This one has been coming for a while… Last time I went for my CCIE was Q3 2007 and it’s been pretty quiet here since.

In the mean time I’ve moved country, changed jobs and moved again, though not as far. So how is my CCIE doing? Well to be honest, it’s not. You see, I came from a sponsored certification track -which incidentally I forged with my employer at the time- and thus had to sort out a transfer sum from my new employer. No problem for the Dutch employment market, at least at the time. But here in the UK I had no such luck, suffice to say that financially it was not a good idea to move country. My new employer expressed that they would be happy to support attaining CCIE status. Little did I know that we had completely different concepts of ‘support’.

Loving a new challenge I quickly settled into my new position, only to find two years had gone before the question of attaining CCIE popped up again. No wonder really when you have a 100% billable target and there’s plenty of over time involved in the projects at hand. Then when things settled down and I moved to another customer I only found myself further and further away from (CCIE related) technology.

Yes, I still design and do have a consulting role but I’m in no way challenged and kept on my toes protocol wise. It took a few technical interviews to fully realise the impact of this. Which brought me to this point: Either, I work and retrain myself towards CCIE in my own time, hope my employer will pay for the lab and favour me with a mere week off for full-time study. Or do I let go of the desire to attain CCIE and trust that there will be employers out there who are smart enough not to be blind sided by the highly praised numbers of my peers.

My choice has been to no longer pursue CCIE. I can’t ask my family for a long and hefty sacrifice once again, we’ve been there done that. I’m now one kid and two cancers (promisestoday.com /@maizymoo tweet) further and value my own time more than my career, if this means UK employers don’t like me any more than so be it. I know what I’m capable of, just wish I was better at convincing prospective employers…

[Above edited, below added – Jan 27th 2014]

Sad thing is that the CCIE we find ourselves hiring. often do not have the consultancy skills needed to satisfy our customer’s needs. To the HR managers out there: Hiring a CCIE does not mean, you get good communication skills, customer facing skills or even basic networking experience for that matter. Trust me I know, I’ve had to replace a number of (single, dual and a quad) CCIEs on various projects where things had gone so bad we were about to lose all future business.

Don’t get me wrong, I value certifications and see them as a good means for career progression. I do have issue though with the UK market putting so much pressure on individuals to develop themselves, alienating them completely from a corporate drive to improve through a shared responsibility. UK employer – employee relationships have become too one sided… For more on this see a recent article of mine.

Tags: CCIE,cisco
Categories: CCIE R&S, Main blog, Work
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