Is the CCIE still Valuable in 2017?

5 min readOct 9, 2017

Is the CCIE still Worthy in 2017?

The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, or CCIE, is a technical certification offered by Cisco Systems. The CCIE certifies the skills required of network engineers to plan, operate and troubleshoot complex, converged network infrastructures on a wide variety of Cisco equipment.

Nowadays, there are many network hardware brands, such as Huawei, Dell, HP, etc. Cisco is not longer the sole one. The CCIE is also not the sole exam. There is a HCIE (Huawei Certified Internetwork Expert) exam…

We may stray from the point, let’s go back.

So, is the CCIE still worthy?

I’ve collected some viewpoints from the Internet.

Viewpoint of CCIE Exam from the Internet

For me, it’s simple math.

I plan on working for another 30 years.

I plan on investing approximately $10k into CCIE study materials and boot camps (paid for by my employer, but for the sake of these calculations let’s say it’s not).

I plan on investing 1500 hours of study time and value my time at approximately $50/hour.

That’s an $85k total investment, or $2,833/year over the next 30 years. Do I think a CCIE justifies a $2,833/year increase in salary? Absolutely. I’d say a CCIE could increase my current salary by around $20k/year at this point in my career. At this point in my life, another $20k/year could completely transform my lifestyle and provide future financial stability.

So yes, for me, it’s worth it. Not sure about you.

— — thenullpacket

CCIE opens up a number of large business jobs which will have lots of salary and budget BUT they will also have lots of ITIL and bureaucracy that will make you hate life. There’s always give and take but you have to decide for yourself if you want that to begin with.

— — munky9002

Holding a CCIE does not prove that a person can:

Manage and schedule projects
Translate business goals into network objectives
Design a network to comply with best practices
Compile a bill of materials and quote out equipment
Communicate well with customers
Accurately convey technical concepts to management
Work independently with minimal supervision
Function as part of a team
Schedule and conduct planned maintenance
Generate and interpret a packet capture
Adapt to other vendors’ products and languages
Open and manage a TAC case or RMA
Templatize device configurations
Automate network operations
Write legible documentation

— — Jeremy Stretch

Short answer, so long as there are gold partners, and recruiters, yes. Cisco gold partners need CCIE, they must hire them.

Most higher paying $100K+ networking jobs will ask for CCIEs. Why because it is easier for a recruiter or an HR person check a box, that it is for them to tech check you.

On another note, try to get out of IT operations, it is a dwindling field, cloud, off shore, Managed Services are slowly reducing the need for Net Ops folks at most enterprises. Never mind Cisco ACI, and SDN. Network ops is always going to be overhead, and business love to cut overhead.

Instead position yourself as a consultant, or go work for a VAR as an architect or solutions architect, (with your CCIE) and focus on the requirements gathering, and architecture design.

Also Security is really hot, with lots of money being thrown at it. However CCIE in security is not as impressive as say a CISSP or other non-vendor security cert.

— — ScaredOfTheMan

The most beautiful key ring in the world.

— — This guy may pass the CCIE exam.

Actually, these viewpoints are personal point and they maybe not reliable for us.

However, do you know how many CCIEs in the world?

Actually, for this question, I don’t know the answer, either. After search and search, I find a figure telling you that about 38005 CCIEs in the world in 2013.

Except the figure, you can find a tool, CCIE Hall of Fame, to find the different number of CCIEs in the world. It was updated at 01-FEB-2017.

So we can know that there are no public data can tell us the right number.

I think you are smarter than me. If you have other ideas to solve this problem, please share with me.

Return to the point, we can find there are many CCIEs though the exam is difficult.

If you still are in trouble when asking the CCIE’s values, I collected some advantages and disadvantages of the CCIE exam for you.

CCIE Exam Advantages:

1. High Salary, the most important one.

The one who get CCIE certification can probably find a high-salary job.

According to Payscale.com, an employee who holds a CCIE Routing and Switching cert can earn between $60,048 and $168,860 annually, depending on his/her experience.

You just spend a period of time to study hard, then you can get a good job.

Sounds easy, isn’t it?

2. Promote to a higher office

If you pass CCIE, almost everyone think you have the superb ability in solving Network problems. It proves your ability and rich experience on network solutions. Your boss will trust you more and may push you into a higher position.

CCIE Exam Disadvantages:

1. Work with Virtue of Experience, not CCIE.

CCIE exam isn’t about the real world. It’s about probing the depths of your knowledge of Cisco features. Everybody should know the obvious and simple solutions. That’s easy, and the CCIE lab exam is supposed to be hard, so it specifically excludes the simple and obvious solutions. So when a network engineer makes a solution always depends on his experience, not the certificate.

It’s like a driving licence. We can get licence easily but we still have to pay more attention to stop the traffic accidents.

2. Difficulty of the exam make you fail again and again

Difficulty of CCIE is a well-known reason that somebody can’t pass the exam. If you must pass the exam, you may pay much money and time. You may also lose the time to accompany your family. If you still fail finally, it maybe the most terrible thing in your world.