[FB LIVE] What I Would Do If I Were Starting Over

hey welcome everybody this is Kevin Wallace and I thought I would join you this morning er it's probably not morning where you are but I thought about joining you this morning and answer a really common question that I've been getting just a lot these days I get the question all right Kevin I'm kind of getting into the IT certification space I'm just kind of beginning my career if you were me and you had to start all over again what exactly would you do what would what would be your game plan and I thought we talked about that for a little bit today and maybe it'll give you some insight into what your next step or what your first step should be now let me start off with a disclaimer I'm not you we have different circumstances we have different interests we have different resources we have different employers things are different but I'm not telling you what the steps I'm about to give I'm not saying that's what's necessarily best for you but this is what I would do if I were starting over again today bring you in this industry and I'm hoping from that you're gonna be able to take some insight and know and maybe you say okay it's a little bit clearer now what my next step is so let's jump into it I want to give a big welcome to everybody this joining us looks like we've got a good number I just I just literally this morning decided to do this talk I was thinking okay I'm getting this question a lot I'd really love to chat with people one-on-one let's do a Facebook live chat so I hope you enjoy this and if you do let me know because if it's if it's something you guys like I'd love to do it more and more frequently but let's get down to this topic what would I do if I were starting over again today and I'll tell you my my answer today is different than the answer that I would have given you a couple of years ago a couple of years ago here's what I would've said I mean sketch this out for you I used to visualize things like this I used to think that all the Cisco difference all the different certification tracks and Cisco has they're all relatively the same in popularity yeah sure routes which is probably the most popular so maybe those of you them taking a stats class you're going to recognize this this normal distribution curve and we'll say that this is the this is the mean I will not have routes which up here is the most popular I know maybe sort of middle of the road we might have service provider you might have security up here maybe down here a little bit we've got collaboration but the idea was pretty much any track you take it's gonna fall somewhere within this area they're all great I would tell you I would say pick the track that is most interesting to you because you're gonna be spending a ton of time going down this certification track don't pick a topic just because you think there's gonna be more job demand for it to pick a topic because it's something that you'd love something you really can kick get into and dedicate the next for you up next few years of your life - my answer is change though in the last couple of years and the reason I say that is there have started to emerge a couple of statistical outliers to say with our to stay with our stats metaphor we've got network programmability that is pretty much a necessity these days and we've also got cyber ops or cybersecurity let's talk about these two for a moment first of all network programmability my eyes got really open to that actually a few years ago but it really hit home this year at Cisco live Cisco the CEO Chuck Robbins was giving his keynote and and here's the illustration he gave I won't share this with you he said that traditionally people in this industry have CLI skills now I've been working with Cisco Gear since about about 1989 so I was definitely in this camera I was a COI person and I would guess many of you joining me today you've got some good CLI skills you can get into a router you can configure that interface you can set up spanning tree protocol on a switch you've got some solid CLI skills now others of you or maybe some of your co-workers they have programming skills so they've got this other skill set or they can do programming what Chuck Robbins was telling us was that the sweet spot for the future is to be right in the middle to have an overlap of those two skill sets in this magical overlap area he called that a hybrid a hybrid engineer and that's what I want for you guys and gals joining us on the on the blob call today to be a hybrid engineer we've got a mixture of skill sets we've got both the CLI and the programming you know you can use different I get this question a lot too does it have to be Python can be something else it can be something else but generally it's Python you'll you're going to want to know some Python but here's the fear that I hear from so many people so many people say I've got my CCNA and writing and swishing I've got my CCP and writing and switching is that is that wasted now is it is it any good well I would say yes it is because even though we might be configuring our networks with programs talking directly to those network devices and talking to controllers like an a pic or an APM controller we're still going to need to know what are we doing when we're setting up a low latency cueing what exactly does that mean we don't want to say yeah it's right on low latency cueing we want to know what's going on here we need to be able to to tweak things a little bit so we want to become a hybrid engineer just going to take a quick look I want to stop periodically during our talk today just to catch any questions that might be going on so let's see if we have any questions coming in oh good to see you too I think thanks for that feedback all right I'll be checking this periodically but let's talk about let's talk about cyber ops now Chuck Robin says you're going to need to be a hybrid engineer to be relevant in the future what about cyber ops what's that about well cyber ops almost make a notation here and I've heard different studies on this but around the Year 2019 to 2020 there's gonna be six million cybersecurity jobs available are not available to be six million total cybersecurity jobs in the world now what's staggering about that what just blew my mind was a full fourth of those 25% 1.5 million jobs are gonna be unfilled can you imagine that in 2019 2020 if you've got a cybersecurity specialization or you're you're good in that field you've got some options approximately 