[SLL] Greetings Open Sauce People

[Bryan McLellan]

On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 11:28 PM, Rob Blomquist <rob.blomquist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now, I am jumping ship as the economy has dumped, and any hope of my past
> career panning out for me, have gotten me nowhere. I have chatted with a
> couple of people in the last month who have recommended disparate paths. One
> said get a cert, the CCNA is a good one, it will give what I know already
> credibility, and I will know more about networking than I ever dreamed.

Before I moved to Seattle, I only cared about Cisco certifications
because they seemed the only technically challenging ones. Once here,
I had a really hard time getting interviews with my small town resume
credentials so I picked up an MCSE/MCDBA, among some other things.
Those immediately started getting my resume attention.

But I never wanted to be a Microsoft person, just to get my foot in
the door somewhere. It's what I know, and the people that I know that
are aware of that, that matters now.

CompTIA certs are pretty silly, but they're super easy. Cisco certs
are still awesome, but the simulations achieve their purpose and you
have to know a lot more than answers, you must understand the
material. Microsoft's trying to go that way, but their simulations are
just hoops at this point. The trouble is number of exams required to
get Microsoft credentials is pretty high. There's some overlap though,
for instance the MCSE 2003 Network Infrastructure test is pretty
passable out of the gate by anyone with experience with dns/dhcp/etc
on any other platform.

Experience is, of course, what really matters. Find a position that
requires you be ready for anything. Start in an analyst/business
position if that's what you can get. Once you have a job,
certifications are really only good as a goal for learning in areas
that you're not familiar with; a bar of sorts.

Bryan