Tag Archives: Continuing Education

The Power of Continuing Education on Certifications

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I’m about six months away from recertifying my CCIE and even though I could just go Emeritus now I’m working on completing some continuing education at the end of the year to push it out another three years. I am once again very thankful that Cisco has this as an option instead of taking a test over and over again as the only option to renew my certifications.

As I embark on another journey to keep myself current in the networking community, I realize that the flexibility that education credits offer is more important that just passing a test or learning a new skill. Employers should also be thrilled that knowledge workers have the ability to work on other skills and be recognized for them. Because there are two different paths that this can lead to.

To Be The Best

One of the things that most professionals recognize with continuing education is that you can leverage your skills to race through things. If you’re already an expert at something like BGP or spanning tree why not take courses to improve the depth of your knowledge? This is part of the reason why there are a number of double CCIEs that have Routing and Switching and Service Provider. The skill sets have a big overlap which makes the additional study to pass the other relatively painless.

Taking pride in practicing the same skill set over and over again is something we traditionally associate with athletes and other skill positions. It is a very valid way of showing everyone that you truly are an expert at your craft. Knowing every nuance of the protocol or understanding it to a degree not possessed by anyone else is a real accomplishment. The value you gain in troubleshooting situations is unmatched. It’s easy to become the authoritative source on something because you’ve literally studied every piece of material on it and you know it inside out.

The downside of this kind of approach is that you naturally gravitate toward being an expert on exactly one or two things. Like a cake baker you are great at making one specific kind of thing. You may have more than enough work to keep you occupied for years but if the market shifts you may find yourself in trouble. The deep learning method works with technology that doesn’t get superseded quickly. IP routing is here to stay but we also said the same thing about traditional telephony and FORTRAN. Those may still exist in some form today and the experts are still needed to make them work but they aren’t nearly as big as they used to be.

Covering the Rest

The opposite of a deep expert is one that has a wide breadth of knowledge. This is the area where I feel a continuous learning program really shines. That’s because access to knowledge outside of your specific discipline can be hard to come by without help. Having a list of approved courses for a CE portal steers you in a good direction to take advantage of these offerings.

I remember telling people that I knew I was starting to gain on my knowledge and certification journey when I stopped finding the books I needed at the local book store. That’s absolutely true for those that are trying to reach the pinnacle of their specific skill set. However, those basic books are great to jump into an area you may not be familiar with.

You may think that you can spend your time studying and practicing and getting expert skill levels in a few key areas but you also need to realize that things can shift. Networking professionals today also need to understand programming and cloud and many other aspects of enterprise IT. It’s not even a case that knowing how to use those things is just easier. Instead it’s a case of requiring knowledge in those areas to understand how they interact so you can build more complete systems. You might be able to work on technology with a specific skill set but you won’t be able to work on anything new if you don’t know how all the parts work together.

You may not like the idea of studying lots of different areas of knowledge and that’s totally fine. But if you don’t at least understand that some knowledge of other areas is needed you’re going to find yourself opting out of many opportunities to work on things that are going to be important later.

Tom’s Take

You can choose to be the deep expert or the designer with breadth. The important thing is that the choice is yours thanks to the foresight of companies that embrace a model of learning over regurgitation. If you want to pick up new skills and get credit for them you can. If you’d prefer to be the best at a given discipline then the world is your oyster. No matter what you have the ability to make a choice that isn’t studying for a test every couple of years that doesn’t expand your knowledge. To me, the real value of a CE program is how it makes us all better.

Mythbusting the CCIE Continuing Education Program

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It’s been about a month since the CCIE Continuing Education program was announced ahead of Cisco Live. There was a fair amount of discussion about it both on this blog as well as other places, like Jeff Fry’s post. Overall, the response has been positive. However, there are a few questions and ideas about the program that are simply not true. And no, this is not The Death Of The CCIE Program (just Google it). So, let’s take a look at this edition of Mythbusters for the CCIE CE program.

Myth #1: The CE Program Is Just A Way For Cisco To Sell More Training

This was a good one. The list of CE classes that was release at the beginning of the program included Cisco Live classes as well as Cisco Authorized training classes. Those were the only thing on the list as of right now. When some people saw the list, they jumped to the conclusion that the reason why the CE program exists is because Cisco wants to push their training courses. Let’s look at that.

