RE: Are CCIEs and other Cisco certifications as valuable as they used to be?
I agree with what most of you are saying. The 'paper' cert is losing its value. The question now is, what is it being used for? Once upon a time, it was the result of an IT professional spending years in their field and then obtaining the cert. However, that is no longer the case. Now, you take the boot camp and get the cert. In fact, today, that is the only way to get the entry level job. Does any else here remember that if you had a college degree, any college degree, you were guaranteed a job right out of college. No longer the case. In today's environment, the most successful engineer has both the cert and the experience. Getting the cert first, despite how one acheives it, shows that they have at least been exposed to most aspects of what they will face when they get out there. People are complaining that it is only experience that counts, but how do you get that experience today? You have to have the cert. The heady days of the 90's, the Wild West of IT is over. We are maturing as an industry and cutting our teeth in the most difficult economic time that any of us can remember, and we are succeeding and in some cases flourishing (depending, of course on geography and political situations). Get your certs, get your experience. You need both.
