And a Network Engineer Shall Lead Them
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Friday I was in Kansas City for a meeting of economics bloggers held at the Kauffman Foundation. My claim to being an economics blogger is slim, I know, but it was a chance to hang with some interesting people and learn something so I went for it. And in honor of that event, then, I’m making this column entirely about how we can tell when the economy is finally turning. There’s a strong argument that time is right now.
Yet the economy doesn’t feel any better to me. Does it feel better to you? Probably not. But what we’re looking for is the bottom, or rather that moment just past the bottom when things start to head north again. The question on every investor’s mind, then, is “have we hit bottom?”
What we are looking for is a leading economic indicator, something we can easily measure that reliably rises in advance of the overall economy. That’s easy, you say, just wait for the stock market. And it’s true that the market always leads the economy by six months or more at the end of every recession. So economists look for that unambiguous turn in the market indices to guide their own predictions that the overall economy is about to improve.
But what if you are an investor and aren’t interested so much in the economy, itself, but in the markets, where you want to make some money? I keep reading that the market is so over-sold that this is going to be one of the great long-term buying opportunities ever, that trillions of investment dollars are waiting, stuffed in money market funds, ready to buy-up depressed shares ONCE THE MARKET TURNS.
That’s the problem: the investors don’t want to buy now in case the market drops another 10 percent. See how stupid even Warren Buffet is looking this week. Remember Warren was the guy telling us all to buy stocks (and leading with his company’s money) last fall when the market was 30 percent higher than it is today.
What we want, then, is not just a leading economic indicator but an indicator that LEADS the traditional leading indicator – the stock market. Well George Morton thinks he has one.
George is a double Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert or CCIE. In the world of network techs earning a CCIE is as high as you can go and being a multiple CCIE (more than one subspecialty, like routing and switching, security, storage, voice, etc.) is like being an MD-PhD or, in Germany, a “doctor-doctor.” It’s a big deal and George is a smart cookie.
Just as an aside, notice that the “E” in CCIE stands for “expert,” not “engineer.” Cisco learned a lesson from Novell’s Certified Netware Engineer program that ran afoul of licensing boards in several states that said only they could declare anyone to be an engineer. So while nearly all CCIE’s are engineers, they only claim to be experts.
Cisco has taken to publishing statistics on how many CCIE’s of what type there are in various countries and regions and George pays attention to this stuff and sees wisdom in it where others see only Cisco PR. It was George who suggested to me a couple years ago that CCIE’s were a good proxy for 21st century economic leadership – that the nations showing the most CCIE growth were likely to be the most powerful for their size moving forward. If that’s true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then China will be a LOT more powerful than India this century and Singapore will be a technology power to be reckoned with.
George’s new idea is to look for flux in CCIE numbers to use as a leading economic indicator. Specifically the number of CCIEs in the U.S. has lately been going DOWN and the number of new CCIEs has stagnated. This could be for many reasons and Cisco in its statistics makes no effort to educate us. By the way, you can see George’s compiled numbers on the effect here.
The numbers may have dropped because companies aren’t willing to spend the money to send their people for CCIE training, because CCIEs who aren’t U.S. nationals may be going home, because CCIE’s who ARE U.S. nationals may have been recruited overseas — any number of reasons. George doesn’t try to figure that out, he just sees the change in CCIEs as a leading indicator of sorts that suggests the market is about to turn.
“An interesting event took place this month (when) the number of CCIEs grew at a greater pace than any time over the last six months,” said George. “The six month average has been running around 300 a month, this period the number jumped to 460. Now, we know that we are not counting month to month, but the sudden spike is refreshing for a number of reasons.”
George looks to the early work of Charles Dow, founder of Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, and author of the long-forgotten Dow Theory, which was intended to help investors understand what was going to happen next in the economy and the stock market.
Among the many rules that constituted the Dow Theory was that Railroads stocks would lead any market rally or decline. That was because Dow figured that businesses would start (or stop) shipping items before the revenue from those sales hit their bottom-line.
George’s theory is that IP networks are to the 21st century what railroads were to the 19th.
