From: nrf (noglikirf@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Oct 14 2007 - 02:59:31 ART
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Morris" <smorris@ipexpert.com>
To: "'nrf'" <noglikirf@hotmail.com>; "'Rahmlow, Howard F.'"
<Howard.F.Rahmlow@unisys.com>; <sheherezada@gmail.com>
Cc: "'Burkett, Michael'" <Michael.Burkett@c-a-m.com>; "'Brad Ellis'"
<brad@ccbootcamp.com>; "'Christopher M. Heffner'"
<cheffner@certified-labs.com>; "'Eric Dobyns'" <eric_dobyns@yahoo.com>;
"'Brian Dennis'" <bdennis@internetworkexpert.com>; <ccielab@groupstudy.com>;
<security@groupstudy.com>; <comserv@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 8:20 AM
Subject: RE: CCIE Lab Price Increase
> Ok, so now it comes down to the whole premise that you believe the
> shortage
> of seats is taken up by this amorphous group of people who ping-flood the
> lab until passing.
I never said that the shortage was SOLELY caused by this group of people.
But clearly, it doesn't help. Again, the mathematics seem to be quite
clear. If you fail the exam 20 times, you have effectively taken up 20
seats that could have been used by others. In other words, you are taking
up far more than your fair share. Is this really such a difficult point to
understand?
>
> Now, being that there's no preferential treatment when it comes to
> signing
> up for lab dates, I'm interested in just how you think this group really
> is
> causing that problem, or if you are asserting that the VAST MAJORITY of
> people take it over and over and over and over until passing which is
> causing the shortage of seats.
See above. I never said that the vast majority of people take it over and
over again, or that that particular group is the only one causing probems.
But at the same time, these people are relatively easy to identify. That's
why I am concentrating on them.
I'll give you an example. Let's say that you work for a company like Cisco
that gives out free soda. Then you notice some people hauling away piles of
free soda away, possibly to give it to their families or whatnot. That
might be fine if the company gives out so much free soda that everybody gets
what they want regardless But what if that doesn't happen? What if you
happen to be one of the guys who can't get a soda at all because somebody
else had snarked away a whole pile for himself? How fair is that?
>
> Shortsighted view IMHO. There may be people who keep taking it and keep
> taking it, but if they keep paying, why would Cisco care to dissuade them?
> You can only sign up for one date at a time. So someone has to take a
> lab,
> figure out they failed and try to sign up again. How they sign up again
> is
> the same process that everyone else goes through.
Again, see above. The most important reason why Cisco (and everybody else)
should care is because lab seats are constrained, and others are not able to
get the lab seat that they want because these guys are taking up so many of
them.
Let me make the soda analogy specific to the case at hand. Let's say there
are a whole bunch of different sodas (Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, etc.)
Furthermore, let's say that everybody could get only 1 soda at a time
(similar to what happens now with the CCIE exam scheduling). But, after
obtaining your soda, you can keep returning to the back of the line over and
over again and keep getting more soda that way. So some guys will keep
going back through the line 20 times and taking 20 sodas. How do you think
that makes the guy who only wanted 1 soda, but a specific kind (i.e. a Diet
Coke), but finds out there are none available, and then finds out that some
other guy took 5 Diet Cokes out of the 20 total sodas he took?
That above situation is analogous to what is happening with the CCIE exam
right now. Some people can only take the test at certain times. For
example, he might have a work or family conflict that allows him to travel
to the test center at only certain times. What if he can't get a potential
seat on one of his available days that he can take the exam because some of
these perpetual test takers have taken the seats?
A more fair way to hand out sodas (or test seats) is to simply enact a rule
that you can't just keep going to the back of the line over and over again
to collect more goods, when other people haven't even had the chance to get
one soda (or lab seat). Sure, if everybody has had their fill of sodas,
and there are still some extras available, you can have them. But you have
to give everybody a fair shot at getting one. You can't just hog all the
sodas.
Another way to accomplish the same thing is to enact a prioritization system
for seats. For example, if 5 people want the same seat, then the guy who
has already taken the exam 20 times should be given lower priority. Why?
Again, because that guy has already had 20 shots. I think it's fair that he
should defer to somebody who has had fewer attempts. Just like if you've
already picked up 20 sodas, it's fair for you to let somebody who hasn't
even had 1 soda to be given prioroity.
>
> I just had a hell of a time finding a voice lab date after dropping my
> 10/19
> date last month. I'm not given any special treatment either, nor would I
> expect any. So you are attempting to solve a problem that you honestly
> don't know exists, at least not in the magnitude you appear to think it
> does.
