alt.certification.cisco - Unsure Of The Path I Should Take

Author

Unsure Of The Path I Should Take

Demetria Crawford

2003-08-19, 12:25 am

I have recently been laid of from my job and have found the demands for a
network administrator or engineer to be very high. The knowledge and
experience, 6 years MCSE, that I have is not enough. Now they are requiring
some database admin and the infamous cisco and the cert. I have had very
little experience working with routers, I know enough to be dangerous. Now I
figured that I have the perfect opportunity to advance in knowledge but I am
not sure of the path that I should take. I have read Wendall Odom's book and
now I seek experience. Any advice on what I should do, I do not want to
become a paper CCNA even though I do plan on taking the test.

Bernie

2003-08-19, 1:24 am

On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 23:27:48 -0400, "Demetria Crawford"
<dkc1975@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>I have recently been laid of from my job and have found the demands for a
>network administrator or engineer to be very high. The knowledge and
>experience, 6 years MCSE, that I have is not enough. Now they are requiring
>some database admin and the infamous cisco and the cert. I have had very
>little experience working with routers, I know enough to be dangerous. Now I
>figured that I have the perfect opportunity to advance in knowledge but I am
>not sure of the path that I should take. I have read Wendall Odom's book and
>now I seek experience. Any advice on what I should do, I do not want to
>become a paper CCNA even though I do plan on taking the test.

Not to sound dismal or anything, but you would be far better off
staying in the "systems" arena than going into networking. In order
to understand this, you need to understand where the epicenter of the
past few years is. Remember how it started with the big telecoms and
then rippled outwards? So what happened is that all the big telcos
stopped spending money. Vendors such as Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, and
to some degree Cisco starting dumping good network engineers on the
street. Now these were mostly people working on telco technologies.
Since there were no telecom jobs out there, they did the next best
thing--they went into enterprise networking. It was a natural
fit...if they can service five 9's multi-million dollar gear, they can
certainly service lesser enterprise gear. Even though enterprises and
enterprise high-tech vendors (such as MS, Foundry, and to lesser
degree Cisco) were not directly impacted by the telco meltdown, they
were impacted by the inflood of engineers. Of course high-tech in
general was on its own downswing, though not nearly as drastic as that
being experienced in telecom.

Then the telco's started laying off engineers because cutting spending
wasn't enough. So they added to the flood of engineers moving into
the enterprise space. And for good measure they cut spending more and
the telecom vendors put a bunch more engineers out of work. So those
that insisted on staying in the high-tech industry took enterprise
networking jobs once again.

All this has served to raise the bar immeasurably for those trying to
start out into this field. What has to happen for networking to lower
the bar again is that new jobs have to be created. Seeing as how only
a couple of the telecoms are just returning to profitability, and
carriers are still cutting jobs here and there, the prospects are not
looking to improve much for quite some time.

The good news for those in your position (meaning those with good
systems experience) is that the telecom meltdown has not taken away
too many of your jobs. Telecom engineers are notoriously dense when
it comes to PCs, servers, MS OS's, etc. Not very many have gone into
systems work except UNIX, because the only OS that seems to be more
consistently known by telecom engineers is UNIX, particularly Solaris.
Anyway, I am not saying it is a bed of roses in your field. Just that
your bed is a lot rosier than networking and far rosier than telecom.
If I were in your shoes today, I would stay in the segment that has
been impacted less (i.e. systems) where I could leverage my existing
experience. Trying to switch into an area which you don't have
experience is pretty much career suicide today. I remember back when
I switched from primarily systems work over to primarily networking
work, and it was difficult back then. That was at the height of the
industry. So if it was difficult to make the transition back then, it
is probably darn near impossible today.

--Bernie

Jim Yiapanis

2003-08-23, 8:24 am

That's all well and good... but who says you have to have one and not the
other.