Over the last six months the CCIE numbers have been steadily going down. Last August the U.S. CCIE number went down by one. The last report in January the number of U.S. CCIE’s grew by eight. Over the last 50 or so days the number has grown by 83 new CCIEs in the U.S.
Is this a change in trend? Are the markets starting to bottom? With all of the bad news in the press, you have to want to be a contrarianIf this were the Dow Theory, then the prediction would be that companies are creating more CCIE’s in anticipation of expansion and adding new networks.
Is George Morton correct? I say “yes,” but wearing my economics blogger hat I’ll endorse his conclusion for what might be a surprising reason: it doesn’t matter.
The market will eventually bottom and turn. It always does. Those trillions of dollars parked in money market funds are real and will emerge when the market turns. This CCIE number might indeed indicate that the market is turning for exactly the reasons George postulates, though the numbers are so small that it could really be for any number of reasons. AT&T could simply have noticed, for example, that its top network folks aren’t CCIE’s and should be, so they sent them all in to take the test. It could be that slim.
But investors are optimists, remember, or they wouldn’t invest. That bit about the market turning followed by the overall economy is important. I can argue that the economy turns BECAUSE of the market and the market turns IN ANTICIPATION of the economy, which means it’s all voodoo economics and always has been.
No matter. If the market makes that bold turn in the next 30-60 days George will be shown to be the genius I always knew him to be, the market will in turn lead the economy (though because of the huge housing inventory I expect this to be a bumpy recovery and you should, too) and we’ll all be eventually prosperous again.
It always happens, you know. All we need is a sign.
Well, I certainly hope you’re right, but one month’s data does not a trend make.
Bob,
Wish I would have known you were in KC. I would have offered to buy you some ribs. Hope you got some anyway.
About the market, this isn’t your garden variety recession. I’d suggest Karl Denninger’s take.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/841-The-Challenge-Before-America.html
Interesting theory, I’ll look forward to a recap in a few months. I’m not convinced it isn’t a scenario like the AT&T one you mention.
Could it be, though, that folks seeing the economic turndown went out at completed their CCIE or other certifications in order to be seen as more competitive in the shrinking job market?
This was exactly my thought. Either that or they’d recently lost a job and had some time on their hands. Either way, I think “education always does OK during economic downturns” sounds a little more plausible than “well now that we’re finally spending money we better start by training a new expert rather than hire un unemployed one”. By the way, this didn’t sound all that convincing the first time you ran with it, and now that we’re a couple years further into widespread outsourcing it sounds even worse.
I agree. Just like college enrollments go up during down years.
Sounds a very good explanation to me.
My theory?
The old time-frames for bust-to-boom are no longer operative templates.
Recessions used to take a long time to play out, because industries didn’t have the moment-to-moment vertical integration we see now in supply chains.
Inventories that sat idle were not only signs of wasted resources, they were also a buffer that slowed the signals of economic activity.
This is the first downturn of a hyper-connected market. We’re shedding jobs like we never have, because small-to-medium businesses now have access to the relevant data that informs layoffs faster. Those looking at the slope are seeing the same data as before, but compressed in time.
The recovery will not be quite as compressed, because there will be re-organization and slower buildup. Much like how gas prices rocket up, and float down.
That’s my theory… and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I’m right.
Another reason may just be that unemployed network engineers are working on making themselves more employable by stopping procrastinating about achieving that certification (the only one in the IT industry worth the paper it is printed on). I know at least one person in exactly that situation.
What is the likelihood that the increase in the number of new CCIEs is just a reflection of the fact that there are a whole lot of out-of-work folks who are trying to enhance their resume?
A former CFO I had for a boss put forth the fact that it was Sales and Marketing job postings that dictated where the economy was heading. If there are lots of postings, then there are lots of sales and revenue. Of course, marketing in itself is voodoo since there is no way to measure its effectiveness without sales.
It’s probably more likely that in anticipation of getting laid off more engineers are concentrating on certification to make themselves more marketable. As the saying goes “it’s darkest before the dawn” so it’s impossible to say if the change in numbers is a prelude to the turn or a consequence of the bad times that are certain to be the worst at the bottom.
