Now that I have passed the CCIE Lab exam people are asking me “What are the CCIE benefits?”
As for tangible benefits to me personally they are in no particular order:
- I can now go to the CCIE Apparel store and purchase my CCIE Leather Jacket and other clothing with my CCIE digits on them – yay!
- You used to get TAC cases escalated to a L3 engineer by logging it as a CCIE but I am not sure if that is still the case now.
- I of course get my CCIE Plaque through the post which is one of reasons for all those hours of studying.
- Personally I know that I have achieved it and passed the exam which is accepted worldwide as the most prestigious networking certification in the industry.
- It is great to have on your CV and the personal satisfaction of passing this exam is immense.
For my employer they can now use my CCIE number to maintain their partner status.
The question now is how much do you broadcast that you are a CCIE. By achieving this certification you are seen by many as knowing everything, which is certainly not the case.
Without taking anything away from the years of study and the 8 hour exam which I sat through many times, I have proved that I can pass the exam set by Cisco which required me on the day to troubleshoot some issues and configure a network in a specific way defined by Cisco.
Am I going to bring it up in conversation all the time, put it on my email signature and wear my badge everywhere, no.
You prove you are a CCIE by your actions and not your certification.
What I have achieved is a certification. I can now team this with real world experience.
The CCIE does not teach you how to:
- Co-ordinate late night changes on multiple systems from different vendors.
- Create a bill of materials for a new network project.
- Project manage 3 engineers to install new hardware at multiple remote sites with minimal downtime.
The list goes on.
I cannot be happier to have passed the CCIE Lab Exam and it is to date my biggest achievement academically since getting my degree over 20 years ago.
Will I order the leather jacket? I doubt it.
I am just counting the days until my plaque arrives and I can proudly mount it above my desk, and every day be reminded of the journey it took to get there.
The certification is the icing on the cake, it was the journey that made me the person I am today.
Roger
well done Roger!, congrats!, whats your next plan (track|cisco champion|cisco designated vip)?. do you think having a blog gives more credibility to a CCIE certified engineer? i’m interested in blogging but i’m not yet well-versed in writing.
Timothy,
I originally set this blog up as an SEO experiment and a learning tool. I would write about a certain topic which would make me research it and make sure all the information was correct, this made me learn it as well. I would also try to get it to rank as high in google as I could. when I started I had a challenge to rank this site for the search term “CCIE Blog” against a fellow student on one of the INE bootcamps. I currently rank #1 in the UK for the search term so am quite happy with that.
Does this blog give me more credibility as a CCIE?
That is a good question and all I can say is that as long as the content is solid it can not do any harm and I have made some great contacts through the blog over the years.
My advice to you about starting a blog is to just do it. You will learn as you go along.
Roger first of all congrats on getting this magical no. 🙂
Today during search i find your blog and after spending few minutes i feel this gonna very help full during my CCIE R&S prep.
I will be remain in touch and will explore technology from your blog.
Thank you Surjeet, I am moving some pages around at the moment so if you can’t find something use the search function and there are articles on most topics relating to CCIE