Two minor obstacles...
Sep. 23rd, 2004 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipWell, my CCNA exam was this morning. No, I didn't pass. The computer crashed just after I started and so I had to wait an additional fifteen minutes for a restart (by which time I was getting tired, having been up since 3am). I also had the misfortune of discovering a couple of days ago that the main text I had been using for preperation, CCNA Exam Cram, is universally regarded as a piece of shit and add like to add my weight to that assessment. There are huge sections of the course which are largely ignored (particularly router configuration, OSPF, NAT and WAN implementations) and regrettably were significant parts of the exam I just took.
The beneficial upshot of all this is that I've realized that I (a) don't really like vendor certifications or (b) fact-based exams in general. I don't really want to have to remember that the default Administrative Distance for External EIGRP is 170, whilst it is 90 for internal IGRP and all other protocols are somewhere in between. That's what technical manuals are for - to store facts. Give me universal qualifications (whether it is TAFE or university) that are longer-lasting and projects instead.
Also there is the minor matter that network engineering and systems administration are not one and the same. I think I would go batty if I spent all my life dealing only with routers, switches and cabling. Although it is oft-maligned, I actually enjoy the technical support and training side of being sysadmin. It deals with people and fundamentally, I like helping people. The other option is, of course, programming. Contrary to popular belief, although programmers do spend a long time alone hacking away at code, there is such a thing as a community of programmers and they do share a lot of knowledge with each other.
Other minor obstacle of the week is called my supervisor. Oh yes, he likes my PhD. According to him, it's the first time he's seriously had to consider the suggestion that there are technological means for democraticisation. He says that it's a unique contribution, a goldmine of information that includes the most critical issues of the topic available. It is an extremely important and valuable text which needs to be expressed in the best possible way... And therefore (you saw this coming, didn't you?)... can you do a rewrite? *sigh*
The beneficial upshot of all this is that I've realized that I (a) don't really like vendor certifications or (b) fact-based exams in general. I don't really want to have to remember that the default Administrative Distance for External EIGRP is 170, whilst it is 90 for internal IGRP and all other protocols are somewhere in between. That's what technical manuals are for - to store facts. Give me universal qualifications (whether it is TAFE or university) that are longer-lasting and projects instead.
Also there is the minor matter that network engineering and systems administration are not one and the same. I think I would go batty if I spent all my life dealing only with routers, switches and cabling. Although it is oft-maligned, I actually enjoy the technical support and training side of being sysadmin. It deals with people and fundamentally, I like helping people. The other option is, of course, programming. Contrary to popular belief, although programmers do spend a long time alone hacking away at code, there is such a thing as a community of programmers and they do share a lot of knowledge with each other.
Other minor obstacle of the week is called my supervisor. Oh yes, he likes my PhD. According to him, it's the first time he's seriously had to consider the suggestion that there are technological means for democraticisation. He says that it's a unique contribution, a goldmine of information that includes the most critical issues of the topic available. It is an extremely important and valuable text which needs to be expressed in the best possible way... And therefore (you saw this coming, didn't you?)... can you do a rewrite? *sigh*
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 09:25 pm (UTC)Regardless dearheart - I'm proud of you.
As for the PHD - I think that it's fantastic news that your supervisor is so enthusiastic about it. And frankly there is a halfway decent bottle of champers in my fridge waiting to be popped ;-)
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:30 pm (UTC)No, I don't think I'll sit the vendor-exam again. I should have listened to the comments that
Now, if there's a half-decent Uni/TAFE course out there instead...
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:38 pm (UTC)Sounds like high effort for low return. And no where near as useful as a driving license.
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:48 pm (UTC)The pay is good for someone who has a CCNA - like $65K+. But not having a CCNA is not a restriction to doing network engineering.
I was actually thinking the same thing you on the way home... For all the effort that one puts into it, trying to get 849/1000, the return is actually very low - an pricey, proprietory, temporary qualification...
I mean, what would Bob say? It's all very anti-slack.
