Look, guys, the bottom line is this. The fact is, it is more desirable to have a lower-number ccie than it is to have a higher-number. I believe that this is so because the test was more rigorous in the past than it is today, but even if you don't believe this to be the case, you have to acknowledge that other people think so, and in particular, people who have hiring power think so. And since no man here is Bill Gates, we all have to work for a living, which means that we all have to get jobs, which means that we all have to impress those people who have hiring power. At the end of the day, those people have the jobs that we want, so we have to follow their rules even if we don't agree with them.
I've heard a lot of objections in this thread to what I've been saying, and hey guys, it may surprise you, but I don't like what I'm saying any more than you guys do. I don't have a particularly low number. I've lost out on opportunities because my number was not "deemed" low enough by recruiters/HR/headhunters. And yes, just like a lot of people here, my first reaction was similar to you guys - I got pissed off at those recruiters/HR guys. But that was my first reaction. I then thought about it and I realized that it's not the recruiters fault that they're acting this way - they're doing it because the HR departments of the companies who they are scouting for told them to do it. And it's not really HR's fault either - I highly doubt that HR is spending all their time scheming to intentionally come up with unfair hiring practices just to screw guys like me over, like some kind of weird X-Files conspiracy (why would they want to waste their time trying to deliberately screw me and some of the other higher-number ccie's over when they've never even met us - what exactly does HR gain by doing this?). So why get ticked off at recruiters or at HR when they're only doing their jobs? I believe the real underlying root cause lies with Cisco itself for not properly maintaining the quality of the program. Again, I will pose a question I posed in my discussions with Mark Hayes in this thread - why are bootcamps thriving businesses? Because quite obviously they are selling what is in essence an improved chance to pass the test. In a nutshell, that's what you're really buying when you attend a bootcamp. If this was not the case, then why would people spend money to attend one? Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with bootcamps per se (they're out to make money just like any other company) but it does mean that their existence makes the test easier and this effect must be counteracted by Cisco by making the exam even harder if you aim to maintain the same rigor of the program (another way to counteract the effect of bootcamps is to use relative scoring, but I digress). Otherwise you end up with the situation you have today - where guys are to a certain extent just buying their way to a cert. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=70695&t=70328 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
