From: Marko Milivojevic (markom@markom.info)
Date: Tue Nov 25 2008 - 02:51:20 ARST
> I am very very confident that if a person can not answer CCNA/CCNP level
> questions he can not be run and manage CCIE LEVEL network (Is there any CCIE
> LEVEL network on the moon becasue my friends on the list are still not
> accepting that CCIE can work on lower level network).
I beg to differ.
While I can understand how that interview went and that candidate in
question was less than top quality, don't for a second assume that you
know everything. Especially something "easy" that you read 5-6 years
ago. I was reading CCNA almost 7 years ago. I'm entirely sure that
there is stuff in that material that would leave me wondering for few
minutes and lead me to reply that I had no idea. Would that make me a
lesser CCIE? What about the fact that most CCIE's have less and less
hands-on experience as the time goes by and focus on other tasks?
Pre-sales, customer presentation, network design, etc.
If we are really strict, how many of us would be ready to bet their
numbers and do "take it or leave it" ad-hoc lab again? After 6 months,
I was sure I could do it. After 12 months, yeah, probably. After 18
months, well, if I studied for a week or so...
All this doesn't defend proverbial Ali, but I want to re-raise another
point. Something that after more than 10 years of experience I
consider the golden rule of networking:
"IF IT AIN'T BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT!"
Now, for something completely different.
<rant>
Customer network was working with a hub and they were happy? Good for
them, I ain't touching that. Then again, this is common sense talking.
Ali was, of course, trying to get a job with a partner or some other
box pusher. OF COURSE, the correct answer was replace the hub. Not
because of something as silly as breaking up some domain that they
couldn't care less about. The real answer was: We get the money if we
replace it. Even better if network starts behaving weirdly - we get
more consulting hours. Perhaps they are under attack, let's sell them
ASA, IDS, IPS, MARS, <insert your gadget of choice>. Our Ali couldn't
tell them that, or there would be no job for him and he wasn't witty
enough to come with an collision domain excuse :-). Bad for Ali, we
can't have unwitty people be our contractors now, can we? ;-)
</rant>
-- Marko CCIE #18427 (SP) My network blog: http://cisco.markom.info/Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
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