1.5 million jobs worldwide available in that area this is an area that deserves some focus so I'm thinking that we certainly we certainly need the foundation I would never tell you you know forget about CCNA routing and switching no no I would say that that's foundational I don't care what track you're in if you're in data center you've got a route you've got to switch those data center packets see if you're in Wireless as soon as you get that wireless access point your routing and switching everything kind of boils down to routing and switching you've got to have that as your foundation so I would say yes you've got to have some routing and switching knowledge but in addition to that before you start going down another track before you start going down the collaboration or the data center or the service provider or the security track I would say that you want to scale up and your programming I want you to become a hybrid engineer and then once you start focusing on a track now right now at the time of this recording it's probably going to change but as of today Cisco only has one cyber ops certification it's it's a CCNA cyber ops certification it takes two exams to pass it now interestingly your CCNA ran writing and switching is not a prerequisite you can just go right in and take those two exams and some of your a CCNA and cyber ops but a director means you get your CCNA and running and switching anyway I think that's a I think that's a good first step so these are our two statistical outliers beyond the group that I normally thought all those certifications are at the same pick what you love and go for it no now I'm saying start out with writing and switching and then you've got to understand about programming you've got to understand about some cyber ops take a quick look and see if we have any questions coming it is a bit windy here today now somebody's saying I know is this from the beginning of your career after the CCAA plus security plus do they have no value that's not at all what I'm saying please don't hear me say that I'm saying those things do have value I'm saying that we need to know some of the foundational underpinnings of how things work yeah if you're a bomb if you're getting your CCNA I would actually recommend that as your first step if you're getting in or if you haven't worked with the networks at all then yeah maybe the CompTIA tract take a look at security they've got cops he actually has sort of a suite of three different security certifications right now they just came out with their own cyber security certification earlier this year or is it the the CSA I'm not sure of the acronym but yeah I think that will be great I want you to build that foundation I want you to understand how things work at the CLI level once you understand the theory I'm just saying once you get that base then build on it you've got to build on it with programming and and I don't care what I don't care if you're going down security collaboration or whatever track you're going to intersect with with network program ability because I was talking to a Cisco engineer and they were telling me that what's a collaboration even though you're in the collaboration space they said their vision is that you're going to be you're going to be using network program ability to configure your Cisco Unified Communications Manager server you're not just going to be doing everything through the GUI that you normally have you can write programs to reach out and configure a group of servers so it doesn't matter which track you're in yes you're gonna need some programmability I'm just saying go in fact I think this will help let me show you graphically how I'd recommend if I were starting over today here's how I would do it and I think all sorts have value please never hear me say that that any cert does not have value just by going through the certification process you you're better I don't care if you get the certification or not you're a better IT professional I remember it took me two attempts to get my second CCA and I remember after the first failure I just felt so horrible about that on the study the decided decided and it I didn't pass but you know what I reflected on I thought you know still worth it I'm a better engineer because I spent all those hours going through that study I've learned so much in prepping for that cert that I wouldn't have learned otherwise it made me better even if I didn't pass so please understand I think there were value at all these different certifications but here's how I would start over again back to the topic of today's discussion how would I start over the number one thing I would do assuming I had all now if I didn't have any experience at all the problems like brand new I've never set up a wireless network in my home I probably start with network plus maybe eight plus if I wasn't that familiar with computers but if you're someone handy with your the you're the person in the family that everybody calls when they want the printer setup or you're the person that they call a win when they get a virus and you're doing all the family maintenance that's probably your indication that you've got to get start the first thing I would do is I would get my CCNA I can spell that'll be fantastic CCNA in routing and switching that would be number one as soon as I did that and that's what it'd take a little bit of time because you could either go after the two exam track or the one exam track if you go after the two exam track then you're going to be taking the ICD one exam passing that gives you your C C and T certification and then you will take the ICD two exam both of those combined give you your CCNA and routing and switching or you can just go for the for the lump exam you can yeah one and done I call it you can take the one exam and you can become a CCNA now which track should you take my general recommendation on that is based on your experience it's just sort of a semi arbitrary cutoff if you've got two years or less of experience I would say go the two exam track take them individually you don't have to remember eyes as much or prepare for as much for each exam but if you've got more than two years of experience working with Cisco gear I'd go for it I'd do that one exam track so step one I will do my CCNA in writing a switching man on top of that I also consider this to be foundational number two I would study I'm not saying get certified in it but I would study network programming because that's going to be the underpinnings