Hey Folks,
I am trying to work out a strategy for vendor certification in our company.
As a general rule, do you all fund employees certification and if so what
kind of levels do you try to maintain as good practice?
For example. NOC staff should be JNCIA and engineering JNCIP to JNCIE?
Clearly certification does not usually reflect ability but it does help
people feel valued and to maintain a basic level of competence.
Thanks all,
Isaac
Cisco discriminates against customers without certification and delays service and support to them as a result. (e.g.: you can’t open a sev 1 case online unless you are “CCIE”).
You likely want to have someone with this access in their account to speed access when there are network critical issues.
- Jared
^^ It really helps if you're a Cisco shop to have CCIEs.
Every place I've worked has offered to refund the cost of a cert after
you pass (if the employee fails, the cost is on them), and it's had a
pretty decent uptake among the more junior staff - as well as the CCIE
re-certs.
I'm not sure if Juniper have a similar type system of rewarding
partners that are packed with certified engineers, but I wouldn't be
surprised if they did.
Hey Folks,
I am trying to work out a strategy for vendor certification in our company.
As a general rule, do you all fund employees certification and if so what
kind of levels do you try to maintain as good practice?For example. NOC staff should be JNCIA and engineering JNCIP to JNCIE?
Clearly certification does not usually reflect ability but it does help
people feel valued and to maintain a basic level of competence.Cisco discriminates against customers without certification and delays service and support to them as a result. (e.g.: you can’t open a sev 1 case online unless you are “CCIE”).
You can however just call them and yell "Environment Down" and they will call it whatever Sev you want. There are an unending number of issues with their online case opening "portal" however.
Filling out a form online to wait a call back was never my first choice. Plus putting that Cisco hold music on speaker is a good way to improve the mood!
I found the fastest way to open a sev 1 case is to open it online as sev 3,
that gets all the questions out of the way, then call the 800 number and
escalate to network down emergency. You then hold for the next available
engineer. I am pleased with the responsiveness of this approach.
d
Hi Isaac,
Personally, I use certifications as more of a weed-out factor. List
lots of certifications on your resume? No interview for you.
Particularly that guy who used what should have been valuable space on
his resume to report having taken a 3-day certification course in
configuring Kentrox CSU/DSUs. Yikes!
Seriously though, certs stink of a cogs-in-the-machine approach to
business, which is the opposite of making folks feel individually
valued. Gee, I can tell from talking to you that you're smarter than
half our engineers but if you want to respond to the red lights in the
NOC you'll have to go get a CCNA.
If you want them to feel valued, give them an education reimbursement
program for any job-relevant training, college coursework, etc. Any
who want to spend it on certs, so be it. Any who want to spend it
professional conferences like NANOG, well, those are the ones you
keep.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
No and none. I see value in competence, practice, experience, education
and the inevitable bitter lessons that we all must endure, but I don't
see any value in the vendor certification process except as "cash cow
for vendors".
---rsk
We got a resume once where the guy listed "2-day workshop on personal grooming, Karachi, Pakistan" under his "education" section. I think that trumps the Kentrox certification. 
-Bill
In all seriousness, some people could do with that!
The technical term for that music is the "Cisco Disco"
The technical term for that music is the "Cisco Disco"