CCIE Expired...

TLDR: "My CCIE expired and I don't care. I have moved on in my career"

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About 5 years ago I posted of me passing my CCIE RS which was a process that took the better part of 4 years to accomplish. Well, I got the official email today from Cisco that my CCIE has fully expired.

I renewed my CCIE once and struggled then to convince myself to go through with the re-cert. After I walked out of the testing center I told myself I would never renew my CCIE again.

Stance on certs

I know there is a mix bag of emotions and opinions around certs and I fall in the camp where I have seen tremendous growth in knowledge and my career from the certs I have completed. My stance is, if they work for you and push you in the right direction then go for it. If not, then find another method that pushes you.

Trying to improve your knowledge and skills is NEVER wrong.

I have always been a strong supporter of the core Cisco certs (RS, SP) as they dont just teach a product, they teach the fundamental technologies. But that is slowly changing...

Why let it go?

During those 4 years I set pretty much every other technology and focus aside to grind through my CCIE. And it was painful. I watched as SDN, Network Automation and new skills started to come into light and I set those aside to spend the day/week learning RIP or drilling deeper into SSM multicast.

I knew when I finished my CCIE my focus was going elsewhere and just like the industry, it did. SDN really didn't make the impact we thought it would, but network automation made huge strides in the industry. No one talks about how they can improve their workflows of manually configuring switches.

Since I passed in 2015, I have not seen a single justifiable reason to set a considerable chunk of my time aside to prove I still know now to configure a Cisco network. Just like my college degree, my CCIE is a stepping stone or what I consider my foundational knowledge.

My certification journey played an immense role in getting me to where I am but it has little use right now and the time sink is not justifiable.

Looking Forward

If I had to guess, the network will not be any less important in 10 or 20 years. Hell, you still have to move packets. But it will take less to manage and be more tightly integrated with the full application and infrastructure stack. The Cloud and how it is used and operated is a prime example.

Other hints into this are Kubernetes and NFV which are moving the network intelligence deeper into the server or application and away from the actual fabric. Companies like Celium are moving network control deep into the kernel and SmartNics are giving servers better network control.

SD-WAN and wireless has already removed the complex configuration of tunnels and network segmentation away from the network operator and simplified the operations of of those areas of networking.

This is a trend that will not stop as customer demand on applications require it now. Hint the popularity of Cloud and containerization with app developers.

The network can not functions as a manually configured eco-system anymore. We either make this change or some other group in technology will do it for us.

I chose to help lead this change.

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If you made it this far, thanks for spending the time to read. I always welcome discussion, so let me know what you think.