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:51 pm (UTC)That was the main reason I was happier to go with the Solaris certification. They never expire, but, it's tied to the version. Pass the SCSA for Solaris 7 and that's with you til you die. That said, I still haven't gotten around to finishing up that (1/2 done) and we're up to Solaris 10 these days...
Careerwise, there are plusses and minuses to both TAFE and uni. TAFE can be a bit of a mixed bag: there are some great courses out there and some utterly abysmal ones. Either way, they're not as well recognised with recruiters as compsci degree holders.
OTOH, at uni you'll get a lot of largely irrelevant theory by people who've never/rarely worked in the real world and most compsci degree holders need to be retrained anyway when they hit the workforce to do actual IT job related things.
On the job IT experience is really the best teacher though. You're already on the right track by taking on consulting work.
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Date: 2004-09-22 10:00 pm (UTC)*nods* You are absolutely right. When I was saying TAFE courses, I was thinking of the more serious ones with a strong practical orientation, like the Cert IV... WRT to uni courses, yes they are theory heavy but the advantage of that (and there is only one), is that they can be quite flexible as well - and it's research/project orientated, which I like.
The Solaris certification much better than most on the vendor specific path. Apparently there's a GNU endorsed Linux one as well these days.
On the job IT experience is really the best teacher though. You're already on the right track by taking on consulting work.
*nods* Much more enjoyable as well.
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:27 pm (UTC)*hugs*
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:29 pm (UTC)All the best....
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:33 pm (UTC)Thanks to both of you... It would have been nice to have had that extra qualification, but at the end of the day it's not necessary. There are other means to achieve the same result.
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Date: 2004-09-22 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:45 pm (UTC)Never say die, for I have found a decent alternative!
Sounds like it has some interesting aspects - on a quick browse :)
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Date: 2004-09-22 11:12 pm (UTC)Well, quite a few people have completed CCNAs with a little as a month of study... but from what I've read they've usually been doing this sort of thing for years.. Me, I was a glorified tech support with a political edge for a few years and primarily a staff trainer, policy developer and hardware boffin in East Timor. 'Twas a very rare day indeed that I actually logged on to the router or switches there, even if they were Cisco.
Aha!
Date: 2004-09-22 10:24 pm (UTC)Never say die, for I have found a decent alternative!
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Date: 2004-09-22 10:25 pm (UTC)They did a really good job of requiring you to understand both the question and the answers. Often they'd have answers which threw in all the right buzzwords, but didn't quite connect them properly. If you'd just read a book you'd be doomed.
The more modern ones weren't nearly as good. (The IIS 4.0 exam was particularly bad - there's no way I should have passed that based on how much practical experience I had with the product.)
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Date: 2004-09-22 11:15 pm (UTC)Possibly explains why less than five feet away I have two copies of NT Server 4, NT server in the workplace and NT Workstation... No, they weren't bad at all.
If you'd just read a book you'd be doomed.
True in this case as well - I really didn't have enough 'hands on' experience with the assumed equipment.
Maybe I'll have another shot in a couple of years :/
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Date: 2004-09-23 02:17 am (UTC)Here is my advice
- get the CCNA if you are actually looking for a job. If you are looking for work from one of the IT body shops or generally in big corporates, it will make a real genuine difference. If you are thinking about doing this, get the qualification. Probably more than a Cert 4.
- if you are going to do it eventually, do it now (ish). Its nice and fresh, you have more or less current hardware to practice with. And buy a better book, obviously.
- vendor certs don't make much difference if you are self-employed, dealing directly with your clients. They either trust you or they don't.
- don't be too down on fact based knowledge. Thats what the vendor certs are for. The stuff they teach you is actually useful. You may not need to know all the random constants, but its the easy part of the exam and it is useful to know because if you don't know it off by heart, when you encounter something that is configured in a weird way you won't realise that until much too late, when you start checking basic assumptions in desperation after hours of confusion.
