Monday, December 2, 2019

Cisco cert renewal time... why do I bother? It seems like a scam.

I have a CCNP R&S and CCDP. The thing is, I've had them since 2004. That's when I did all the work for the CCNP (it wasn't R&S at the time, just CCNP) and the CCDP was just two more tests. There was stuff on there about ISDN and token ring.

Fast forward five renewals later and 7 years in a non-technical role. The renewals only require you to take any NP level test to renew (was 640, now 300). It's gotten to the point with these renewals that I just pick some random topic that sounds interesting and read the book and take the test. Last time it was wireless design. Before that was a security one. Before that was a voice one.

Point is, none of them had to do with R&S or Design. If I went to an interview and someone asked me some difficult routing questions, I'd be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm completely willing to just let it slide and expire but it's possible my company is going to go under in the next 3 years and it might still help get me to an interview (where I'd probably fail horribly).

I had Juniper, Aruba, and Brocade certs that all expired and it had zero effect on my life.

What would you do? Renew or expire?

Edit: I shouldn't have said it feels like a scam in my title, but I can't change the title. I was originally thinking about how it seems a little fraudulent that I could have a cert in one thing and take a completely unrelated test (5 times!) and have that original cert renewed as if I still know anything about the topic.

The original post was going to be more about that but as I was typing it morphed more into "should I bother?" Sorry for the bait and switch.



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