The use of railroads as an indicator was based upon percentage value of those companies had upon the market. The use of CCIE certifications as an indicator is dubious. Its use as such could be based upon the “dot bomb” era ending in 2001. This era was the result of the confluence of the internet with mandated Y2K system upgrades. All publicly traded companies were required to be Y2K compliant and while they were at it why not add internet access.
Interesting note that two internet communications companies were the spawned from Phil Anschutz’s Union Pacific railroad: Qwest and Level 3. The railroad had an underutilized asset right of way which was re-purposed for fiber optic networks.
I believe you hit the nail on the head noting the Oracle of Omaha got burned bad as well as rest of smartest guys in the room e.g The Blackstone Group, NYSE:BX.
Each recession is marketedly different, and defined by what the caused the recession to start with. Fixing that issue (or market condition) is the only time that the recession will start to rebound.
This recession is about debt-to-income ratios pure and simple. Most don’t realize it, but that’s the issue at hand. All the players in the markets (companies, individuals, government) have an extraordinarily high debt-to-income ratio. What’s the solution? Get that debt off.
Obama’s biggest mistake right now is that he thinks he can spend his way out of a recession that is all about debt. As a result he’s going to pile on more and more debt, and also as a result he’s going to make the recession longer and longer.
The biggest thing Congress and Obama could do to resolve the issue is (a) balance the budget, and (b) apply any budget surplus to paying down the deficit. Lead by example.
Why would this do more good than tax cuts and stimulus packages? Because it ultimately puts money right back into the economy. By paying down the deficit, you buy back T-bills and other government issues bonds; that money then gets re-invested and the dollar gains in value because there is less debt against it. So you’ve not only achieved more money in the market place, but also better valuation of US currency.
In spending money, we restrict the money that goes back to paying off those T-bills, and further we have to devalue the dollar (lower the valuation) to pay off what we do pay off – either through selling more T-bills or exchanging old ones for new ones.
As we saw with the U.S.S.R in the 1980′s and early 1990′s, massive spending beyond your means as a nation will bankrupt the country. The US is not immune to that either; it may take longer but it will still happen if we don’t control our debt.
So no – CCIEs counts are no economic trend indicator to anyone other than Cisco – because it does directly affect Cisco’s bottom line and no one else’s.
I could agree with somewhat with the Dow Theory in general – if generalized to be ‘transportation’ instead of ‘railroads’ – but that still wouldn’t apply to _this_ recession as _this_ recession is all about debt.
Address the debt issue and you’ll resolve the recession and set the US up for another long term of economic success. Otherwise, at best you’re only extending the time until a collapse happens.
Yep, TemporalBeing hit it on the head. The winners in this recession are those who can use their resources and money the best without going into debt doing it. No one will be buying (not consumers or businesses) until they are relatively debt free. The pain has only just begun. I’m sure by the time this recession/depression is over we’ll of lost about 20% of businesses in America due to bankruptcy.
We’ll be out of this pain only when people start buying…so look for indicators for consumer purchases and business expansion for that instead of market activity first.
Aren’t CCIE’s likely to be a lagging indicator of layoffs? Perhaps people who could have passed the test didn’t bother to take it because their boss knew they would pass it. After a layoff they want to make it official to help them get a new job.
Bob,
This CCIE theory makes for interesting reading but you are completely ignoring the fact that the Federal Reserve has turned the presses to the redline in printing worthless paper money. Charles Dow didn’t have to worry about this issue because FDR took us off the gold standard in 1933-34.
That opens up all kind of ways to ruin the marketplace when we allowed the government to print money at will. Nothing is holding them to be honest. That, and the fact that we are borrowing like crazy from other countries, like China, and there is absolutely no way it will turn around in 1-2 months. Try 10 years if we are lucky. Look for hyperinflation in the near future.
The U.S. Government has completely decimated the market and should be tried for treason. Wishful thinking and the lack of confidence in the markets has nothing to do with the reality that our money is becoming more and more worthless by the minute.
I don’t think so … in this case there are lots of laid off techies with the time on their hands to finish whatever training they wished they had. In recessionary times, people got back to school, hoping to enhance their value. That’s what’s happening here.
BTW: I completely agree with TemporalBeing above. He is as right as he could be. If only the Feds were forced to balance the budget (sigh).