Let’s say you want to start a global program that requires people to keep track of their training credits to turn them in for some kind of reward, whether it be money or credit for something else. Do you:

  1. Open the program for submissions of any kind and then hire a team to sort through them all to verify that they are legitmate
  2. Use a small list of verified submissions that can be audited at any time internally and are known to be of good quality based on existing metrics

I can only imagine that you would pick #2 every time. Remember that the CCIE CE program is barely a month old. It was announced so people could start taking advantage of it at Cisco Live. The list of classes included on the list was small on purpose. They were Cisco affiliated classes on purpose. The CCIE team can audit these classes easily with internal metrics. They can drop in on them and ensure the content is high quality and appropriate for learners. They can revoke classes deemed too easy or add advanced classes at any time.

The list of training classes looks the way it does because Cisco thinks that these are classes that CCIEs would learn from. They weren’t picked at random to get class sizes higher or to make more profit for Cisco. These classes are something that people would benefit from. And if you’re going to be taking the class anyway or are looking to take a class on a subject, wouldn’t you rather take one that you can get extra credit for?

Myth #2: The CCIE CE Program Was Designed to Sell More Cisco Live Conference Passes

Another chuckle-worthy conclusion about the CCIE CE program. People assumed that because Cisco Live courses were included in the acceptable courses for CE credits, Cisco must obviously be trying to push people to register for more Cisco Live courses, right?

It is true that the CCIE CE program was announced right before Cisco Live 2017. I personally think that was so the CCIEs attending the conference could get credit toward any classes they had booked already. Yes, the courses count. And yes, the longer 4-hour and 8-hour Techtorial classes count for more credits than the 1-hour sessions. But, there is a limit to how many classes count for credit at Cisco Live in total. And there is a cap of 70 credits per cycle on Cisco Live credits in total.

Even if Cisco wanted to use the CCIE CE program to push Cisco Live attendance, this isn’t the best way to do it. The Cisco Live option was to reward those that went anyway for things like advanced training classes and the CCIE NetVet lunch with the CEO. If Cisco wanted to make the CCIE dependent on Cisco Live, they could easily go back to the model of a specific conference just for CCIE recert as they did in the past. They could also just require a specific number of 3000-level classes be taken to recertify, again as in the past, instead of awarding points for other things like Techtorials. Thanks to Terry Slattery for helping me out with these last two points.

Additionally, tying CCIE CE credits to Cisco Live is a horrible way to push conference attendance. Most of the “cool stuff” happening at Cisco Live right now is happening in the DevNet Zone. Many people that I talked to ahead of the conference this year are strongly considering getting Explorer or Social passes next year and spending the whole time in the DevNet Zone instead of the conference proper. If Cisco wanted to push Cisco Live conference pass purchases, they would lock the DevNet Zone behind a more expensive pass.

Myth #3: There Are No Third Party CCIE CE Credits Because Cisco Hates Competition

This myth is currently a half truth. Yes, there are no third party CCIE CE options as of July 2017. Let’s go back to myth #1 and take a look at things. Why would Cisco open the program to the whole world and deal with all the hassle of auditing every potential source of CE credits just after launching the program? Sure, there are a lot of great providers out there. But, for every Narbik bootcamp there’s a bunch of shady stuff going on that isn’t on the up-and-up. But investigating the difference requires time and manpower, which aren’t easy to come by.

Ask yourself a simple question: Do you think Cisco will never have third party options? I can almost guarantee you the answer is no. Based on conversations I had with CCIE program people at Cisco Live this year, I would speculate that the CCIE CE program will expand in the future to encompass more training options, including third parties. I would bet the first inclusions will be certified trainers offering official courses. The next step will be auditing of classes for inclusion, like bootcamps and other semi-official classes. Expansion will be slow, but the classes that make the grade will help enhance the program.

What won’t be included? Youtube videos. Training webinars that are just cleverly disguised promotional pitches. Anything that is given without any way to track down the author and verify their knowledge level. And, as much as it pains me, I can almost guarantee that blog posts won’t count either. Cisco wants to be able to verify that you learned something and that you put in the effort. The only way to do that is through class attendance auditing and verification. Not through Youtube views or blog post counters.

Tom’s Take

For a program that’s less than a month old, there were a lot of people rushing to pass judgement on the hard work put into it. To pronounce the death of something that has endured for more than 20 years is a bit presumptuous. Is the current version of the CCIE CE program perfect? Nope. However, it’s better than the lack of a CE program we had three months ago. It’s also a work-in-progress that will only get better over time. It’s a program that Cisco is going to put significant investment into across the entire certification portfolio.

Rather than tearing down the hard work of so many people for the sake of ego stroking, let’s look at what was delivered and help the CCIE program managers build a bigger, better offering that helps us all in the long run. Cisco wants their CCIEs to succeed and go far in the networking world. And that’s no myth.