CCIE Is it worth it? What path should you take?

what's up rockstar engineers and welcome back to the next gen t youtube channel i'm rob reicher your instructor and mentor here at nextgen team in this video we're going to cover the value of the ccie and how nextgen t zero to engineer program can get you started alright let's dive in so if you're watching this video you're probably wondering what certifications would look best on your resume where you should spend your time and how to climb up in the industry yeah we all have those questions right but where should you start can you dive right in and start studying for the cca right now i had that question when i first started studying for the ccie i would hear the question and the comment and things like it's really really really hard to get is it really worth it it takes so much time to acquire and the answer to it to be honest with you is it's absolutely worth it you know having been through the process myself i can tell you firsthand that it's 100 worth the time and effort you get one of these cool plaques when you finally do pass the the lab exam so if you've got multiple ccies you get multiple plaques this one just happens to be for the writing and switching track so when we talk about value that's just one piece of it right but in order to understand the full value of the ccie we need to really understand what ccie is so let's define that first ccie stands for cisco certified internetwork expert so it's cisco systems top technical implementation certification now there are other expert level certifications out there as well as ccde and ccar but those are design and architect certifications not technical implementation and troubleshooting exams like ccie so the cool thing about it is it's a technical career certification and it's offered by cisco so therefore for those of you that have gone after ccna or ccp or that's in your game plan to go achieve you go attack ccna and ccnb first and then you get your ccid after that the big difference here between ccna and ccmp and ccie is that ccna and ccnp are written exams meaning you go to a pearson view location you do the clickity click stuff and then boom you get your results right away in ccie it's not a written exam it's 100 lab based so there are no multiple choice questions you've got to know how to get things working so if you're in the u.s you go to a place in texas richardson texas specifically just outside of dallas and you take the exam the exam is eight hours long and after you've done the eight hour exam then you will usually get your results within about 48 hours after you've taken the test so the results are not instant so for those of you that are taking the ccda or ccnp and you're used to seeing that congratulations you've passed or unfortunately we were rich to inform you you failed you failed to meet the minimum requirements or whatever the verbiage is ccie doesn't give you that warm fuzzy feeling when you're done you walk out of there you kind of know whether or not you passed i knew on my third attempt at the cca lab in 2015 i walked out of there knowing that i had passed it was just waiting for cisco to go through their process and give me the thumbs up and eventually giving me my number where in ccna and ccp you get your results right away now your results do come in via notification via email so you get an email from ccie at cisco.com and then you have to click the little url in the email and that redirects you to the portal that you authenticate to and then in really small letters so you get the pass or fail and you can get your score report your cca number's in there i like this stuff so it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling i remember getting that email it was october 20th 2015 at about quarter to two in the morning i we literally just got back from the airport because i flew from north carolina back to milwaukee and i remember opening that email up and i ran through the house like a chicken with my head cut off i was so stoked but i had taken an exorbitant amount of time to earn it three attempts and nearly ten thousand dollars to to earn the ccie so it's absolutely something that you have to be a 100 all in it's not something you can be even remotely like i'm not really sure so specifically it's not something you wake up one day and just declare you're going to go after it's definitely a long-term commitment so a very large portion of a extended year plan so some people have the intention of doing it in four years some people want to do it in 10 years i was kind of gung-ho on it i got into a group of engineers a study group and a lot of those guys were really motivated and their motivation motivated me so i put everything else on the back burner and i just went after it one of the things that i had to do when i went after was i had to communicate to my wife and my family that i was gonna go attack it because this is something where there were several occasions where i stayed home you know they would go out of town for the weekend to give me quiet time and i would study the entire weekend so from the time i woke up you know friday evening until some early time of the morning three four five in the morning all day saturday and all day sunday i was studying but what that did is it ramped up my learning process and made it very very easy for me to understand stuff and the job you know the network engineering jobs that i was doing the consulting projects i was working on they became really really easy to execute because i was always leveling up my understanding i was always taking my technical expertise to the next level week after week after week on average it takes about a year to two in order to prepare for the ccie so i started july 31st of 2014 i passed the ccia written exam which is now no longer an actual test you take it's now a the the new ccnp core exams for the particular track you're in that's your new written exam now having been through the process myself and i can speak from firsthand experience that you really need a ccnp in order to kick off ccie now you can do ccie without any prereqs so you can do you can jump right off and dive right into ccie but you really need a ccnp level of understanding both theory and implementation in order to be successful with ccie so ccp is definitely a good foundation for those that are thinking about pursuing it it's not about the destination it's all about the journey because one of the things that i found when i was first starting to study for it i would watch other ccas work and be like wow i want to be like that guy or that girl and be that well versed in that particular technology the cool thing is once you pass it it's a huge milestone i remember getting a lot of praise and recognition you know congratulations you passed linkedin twitter youtube all blew up right it was all congratulations for those that understood the time and the commitment the value of the cca comes from lots and lots of time spent lagging up the different capabilities and things like that if you just go into just read the technologies and you understand the theory and stuff like that that on its own is not enough to pass the lab exam you have to actually implement a number of capabilities so the lab exam makes you prove that you can implement the tasks and get everything up and running so having a ccie is a big differentiator as well though so now that we understand more or less the behind the scenes and you know kind of the the one two three steps in order to get started why is cca such a big deal so or why do i feel like it's such a big deal um a lot of other ccies i know think about it the same way so one of the things that it does enable you is to be way more competitive in the job market so i've gone from ccnv to ccie and my salary dramatically increased and also the rules also increased so i went from just being a network engineer to a senior engineer i was also a solutions architect and a network architect what's the difference between those two not a whole lot network architects are more focused on the operations and getting things to work a certain way where solutions architects