[150202] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Common operational misconceptions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Painter)
Sat Feb 18 16:16:20 2012
From: "Michael Painter" <tvhawaii@shaka.com>
To: <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:15:31 -1000
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Paul Graydon wrote:
>> Yes I'm serious, they were CCNP qualified, hired as a NOC engineer for
> an ISP & Hosting company. For the company the NOC team was the top tier
> of customer support (3rd line+), they looked after routers, switches,
> firewalls, servers, leased lines, and so on.
> This individual was perfectly capable of regurgitating all the facts,
> figures and technical details you can imagine, probably pretty much the
> entire CCNP syllabus. What they didn't seem that capable of was
> actually applying that to anything. I'd bet good money that if I'd
> asked him at the time what the 1918 network ranges are he'd have been
> able to tell me.
> This is exactly what we're teaching kids to do these days (makes me feel
> so old that I've already been saying this for several years and I'm only
> 31) standardised tests aren't marked based on ability to apply
> knowledge, just the knowledge itself. Hence my view, give me someone
> who knows how to think over someone who is qualified to the hilt. These
> exam cram 'do a CCNP in a week' courses only serve to make it worse.
>
> Paul
Ahh, I get you now...thanks.
Took me back to '64 and the battery of tests (all day!) I was given before getting hired by IBM for the 360 rollout. I
was amazed by the amount of questions of the "if gear a turns ccw, what does lever b do?" variety.
Later I was told that -all- the testing results were important, even the psychological ones, but what they really wanted
to find was the best analytical *mind*.
Best,
--Michael
