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MCSE/Cisco certification


Chris

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Cisco - yes (but only if you want to change your IT specialisation).

MSCE - no.

In your personal circumstances if you went going down the Cisco route then you would be changing your IT skillset which isn't an easy thing to do (if your wanting to do Cisco stuff then you are wanting to become a network engineer as opposed to a web developer).

Like most of the Microsoft certifications, the MCSE certification has become a bit Mickey Mouse as it is much easier to attain than it once was. You can effectively buy one if you spend heaps and go on the 5-day intensive boot camp where they guarantee you'll get it. I got half way though mine before I gave up and to be honest I'm glad I did. Because it would have made no difference to my career progression.

Having been responsible for hiring a few folks in IT I can speak from experience when I say that if I see someone with an MCP or MCSE on their CV then I tend to think - "that's nice". But I certainly won't hire someone on that alone. Like most things, it's relevant experience that is the most important thing to have in IT.

What I think you'd be best doing is deciding where you want to see your career going in IT and then tooling up on the specific skills you'll need to get here. For example, if you want to become a more senior web developer then you might want to go on some courses to become an expert in some specific technologies - Microsoft C# for example. That's a hot one. Microsoft SharePoint 2007 is another one as well.

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Another point - as a potential employer I would question why a candidate with no previous network engineering experience and who has shown no interest in that kind of role before has suddenly attained a Cisco qualification.

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Chris, i don't know how much you earn but you could look into getting an ILA grant. Something i have learnt about quite recently. If you earn less than 18k a year you can qualify for 200 pounds towards a course (as long as it is in the list of compatible courses). If you earn over 18k a year i still think you can qualify for a 100 pounds grant towards the course.

Again, this is something i have just learnt about recently. I urge people to check it out if you are unfamiliar, free money. I plan on sitting a protools course soon.

ILA Scotland £200 offer

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mcse is a joke and a waste of time, nobody takes it seriously unless you want to work for a shitty smalltime company. Cisco certs are better but if you are a www developer like neil says, it's kinda irrelevant. Wouldn't your employer be happier to send you on courses more related to webdev stuff?

If you actually want to get a certification which will make your cv shine and score you some highpaying contracts Sun is really the way to go Sun Microsystems Training Course Catalog

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What I think you'd be best doing is deciding where you want to see your career going in IT and then tooling up on the specific skills you'll need to get here. For example, if you want to become a more senior web developer then you might want to go on some courses to become an expert in some specific technologies - Microsoft C# for example. That's a hot one. Microsoft SharePoint 2007 is another one as well.

That's basically the point I'm at. Starting to think about where the next stage of my career is going to be really. Do I move further into web development or move back towards the systems engineer stuff I was doing previously, or stick with the education technology specialist work I'm doing at the moment.

The point about suddenly switching to a network engineer is a good one, I just mentioned Cisco because I'd seen it on a load of job adverts. My main thoughts were of the MCSE variety, although I considered Oracle as well as I've done a lot of work with it and my PL/SQL skills aren't bad.

We'll see what happens. I'm away on holiday for two weeks, hopefully I'll get a better idea where I stand at my current work once I'm back. That'll help shape my thoughts on the subject.

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mcse is a joke and a waste of time, nobody takes it seriously unless you want to work for a shitty smalltime company.

I don't know if I'd go that far, I've seen plenty of adverts for very big IT companies in the last few weeks that specified an MCSE as a requirement.

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Here's hoping you aren't responsible for the pointless abomination that is Moodle.

:swearing: My uni just recently changed from perfectly functional, quite likable WebCT to the horrific Moodle. It's absolutely useless, even in the context of a tiny uni with about 900 HE students. I dread to think how it works in a much bigger educational setting :\

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I'm surprised by that. I only switched jobs a couple of months ago and without a MCSE I got offered all three jobs I applied for.

You weren't applying for jobs that had a high technical requirement though.

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I don't know if I'd go that far, I've seen plenty of adverts for very big IT companies in the last few weeks that specified an MCSE as a requirement.

Not because it's a worthwhile qualification, it's just a step up from requiring that the candidate can read and write before they come to an interview for a bottom of the barrel job.

If you want to get a certification that will actually help you get a better paying job, Sun Solaris admin, Oracle DBA or Juniper courses are the way to go.

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Not because it's a worthwhile qualification, it's just a step up from requiring that the candidate can read and write before they come to an interview for a bottom of the barrel job.

If you want to get a certification that will actually help you get a better paying job, Sun Solaris admin, Oracle DBA or Juniper courses are the way to go.

