When you finish university you think to yourself “Right, that’s it, no more study, no more exams!”
But it doesn’t work that way, especially in my field. It turns out that if you want to, you can keep sitting exams pretty well forever. “Certification” is big business in the IT field. Vendors push certifications, encouraging people to study details of their products, and pass electronic exams on them.
The theory is that if you want to deploy and manage say Cisco products, then you can hire someone who has achieved CCNP, and assume that they will have a certain amount of knowledge about Cisco routers and switches. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way – you might just have been able to memorise enough stuff to pass the exam, but be crap at actually doing stuff in the real world. There are also many highly experienced engineers I have worked with who have never completed any certifications.
There are many different certifications out there, some of them very popular, some no longer in fashion. Vendors will often have different levels, e.g. basic, intermediate, advanced. There are also vendor-neutral certifications, such as CISSP, which covers computer security without focusing on any one product or company.
Many engineers never bother with any certifications, but I do. Why? For one it makes me learn about things that I don’t necessarily use every day at work, but am interested in. It keeps me fresh, and helps if I want to move my career in a different direction. It does also help if I am looking for a new job, as it helps validate my experience. It’s not quite such a big thing in New Zealand, where everyone knows everyone, but in overseas markets, many jobs will specify minimum qualifications, just so that HR can weed out people.
Over the years, I’ve picked up CCNA, CCDA, CCNP, CCDP, CCSE, RHCE and CISSP. Along the way I’ve had a few others that I’ve let expire – that is of course the problem with having multiple certifications, they need to be renewed. The more you have, the more time you end up renewing them. That’s what I’ve just been up to, renewing my CCNP and CCDP. I had to pass a routing exam to do this. Routing is not a big part of what I do these days, making it a bit challenging. Probably not quite as challenging as when I last renewed it, three years ago in Singapore, after a year on the road, not even doing any technical work. It wasn’t easy, but I passed, and now that’s covered for another 3 years.
I’m now seriously considering studying for CCIE, a very high level networking certification. It will take me at least 6-9 months to complete, with a high chance of failure the first time I try sitting the lab exam. Put this together with the fact that Anna is working hard at university, and our flatmate is going to be studying part time while working full time, and things are going be to a bit dull and studious around here for a while…