Wow, we have a lot of cynicism here, but who’s to say you aren’t correct?
One point I should make about CCIE certification is that it’s fairly expensive to get if you add-in all the ancillary expenses. So this isn’t something a network tech would just add to his resume for the heck of it, since it would require spending several thousand dollars per certificate. That means the new numbers are probably the result of businesses paying to have their people certified, not those people just adding it on their own.
This is a great discussion with many cordially divergent points of view! I don’t have an answer to this economic mess and am not in the computer field. I am an M.D., M.S. (doctor-master).
Getting on point- I do not know the income range for a CCIE certified tech or how many certs they typically aspire to. From my perspective (I am double boarded in two specialties), if additional board certification was helpful in increasing my job and/or income prospects I would do it in a heart beat (I did 11 years ago). 2K and an additional 150-200 study hours on your own time is about right- cost of doing business and a small one at that given the thousands of hours spent practicing medicine.
Know other Docs that did not obtain that additional cert due to a combination of factors (cost, time commitment, fear of failing a “tough” test). M.D. market in primary and emergency medicine still quite good. If docs were to start get laid off/ job market getting real tight I guarantee we would see M.D. fence sitters getting additional certifications if these certs were perceived to be a competitive advantage.
How about hearing from some of the newly certified CCIE’s about what motivated them to get “certified”.
Trent
If someone wants to go for Certification, it isn’t money out of your pocket, you can get education loans (at pretty good interest rates if the state is involved) for Cisco, or any other certification. This doesn’t mean it needs to be certification from scratch, I may already be a specialist in one area.
I agree completely that this has to do with unemployed network engineers working on getting better positioned in the job market. This metric doesn’t address the number of specialists who are unemployed,
1) Router emulation in software has really lowered the economic entrance barrier. Today you can do much of the practice you need to pass the CCIE exam in your PC. You are no longer tied to rack equipment rentals or access to real equipment at work. If you’re fired, you can cheaply prepare your exam at home, dowloading all the material you need from P2P networks.
2) Cisco is doing “experiments” in changing the way the exams are done, like introducing oral questions in the practical CCIE exam. The people may be rushing to get his certification before it gets more difficult.
I was just about to make that same point, that the CCIE training is definitely more likely to be something a business pays for vs an individual. Especially an out-of-work individual.
Very thought provoking article.
I wish it were that simple. The problem is that everything that Obama’s administration is doing disturbs the economy and lengthens the recovery. If regulations increases– a longer recovery. If taxes increase– a longer recovery. If Congress passes laws which forcably unionize small businesses, then the marginal companies will go out of business and a longer recovery.
If Obama lays off the cost by borrowing from China or inflating the money supply, then the recovery will come, but we will be hit by high price inflation which Obama will blame on the greed of businesses.
when your only tool is a numerical survey of CCIEs…
that’s pretty weak, Bob. I really hope you’re over simplifying the analysis. where are the diagrams showing this correlation? it’s a fantastic theory, but in order to establish it as a leading indicator, you have to work backwords before you work forwards. what are they historical CCIE numbers? is there a seasonality/quarterly effect due to budget timing? it strikes me as odd that the bump coincides with the first of the year/quarter. and why 30-60 days? what analysis does that result from? please tell me you have something more rigorous.
The “Joke Indicator” is the best measure of where we are at in a given economic cycle.
When the economy is growing people are busy working and jokes are few… When the economy is contracting, folks are hustling to avoid loss… During the leveling off periods and between trends, business activity is stable – either at the top or bottom of a cycle and there are a lot of jokes moving through the culture, because things are just sort of stable…
We are just beginning to see a slight up tick in the amount of humor. As the bottom we are in levels out more jokes will be told and as the economy strengthens the amount of incidental humor will tapper off, that will be when economic activity is increasing and the bottom is over.
It will be interesting to watch this one over time. I would bet that there are a number of active factors. Time did a good article on leading indicators recently: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1876737_1876735,00.html?iid=tsmodule, but none of them track the net. Maybe CCIE tracking will turn out to be a good one to add to the list. Or maybe someone noticed that Obama is proposing to spend several billion on broadband buildout.