In my field, most companies seem to be dropping Solaris in their droves, and moving towards Linux-based infrastructures, so from my point of view, something like Red Hat admin would be a far more desirable certification.

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:swearing: My uni just recently changed from perfectly functional, quite likable WebCT to the horrific Moodle. It's absolutely useless, even in the context of a tiny uni with about 900 HE students. I dread to think how it works in a much bigger educational setting :\

Believe me, Moodle is about 30000000000000000000000 times better than WebCT.

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In my field, most companies seem to be dropping Solaris in their droves, and moving towards Linux-based infrastructures, so from my point of view, something like Red Hat admin would be a far more desirable certification.

I don't know what your field is or who you work for, but redhat is dead and has always been a joke for around a *decade* now. Maybe by "most companies" you mean some pointless oil services companies with a unit on some greasy industrial estate in bridge of don whos crucial IT infrastructure means an smpt relay, an http proxy and a slimey chlamidia infected secretary.Open your eyes.

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I don't know what your field is or who you work for, but redhat is dead and has always been a joke for around a *decade* now. Maybe by "most companies" you mean some pointless oil services companies with a unit on some greasy industrial estate in bridge of don whos crucial IT infrastructure means an smpt relay, an http proxy and a slimey chlamidia infected secretary.Open your eyes.

I was actually referring to major oil multi-nationals who are one of the biggest global consumers of high end *nix computing. Linux is cheap, robust, performant, and in response to the oil companies, most of our software suppliers are now also pushing strongly in the Linux direction.

Oh, and since I didnt show you one iota of disrespect....do me a favour and show me the same courtesy.

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I was actually referring to major oil multi-nationals who are one of the biggest global consumers of high end *nix computing. Linux is cheap, robust, performant, and in response to the oil companies, most of our software suppliers are now also pushing strongly in the Linux direction.

Oh, and since I didnt show you one iota of disrespect....do me a favour and show me the same courtesy.

Linux is not robust, it is written by beardy basement-dwelling hobbyists with no idea about the real world. When you move to linux for production servers, all it takes is 1 nerd on the other site of the world to commit a piece of flawed code to the source tree and suddenly you can't do business anymore, or worse, and there is nobody to hold responsible. Yes it is cheap, and you get what you pay for.

Anyway, from the point of view of getting a certification worth putting on your CV, with the intention of earning money, anything to do with linux is a waste of time.

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I was actually referring to major oil multi-nationals who are one of the biggest global consumers of high end *nix computing. Linux is cheap, robust, performant, and in response to the oil companies, most of our software suppliers are now also pushing strongly in the Linux direction.

I have to say in my experience of working with the oil majors they all use Solaris if they aren't using Windows based servers. The only time I've seen some flavour of Linux in use is on workstations.

Linux has its place (it's great for web hosting for example - this web site is hosted on a dedicated Red Hat Linux server) but I wouldn't want to have something like Oracle or SAP running on a bunch of Linux boxes.

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I have to say in my experience of working with the oil majors they all use Solaris if they aren't using Windows based servers. The only time I've seen some flavour of Linux in use is on workstations.

Linux has its place (it's great for web hosting for example - this web site is hosted on a dedicated Red Hat Linux server) but I wouldn't want to have something like Oracle or SAP running on a bunch of Linux boxes.

BP and ConocoPhillips are two examples of majors using Linux clusters for seismic data processing and reservoir simulation.......many of the major geophysical data processing centres (Fugro, CGG) have already moved this way also. The company I work with, Apache, is also currently evaluating Linux with a view to phasing out Solaris in the near-term.

Perhaps this isnt the direction industry is taking for Oracle/SAP, but in the geoscience and reservoir engineering sphere, where volumes of data and requirements for processing power are orders of magnitude greater, Linux-based systems are steadily taking over.

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Linux is not robust, it is written by beardy basement-dwelling hobbyists with no idea about the real world. When you move to linux for production servers, all it takes is 1 nerd on the other site of the world to commit a piece of flawed code to the source tree and suddenly you can't do business anymore, or worse, and there is nobody to hold responsible. Yes it is cheap, and you get what you pay for.

Anyway, from the point of view of getting a certification worth putting on your CV, with the intention of earning money, anything to do with linux is a waste of time.

Just had a quick look on one of the UK's biggest job sites for Linux vs Solaris jobs:

Linux - 703 jobs

Solaris - 235 jobs

If getting Linux certified meant i had 3 times the chance of getting a job, I'd hardly call it a waste of time.

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