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

Probably a good idea

[blate]

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 :)

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