[48173] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Certification or College degrees?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Sprunk)
Thu May 23 12:34:16 2002
Message-ID: <01e901c20277$686d1be0$9d876540@amer.cisco.com>
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <ssprunk@cisco.com>
To: "Vadim Antonov" <avg@exigengroup.com>
Cc: "Nanog List" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 11:28:02 -0500
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Thus spake "Vadim Antonov" <avg@exigengroup.com>
> Stephen - I bet I can do networks much much better than most cisco CCIEs,
> even after years of doing network-unrelated work :) That's because I
> understand _why_ the stuff is working, not only how to make cisco box to
> jump through hoops.
...
> > You don't. You devote your career to learning networking. IOS is a base
> > skill which is necessary (today) to utilize that knowledge and, more
> > importantly, get a job.
>
> Yawn. Are you serious? Sure, you need to have some idea of what things
> are and how they work, but finding a magic incantation in IOS manual is
> not something which only ceritified cisco "engineers" can do. Unless both
> IOS and documentation deteriorated much much further than I think.
Where did I say that? Read my statement again; I think you're in violent
agreement with me.
> > A person with lots of knowledge and no skills is a liberal arts major, not
> > an engineer.
>
> One of the best network engineers is the world is a liberal arts major :)
I find most of them make great fry cooks ;)
> > Academic respect doesn't pay the bills.
>
> Sure, being a trained _technician_ pays bills. Just about. In my
> experience, having a real education does much more.
If you take a non-logical, non-visual, non-geeky technician and push him through
a CS program, he'll emerge still a technician. Will a piece of paper make him a
more valuable employee? Probably not.
> > Degrees are, in essence, a certificate that you are capable of learning
> > things by rote and regurgitating them later, possibly applying a small
> > amount of thought (but not too much).
>
> Depends on where you got it. Try to get through MIT or Stanford by
> learning thing by rote :) I think you'll find yourself with self-esteem
> below the floor, and a ticket home after the very first exams.
I do have great respect for MIT, Stanford, and a few others. However, only a
tiny fraction of 1% of CS grads come from those programs. I'm basing my stance
on the rest of the population.
S
