a couple of months ago i decided to break down and take the cisco ccna certification exams, which i had no problems with. i passed the icnd1 exam and then passed the icnd2 exam a week later.

just prior to the end of our fiscal year (june 30th), we have our annual performance evaluations, which precede any raises we might receive on july 1st. a few days ago, i got my “letter” letting me know what my raise would be (we generally get 3%) and i was happy to see a nice bonus on there on top of that for completing the ccna. if i had known that i would be getting that, i’d have taken the tests a long time ago!

i have to say that the ccna was well worth the (time) investment i put into it, since it didn’t cost me anything financially ($work reimburses me for certification exams). by the way, i never got a bonus for the microsoft certs. :P