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?"

Comments

Diversification is a Good Thing (tm)

[GeorgeH]

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.

Money is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Money is the answer

[JM Apocalypse]

The top-notch certification (on the primary pyramid) is the CCIE (Cisco Certified Internet Expert). From what I have heard, it is an incredibly difficult test, and there aren't very many people who have it (they have numbers ... low numbers!). The CCIE requires several testing sessions, costing in excess of $2000. There are 3 pyramids of certification, and if you want to see it, look in a CCNA book. You could probably find more information on the cisco netacad site: http://cisco.netacad.net/public/index.html

Re:Money is the answer

[burns210]

(i am taking the CCNA class)

the CCIE is cool because, 1. you are in a very elite group of 'networking gods', passing that thing is HARD. 20% pass their first time(80% fail!).
2. When you take the test, Cisco flies you out to their HQ, give you a room with some networking equipment, and setup a situation where something (or things) are broken. you have an hour to fix them. You are judged by a panel of CCIEs, and if they say you pass, you pass, it isn't getting a certain score on a multi-choice test.

btw: CCNA's are said to be able to admin a network of 100 computers, CCNP(the middle teir) are able to network of a 1000 computers.

Re:Money is the answer

[anticypher]

That information is about 3 years old. And the info about the Ukraine is completely wrong.

Recently I heard from a recruiter who was looking for a CCIE candidate in the UK. After putting the very narrowly defined job spec up on a couple of job boards (I saw it on jobserve), he received over 50 qualified CVs within an hour. After 1 whole day, he had over 100 CCIE's contact him looking for a job. He also got about 500 Cisco Certified but not quite CCIE level responses, deleted instantly.

The market for Cisco Certs is very saturated right now. Cisco worked hard to get millions of techies trained up during the dotcom boom, and now all those guys are keeping the rates depressed.

There are probably only 13 CCIE's in the Ukraine, and thousands of lesser certs. There are 1400 CCIE's in Britain, and 400 just in Belgium. Of course, 50 of those work for Cisco :-)

the AC

Give it a try

[rebill]

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. . .

Associate - Not Administrator

[oni]

CCNA stands for Cisco Certified Network Associate not Administrator. There's a big difference.

Re:Probably a good idea

[daveb]

The CCNA course will teach you some general networking topics, but much of it is Cisco specific (down to knowing specific commands for different router/switch platforms.)

Sure the CCNA course has lots of cisco specific syntax - but you can't know the syntax without learning the theory - which by the very nature of TCP/IP must be universal. VLSM and subnet masking is the same in Cisco land, *nix or M$.

Same goes with RIP & OSPF - true tho - there is a bit of cisco proprietry routing such as IGRP & EIGRP, but the emphasis is more on RIP and OSPF.

when learning networking I believe its useful to actually impliment the theory. Choosing to do so on Cisco routers, or Linux or Windows is irrlevent. I'd suggest that once you've done the CCNA course then you should hunt down some other routers and switch gear and try to impliment using different syntax. Linux is a good choice for the routing stuff (for RIP anyway - not sure about OSPF).

cavet - I teach in the Cisco Network Academy CCNA programme