Most weeks, I am involved in the discussions of CCIE’s relevance in today’s industry. In this post, I would like to highlight some of my thoughts.

Pre CCIE

When I first joined Cisco, it was a dream to obtain my CCIE. There were many stories of the hardship to obtain your digits and some engineers still could not achieve this status after many years. The CCIEs that I did come across seem to be in a league of their own.

After a while, conversation was steered from IF I would obtain my CCIE to WHEN I would obtain my CCIE. Cisco built great value around CCIE and supports their employees to obtain it.

There are certain points in your career when obtaining your CCIE brought maximum value. When you wanted to change technology or when you want to prove you were an expert in a technology. For me it was the later.

Reflecting back, the three biggest challenges to obtaining my CCIE are:

1. One year of no external disturbances.
2. The blueprint does not change until I have pass.
3. Multiple attempts to pass is expected.

 

Current CCIE

After one year of sleepless nights, no partying and one broken laptop, I was able to obtain my 5 digits. At this point of my life, I was the sharpest person in that technology. I could solve anything, I could lab anything and I could remember everything. The pride I had once I joined this exclusive club is indescribable.

However there are a few negatives, the expectation on you is now exponentially higher and I dread the prep to re-certify every two years.

 

Post CCIE

I am always wondering what is next. Should I get another CCIE? Should I get another vendor’s certification? Should I go back to University and obtain my MBA or Masters?

With the industry moving to Agile, DevOps, Cloud and SDN, is there any value in a CCIE? I believe so. As the following three reasons below, demonstrate the foundation that it has built. So I can evolve and be aligned with the industry.

1. I have the confidence to master any technology. Currently, I am the only SME in EVPN for my highly change resistant company and I have successfully driven early adoption.
2. I fully understand the inputs, outputs and behaviours of a network. Allowing me to assist DevOps to implement Infrastructure As A Code.
3. Most SDN solution require building overlays over traditional networking technologies. Thus, the gap for me to understand the full stack is minimal.