Opinion:Certification Matters –Part 2– Knowledge or Experience — Which Is More Valuable ?

Is know­ledge or exper­i­ence bet­ter when hunt­ing for a pos­i­tion ? It’s a good topic and worth put­ting some ideas down here and hav­ing a dis­cus­sion.
In my first post Opinion: Certification Matters — Experience Less So — Part 1 I star­ted a series of posts about cer­ti­fic­a­tion. In the com­ments on the post, “Dedan” out­lined his story of know­ledge, but not quite the right exper­i­ence to be able to find work. I excerpt his com­ment here:

I was an officer in the US Navy and a pilot until last year. I taught myself net­wok­ing though I have a BS in com­puter engin­eer­ing. I have a CCNP and have passed the CCIE writ­ten. I have blown people away at tech­nical inter­views with what I know as com­pared to what my exper­i­ence says I should know. If exper­i­ence is the only met­ric how is any­one ever sup­posed to get hired for anything?

I have man­aged over 100 people. I have been an air­craft com­mander in 4 dif­fer­ent air­craft includ­ing car­rier based plat­forms. I have been respons­ible for lives. I have got­ten to my cur­rent level of know­ledge while doing all that and never hav­ing a job that would have helped me learn or going to any course. I

This seems to open up the ques­tion, is know­ledge or exper­i­ence more valu­able when look­ing for a job ?

Knowledge is a vital require­ment, or is it experience ?

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.." - Kung Fu-tse (Confucious)

For a net­work­ing role, know­ledge is an abso­lute require­ment. This know­ledge will take a few forms, but some examples would be under­stand­ing the following:

• some know­ledge of span­ning tree
• some know­ledge of OSPF /​ RIP
• under­stand­ing of the product inter­face and capabilties
• under­stand­ing fire­wall con­cepts and methodology

Here is the recur­sion, some of this you can get in a text book, but some of it only comes with prac­tice. That is, being able to drive the Juniper ScreenOS inter­face is some­thing that needs prac­tice and while know­ledge of how a fire­wall works can get you going and halp you get an out­come but con­fig­ur­ing a live sys­tem requires someone who has hands-​​on experience.

The reverse is also true. That someone who has sub­stan­tial exper­i­ence on fire­walls, may not be have spe­cific know­ledge about the con­fig­ur­a­tion that they are try­ing to under­take. An example might be the addi­tion of dynamic rout­ing to a fire­wall (a recent addi­tion to many fire­walls) that the individual’s exper­i­ence may never have covered. Or per­haps, applic­a­tion inspec­tion is required to address a par­tic­u­lar secur­ity issue, and the indi­vidual has no aware­ness of the applic­a­tion to be pro­tec­ted and thus makes a fun­da­mental mis­take at implementation.

I ima­gine that a reas­on­able par­al­lel might be a pilot who has all the the­ory and an amount of sim­u­lator time but no actual flight time. You can know all that you need to know, but real exper­i­ence is needed for someone to hand you the con­trols and tell you to fly the plane from London to Barcelona.

Is that a valid ana­logy ? I think so (although fly­ing an air­liner has greater risk to life than networking).

Or are we too quick to assume .…

As a team leader or senior engin­eer, am I too quick to assume that lower levels of com­pet­ence or lack of exper­i­ence will cause prob­lems ? The answer is yes. Many times a junior per­son make a basic mis­take dur­ing the upgrade of a sys­tem, or a con­fig­ur­a­tion change. This means that every action with the equip­ment, from simple oper­a­tion is a sig­ni­fic­ant risk and, gen­er­ally, net­work­ing mis­takes have an impact that is not pro­por­tional i.e. net­work mis­takes tend to cause major outages.

How do you get into Networking ?

"They used to say that knowledge is power. I used to think so, but I now know that they mean money. - Lord Byron, 1788-1824

I don’t believe there is any magic cure for this. Some people get into a good net­work­ing job by start­ing out small, show­ing their cap­ab­il­it­ies and get pro­moted. This often occurs in big­ger com­pan­ies by work­ing in oper­a­tions and then pro­gress­ing into design or imple­ment­a­tion roles.

Other people work for smal­ler resellers who are will­ing to give you a chance, how­ever, you prob­ably will be paid less than you are worth and you need to make sure that you move jobs often to reach your full poten­tial. If you take this route, make sure you look for oppor­tun­it­ies that allow you to pro­gress, and make sure that you take them.

When the mar­ket is boom­ing, some com­pan­ies can be so short of good choices that they can take you on and throw you in the deep end. This is some­times called “lucky” (but it doesn’t always feel like it when you are going through it).

And the time hon­oured tra­di­tion of “know­ing someone” who can, some­how, sup­port your applic­a­tion or offer to coach you once you are in the role.

I am sure that there are other, but maybe this is a start in describ­ing your options.

But tech­nical skills are only one part

"Imagination is more important the knowledge."  - Albert Einstein

I watched an inter­view with Jeff Doyle recently where he talked about the the best skills for an engin­eer to develop their career. They were:

• learn how to write good documentation
• learn how to com­mu­nic­ate with your peers and management
• learn how to present to small groups

At one point, I was forced to attend a “Presentation Skills Training Course” which, I admit, I abso­lutely hated. But this was presen­ted by a lead­ing train­ing com­pany and it taught me things I didn’t know I needed¹ and since that time I have been com­fort­able with present­ing. In my case, this was rein­forced by present­ing to large audi­ences shortly after com­ple­tion and this helped to pol­ish my (nonex­ist­ent) tal­ent. But it has been valu­able in being con­fid­ent in work­ing with senior man­age­ment and cus­tomer presentations.

I guess that this means that not only is tech­nical know­ledge and tech­nical exper­i­ence, remem­ber to develop your per­sonal skills, as they will let you go fur­ther than tech­nical skills only.

Knowledge first, exper­i­ence second

I would say that know­ledge is first, and exper­i­ence is second. Once you have know­ledge, to oppor­tun­it­ies to gain exper­i­ence for far more likely than the reverse. I still feel that exper­i­ence is less import­ant than know­ledge. Certification remains as proof that you can get, can learn and can prove that you have the knowledge.

Other Articles in this series

Certification Matters, Experiences Less So — Part 1
Certification Matters — Only you can do the Study Part 3
Certification Matters — Exams are not rel­ev­ant to Real Life — Part 4

Footnotes

1. know­ledge over exper­i­ence again ? [back]

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