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Should Software Engineers Seek CCNA's?
kernel2 asks: "I'm in the software engineering profession and some of my friends are about to enroll on a CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator) course and are egging me on to join as well. I'm trying to decide whether I should do the course or not. On the one hand it might help me understand networking (especially in bigger corps) better and that is something I love (networking). It might also help me diversify and improve my chances of landing a job in these strained and difficult times (and that's primarily why my friends are doing it). But wouldn't it look odd on my CV? I mean why would someone highly interested in software (with a Software Engineering degree) do CCNA?"
Think of it as an opportunity to better understand the platform your applications will be operating on. Understanding the network infrastructure would probably help you when building applications that require High Availability or exotic network requirements.
Not every programmer has a myopic world view, and I think that the ones who can think broadly are the ones who succeed most often. Take a look at Larry Wall's background for an idea of what a diverse background can produce.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
There's no requirement to list every award and certification you have on your resume. If you don't think it will help you get the job, don't list it.
If you think you'll learn interesting things, and you have the time and money, take the class.
Cisco Certified people get the top dollars in the industry. Their top-notch certification (CCNP, I believe, for Network Professional, but I might be wrong) easily fetches $80K+ around the United States and $100K+ in big cities. That's not pocket change.
Cisco Certified people, assuming you're through with the certification and actually get it (dropout rate is quite high, lots of hard-working hours must be invested), you're sitting on the money bag.
For example, in Ukraine a Cisco certified expert gets a paycheck of $25K yearly. That's Ukraine, where the average salary is $200 and anyone in software development is expected to make $500-700 max. The catch? Only 13 Cisco-certified experts (their top certificate) for entire freaking country of 50 mil. people.
If you have a chance to get free education, go for it.
But a systems programmer could learn complex networking for making complex software that uses tricky (as in time and bandwidth critical) programming such as Beowulf, clustering, Grid, anonymous P2P, and others.
And well, if your program eats cpu like candy, why not make it 'clusterable' once you learn the network semantics of it? That's what the makers of Cinelerra did.
Cisco preraration courses are of a very high standard. You will get trained on Cisco equipment but most stuff(like routing protocolls) is very general. Although I didn't go for any certifications I profited immensly of this. That and you'll have the opportunity to network 6 routers, 20 switches and 2000 meters of cable for a whopping 6 NT boxen. Sounds odd but it's quite fun.
20 minutes into the future
i have a bs in swe and have a ccnp. when the coder jobs aren't up to spec, then the network engy jobs are a good backup. Networking is my favorite as well. It never hurts to know more.
I mean why would someone highly interested in software (with a Software Engineering degree) do CCNA?
The only way that having a CCNA could HURT you, is if you're applying for some crack elite software team or something, where distractions would be frowned upon.
But in the rest of the world, I would bet money that a small business would LOVE it if they hired a new software guy onto their small team, who could help out with networking. The larger the employer, the more specialized jobs will become. This will do nothing but help if you seek employment with a business or agency with a smaller team of tech-people.
no thanks
You didn't mention cost as a factor; so I am assuming that it is not one, for whatever reason ...
;).
So my question is, Why Not?
Think it looks funny on your CV? Don't List it
It's a chance to learn something that you are interested in, and get a pretty piece of paper to show for it. Might even keep you out of the unemployment office one day. I, for one, have never suffered in my career from knowing too much! (maybe from too little, at times
Given money not a problem, I (also a software person) would sacrifice my spare time for the opportunity, no question.
The CCNA certification covers a rather broad, albeit not very deep (IMHO) range of networking concepts and technologies, protocols, etc., as I'm sure you've read in the course descriptions. I don't have any of the CC* certifications myself, but I have been working in networking since about 1998, and I worked at Cisco for about 3.5 years.
:)
I think you should go ahead and take the course. Let me give you a couple reasons why.
1. If you're not knowledgable about networking, you should be. Networking and the Internet in general, as we all now, are increasingly critical technologies for software engineers in almost all businesses. You should have at least a high-level understanding about how and why they work; the more you know, the better you will be.