This is an economy which has been running on credit for several decades. All of a sudden there is almost no credit available, so the economy is contracting precipitously and a deflationary spiral–the economic version of a positive feedback loop–will surely follow unless an heroic intervention is applied immediately. All those trillions of capital are sitting on the sidelines, because A) no one wants to be the first penguin into the water while the shark is circling, and B) if deflation does rear it’s ugly head, all that capital makes it’s best return by just sitting there. By comparison, inflation is stable and manageable.
That’s why George Soros recently wrote: “There is no way to escape from a far-from-equilibrium situation–global deflation and depression–except by first inducing its opposite and then reducing it” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-soros/a-plan-for-economic-recov_b_166518.html). In other words, break the positive feedback loop, and then regain long term stability.
So I would say that the real indicator will be the availability of additional credit, because it’s both indicative, and causative; and without it, this economy won’t just contract, it will implode.
I tend to believe that the spike in CCIEs is more in keeping with the sudden uptick in college enrollment. Well qualified people are out of work and have to time to expand their education/vita. I believe a better indicator of whether the economy is about to turn is electricity consumption.
In a tight business environment with lots of unemployed CCIEs, I see employers hiring them rather than paying big bucks for training.
From the standpoint of the laid off techie, a few grand for a strong certification isn’t a bad idea… I know I’m thinking about doing it (and I’m still employed, just underemployed after a corporate buyout)
UGH, please, don’t talk about the economy, religion or politics. Just talk about technology companies. And Especially don’t talk about investing.
IF you think Warren Buffett looks foolish because of a short term result, you haven’t studied Warren Buffett enough to use him as an example. Plus I’d like a citation where he told us to “buy stocks” particularly the random set of stocks as indicated by the dow. He would never do that.
Secondly, you can’t call a turn in the economy if you don’t know why its declined in the first place.
Its declined because the federal reserve has been manipulating the money supply and interest rates since the dotcom bust. That bust was a real economic event. In 2001 they put interest rates below inflation, this underwrote massive foolish credit expansion.
Since then, inflation has gone up, and the government is setting new records of deficit spending– $3T in spending in 12 months is representative of %30 inflation all by itself and thats on top of the high inflation already baked into the system.
Until interest rates are allowed to float at the market, or the government stops inflating the currency we run the risk of hyperinflation and a complete societal collapse.
Its a long slide down from here and we’re only picking up steam.
You want a leading economic indicator? When Obama slashes the budget, cuts spending and we start having surplusses and the federal reserve stops printing money and bonds as fast as it can, and interest rates are allowed to rise— then you might have an indicator that things will be turning around.
Hopefully we wont’ be off the cliff by then.
A good site for economics for regular people is http://www.mises.org
Interesting read, but I tend to agree with TemporalBeing on this one. BTW, I had to smile with the comments about laid off techies getting their CCIE. Even with the easing back of the lab from 2 days to 1 day, this is still darn near the toughest cert to get in the industry.
Chances are if you are strong enough technically to pass the lab (and are NOT a sociopath), your company is doing all it can to keep you.
Enjoy!
I agree with Joe. MBAs are expensive to acquire as well, but business schools show an uptick in downturns: college leavers whose mater and pater can afford to do so boost their qualifications instead of hunting in a desperate job market.
City types take redundancy packages and plough them into MBAs. I suspect the same thing is happening with techies. IT people at Wall St/City banks are being laid off. Many of them are smart enough to have savings, minimized their mortgages etc.
I think the upside to this is rather that there’s a lot of increasingly qualified people hanging around on the sidelines, waiting to do useful things. Like the stacks of money being piled up by Hedgies, they’ll make the upturn faster when it comes. Unlike all the newly minted MBAs, who are the people who got us into this mess in the first place.
I think this indicated a lot of laid-off IT folks with time on their hands that are doing the right thing and using the dip to train up. But that’s not the same thing as a leading indicator of recovery.
Bob, I’ve loved/read your column for years at all it’s various venues, but you should put your “economic-blogger” hat up in your closet next to your pirate hat.