are trying to integrate with other things maybe green elevating a brownfield environment things like that now according to ziprecruiter it's the average cca salary is about 150 000 a year so you have a just about a you'll understand where about you can fit into it and that's you're not guaranteed that that's just the average some people make way more than that so depending on the market depending on the part of the country you live in uh speaking for those of you that are here based in the us that's basically where that comes from having the knowledge and the search on your resume definitely does make you more desirable and the cool thing about it is the reason why you're so desirable is because there's only 60 to 66 000 of us out there so for the past six months or so the time of this recording you can't take a cca lab so from march until september the cca labs were shut down they're just now starting to open back up so no one's been able to pass the cca lab since march when they close down to the labs and that's all lab locations so those i know people that were planning on taking the cca lab and they're like uh it is what it is with that being said now we have to understand what steps should you take if you're new so if you're new to it there's a few steps you should take before considering ccie so you can add it to your long-term goals for preparing for ccie but you really need a structured approach to attack it so again i'm going to go back to what i talked about earlier just about everyone uses ccna and ccnp to prepare for ccie it's very much a crawl walk run approach you can crawl at ccna you walk in ccp and then you can run in ccie now the reality of it is you will crawl walk around at each level because there will be new information that's given to you yet to learn a new topic or a new feature things like that are going to happen right you can't get away from that but anything you've already gone over let's say you're taking ospf a little bit deeper you're taking bgp a little bit deeper you know you're going to be that much you're it's going to be that much faster you're going to work through those particular topics because you're going to be that much more familiar with them so as you progress from n a to np to ie you become more and more familiar with the topics so this includes the theory implementation advanced features troubleshooting mastery so on and so forth you will cover the same topic several times so the more times you cover it the more comfortable you become with it right so just like riding a bike or preparing your favorite meal by the time the process is nearly over you will be so well-versed several topics that you will be able to walk into the lab exam and you'll be very comfortable with the tasks that are being handed to you some will be absolutely no-brainers you'll just go in there and you'll crush it others will be like i remember a couple of tasks in all three of my lab attempts where i had to sit back and i had to draw something out and understand each one of the lines of the task and you have to i had to play around with some variables i had to adjust some stuff here and some stuff there i don't give too much away but that was some of the stuff you had to do sometimes you had to might edit and massage your configuration in order to meet the desired results now the cool thing is once you've met the results you're in good shape so let me give you an example so if you have four tasks that you need to configure for one particular section you have to get all four tasks working in order to receive the points for that particular section there is no partial credit so it's either all for one or none at all right when you do go through your exam and you run into problems there is documentation available to you the lab is actually an open book test and you can look up any configuration you need to as long as it's a configuration guide and not like a example of something or a tech node that's written for a specific use case it is slow and not intended for use throughout the exam so you definitely have to know how to manually navigate to the documentation there is no google like search feature so you're out of luck there you can use find so like if you're on a windows box ctrl f and then you can type in whatever it is you're looking for and find that particular feature the thing about the lab itself is it's all about speed and there's interpretation that needs to be used as you're going through the different tasks so you gain speed by spending hundreds of hours lapping this stuff up and playing with it and then you're able to interpret what you're being tested in figure having lab and tested everything out so some tasks are easier than others some tasks are more complicated as we already mentioned now when it comes to figuring out whether you've got it right or not there are verification outputs so for example a particular task might have those same four tasks again again you go through and you look at the the verification as long as your output matches theirs you're in good shape there might be other ones where you need to match something like a particular destination you need to be able to reach uh network x for example and there's in the verification output you need to go via 10 1 1 1 and 10 1 1 2. so if you're trying to get to a particular destination and you see 10.1.1.1 and 10.1.2.1 in the verification output if you do a trace route for example to that particular destination and you see 10 1 1 1 show up first and then 10.1.2.1 show up second that's a 100 okay as long as both show up in the output you're in good shape that's basically where that comes from they're not everything is 100 controllable and you need to know that so the way that the forwarding engine works the way the control plane works the control plane directs the forwarding engine on the routers to do what they're supposed to do so as long as your outputs match what they're looking for you're in good shape so if you're at the beginning of your it career and planning your crawl walk or run approach we do have an option for you through the next gen t zero to engineer or zte program where we teach real world skills through hands-on training and help people like yourself level up in it or cyber security in just a few months this program will help you build a strong foundation that goes beyond just a few entry level search on your resume so the zte program begins with basic training with fsna building the foundation of networking so you start off with that learning some basics of networking get everything up and running get some wins and victories under your belt then you transition into ccna where we go through and we help you step by step through the ccna certification process then when you pass your ccna you can dive into the advanced training portion you get the hail with me where we focus on fsnp we're more project focused at this point because you're a little bit more advanced you know some more stuff you go through advanced training with me you go through the projects and then you end up rolling out the full stack network professional certification and the sqc by the time you're all set up and done with that you're in a really good spot to begin diving into your ccnp which again is a good starting point for ccie so don't forget that you need to have a ccmp before you detect ccie you can't just dive right in because you'll sit there for two years before you get there if you've learned something new from this video give us a thumbs up hit that subscribe button i'm rob reicher instructor and mentor thanks for watching do you know what time it is it's time to level up and become a rockstar engineer i'll see you in the next video thanks everybody jacob hess here thank you for watching the video i hope you really enjoyed it and i'd also like to remind you if you're truly serious about your career in information technology be sure to check out our it engineer training programs at dot www.zero2engineer.com

Channel: NexGenT

Views: 18,516

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Id: xiDn8Yl45lI

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020