Stand-out from the crowd, know both, throw in a Project+ cert and IT Service
Management (ITIL) certfication and you'll be hot property

"Bernie" <Bernie@weekend.com> wrote in message
news:th93kv0a911ceh9msaue6ftpt
gu8k0tg8e@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 23:27:48 -0400, "Demetria Crawford"
> <dkc1975@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >I have recently been laid of from my job and have found the demands for a
> >network administrator or engineer to be very high. The knowledge and
> >experience, 6 years MCSE, that I have is not enough. Now they are
requiring
> >some database admin and the infamous cisco and the cert. I have had very
> >little experience working with routers, I know enough to be dangerous.
Now I
> >figured that I have the perfect opportunity to advance in knowledge but I
am
> >not sure of the path that I should take. I have read Wendall Odom's book
and
> >now I seek experience. Any advice on what I should do, I do not want to
> >become a paper CCNA even though I do plan on taking the test.
>
> Not to sound dismal or anything, but you would be far better off
> staying in the "systems" arena than going into networking. In order
> to understand this, you need to understand where the epicenter of the
> past few years is. Remember how it started with the big telecoms and
> then rippled outwards? So what happened is that all the big telcos
> stopped spending money. Vendors such as Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, and
> to some degree Cisco starting dumping good network engineers on the
> street. Now these were mostly people working on telco technologies.
> Since there were no telecom jobs out there, they did the next best
> thing--they went into enterprise networking. It was a natural
> fit...if they can service five 9's multi-million dollar gear, they can
> certainly service lesser enterprise gear. Even though enterprises and
> enterprise high-tech vendors (such as MS, Foundry, and to lesser
> degree Cisco) were not directly impacted by the telco meltdown, they
> were impacted by the inflood of engineers. Of course high-tech in
> general was on its own downswing, though not nearly as drastic as that
> being experienced in telecom.
>
> Then the telco's started laying off engineers because cutting spending
> wasn't enough. So they added to the flood of engineers moving into
> the enterprise space. And for good measure they cut spending more and
> the telecom vendors put a bunch more engineers out of work. So those
> that insisted on staying in the high-tech industry took enterprise
> networking jobs once again.
>
> All this has served to raise the bar immeasurably for those trying to
> start out into this field. What has to happen for networking to lower
> the bar again is that new jobs have to be created. Seeing as how only
> a couple of the telecoms are just returning to profitability, and
> carriers are still cutting jobs here and there, the prospects are not
> looking to improve much for quite some time.
>
> The good news for those in your position (meaning those with good
> systems experience) is that the telecom meltdown has not taken away
> too many of your jobs. Telecom engineers are notoriously dense when
> it comes to PCs, servers, MS OS's, etc. Not very many have gone into
> systems work except UNIX, because the only OS that seems to be more
> consistently known by telecom engineers is UNIX, particularly Solaris.
> Anyway, I am not saying it is a bed of roses in your field. Just that
> your bed is a lot rosier than networking and far rosier than telecom.
> If I were in your shoes today, I would stay in the segment that has
> been impacted less (i.e. systems) where I could leverage my existing
> experience. Trying to switch into an area which you don't have
> experience is pretty much career suicide today. I remember back when
> I switched from primarily systems work over to primarily networking
> work, and it was difficult back then. That was at the height of the
> industry. So if it was difficult to make the transition back then, it
> is probably darn near impossible today.
>
> --Bernie

Ghazan Haider

2003-08-24, 7:25 am

I do not agree there. For one, I have seen the enterprise networking
jobs also requiring Solaris (or AIX or HP UX) on the rise at least
here in Canada or the North East USA. Maybe the market itself is
generally bigger. Secondly, more employers are looking for technicians
with a wider base of knowledge. In many places, basic servicing of
phone equipment is expected of a network/system admin in small to
medium sized companies. For medium companies, the definition of system
admins and net admins have come closer and it is no longer profitable
to be all that specialized, unless you're REALLY specialized in which
case, you would sit tight and wait for the right job to come by.

You're right about the original poster capitalizing on his experience
and staying under the same title as experience itself has become the
hottest commodity right now. However, for a good techie, gathering
certifications should be easy and he should get the certifications if
only because everyone else is getting them, and he wouldnt want to be
left out. For any system/net admin, I think the usual college degree,
3 years experience, MCSE and CCNA form the 'must have' basis on which
he can build more (CCIE, RHCE, CISSP, SCNA, IBM certs).

These are only my observations of the market and I've not been around
too long. Please feel free to correct me.

Bernie

2003-08-31, 8:28 pm

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 21:26:02 +1000, "Jim Yiapanis"
<yiapanis@hotmail.com> wrote:

>That's all well and good... but who says you have to have one and not the
>other.

