While the effectiveness of degree requirements may be argued, they are
efficient. When your HR department gets hundreds or thousands of
applications, they need some way to find the wheat.
The net sector is young and was mostly immune to traditional business
practices. Not all traditional business practices are bad (see dot.bomb).
Lack of business acumen means the days of six figure income and significant
stock options because there were 10 job openings for every geek who could
RTFM are over. Even though the "job market is coming back" there's still 20
'techies' in Birkenstocks and Star Wars t-shirts for every (decent) job
hiring. Everything else being equal (which is often the case) a cert or
degree is a great tie-breaker.
Welcome to the traditional job market fellow geeks. Remember all the jokes
about Sanitation Engineers?
Put another way, when you take that expensive car of yours in for service
(you do have one if you're successful in this industry, right? ), do you
go to Joe's Garage (apologies to all named Joe) or a dealer/service center
with "certified" mechanics?
Thank you for the objective response. It seems that there is room for
multiple perspectives on this topic.
I take my new volvo to the local equivalent of "Joe's Garage" for
regular (3000 mile) service. Joe is not volvo certified, but they do
let me watch over their shoulder to make sure everything is perfect.
The service is a fraction of the cost. If there was a mistake in
service, they only ask for their cost for the parts to rectify the
mistake (This is the 6th car that I've taken to "Joe's Garage".)
However I do take the car to Volvo for the 30000 mile service interval
(which, in fact, contains no service, only diagnostics). If Volvo finds
a problem, I'll take it back to Joe's Garage for the actual repair.
I see your perspective on the HR department. HR probably deals with
dozens of applicants and the certification is an easy pass/fail
evaluation method. However, IMHO, there are probably many expertly
qualified candidates that have no paper but are more qualified than the
paper CCNA.
Stoned koalas drooled eucalyptus spit in awe as Christopher J. Wolff exclaimed:
I take my new volvo to the local equivalent of "Joe's Garage" for
regular (3000 mile) service. Joe is not volvo certified, but they do
let me watch over their shoulder to make sure everything is perfect.
The service is a fraction of the cost. If there was a mistake in
service, they only ask for their cost for the parts to rectify the
mistake (This is the 6th car that I've taken to "Joe's Garage".)
However I do take the car to Volvo for the 30000 mile service interval
(which, in fact, contains no service, only diagnostics). If Volvo finds
a problem, I'll take it back to Joe's Garage for the actual repair.
From what I have found most colleges in the area of the world that I am in
(New England) focus their BCS studies on programing. Completely unrelated to
the area of anything network related. This may not be the case everywhere.
Maybe the industry leaders should assist the education scene in developing a
degree program for future network engineers that beter prepares them for
this field. It doesn't help the industry if a bunch of programers are
running around acting like network engineers, just as a bunch of network
engineers are no more qualified to program. Perhaps a bachelors in network
engineering is in order?
We actually have that - or something close to it. We are slowly
building a bigger networking lab with router-ish stuff for students to
learn from. In fact, I'll be handing off full BGP table for them to see
and play with in the lab. If you want to help us educate, we'll gladly
accept any donations, particularly gear, we can get.
if i was to take a newbie, i would much rather hire someone who has
taken algorithms and data structures, queuing, ... than someone who
has spent their time studying for whatever juniper and cisco call
their vendor certifications.
one can teach a monkey how to hack a router, as is demonstrated on
a daily basis. but a little computer science goes a much longer
way.
The college I am attending, Strayer Univeristy, has a B.S. degree
in Internetworking. While it is kinds geared towards Cisco the good part
is that they will give credit for life experience etc. I am getting credit
for 8 classes due to my work experience in the field. The also have online
courses so you do not have to actually go to class. They are a private
school so tuition is a bit higher than state run schools but to me worth
the cost since I do not think a degree in Computer Science is going to
help me in my career. The price for the online courses are the same no
matter where you live. Finally, they are fully accredited.
www.strayer.edu
Monkeys screamed incessantly when Andrew Dorsett said:
> running around acting like network engineers, just as a bunch of network
> engineers are no more qualified to program. Perhaps a bachelors in network
> engineering is in order?
EXACTLY my concept....So why can't we find some university and develop
this so I can transfer into a program I enjoy....
That's like saying that there is not enough stuff you have to know to
successfully design air conditioners or cars to fill single semester
courses, and yet, Mechanical Engineering programs exist.
A good undergrad degree program in network engineering would have...
- a solid CS core of introductory coding classes, with some OS stuff
- A bunch of math, concentrating on the applied side, especially statistics
and discrete math.
- EE, at least a year or two, to cover the basics
- The normal engineering core classes (calculus, physics, chemistry,
statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, fluids)
- And then some actual network engineering stuff like routing protocols,
wireless, microwave, optics, LAN technologies, etc
Finally, like most modern engineering programs, it would be heavily design
based, and include numerous design projects and a capstone project.