- And sure, its not as good as a degree, but a vendor cert isn't a multi-year course either - they are designed to complement, and both serve their purpose (though actually, a comp sci degree usually won't help you all that much with sys admin stuff, they are usually much more programming focussed).
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Date: 2004-09-23 09:09 am (UTC)As a veteran of many exams-that-didn't-go-well, much sympathy, and reflection on how it really doesn't reflect your worth as a person.
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Date: 2004-09-23 03:16 pm (UTC)Thanks Dr. K...
The distractions on Saturday night were welcome. I was foreboding doom at that stage already ;-)
On a related topic, here's my recipe for the carrot cake
1.5 cups of oil/butter, 2 cups sugar, 4 eggs, 2 tablspns vanilla essence, 2 tbpsns of nutmeg or cinnamon, 6 cups grated carrots (hooray for food processors), 1 cup sunflower/sesame seeds.
(In similar proportions if your baking tray isn't as enormous as mine ).
Mix it all up.
Put in the oven at 350F for 30-40 minutes. About 10 minutes prep with a processor....
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Date: 2004-10-30 01:37 am (UTC)Ahem! A late response... Did I mention 4 cups of plain flour :S
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Date: 2004-09-23 03:09 pm (UTC)The good thing about the Cert 4 is that it can be upgraded quite easily to univ-level qualifications and completed quite quickly - also it is a more cost effective process than doing a GradDip in CompSci.
I'm not down on fact-back knowledge per se (goodness - what a world that would be!), but rather fact-based exams. Not only am I unused to exams in general (coming from that nice hippy university where assesment was continious and project based), but when I have done exams they have been essay/short answer based. The format of the exam was something I simply wasn't used to and that was quite telling.
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Date: 2004-09-23 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 03:18 pm (UTC)You know
I'm doing a full-time Business Management course. I'm doing a PhD part-time. I'm working part-time. And I wanted to complete a CCNA (which is normally 6 months study at best).
Something had to give.
NAT and OSPF?
Date: 2004-09-24 12:06 am (UTC)Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!
Re: NAT and OSPF?
Date: 2004-09-24 02:05 am (UTC)OSPF (Open Shortest Path First). Link-state routing protocol. I think it makes its first appearance in chapter 14 of the intro CCNA coursebook and a lot in chapter 5, 6 and 7 of the ICND CCNA book (yes, it's that important - as I found out).
NAT (Network Addressing Tables). Turns multiple internal hosts in a single host for external connection. Comes with wonderful types such as 'inside local', 'inside global', 'outside global', 'outside local'. All of chapter 8 of the ICND book is dedicated to this.
OSPF I had a slight grasp of, NAT virtually none. Basically, I crammed with the wrong books and have since paid the (justifiable) price.
I reckon I'll have another crack at it again. Once I'm not doing so much. After all, it's supposed to be a two-year course, and I did try it in a three month period with lots of other commitments.
Which exam are you doing? The INTRO or the two-part combined?
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Date: 2004-09-25 02:56 pm (UTC)Can't live with 'em, can't live without out 'em. *sigh*
(nor university beuracracy - very very bad mis-spelling there - as I've told everyone on LJ this morning, I have a tummy bug and am a bit - urgh)
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Date: 2004-09-26 12:41 am (UTC)Anaecdotal evidence is that it's actually quite rare among tech support/sys admin types, mainly because they do come from a technical background. Coming from a social sciences background (like <lj user="zey"), means that I actually prefer the teaching/training part of IT support. But of course, that's the part that I'm strongest in.
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Date: 2004-09-26 03:44 am (UTC)All formal - too much head in the books, and frustration with the system.
Go.
Drink.
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Date: 2004-09-26 06:31 pm (UTC)Interesting you should suggest that. Last night I ate pizza and drank beer and champagne with severina_242... And we played a ridiculous amount of "Spongebob Squarepants" on Playstation... It comes with the epic line Flying squirrel coming through... Cracks me up, it does.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 03:35 am (UTC)