I’ve recently became CCNP Enterprise certified and I need some guidance regarding what to do next.
The IT world is big and competitive so I can’t stop now and tell myself that I am done for the year. I was thinking about pursuing either devnet associate since automation is hot these days or CCNP Service Provider. I recently had to switch jobs and now I work for a company that provides ISP services so I’ll get to work with things like QoS, MPLS, segment routing, and so on.
But if you consider this from your own professional and personal experience, what do you recommend for me to do next?
With the work you do now, I would say that spending time learning stuff like QoS, MPLS, and segment routing is worth it. All the time you spend studying these topics will be worthwhile in the future. We’ll use them today, and 5-10 years from now.
I can also recommend to learn more about network automation. You know the technology, and you know how to use the CLI to get the job done. Now see if you can learn how to do it with CI/CD pipelines, deploy from GitHub, stuff like Ansible, Terraform, etc. You don’t have to become a full developer or cloud engineer but we are shifting more towards a “push and deploy” mindset. Learning all this stuff is definitely helpful in the future.
Also, if the certification helps then go for it but otherwise, learning the technology on your own is very efficient. You don’t have to worry about blueprints, memorizing, learning vendor-specific products, etc.