2. At Cisco, CCNA's weren't really considered very useful... you were expected to know or learn whetever you needed to know for your job, certification or not. However, many companies encourage or require that their network administrators and other IT folks get CCNA's, which indicates to me that they place some value in the skill-set implied by having such a certification. Personally, if I'm the hiring manager and I care about your networking knowledge, I'm going to quiz you on networking anyway, and not trust that the CCNA means anything in particular.
Having a CCNA can't possibly hurt you. Even if your work isn't related to networking, it shows that you have a diversity of skills and interests, and that you have sensitivity to issues outside of your core skill set. It also means that I might be able to use you on networking-related projects, which increases your value to me as an employee.
3. Hell, you may find, as I did, that networking is really fun stuff and that you'd like to persue it further. No loss there either!
Let me close by saying that passing the CCNA test only means that you knew a certain set of material on a particular day. It doesn't make you a networking expert. If you don't use those skills, you'll lose them, just like anything else. Keep reading about new technologies, and, if you can, fiddle with networks from time to time. Keep up your intuition and troubleshooting skills. Knowing how to debug network problems comes in handy at the strangest times
On a whim, I took a COBOL class in college (1989). I learned one critical fact during that class - that I *never* wanted to do COBOL programming again.
It never showed up on my resume, and very few people know about it.
However, I passed up on some $20k/year salary increases by *not* listing it on my resume during the late 1990s. It was a conscious choice - and one that I was glad to be able to make.
By adding networking to your skill set, you could become the IT person at a small company. Imagine being the fifteenth guy to work for Microsoft, for example. Big bucks.
More opportunities (if you like doing that work still, once the class is over), or knowledge that you want to avoid the field like it was the plague. Hmmm. . .
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
In the past few weeks, I have tried to get my CCNA twice. I have experience one major problem, though. The curriculum that I took a course on is not properly aligned to the test. So, when I took the test, I was not adequately prepared for it. I took the version 2.2(I think) curriculum, and most of the stuff on there is on the test, with a few huge exceptions. One thing to watch out for: zero-subnet. I had no idea what this was, and it seems like the new (v3.0) curriculum doesn't fix this. It has a short section on it, but it fails to say if it only affects the first and last subnet, or just the first one, and their glossary fails to cover this subject. ** sigh **. So, let's describe to you my misery. The CCNA is scored out of 1000 points, with a 849 to pass (or a little below 85%). So, I went in to take the test, and somehow managed to get a score of 847. I don't know how I did it, and it seemed astronomical. Then, two weeks later, I went in to take the test again. The computer that I used was much faster, and I was sure that I fixed some of my problems, and found out (I think) what zero-subnet is. So, when it came time to reveal my score, I stared in horrible mortification: I got the same exact score.
... and then I think that somebody is trying to tell me something.
Yeaaah.
I have until early-to-mid December to pass the test before it changes for the new curriculum, but I am afraid to take it again because I might get the same score
That's my story -- has anybody else had any similar experiences?
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Orppf urp mf y.ppcxn. yflcbi otcnnov C am yflcbi yr n.apb Ekrpatv (Dvorak -> Qwerty)
Keep a generic resume around for each kind of job you are trying to seek, then modify it slightly based on the job description - highlighting the areas that are important, removing skills that appear not to matter (or downplaying them)
Next use a custom cover letter to show the idiot in the HR dept. why he needs to forward your resume to the hiring manager. Spell it out in great detail how you meet and exceed the requirements posted for the job (even those looking for 20 years of Linux experience). From there hope that you hit the lights on his computer, because he is getting 200-1000 resumes every day for this position and might forward 2-3 a week to the hiring manager.
After that, play the numbers - after all, it is just a numbers game
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I've been doing RF hardware design for 7 years. I recently got my Continuing Education certification in Unix C/C++ programming from WPI. I didn't do the CE program because I thought it would be nice to have on my resume. I did it because I really wanted to learn it.
Having said that, it has helped my resume stand out. Although programming and RF are at opposite ends of the spectrum, employers like the fact that I can help bridge the gap between analog engineers and software engineers. They're not expecting me to write code but it benefits my employer if I can more effectively communicate with the software engineer who writes the driver/firmware for my board.