Well, if the problem is really a small one, then it's easy to fix, right?
After all, if there are only a few such people who take the exam over and
over again, then it's relatively easy to devise a system that places
sanctions on them.
>
> So your "test seat hogs" are really no statistical variant simply from the
> quantity of people trying to gain this certification. With bar exams,
> CPA,
> CFA or others, the benefit that they have is that there are several
> locations across the US (perhaps one per state, but that's a diluted pool
> vs. CCIE which is worldwide) and they also sit several hundred people at a
> time as opposed to the limited number of CCIE seats. So the two really
> are
> not related in terms of solutions or in terms of problems.
Exactly right. You just alluded to the difference in the problem: the CCIE
problem is WORSE. Why? PRECISELY because of the limited number of CCIE
test seats. So what you just stated here, of which you are exactly right,
actually supports MY case. It is PRECISELY because not everybody can get
seats when they want them is why you need a system that deters those people
who are taking away too many seats. You want to take the Bar 20 times?
Fine. You're not preventing anybody else from taking the Bar. But if you
take the CCIE 20 times, you ARE hindering others.
>
> I can say lots of things about my grades and such. Not the least of which
> is that if I were still 22 and applying for a job, my grades would speak a
> lot about my ability to follow through to a commitment and things along
> those lines which is what most evaluations are done for. Now that I've
> been
> out of college for over 15 years, chances are that I'm not the same person
> I
> was back then, and MOST employers are simply interested that I have a
> BA/BS
> degree to begin with.
>
> If an employer really was that interested in having my grades, I would
> inform them that while they could have them, I would be interested in
> knowing what information that would think would be relevant and perhaps it
> would affect my decision about whether it was a company worth working for
> or
> not. Now, perhaps that's just me, but if anyone is going to dive into
> that
> kind of detail and pretend to make some ongoing decision about me as a
> person based on things I essentially did as a child, then I would be
> concerned with what other short-sighted decisions would be made about
> other
> things along the way.
Fair enough, but all you are saying here actually makes my proposals even
more amenable. After all, you said it yourself, many employers don't care
about your grades, because you have experience. Similarly, I am quite sure
that many employers won't really care how many times you took the CCIE exam
before you finally passed, again, because you have experience. So if that
is the case, then why not make that information public?
What I am saying is that I think information should be made available, and
it should be up to the employers to decide what they want to do with that
information. The less information is available, the more distorted markets
tend to be.
Besides, let me turn the question around. If it is really true that the guy
who failed the exam 20 times before finally passing is just as good (on
average) as the guy who took the exam 1 or 2 times before passing, then
surely, the market will figure this out, and hence the former guy will be at
no hiring disadvantage relative to the latter guy. Hence, why not make the
information public? The only logical reason I can see is that these guys
are NOT of the same quality (again, on average), and hence the former guy
obviously WANTS to hide the information because he wants to appear to be of
higher quality than he really is. But while that's obviously a good
selfish reason for wanting to hide information, that's not good for the
system as a whole. It's like getting bad grades in school and then trying
to hide them from your parents. Sure, you obviously want to hide those bad
grades from your parents, but that doesn't mean that the school should let
you hide them from your parents.
>
> As for Google, what you are leaving out is that they also set out to hire
> a
> younger crowd. And with the younger crowd, the college degree/transcripts
> were the best way to measure the people, their personality, their drive
> and
> accomplishments. The CCIE is a varied age group, a varied ethnic and
> socio-economic group, so it really does not apply.
A relatively younger crowd, sure. But not THAT young. Even in 2003, Google
was hiring plenty of highly experienced people.
I can use other examples. You want to become a consulting associate at
McKinsey, or any of the other major strategy houses? You want to be an
investment banking associate at one of the Wall Street bulge bracket firms?
You NEED high grades just to get an interview. These jobs also require
significant prior experience in addition to those high grades. But you
can't just say: "Well, I've developed 20 years of experience, so now I'll
just decide one fine day to apply to become an investment banker at Goldman
Sachs." Uh-uh. You won't even get into the door.
The point is, there are quite a few companies out there that place a great
premium on grades. We can agree or disagree as to whether that is right,
but we can't deny that it is a reality. Frankly, I don't think it's much of
a coincidence that so many of these firms also happen to be some of the most
desirable employers in the world. For example, all those people who got
into Google in 2003 were given pre-IPO stock options, and in fact, I'm sure
that a big reason why they wanted to join Google is because they knew that
they were about to get in on the biggest tech IPO in recent history. I'm
sure those guys are laughing all the way to the bank.
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