Microsoft/Cisco certs

[zx10guy]

I also will reiterate that experience is very important. Many times more important than certs. I have also reached a point in my career where my experience speaks louder than any cert. I haven't had any issues having companies interested in my services. Key is I stay hands on and have had exposure with a lot of different IT disciplines and doing architectural design (designed and deployed a new data center/campus infrastructure, migrated old infrastructure to new, and kept a couple of field locations up and running all at the same time). This experience was critical when I last interviewed with Cisco. I was placed in front of 5 CCIEs with one of them having multiple CCIE certs and was designated a fellow (meaning the company would have to dissolve or he leaves on his own accord before he loses his job there). After going through the gauntlet, I ended up with an offer and a thumbs up from all 5 technical interviewers. The fellow was the toughest as he drew up a building on a white board and then told me to design a campus data center with IP addressing, topology, and equipment to be used for both wired and wireless. After that I had to talk through the data center part and replication. All of that was thrown at me on the fly as he made things up in his head. It was probably the roughest 1.5 to 2 hour interview I've ever had.

Anyways, certs do come into play for some positions even if you do have experience. Many Federal jobs both staff and contracting positions will state certain certs are a requirement before being considered.

One thing you should keep in mind. Once you get into IT, you really need to constantly keep learning and staying up to date. You never stop learning if you want to be relevant...unless you get into some Federal position where you only do X for a few years. I'm in pre-sales now and what I've done to stay relevant is to acquire equipment to build out a home lab. Many networking professionals will also have their own lab setups to constantly practice and try new things.

[davis449]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Anyways, certs do come into play for some positions even if you do have experience. Many Federal jobs both staff and contracting positions will state certain certs are a requirement before being considered.

Crap, I completely forgot this one. Yeah, if you're gonna go gov., certs are a must.

One thing you should keep in mind. Once you get into IT, you really need to constantly keep learning and staying up to date. You never stop learning if you want to be relevant...unless you get into some Federal position where you only do X for a few years. I'm in pre-sales now and what I've done to stay relevant is to acquire equipment to build out a home lab. Many networking professionals will also have their own lab setups to constantly practice and try new things.

I'll relate an interesting experience I've had with my current position I took 2.5 years ago. I worried a lot about losing some of my hands-on skills when I took this position where I have to work every issue from every client remotely. I found that I am now really developing an ability to do it all "blind", so-to-speak. Prior to this, I was doing all this work myself or with co-workers and had the ability to see it and lay my hands on it. It's given me another challenge.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by davis449

I'll relate an interesting experience I've had with my current position I took 2.5 years ago. I worried a lot about losing some of my hands-on skills when I took this position where I have to work every issue from every client remotely. I found that I am now really developing an ability to do it all "blind", so-to-speak. Prior to this, I was doing all this work myself or with co-workers and had the ability to see it and lay my hands on it. It's given me another challenge.

The ability to have someone describe a problem, you ask relevant questions to gain a better picture, and then formulate a resolution plan is important. I've developed this skill over the years when peers/customers call me to ask for advice.

But hands on is still pretty important. With all the various systems out there, I find myself having to get keyboard time to remember things. Since the OP started this around networking, if I didn't have a Juniper EX4200 switch in my lab, I would easily forget all the things I've learned playing with it. For those that haven't touched a JUNOS switch, it's a different world. It's nothing like configuring a switch that follows Cisco's IOS syntax. So far to make me touch and refer to the EX4200 periodically, I have it as my main internal routing (layer 3 switch) device for a few VLANs with it exchanging OSPF route information to a Force10 S4810, a Cisco 3560E, and a SonicWall E6500 (just replaced a Cisco ASA5505).

Then there's the whole new development behind SDN (software defined networking) and open networking which there hasn't been an official industry wide recognized certification. The only way to get a good understanding of it is to get your hands dirty. Everyone has their take on this: Big Switch, Pluribus, Cumulus, IP Infusion, Midokura, NEC, and Cisco ACI (which isn't really SDN). There's some really cool stuff out there and the software defined X movement is really starting to take off.