Pass – Back to the Hotel
I wandered back towards the hotel with the realisation that I was the only person who had passed in those 2-days. That’s when I came back to earth. Here I was – on top of the world, genuinely bursting with the joy of passing something so tricky, going back to an identikit hotel on an industrial estate knowing there was no one there to share it with – all the others having failed.
In the end I only ever saw one of the other people from the labs again. I bumped into the French chap who had come back on the 2nd morning for the practice, and I shared my good news with him. We sat at the bar in a massive, airy hotel lobby clinking beers, experiencing a weird awkward mix of feelings as he hadn’t had the same success. As we chatted he shared that he’d largely come to terms with it, and was genuinely pleased for me.
I don’t know if he knows how much of a friend he was to me right there and then, it would have been a very lonely hotel that night otherwise. I wish we’d stayed in touch… Did he go back and try again and get through? We ate together that night – I remember having fish.
Return to Work
My CCIE certification number meant I was probably one of about 4,000 or fewer people at the time who held the active certification. Looking for stats there were websites (including Brad Reece’s and the ‘CCIE Hall of Fame’) that gave rundowns on where in the world CCIEs were based to give some sort of flavour. At the time I think around 10% of CCIEs were based in the UK, so I was one in a few hundred. Given my relative youth I also figured I’d be one of the youngest.
Work took care of us, we got genuinely chunky pay rises and a bonus to say congratulations on passing. They got to use our CCIE status to get their kit discounts and marketing messages out, so it kind of balanced out. I also received a Montblanc pen, which I was too scared to use as it was about £200 or something (for a pen!). I’ve no idea where this is now – one day I’ll open the right box and it’d be interesting to see if it still works after 21 years of stasis, but given it’s price, I say it should!
Key to the Door
Achieving my CCIE undoubtedly played a pivotal role in the opportunities and doors that opened to me, and it has been key to a significant part of my career. I stayed with AT&T for another 5 years before spreading my wings, and since then I’ve spent time in many sectors contracting, in R&D and in MSP and Enterprise IT leadership roles. Even 21 years on it can still get me towards the top of the list when I’m seeking a new role – it still holds that cachet. To this day I see why CCIE is still attractive and highly sought after.
Recertification across so many years has been a bit of a chore, but overall more than worth it. I decided not to go for emeritus, but deliberately stay active on the CCIE track. Rather than make this 4-parter even longer I’ll do another blog on recertification, and perhaps my thoughts on the CCIE as a whole and its future.
In my new role I’ll be drifting away from the core of CCIE, and as I mentioned I’ll give some more thoughts to this new world, putting fingers to the keyboard to talk about it future postings too – I look forward to writing about this as there’s genuinely a seismic shift for network engineering going on.
Postscript
I still have one thing about CCIE after all these years that still needs closure. I never did get a personalised CCIE leather bomber jacket, with my name and number sewn into it. One day, one day – maybe I’ll treat myself on my 25th anniversary 😊