for all of these individual think of the messiah's all these individual certs that are going to be coming later so you're gonna want to have this foundation now what would i do third I wouldn't go directly down the track yet like I was saying earlier I don't care what track you're going after I think your personal opinion I think you need to know routing you need to know switching because you're gonna be routing and switching all sorts of packets it doesn't matter what track you're in and I would want you in a competitive job market to be able to show that you can go deeper into these tracks you didn't stop at CCNA I think it's great that's a great accomplishment it's a necessary step don't hear me don't hear me say that it's not a good thing yeah you've got to do it but don't stop there I would then get a step number three personally I would then get my CCMP in routing and switching that's gonna show that you're able to go a bit deeper now a lot now a few years ago here's what I would have told you years ago I would have said let's go from that point directly to your ie because the rewards come when you can go super deep in a topic when you are an expert instead of being a generalist I would much rather have one CCA even than five CCNA s because a particular employer a particular project they're gonna need you to have deep domain expertise in whatever the the topic is rather than being a generalist it's cool to know about all those things I left it off to learn and learn about all those things but I would tell I would have told you that the value is going deeper now however because of this this emergence of this unprecedented need like we've never seen before for cyber ops professionals I would say as your fourth step here's what I would do I draw this as a little silo that will stack on top of this I would get my CCNA in cyber ops so we're going to build on this foundation this little silo we're gonna get our CCNA and cyber ops now once you've done that it's step number four this is where you get to decide you get to decide all right I've laid a foundation I'm competitive I can go into an employer and I can say I know Python I can work with an A think I can work with an APM I can tell it I can secure shell directly into devices now please hear this I don't think right now personally I would not spend too much time becoming super super super super expert in network program ability because I really think most of your learning is going to become on the job you're going to go into a data center environment or you're going to go into a big enterprise environment and they're gonna have a specific need and if you've got the basic tool box with you that you've learned you know how to use how to use Aria to build your Python programs based on based on JSON output that you've extracted from an AP if you don't have to do those if you've got the basic skills to do that then you can adapt those skills and you can learn and you can apply those skills to whatever your employer what you do so I would say study this study this now I realize that Cisco now has they've got a it's sort of a specialization certification and network programming that'd be great to have I think the study for that would be valuable you typically don't see a lot of job opportunities or job offers where they're saying we want you to have this specialization usually it's one of the big certs the NA the NPD ie the the de something like that so I wouldn't spend too much focus on getting that specialization cert but certainly you want to know network programming and then whether you're necessarily gonna fill one of these 1.5 million job openings or not I don't want you to know some cyber officer because just about by virtue of the demand we know it's gonna be super super important so at this time in your career you can take a deep breath finally you go huh alright what am I gonna do now what do I love do you love security great go down the security track are you working in a data center do you love you can go down the data center track are you working for a service provider this is where you get to pick and choose and let's I'll just take my example I went for collaboration so for collaboration do another silo here we'll say this is collaboration as step number five let's say I picked which I did the collaboration is my path to go down I would get my CCNA wouldn't stop there I would get my CC and P in that track and then I might get my CCIE let me explain now I did get my CCI in both routes which end and collaboration and if rats winch's your chosen field then you bet go back here and get your ie but I might get my CCI here and step number seven now here's what I mean by I I might get my CCI in that area I have seen a lot of people get all excited about their certification goals and they've they've knocked out their na they'd knocked out their NP and they go for their ie and they spend a lot of money they spend a lot of time I've heard of it causing marital troubles you're spending so much time studying there is a sacrifice that you have to make if you want to become a CCA it's not something to be taken lightly I'll give you an example of my second CCIE after I failed my first attempt I started I thought I'm gonna get dedicated I'm going to I'm gonna study study study I'm gonna get it next time and I remember from some some time in October 2011 until sometime in March 2012 I studied about tried to keep track of it loosely I started about 1600 hours for that exam 1600 hours I studied every day well I took Christmas off but every other day literally I studied every day for months taking one day off to get ready for that exam and it was hard like I said that exam after months of preparation and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of study it was super hard I could have easily failed that exam so I don't want you to get into a situation where you don't have the flexibility at this stage in your life to dedicate that much time maybe your employer's not gonna be financing it and you've got to come up with this big chunk of money every single time to take the to take the exam ID want you to go down that track if if he if you're not emotionally ready now here's here's the way I was here's the land knew that I was emotionally ready to go after my second CCA it's kind of hard to explain um I remember talking to my wife about it I was talking to my boss at the time about it and I said there's not some big career move that I want to make after I after I get my second CCA invoice