I didn't say that. I am saying that you can go out and get 10
networking certs, and it means crap in terms of getting networking
jobs if you don't have experience. You need experience to get jobs
today. So if a person wants to enhance their *sysadmin credentials*
by getting a CCNA, then great, it probably helps to differentiate
themselves from the sysadmin crowd. Are you going to get a networking
job if you have tons of NT experience, no networking experience, and
only one networking cert? No.

>Stand-out from the crowd, know both, throw in a Project+ cert and IT Service
>Management (ITIL) certfication and you'll be hot property

I seriously doubt there are any certs today that by themselves mean
much if you don't have the work experience to go with the cert...

>"Bernie" <Bernie@weekend.com> wrote in message
> news:th93kv0a911ceh9msaue6ftpt
gu8k0tg8e@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 23:27:48 -0400, "Demetria Crawford"
>> <dkc1975@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >I have recently been laid of from my job and have found the demands for a
>> >network administrator or engineer to be very high. The knowledge and
>> >experience, 6 years MCSE, that I have is not enough. Now they are
> requiring
>> >some database admin and the infamous cisco and the cert. I have had very
>> >little experience working with routers, I know enough to be dangerous.
>Now I
>> >figured that I have the perfect opportunity to advance in knowledge but I
> am

>> >not sure of the path that I should take. I have read Wendall Odom's book
> and
>> >now I seek experience. Any advice on what I should do, I do not want to
>> >become a paper CCNA even though I do plan on taking the test.
>>
>> Not to sound dismal or anything, but you would be far better off
>> staying in the "systems" arena than going into networking. In order
>> to understand this, you need to understand where the epicenter of the
>> past few years is. Remember how it started with the big telecoms and
>> then rippled outwards? So what happened is that all the big telcos
>> stopped spending money. Vendors such as Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, and
>> to some degree Cisco starting dumping good network engineers on the
>> street. Now these were mostly people working on telco technologies.
>> Since there were no telecom jobs out there, they did the next best
>> thing--they went into enterprise networking. It was a natural
>> fit...if they can service five 9's multi-million dollar gear, they can
>> certainly service lesser enterprise gear. Even though enterprises and
>> enterprise high-tech vendors (such as MS, Foundry, and to lesser
>> degree Cisco) were not directly impacted by the telco meltdown, they
>> were impacted by the inflood of engineers. Of course high-tech in
>> general was on its own downswing, though not nearly as drastic as that
>> being experienced in telecom.
>>
>> Then the telco's started laying off engineers because cutting spending
>> wasn't enough. So they added to the flood of engineers moving into
>> the enterprise space. And for good measure they cut spending more and
>> the telecom vendors put a bunch more engineers out of work. So those
>> that insisted on staying in the high-tech industry took enterprise
>> networking jobs once again.
>>
>> All this has served to raise the bar immeasurably for those trying to
>> start out into this field. What has to happen for networking to lower
>> the bar again is that new jobs have to be created. Seeing as how only
>> a couple of the telecoms are just returning to profitability, and
>> carriers are still cutting jobs here and there, the prospects are not
>> looking to improve much for quite some time.
>>
>> The good news for those in your position (meaning those with good
>> systems experience) is that the telecom meltdown has not taken away
>> too many of your jobs. Telecom engineers are notoriously dense when
>> it comes to PCs, servers, MS OS's, etc. Not very many have gone into
>> systems work except UNIX, because the only OS that seems to be more
>> consistently known by telecom engineers is UNIX, particularly Solaris.
>> Anyway, I am not saying it is a bed of roses in your field. Just that
>> your bed is a lot rosier than networking and far rosier than telecom.
>> If I were in your shoes today, I would stay in the segment that has
>> been impacted less (i.e. systems) where I could leverage my existing
>> experience. Trying to switch into an area which you don't have
>> experience is pretty much career suicide today. I remember back when
>> I switched from primarily systems work over to primarily networking
>> work, and it was difficult back then. That was at the height of the
>> industry. So if it was difficult to make the transition back then, it
>> is probably darn near impossible today.
>>
>> --Bernie
>

--Bernie

Bernie

2003-08-31, 8:28 pm

On 24 Aug 2003 03:57:49 -0700, ghazan@ghazan.haider.name (Ghazan
Haider) wrote:

>I do not agree there. For one, I have seen the enterprise networking
>jobs also requiring Solaris (or AIX or HP UX) on the rise at least
>here in Canada or the North East USA. Maybe the market itself is
>generally bigger.