A more logical explanation of the “trend” noted is:
1.) Obviously, over the course of the last 12 months, most businesses have had to make major cutbacks in operational expenditures due to the deteriorating economy, and full or partial educational reimbursement is one of the first areas that gets the ax.
2.) There are goodly numbers of the brighter population segment who are using their savings/severance packages to go back to grad school/CCIE/other career enhancing training programs to increase their desirability for when the markets/economy does start coming back, rather than beat their heads against the current employment/hiring nightmare.
Since your base statistic involves an increase of 160 people out of potential millions in the data set, that would make a lot more sense than your explanation.
If you really want the BEST leading indicator of the economy, which has always been ignored, probably for obvious reasons, by all the leading economist, that would be nudie bars. Amount of money earned per shift/shifts worked per week by the girls and overall alcohol sales. This is invariably the best indicator of disposable income being disposed, and one of the first things that gets cut back on when the economy starts slowing down, often leading the stock market and other indicators by 3-6 months.
Most comments have hit it…the economic problems force people to enhance their resume. But, what are the numbers on the whole MCSE track? I used to hear adds three times an hour for MCSE training…”quit dead-end job, get cert. in 6 months, make $65K !!”….pffft, good luck with that.
If you could break out the Cisco certs that were sponsored by employers, then I think the relation would be more accurate.
PS: Could you place the “comments” link after the story text? Or at least not so we have to go back to the home index?
[...] I, Cringely » Blog Archive » And a Network Engineer Shall Lead Them – Cringely on technology "George’s theory is that IP networks are to the 21st century what railroads were to the 19th. Over the last six months the CCIE numbers have been steadily going down. Last August the U.S. CCIE number went down by one. The last report in January the number of U.S. CCIE’s grew by eight. Over the last 50 or so days the number has grown by 83 new CCIEs in the U.S. Is this a change in trend? Are the markets starting to bottom? With all of the bad news in the press, you have to want to be a contrarianIf this were the Dow Theory, then the prediction would be that companies are creating more CCIE’s in anticipation of expansion and adding new networks. " (tags: economy) [...]
[...] I, Cringely » Blog Archive » And a Network Engineer Shall Lead Them – Cringely on technology "George’s theory is that IP networks are to the 21st century what railroads were to the 19th. Over the last six months the CCIE numbers have been steadily going down. Last August the U.S. CCIE number went down by one. The last report in January the number of U.S. CCIE’s grew by eight. Over the last 50 or so days the number has grown by 83 new CCIEs in the U.S. Is this a change in trend? Are the markets starting to bottom? With all of the bad news in the press, you have to want to be a contrarianIf this were the Dow Theory, then the prediction would be that companies are creating more CCIE’s in anticipation of expansion and adding new networks. " (tags: economy) [...]
The huge housing inventory is GOOD for the economy, unless you’re a house builder or someone who has invested your life savings in a house for which you paid too much.
The site you linked to pointed out that the test design was changing at 1 Feb. That sure seems like a significant factor that could easily explain the surge.
Wait…you forgot to talk about Apple or Microsoft.
Its not a tech article without it being about them you know and you will lag behind in your quota.
Bob is correct that companies are paying for certification, but Ben is also correct that it is a lagging indicator.
Right now network engineers who are employed are getting certified at their employers expense so that their resume looks better. Certification helps the employee retain his job during times of layoffs and help the person find a new job if they do get canned.
What of the lag? How long does it take to become a CCIE? Months? Years?
Of more interest is how many may be starting the program. Just because they become certified now does not seem of particular interest as a an economic harbinger.
This is why the government does not track “housing completions” but rather “housing starts”
Bob,
I like your theory. Frankly, I like any theory that posits the chance that my decimated 401(k) may start to recover value.
The problem is, you’ve basically said that railroad recovery is in 2009 terms equal to train engineers getting their license. Dow didn’t track the number of train engineers getting their license, he tracked the number of train cars actually moving across the country.
Perhaps Dow wanted to track engineer licenses, but didn’t have the technology then. Who knows? But all we do know is that what he did track was correct in predicting a market recovery.