now collaboration I don't really have this in game for it I just really really want it I just knew deep down I gotta have this I don't know why I don't know where it came from I kind of like what Tony Robbins talks about the word desire he says the word desire comes from the Latin roots day and Siyar like desire when they're talking about horseys meaning father days ire actually means of the Father so just personal belief I think you if you've got a deep desire for something it's it's something good something positive I think that came from somewhere and I think you've got the resources to make it happen but if you just have a passing interest in a CCI you would look really good on the resume yeah I think I'll do that I want you to really think long and hard because it is a sacrifice and it depends on so many variables let's say that no graph for you let's say that on the y-axis we've got the skill required to get a CCA represented by this next line and here's the time it takes to study let's say you're studying a brand new topic for the first time well right off the bat that learning curve is steep isn't it you're learning this command and that coming in - oh that was cool let's do that again let's lab this up so you got the steep learning curve but then things start to Plateau takes longer to figure things out but let's say that you're one of the fortunate ones you break this barrier what's safe now if you're a superstar does not many of those around I'm not one but if you're a superstar maybe in a year's time you can get you can get your CCA that's rare by the way it took me it took me about three years to go from na to ie so let's say for me it took me here's some of the variables I was talking about some people they process information slower than other people doesn't mean they're smarter or not smarter it just means that they just process information differently some people recall information differently some people are quicker than others about making associations in their mind between different pieces of information how fast you type is a is a is a factor I remember after passing my routes which CCA I thought to myself if I had not taken that typing class in college I would have fail the labs seriously I would have failed it because there was so much typing if I had just been a a Hutton Peck typist at that time I wouldn't have passed the lab so it depends on so many things where there aren't you fast and how quickly you can pass for me it was more like this yeah Warren the more learn and maybe in about three years time I broke through that level ain't got that CCA now for other people family demands financial concerns some people are external thinkers some people in order to really work a problem out they need to talk to other people about it and some people are now I'm an internal thinker I've just processed things internally trying to figure something out some people need to chat it up with someone you're going to be chatting it up with anybody in the lab maybe the proctor but no that's that's limited but some people just because of who they are it's not a good thing or bad thing it's just their characteristics it's gonna take them longer to reach this level and there is a point when it becomes too long I mean what if you're in this situation resources personality external thinker you're ready get to the point where suddenly it's too long now I know of no then one CCI candidate that comes to mind and I'm under a nondisclosure I'm not able to give a name or how many attempts that this person has made but let me just give you an illustration if I decided today that I'm gonna go after this brand new certification I'm gonna take it all the way to the CCI level and I took one attempt per year based on how many times they have passed it or how many times they've taken in and failed no kidding I would probably be dead before I ever earned that CCIE don't be in that situation I don't want this to be something that you're just chasing and you you burned so much of your life away because there's a sacrifice my family was super supportive pick that up family was super supportive and I'm really blessed in that area but I told him I said I know my life is gonna be out of balance and it was four months but I got the certification and it paid off so you need to think long and hard about this so what some up the topic of today was what would I do if I start it over and I would say that the first thing is getting that well back up that slide page first starting over number one I would get my CCNA and running and switching number two I would study I would really care about the certification I would study network program ability then I would come and pick up my EMP and round switch then I would pick up cyber ops at that point I would pick what I'm most interested in and I would go after that next I use collaboration as an example I'm gonna get the CCNA NP and after thinking long and hard about it I may or may not go after the IE if I did not go after the IE here's what I would do I would pick another silo maybe I would pick and I would get my ene and NP and data center instead of going all the way to the CCI level that would be an alternate approach if I thought the CC and the CCA just was not for me so that's that's how I would go about it if I were starting out today again your mileage may vary we've were different personalities now if I can help you on this now I'm guessing because you're joining me on this live call then you've probably seen some of my training videos you follow me on some of the different social media outlets so I just want you to know that if you kind of resonate with the way that I teach stuff I can help you with the first three steps I'm actually working on that cyber ops thing myself right now so hopefully maybe next year we'll have something on that no promises but I'm studying that myself right now but I can help you with steps one two and three right now you can go to KW trained comm slash CCNA course and that's going to take you to my complete video course for earning your CCNA and writing and switching everything you need to know to pass that exam if you're already there you're going for your C C and P and running and switching go to kW train calm / CCNP course so see seen a course CCNP course or if you won't learn about network programmability again not really trying to get a certification but just so you can go into an employer you can go into a customer environment you can do this in your own environment just so