CCNA stands for Cisco Certified Network Associate not Administrator. There's a big difference.
i dunno if it matters, but i thought ccna stood for cisco certified network associate. not administrator.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
I'm a mish-mash person. I know a fair amount about networking, a fair amount about operating systems, and a good deal about programming. Getting a certification in another displine related to your main discipline can't hurt. Never will.
Do you have any idea how many programmers don't know jack about the network that they program on? It's absurd really -- but they can STIll do a good job! I have seen damn good rock solid programmers (well -- good enough for the job at hand) that didn't know you could open an FTP client to an address that started with "www.".
Some don't know that latency is a problem when doing network programming. The idea of removing client/server communication chatter is just plain odd to them. It doesn't cost CPU, in fact it's sometimes faster, so why would you NOT want to chatter back and forth?
And these people can be darned good programmers in corporate environments. They sometimes need guidance though.
Get the CCNA, it shows that you kinda like networking. If you're going for a software engineering job lay it on there down at the bottom of your pile of other tech skills. If it comes up just play it off at interview time, "Yep.. I got that. I've fiddled with networks so much in the past that I figured I should just get it. It was a breeze and I already knew it anyway. It's not my primary focus, but I realized long ago it's something I should have knowledge of so I got the certification for the heck of it."
If they want to you to take up a networking job that you don't want you can play that off too. "Yeah, I have a CCNA and I dig networking and such, but I consider myself more valuable as a programmer. It's my main discpline and I work far harder on that than I do networking." Well, shit, if you got a CCNA on a whim you must be a good programmer!
Walking in there with a resume that will "rock their knob" in every discipline can't hurt. Toss shit in that doesn't apply but make sure it's not considered your main discipline, unless you want them to. "Yeah, I've worked on projects that emphasised parallel processing batch systems to get the most out of our hardware but what I really dig is high-repsonse clustered environments that scale up horizontally. They're much more fun for me and I feel far more comfrotable working with them." Shit like that -- but it has to be true. Flip it around the other way if you have to take a 2nd interview.
Every interview I walked into wanting that job I got. I've had some where I was less enthusiatic about the position that I didn't get and I walked away knowing I didn't want the job. If I wanted it, I got it. Know your shit, be honest, and don't be afraid to talk down some of your skills that aren't important to the job. If they think it's impressive that you have X cert when the job really requires cert Y just talk down cert X. It's a toy thing to you. What you really dig is discipline Y.... and that's where you rock.
If they have "router monkeys" at the place without at a CCNA and you play that down because you're a far better programmer than a network guy you just plain look better. You don't have to be king shit at everything, but if you have enough in your bag to impress them in one area you give yourself the power to talk yourself up in another area while maintaining that "I'm a better coder than networking guy" air.
Can it hurt to take a CCNA course and get the cert? No
Is it worth having on a resume? Not really.
If you know very little about networking, the CCNA course will be helpful in that respect (but 100% of which can be learned in a book or two, which is much cheaper than taking a course & tests). I myself took the ICRC course and worked in networking for 4 years (I was a WAN administrator for a national backbone). I never bothered getting my CCNA however.
Sadly, CCNAs are a dime a dozen now. Like MSCE, everyone and their grandmother has that cert (as it's fairly easy to get). It wasn't so just 3-4 years ago. So if you're doing it solely for having an extra cert to put on your resume, I wouldn't bother, unless you want to go for the more prestigeous CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) or CCDP (Cisco Certified Developer? Professional), or ultimately, CCIE. I doubt you'd want to get those 2 higher certs, as they are totally unrelated to your current field of work.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
This is such a no-brainer Ask /. that it makes me
think it was placed here as an advert for Cisco.
Hi, I'm a software guy (just like most readers here) and was wondering if I should get certified (all the replies say, yes, of course, CCNA look so good on CV - like butter on fish).. I am also curious if this had made you consider *your* resume'.. OH, and here's a convenient link to a Cisco enrollment form (here)
Cisco Certified people get the top dollars in the industry. Their top-notch certification (CCNP, I believe, for Network Professional, but I might be wrong) easily fetches $80K+ around the United States and $100K+ in big cities. That's not pocket change
You haven't looked for an IT job in the US lately, have you?