Applying your theorem, a better measure would be the number of packets going across the U.S. networks. More packets, more business – right? So maybe those new CCIE’s can help track the number of packets flying around. Of course, they’ll have to filter out all the porn and warez downloads. Oh and forget Usenet traffic, that’s probably a contrary indicator
.
[...] vis-a-vis Cringely (Mark): http://www.cringely.com/2009/03/and-a-… [...]
So, since we’re all going to be prosperous once again … how long before Team Cringely moves closer to that moon-shot?
i disagree.
Keep in mind that Buffet is a buy and hold investor, not a speculative trader. Just because his investments have dropped 30% in a few months doesn’t mean they are not sound choices.
Hey Bob, are you going to blog about what you learnt at the econo-blogo-conference.
Was any wisdom parted?
Count CCIEs to find the tech leader in Asia… Count CCIEs to find out when the economy in the US is turning… This seems to be an amazingly useful metric! I wonder what else it can be used to indicate.
Never mind the actual merits of the CCIE program, the main thing counting CCIEs measures is how much employers value a simple yes/no metric instead of having to evaluate a prospective hire’s capabilities themselves.
While there may be some correlation with the number of CCIEs to other things you want to measure don’t be fooled into thinking you have established cause and effect, however indirect, when you have not.
Dow died more than 15 years before the US had to nationalize all of the US railrods, becasue they were so totally inept and could not handle the WWI traffic. I wonder what he would have said about that.
This is just curious speculation, like your simile between the railroads and the current networks. Back then, the railroads moved everything that the steamboats, didn’t, and I mean everything. There were no highways, no freight planes, no airlines. But the railroads had nothing to do with city newspapers, and they were rather disconnected with the telegraph services and the wire services.
[...] And a Network Engineer Shall Lead Them [...]
If you want a leading economic indicator in the computing sector look to the people who design the machines that make machines… is there hiring for stepper designers? or chem/physics/optics folks in resists? for optics/physic types in laser/materials interactions…
Having worked for some time in aerospace engineering, I take issue with IT being considered anything more than plumbers, or AV geeks with slide projectors in days of old. Sure there is real cutting edge Computer stuff being done by EE’s at Intel or Cisco or IBM… but not by field service people.
I am a CCIE (Routing and Switching) and if i was laidoff tomorrow, I would begin work immediately on another CCIE. So I am not sure how this would indicate the economy is going to improve.
)
We’ll know we’ve hit bottom when people are so discouraged by the prospects of recovery they stop wondering if we’ve hit the bottom.
Those may just be optimistic companies jumping the gun, but they’re far too early. Until all the debt is discharged, until the number of worthless derivatives being held by various companies is known, the world is headed for the Greatest Depression of all.
And hyperinflation isn’t the problem, because no one is going to be able to buy (or want to waste money on) anything other than food and shelter for the next 10 years or so. The only safe place now is Treasuries, and of course they are vulnerable to a U.S. default (after all, the U.S. is technically bankrupt).
There is too much debt and corruption in the system, and it’s imprudent to do anything at this point but sock money away in your home safe. Don’t get your CCIEs, don’t buy gold, just save money.
You’re going to need it when your 401(k) is seized, your gold is seized, and Social Security and Medicare run out. That’s what’s coming folks, all in less than 18 months.
Probably it has to do with highly qualified people being laid off and trying to improve their job chances. I went and got a grad degree in CS after the dot.com boom and this was far too much trouble and took too long. By the time I finished I’d had it with tech. The way they cater to foreign people now has all but ruined the business. I did some certificates too but they tend to focus too much on specific areas. It seems to me that nobody really knows everything in tech so either you have a wide but shallow knowledge or something very specific. Like the Oracle test was very specific to Oracle. As for this cert replacing the Railroads it’s a stretch. There is an index, the Dow Transportation Index that replaced the railroad index. This covers FedEx and all those. It confirmed the markets are in a bear when it dropped a few months ago. One thing tech does have in common with transportation is they both change over time so there’ll probably be some new tech in the future. The cs degree does try to give you a broad knowledge and does ok with that if it weren’t for all the other bs. As for getting a job the non-tech people have little ability to make any judgment which is why they fall for all the foreign people. This is one reason why the markets are doing so badly. It’s not just a correction that is going to bounce back.