow you amazingly great, how could you even envision doing such an incredible feat, us mere mortals could never even dream of doing that amount of certs in our lifetime no mind in just 6 months." Ok, now where's did i put my beer and remote control?
Forsaken_GA wrote: » Oh believe me, I am *not* being complimentary I am simply confirming that he is nuts It's always fun to see new folks full of vim and vigor who flame out in six months. He'll learn to his dismay that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Unless he already has extensive networking experience (or unless those 'lab manuals' are something else, as I suspect), I find the concept of doing all three CCNP exams in a month to be quite entertaining.
Ahriakin wrote: » Guys c'mon, a wee bit more courtesy please. You can make the same points without the sarcasm.
LAN_Guru wrote: » When I am in study mode like this, I spend 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week preparing for an exam. During the 39 days that I will be doing the CCNP, I have mapped out 28 study days (I will be out of town for 5 days over Thanksgiving, 12-10 to 12/12, and have 3 exam days). Over that 28 days, I will be spending 360+- hours preparing for exams. What is so far fetched about someone who has immersed themselves into 12-14 days doing nothing but studying Cisco technologies and having completed CCNA a week before to pass the 3 CCNP exams with 100-140 hours prep time for each? People do CCNP at 10-14 days bootcamps all the time, what makes you think someone can't do it in triple that amount of time? Do the math and it won't seem so daunting of a undertaking...
Forsaken_GA wrote: » 2 responses to the same post. I must have hit a nerve. Dude, you can talk about it all you want, but I still stand by my opinion. Unless you have oodles of network experience (in which case you're a ringer, not a prodigy), your goals are unrealistic. Even if you are brilliant at exam preparation, you're studying for the exam, not to learn the material. I doubt your retention will be all that good. As far as those 10 to 14 day bootcamps... you are aware that more than a few have a shady reputation, aye? When the instructor is handing out braindumps as 'study material', it's not a big wonder why people manage to pass them. All in all, you're going to do what you're going to do, and I wish you the best of luck. All I will say is this - if I was interviewing you, and you mentioned that you'd passed all these exams in such a short amount of time, your stock would immediately drop with me, probably irrecoverably. I'm not going to lie, nor am I going to beat around the bush for the sake of being pleasant in public - At worst, I would suspect you were a cheater, and I wouldn't be willing to take a chance that you weren't. At best, I would suspect you of being inconsistent and unable to make up your mind about what you wanted to do.
NOC-Ninja wrote: » I believe, even the brightest/author/teacher in the Cisco realm wont passed the CCNP in a month.
NOC-Ninja wrote: » Reality is we have been in your shoes. Specifically Cisco tests. I dealt with the current CCNA and CCNP tests. Its impossible to passed CCNA and even more CCNP if we based it in your schedule. Moreover, its impossible to clear CCNP in a month. No matter how you try to convinced us, Cisco guys, we believed that CCNP takes time to understand and passed. From the way I see it. You really just want to passed the tests. Good for you if you passed it but can you really answers the questions of the guy interviewing you if you have those certs? What if I give you a config, Will you be able to tell me whats wrong with the config? Can you really deploy 6500 series and tune it? I believe, even the brightest/author/teacher in the Cisco realm wont passed the CCNP in a month. Lets break it down in pages ROUTE = 768 SWITCH = 504 TSHOOT = 552 TOTAL 1824 pages + Video tutorials + Labbing = X hrs You might as well add your family time and work time. Forsaken is right. You will do whatever you want to do. Goodluck
LAN_Guru wrote: » There are exceptions to everything. Please don't assume that I am cheating or have any less understanding or retention of the material because I choose to learn something in less days, weeks, or months than most (though the same or more total hours of prep time).
Forsaken_GA wrote: » I think you're displaying quite a degree of hubris in assuring us you're the exception. Which I'm actually ok with, I'd rather deal with people that are willing to speak their mind, than fall in line with the rank and file. I'm going to make assumptions based on my personal experiences and opinions, like every other human being, and if being profiled like that offends you, well, then I'm sorry, but that's how I see it. What it all boils down to is thus - talk is cheap.
Essendon wrote: » @Forsaken - I'd have to disagree with your opinion that LAN_Guru's stock would drop if he told you in an interview that he had achieved all these certs in a short period of time. Sure it would arouse suspicion, but c'mon, you could ask him all the questions in the world, you could see all his jobs on the resume, you could grill him all you liked. He would stand in the clear at the end of it all.
