From: Andy's Contact (contact4you@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Oct 10 2007 - 18:40:37 ART
all,
from my mind the main problem is the way how preparation classes and workbooks are used by candidates. i strongly believe that you should know things really well from day to day experience when considering going for ccie certification. if you just want to get the ccie (without years of experience) and you try to get there by buying written exam questions, learning by walking through focused workbooks and going to bootcamps it is the wrong approach (from my perspective). therefore people fail that often; because too many candidates attempt to get certified who really do not have the background they should have.
my understanding of the ccie is that you should have at least two years of experience. and this experience should be at a detailed level across all topics that are part of the blueprint. of course hardly anyone knows everything from the blueprint extremely well - but hey, you "only" need 80 points out of 100, right? practice the few things you do not know that well when preparing for the exam and by at least getting partial points for these areas you should be good with the 20 marks you can miss. such dedicated practice should not take 6 months of your evenings and weekends - as you should only have few gaps.
but of course if not having lots of experience in all topics (or lets say in most of the topics) and nevertheless aiming for ccie you have to learn almost everything using workbooks, bootcamps and by attempting the lab several times.
i know that there are several vendors of bootcamps and workbooks on this list. i know that they do not violate the nda in their products. however, all of them write their courses and books having the actual exam in mind. i am sure that for every single topic of the blueprint there are at least as many details being not covered in these preparation books and classes as there are included in the material. but interestingly those that are included cover everything (and sometimes a bit more) than we face in the lab. all these products are well aligned to the actual labs. and i am not blaming the vendors, it's their business and they just offer what the market requests. i am also sure that most vendors will disagree and tell me that i am wrong. but hey, just think about it: how often do you (internally) note things to be added to your courses just because they have been added to the exam (and i am not talking about updated blueprints just about new tasks/scenarios based on existi!
ng blueprints)? i am sure all of you try to be up to date as you might loose customers otherwise.
when i see mails of people on this and other lists saying they passed their first ccie, so they now focus on the next one, and then go for the third, etc. then i wonder how much they will know about the topics of the first after they passed the third. don't get me wrong, i have deep respect for people passing more than one exam as long as they really know things well. i just believe that some who are clearing one track (immediately) after the other one by attending bootcamps, going through workbooks and requiring several attempts for each track do not really have the knowledge the ccie level (from my mind) should be about: deep knowledge, true understanding and lots of experience; not information about things known to be in the lab (not talking about nda issues but about pretty focused workbooks/bootcamps as mentioned before), quickly and brutally absorbed over a relatively short period of time. especially when not knowing why to do things a certain way, but just being train!
ed to solve task x in a certain way, i believe something is wrong.
requests for a higher level than ccie (as seen here) just shows what i believe has happened: it is too easy to get the ccie for people who (from my mind) should not (yet) be able to get there. the reason for requiring a better certification can only be that this one is not at a high-enough technical level anymore. and i believe it was indeed higher before people started to go for it even if they missed the background: solid understanding and lots of experience. however, a new, higher level could solve that problem; we just need something that differentiates between people with years of experience and deep knowledge from others who do not know that much and for instance do hard in troubleshooting problems efficiently. - and just to make sure: i am not considering people who pass ccie in the way i described above being stupid or just average, i just believe that there are too many people at the (currently) highest possible level and that it does not identify the best of the be!
st anymore but only the larger community of the very good. but introducing a new level might not help in long term as long as people try to get such a certification by any means (bootcamps, x attempts, workbooks, etc.) even if they are not really ready for it. we would have the same situation a bit later again and there would be just some more preparation products on the market.
to finish my thoughts, my recommendations for solving the current problem of being overbooked (and of having a too large pool of experts without further differentiation) are:
1) back to a 2 day exam with at least half a day of troubleshooting at the end
this makes it easier to differentiate between people who just studied how to implement a given scenario versus those who really know what's going on
2) max of 3 attempts per track (maybe allowing access again 3 or even more years after the last attempt)
this should block the try and error attempts and making candidates knowing all possible scenarios. candidates would only go there when really knowing things well
3) grading by two proctors at the third attempt
just for fairness because of the truly hard consequences of 2) when failing the 3rd attempt
4) interval between attempts based on score
i can imagine a range from 3 months (if only missing a few points to the cut score) up to one year (if reaching less than half of the cut score) which candidates have to wait before being allowed to come back. again this makes you going there only if you really believe you are ready for it
5) more different scenarios
there should be higher variation in the tasks. it must be extremely difficult for individuals as well as for vendors of bootcamps/workbooks to know all possible tasks so that preparation is not so much focused on exactly those topics used in the lab today
i know that this will never happen (for multiple reasons), especially when considering economic views from cisco's perspective. 2 days instead of 1 means 50 % of seats, two proctors for 3rd attempts - again "wasting" resources and reducing seats, having more scenarios - even more efforts to be put in... maybe the price has to be doubled to make this work. - just kidding, no worries, all of this will never happen.
but personally, i believe if these rules were in place people would "study" the way i consider right: by every day's work. - and that was my main message above: going for ccie should mean that you know the stuff because you use it every day; you should not miss lots of things which you only start studying because you go the lab. if you are having too many areas that you do not already know fairly well, then maybe ccie is simply not the right thing for you...? to become an expert it takes (or should take) more than working hard for 6 months every evening/weekend by going through bootcamps and workbooks and trying the lab several times. being an expert should mean that you know the stuff from long time experience - from lots of different views and not just from a lab preparation focused perspective.
at the end the title is only worth as much as the knowledge of the people having it. and don't get me wrong regarding bootcamps and workbooks: i consider these products very helpful, but from my mind not for LEARNING, but only to VERIFY your readiness and to identify the areas you need to focus a bit more. learn in your daily life. if your job does not allow that, why do you want to become an expert in this area (at this stage)? maybe it would be better to first look for a job where you can get in touch with the stuff more before trying to get acknowledged as an expert.
and btw, just to get back to the initial topic of this thread, if candidates only looked after the ccie level once they have enough experience the price of the exam would not matter that much as they could pass with less attempts; and finally there would be more seats available.
pretty different view to what i have read so far, guess this will be a lonely opinion...
anyway, do not take this personal if you feel that you do not match my definition of a ccie. it's just a single person's opinion - not worth more or less than all other people's (different) views...
thanks
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Nov 16 2007 - 13:11:13 ART