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I have to say that overall, I agree. There are too many cert seekers. Some of the replies to this thread recommend going for Linux or Cisco certs. Well, guess what. . . Those markets are in the toilet too. I'm a Cisco Instructor and a CCIE. When my company went bankrupt and dumped me (along with the rest of the instructor/consultant core), I thought I'd have a job immediately based on my background. It should be easy for a published CCIE to get a job, right? NO.

Well, I found one after a month. It came with a 30% pay cut however. I'm not overly happy about that.

The issue at the moment is that there a literally thousands of CCNA/MCSE's looking for entry level stuff. The barrier they're hitting is that all the entry level stuff has been filled by people with 5+ years experience. So, it's virtually impossible to break into the market.

As an instructor, I get physically ill at the cert chasers. Even though they pay the bills. I don't teach the exams. I teach the technologies. I tell them straight up that I really don't care if they're in exam prep mode, I'm here to teach real-world technologies.

Those people who post on the newsgroups, etc. bragging about the fact that they're paper certified and have never touched the gear make me sick. They usually suffer a bombardment of flames letting them know how much the fact that they're devaluing the certifications of those of us who have worked our butts off for this.

I've been a victim of the cert madness. But, I'd been doing this stuff for years before I got any cert. The cert newbies don't want to pay their dues, get some bruises and actually learn the concepts. They just want their piece of paper and think they should get a $200K/yr job since they got their CNE. Get real.

I'll shut up now.

Csconerd: MCNE, MCSE, CCSI, CCIE, ABCD, ASAP, RSVP. . . and so on.

So you back in TX now, is this where you took the pay cut? I'd keep looking if you had to take -30%. Or do consulting. My brother does consulting back East and he doesn't have any certifications, just 5 years with NT4, '95/'98, hardware and now he's reading Linux. He does real estate to put food on the table though.

I'm (still) waiting on some Fed. jobs I've put in for based upon my investigative background and security clearance. So, I probably go chase another cert. while I wait. I'm just not finding any computer-related work locally.

I advise looking around continually, I've seen some really wild wage fluctuations for essentially the same job.