Blog | Technology | 2023-10-16 - Allowing my Certifications to Expire

2023-10-16 - Allowing my Certifications to Expire

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This may be interesting to fellow wageies in the tech field.

I currently hold a few certifications in my field of expertise; namely through Cisco and Juniper. If you happen to not know about these certifications, they are essentially a credential provided by a vendor of hardware/software that you can earn by paying for and passing an exam or set of exams created by them. Everyone does them: Microsoft, Amazon, Google-- there are certs all over the place. Once earned, you can slap a cert on your résumé and use it as leverage to get interviews, pay raises, promotions, and the ability to cast lightning at will from the fingertips; at least, that's what they hope to achieve.

For technology certs, they usually have a hierarchy of competancy and difficulty. Typically, you have exams that are at a beginner level that are more high-level and are concept-based, multiple choice tests of a recipient's knowledge. From there you typically will see associate-level exams, then professional-level, and finally expert-level. Architect-level exams exist with certain vendors, but that's the general consensus of vendors I've looked at. Usually there are different tracks for these, too, so if you wanted to specialise as, say, a wireless guy, they've a track for that. Phones? They got it. Internet provider magic? That, too.

The certificatons usually expire after 2-3 years unless you re-take an exam you've done before at the highest level achieved (this renews all of your certs laterally and downstream), pass a new exam at the highest level you've achieved, or if you manage to pass one at a higher level. The capitalistic goal of these certs for vendors is that you continually pay to renew them so that you continue to have the credential "active" for your résumé or whatever. It's usually a never ending game, or, at best, one you play (and pay for) for 10+ years to earn a more permanent status with select certifications.

Self-Certifying

In my circumstance they did seem to help me out in my career climb initially. I got Cisco's CCNP Routing and Switching certificate (now called "Enterprise") and have recently achieved Juniper's JNCIS-SP. They both essentially are similar concepts with some proprietary vendor jargon added to them. They are tough, and they're not cheap. For example, to get my CCNP cert I had to pass three $300 USD exams. In my circumstance I failed 3 attempts so that's $900 USD out of my pocket. Thankfully my employer at the time did pay for passed exams so I broke even in a sense...

The money was one thing, but also know it was time consuming. I remember quitting my, at that time, cronic video gaming habit, I had moved to a city alone with nobody familiar nearby, I deleted several social media accounts, and generally became a hermit with a lot of time on his hands. Partying wasn't on the table. I'd wake up early to go to work early for 12hr shifts, come home, and study until my already scorched eyes couldn't take it. When I could, I would study at work during down time. Studying for this type of stuff involved paying for and consuming video courses, reading tons of configuration documents, and labbing-- months and months of emulating networks and breaking/building them piece by piece. I remember spending weeks to months on single labs.

To point out the obvious: that whole journey is not necessary to earn certs, but that's how it happened to unfolded for me at that point in my life. The point here is: while cheaper than college or university, it still does takes significant time from you. It took me, personally, around 1-2 years of solid studying and practice to earn a CCNA and CCNP. Others do it faster, others slower.

Okay I'm Certified... Now What?

At one of my jobs, the CCNA did help me get some immediate recognition internally. I had my CCNA before joining an ISP's NOC. Out of the gate I was seen as "the network guy" going purely by the words and actions of the majority of my coworkers. They might cringe or agree with me recalling this. :) I was seen as someone who knew the protocols and could fix core network issues withought escalation; that was hilarious as I didn't really have a ton of actualised experience from prior jobs to back that expectation up. Realistically a CCNA and some few years experience wasn't enough to be what others held me to, and I didn't feel I lived up to the expectation my peers had of me, but the social status had a positive serotonin effect and had my peers take me seriously. The aura of the exam worked I guess.

Once I achieved a CCNP (the next level up from CCNA) in the same role, I remember the social shift was immediate once word inevitably spread around, which I didn't want to have happen. If it isn't obvious by now, the hype over a cert kind of feels hollow and more like a victory for the vendor's wallet to me now. I felt thrilled personally, though, don't get me wrong. I was very happy that I passed those honestly rigorous tests. I got a nice bottle of scotch to celebrate. I got to work with all of those protocols, lab out network environments virtually-- I felt like I could better take on the bigger, complicated, actually impacting issues that would occur at this ISP. Being realistic, it... sort of did. It made me familiar with terminology that was being thrown around by our technical superiors, and sure, some esoteric theory came in handy more than a few times for sure, but I was always missing that deeper comprehension of the complex environment we were in. That comprehension is really developed by simply spending years building and taking on responsibility for this kind of infrastructure.

The CCNP likely helped me with a promotion I received later on there and I do recall that the facts one has to memorise for these exams came in handy a few times during that interview. From that point onwards to today, I've been doing engineer-like tasks for various companies, getting a few certs here and there, but not really prioritising it.

Some E-Mails Came in...

Skipping now to the present day, my inbox showed some e-mails like this:

Your certification is about to expire
Your certification is about to expire
Your certification is about to expire
Your certification is about to expire

This was bound to happen. In my early career years, this would've terrified me to see, but having worked for nearly a decade now, it didn't worry me as terribly. It was time to decide if I was going to recertify or not... Well, I went for it. I bought into the idea of keeping it all up to date despite being in the highest position I've held yet, and despite working with a totally other vendor. I went for a different track at the same level (so, another CCNP). The thing is, the vendor had revamped their exams and did some significant changes.