I can't comment on specific job ads you have seen, but there are any
number of interpretations to this, not all of which mean that you are
going to be managing a UNIX server farm on top of the network

1) Maybe they are asking because their NMS runs on Solaris, and they
want the admin to have a clue about it. Maybe they want general
familiarity but not a Solaris admin.

2) Maybe with IT in the dumps some of these companies are looking to
have one person do two jobs. This isn't uncommon. However, I'd say
that combining networking and sysadmin is more common to smaller shops
than bigger ones. After all if the company is big such that one
person cannot manage the entire server farm, then it is out of the
question to throw network administration on top of that too. Anyway,
in the case of one person for two jobs, it is a cost cutting
motivation. They aren't paying two salaries to one person, maybe just
1 1/3. It isn't worth it in the long run. So I am not counting the
"cheap bastard" companies.

3) It isn't uncommon for companies to add requirements to
differentiate between a flood of candidates. So instead of just
asking for networkers and getting 1000 resumes, they ask for
networkers with Solaris and get only 500 resumes. They have just cut
in half the amount they have to weed through. This is important in
the context of your reply because you stated that you have seen
networking jobs adding UNIX on top of the requirements. You didn't
state the reverse where companies are looking to transform sysadmins
into networkers. Since the context of my reply was to a sysadmin
looking to get into networking, your reply isn't exactly that relevant
to this situation.

>Secondly, more employers are looking for technicians
>with a wider base of knowledge. In many places, basic servicing of
>phone equipment is expected of a network/system admin in small to
>medium sized companies. For medium companies, the definition of system
>admins and net admins have come closer and it is no longer profitable
>to be all that specialized, unless you're REALLY specialized in which
>case, you would sit tight and wait for the right job to come by.

It depends on the employer as you say. Some are looking for one
person to do more jobs. And others are looking for a person that is
specialized to still be able to be a backup to another job when that
person goes on vacation etc. In those cases, sure having a broader
skill set is beneficial. But I stand by my statement above that in
getting hired to do multiple jobs, you aren't going to get paid
multiple salaries.

Anyway, you have to ask yourself what your goals are. Do you want to
work on mid sized networks the rest of your life where you also have
to do tape backups and email administration on top of it? Or do you
want to work on huge enterprise networks or possibly carrier networks?
If you want the latter, you aren't helping yourself by becoming a jack
of all trades. If you want the former, you are going to be qualified
for more jobs from a quantity perspective, but those jobs are
generally not as high in quality or pay as the other.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that you have to know networking
and nothing about systems or vice versa. It always helps to have a
*little* experience with the other field, but I have not found it
beneficial to have one foot in each field on a continuing basis. IOW,
I do believe you should know a little about OS's in being a net admin
or vice versa. I disagree that it is advantageous (from a career
standpoint) to attempt to be experts in both fields.

>You're right about the original poster capitalizing on his experience
>and staying under the same title as experience itself has become the
>hottest commodity right now. However, for a good techie, gathering
>certifications should be easy and he should get the certifications if
>only because everyone else is getting them, and he wouldnt want to be
>left out. For any system/net admin, I think the usual college degree,
>3 years experience, MCSE and CCNA form the 'must have' basis on which
>he can build more (CCIE, RHCE, CISSP, SCNA, IBM certs).
>
>These are only my observations of the market and I've not been around
>too long. Please feel free to correct me.

--Bernie

Ghazan Haider

2003-09-02, 3:37 pm

I believe you when you say specialization is more beneficial over
diversification of skills in this market. Given the years of
experience for the original poster, I would suggest that to him/her
too.

I havent been in the market long enough however, and in my case,
diversification of skills is the only option, as opposed to waiting to
gain at least 7 years of experience. I'm not a big fan of servicing
phone lines and managing Windows spyware on the systems along with
networking stuff either, but after the anticipated CCIE, I can only
see the UNIX sysadmin market to augument my skills.

Here in Canada, using workopolis.ca and monster.ca, most network
related positions come with a barrage of other requirements, usually
(HP and IBM) snmp tools, various UNIXen, security certs,
specialization in markets like medical or manufacturing, and a good
experience with Microsoft OSes. Higher level positions that require 8+
years of experience also demand these, in addition to the 'leadership'
experience requirements. I would be curious to know of other
specialization certifications or paths (other than the CCIE) related
to networking positions.

Sponsored Links