Cheaters who get ahead and stay ahead. Thoughts on brain dumps

TL;DR...I dumped the fuck out of my Cisco exams. These paper credentials ultimately allowed me to land the interviews I needed to get my career started, which allowed me to get the experiences I need to get ahead and stay ahead. Now I'm making 150k+...still dump to this day. I focus on strong fundamentals and practical knowledge. The piece of paper was there just to help me land an interview. You can chose to believe I'm lying but that is the truth.

Long version:

I'm going to be frank...I look the other way when it comes to dumping Cisco WRITTEN exams, especially when it comes to younger professionals or people who are just starting out and just need to land their first job networking gig. For these newbies, typically the path of ascension is help desk -> sys admin -> net admin -> net engineer -> architect.

Is it dishonest to misrepresent themselves and their abilities? Absolutely. Do I expect people to exaggerate their titles and responsibilities? Absolutely. However, I was in their shoes once, and I totally see where they are coming from. Let me tell you my story...the story of a cheater who got ahead and stayed ahead making 150k+ a year now as a network engineer. It is an all too common story I'm sure some of you can relate to.

Imagine you're a young, ambitious, and aspiring network engineer who has no network experience. In fact, you have no IT experience. You have the drive, but no one gives you the chance. You spend your days driving your hoopty to work pulling shipping orders in a hot/dingy warehouse and spend your evenings learning all manner of technologies, ranging from Linux/Windows administration, to networking and Security. Finally you catch a break and land your first help desk job. You soak up everything like a sponge. At every turn, you work hard to apply your knowledge daily to productive ends in an attempt to bolster your resume, but you're stuck with the help desk tasks and like a shackle, the tickets continue to weigh you down.

You ask for more responsibilities, try to shadow the network engineers, and try to help them in anyway you can no matter how small the task, but you end up relegated to a role of obscurity and bullshit tickets because 'that's all you're supposed to do'. Thus, you're stuck on the never ending hamster wheel of help desk tickets (NOCs are usually the same trap, since you never really get a chance to zero in on 1 technology, so you're scatter brained all the time).

You try to apply else where, but you're turned down due to 'the lack of experience' or because 'the scale of your deployment wasn't large enough'. Sometimes you're not even given an interview at all. You reach out to friends for help, but they are either not in your field, or have limited connections that can help. Outside, the competition is fierce, and you apply to various positions like NOC/Jr. Admin/Jr. Network Engineer at various VARs and businesses...sadly to no avail. Admittedly, sometimes I turned down some network jobs too because the pay was just flat out too low.

The truth is, not everyone has a mentor who can pave the way for them to a network engineering career. Maybe the job doesn't allow for networking duties. Maybe the network is too simple to perform any notable project that can land them that next job or set them apart from the competition. Maybe the business won't support your career decisions. There's so many reasons.

Sadly, as much as people say they hire for attitude, I would argue that that's a bunch of bullshit . My reality is that it didn't count for much in the interviews. Did it matter that I had a home lab and that I was labbing it up every evening? Nope. Did it matter that I was working hard, waking up everyday and reading and devoting myself to mastering the networking craft? Nope. Hell, I have an entire bookshelf of networking books just sitting here in my garage, and unlike Tai Lopez, I actually read them. That's not including all the online articles and PDFs I read. That type of enthusiasm and motivation never counted for shit in my interviews (but ultimately the efforts did pay of in the long run)

Maybe you might think 'OP is full of shit and just can't sell himself well. That's why he couldn't land a net engineer job'. Well this is my story, and I'm giving my perspective on it.

I remember I failed my first Cisco exam. CCNA...65%. I remember how hard I tried and that 65% was like a slap in the face. 250 down the drain...and not any closer to getting a network related job. With no mentor and a job that was not remotely network related, I felt stuck. Who wants to gamble with 250 - 400 after tax dollars per attempt when they are earning 10-20 bucks an hour?

After that, I dumped the fuck out of my CCNA and passed. After 6 months, I passed my CCNP (with dumps of course). The difference between me and someone who just straight up dumps the exam, is that I actually took the time to learn the technologies. All the while, I was working these low level jobs.

A few months later, my efforts were finally validated, when I had interviewed for a simple field engineer job. This was the kind of job where the tech would be racking/stacking, doing some cabling and A CCIE had interviewed me and I had 'CCNP' on my paper, so he grilled me on OSPF LSAs, IPsec VPNs and BGP path selection. Much to his surprise, I aced that interview, despite only having worked with GNS3 (and dumps of course).

Finally, I had someone who acknowledge my technical ability. I was quickly brought in for a face to face interview. I had prepared a simple powershell script that would automatically add RADIUS clients (APs) to the AD servers for this wireless deployment (based on a list of hostnames,IPs and radius secrets/passwords) and presented it to them. My chances of being brought on were looking good. Ultimately they offered me the contract gig, but I turned it down due to it being low ( <20/hr)

A few weeks later, I get a call, ironically for a jr network engineer job working with Juniper Equipment. Apparently they had been looking for a juniper guy and couldn't find one, so they had to lower the bar.

My resume was floating around during this time and this was just sheer dumb luck that the recruiter called me and put my resume through. This interview was more L2 focused. Again, because of my studying efforts, I passed the technical portion of the interview. I was upfront with my lack of operational experience with the technologies, but because I showed a strong conceptual understanding of the networking technology (unlike people who just straight up dump), I cleared the interview.

I landed the job working in a large data center. It was there my career skyrockted and I finally got the chance to apply everything I knew, ultimately allowing me to validate that on my resume. I had a meteoric rise and my salary ballooned quickly, showing that I was more than just my 'CCNP' piece of paper. From there I moved on and here I am today with a comfortable mid 6 figure salary.

Now I have the experience and the title(s). Now the piece of paper doesn't matter. The truth however, is that I would not have gotten the interview that got me this job if I hadn't put 'CCNP' on my resume during that time. Yes, I did cheat to pass the exam, but I also took the time to honestly understand the technologies covered. Would I have been the same person without the cert? Absolutely. The difference is which version of 'me' would have gotten the interview.

I think Cisco written exams are total garbage and borderline salesey when it comes to forcing you to learn their bullshit acronyms and technologies to pass their exams. It's nothing but an endless line of alphabet soup and acronyms you'll never care about outside a Cisco shop. Hell, if I went in blind, I don't think I could have answered some of those questions. CCIE is different, but that's outside the scope of this post.

These stupid pieces of paper are often a pre-requisite just to get your foot in the door, but there are hardly indicative of the skills required in most day to day for most network engineers, who honestly don't deal with networks that are that complex.

It's tough for the newbies who are just starting out. I get it. To those who give me shit and saying 'don't be a loser and don't dump', I'll say this, if you really want something bad enough...."If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough"

Feel free to down-vote me into oblivion.