Long story short, after a 2-hour exam with well over 100 multiple choice, long-winded scenario, and extensive configuration and troubleshooting simulation qestions on a tiny, awful user interface which forces you to scroll and pan all over the place, I... FAILED. I had only finished a little over half of the questions before a first happened where I ran out of time. This was the only time I've ever ran the whole clock on one of these exams. Insult to injury was the knowledge that I passed the same level of exam not too long ago, and now I can't even get halfway apparently.

Refurbished Exam Experience

The changes these guys did to their exams felt quite unreasonable. I'm not really a sore loser; during my certification binging, I would fail an exam and immediately book the next one once I got home, labbing the entire time to the next attempt. The length of the onslaught of this updated exams' scenario questions was rediculous, not to mention when they have you painstakingly open a separate window in your already cramped UI and scroll in four directions to see a vague image (or images!) of a topology referenced in the question.

I seriously cannot overstate the cheated feeling. It felt like a company took 300 USD by tossing far too many wordy questions cramped in a shit UI. It wasn't a pleasant experience; by far the worst. To illustrate the feeling of this exam, let me write a surprisngly unexaggerated example of a question (this is NOT a real question and is obfuscated to not break the vendors' policies:)

You are a network engineer at Company-A. You connect to Company-B and Company-C who have Customer-B and Customer-C. Company-B recently made a few changes to their infrastructure and implemented technology X, while Company-C has not. Customer-B is asking to be able to talk to the other customers and has the following requirements:

	1. Blah
	2. BLAH
	3. BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Companies B and C can only achieve those goals with X condition, but not Y condition. How would you implement this?

	1. example of lines of configuration syntax
	   example of lines of configuration syntax 
	   example of lines of configuration syntax
	   example of lines of configuration syntax
	2. more lines of code for this option to read
	   more lines of code for this option to read
	   more lines of code for this option to read
	3. wow EVEN MORE TO READ, HOW MUCH TIME DO I HAVE LEFT?
	   wow EVEN MORE TO READ, HOW MUCH TIME DO I HAVE LEFT?
	   wow EVEN MORE TO READ, HOW MUCH TIME DO I HAVE LEFT?
	   wow EVEN MORE TO READ, HOW MUCH TIME DO I HAVE LEFT?
	4. I totally wasted $300 USD didn't I...
	   I totally wasted $300 USD didn't I...
	   I totally wasted $300 USD didn't I...
	   I totally wasted $300 USD didn't I...
	5. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
	   NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
	   NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
	   NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

... [Click Here] to view a small popup window of a large, sometimes blurry topology picture that you'll have to vertically and horizontally scroll around in as it takes up enough room in your screen so as to render the question behind the window unreadable.

See what I'm getting at? This is EXHAUSTIVE to read. There were shorter questions than that, but honestly... there were certainly dozens of questions like that. As a native English speaker, and as someone who prefers accuracy and certainty when answering questions, how the Hell is one suppose to do that 12 times in a 100+ question exam, of which some of those questions are full-on emulated router configuration tasks that ALSO have multiple tasks nested within them without running out of time?

Phew... I needed to let that one out. Thanks for bearing with me. ;)

It was the only time I had reached out to the vendor to ask, essentially, "What the Hell was that, guys?" to which they essentially replied "Meh, that's how it is, just take it again if you want to keep your certs." It wasn't a good academic experience... it felt like the encouragement was to plow through questions as fast and recklessly as possible. That's something I don't favour, being an actual network engineer now in the present day: People making reckless, off-the-cuff, reactionary changes to live infrastructure. It doesn't go well a lot of the time.

Thinking on it at that point in time, I saw no reason to keep the certificates. They were a digital milestone for me, and in reality I still earned them at a point in time, but letting them expire just meant that this vendor didn't recognise me as someone up-to-date with their products. That's honestly not a huge loss conceptually to me, and thus I've decided to let them die off. They've served their purpose for me and I don't see much use coming out of keeping them topped up.

Where I Stand with Certification Now

Alright, so here's my take on tech certifications nowadays:

They're potentially useful, but not vital. I think proven experience will always earn you the most street cred in the tech world. When I've interviewed engineers, experience and project examples are always what I look for. If you're in a position where you need that experience but are getting constantly rejected or are just having no luck, I do think certs can help get your foot in the door in some situations. Depending on how you studied and practiced, you'll have more or less of a hard time actually doing the work when the time comes.

I'd say if you're getting a cert, be very mindful of its limitations and its value for your goals. Pretty straight forward advice. Just be realistic. Certs cost you a lot of money to maintain, so get one if you need to and look for every excuse you can to do the projects you want to do. Do a good job at them, too. Put those experiences on your resume to future-proof yourself. A point here is to do what it takes to know how to actually build something and actually maintain it.

Oh, and don't feel pressured to keep your certs topped up unless you've a reason to expect your experience alone will not be enough to get work when the time for change comes. In the technology field, there will no shortage of companies that will subscribe to the belief that you must have formal credentials in order to be useful to them. Make the statement to those people that you wish. If you want to encourage them to pressure like that or if you wish to discourage it, you can make that choice. Prove to them your value in other ways if you're a fan of the latter.