you got enough skills to get in the game when it comes to network program ability you can go to KW train comm / f + p video that's where fundamentals of network program ability video that's a brand new video course I came out with literally just about like 10 days ago or something like that and it will tell you how to how to work with an 8 pic and an APM and how to tell nits and have a secure shell into devices it will teach you things like net coffin yang data modeling and XML and JSON and working with the postman app so this is what I would recommend as training to get started on those first 3 steps let's take a look at questions now yeah got a comment coming in here saying hey guys you still need CCDA for the basics and I would agree that if you're going to be in any sort of a design role then I think the DA is great it's got a lot of theory in it and it's a great course if you look in the marketplace if you look for if you look for what certs are in demand da is not toward the top of the list I think it's valuable I got mine early on glad I did but it's it's new at the top of the list or it's not near the top of the list well this is interesting timing I'm getting up I'm getting a delivery so you're gonna hear some noise in the background right now you think some equipment delivered oh yeah somebody's saying bypassing the architecture exam it's going to renew the CCC C&P exam or your CSUN fee cert yes indeed it will any other questions go ahead chat those in right now a question coming in about the certification opportunities for service provider and data center what's their future I think that uh again remember that Gaussian curve that we showed you earlier that that normal distribution well I think they still live in that normal distribution I think there's still a demand for it I just wanted to point out to you that there's a couple of these outliers we've got we've got cyber ops and we've got Network programmability that are statistically outside there they're two standard deviations away I would say from the statistical mean now it says what if we already have a good amount of experience in collaboration how do we go from there do we have to go back and start again with routing and switching if you've already got a good bit of experience with with collaboration then I would I want to pick up I guess it depends what you mean by a good bit of experience if your good bit of experience includes knowledge of routing and switching if you can go in and you can set up unidirectional link detection on your switch if you can set up a rapid spanning tree protocol rapid PBS T plus yeah if you know the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 ether channel if you've got the knowledge then I think you're good but if you're not at that point and I would say you probably are if you're that far down the track of collaboration then then I would say it's important to know that so a great way to know that is goes to go through the certification tract if you don't know all the things that you should know at the NA level for writing and switching I'd go back and revisit that but if you already got the experience yeah that's great you have the question cyber ops is the way to go after my C C and P are writing a switching um again your your situation may vary depends on what your employer wants what you want to do I'm saying what I would do in this in this live call today but yeah after for me I would do CCNA I would and writing and switching I would do Network programmability I would do in P and running and switching then I would do cyber ops that's what I would do what's required to pass the CCNA and CCNP data center I've got the CCMP and routing and switching your best bet because I don't want to misquote exam numbers I don't have my EMP and data set got my na in data center honestly it was not difficult I found that to be one of the easier tracks to get your na n but just go to the cisco.com and go to their certifications area you can see all the details about about the data center certs well that Sun is beaming down I need to position this in a different place in the future any other questions what are the keys required to pass those oh I'm sorry what are the keys required um I don't have any specific specific well actually I do if you go to my website I think it's still there if you go to canopy train com I think they're on the homepage there may be a link to to a seven-step framework for preparing and passing any cisco certification exam so i've got i've got a big article and a diagram a framework of how to approach any exam so i go i go download that generally would you we would like to hear from you what will you learn what will I learn if I go for the cyber officer well Cisco says if you get the cyber officer what they're preparing you to do is to work in a cybersecurity operation center were you working one of these big rooms where they've got that I got the monitors all over the wall and they they they're monitoring traffic they're monitoring threats and they're responding to those threats coming in from from all over the world so the the goal is to prepare you to work for a cyber a cyber security operations center and of course you can advance you could be a manager of that or you could be in the design area that but but that's what Cisco says the questions oh you're welcome getting a thank you I'm not saying a lot of other questions coming in right now so I think we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up for the day if you like this format this is the first Facebook live video I've done and I've learned a few things about positioning these things I'm not in the direct Sun when I'm teaching in the future but if you like this I'd love to see some some thumbs ups or some hearts or something on the screen if you'd like to see more of this I thought it would be fun to try and an answer that really common question again my my next step might not be your next step but I hope something I said today has has triggered something in your mind and I certainly want to wish you the best in the real world as well as in your certification thanks again everyone

Channel: Kevin Wallace Training, LLC

Views: 26,426

Keywords: sdn, software defined networking, cisco, cisco jobs, ccna, ccnp, ccdp, ccda, ccie, network programmability, kevin wallace, ccent, cyberops, cyber security, cisco cyberops, cyberops ccna, ccna cyberops, #kwtrain

Id: zNhhafnCrxc

Length: 33min 54sec (2034 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2017